by Nyna Giles
She had assumed that after the wedding, Grace would vanish from her life, but that hadn’t been the case. Grace was determined to keep up with her old friends, and to find ways of including them in her new life. Before my birth, my mother had written to Grace in Monaco, asking for a favor. My mother had a cousin from Steubenville, Sandra. They had grown up next door to each other, and even though my mother was ten years older than Sandra, they had remained close. Sandra was in high school and had decided she wanted to study to be an actress at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Grace’s former acting school. However, Sandra couldn’t afford to travel back and forth to New York for the auditions, which took place in the spring, and—should she get a place—buy another ticket when classes started in September. Carolyn wrote to Grace, explaining the situation; my mother knew that Grace would do whatever she could to help a young woman with dreams of a career in the arts. Grace wrote to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, asking if Sandra could audition in September, so she would only have to pay for one ticket to New York. The Academy agreed. In the end, Sandra’s father didn’t allow her to go to the audition—he didn’t approve of Sandra’s becoming an actress. But by the time I was born, Sandra had finally gotten permission to move to Manhattan to study to be a secretary at the Katherine Gibbs School.
The year of my birth, Sandra moved to New York. She was nineteen years old and staying at the Barbizon Hotel in New York, just as Grace and Carolyn had done. The next spring, when I was six months old, Carolyn received word that Grace was going to come to visit us at the Dream House, so she invited Sandra to join us. I was too young to remember the visit, but years later Sandra recounted it for me. While the royal security detail waited outside in the limousine, Her Serene Highness Princess Grace bustled into our home, bringing gifts for me and for Jill and Robin. Grace looked as beautiful as ever, her hair pulled back, her skin the color of porcelain; Carolyn led her friend and Sandra to the living room, so they could sit comfortably. Grace was wearing expensive leather shoes with a tiny heel, which she slipped off. She curled up her legs on the couch, enjoying the warmth from the fireplace (the palace in Monaco was notoriously cold).
Together, Carolyn and Grace reminisced about the past. Carolyn went to dig out The Pursuit of Destiny, the book of horoscopes they’d loved to read to one another during evenings at the Manhattan House. They found the familiar pages containing their fortunes and began to read. The future once foretold in the pages had become the present. Grace had fulfilled her destiny, “taking center of any stage, as by divine right, and occupying it successfully, with popularity and charm.” Carolyn’s fortune had always been much more mixed. The book had warned her that she would end up here, her energies scattered, her mental balance gone. “Irritable, nervous and undependable” were the words the horoscope used to describe her fate. Sandra was still at the beginning of her journey. Her horoscope promised that she had “constructive energy, creative ability, courage and dependability,” and that she would be able to “accomplish anything—within reason.”
Later that afternoon, Grace left in her limousine, and Sandra took the train into the city. Carolyn was alone with the children. Outside the windows of the Dream House, the sun set over the inlet and the muddy beach. Now that Grace and Sandra were gone, there was nothing to distract Carolyn from her absent husband, the children that didn’t listen, the baby that cried too loudly and for too long. Carolyn was at land’s end, on the edge of the woods. There were days she didn’t know if she could get up in the morning to feed the children breakfast. Other days, she couldn’t stop, with so much energy she didn’t sleep at night; she just kept going, her mind refusing to shut down. She knew now that all the elements—people, places, things, the movement of the planets overhead—were connected. She alone could understand this. She heard noises everywhere, and she knew what they meant. The creakings and knockings in the house’s tall wooden walls. The rustling of the swallows under the eaves, like voices whispering; the fox that came up to the window and stared inside at her, its eyes flashing. They were sending her messages. She had to stay alert. It was up to her to listen.
