by Nyna Giles
Unlike Carolyn, Grace saw clothes as a means to an end, preferring sensible shoes, which she wore with tweed suits, skirts, and cardigans. Often she tied back her hair with a scarf—it was so fine and would never stay put. She was nearsighted and wore horn-rimmed glasses. At home in Philadelphia, Grace’s mother despaired at her daughter’s lack of interest in fashion or feminine activities such as sewing or knitting. Whenever Grace started making a dress or a scarf, she would become bored and put it in a drawer before it was finished.
Carolyn was soft-spoken, bordering on shy. Grace was more confident and outgoing, with a talent for impersonations that made her new friend laugh. Yet despite their differences, Grace and Carolyn were drawn together by a shared sense of purpose. They were both in New York to pursue careers and to escape the narrow expectations of their families.
Grace had wanted to be an actress since childhood, but her father, Jack Kelly, disapproved of the theater. Before Grace finished high school earlier in the year, her parents had insisted she apply for college, but she had failed to get a place. There were so many young men coming back from the war, and they were being given priority. After she was turned down by Bennington College, Grace saw her chance. She auditioned for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and got in. Jack Kelly was not impressed. At college, his daughter might meet a suitable husband, but at a drama school, there was no telling whom she might run into. Initially he refused to give his permission, but eventually Grace wore him down. Jack agreed to let his daughter go to New York on one condition: that she stay at the Barbizon, where she would be safe. Grace’s mother, Margaret, reassured Jack that since Grace never stuck at anything, she’d be home in three weeks.
Grace, who had been at the hotel since September by now, had happily already proved her mother’s prediction wrong.
Before long, Carolyn and Grace were knocking on each other’s doors, sitting on each other’s beds, sharing the day. Outside it was one of the coldest New York winters on record, but in their rooms, it was cozy. With Grace’s help, Carolyn began learning the city, venturing out in temperatures so sharp they made your temples ache. There was Central Park, the hotel’s unofficial backyard, which you reached by walking west, entering through the gates nearest to the children’s zoo. Along Fifth Avenue, the city’s wealthiest residents stepped in and out of gleaming storefronts. If you kept walking east, beyond Lexington to Third Avenue, you entered another universe filled with antiques shops and old-world restaurants opened by refugees from the war.
Carolyn loved the way that when you returned to the hotel Oscar, the smiling doorman, would always be waiting in his smart blue uniform and cap to welcome you home. He was bald and jowly under the hat that he tipped to each one of the guests as they passed. Legend had it that he had arrived at the Barbizon the year after it opened in 1927 and had been standing under the awning at Sixty-third Street ever since. Nothing seemed to make Oscar happier than saluting the hotel’s residents as they left the building, handing them into taxicabs as if they were princesses or movie stars, waving them on their way, then welcoming them back as if he hadn’t seen them in years. For Carolyn, Oscar was the opposite of her stepfather, welcoming her home with bolts across the door.
* * *
IN THE COMING WEEKS, Carolyn left the Barbizon in the mornings with new conviction. She had taken the young photographer’s advice and had signed with the Harry Conover agency on Vanderbilt Avenue, twenty blocks from the hotel. Conover was a former male model, with slicked-back jet-black hair and a salesman’s smile, whose agency supplied girls to photographers, advertising agencies, department stores, fashion shows, movie scouts, and publicity agents.
Carolyn was petite at five feet four, not tall enough for high fashion, but Conover could see her potential as a junior model. “Junior” clothing lines aimed specifically at teenagers were a relatively new phenomenon. Before the war, young women had worn the same clothing and read the same magazines as their mothers. But now that clothing rationing was finally over, manufacturers had discovered a new and lucrative youth market. Magazines like Seventeen, Charm, and Junior Bazaar showed their teenage readers a world of sweaters and skirts, bobby socks and loafers, boyfriends, slumber parties, and the hit parade. Carolyn’s prettiness, so effortless, relatable, and girl-next-door, fit with this vision.
