by Nyna Giles
Each morning, Carolyn dressed as if preparing to go to work, pulling at the fingers on her gloves until they were perfectly straight, pinning her hat on her head at the ideal angle, then taking the elevator down to the lobby. There she stood and watched as the hotel’s residents hurried out of elevators, chattering to one another as they pulled on their gloves and adjusted their hats, before streaming through the revolving doors, out into the world and their lives. More than anything, Carolyn wanted to follow them.
And so she did. Mostly, she walked, saving the subway or cab fare and learning the city as she went. She discovered Bloomingdale’s department store, right around the corner from the hotel, where she could admire the latest fashions. Walking farther, she stumbled on the Horn & Hardart Automat, just south and west of the hotel on Fifty-seventh Street. The food at the Automat was cheap and fresh, and stored in little glass boxes. You dropped the nickels in the slot, turned the dial, and then popped open the door to pull out your selection. Carolyn thought the Automat was so modern and clever, as if you’d just stepped into the future. No one minded if she stayed for hours, sitting by the window upstairs, looking out onto the hats of people passing by on the avenue below, only getting up to refill her cup of coffee from the spout in the wall. In Steubenville, when she went home at the end of the day, she spent her time clearing up after her younger siblings, washing dishes, cleaning house. But after she ate at the Automat there were no dishes to wash. And when she went back to the hotel, her room was her own; it was cleaned, and the bed made and turned down. She was free.
One day, only a week after she arrived in New York, Carolyn was at her usual spot at the Automat, looking out over Fifty-seventh, when a young man came up to her. He introduced himself as a photographer.
“You’re an attractive girl,” the young man said. “Ever thought about modeling?”
Carolyn told him yes, and that she’d even had some test shots taken while still home in Steubenville. The young man sat down; they started talking. The photographer knew people. He could introduce her.
Would she like to meet Harry Conover, owner of one of the oldest and largest modeling agencies in the country?
Carolyn nodded yes. The young man scrawled an address and number on a piece of paper—52 Vanderbilt Avenue. That day, Carolyn left the Automat and ran back to the Barbizon with the paper in her pocket, the ticket to her new beginning.
CHAPTER 2
Nina
That young and determined woman at the Barbizon is a person I never knew. By the time I was born, my mother was in her early thirties, married and living on Long Island, spending her days taking care of my two older sisters and me. When I picture her back then, I see her standing at the stove in our kitchen, head tilted slightly. She’s wearing her everyday blouse and slacks, either in white or pale pink. One hand is stirring something on the stove; the other is holding on to the counter. To one side is a glass of wine. Her cigarette is in an ashtray, and when she picks it up, she twirls it in her fingers absentmindedly. My mother is quiet and methodical in her movements as she stirs. Classical music plays on the turquoise turntable she keeps in the kitchen. I’m standing behind her, quiet as I can be, always worried she might startle if I make too much noise.
In my earliest memory of my mother, I’m still a baby. I’ve just learned to walk, and I’ve somehow maneuvered myself over the bar of my crib, sliding down onto the floor below, then going out along the hallway to the stairs overlooking our living area. I turn around to shuffle down the stairs on my knees, going about halfway down before I call to her. My mother’s standing below at the kitchen counter with her back to me. When she hears me call, she runs to me, scooping me up into her arms, protecting me. Even as a baby, I’m searching for her, trying to keep her close.
When I was growing up, my mother and I were often in the house alone. My father was almost always someplace else, either working or socializing in the city. My two sisters were six and eight years older than me; they had their own lives, their friends and places to go. Our house was at the end of a long private road, surrounded by woods, at the edge of the waters of Long Island Sound. My father called our home the Dream House, and he had helped to design it. The Dream House was built from planks of redwood trees, with ceilings two and a half stories high. At the back of the house were giant picture windows from floor to ceiling looking out over our own little beach, where I liked to play. The house was very modern, ahead of its time, but at night, when the wind was blowing, the Dream House creaked and complained, as if it never wanted to be built at all.