Carolyn knew that something was wrong. She wasn’t herself. She made an appointment to see a psychiatrist in Manhattan, a Dr. Green. Soon she was driving into the city each week for the sessions. She didn’t tell Malcolm; she knew he would only disapprove. Eventually, Malcolm discovered the check stubs. He confronted Carolyn. He was furious. Why was she wasting his money on city doctors? When she explained she had been seeing a psychiatrist, Malcolm demanded she switch to a doctor of his choosing, and he made it a condition of him paying for further treatment. But Carolyn kept going to Dr. Green, until Malcolm found the check stubs again and put a stop to the visits once and for all.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING YEAR, Princess Grace telephoned my mother at the house on Long Island. She was coming to New York at the end of April, bringing her children with her to visit America for the first time. They would be in the city for only a few days before traveling on to Philadelphia; Prince Rainier would be joining them there. Grace wanted to make a date to take her old friend and her goddaughter Jill to the ballet. Grace would bring Princess Caroline along—now four years old.
They agreed on a date to meet and that they would go to see the New York City Ballet at City Center. It would be just like old times. My mother bought Jill a new party dress and tied a big bow in her hair for the occasion. Jill was ten. I was barely two years old; that day I stayed at home with our babysitter and Robin.
As Carolyn waited in the lobby of City Center with Jill, she was reminded of all the times she had come here with Grace in their Barbizon days, lured here by the beauty of the dancers and Balanchine’s choreography. At eighteen and nineteen years old, things were so easy between them. The currents of their lives ran in the same direction, flowing only forward, out through the revolving doors of the Barbizon and into the world. They were women with a shared past now; there were secrets between them. Carolyn was thirty-two; Grace was thirty-one. Carolyn had her three children, Grace her two. They would never again be those young girls, in love with the city, with the ballet, with the beautiful unknown future. The currents of their lives no longer ran in the same direction, and Carolyn knew she wasn’t going to be able to fall back into the flow.
The princess arrived, holding little Caroline’s hand. Grace hugged her friend, hugged Jill, who had grown so tall since the last time they had seen each other. Grace was radiant, warm, but controlled. Carolyn was so impressed by the way Grace handed Caroline, still only four years old, the money to buy her own program, and by the way the little princess counted out the change using the unfamiliar American coins. The two mothers and their daughters entered the theater, taking their seats in the orchestra, a few seats back from the stage. At this point, the entire house began to applaud, and Grace turned around and waved regally. Carolyn wondered how it must feel: to be so completely admired.
The ballet was Swan Lake, and in Balanchine’s version, the story was distilled into a single act. Tchaikovsky’s sweet, sad music began to play. As the curtain came up, the stage was dimly lit, a glittering lake in the background. Hunters carrying crossbows appeared, but as the music continued to build, the hunters exited the stage, leaving Prince Siegfried alone to watch the Swan Queen, Odette, arrive onstage. Together the Prince and Queen danced, Siegfried lifting her high into the air. Toward the end of the scene, Von Rothbart, the cruel sorcerer who cast the swan spell on Odette, appeared in his cape and mask—and Odette ran away.
Next, the swans floated in, wearing their white tutus, forming a dramatic long diagonal line across the stage, then peeling off, one after the other, as Siegfried passed them. They danced with each other and with the hunters, in a constantly changing spectacle of pattern and movement. Odette danced alone and with her lover. Siegfried danced alone and with Odette. The swans returned, in groups and in their full numbers. Finally, Von Rothbart appeared again, commanding the swans to leave. Odette w
ent with them, beating her arms like sorrowful wings. Siegfried and the hunters were left alone, heads bowed. The curtain fell. In the space of one act, Balanchine had told the story of doomed love, from beginning all the way to bitter end.
As far as I can tell, the trip to the ballet was the last time Grace and Carolyn were together. In the years to come, they corresponded, but I have no record of them ever meeting again. After her visit, Grace returned to Monaco, to her palace, her husband, and her royal duties. My mother retreated, back to Long Island and her isolation.
