by Nyna Giles
Another voice was coming through on the second speaker.
“Carolyn, it’s Grace,” said the voice. I recognized the soft, almost English-sounding accent from the films. “Carolyn, you need to go home to Malcolm. It isn’t right. You have to do as your husband tells you.”
My mother didn’t reply. She looked as if she wanted to run from the room.
My father’s voice returned. “Carolyn, when you get to Cannes, just get on the next boat back, do you hear me?”
I could hear the exasperation in my father’s voice. This was yet another thing my mother had done that didn’t make sense and made his life harder. Grace sounded so calm, repeating whatever my father said. They were both on the same side, against my mother. I felt so sorry for her. At the same time, I had a strong feeling that I shouldn’t be listening to this conversation, that this should be between the adults.
The boat rocked beneath us. My mother was crying.
“We need a miracle,” she said over and over. I went to her and wrapped my arms around her legs.
* * *
IN THE COMING DAYS, our ship passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, the waters now deepening to tones of blue, circled by the rocky shorelines of Spain and Morocco, giving us our first sight of land since leaving New York. After more than a week on board the ship, we pulled in to the port at Cannes, its bright white buildings topped with their rust-red roofs, the skies as bright as the ocean below. My mother explained that Cannes was about an hour’s train ride from Monaco. Grace was traveling on official business, so we might not see her right away. Again, I worried about meeting Aunt Grace in my little blouse and skirt.
My mother had studied French in high school, and she managed to find and negotiate the rent on a small garret studio in a seventh-floor walk-up on a narrow street not far from the Croisette, the main road that ran alongside the water. I remember the view of red rooftops stretching out to the ocean. The apartment was old, with pale-colored walls and floral-print bedspreads. It had no kitchen and no heat. Mornings, we went out to one of the little cafés on the Rue d’Antibes for breakfast. My mother would order drinks and food for us; my favorites were the crepes drizzled with chocolate. After we finished eating, it was my job to count out the money to pay for our check. L’addition, my mother called it. I loved separating out the shiny francs and centimes into stacks, then putting the correct change in the waiter’s little silver tray.
I remember one morning after breakfast, my mother praised me on my ability to count out the francs and centimes. The memory stands out because she rarely complimented me in this way. I think she was usually too worried about me to notice when I learned something new. It was only years later, when I became a parent myself, that I realized how much children need to be encouraged and coaxed to try new things, and how little of this kind of support I received as a child. The expectation from my mother was that I would never succeed at anything because I wasn’t strong enough. I was so fearful of the world as a result, such a quiet, solemn child. But I remember actually skipping across the street to go back to our little garret that day. I was filled with pride and happiness because my mother had told me I’d done a good job.
* * *
EACH MORNING, after breakfast, our mother smoothed down her hair and, wearing her nicest blouse and skirt, went off to find work. She barely spoke any French, she didn’t have papers, and although she had worked in a department store after high school, her only real work experience was as a model. Perhaps she tried the stores along the Croisette that catered to tourists, thinking that her English might be an advantage there, or maybe she thought she could find work as a waitress. Robin also tried to look for work, but without knowing any French at all, the task couldn’t have been easy.
In the afternoons, Robin and I went down to the narrow beach, with its blue-and-white-striped umbrellas, and although I didn’t have a bathing suit, I would sit on the warm sand as Robin basked in the sun in her bikini. Then I’d walk down to the water to dip my toes, always trying not to stare at the women sunbathers with their bare breasts. I had never seen anything like it! My sister explained that was just what you did in France. In the evenings, Robin went out dancing at the local nightclubs, and I lay awake, worrying that something had happened to her. She always returned, but often not till dawn.
After only a week in France, money was already running low. My mother called my father, but he refused to send us funds. We had spent almost all our money on the room in the garret, and Grace was still away. My mother decided it was time to go to Lourdes. She bought us second-class train tickets, and early the next morning we boarded our train bound for southwest France. We watched as the sun rose over the ocean, revealing village after village all along the rocky coastline of the Côte d’Azur. Soon we were barreling through tunnels and valleys, the ocean behind us now, a new, greener landscape ahead.
