The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  “Grace,” said George firmly, “Bette Davis was extremely valuable when she tried to get out of her contract, and she lost. She was nearly ruined.”

  “I’m planning to avoid that fate by never signing one of those blasted contracts,” said Grace, straightening her back in her seat and refolding her napkin in her lap. “And anyway, at the end of this picture, I’m returning to New York to work with Sanford Meisner and get myself back on Broadway. Hollywood isn’t for me. For one thing, I can’t stand the heat.” It had been miserable to dress as Amy Kane on location: she’d spent the past week in layers of thick cotton, bonnet and all, shooting scenes in the dust. The pipes that connected her nose to her throat felt rubbed raw and made it a chore to speak properly. Worse, she felt like she was doing poor work. Fred kept shooting her scenes over again, and even when he said, “Cut. That’s good,” she felt he wasn’t thrilled. At first, she asked for his advice, but he was so absorbed with the cameraman and the set, he didn’t seem to have much time for Grace.

  “Ah, the determination of youth,” Uncle George said airily. “I’d love to have you in California more, Grace. People are much more . . . accepting here. I find I fit in better. Certainly better than in provincially minded Philadelphia, and better even than in New York, which purports to be so cosmopolitan.”

  “Wouldn’t you have better luck with the younger crowd in New York? You’re always with the Edith Wharton set.”

  “I’m too old for the Arthur Millers and Tennessee Williamses, I’m afraid. Edith Wharton’s New York is what I know, where I’m accepted as much as I can be. To you youngsters, I’m irrelevant. Out here, I can remake myself.”

  Grace felt unsettled by her uncle’s uncharacteristic melancholy. “Where’s William?” she asked. “He always puts a spring in your step.”

  “Oh, he’s off indulging his newfound passion for golf,” said George. “Hence our new location.” He gestured at the expanse of rolling green out the massive windows behind him.

  “I see,” said Grace. “Do you play as well?”

  “Occasionally. Mostly I appreciate the time to myself.”

  “Any projects marinating?” Grace asked enthusiastically, wanting to hear but also wanting to shake her uncle out of his mood.

  No such luck.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said, getting up from the divan and putting an end to the conversation for now. “I’m starving, and Maria said she’d make her famous crab-and-avocado salad for lunch.”

  * * *

  The bad press about Grace and her romantic exploits was so noisy and far-reaching that it actually infiltrated the Philadelphia papers, and the next thing she knew, Lizanne had been dispatched to stay with her at the Chateau Marmont as a chaperone. The Kelly sisters had a couple of fun nights out on Sunset Boulevard before Grace had to depart for more on-site filming in the arid California wilderness.

  “You won’t get in trouble while I’m away?” Grace asked her sister with a knowing smile on her lips. Lizanne had been flirting with a busboy at the Chateau’s patio restaurant the night before. She’d lately realized that the Chateau, with its decidedly understated entrance and complete enclosure by high walls and dense oleander and bougainvillea, was one of the few places where the press was banished. Perhaps United Artists had been doing her a favor putting her up here. It was a vault of sorts. And so she’d started taking more of her meals there.

  “I promise to go to church every morning, and read the Bible every night,” joked Lizanne.

  Grace opened her mouth to say something about how mad her parents would be if they thought she’d corrupted her little sister, too, when Lizanne cut her off to say, “Relax, Grace. I’ll be fine. Anyway, no one here knows who I am. I can do what I want and not worry about the papers.”

  She had a point. And Grace found herself jealous of her sister’s anonymity.

  Back under the relentless sunshine, Grace worked hard to bring Amy to life in front of the camera, to infuse every word and gesture with the young woman’s frustration and bravery. But it was hard. Fred kept saying things like “Too much” or “Not enough,” and she couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. Coop and Katy made it look so effortless. Oh, how she envied Katy’s sultry nonchalance. Her posture was pole straight but her gestures fluid and soft; her low, accented voice could move from confident to come-hither on a dime.

