The Girl in White Gloves

by Kerri Maher

  “I find it inspiring,” said Rainier. “The cooperative labor of men to build something that would last far beyond their times. The Romans modernized Europe. They are my inspiration for Monaco, which sorely needs modernization.”

  “And large trophy buildings?” she joked.

  “No,” he said with a smile. “But I’m sure you’ve noticed that we do need new buildings. So many of the old ones are falling apart. Even the poorest Monégasques should have a decent place to live, with shutters or awnings to keep out the sun, fresh paint, and modern plumbing.”

  These noble wishes, unconcerned with the residents and visitors who drove the fancy cars and wore the couture, made Grace’s heart expand with warmth and admiration. I’m marrying this man, she thought, and she kissed him on the lips. He responded, but the flashlight made it laughably difficult to embrace properly, and so they wound up in a fit of giggles. “Come,” he said with a nod of his head toward the other side of the monument.

  “Oh,” she gasped when she saw the view. Spread out before her was a vast descent of dark land, dotted by twinkling yellow and white lights. Shadows of houses, trees, roads, and other swells and hollows varied the deepest greens and blacks on their way to the inky sea. She could just make out where the water met the coast, and she could even faintly hear the far-off rushing of the water as it lapped against the sandy, rocky earth. Lights from boats in the harbor illuminated the surface of the deep with glowing, rippling halos.

  Rainier was standing very close to her. She could feel his whole body behind her, its heat and contours. He rested his chin on her shoulder, and they looked out together at the spectacular view. “It’s yours, my love,” he whispered in her ear, sending shivers of both desire and awe down her spine.

  It can’t be, she wanted to say. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” she said.

  “I hope it proves worthy of the sacrifices you’re making,” he said.

  This acknowledgment was too much; her heart overflowed, and she felt tears make her eyes wet and hot. Do not cry, she told herself. To stanch the flow, she turned toward him without another word, took the flashlight from his hands and placed it on the ground, then set about kissing him with all the passion she had, enough to obliterate everything else in her mind and heart.

  * * *

  Legally, they were married the day before the mass at St. Nicholas Cathedral, which would be televised and broadcast around the globe. My most watched live drama, Grace joked to herself. But on April 18, 1956, she wore a tea-length pink brocade dress that was just the sort of thing Edith would have designed for her to wear on the occasion, and she met Prince Rainier in the Throne Room of the palace with only their family and closest friends, where they were married in an intimate but long ceremony before Marcel Portanier, President of the State Council, Director of Legal Services, and Civil Status Officer of the Princely Family.

  Monsieur Portanier spoke of devotion and sacrifice, then read from the seemingly interminable Civil Code all their respective rights and duties as Prince and Princess, then the astounding one hundred forty-two titles that she now shared with His Serene Highness. Having already gone over these details in the marriage contract, Grace found herself tuning out and practicing a game she’d learned at the Academy, in a movement class. She sat perfectly still, as if she’d been turned to stone. As a statue, she heard a great many noises behind her, honking and blowing and sighing and sniffling. It was a great challenge not to laugh at the mucusy humanity all around her. But the sounds and the exercise made this public reading of law tolerable.

  Her gloved hand shook as she signed her name in the register, her heart throbbing blood dangerously fast through her body and so loudly she could hear it in her ears. But as soon as she’d done it, she felt relieved. Her heart slowed as Rainier signed his name, and when he kissed her in front of everyone gathered, she felt lighter and happier. “Are you ready to let your subjects congratulate you?” he asked, eyebrows boyishly raised, voice expectant as a child’s on his birthday morning.

  She didn’t dare speak, but nodded as eagerly as she could.

  He led her out of the room and to the marble balustrades of the Hercule Gallery. Hand in hand, they looked down and out onto the thousands of people gathered in the courtyard, who erupted with ecstatic cheers when their Prince and new Princess waved at them. Grace beamed her best smile down at these people, who apparently loved her as their Princess, an extension of their love for their Prince, while she tried to draw strength from the people she loved standing behind her.

  It’s just like a theater, she kept telling herself as she waved and smiled. You’ve finally gotten what you always wanted.

  When she looked back on her wedding, it would be that day she remembered most clearly and fondly. The next day—the day she wore the dress MGM had designed and paid for, the day heavy with jewels and symbolism, overtaken by prayer and photographs—was a complete blur. She was Catholic, and she wanted to feel that the religious ceremony was the most important. She expected to feel a kind of beatific joy enter her heart as Monseigneur Barthe of Monaco and Father Cartin of Philadelphia—a compromise measure Father Tucker had invented to appease her parents about the wedding location—married them beneath the gold-and-lapis mosaic of God the Father and His Son, in the dome high over their bent heads. But she was so nervy from all that had gone before, so anxious for the whole spectacle to be over, she found it difficult to treat the endeavor as anything more than a performance in the finest costume of her career.

  She did remember feeling thankful for the cool spring morning as she knelt before the altar in her heavy, modest dress because St. Nicholas was a small cathedral, and with so many people in the pews, it felt too warm and close inside. The perfectly pitched music of the organ and the choir was nonetheless too loud for the space and made her feel almost claustrophobic. When at last she could rise from her knees, knowing the ceremony was nearly over, she felt enormous relief.