CHAPTER 16
Nina
In 1978, after three years on St. Thomas, Chendo and I moved back to New York. The island had been a perfect getaway, but both Chendo and I knew it couldn’t last forever. We missed our families, and I missed living in a big city. We decided to come home. My husband went to work for his father’s jewelry business, and I found a job at Bergdorf Goodman’s department store at the Clinique cosmetics counter. We bought a small co-op apartment together in Queens, not far from his parents.
While we had been gone, the Dream House on Long Island had been sold, but for far less money than my parents had hoped. While they had been waiting for the divorce to come through, they had rented out the place, but the renters had neglected to take care of the property, and the house had fallen into disrepair. Cabinets had been ripped out of the walls, doors were hanging on hinges, and the bathtubs were coated with rust. The garden had grown over, my father’s beloved marigold beds were filled with weeds, and there were beer cans strewn around the property. For a time, the Dream House stood abandoned altogether, the neighborhood kids using the yard as a passageway to tramp down to the beach.
After the sale of the house was completed, my father and mother took an equal share from the proceeds. My mother had been living in Philadelphia with Robin. Now she was able to move into an apartment in Manhattan on West Fifty-eighth Street.
This was where she was living the night of January 28, 1979, the night my father knocked on her door late, wearing a black suit.
He had come to tell her the news from which my mother—in fact, all of us—would never recover. Robin was dead.
That night, my sister had gone on a date. The guy owned a brand-new yellow Corvette. He was driving Robin home. He lost control of the car, hitting a bridge abutment. He survived, but no one could save Robin. When the paramedics reached the scene of the accident, “Stairway to Heaven” was playing on the car radio.
Chendo was the one to tell me. We were staying at his parents’ house in Queens. I remember I fell to the floor; I lay there in a fetal position, holding myself as the sobs racked my body. Chendo’s little sisters came into the room. I remember they were staring down at me; I knew I was scaring them, but there was nothing I could do. I felt like I couldn’t breathe; how would I ever live in a world without her?
A week later, our family came together in Philadelphia for Robin’s funeral. My mother, Jill, Patricia, and I gathered around Robin’s open casket to say our good-byes. We were all distraught, my mother silent, her eyes hollow with pain, the powder on her face streaked with tears. My sister’s beautiful face was expressionless, painted with the thick mortician’s makeup. She was wearing the long-sleeved navy-blue dress with a white collar that my mother had picked out for her. I remember my mother leaned down into the coffin and tenderly moved Robin’s legs, one away from the other, before she went to her grave. A mother’s final gesture of care.
After we said our good-byes, I turned to my mother and sisters and asked that we make a pact to be close. We had been through so much—illness, divorce, tragedy—but it was clear to me that Robin would want us to come together now, to move forward as a united front. I hoped we could, for her.
My father was also at the funeral. I had never seen him so upset. His relationship with Robin had always been tumultuous, but after years of estrangement, they had recently reconnected. My father had gone to see one of Robin’s concerts, and my sister had taken it as a sign that they could move forward. The church that day was full of Robin’s friends; so many people had wanted to come to pay their respects. Patricia, Jill, and I stood up in the front and read the lyrics from one of Robin’s songs, “Lady in Waiting.” “You’ll still guide my hand, through a world that I don’t understand,” Robin had written, “and you’ll still protect me from the pain, when you’re gone. Oh when you’re gone, I will remain.”
Robin’s loss was more than any of us could bear, but it completely devastated our mother. Of her three daughters, Robin was the one who could make my mother laugh, who could actually put her at ease. When my mother and Robin talked, they had long conversations where my mother actually opened up and shared what was in her heart. Robin had always been so confident and calm, and even Robin couldn’t be saved. Robin’s death marked the point my mother gave up; the rest of her life became a kind of endurance.
After Robin died, I completely shut down. Robin was the only person I ever really trusted in my family to tell me the truth and to support me. I blamed myself completely for her death. I had planned to visit my sister that weekend of her death, but at the last minute I had canceled. If I’d been with her, she never would have gone out on the date. She might still be here with us.