  At the end of a particularly grueling day, once Grace had showered the dusty grime off her face and out of her hair, she was about ready to collapse in bed without bothering to eat dinner when there was a knock on her hotel room door. Wrapping her dressing gown tighter around her, she opened the door and found Katy dressed in a formfitting navy dress, hair done and lipstick on. “Let’s have a drink,” she said to Grace.

  “That’s a very nice offer, but . . . ,” Grace croaked, her voice having been scoured yet again by the dry heat.

  “No excuses,” said Katy, wagging a finger. “Meet me downstairs in ten minutes.”

  And off she went, leaving Grace to wonder why the other woman would bother getting so gussied up for the backwater hotel’s saloon. The place they were staying resembled the Old West buildings on the Warner Bros. lot, where they filmed other scenes, which had felt charming at first. Now Grace found herself wanting to escape into something luxuriously modern at the end of each day. What she wouldn’t have given for a slick, air-conditioned restaurant and a gin and tonic in a crystal glass. As if in protest, Grace put on her dungarees with flats and a short-sleeved sweater, not caring that the outfit showed her figure to be the string bean it truly was—flat where it should be curved, slim where it should be voluptuous. Then she topped it all off with her cat’s-eye tortoiseshell glasses.

  Katy was waiting for her on a round leather barstool. Many of the crew members were also in the bar and restaurant, but none of the other lead actors were around, and Grace was grateful for that. Sitting on the stool to Katy’s right, Grace ordered a gin and tonic and was buoyed a bit when it was served to her quickly in an attractive, heavy tumbler. Katy was drinking a clear liquid on the rocks, and Grace tried to guess what liquor it might have been but realized she didn’t know Katy well enough to have any clue.

  “You look nice in glasses,” Katy commented. “Too bad you can’t wear them during filming.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Grace, though being half-blind while working had become second nature to her. It was easier on a film set than on a stage, because everything was closer to her. Small favors.

  “Maybe if you could see better, you’d relax more,” said Katy.

  Grace sighed. “Is it so obvious I’m not relaxed?”

  Katy smiled sympathetically. “Sorry. But that’s why I wanted you to come out with me tonight, such as this place is,” she said, moving her eyes around the wood-paneled room that smelled of old smoke and whiskey. “I thought maybe you just needed to unwind a little.”

  Grace bristled at the implications of Katy’s statement. She’d been hearing versions of this critique more and more lately—in the papers, during summer stock, and even in Edith’s notes, she was starting to realize. Comments about her appearing icy or uptight or, the kinder version, being classy or patrician—how funny that was, considering where she’d come from! Her dad might have made a substantial fortune in the building business, but nothing could take the Irish Catholic out of their blood.

  No matter how it came out, she didn’t like being pigeonholed any more than she liked being called a cover girl at the Academy. All the labels boiled her down to something she fundamentally wasn’t. She liked to think that with the right dress and the right script, she could play a role like Katy’s in High Noon. That was what it meant to be a versatile actress.

  “I am relaxed. Thank you,” said Grace, knowing she sounded anything but. Then, more softly, she added, “I’m just very tired.”

  “I used to say I was tired whenever things
weren’t working out, too,” said Katy, and Grace would have liked to get mad at the other woman, but she spoke matter-of-factly, without malice. She wanted to help.

  “Well,” Grace began, “I am tired, but you’re right that it’s also a convenient excuse. I’m not even sure what I’m doing here, to be honest.” Her words sped up as she went on. “Coop’s character is far too old for mine, I’ve only been in one other movie, and here I am thrown in with a director who doesn’t have any time for me, and what I really want is to be back in New York auditioning for stage plays and wearing a goddamn jacket in the evening. It’s September, for Pete’s sake. It’s unnatural to feel this hot all the time.”

  Katy laughed. “Now, there’s the real Grace Kelly. This is a girl I could get to know. And I agree that your character is too young for Coop’s, but doesn’t it happen all the time? Pairing the beautiful young girl with the older, more experienced man? As if we need guiding, shaping.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it like that,” said Grace. But it was true. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall—and Ingrid Bergman, for that matter. Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. “But it’s not like Coop or Fred have any interest in shaping me,” Grace pointed out.

