by Nyna Giles
In classes, Carolyn moved well; she had a natural grace. She thought about dancing professionally, but her teachers warned her it was already too late. She had just turned twenty, and most dancers of a similar age had been training for a decade or more. So Carolyn took what she had learned and applied it to her work as a model. By November of 1948, when she was photographed by Francesco Scavullo for a six-page feature in Seventeen wearing a party dress of velvet and rayon taffeta, her tiny waist nipped by a bow, she stands with a dancer’s carriage, her leg positioned elegantly behind her in a perfect tendu.
CHAPTER 6
Nina
Whereas my mother was always there with me when I was growing up, like the waters of the Sound with its thin strip of beach, my father was like the weather: he came and went, and you never knew how it would be tomorrow.
Like so many other fathers of his generation, he was almost completely uninvolved in anything to do with his children. I don’t remember him ever going to a parent-teacher conference, or helping me with my schoolwork, or even commenting on the fact that I was so often at home sick in bed. During the week, he stayed in the city, and on the weekends, when he came home, he spent most of his time next door with his friend Sherman. He was much older than my mother, entering his fifties when I was born. It was as if he inhabited another world, one filled with his own interests, work, and social activities; a world that had nothing to do with my mother’s chores, with children, or with the slow ticking clock of our days.
It’s hard for me to remember any more than a handful of instances when my father paid me any real attention during my childhood. I usually kept quiet, didn’t make a fuss like my sisters, and as a result, I rarely caught his interest. Occasionally, he would allow me to come and sit with him in the den to watch TV. Here he had a special storage unit for his beloved RCA television set, including a wooden tray that slid out that he had designed himself. I would sit on the dark blue corduroy-covered sofa, and he would sit opposite, sunk deep into his comfortable black chair, in front of his fully stocked bar and his library wall with his books, watching the flickering color TV.
On the walls of the den, my father hung his collection of paintings and reproductions from his family archives. He was originally from Georgia, and despite spending most of his adult life in the North, he maintained his accent and his pride in his southern heritage. (According to my father, our Georgian ancestors were responsible for bringing peaches to the United States.) I remember a print of George Washington Crossing the Delaware that hung in a thick gilt frame above the couch. Then there was the black-and-white photo of a steamboat, the Major Philip Reybold, built by one of my father’s ancestors in the 1850s. The story went that one stormy night the steamboat was out on the Delaware River when it was struck by a tornado and the ship’s silver bell was lost. According to local legend, whenever severe weather threatened the waters of the Delaware, you could hear the Reybold bell ringing out from the depths of the river.
Only once do I remember my father asking me to join him in any other activity at the house besides watching TV. I was in the kitchen with my mother, and I could hear him calling for me. It was early summer, and he wanted me to come outside to help him plant some marigolds. My father loved to garden, and he did all of the landscaping around the house himself. He built a grape arbor trellis that led all the way along a brick path from the kitchen to the garage; there were beds of green pachysandra all along the front of the house and to either side; in summer, I remember rhododendron bushes and white petunias with red snapdragons, and pink petunias outside the kitchen. I was so honored that he would trust me with the task of planting the marigolds that I got up from the table go to him, but my mother stood in my way. I wasn’t well enough, she explained. I needed to stay inside. The marigold beds were on the opposite side of the house, too far away from the kitchen windows she could look out of to check on me. After a while, my father stopped calling for me. He never asked me to join him in the garden again.
Even when the five of us were home together, we kept to ourselves: my father in his den or in the garden; my mother and me in the laundry room or the kitchen; my sisters in their rooms. The only time I remember going someplace as a family was to the Fireman’s Fair in nearby Southdown. I must have been about six years old. The fair was in the parking lot of the firehouse. There were fire trucks on display, a big Ferris wheel, and carnival games for the children. To my delight, my father came with me to play one of the games. I had to throw balls and knock down three clown faces, and, with my father’s help, I won. My prize was either a doll or toy cap guns. I chose the cap guns; they were white and silver and came with a belt and holsters. I knew my father had always wanted a son—my baby blanket that I kept for years was blue with a white ribbon trim because my mother had been so convinced she was going to have a boy. I knew I had been a disappointment to him, so I thought perhaps playing with boy toys would help keep his attention just a little bit longer. I was right. My father got a big kick out of my choice. He loved that I chose the guns.
