by Kerri Maher
But, her uncle had said, she was on her way. She’d make damn sure of that.
Chapter 5
Which beaus are these from?” Prudy wondered aloud as she carried a box of roses from the door of their apartment into the kitchen. “I swear, Grace, we don’t have enough vases!”
“We’ll just have to get another one from Mr. Chin on the corner,” Grace said, digging in her purse to find her favorite lipstick as she clicked in her new heels across the hardwood floor of their six-room flat. There were already two other vases of roses on their kitchen table.
She looked at all the red petals, and shook her head. “These men show no imagination,” she lamented. Asmir Kazmi’s far more impressive arrangement of exotic blooms—orchids and pink foliage she’d never seen before—had long since died off, and she hadn’t seen him anywhere recently. Back in late September, he’d told her he had business in Paris, and would be back in New York soon. Now it was Halloween, The Father was going to open on Broadway in just over two weeks, and it looked as though he was going to miss her debut. She wasn’t even sure why she cared—it wasn’t like she was in love with the dark-haired, long-lashed playboy. His attentions were flattering, though, and a welcome break from the bond traders and lawyers she met when she went out with her girlfriends. For their first date, Asmir had taken her on a private boat ride up the Hudson, rather than to the Waldorf or the Plaza or one of the trendy restaurants popping up all over the Village that made the uptown men feel very au courant for patronizing with an actress on their arm.
After the debacle with Don, she’d sworn off actors for a while. When she arrived back in New York at the end of the summer, having just landed the role of Bertha in Strindberg’s masterpiece, playing opposite the great Raymond Massey of all people, she’d seen Don on her first night back in town. It was a forbidden meeting, which made it all the sweeter. When Uncle George suggested she audition for The Father at the end of her run in Bucks County, she’d taken the train to New York without telling her parents and furiously knitted a scarf for Lizanne and baby boots for Peggy’s little daughter while awaiting the results. She’d been just about to embark on an ambitious sweater project for herself, just to keep herself busy, when the director called. “We were quite impressed, Ms. Kelly, and look forward to seeing you in rehearsals,” he’d said, and it had taken all her restraint not to shout, Oh, thank you, thank you! You have made my day—my week—my year!
As soon as she hung up, she rang Uncle George and demanded, “What are we going to tell Mom and Dad?”
“I’ve been thinking about just that,” he said, sounding for all the world like an Agatha Christie detective as he explained his plan: Grace would share an apartment with her conservative friend Prudy Wise from the Barbizon, whom Grace’s mother had met and loved. They would reside in a small building with a strict doorman—of course, Uncle George knew just the right one—and their place would have a guest room for any family member who cared to drop in and check on her virtue.
Breathless with nerves and hope, she explained it all to her parents one night after dinner at their place in Ocean City, where her father was always at his most relaxed and magnanimous.
“You’d better not see that Don Richardson fellow,” he snarled nevertheless.
“Daddy,” Grace lied in a light and dismissive tone, “I haven’t seen him for months. And if there’s one thing this summer’s shown me, it’s that I’ll be too busy with the play to see anyone socially.” Her mother raised a skeptical eyebrow, but she and her father let Grace go. The truth was, she had Kell to thank for her parents’ permission. He’d won at Henley again in July, and her father had been in the best of moods ever since, floating high above everything and everyone. Anything that didn’t have to do with sculling and his son happened so far beneath him, Grace’s escape to New York hardly merited more than his warning.
She hadn’t even unpacked her suitcase in her new place on Sixty-Sixth Street when Don knocked on her door and pulled her by the hand to one of their old haunts, and instead of spending her first nights in her new bed, she spent them in his old familiar one. The morning she readied herself for her first day of rehearsals, he’d zipped her dress and watched from the bed as she fastened her earrings and put on her glasses, then turned to him and said, “How do I look?”
“Like you’re ready for a day at Bloomingdale’s instead of hard work.”