  “Stop asking. Shape yourself.”

  “That sounds very empowering,” Grace sighed, “but I still just feel like I have a lot to learn.” Inside, she felt sloshy, as if everything on the other side of her skin was water and unable to hold her up. Katy looked like she had a finely wrought skeleton beneath her much thicker skin.

  “Doesn’t one of your famous American acting teachers say that everything you need to play every part is in here?” Katy tapped her heart.

  “Lee Strasberg,” said Grace. “But not everyone agrees with him. I don’t. I like to play people who are different from me. I like to pretend to be other people.” Saying this, she felt five years old again, the little girl who’d made her bedroom into magic fairy lands, or kingdoms with dragons, using puppets and dolls and cardboard boxes.

  Katy shrugged. “You can play people who are different from you while still finding their heart inside your heart. What can Grace Kelly give Amy Kane?”

  “That’s a very good question.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “Expectation.” The word was out of Grace’s mouth before she’d even thought it. “I’m in this movie with a legend. Gary Cooper. People will expect me to . . . I don’t know. . . .”

  “Shine like a star?”

  “Something like that.”

  Katy finished her mysterious drink and signaled to the bartender for another.

  “What are you drinking?” asked Grace.

  “Tequila. They have a good one from my province of Mexico here.”

  Grace had never tasted plain tequila on ice before. It sounded exotic and sophisticated. When Katy’s fresh glass arrived, Grace realized it had a large wedge of lime also squeezed into it. Katy pushed it to Grace. “Try it.”

  Ice clinked in the glass as Grace tipped it to her lips. The clear liquid had a fire to it that felt especially harsh on her dry throat, and the lime stung her lips. “You’re a stronger woman than I am, Katy Jurado,” Grace said with a cough as she placed the glass in front of her new friend.

  “Not stronger,” said Katy. “Just . . . harder.”

  Grace wasn’t exactly sure of the difference, but wasn’t about to admit it. And anyway, she was glad of the company, glad not to be in bed already with her hair in rollers, wondering idly and nervously what tomorrow would bring. As they continued talking, they found more common ground in the movies they’d loved as girls (Gaslight was a particular favorite), and funny stories about actors offstage and off set. Katy had a hilarious one about seeing Cary Grant doing some sort of clown act, complete with juggling, at a party in the hills. “You’d never have known he was the same man in Notorious or Philadelphia Story.”

  Their laughter was interrupted when Coop sidled up to them, hair wet and smelling of aftershave, and said, “I hate to interrupt, ladies, but I think it’s time I finally bought you both drinks.”

  “Why, Coop,” said Grace, feeling flirty and relaxed after her drink and with Katy at her side, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Within an hour, the three of them were sitting at a table with other members of the cast and crew, laughing and trading quips, drinking tequila and eating steak and baked potatoes and wedges of lettuce doused with Roquefort dressing. This was what she’d been missing in Hollywood—the camaraderie, the sense that they were all part of the same family, if only for a short time, which was so common and usually instantaneous on the set of a play, especially the summer stock companies.

  Though she stopped drinking after the one gin and tonic followed by a cold cerveza with her steak, Grace felt emboldened to do one of the impersonations that had entertained her Barbizon and Academy friends. It started with Coop teasing her that when she showed up on the set with her glasses and bag of knitting supplies, “I turned to Tom here and said, ‘Oh, boy, we’ve got a school marm in model’s clothing on our hands.’” In response, Grace launched into her well-practiced imitation of Eve Arden’s Miss Brooks, everyone’s favorite sarcastic English teacher on CBS Radio; in short order, Grace had the table in stitches with her routine about needing glasses.

  Tumbling into bed far too late, Grace felt content for the first time in ages. Maybe Uncle George was onto something. Maybe she could learn to like Hollywood after all.

  Chapter 8

  You seem happy this morning,” Grace said cheerfully.

  “You seem happy this morning,” Sanford Meisner—Sandy—said back to her, putting on his gruff Brooklyn accent, and giving her a nod and a smile.

