The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  Grace drew in a long, fortifying breath as she lifted her eyes to where the Queen Mother, in whose honor she was reading, looked down at her beatifically, expectantly. Grace found the words to the Keats poem that started her program: “Bright star, would I were as stedfast as thou art— / Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night . . .”

  * * *

  Despite Grace’s secret wish that it would not, Caroline’s wedding day arrived—without a Windsor in attendance. Her eldest child, her first daughter, looked almost saintly in her modest embroidered dress, which fairly glowed white against her tan skin and dark hair, which had been swept back and fastened to a veil with a curve of small white flowers at the sides of her head. Grace tried to look at Philippe as little as possible, because to see the two of them together only drove home how mismatched they were, even physically—Caroline so young and delicate, all small points and angles, and Philippe, who was so much older, which showed in the lines of his face, his politician’s smile and heftier features. How ironic, Grace observed, that I should spend so many years in thrall to much older men on-screen and off-, but it should be my daughter who actually marries someone entirely too old for her. Whatever criticisms she had of Rainier, none had ever been that he was too old.

  “Caroline told me how much it means to her that you’re both here today,” Albie said to Grace and Rainier as they waited in one of the chambers of the chapel before the ceremony began. Stéphie was also there, sitting on a desk and swinging her legs and chewing gum like the schoolgirl she was.

  “Our little diplomat,” Grace said, smiling and patting her son’s cheek. She felt a flush of tears at his words, but was determined to hold them in even though she’d instructed her most trusted makeup artist to use only waterproof products for this momentous day. “Thank you for telling me that.”

  The ceremony, mass, and photographs, the endless receiving line under the waning but still hot Monégasque sunshine, seemed to stretch the day out interminably. Caroline, who usually detested this sort of pomp and formality, appeared to be relishing every minute of it now that the attention and compliments were directed at her. She smiled with genuine gratitude and kissed or grasped hands with everyone, no matter who they were, and Grace recognized something in her daughter that reached down into her gut like a hand scraping out the innards of a Halloween pumpkin. She feels seen. In spite of all her instructions to herself not to be like her own mother, had she made Margaret Majer Kelly’s mistake anyway? Did Caroline also feel unseen? Was this the stage her daughter felt she needed to step upon to get her mother’s attention?

  The hand scouring her insides went to work again when Grace watched as Rainier took Caroline to the dance floor when the band struck up “Sweet Caroline,” which had been their daughter’s household theme song since its release nearly a decade ago. Rainier and Caroline smiled at each other in that way that excluded everyone else at the reception, that way that simultaneously said je t’aime, papa and je t’aime, ma fille. “And when I hurt,” sang the front man of the band, “hurting runs off my shoulders. How can I hurt when holding you?”

  A fierce maternal jealousy filled Grace, and she wondered what Philippe thought when he saw his bride with her father. Grace scanned the crowd for Caroline’s new husband; it took longer than expected because he was toward the back near the tiers of intricately decorated cake, not even looking at his new wife but laughing riotously with some other unctuous, false-smiled businessman type.

  I’ll be right here when you need me, Grace thought at her daughter, hoping that she’d finally be up to that task, hoping she could give her daughter what she needed, when she needed it.

  * * *

  The palace was eerily silent after the wedding. Grace took off for Roc Agel alone, needing the healing touch of the long grasses and wildflowers. She had told the rest of her family, whom she left behind at the palace, that anyone was welcome to join her if they felt so moved. No one had volunteered, and so she’d left, taking with her a new volume fresh from Shakespeare and Company by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. She’d recently become interested in Irish writers, following a binge on the poetry of Yeats.

  It was a warm late-summer afternoon, and Grace stood in her studio surrounded by fresh cuts of flowers she planned to dry and press into designs and patterns that pleased and soothed her, when she was startled to hear Stéphanie’s voice from the doorway behind her say, “Mom?”

  “Oh, my goodness,” Grace said, whirling around, her hand on her galloping heart. “Stéphie! I’m so glad to see you, but so surprised!”

  Her younger daughter laughed. She looked enough like Caroline to give Grace a fresh pang of the sadness that had dogged her since the wedding. “Sorry,” Stéphie said, “but I wanted . . . I just thought maybe we could keep each other company.”

  Grace almost wept at this surprise. Her beautiful, popular daughter had surely turned down many invitations for more glamorous locales and company than Roc Agel and her washed-up actress of a mother.

  Crossing the room, she hugged Stéphanie. “I couldn’t be happier to see you.”

  “Do you want help with your flowers?” Stéphie asked. This offer was also unprecedented. Goodness, what other pleasures will this evening bring? Grace wondered.

  Though the idea of talking flowers with her daughter, and also of getting some of that work accomplished, was appealing, she didn’t want to risk boring Stéphanie so that she’d never be tempted to repeat this daughterly offer of company and companionship.

  “Actually,” said Grace, “I’m starving. How about you?”

  They spent an hour in the rustic kitchen, chopping fresh herbs and tiny tomatoes they gathered together from the garden, boiling water for pasta, and nibbling on a chunk of a local goat cheese and crostini with l’eau pétillante. They traded funny stories about the wedding, and Stéphie opened up about some of the girls at her school and how it bothered her when they excluded her from certain parties and outings. “I don’t always want to actually go,” her daughter said, “but I want to be invited.”