Through the woods and up the hill was a castle called Eastfair. This was the home of my father’s closest friend, Sherman Fairchild. Sherman was a millionaire and he had built the castle for himself, modeling it on a medieval French château he had visited while traveling in Normandy. The castle was vast and made of stone, with a tall tower at one end, of the kind in which princesses are imprisoned in fairy tales. The Eastfair estate had twenty acres of grounds, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a pool, and a big square building with a photography studio inside, where Sherman would take pictures of the models that came to visit him on the weekends. It was Sherman who had given us the strip of land on which to build our home, and Sherman who threw the parties my father attended while my mother stayed at home with me.
When my older sisters, Jill and Robin, were home, I did my best to keep up with them. I took note of what they wore, what they said, how they acted. I wanted to have what they had and to be a part of whatever they were doing. This came with its risks. I remember standing and watching my sisters playing with the tree swing that my father had rigged up in the woods to the side of our house. I knew I was too young to join in, so I stood to one side. The swing seat was made of wood and metal. Jill climbed into the tree, and Robin was pushing the swing as high as she could so that Jill could grab it and leap on.
“Nina!” Robin shouted, warning me to get out of the way.
I turned just as the metal swing hit me right on the top of my head. My sisters carried me back into the house, leaving a trail of blood all the way across the gravel driveway, up the steps, and into the kitchen, where my frantic mother tried to stop the blood with towels. When it became clear that the cut was severe, they took me to the emergency room. I remember how frightened I was, the feeling of being restrained, my arms strapped into a papoose, aware of every stitch the doctors sewed up my head.
Later that evening my father came home to find a bloody driveway and what looked like a murder scene in the kitchen. He had no idea where we were.
* * *
IN MY MEMORIES of my mother, she’s almost always at a distance, turning away from me, lost in the daily tasks of motherhood. I don’t think she particularly enjoyed cooking, but she did it diligently, moving around the kitchen slowly and methodically, completing each task by rote. Her dinner staples were hamburgers (always without a roll) and baked potatoes and peas. Sometimes she’d heat up Tree Tavern Pizza, or make chicken or shrimp curry with white rice, or filet of sole with butter sauce. My favorite was her breakfast: one egg over easy on white toast with crumbled bacon and salt and pepper, all chopped up together. She’d bring it to me in bed when I was sick. Once in a while, she’d make me a special treat: chocolate chip pancakes arranged in the shape of Mickey Mouse’s head—a circle for the face, and two smaller circles for the ears. She smoked all the time as she cooked, finishing one and lighting another. Newport was her brand; with its turquoise-and-white packaging, and the gold paper lining, it seemed so much more feminine than my father’s Kents.
When she wasn’t cooking or driving my sisters to their various activities, my mother was doing laundry. The laundry room was upstairs next to my parents’ bedroom, and it had a washer, a dryer, an iron and ironing board, and shelves lining the walls. The room was always orderly and neat; everything had its place. I would stand next to my mother as she folded with precision and care. She never expected me to help with the folding, never gave me a chore. Later, wh
en I left home, I realized I’d never so much as loaded a washing machine or a dishwasher. My mother had always done everything for me.
As a child, I followed her everywhere. I didn’t like to let her out of my sight. Even when she took a bath, I’d stand at her side. I remember the thick, bright red caesarian scar that stood up in a ridge from her pale skin, running from above her belly button all the way down her abdomen. If I asked her about the scar, she’d tell me that it was from my birth and that she was prone to keloid scars—where the scar tissue doesn’t fade—and that’s why it looked that way.
About once a month, she brushed Clairol’s Loving Care hair dye into her glossy black hair, paying special attention to a streak of gray by her part. I would sit next to her in the bathroom as she did this, the ammonia pinching in my throat and nose. She always used Jergens lotion on her hands, which she kept with her powder puff and red and coral lipsticks in golden tubes. At night, I’d watch as she wound her hair into pin curls, fixing each section into a neat loop and securing it with bobby pins.