Conover was going to show Carolyn’s photographs to interested clients, and in return, he’d keep 10 percent of her fee when she booked a job. Starting out, her hourly rate would be five dollars; the rest was up to her. If she was serious about becoming a successful model, she was going to have to work for it. There were plenty of beautiful young girls in New York, Conover warned. What separated you from the pack was determination. You had to go door to door and office to office, receptionist to receptionist, introducing yourself to photographers and advertising clients, campaigning as you went.
Each day, Conover would send Carolyn a new list of appointments, with the addresses of photographers and agencies looking for junior girls. Then Carolyn took out her map of New York and started walking. She entered unfamiliar lobbies, ascended into darkened stairwells, or took elevators into unknown buildings, never knowing exactly where she was going and what would be waiting for her there. It took a lot of pluck to keep walking into those lobbies and stairwells and elevators, but Carolyn knew she either succeeded as a model or she went back to Steubenville.
More often than not, there would be a gaggle of pretty girls waiting in the reception area by the time she arrived. Soon enough, small groups of girls were called into a room where the clients were waiting. The clients were almost always men, sometimes as many as four of them sitting wordlessly at a desk. After the girls handed over their test shots, they stood in a line in the middle of the room, positioning themselves at different angles, while the men behind the desk looked them up and down.
Then the critique would begin, with the clients discussing each girl’s merits and flaws among themselves. Carolyn got to know her body and its shortcomings very quickly—and all the other girls’ imperfections, too. One model, Eleanor, had ears that stuck out, and she had them pinned back. Another had freckles and had to have an abrasive treatment to remove them. Carolyn had circles under her eyes, which she soon learned to cover with makeup.
After the assessment was over, either Carolyn would get booked for the job or she wouldn’t, and there was no way of knowing why she had or hadn’t been chosen. Much of it seemed to depend on the mood of the clients—whether one of them had had an argument with his wife or girlfriend and somehow you reminded him of her.
At the end of the day, Carolyn went back to the hotel and waited for the phone by her bed to ring.
And it did. Her first modeling job was a two-page spread, for Junior Bazaar, a magazine aimed at the twelve-to-twenty-year-old set. The theme of the shoot was “youthful fashion at an affordable price,” and it featured Carolyn and two other models standing against a giant white backdrop with an ironing board, an iron, a laundry basket, and a hamper filled with clothes. For the next few hours, the models posed as laundresses, carrying, folding, and pressing laundry. Carolyn had two looks in the final spread. One was a gray cotton lawn dress “with baby sleeves, tied into little puffs and a very deep ruffle around the hemline.” The other was “sand-colored pillow ticking, striped in thin lines of white, with a trim Eton jacket and a cummerbund skirt pinch-pleated all the way around.” In one of her photographs, Carolyn looks down, examining her iron pensively, assessing it for the correct heat. In another, she’s playfully hitched her dress over the ironing board while wearing it, so that another model can press her skirt, as if such duties were in fact every young girl’s dream.
Before long, she was modeling in advertisements for junior fashion lines, wearing sundresses, playsuits, and nightgowns.
On one of her shoots, Carolyn ran into the young photographer who’d introduced her to Conover. She told him that thanks to him, her career had officially begun. The photographer smiled and asked her if she
’d like to go away with him for the weekend, as if she owed him something for his help. Carolyn was horrified. She told him no, that she wasn’t that kind of girl, that they hadn’t even been on a date together! Then she quickly made her excuses and fled back to Sixty-third Street, where Oscar the doorman waited, hat tipping as she flew through the revolving doors, into the lobby, across to the elevator, and up to her room, where no man could follow.