* * *
BEFORE I WAS BORN, my father had been a successful advertising executive on Madison Avenue; when I was still a baby, he had worked in publishing for McGraw-Hill. But by the time my memories of him begin, he had left his corporate job to work for himself as an inventor and entrepreneur. His company, the Sight Radio Corporation, had its offices on Park Avenue. My father’s big idea was to use the new technology of the “flap display”—the kind you saw in train stations with the numbers and letters on metal flaps that flipped to reveal your platform and departure time—to keep airport travelers up-to-date with the latest news. “Sight Radios” were large free-standing boxes designed to sit in airport lounges with displays that flipped to show the latest weather alerts, sports updates, and news headlines.
In all his ventures, my father was encouraged by the example of his friend and our neighbor Sherman Fairchild. In those days, Sherman was one of the most successful inventors and investors in America. His Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation had developed the first aerial camera, the first home movie camera with sound, the first synchronized camera shutter and flash. He had been on the cover of Time magazine. Sherman had made millions of dollars from his patents, and he was constantly coming up with new ideas. One day, he was trying to light a cigarette outside, and the match blew out; he set about designing a new and improved match with a slot below the head for air currents to pass through so the flame would stay lit in the breeze.
Throughout my childhood, there was always the expectation that at any moment, my father might achieve a level of success similar to Sherman’s and our circumstances might change. He designed drinking glasses with portraits of tennis champions on them. He made a square game table with an inset board that could be turned over to reveal a backgammon board. He pioneered a belt made from clear plastic and synthetic leather with pockets for photos all the way around in which you could display photos of your friends. He talked about building a gondola system in New York for transportation. But although some of my father’s products were more successful than others, none of them made the millions he had hoped.
After he left his steady publishing job to become an entrepreneur, there was never enough money to go around, and this was a constant source of conflict between my parents. When I was very young, I remember, we had help around the house: a young babysitter who spoke Spanish, a woman who came in to clean, and an older babysitter, Mrs. Christianson. At that time, we were members of the Bath Club in Lloyd Neck, with its private beach and tennis courts. My sisters took horseback riding lessons and swimming lessons and went to dance classes. At some point, the help around the house, the lessons, and the trips to the Bath Club stopped, because I only remember taking one riding lesson, one ballet lesson, a few piano lessons, and then that was it. There wasn’t money for more. I remember my father once becoming furious at me for using too many paper towels to mop up a spill because it was a waste of money. Years later, he showed me a stack
of bills from my doctors’ visits, as if I were to blame for the devastation of our family’s finances.
My father drank, and he had a vicious temper. He would yell at my mother at the slightest provocation, then throw up his hands and walk away. My mother was very quiet during these arguments. She never raised her voice. While he shouted at her, she would look down at the ground as if she were to blame. I remember her standing up for herself only once, holding up a knife.
“Don’t come near me,” she told him. He didn’t.
From an early age, I thought of myself as the peacemaker, the glue that held the family together. At home, there was tension between my parents, tension between my sisters, and tension especially between my sister Robin and my father. Robin was always a little wild. By her early teens, she was already wearing makeup and miniskirts. She started dating a guy from “the wrong side of the tracks.” The boy was much older than her, with dark curly hair and a black pickup truck. They would speed off together into town, not coming back until late at night. When my father attempted to ground my sister, she simply ignored him, waltzing out through the front door and never looking back. My father knew he couldn’t control Robin, and this enraged him.
