The Bridesmaid's Daughter

by Nyna Giles

  In 1995, when she was eleven years old, Nicole underwent brain surgery to remove an abnormal area of cells that her doctors thought might be causing the seizures. During the surgery, her surgeon discovered a tumor that had been there since birth. After the tumor was removed, the seizures stopped, but Nicole developed psychiatric problems. She was frequently disturbed; she began hearing voices; we were dealing with behavioral issues. She was diagnosed with symptoms of schizophrenia. Nicole started at a day-treatment program for severely emotionally disturbed children; it was a caring, supportive place where the staff did everything they could for her. Thanks to the program, I began to go to see a therapist with Nicole each week. This was the first time in my life that I had access to mental health professionals, and I began to understand what it meant to advocate for someone’s care.

  I was the mother of three now—my younger daughter, Danielle Robyn, named for my sister, had been born in 1991. Since having my children, I had thrown myself into my role as mother, determined to be involved in their life in ways my own mother had never been. The same was true of my marriage. I had tried to be the perfect wife for my husband. I got up in the morning, I dressed the part, I said the right words, and I smiled at the right times. But now, at the age of thirty-six, I realized that, at my core, I was deeply unhappy.

  I decided to start having sessions with a therapist for myself. The therapist asked me, “Nyna, when you look in the mirror, who do you see?” I sat for quite some time trying to get the words out before I realized there was no way for me to answer that question.

  The therapist explained to me that in order to begin to find the answer, I was going to have to look back. She helped me to see that, like so many women, I was terrified of becoming my mother. That despite all my efforts to escape my mother’s influence, I had inadvertently followed in her footsteps. I had left home at a young age, just as my mother had done. I had modeled, just as she had done. I had given up my career to move out of the city and focus on being a wife and a mother, just as she had given up her career. I had three children, just like my mother. If she could crack—slipping through the fragile net of life—what was stopping me from doing the same?

  I knew what came next in the story, and I was determined to do everything in my power to avoid it. My children were depending on me.

  * * *

  FOR MORE THAN a decade, my mother lived at the shelter by choice. No one could legally force her to leave, as much as we tried. But then, in the summer of 1998, that choice was taken away from her. She collapsed in the street and was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital, where the doctors discovered that she had heart problems and needed a pacemaker. She refused to let them fit her with one, and no one could persuade her to change her mind. At this point, the shelter staff explained that without the pacemaker, they could no longer take care of her, and for legal reasons she wouldn’t be allowed to come back to the shelter. By now, my experiences with Nicole had taught me how to be an advocate. I worked closely with my mother’s social worker to find a place for her, locating an adult home in Sachem on Long Island where she could be cared for. I knew my mother was going to miss Manhattan and her routine there, but I also knew that for the first time in many years she was going to be someplace safe.

  My mother traveled to the adult home in an ambulance, so she would have medical supervision while in transit. I drove ahead, so I could be waiting for her when she arrived. I remember staying to help her set up her room, like a parent with a child going away to college. It didn’t take us long to get her settled; she had hardly any possessions, just a few items of clothing, her watercolor set, and some books. I made sure she was comfortable and had been introduced to all the staff. Then we said our good-byes. I hugged my mother and told her I would come back soon, holding her in my arms. She was so tiny, so fragile.

  For so many years, I had wanted my mother to be a mother to me. I longed for her to do all the things I saw other mothers doing for their adult children. Even a simple interaction, such as going for lunch and catching up, was so fraught and complicated for my mother and me. When she couldn’t provide these most basic aspects of motherhood, I had felt so sad and frustrated. But that day at the adult home, I understood. I could no longer expect her to play the role of mother in my life. I needed to be the parent now.

  In the months to come, I drove out to see her as much as I could. She would often ask me to bring her items she needed, something to wear, a new pair of shoes, a book. Once I brought her a cassette player as a gift, along with some of the classical ballet tapes that I knew she loved. The next time I visited, I noticed the cassette player and the tapes were still in their packages. Didn’t she want to listen to the music? My mother shook her head. I think she felt that she didn’t deserve such pleasures anymore.

  Adjusting to life in an adult home wasn’t easy for my mother, but there were benefits for her. One of them was that she finally began taking medication. The nurses would sit with her and make sure she took every single one of her pills—and she became much more stable as a result. For the first time since her diagnosis, she was actually being treated.

  The move to the adult home marked a turning point in my life, too. I was determined to finally look in the mirror and to find myself there. I began establishing myself professionally, creating a new career for myself in advertising sales, working for a local newspaper for a boss who became a real mentor to me. For the first time I began to acknowledge that I wasn’t happy with myself or in my marriage. A year after my mother moved to the adult home, David and I filed for divorce. I put my focus on my children and becoming fully independent. My lack of education haunted me, but I could no longer let it stand in my way. I knew I had choices that my mother never had—to work and provide for my children and myself now that my marriage had run its course.

  Five years later, when I met the man who would become the love of my life, I didn’t try to hide my past from him. I didn’t want to fit anyone’s idea of “perfect” anymore. Like me, Peter had three children and was divorced. He understood.