  At last, Rainier could kiss her freely before God, and when he did, all their friends clapped and cheered and whistled, just as they would have done in an American wedding, and she was so glad for this familiar moment. When she turned to face all the people who were standing and looking at her and Rainier—her husband—she saw their tears and smiles and hands on their hearts. She held Rainier’s hand as they walked down the nave, smiling and whispering thanks to family and friends in the pews. When the heavy doors of the cathedral opened with a boom and a creak, Grace caught a glorious blurry glimpse of the same blue sea she’d so loved that night with Rainier in La Turbie, perfectly framed by the rectangular doorway. Bright, sunlit color encased by darkness, shadow. And then their people and the press swarmed, and it was gone.

  Chapter 30

  1976

  When Engelbert Humperdinck took the stage at the annual Red Cross Gala, his baritone voice smoothing over everything like a velvet cloth as he sang “Release Me,” Grace felt that she could take full breaths for the first time in weeks.

  First, there had been Caroline’s threat to quit university, which Grace could only assume was linked to her budding romance with the mysterious Philippe Junot, whom Grace thought far too old for their nineteen-year-old daughter—seventeen years older!

  Then there had been Jay Kanter’s very sweet phone call about a movie called The Turning Point, which offered, as he put it, “that rare opportunity for a woman of a certain age to rebuild her career.” In a rush, she had felt all the pain of her youthful folly in not listening to Rita and Edith, of hoping that even after Rainier had outlawed the showing of all her movies in Monaco, he might still see that she needed to act. The pain of realizing too late that she had vastly overestimated his love for her. She couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t worth feeling that way when there was nothing she could do to change the situation, so she’d called Jay back after a respectable day of “thinking” to politely decline.

  And if sh
e was being honest, which she felt she could be only within the confines of her own skull, she was sick to death of planning the Gala. She’d been doing it since ’56, for two full decades. After Josephine’s second appearance in ’74, standing in for Sammy Davis Junior at the last minute, Grace had been tempted to hand the baton to someone else. How could it ever be the same, after dear Josephine sang “Lonesome Lovesick Blues” for one of the last times in her life?

  “Why don’t you join me onstage?” Josephine had asked Grace on the telephone before that memorable night. “I’ll do Bing and we can sing ‘True Love.’”

  Grace laughed so hard at the image of the two of them doing this duet in their ball gowns, tears leaked from her eyes and she gave herself a stitch in her left side. She could hear Josephine cackling with abandon on the other end of the line.

  When their belly laughs had subsided into giggles, Grace said, “Thank you, Josephine. You don’t know how I needed that.”

  “I did know, Gracie girl,” she replied tenderly.

  Grace felt tears gum up her throat. Was it so obvious she was unhappy, or was it that Josephine knew her so well? She preferred to think it was the latter.

  “Thank you, Josephine. For everything.”

  “Anytime. Any old time at all.”

  Humperdinck was a very fine singer, but he wasn’t an old friend, and as she added years to her own age, what Grace craved most of all was the comfort and company of people who knew her well; what a terrible thought that this relatively small coterie would dwindle in the coming years.

  Her fingers fell lightly on the jewels at her neck, and she thought nostalgically of the pearl choker she’d worn so often at Edith’s behest. It was strange how she hardly even saw the enormous Cartier diamond on her ring finger anymore; it was simply part of her hand now, like the skin that was dappled brown from too many suntans and the knuckles that had begun to protrude. Had she really wanted such a ring so badly once?

  When Rainier had first slipped it on her finger and she’d felt its unexpected weight on her hand, she’d understood little of what such a ring actually meant or what she was bartering when she accepted it. Oh, she’d thought she’d known everything at twenty-six—she’d escaped Philadelphia and risen to stardom, after all, stood her ground with the studio to get what she wanted more than once, and bravely left more than a few other men when it became clear that they couldn’t offer her what she thought she needed. She’d thought she’d seen herself and the world so clearly. How could she even begin to explain any of that to Caroline, who was heading down a perilous road with Philippe Junot, without also explaining what her own marriage really was?

  As was required at the annual Gala, Rainier asked her to dance. With a light touch on her elbow, he interrupted a conversation she’d just struck up with a documentary filmmaker. Reluctantly, she excused herself from a conversation about film and art, and allowed her husband to take her in his arms. She was reminded of so many of their past turns across the floor: at the Waldorf Astoria right after they’d become engaged, at their wedding, at Rainier’s Silver Jubilee, and once, about a decade ago—she blushed now even to remember it—naked at Roc Agel when the power had gone out and after much tinkering Rainier had gotten an old wireless to work, which piped in a station playing fuzzy oldies. They’d drunk too much wine and made love; then—of all things—Grace’s own number one hit had come on, “True Love.” She’d felt so swept away that night. She couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

  Rainier looked into her eyes now, as they moved together in their finery like the practiced couple that they were. This year, they had celebrated their twentieth anniversary. Wasn’t that worth something, if not everything? She decided to believe it was, if only for that moment, and she smiled at him with an affection that felt like a warm hand on her heart.