Lourdes had always held a special place in my mother’s heart. Her favorite film was The Song of Bernadette, about the life of the nineteenth-century saint Bernadette Soubirous. Whenever The Song of Bernadette played on television, we watched the movie together, sitting close to each other in our den. The film starred Jennifer Jones, one of my mother’s favorite actresses, and it told the story of Bernadette, a young peasant girl living in Lourdes more than a hundred years ago. One day, Bernadette was collecting firewood in the caves near her home when she saw a vision of a beautiful lady dressed all in white and wearing a white rosary. When Bernadette went back to the caves again, the beautiful lady spoke to her. The lady explained that she was the Virgin Mary and she asked Bernadette to build a chapel there on top of the caves. On the next visit, the lady asked Bernadette to dig in the ground and drink from the spring there. Soon a stream was flowing from the cave, and although the water was muddy at first, it soon cleared. Water from the stream was given to the sick, and those people were miraculously cured.
But not everyone believed in Bernadette’s visions, and people began saying she was insane. The Church launched an investigation, and Bernadette was called in front of a tribunal. Eventually, the local bishop declared that “the Virgin Mary did appear indeed to Bernadette Soubirous.” Bernadette was vindicated, and a large white statue of the Virgin Mary was placed in the caves and a church was built above. Since then, millions of people from around the world, sick or suffering, had come to Lourdes on a pilgrimage, hoping to be cured.
* * *
WE ARRIVED AT Lourdes late at night. My mother found us a room in a small pension not far from the river. In the morning, we woke early to the sounds of church bells echoing and a soft mist hanging over the town. Ever since leaving New York, my mother had been tense and distracted, but now she was calm, as close to happiness as I can remember her. We were finally in Lourdes, and the shrine, she believed, would change our lives. After breakfast, we made our way past the cathedral and down to the river. Crowds were gathering, everyone walking in the same direction, people in wheelchairs or walking with canes, the elderly and the sick, holding on to family members and friends. All along the river there were stands selling figures of Mary and bottles of holy water.
My mother had been brought up Methodist, but Catholicism fascinated her. Her birth father had been Catholic, and when she visited him as a teenager, she had attended a Catholic summer camp. From a young age, she had fallen in love with the dramatic stories of the saints, and she had a special affection for the Virgin Mary. Part of her bond with Grace—who was born a Catholic—was that her friend had taken Saint Bernadette as her patron at her confirmation.
We went down toward the river and across a small bridge. On every side of us, people were walking silently. We could hear singing ahead. In the near distance, we could see a church perched on a bluff, with deep crevices in the craggy rock below. I knew immediately that this was the grotto where Bernadette saw her visions of the Virgin Mary. We followed the crowd through the gates toward the hollowed cave. Above us, there was a giant white statue of the Virgin Mary, her hands pressed toge
ther in prayer, a trickle of water wetting the stone directly below her feet. The people ahead of us went up to the rock and started running their hands along it. Some had brought bouquets of flowers as offerings to the Virgin. Others sat on rows of seats, as if in a church, or stood lost in their thoughts or prayers.
My mother walked toward the Virgin, her hands clasped. I could see she had tears rolling down her cheeks. Robin and I were right beside her. We had come all this way. It couldn’t be for nothing. I waited for the change to sweep through me. I screwed up my eyes, pressed my hands together, and asked Saint Bernadette and the Virgin to take care of me, my mother, and my family. Please make Robin better. Please make my mother happy. Please just let everything be okay.
Later in the day, we collected holy water from the little faucets in the rock face, taking sips from our bottles. By the time we left Lourdes the following day, my mother was convinced that we were cured and that a new chapter in our lives was about to begin. But Robin was still unwell. We saw various doctors in Cannes, including a chiropractor and a general practitioner. We visited the English hospital, where she saw a specialist, but by now, there was no money left to pay for medicine. My mother called the palace in Monaco, hoping that Grace was back from her trip and could help us. Grace’s secretary explained that Grace was still away but that the princess wanted to do whatever she could to help. Eventually, an arrangement was made: the secretary would meet my mother and lend her the money for our passage home. My father would repay Grace as soon as he could.