Watching my sisters’ teenage misadventures made me resolve to always be “the good one.” Every time they got into trouble, I quietly promised myself that I would never make the same mistakes.
Once, Robin and my father got into a fight right outside our bedrooms. My father had his hands on Robin’s arms, and she was struggling to free herself, kicking and clawing at him while he clung to her, trying to restrain her. I was terrified he was going to hurt her. I remember I raced out of my room and slid my small body between them, then put my arms out on either side of me; I pleaded with them to stop. But I wasn’t strong enough to separate them. My father shoved me aside, pushing Robin through the open door of her room, where she fell onto her bed. He crouched over her writhing body, his hands around her neck, yelling at her, shaking her. It occurred to me that he was going to kill her. Somehow Robin wriggled free of him and ran out of the house, along the driveway, and out onto the road. My mother and I got in the car to go look for her. Eventually, we found her, hiding behind tall hedges near our bus stop, crying.
Another time I remember going to look for Robin in the woods beyond our house. She was bleeding. I don’t know where the blood came from. In my memory, this moment seems like one from a bad dream, where I don’t know exactly what’s happening or why.
The police were called to our house more than once because of disturbances. I remember the lights of the patrol cars in the driveway, the crunch of the gravel, doors slamming, then the knock on the door that finally stilled the shouting. When I think back on it now, I wonder who called the police. Our neighbors were too far away to hear anything. Maybe it was me.
CHAPTER 7
Carolyn
In their respective rooms, Grace and Carolyn looked out across a city that was now a grid of familiar addresses for the photography studios and advertising agencies where they went for their shoots. They were both so pragmatic, these girls, so completely determined to win their independence. But that didn’t mean they weren’t also romantic. Out there somewhere in the city, they knew, a man was waiting for each of them, their perfect match.
Grace had her own gramophone player, so up in her room, they played their favorite records on repeat. Manhattan Tower by Gordon Jenkins had come out the year before, an entire album of songs and stories about a young man who comes to New York to live in a Manhattan apartment tower and who falls in love. The music was sweeping and sentimental, interspersed with the sounds of taxi horns and traffic hum, an echo of the world outside the windows of their own tower. Then there was Grace’s favorite song, Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy, just released earlier in the year and still at number one. At the Barbizon, Carolyn and Grace lay on their sides on Grace’s single bed, heads propped on hands, listening to its strange, lulling lyrics over and over. “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn,” Nat sang, his voice like velvet, “is just to love and be loved in return.”
Carolyn had already left a boyfriend back in Steubenville. His name was John Criss, and they’d dated the summer after she graduated high school. John had seen her photo in all the newspapers after she was crowned the town’s beauty queen, and he thought she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. So he tracked down her number and called to ask her out; Carolyn was flattered and said yes. John was clean-cut and well dressed, a year older than her and a sophomore at Ohio State. He took Carolyn to the movies in town; they went to the dance hall at Ogilvy Park. A photograph survives of the two of them double-dating with friends, John gazing over at Carolyn, with her blue-black hair and movie-star smile, looking like a man unable to believe his luck. At the end of each evening, John would walk Carolyn back to her house on Pennsylvania Avenue, his hand in hers, but that was as far as it went. Carolyn’s stepfather, Joe, would be waiting at the door, making sure John didn’t get any farther than the front porch.
John’s mother was also concerned about the relationship. She could see that her son was falling in love with Carolyn, and she didn’t want him distracted from his studies at Ohio State when he returned in the fall. Mrs. Criss knew that Carolyn hoped to move to New York to model, so she offered to give her extra money to help her leave town. Carolyn took the money. That fall, John returned to Columbus, and Carolyn boarded her train to New York.