Ignoring the edgy feeling, she playfully stuck out her tongue at him before grabbing her purse, kissing him on the cheek, and setting out into the crisp September morning. She’d always known what to wear, and she refused to let Don make her feel differently. But the comment, from the mouth of a former teacher, put a damper on her sprits that day. She knew he was annoyed that she’d stayed away from New York for so long—he couldn’t understand why she was willing to “do Daddy’s bidding,” as he’d put it. He just couldn’t respect that she wanted her parents’ approval.
And he kept at it. “I don’t see why you go home to visit so often,” and “To be a real actress, you’re going to have to give up the country club,” and “You’re so successful as a model, you don’t even need their money, so why bother?” She let his comments all go with a shrug, and occasionally a firm “They’re my parents, Don.”
Once when she said this, he replied, “Did you ever stop to think who you might be if you had different parents?”
“Whyever would I do that?” she replied, genuinely shocked. “I wouldn’t be me without them. The good and the bad.”
She could see the muscles in Don’s jaw tense as he shook his head. “I’ve been avoiding telling you this, but I think you should know it,” he said, too aggressively, “but your brother’s been calling me and telling me he’ll beat me with a rowing oar if I don’t stop seeing you.”
“Why would you say something like that? Kell’s not a thug.” A tiny voice inside her—where was it? Her heart? Her belly? Her head?—said, It might be true, you know.
“You can take the boy out of Philly . . .”
“Shut up, Don,” Grace snapped, her color and anger rising to silence the tiny voice. “It’s one thing if you can’t cope with my success, but don’t . . .”
“Success?” Don laughed. “One Broadway play and you’re a success? Let’s just see what the reviews say, shall we?”
At that, Grace pressed her lips together, snatched her overnight bag, and slammed the door on her way out. Wait! called the tiny voice, and Grace shut a door on it as well.
Don had apologized with a phone call that night, and shown up to the theater with a box of her favorite French chocolates a few days later when he hadn’t heard back from her—which was really a dirty trick, because he knew half the cast and she had to be nice to him in front of them all. He managed to get himself invited out to dinner with a group of them that night. Though she tried to avoid it, she still somehow got squished into a booth between Don and the director’s secretary, a ruddy woman with flaking lipstick called Hannah Simpson. Grace made valiant conversation with Hannah all through dinner, and found out everything about the middle-aged woman’s high school–age son and daughter, both of whom wanted to be actors themselves, and her aging father with dementia, who lived with them in Queens much to her husband’s chagrin. Passing on all the wine offered to her, Grace felt particularly disgusted when Don slurred in her ear, “I’m real sorry, Grace. I’m sure you’re going to get rave reviews. Are you going to punish me forever?”
She turned to him then and saw the drippy infatuation in his face, the same as all the boys she’d known growing up. And here she’d been thinking Don was different. But he was only older, which somehow made him all the more pathetic. One thing kept her from recoiling altogether, or making a cutting final remark in reply: that word he’d used, punish. Hadn’t she thought the exact same thing about her own father, back in the spring, and so many times throughout her childhood: that his favorite punishment was the silent tre
atment? Wasn’t she doing the exact same thing to Don? She might not have been willing to accept criticism of her family, but neither did she want to be like them. That was what her whole New York project was about, after all—being Grace Kelly. The Grace Kelly her parents could finally see, respect, and adore.
Curling her lips into an apologetic smile, she put her hand on his under the table and said, “I’m sorry I’ve been distracted lately. I’ve been so worried about the play, and . . . well, I’ve sort of forgotten myself.”
Looking immensely relieved, Don said, “I understand completely. This is a big break for you, and nerves are good—they’re healthy. But you’re going to be terrific, Gracie. Just like you were in Bucks County. Better.”
“Thanks, Don. That means a lot coming from you.” And it did. But it didn’t change anything.