  “Yes,” Grace agreed, “it’s always nice to feel included.” She remembered so well how it had felt not to receive invitations to the usual Hollywood parties as soon as she moved to Monaco. Of course, she couldn’t have gone, but it would have been so nice to feel that her friends missed her so much that they invited her anyway. Not being invited made her feel forgotten. The long list of invitations she had to decline had so swamped her in recent years, she’d forgotten how hard that other feeling had been for her, and she tried to offer Stéphie as much understanding as she could.

  When at last they each had bowls of steaming, fragrant spaghetti smothered in herbs sautéed with anchovies in oil, it was dark. “Want to see if there’s a good movie on television?” Grace suggested, and when Stéphie nodded with an eager smile, they went to the living room and sat cross-legged as Grace used the new remote control to find a channel that might have a decent movie. In minutes, she located a choice so perfect it was almost divine intervention: Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn. It was only about fifteen minutes in.

  “Have you ever seen this?” Grace asked her daughter, who stared at the screen in rapt attention as she slurped a mouthful of pasta and shook her head.

  “Shame on me, then! This movie is a must.”

  She only wished Caroline was there. At the first advertising break, Grace filled Stéphanie in on the start of the movie she’d missed. “So,” her daughter asked in disbelief, “this is really about a princess of a small country in Europe who wants to run away from her life?”

  “It is,” Grace affirmed, hardly able to believe the parallels herself. The first time she’d seen the movie had been when it released in 1953, and she’d been twenty-four years old—exactly the same age as Audrey. How clearly she remembered sitting in the dark theater, watching Princess Ann enjoy her ice-cream cone and new sandals and impish haircut, little freedoms Grace could
have walked out of the theater and enjoyed herself at the snap of her fingers. Little had she known that in three years, the young actress who’d sat in envy of her contemporary’s luck in landing this prime role would trade those very freedoms for the life Audrey was playing in the movie.

  Now, twenty-five years later, Grace was watching the movie again with her own little princess, laughing with recognition as sheltered Princess Ann got into all manner of trouble throughout Rome alongside Gregory Peck’s Joe Bradley, who was utterly won over by the girl’s naïve charm. When the movie ended and Ann chose to resume her stifling life as sovereign, with all the luncheons and interviews she abhored, Grace and Stéphanie were blowing their noses and dabbing their eyes with tissues. When the credits rolled and they finally looked at each other, they burst into laughter and went into the kitchen to eat ice cream, standing in their bare feet.

  “Too bad Caroline didn’t meet a Joe Bradley,” mused Stéphanie.

  I was just thinking the same thing. “I’m sure Philippe is showing her a terrific time on their honeymoon,” Grace said. “And maybe you will meet a Joe Bradley someday.”

  Stéphanie grinned, and she looked as excited and carefree as Grace had ever seen her. “That would be fun,” she said.

  As she lay in bed in the velvety darkness, with her windows open to the symphony of crickets and cicadas, a fan delicately whirring in the corner of her room, gratitude welled up in Grace. After everything she’d given up, life was finally giving her something back—the Fox board, the poetry readings, and now an intimacy with her daughters she’d always craved. Caroline’s marriage might not last, but it had afforded Grace the opportunity to support her daughter and to be close to her other two children.

  Before she knew it, Stéphanie would also be a grown woman. And maybe another director, someone of Hitch’s caliber, would show her a script. And it wouldn’t matter what Rainier said, or what some decades-old piece of paper dictated. Her adult children, whom she loved, couldn’t be kept from her. They could choose to get on a plane to California. And they would. Surely they would.

  Chapter 39

  1981

  Twenty-five years. Their so-called wedding of the century had been a quarter of a century ago. And later this spring, England’s Prince Charles would marry Lady Diana Spencer in a wedding heralded as the biggest thing in nuptials since her own. It was very strange to be the bride against whom others were measured, especially when she hardly even remembered wearing that dress, taking all those pictures, walking down the aisle, and bowing her head so regally beneath her veil. Even she was impressed at herself, looking at the pictures that were still sprinkled into newspapers and magazines. The pictures proved she had indeed been a fairy-tale bride, but what they couldn’t show was that every molecule in her body had been yearning to be on Rainier’s boat, sailing away from it all.

  Grace was to meet Lady Diana later that day, at a poetry reading at Goldsmiths’ Hall in honor of her groom, Prince Charles. She had half a mind to take the young man aside and tell him to be nice to that young thing he was marrying, for she looked like a frightened rabbit in every single photo that was taken of her. And like everyone else in their circles—everyone except Diana herself, Grace assumed—Grace had heard the rumors that he was still involved with his college sweetheart.

  Rolling out of her feathery-soft London hotel bed, Grace padded to the bathroom and stared at her face in the mirror. Every morning she hoped to see something different, especially if she’d woken many times to use the toilet, as she had last night. She kept hoping the bloat in her face and torso would be gone, the excess water flushed down long pipes and into sewers, far away from her own body.