The secretary gave my mother an address, and we went there directly. It was an apartment in Nice, near the waterfront, large and glamorous. There were mirrors on every wall redoubling the sunshine outside, and there seemed to be something made of silver on every surface—silver candelabra, silver picture frames, silver statuettes. Outside the windows the waters of the Côte d’Azur glinted their response. Did the apartment belong to the princess? Or one of her friends? I can’t remember. The secretary gave my mother an envelope with the money inside; then we left the apartment and returned to the waterfront. (The following year, my father repaid my mother’s debt, while he was on a business trip in Europe.) With the money loaned us by Grace, I could finally buy a new outfit. I remember Robin and I wandered the back streets of Nice looking in the little stores and boutiques for something I liked. Robin helped me pick out mauve-colored brushed-cotton jeans with a matching long-sleeved T-shirt decorated with Indian-style embroidery. I loved that my new outfit looked just like something Robin would wear. I felt older, more sophisticated, no longer the baby.
I never did get to see Aunt Grace while we were in France. The following day, my mother bought us tickets on the SS Raffaello, leaving from Cannes and bound for New York. I’ll never know for sure what was going through her mind that day as she stood on the ship’s deck, watching the red rooftops and sparkling white buildings of Cannes recede from view, but I can imagine. As the boat tugged its way through the waters, leaving France behind in its wake, with every second that passed, she was being carried back to Long Island, to the Dream House, where Malcolm was waiting.
CHAPTER 13
Carolyn
It was always the case that what my father wanted was not what my mother would have chosen. In 1957, the year after Grace’s wedding, Malcolm announced he was no longer satisfied with the apartment at the Manhattan House. He wanted more space, more light, more air. The other executives at McCann Erickson lived out in the suburbs with their families. At a certain point in your life, it was what you did as a man of stature and class: you moved out of town. By now, Jill and Robin were six and four; they needed a yard and their own bedrooms. Malcolm’s closest friend, Sherman, was offering to gift the family five acres of waterfront property adjacent to his estate on Long Island. The setting was spectacular, shadowed by woods on both sides, with views of the Sound and its own small beach. They could hire an architect to build the Dream House there.
Malcolm was convinced it was a good plan, but Carolyn wasn’t so certain. She had visited Sherman’s estate over the years and knew it was isolated, thirty minutes’ drive from the nearest train station and across a causeway that made you feel as if you were leaving the rest of the world behind. She was worried she would miss the city. She loved their apartment at the Manhattan House. To her it didn’t seem cramped; it felt cozy. After six years of motherhood, she had settled into a happy routine with the children and their nanny, relying on their schedules for the quiet rhythm and predictability of her days. In the city, she had everything she needed. There was Central Park close by, Bloomingdale’s, the ballet, her friends, all within a few blocks. Malcolm reassured her that she could go into Manhattan whenever she liked. It was only a train ride away; she could have the best of both worlds! Besides, he had already picked out an architect, Randall Cox, well known in the South and an up-and-comer on the East Coast. Together, the two men had started drawing up the plans.
Cox’s vision for the new house was a modern, barn-shaped building constructed from redwood and glass, very much in the contemporary style. The main living area would be expansive, with a lofted ceiling two and a half stories high and glass picture windows opening out onto the views of the Sound. Carolyn worried that with all that space and glass right on the water’s edge, the house was going to feel cold, especially in winter. If they were going to move out of the city, she was hoping for something homier, more like a cottage, a place where she could be comfortable with the children, somewhere like Steubenville, where neighbors lived close by and watched out for one another. Carolyn’s roots were simple. Malcolm felt that she was missing the point. Sherman’s estate was on Long Island’s Gold Coast, where millionaires came to spend their summers. Besides Sherman’s castle, there was the Colgate estate, the Marshall Field estate, the Wood estate, vast mansions built on acres of manicured land. The Reybolds were going to have to find their own way to keep up with the neighbors. They needed to build a show house, a statement of good taste, a place where you could invite people for parties. For Carolyn, though, the neighbors were part of the problem. Whenever she went to out to visit Sherman on Long Island, she was reminded yet again that she was an outsider, the imposter from Steubenville.