My relationship with Chendo suffered. We couldn’t agree on where to live. I wanted to be in Manhattan, not in Queens, but his parents wanted us close by. We were still so young, barely out of our teens, and the pressure of marriage and buying a home was too much for us. Chendo wanted to make it work, but I had nothing left to give. We signed a legal separation in July 1980. After that, we sold our co-op, and I moved into an apartment on Seventy-seventh near Third Avenue. I was just twenty.
I remember that after my marriage to Chendo ended, my mother went with me to a furniture store in the city to help me pick out a pullout couch. It was blue with a delicate flower pattern, the kind of fabric that she loved. For once, we found something we could agree on, as I loved the couch, too. I remember feeling so happy she was showing an interest in my life that when she offered to pay for the couch, I agreed.
If I had known how little money she had, I never would have let her. It was only much later I learned that her nest egg from the sale of the Long Island house was almost gone. She had handed her share of the money over to an investment broker at Merrill Lynch. My mother knew nothing about finance, and the broker took full advantage. He churned the stock to generate commissions, until her account was whittled away to almost nothing. The little money she did have left she started giving away to the TV evangelists she watched on her black-and-white set in her apartment. I remember going to visit her and finding a slim stack of envelopes on the credenza, each envelope holding a single dollar bill and addressed to an evangelist. She called these donations “tithing.”
While my mother withdrew inside herself, my grief after Robin’s death propelled me forward. Right before she died, Robin was beginning to make a name for herself as a singer-songwriter, playing the clubs and bars of Philadelphia. She had always been musical. A scout from Warner Bros. had spotted her, and she was in talks for a record deal. Robin hadn’t lived long enough to achieve her dream, but I became determined to achieve some of mine. I got my GED, finally able to say I was a high school graduate. I began to think about a career beyond working at Bergdorf’s. I knew I was tall and slender and photographed well. I had had some modeling test shots taken, borrowing my mother’s pale yellow bridesmaid’s dress from Grace’s wedding to wear for the shoot.
(Later that year, with complete disregard for the dress and its historical value, I wore it to a Halloween party at the Underground Club in New York. I don’t remember what happened to the dress after that. Somewhere along the way, with so many of my mother’s other belongings, it was lost.)
I connected with some of the smaller modeling agencies and did more test shots. I started to have some success, and my portfolio grew. I left Bergdorf’s to focus on my new career. I met with my mother’s agent, Eileen Ford. She reme
mbered my mother well and wanted to help, but she told me I was better suited for runway than for print. She sent me to Gillis MacGill, the owner of the Mannequin modeling agency. Gillis was in the process of putting together a group of girls to send to Japan, and I was given a three-month contract. All I needed was the plane fare. My father loaned me a thousand dollars for the flight. Everything else would be taken care of when we got there—the agency in Tokyo would handle our living arrangements. I stayed in Japan for five months, appearing in TV commercials, print ads, and runway shows.
Now that I was modeling seriously, I changed my name from Nina to Nyna with a y, to help me stand out. My sister Jill had already changed her name to Jyl with a y. I kept hurtling forward in life, pulling together whatever pieces I felt I needed to make a complete picture for myself as I went.
Then I met David. I was on the plane traveling to Tokyo. He was heading there on business. I remember he was goofing around with some children on the airplane, entertaining them during the long flight. From the first moment I felt drawn to him, to his strength and kindness. After we both returned to the States, we became inseparable. He was so supportive, offering me the kind of stability I knew I needed. Soon after, we decided to get married, and a year and a half later, I was pregnant. My new husband was everything I felt I wanted and needed. He came from such a good family, and his mother, Dee Dee, was a wonderful, loving person, too. My new mother-in-law had two sons; she started referring to me as the daughter she never had. Dee Dee and I went shopping together and met for lunches at Bloomingdale’s. These were small things, but they meant the world to me. Like Chendo’s mother before her, she became my surrogate mother.