  But every morning she was disappointed. She hardly recognized herself. The hormone specialist she saw regularly in Paris had put her on what he promised was the absolute latest in treatment for menopausal women. When she complained that the regimen of pills was making her face and body fill like water balloons, the doctor kept saying this effect would subside; she just needed to be patient. Patient, patient. She was so tired of waiting all the time.

  For God’s sake, when could she expect to look like herself again? Through all the trials of her life, one thing she’d always been able to depend on was looking in the mirror and seeing herself every morning. It was disconcerting to see this fun-house version of herself look back at her, when her face was the one thing she’d never had to struggle with in her life. The choices she’d always made to stay out of the sun, not to smoke, not to drink too many cocktails or eat too many desserts had sometimes been a hardship, but as a result her face had been stable her whole life.

  It was beyond vanity, the way these changes unsettled her. What she felt was more like being shipwrecked, marooned on an island where nothing was familiar, all her usual defenses and helpmeets destroyed. She had to figure out everything anew.

  The change was making her cranky, which she was not proud of, but hadn’t been able to help. She had been extra critical of her girls lately, after a few months of unexpected calm following Caroline’s divorce from Philippe Junot last year. Grace and her elder daughter had been like storybook princesses locked in their palace, shutting themselves in from everything else outside. Grace stroked Caroline’s hair as she cried; they burrowed under duvets and watched movies and ate chocolate ice cream; they took long walks in the hills near the palace that reminded her of her treks with Rita in the hills near Sweetzer when she was her daughter’s age; then they would take cooling swims in the pool. Eventually, they made plans for the relaunching of Caroline’s life: graduate school, Paris, and a foundation for children that she could pour her energies into. “I want to be so busy, I don’t even think about men,” she said to her mother. Full of hope, Grace cupped her daughter’s beautiful face in her hands and said, “I’m so very proud of you.”

  But hardly six months had gone by, and Caroline again became a regular feature in the tabloids: worse, the photographers were now also attacking Stéphanie with a vengeance now that she was a regular on the party circuit.

  Unlike the last time they’d had this conversation, Rainier was in favor of Grace taking up residence in Paris with their girls. “They must behave,” he said irritably. It was the most he said on the subject, as he was pouring all his parenting energy into Albie, who would soon be graduating from Amherst and was becoming more and more interested in the sports he’d always casually pursued. He’d even taken up a little-known Olympic event called the bobsleigh. “Can you imagine?” Rainier had chuckled. “The prince of the sunniest country in Europe competing in the winter Olympics?”

  “It is ironic,” Grace agreed. “But his grandfather would be very proud.” She wondered if this was really true, however, for Jack Kelly’s grandson was more of a dabbler than a focused athlete. Albie was good at many sports, which pleased and reassured Grace. Having seen what happened to Kell, whose fanatical dedication to rowing had kept him from enjoying his own life, Grace had never asked Albie to choose between tennis and swimming and track. Not for the first time, Grace felt grateful that her father had died before he could pass any sort of judgment on her own children. She had enough of his voice in her ears even from the grave. Then she felt terribly guilty for feeling that way.

  In the shower, Grace massaged a large, fragrant cake of soap over her skin, lathering her puffy body in foamy white bubbles. Then she let scalding-hot water rinse the bubbles into the drain. She sighed. A makeup artist would be arriving soon to do what she could with her face. She longed for the days on movie sets when she had to plead for less makeup. Now she had to make sure there was enough.

  * * *

  Gwen Robyns kissed Grace on both cheeks under the soft yellow lights shining down on Goldsmiths’ Hall’s marble Staircase Hall when the poetry reading was done. They had been corresponding and speaking on the phone lately about doing a book on flowers together, but she hadn’t actually seen her friend in months. “It’s so wo
nderful to see you,” said Grace, holding her friend’s hands tightly in her own. Both sets of hands betrayed her age and her friend’s—chilly to the touch, with loose, thin skin and more pronounced knuckles. The Cartier diamond Rainier had given her nearly a quarter century ago was constantly falling into the crook between her finger and palm.

  “I can’t wait to catch up properly tomorrow,” said Grace. She never liked to schedule too many meetings before a performance, preferring to use the time to rehearse or immerse herself in other poems by the same author. So she had added time in London on this trip to see more of Gwen, as well as a few other friends who happened to be in the English capital.

  “What do you think?” Gwen whispered to Grace, nodding over at Diana, who stood beside Charles in a stiff blue dress meant to show off her milky skin and delicate collarbone—but the girl stooped, curving her shoulders inward, her nose preparing for a downward dive into her glass of sparkling water.

  “I wish I could send her to Edith and Sandy for crash courses in how to wear clothes, and how to act like a princess when you don’t feel like one,” Grace said, her heart breaking for this young swan. How different she was from Caroline and Stéphanie, who had never been wallflowers, who had always stood tall and thrust out their chins for the cameras. Grace wondered if this was because her own daughters had been raised in the spotlight, whereas Diana was being shoved into it. She could see why, of course; the girl was lovely. Grace wished only that she could show her how to hide her insecurities.