* * *
IT WAS CAROLYN’S first Christmas in New York. Grace went home to Philadelphia, to be with her family, but Carolyn had worked so hard to get to Manhattan that she couldn’t afford to leave just yet. On Christmas Day, a blizzard began to swirl outside her hotel window, and when she woke up the following morning, New York was covered in white. Cars and buses were stalled in the streets, and the subways were halted. The city was silent; the only occasional sound was the scraping of a superintendent’s shovel making a path along the sidewalk. Dark gray clouds blotted the sun. In the space of less than twenty-four hours, the snowfall had reached almost twenty-six inches.
In the afternoons, she joined the other hotel-bound residents on the mezzanine for company and the complimentary afternoon tea. She wasn’t the only one who stayed on at the hotel over the holidays. There were girls from Michigan and Texas, Illinois and Arizona—so many others who had come too far to go home, girls who were here in New York to pursue all kinds of careers, as nurse’s aides, dental assistants, bookkeepers, receptionists, and hat-check girls. There was even one young woman who had qualified as a carpenter, obtaining her union card.
Thanks to Mrs. Sibley’s efficient vetting process at the front desk, most of the Barbizon girls were still in their teens and early twenties, but there was a small group of older residents who always came out of their rooms around teatime, lured by the complimentary cookies. These were the Barbizon ladies, some of them in their forties and even fifties. They were women who had arrived in the city during their younger years but who had never married and so had never left; some of them had been at the hotel since it opened in 1927, twenty years ago. The younger girls shuddered to think of it. Imagine never leaving this place! The Barbizon was fine for a bit of an adventure, just as long as you didn’t have to stay forever. You wanted the hotel’s revolving doors to spin you out into the city, not back into the lobby again.
CHAPTER 4
Nina
When I was a child, my mother often took me into Manhattan. She didn’t trust the doctors on Long Island, so we would always drive into New York for my appointments. In photographs from that time I’m a thin and pale-faced child with dark circles under my eyes; I never seemed to have rosy cheeks. I was prone to stomachaches, fatigue, sore throats, strep infections, all kinds of ailments and illnesses. From a young age, I knew the city was the place you went to be rescued, to be made better again.
At the wheel, my mother smoked with the window cracked, tapping her cigarette into the pull-out ashtray. I sat quietly at her side, looking out, wondering what the doctors would say this time. I was accustomed to the examining rooms, with their bright lighting and silvery equipment. I knew all about wearing the little cotton gown, sitting on a tall chair with my legs swinging while the nurse took my blood pressure and the doctor pressed a cold hard stethoscope to my back. I was very good at sitting still and sticking out my tongue; I’d had a lot of practice. My father once told me my mother had taken me to as many as fifty doctors in a single year.
The problem was that each doctor we visited usually sent us home with a pat on the shoulder and the reassurance that everything would be just fine, that I would get better soon. My mother wasn’t so easily convinced. We would have to see the next doctor and then another. We were always looking for the right test, the right medicine; the miracle cure.
After each appointment was over, if I was lucky, my mother would take me to the doll hospital on Lexington Avenue as a reward for being a good girl. I had one particular Tabitha doll that I loved. The doll was modeled on Elizabeth Montgomery’s daughter from the TV show Bewitched. Like me, my Tabitha was often sick; I knew I needed to take good care of her. The doll hospital was upstairs on the second floor, a brightly lit workshop where doll doctors operated on dolls from little wooden workbenches. On the shelves were hundreds of dolls that had been brought to be mended, some new, some old, some small, some nearly as big as me. Then there were stacks of boxes for doll parts neatly labeled “hands,” “fingers,” “wrists,” “wigs,” and “German eyes,” “French eyes,” and “American eyes.” I’d carefully give my Tabitha doll to the chief surgeon, and after a little while, Tabitha would be given back to me, good as new.
As a child, I knew I wasn’t so easily fixed.
My mother had told me that I had internal bleeding. It was a concept that terrified me; I imagined the blood escaping my veins and seeping throughout my entire body. Once I had blood in my stool, and this was enough to convince her that something was seriously wrong with me. She also explained to me I was anemic. It was true that I was pale and easily became out of breath.