  Early in our relationship, I let Peter know that I came with a lot of baggage.

  “Bring it on,” he told me. “One bag at a time.”

  * * *

  NOT LONG AFTER I met Peter, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer like her mother before her. She was moved to a nursing care center in Medford, New York, where she would be able to receive around-the-clock care. By then, she was so frail she could barely walk; the nurses would put her in a wheelchair to take her into the dining room. They were so kind to her at Medford; they took good care of her and made the last years of her life as comfortable as possible.

  It was during the time my mother was living at Medford that I got a phone call from a writer working on a biography of Grace Kelly. The writer wanted to interview my mother about her friendship with Grace. Up to this point, I had always refused to talk to writers and reporters; in the years since my mother’s story had first appeared in the press, there had been articles in the New York Post and Hello magazine. TV shows such as Hard Copy and Current Affair had run segments on her situation. And in all this time, I hadn’t spoken to a single reporter. I’d always wanted to protect my mother from their questions, from the prying eyes of the world. But this time, I felt differently. My mother was no longer living at the shelter; she was on medication now, and although she was struggling physically, she was much more stable mentally. I thought she might enjoy sharing memories of Grace. Why not? I called my mother at the nursing care center and asked if she would be interested in being interviewed. She said yes—and so a few weeks later, I arranged to go with the writer for the visit.

  That afternoon, I sat and listened as the writer asked my mother questions and my mother answered them. My mother, who usually didn’t like to talk about the past, told the writer story after story. She remembered the first time she saw Grace coming out of the revolving doors at the Barbizon Hotel, the color of her coat, the sprig of blue flowers in her hat. She told the
story of how she encouraged Grace to go into modeling so Grace could have some financial independence from her father. She could recall the night she had seen Grace in her Broadway debut, how she had sat in the front row of the theater with Malcolm.

  “When she walked out onto the stage, looking so fresh and pretty,” my mother remembered, “I burst into tears. I think it was then I realized she was going places.”

  My mother smiled, recalling the time she suggested Grace wear her hair swept back from her face in a chignon, a style that became her signature.

  As the afternoon drew on, I knew I should probably ask the writer to leave; I could see my mother was growing tired. But I was enjoying listening to the stories. I didn’t want this to end.

  Then the conversation took a different turn. The writer had been saving one question for last.

  “I heard somewhere that there was an affair between Malcolm and Grace,” she pressed. “Is it true?”

  I should have stopped the conversation right there. I should have told my mother not to answer the question. Instead I froze.

  “Yes,” my mother replied, tears welling in her eyes. “It’s true.”

  As my mother spoke, the writer scribbled down every word in her notebook.

  “Grace asked me to come to the Manhattan Hotel,” my mother said. “She was visiting New York. She told me what had happened. She wanted me to forgive her. ‘You don’t have to worry,’ Grace told me. ‘We’re no longer an item!’ I left the hotel in tears and ran straight to my therapist’s office.”

  I reached for my mother’s hand.

  “It wasn’t Grace’s fault,” my mother insisted, turning to me. “Your father was a tricky man.”

  At this point, I asked the writer to stop the tape machine. I knew the conversation had already gone too far.

  The biography came out the following year. In the book, the writer focused on the alleged affair, overlooking all the other elements of the friendship that had been so important to my mother. After the book was released, I glanced at the sections about my mother and then put it away. Even the thought of what she had written about the affair was too confusing, too painful.

  * * *

  AT THE NURSING HOME, my mother’s health took a rapid turn for the worse. She weakened very quickly. I remember going to see her at the hospital where she had been taken for tests. Jyl had been called there, too. Our mother was conscious but barely able to speak, propped on pillows in her bed. We spoke with her doctors, trying to figure out how to make her comfortable, what to do next.

  That day, I remember, my sister had brought along a framed photograph of our mother in her modeling days. The photo had been given to Jyl by relatives. I had never seen anything like it before. In the photo, my mother was still in her twenties, wearing a pale blue dress embroidered with white flowers and holding a matching lace parasol, her dark eyes looking slightly upward. The picture was from the cover of McCall’s magazine dated August 1948. After I got home from the hospital that day, I found the same issue of McCall’s on eBay, bid on it, and won. When the magazine arrived, I had it framed and hung it on my dressing room wall.

  Not long after that, we learned she needed a feeding tube in order to eat, but she was refusing to let the doctors insert it. In the coming days, she drifted in and out of consciousness. I remember the final phone call, the nurse telling me to come to the nursing care center right away; they didn’t know how much longer my mother had left. I drove there immediately. I remember walking into the room and seeing my mother in her bed, so tiny under the expanse of covers, her mouth opening and closing like a bird. I sat with her. I held her hand. I told her I loved her, that I didn’t want her to go.

  My mother died that night. She was seventy-nine.

  We didn’t have a funeral for her. My father and Robin were gone. There weren’t any friends or family left to invite that we knew of. Jyl and I decided to split her ashes. I remember going to the funeral home, where they gave me a gold box filled with my half, along with a poem titled “In Loving Memory of Carolyn Reybold, the Rose Beyond the Wall.”