But Malcolm was determined, and it became harder and harder for Carolyn to resist getting swept up in his enthusiasm and plans. She was happy for him that he seemed so excited about the project. Perhaps if they moved to Long Island, it would be a new start, a chance for them to be closer as a couple. Perhaps Long Island would be good for their marriage.
So in the summer of 1958, Carolyn began packing up the apartment at the Manhattan House. As she filled boxes with their belongings, her thoughts turned to Grace, who had helped them find the apartment in the first place. It seemed like yesterday that Grace had boxed up her own life to leave Manhattan and move to Monaco. Two years later, so much had happened. Grace had given birth to a daughter, Caroline, and then a son, Albert. Little Caroline had been named for a relative of Prince Rainier’s but with a nod to Grace’s old friend, and Carolyn had been deeply touched by the gesture. She missed her friend. They had seen each other only twice since Grace’s departure, when Grace came to back to visit New York en route to see her family in Philadelphia. In between, they wrote to each other.
Now Carolyn wrote Grace to tell her that they were moving, out to Long Island, to Rose Cottage, a guesthouse on the Colgate estate, not far from their plot of land so they could more easily supervise the building of the Dream House. It wasn’t as if Carolyn needed to come into the city for work anymore. Since Grace’s wedding, she had worked only four modeling jobs, and Eileen Ford had removed her name from the agency’s books. Now that she had turned thirty, she could no longer pass for a teenager; she knew that her career was over. As much as she missed modeling, Carolyn’s focus now was getting the family settled out on Long Island, and helping the girls get adjusted to their new elementary school when they started in the fall. Malcolm was absorbed in supervising the work on the new h
ouse, which he hoped would be ready within the year. The move to Long Island was going to be a fresh start.
Then, in the spring of 1959, Carolyn wrote to Grace with good news. She was pregnant again, due in November. That summer at Rose Cottage, Carolyn began to feel the first stirrings of the baby inside her. Work on the Dream House was progressing well, and before Jill and Robin went back to school in September, the family finally moved in, unpacking their boxes. The girls spent the final days of vacation roaming on the beach and in the woods next to the house. Malcolm was thrilled, so proud of his new home. Jill and Robin were excited to have their own rooms.
Carolyn watched as the leaves slipped from the trees, fall shifting into winter. Her due date came and went, the baby getting bigger and heavier with every passing day.
When her water finally broke on November 22, 1959, Malcolm was out, socializing at Sherman’s. Snow was falling, covering the trees surrounding the house in a thin mask of white. Carolyn called her husband to tell him she needed to go to the hospital.
At Huntington Hospital, Carolyn was put in a gown, prepped for surgery, and wheeled into an operating room. She had always known that she was going to have another C-section. In those days, if you’d had a prior caesarian, you didn’t have the option of delivering any other way.
After the anesthesia was administered and Carolyn was no longer conscious, the doctor took his scalpel and made a long, vertical incision starting from above the belly button, working his way through fat and muscle until the abdomen was fully opened. The surgeon then cut into the womb, so that I could be brought into the world.
I was a large baby, ten pounds ten ounces, fine and healthy. The mother on the operating table was another matter. Right away, the surgeon could see that the uterus was extremely stretched out from carrying such a big baby; it wasn’t contracting in the way that it should after a delivery. He tried to massage it to help it to contract, but nothing was working. Carolyn was beginning to hemorrhage. This was an emergency. The surgeon was going to have to remove the uterus in order to save her life, an extremely complicated and risky procedure. The womb was connected to Carolyn’s body by a complex network of blood vessels; it wasn’t going to be possible to remove all of it. The surgery took more than two hours, with the surgeon having to repeatedly clamp and suture to stem the bleeding.