* * *
MY FATHER HAD another daughter, Patricia, from his first marriage. Patricia was my blond, glamorous, and grown-up half sister, twenty years older than I. She worked for my father’s friend Sherman as his executive secretary, and she lived in an apartment in Manhattan. Patricia would come to visit us on the weekends or holidays, bringing her city friends with her. Once she brought along Dori, who had been her roommate for a while. Dori was a model, and this got my attention because I knew my mother had been a model before I was born. Dori wore a pink scarf in her soft dark brown hair that fell in strands around her face like a halo; I thought she was so beautiful. I wanted to spend time with her. She and I sat together in the mustard-colored wide-wale corduroy chair in our den and had our picture taken. I had recently gotten a short pixie haircut, and I wore a pale-pink-and-navy-striped short-sleeved turtleneck and navy pants. Dori said that our outfits matched.
I learned that Dori was married and her husband was a very successful ear, nose, and throat doctor practicing in New York City. My mother seized on the opportunity to tell Dori all about my sore throats. Dori agreed to help us. Soon after, my mother took me into the city to see Dori’s husband, Dr. Schneider, at his offices. He told us I had two areas of staph infection on my adenoids left over from when I had my tonsils removed. I was going to have to have surgery. We began planning for the hospital stay immediately. The surgery was scheduled at Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. My mother seemed relieved. Finally, we had a diagnosis and something to do.
After I came home from the surgery, my sore throats got better, but other problems replaced them.
* * *
MY SCHOOL RECORDS tell the story of my mother’s ongoing concern for my health. The first one I have is from kindergarten, November 1964, when I was about to turn five.
“Mrs. Reybold quite concerned with child’s progress in school,” my teacher wrote. “Nina had to have a hernia operation early in the year. Nina is a lovely, sensitive little girl. Enjoys playing with dolls from home a great deal. Tires easily and often cannot complete a project. Tends to play alone or perhaps with one other child. Nina has missed quite a bit of school due to numerous strep infections. Her attendance is not consistent, making it difficult especially in the readiness program. She seems to be a capable little girl if she had the proper background in the readiness program.”
By April of the following year, my report states that my teachers were considering holding me back, as my lack of attendance meant I was struggling to keep up.
Halfway through first grade, the school reports make clear that my progress was being severely limited by my prolonged absences. By February of 1966, I had been absent for about half the school days in the report period. The school requested that my primary physician fill out a physical examination form confirming my ongoing health problems. Then, in June of 1966, my mother failed to appear at my parent-teacher conference. “There have been num
erous attempts made to have a conference with Mrs. Reybold,” my teacher wrote, “and all attempts have failed. Nina’s attendance has been very poor. As a result, she has learned very little this year. Better luck next year!”
According to the school reports, I’d had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy in first grade, which would have explained why I needed to take at least a few days away from my classes. But why so many other days missed?
The following year, the reports show that I had a “gastrointestinal series,” and this I remember well. It led to yet another test: this time a barium enema, so the doctors would be able to take an X-ray and see if there was anything wrong with my colon. The pain of the barium injection in my rectum was so excruciating I was given codeine after the procedure, which only made me throw up. Afterward, the X-ray showed no abnormalities.
My mother told the school I needed further tests and X-rays and that a note would be forthcoming from our doctor advising the school of my condition.
When I was almost seven, a doctor from Suffolk County School District No. 2 examined me.
“Nina Reybold was examined on 10.10.66,” the doctor wrote. “She was found in good general health and able to participate in all athletic programs, required and intra-mural curricular. No recommendations or exceptions.”
At this point, my mother must have felt encouraged to send me back to school, because at my parent-teacher conference in November, my teacher reported that “Mrs. Reybold is very pleased with Nina’s progress this year. She says Nina is very interested in books at home—often reading. I am very pleased with Nina’s progress in all areas. She has come out of her shell and is interested in everything we do at school. She is a conscientious worker and this is proving to make her very successful. I am very pleased with her attitudes, and find her an asset to the class.”