That little exchange nicely paved the way for her to say, when he tried to tug her toward a cab to his place, “Not tonight, Don. I’m exhausted and need to sleep tonight or I’ll never get through rehearsal tomorrow.”
She only had to put him off a few more times before he took the hint. It helped that when he showed up one last time at her place unannounced, he’d seen Asmir’s impressive vase of flowers prominently centered on her dining room table. Lesson learned: involvement with another actor was hazardous. Proceed with caution.
It was a good thing her theater career was taking off, or she’d have been far more disappointed. But there was a perfect and complete consolation in getting off the subway at Forty-Ninth and Broadway every evening for rehearsal, when the white lights of the theaters were just shining on in the autumn twilight. Every day throughout October, the set came together piece by piece as she and Raymond Massey and Mady Christians, who played her mother, brought the play to life on the drafty stage. It was the largest stage she’d ever been on—it seemed they kept increasing in size and stature just as she had planned in her daydreams—and initially she’d felt tiny standing upon it. But as the play took shape and she felt her character bond to Raymond’s and Mady’s, felt the rooms of the set taking up space behind and around her, Grace began to feel larger herself on the stage.
Four days before the play opened, Grace celebrated her twentieth birthday on November twelfth at Sardi’s with Raymond and Mady, Uncle George, Prudy, Carolyn, and some of her other Barbizon friends who were still in town, and their boyfriends. Not wanting to complicate the evening, she’d gone stag to her own party and felt like a million dollars in her new black dress from Saks with its full chiffon skirt and ballet neck. Then, because she missed her mother—who, in any case, would be up with her father in a few days time, to see the play and celebrate a belated and more intimate birthday with the family—Grace added the pearl choker her mom had given her for her eighteenth birthday. It was a fizzy evening, with excitement mounting about opening night of The Father, and many toasts to Grace’s health and promising career.
“Thank you, everyone,” Grace said after she blew out the candles on the chocolate cake. “I feel like the luckiest girl in New York, which is to say the world, to be here with so many talented and thoughtful people tonight. I hope you’ll all feel the same way about me in five days!”
As her friends jeered playfully at her self-deprecation, Grace raised her champagne coupe. “To the best of friends.” And she felt her heart swell, knowing that these friends would love her even if the play—or she—failed. She felt the same way about all of them.
In the back of her mind, though, she heard someone sneer cover girl, and it put a lump of worry in her throat, as if everything she was enjoying that night were unfounded, stolen, not even hers for the taking.
* * *
Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times said that Grace “gives a charming, pliable performance” in her Broadway debut.
“That’s fabulous, Grace,” said her childhood friend Maree Frisby over Cokes and cheeseburgers at a busy midtown diner the day after the play opened. Grace had been up all night with the rest of the cast awaiting the review in the papers; then she hadn’t been able to sleep a wink when she tumbled into bed at six in the morning. By eleven, she was starving, so she’d phoned her friend at work to see if she could meet for lunch.
“Pliable,” said Grace with a frown. “What does that even mean?”
“It means flexible, Grace. It’s a compliment.”
“I think I’d rather be bold. Like Katharine Hepburn. Or Marlene Dietrich.”
“You’ll have to change your look, then, I think,” said Maree.
“Why? Why can’t I be myself and still be bold?”
“Because you look like a ballet dancer, not a pantsuit-wearing broad, that’s why.”
Grace thought about this paradox while she munched on a French fry. “Ballet dancers are some of the toughest women working today.”
Maree rolled her eyes. “Boy, are you in a contrary mood today. Be happy with the review, Grace! It’s good! And for your first time on the Great White Way, I’d say it was fantastic.”
That night, Grace arrived in her dressing room feeling somewhat revived after three hours of deep, post-cheeseburger sleep, to find an enormous bouquet of autumnal dahlias, roses, and Chinese lanterns, with a note in Asmir’s own hand saying, “Break a leg. I made us reservations at Delmonico’s after.”
No “Please join me” or “Could you come to dinner?” Asmir didn’t fool around with propriety, and his confidence was extremely appealing.