Even at night, I made sure I wasn’t separated from her for long. She’d put me to bed in my own room, but I often woke up at night; I didn’t like the dark, and the Dream House made me fearful; I could hear noises outside—the wind, some bird or animal scuffling in the trees—and so I’d get out of my bed and go to her. I remember tiptoeing out of my room in my nightgown, careful not to wake my sisters, whose bedrooms were next to mine. Then I’d walk across to the other side of the house, where my parents slept, pushing gently on the door to their bedroom. My mother and father slept separately, in twin beds with a heavy round marble table between them. The coverlets on their beds were a blue-and-white pattern that was rough and not soft at all.
I was scared of my father; he lost his temper easily, I didn’t want to wake him. Often I would curl up in an alcove in their suite, surrounded by books, listening to the sounds of my parents breathing. Sometimes I lay down on the floor next to them. Other times I went to my mother’s side and quietly begged her to get up and come with me to my bed. If I accidentally woke my father he’d say angrily, “Oh, Carolyn, tell her to go back to her own room!” But my mother never did tell me. Instead, she’d get up, and together we’d walk hand in hand to my bed. I recall her slow movements and her hushed voice, getting under the warm covers with her. Then she would hold me, we were together, and I would fall right back to sleep. My mother slept with me in my bed most nights until I was ten years old.
Looking back, I wonder if my mother was also awake in the night, and that’s why she was always ready to come and sleep in my room with me. Or maybe she needed to get away from my father. Or perhaps she did it for a simpler reason: she wanted someone to hold in the darkness as much as I did.
* * *
I KNEW MY MOTHER had been a model when she was younger, but by the time I was born, she had given up her career. It was so hard for me to imagine her life before I came along. She didn’t have any old magazines or photos from her time as a model around the house; she explained that she had lost her portfolio on an airplane many years ago. She never told us stories about her career, and although she was always perfectly turned out, her face powered and with a neat coral-colored lip, she rarely got dressed up to go out to parties anymore. In those days, she was simply my mother, moving so dutifully through the tasks of her day—the cooking, the cleaning, the driving, the laundering. My parents didn’t have any old friends who came to visit to tell me about how life used to be. Occasionally, my father would tell stories about life during their Manhattan days, the clubs and parties they’d attended, but these usually took the form of jokes, often at my mother’s expense.
The only photographs that we had from the past were kept in the cabinet under the dry sink in the den. They were thrown in there randomly, one on top of the other, their edges bent and curling, as if my mother were trying her best to forget about them. I would go there sometimes to look at the black-and-white prints and the faded color ones with the white deckled edges, snapshots of another world. Here were the pictures taken of my mother at Grace’s wedding, wearing the wide-brimmed hat and the dress that looked perfectly white in the photographs, but that I knew was actually palest yellow. There was a group shot of Grace with her bridesmaids and flower girls, and one of my mother and Grace sitting at a small table at the wedding reception. Other photographs showed my sister Jill with Grace’s daughter, Princess Caroline, both girls dressed up in Sunday best with big bows in their hair. Jill was about ten; Caroline was about four years old. The photos were taken the day my mother drove Jill into the city to meet Grace so they could go together to the ballet.
Then there were my mother’s old comp cards, the ones she used to hand out to clients in her modeling days. I loved the comp cards, or “composites,” as my mother called them. They listed her height, the size of her waist and bust, her glove size, and her shoe size. And they showed a photo of my mother the model dressed in a fitted suit and a hat, looking up at the windows of Lord & Taylor’s department store. In the store window, there was another photo of my mother, this time wearing a wedding dress and smiling. The cards fascinated me.