  Near a shady wall a rose once grew,

  Budded and blossomed in God’s free light,

  Watered and fed by the morning dew,

  Shedding its sweetness day and night.

  I knew it was most likely the same poem they printed out for all the families, but the words moved me all the same. The rose beyond the wall, my beautiful mother, always out of my reach.

  CHAPTER 18

  After my mother’s death I went through a period where I couldn’t be alone without breaking down. If I got in my car and my husband or children weren’t with me, I would start to cry and couldn’t stop, the sobs taking over my entire body until I couldn’t even turn the ignition, let alone get out of the driveway. I met with a psychologist who didn’t believe in medication, and he told me I needed to think positive thoughts whenever I felt the sadness coming on. This didn’t work. Eventually, my internist prescribed a course of medication, and that helped me to feel stronger. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t change that my mother was gone and that the losses of the past had outlived her.

  When someone so close to you dies, you reach for whatever you can find of that person, just to keep them with you a bit longer. But there was so little I had left of my mother. By the time she died, she had very few possessions remaining, just a handful of photographs of my children I had given her, some books, and some items of clothing. There were no remnants of her youth, no jewelry, no letters; even the bridesmaid’s dress had gone. And besides the framed cover of the magazine on my wall, there weren’t any other pictures from her modeling days.

  I began to spend my weekends at the New York Public Library, going through old copies of Seventeen and Mademoiselle searching for her image. The librarian would bring me bound volumes of magazines, and then I would turn the pages, looking for her and finding her over and over again. Each time I saw her face, I recognized her immediately, the beautiful young woman in the photograph, turning to look at the camera. But what had happened to that smiling, hopeful girl? Where had she gone? I had never known her.

  My children were getting older. After Nicole turned twenty-one, she moved into a group home with five other housemates with developmental disabilities. My son moved across the country, to L.A., to pursue a career as an actor. Danielle went away to college to study fashion merchandising.

  I had time now, time to see what else I could find of my mother, to look for her traces.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A thin mask of snow on the banks of the Ohio River and a weak sun pushing through ice-gray clouds as I drove across the bridge to Steubenville that day. I was returning to my mother’s hometown for the first time since she’d brought me here as a young child. Back then, we had been running away from my father, from the school officials hounding her with telephone calls and letters.

  This time, I’d arranged to meet the president of Steubenville’s historical society, Charlie Green, at the small library and museum that he helped to manage. When I’d asked over the phone if he had any materials relating to my mother, Charlie laughed. Didn’t I know? There was a permanent display devoted to my mother at the society, as well a number of files in the archives. A few years back—not long after my mother’s death—the historical society had even hosted an evening honoring Carolyn and her legacy. They had displayed photographs of my mother, and friends who remembered her had given toasts. No one knew how to contact me, or they would have invited me to come.

  I said I wished more than anything I could have been there.

  The day of my visit, I parked outside the historical society, housed in an old redbrick mansion on Steubenville’s Franklin Avenue. Charlie was waiting for me there. He was a tall and gracious silver-haired gentleman; the library and museum was generally closed around this time of year, but he was opening it especially for my visit, and I thanked him for the kindness. Charlie took me through the oak-paneled entry room directly to the room wher
e my mother’s photograph was kept on a low walnut-wood piano, in a heavy silvered frame. The picture was from 1947, the year that Carolyn was crowned Queen of Steubenville. In the photo, my eighteen-year-old mother is wearing a black-and-white-striped skirt and a cropped black top, her hair sleek and full. It’s summer, and she’s standing sidelong to the camera, with hands behind her back, looking out at the world with such a simple and straightforward happiness. She’s about to leave for New York, ready for the adventure ahead of her.

  Although Charlie hadn’t known my mother personally, he knew about her story.

  “Everyone my age who grew up in Steubenville knows about Carolyn,” Charlie told me. “She was our Sesquicentennial Queen!”

  Then Charlie led me to a back room, crammed with filing cabinets and boxes, where he pulled out an album devoted to Steubenville’s 150th anniversary celebrations. We looked through the pages together, finding photograph after photograph of my mother, sitting on her silvered throne, wearing a long embroidered velvet cape, a crown on her head, and carrying a large bouquet of long-stemmed roses as proudly as any scepter. Charlie had even unearthed my mother’s high school yearbook, her photo still unfaded, preserved with all the freshness of youth. Then he handed me a large file marked CAROLYN SCHAFFNER; inside were clippings from magazines, advertisements from her modeling days, features from Seventeen and Charm. There was the cover of McCall’s taken by Avedon, the Coca-Cola advertisement that my father had helped to arrange. I went through the pictures one by one, some of them new to me, each one a treasure.

  Then, at the back of the folder, was a clutch of articles from the late 1980s and early 1990s, the period when my mother was staying at the shelter. I had guessed they would be there. FROM FAIRYTALE TO FLOPHOUSE, the headlines read.