From the wings of the stage before she went on for her first scene, she glimpsed him sitting in a private box, gazing down appraisingly. Thankfully the lights were too bright and her eyesight too poor for her to see him while she said her lines; but nevertheless, she felt his eyes on her as she moved about the stage, and the connection between them felt intimate and illicit; she thought perhaps her performance was a little bolder because of it.
Later, as she was tugging on her gloves and wondering if she should go to Delmonico’s at all—maybe it was best to treat Asmir as distantly as possible, and just enjoy the admiration from afar—one of the crew members knocked on her door and put her head inside and said, “Miss Kelly? There’s a car waiting for you at the back entrance.” Beneath the protective folds of her coat and dress, her body gave an immediate and powerful physical response to this announcement and all it implied. She wanted handsome, mysterious Asmir. And he appeared to know exactly how to seduce her.
He was not in the car but waiting for her at a secluded booth in the back of the restaurant. He stood when she arrived and the maître d’ took her coat. “I am so glad you could join me,” he said, kissing the fingers of her gloved hand.
“Well, you didn’t give me much choice, did you,” she said, though not as a question.
“With me, you will always have a choice,” he said, sitting down and placing the white napkin on his lap. “But I will always make my preferences known.”
“And what are your preferences, Mr. Kazmi?”
“That the most beautiful and talented young actress in New York should have dinner with me tonight,” he smiled, and it was only when he smiled that she saw how young he really was, for the gesture was just a tad too eager. She’d read somewhere that he was twenty-six, but his black hair and equally dark eyes gave him an almost ageless look. It was his smile that gave him away.
“What a ridiculous thing to say with Vivien Leigh and Gene Tierney in plays right now,” she said, though she took the seat offered her, and gently laid a napkin on her lap.
Asmir dismissed her modesty with a gentle wave of his hand. “You must learn to own yourself, Miss Kelly. You were excellent in the play tonight. Know your worth. Such confidence is very attractive in a woman.”
Not to all men, she thought to herself. And anyway, she had a feeling Asmir only found those qualities attractive in his mistresses; he’d want a very different kind of woman as a wife.
But that’s hardly what I’
m here to become, she thought as she ordered herself a glass of champagne and began to relax. Curiously, though, Asmir did not try to make her his mistress. She saw him twice more before he left New York again, and both times their dinners were quite chaste, ending only in a kiss before she took a cab home. To her own surprise, she was relieved. She had a feeling that if he’d wanted more from her, she’d have given it, and it would have led to problems. She could see herself falling for him, see herself getting pulled into his orbit and left wanting more and wondering why he couldn’t give it to her. Even as it was, he left her wanting more—not from him exactly, but from a man like him, someone unafraid of her looks or her ambition, who could still appreciate both and make her forget all her doubts about herself.
* * *
The night her parents and Lizanne and Kell were in the audience for The Father, Grace was tied in knots. She half wanted Don backstage to make her feel better, since he was the only other actor she knew who had met her family and could maybe understand the particular brand of nerves she was experiencing. For the first time in years, she actually threw up before the curtain call.
Get ahold of yourself, Kelly, she told herself. Show ’em what you’ve got.
But it was hard when she felt like so much was at stake. If she choked onstage, not only would it sink her chances of future roles, it would prove to her father that she was exactly what he’d always said: the weakling younger sister of Perfect Peggy, his darling Ba. And as a bonus, it would prove to her less-kind classmates from the Academy that maybe she was just a cover girl after all.
Grateful again for her blindness onstage, she managed to get through the play, though she had little idea how. She knew she’d said all the right lines, made all the correct moves. In the wings and at intermission, Raymond Massey and other fellow players told her it was her best performance yet. She’d always thought she’d be able to tell when she was giving her best, but that night it felt as though she’d entered some sort of dreamlike dimension, in which she spoke and moved, but heard her own words and those of others from far away.