Even as a child, I was looking for clues, pulling at the threads of the past, trying to picture the person she’d been. I loved spending time looking through the dresser upstairs in my parents’ suite filled with all her beautiful things from long ago, her white gloves, the short ones and the long ones for the evenings, her pretty beaded evening bags and her strings of pearls. Then I’d try them on, looking at myself in the mirror, imagining I was a model, too. My mother’s closet was still full of all the beautiful gowns she used to wear. I’d run my fingers over the satins, silk, and fur, wondering if she’d ever wear them again. In among the taffeta cocktail dresses and evening coats, I’d seek out the yellow chiffon bridesmaid’s dress she’d worn to Princess Grace’s wedding in Monaco, the fabric crisp and slightly rough beneath my fingertips.
I knew that Grace had been one of my mother’s closest friends when she still lived in Manhattan. But by the time I was born, Grace had moved to Monaco, and although she had come to visit me when I was a baby, she hadn’t been back to see us since. Instead, she sent letters and packages for my mother and for my sister Jill, who was her godchild. In one of my earliest memories I’m watching Jill open a birthday gift in a box tied up with long satin ribbons sent by Aunt Grace from the palace in Monaco. I remember my sister searching through layers and layers of tissue paper in the gift box, then pulling out two black dresses trimmed with yellow, one tiny and another much bigger. My mother explained that Grace had hand-sewn these matching dresses for Jill and her doll to wear. I was so impressed, and a little envious of my sister’s special gift.
My mother told me that I had a godmother, too. Her name was Sally Richardson, and she was another close friend of Grace’s and a bridesmaid along with my mother. After I was born, Sally had given me a special bracelet that was gold with hearts and shooting stars made from diamonds and rubies, which my mother kept in her jewelry drawer. I could remember meeting Sally once, going to her apartment in Manhattan. While we were there, my mother was tense, distracted. Later, she told me that she thought Sally was upset because we didn’t send a thank-you note for the gift of the bracelet. The story always made me feel ashamed.
I wondered if Grace felt the same way about the gifts for Jill. Maybe that was why the princess hadn’t been to visit us.
CHAPTER 3
Carolyn
In order to picture Grace as my mother first saw her in November 1947, you have to put aside the images of the blond movie star or the perfect princess on her Monaco wedding day. Instead, you have to see her as a round-faced teenage girl with light brown wavy hair. She’s stepping out of the Barbizon’s revolving doors on Sixty-third Street in New York City, wearing a little black coat with a matching hat decorated with a sprig of blue flowers.
Carolyn watched as the girl sent the hotel’s revolving doors spinning behind her, her black high heel
s clicking as she went.
How pretty she is, Carolyn thought, and how well dressed.
The next time Carolyn saw the girl, she was leaving her room on the ninth floor, right next door to Carolyn’s. It turned out they were neighbors.
The girl introduced herself. She was Grace, from Philadelphia, and she was studying acting at the nearby American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Now that introductions had been made, Carolyn and Grace kept running into each other, in the hotel hallways, in the elevators, while waiting for the shared bathrooms, at the diner in the lobby downstairs.
Carolyn learned that although Grace was almost a year younger, at eighteen, when it came to New York, she was an old hand. She had started her first semester at the Academy in September, so had been living at the Barbizon two months by the time Carolyn arrived. She had an uncle who lived in Manhattan, who was a playwright, who also directed plays, and even when Grace was still in Philadelphia, she often came to visit him to go to the latest shows. Grace was in love with Broadway and the theater. She knew the names of every show currently playing in New York and every actor appearing in them. She collected playbills, pasting her treasured torn ticket stubs in a scrapbook she’d kept since high school, the dates and play names noted in the margins.
Meanwhile, Carolyn followed fashion as closely as Grace followed the theater, making all her own clothes, scrutinizing Vogue patterns, adapting them to her own designs. Before coming to New York, she had made herself a black pencil skirt and a black-and-white gingham blouse, with a black patent leather belt and matching gingham gloves complete with a cuff. The gloves were hard to execute, and she could barely wiggle her fingers when she wore them, but the skirt and blouse fit beautifully.