  “You seem happy this morning,” Grace said again, letting doubt creep into her still-upbeat tone.

  “You seem happy this morning,” Sandy said with a touch of sarcasm, turning away from her.

  “You seem happy this morning,” said Grace, inquiringly.

  “You seem happy this morning,” Sandy said, hands on hips, openly hostile.

  “You seem happy this morning.” Grace took a step toward Sandy, reached out her hand, then snatched it back. She was feeling genuine doubt now in her own body, like panic ballooning in her chest.

  “You seem happy this morning.” Sandy looked at the ceiling, impatient.

  “You seem happy this morning.” Quieter now, a plea.

  “You seem happy this morning.” Sandy rounded on her, yelling.

  Without thinking, Grace took a step back, opening her mouth to say the line but not able to get the words out except as a whisper. “You seem happy this morning.”

  Sandy waited a beat . . . two . . . three . . . then hung his head, sighed, and ventured hesitantly forward. Awkwardly patting Grace’s back, he said apologetically, “You seem happy this morning.”

  Grace raised her eyes to his, her heart thumping in her throat. “You seem happy this morning.”

  Sandy didn’t reply this time, let at least two full minutes tick by as they held each other’s gaze. Grace looked at him searchingly, lips pressed together, chin very nearly trembling. All the emotion of the scene coursed through her—which was precisely the point at this stage of her training, for the words to be virtually irrelevant compared to the authentic emotional connection between the actors.

  Then, on a dime, Sandy broke into a hearty, appreciative laugh. “Welldone, Grace. Well done. That’s what I want you to remember when you get in front of the camera this week.”

  But how, Sandy? she wanted to ask. In a short period of time, Grace had come to love bespectacled Sandy Meisner—for such a leading light in the acting community, he was utterly unaffected. His lessons were fascinating and challenging, but Grace was having trouble figuring out how to actually apply “You seem happy this morning” to her script for The Cricket on the Hearth, her next television drama. Her sessions w
eren’t long enough for her to waste time asking, and she didn’t want to appear hopeless in any case. Don told her she’d get the hang of it with practice, and so she forged on, ruminating while she did dishes or took walks under the autumn leaves in Central Park, on how to use Sandy’s lessons in her TV work and in the few auditions for plays Edith managed to get for her.

  It helped to have Gene in town. His annulment had come through, and so he was a free man, but they continued to keep things quiet because, as Grace explained to him over soda and pizza one night around the corner from Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse, where she went for her lessons, “I can’t run the risk of my parents sending me home again.”

  “How can they possibly do that? You’re a grown woman.”

  She knew he was right, and yet the fear was real. As was the uncomfortable knowledge that her relationship with Don had started to unravel at this very conversation. “They’ll never see me that way,” she said.

  “Make them, Grace. You’re free of them financially. What could they possibly say or do to sabotage your life?”

  She picked at the crust left on her paper plate. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. In fact, she’d had this confrontation with her parents many, many times in her imagination—the conversation in which they tried to stand in the way of her new life and she told them, finally, “No.” The scene always filled her whole body with a powerful energy, making her want to burst outside and run. Sometimes Sandy’s exercises tapped into that energy, and she’d noticed that those were the ones she was most praised for. Not the ones where she felt compelled to simper, whine, or grovel. Those exercises she always had to do over.

  “I am right,” said Gene. “You just have to flip the switch in that beautiful brain of yours and realize that you are independent, and stop giving them any power over you.” Gene was so much better when he hadn’t been drinking, and this sober pep talk was also kinder than any of Don’s had ever been. She’d met him at this dive tonight specifically because they didn’t serve alcohol. After a few drinks, Gene would have just slurred, “Don’t worry. I’ll tell your dad where to put his Catholic ideals of womanhood,” before changing the subject altogether. His drinking made it easier for her to put off the conversation with her parents, because she wasn’t entirely sure the relationship with Gene would last, though she wasn’t yet ready to admit that out loud, and certainly not to him.