  After all, things had been all right between them lately. It helped that Gwen had made good on her promise—her book about Grace was a success despite all it had left out. Rainier had taken to buying it as a gift, ordering scores of copies with Gwen’s signature. Though he never thanked Grace directly for her hand in directing the biography, Grace told herself that this touching act of support for Gwen was thanks enough.

  It also helped, bizarrely enough, that she and Rainier agreed completely about Philippe Junot. “He’s a typical cad, and I can’t believe our Caroline has fallen for a man of this type,” he’d said the other day. Grace kept bracing herself for him to blame her imperfect maternal influence for Caroline’s attraction—or, worse, the romantic past she’d gotten Gwen to cut out of her book—but he hadn’t done that yet. In fact, she might even have Gwen to thank for this: had Gwen printed the full truth, it would have been all too easy for Rainier to wave the book under her nose and say, “How’s Caroline supposed to behave when she knows this is how her mother acted at her age?” But since Grace had taken action to prevent the truth from surfacing—truths Rainier only obliquely knew in any case, and might even have scalpeled out of his own memory and perception of her—surely he saw that Grace was as invested as he was in protecting the image of them as Monaco’s two Serene Highnesses, happily and productively married.

  The image that—at moments like this, as the music of the orchestra swirled around them, holding their elegant forms in its soft embrace—was intact, whole, and as enviously smooth as the ring on her finger, which took in every ray of light and reflected it back out again.

  * * *

  Don’t you find it a bit—I don’t know—morose?” Caroline bent over the rough wooden table and squinted down at the array of dried lavender, bougainvillea, roses, and other flowers and greenery that Grace had been carefully cutting and drying from her gardens in the past year. Though the flowers around the palace were showier, she found she preferred the wildflowers that grew around Roc Agel, where she stood with her daughter now in a back room she’d recently cleared of clutter and remade into a studio.

  “Not at all,” said Grace. “In fact, drying flowers is a way of prolonging their life and beauty.”

  “But they’re dead,” said Caroline.

  “I like to think I’m giving them new life,” said Grace, amused but also a bit disappointed that her daughter couldn’t see the metaphors in her work. She’d taken to arranging the dried petals and stems and leaves in collages on fine handmade papers, affixing them with extreme care in abstract patterns and also sometimes in the form of words like Love or Dream.

  Gwen at least loved this new project of hers, and had even suggested the two of them do a book on flowers together that would feature Grace’s creations. The thought thrilled her. Imagine, Grace de Monaco—an artist! Though she never mentioned it to anyone, even Gwen, she cherished a daydream of a small but successful gallery show in Paris.

  Finally, she felt as though she had a creative pursuit. Coming to this room in Roc Agel felt like coming home.

  “Did you know,” she said brightly to her daughter, “that Vladimir Nabokov was a lepidopterist? He studied and drew butterflies.”

  “The guy who wrote the novel about an old man and a teenage girl?”

  Grace restrained herself from rolling her eyes, and said, “Lolita, yes. Haven’t you read it?”

  “No,” said Caroline, and Grace was surprised, not just by this fact but also because of her oldest child’s prudishness about it.

  Grace remembered reading the novel when it came out in 1955. So many people had been shocked by the brazenness of the title character, but she hadn’t been. Lolita was young, yes, very young, but the age difference between her and Humbert Humbert hadn’t been so different from that between Grace and most of her male costars. Why was anyone so surprised? As a mother, she might disapprove of her daughter going out with someone so much older than she was, but she was hardly surprised.

  Anyway, that wasn’t the point she was making now. “I like the idea that a great writer,” she said to her daughter, �
�could have another fulfilling creative pursuit. I am sure his work with butterflies must have somehow informed his writing.”

  Who knows where my own work with nature will take me?

  Caroline shrugged and said, “If it makes you happy, then great.”

  “Thank you, darling. It does.”

  The next day, Caroline picked two luscious handfuls of flowers on a hike through the hills. One she set in a vase on the kitchen table, and the other she sorted into types and left on Grace’s worktable. The splashy orange poppies were very like her elder daughter: impossibly beautiful, wiry, and hearty. Whatever happens with Junot, Grace found herself thinking as relieved, wet emotion needled the backs of her eyes, she will be okay.

  Chapter 31

  1960

  Will you take me rowing, Kell?” Grace asked her brother. It was a stunning spring morning—the green leaves had just unfurled on the branches of the towering maples and oaks all over Philadelphia. As Fordie drove her home from the airport, Grace had looked out her window at the length and breadth of the Schuylkill River, where her father and then her brother had both trained to be Olympians. After decades of looking at that water and seeing nothing but punishment and retribution, Grace felt the river call out to her for the first time.

  Kell looked up from the coffee he’d been drinking at the kitchen table where they’d shared three decades of breakfasts and countless arguments over how the family would spend a gorgeous day like today. Grace’s vote for a movie or an outside puppet show was always drowned out in favor of a tennis match or a parade.

  This morning, though, their father lay upstairs asleep once again from the heavy narcotic the hospice nurse gave him to blunt the pain—and everything else—caused by his cancer. “Goddamn parasite,” her father had called it, “eating me alive.”