Grace’s first love was already two years in the past. Harper Davis was a schoolmate of her brother, Kell. Harper had dark eyes and a broad brow beneath wavy black hair. He took Grace to basketball games and dances, and Grace pasted mementos from each of their dates in her scrapbook: the wrapper from the stick of gum Harper gave her on New Year’s Eve; the pressed flowers from his bouquets; the business card from the store where he bought her a silvery heart-shaped charm on Valentine’s Day. Then, in 1944, Harper graduated and immediately enlisted in the Navy to do his part in the war. Before he left, Grace tearfully called off the relationship. Her father had demanded that she end it; she was too young for a serious love affair. Grace, still the obedient daughter, complied. By the time Harper returned from service, Grace was already packing her bags to leave for New York.
Even at the Barbizon, at a point in their lives where they were focused on career and adventure, the prospect of a husband still hovered somewhere in the near future for Carolyn and Grace, an event on which everything hinged. A good man meant a good life: a nice safe home, a stable and happy existence. Choosing badly would mean suffering the consequences. Grace had a matchmaker’s instincts. She had become convinced that Carolyn might be a good match for her older brother. Kell was twenty-two, newly graduated from college, and still single. Up in the rooms at the Barbizon, Grace speculated. What if Carolyn and Kell fell in love and she and Carolyn ended up sisters-in-law?
That summer, Grace engineered a meeting at her family home, on Henry Avenue in East Falls, just outside Philadelphia. Built by Grace’s father in the Colonial style, the Kelly mansion was surrounded by grounds and trees, with so many bedrooms and bathrooms that no matter how many times Carolyn counted, she still lost track. That weekend, the Kellys were all assembled, four siblings and two parents, all of them fair-haired, energetic, and able. The mansion, the manicured grounds, the staff, the regimented schedule of the day—all of this allowed houseguests to go from one enjoyable activity to another without having to pause to clean or cook or weed or launder. For Carolyn, the house on Henry Avenue was a stark contrast to her own home, the clapboard house with its pointed gable, its three rooms upstairs and two rooms down, the fractured mix of stepfather and half siblings inside.
At meals and excursions, Grace made sure her brother and Carolyn had chances to spend time together. Carolyn and Kell sat next to each other at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They walked into town side by side. There was no doubt that Kell was good-looking, with his neat crew cut and strong jaw. But his focus, as it had been since childh
ood, was on sports. Kell was a champion rower. The summer before, the entire family had traveled to England to see him compete in the Diamond Sculls race at Henley-on-Thames. Kell had won—and he was still talking about the achievement. It wasn’t that Carolyn wasn’t impressed; it was just that they had so little in common. Kell was two years older, but even so, he struck her as being too similar to the high school jocks she’d left behind in Steubenville.
Carolyn told Grace. Grace understood, but she was not deterred. She was going to keep her eyes open for someone else.
* * *
BACK IN THE CITY, Grace was taking on more modeling jobs, fitting in her assignments around her classes at the Academy. She started lightening her hair to the palest blond. Gone were the sensible shoes, cardigans, and tweed skirts that she used to wear when they’d first arrived at the Barbizon. In their place were cocktail dresses and fur stoles for going out to parties. In the evenings, Grace began leaving behind her horn-rimmed glasses, fearful that if she wore glasses, prospective suitors might fail to notice her. Going without her glasses meant she couldn’t see more than a foot ahead of her, but on the upside, it gave her a distant, dreamy look, which men seemed to find irresistible.
That same year, Grace made her first real New York conquest, the film actor Alexander D’Arcy. She had met Alex at a Park Avenue party she’d attended with friends from the Academy. Alex was ten years older, six feet tall, with black hair and a pencil mustache. To a young acting student like Grace, Alex was glamorous in the extreme. He’d appeared in films with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers; he was a friend of Errol Flynn’s. That night, he asked Grace out for dinner. “Call me,” she said confidently. “I’m at the Barbizon.” And he did call. For their first date, he took her to El Morocco, where she sat next to him on the zebra-print banquette; the owner himself, John Perona, came to sit and chat with them at their table. For their second date, they went dancing at the Stork Club under the midnight-blue ceiling filled with winking stars.
