Searching for Grace Kelly

by Michael Callahan

  Dolly sat, stewing. Her mother lived under the misguided notion that if Dolly had just stayed in Utica, she and Frank would have worked out. The stood-up dates, the broken promises, she was always so quick to explain away bad behavior in Frank that she would have never tolerated from her own children. Why was clear: It was better to be married to a louse than not married at all. Security, that’s what mattered. Take what you can get. Go for the sure bet.

  Regina will be on me like a bee, Dolly thought. It won’t be five seconds before she tells me all about the new girl Frank is seeing. The old cow. Oh, why didn’t I just stay in Manhattan? But I couldn’t have done that to Kathleen. Dolly hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about her breakfast guy yet, not until she felt more sure. But if battle lines were being drawn, that called for action. Maybe I’ll just tell Regina a thing or two myself.

  She stubbed out her cigarette, watching the smoke curl lazily up to the light above the kitchen table.

  For the third time in as many weeks, Vivian had almost missed the bus again. Her only answer was to succumb and buy one of those damn alarm clocks, even though she hated that sudden shrill bell that inevitably made her shoot up in bed as if the place were on fire.

  The recent humidity had broken, leaving a perfect summer morning for the short walk from the bus stop to the mansion. Strolling down the winding sidewalk, Vivian took in the sights of children on bicycles, free from the drudgery of school, their biggest worries now the possibility of a flat tire or a sudden thunderstorm. Leafy trees framed the street and swayed in a light breeze, scattering beautiful patterns onto the road. Who knew New Jersey could be so beautiful?

  She scrambled up the steps of the mansion and pushed through the door. “Good morning, Josie,” she said. “And how are things among the natives today?”

  “Quiet, so far,” Josie replied from behind the reception desk. Tiny and wiry, Josie was one of the five-dayers, one of the volunteers who came almost every day of the week, and sometimes even popped by on the weekend. Vivian, by contrast, came only on Wednesdays, relegating her to what Harry Sofronski, who had once tap-danced with Gene Kelly, called “the special guest stars” here.

  It had only been a few months, but the Actors Fund Home, tucked away in the former mansion of an old miser (a woman miser, no less) in leafy Englewood, New Jersey, had proven an unlikely escape hatch for Vivian since she’d started coming in the spring. Arriving in New York in March and knowing no one, she’d been lucky to land the job at the Stork and even luckier to land housing at the Barbizon; Mrs. Mayhew had a soft spot for authentic Europeans, thought they classed up the place. Vivian had imagined her New York life would be nothing but hustle and bustle, endless cab rides to a steady stream of auditions, but quickly discovered that the auditions were few and far between—two, to be exact—and that most of her days were spent either smoking fags or soaking her aching feet after another night shilling them.

  Then one of the Stork girls had casually mentioned she had an aunt out here and was going to come visit, asked Vivian if she felt like a little road trip out to Jersey. From the moment she stepped into the mansion, Vivian knew she would come back. The place itself was rather unremarkable—misers weren’t exactly known for their décor—but the architecture was brilliant, reminding her of some of the country houses in Bath.

  What had really kept her hauling herself out of bed every Wednesday morning were the people who lived here. Old showgirls, vaudevillians, magicians, singers, dancers. Some had done Shakespeare at the Old Globe; others had been contract players for MGM or RKO. They were the exceptions. Most were Broadway hoofers and swings, the extras and chorines hired show after show to flesh out the scenery and fall in line behind the leads. They’d lived lives on tightropes, never knowing where the next paycheck was coming from or if one was coming at all, their personal lives a mishmash of backstage affairs and dressing-room brawls endured for the brief heady adrenaline rush brought by the orchestra’s overture and the glare of white lights.

  And now here they were, old and wrinkled and broken, waiting for the final curtain. Some were bitter, but most were not. Which is why, Vivian supposed, she kept coming back week after week. She knew she was doing a good thing, a selfless thing, and she had not done many of those in her life. But then, this was not truly selfless, for the stories she heard were priceless. Some she had heard over and over, especially from Gil Mercer, who never seemed to recall that, yes, he had told you the story about the time Gloria Swanson threw an old-fashioned in his face at the Algonquin. But they were all a form of payment for services rendered. A generous payment.

  “Anything urgent need doing?” Vivian asked. She spent most of her time simply visiting. Many of the other volunteers measured their worth in tasks accomplished; just last week one had walked into the kitchen declaring, “I folded the towels!,” as if it warranted a medal.

  “Not right now,” Josie said. “But Sy Schwartzman asked if you were coming today. He’s in the library.”

  “He wants a rematch at checkers,” Vivian said. “I beat him senseless last week.”

  “What he wants is to see if you’re wearing a short skirt.” Josie laughed.

  No luck today, Sy, Vivian thought as she walked down the hall toward the library. She was in a simple white blouse and navy slacks. She’d found out early on it was best not to engage with some of the gentlemen who lived in the mansion. More than a few were still alarmingly randy for their age.

  Sy was sitting in the corner thumbing through the Herald-American. He smiled as she walked up, then started shaking his head. “Would it kill you to show a little leg, England?” This was his pet name for her. He’d been in London for the Great War and was convinced it was kismet the two of them had met here.

  “No,” Vivian replied, “but it might kill you.”

  “You’re too much, England,” he said, chuckling. “I still can’t believe you ain’t been in pictures yet.”

  Sy had been a stage manager for some of Broadway’s biggest productions in the 1920s and ’30s, though his dream, unfulfilled, had been to be a successful playwright. Unlike most of his fellow residents, he was reluctant to tell stories about the old days, but when he did, they were worth pulling up a chair for. Just last week Vivian had begged him to fill in gaps on a story he’d told her involving Rudy Vallee, a much older Theda Bara, a mysterious manservant named Hendrik, a few bottles of premium vodka, and a tryst in the Fifth Avenue salon of a banking heiress.

  Vivian set up the checkers board. “I know you’ve been waiting for the rematch.”

  “I let you win last week.”

  “If only you lied as well as you flirt.” She tapped the board. “Carry on, then. First move’s yours.”

  He slid his red piece diagonally. “I have some moves I could show you, England.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” she said, shaking her head and moving her own checker. “How many poor chorus girls surrendered to the Sy Schwartzman onslaught, anyway? I bet there’s a gaggle of illegitimate children running around the Lower East Side, wondering why they’re always craving knishes.”

  Sy chortled again, harder this time, coughing up phlegm. He loved it when she got sassy. “You make no sense to me, England.”

  “How’s that?” She jumped him, swiped the red piece off the board.

  “You’re a beautiful, classy girl, and yet you leave New York City every week to schlep out here to play checkers with an old farshtinkener like me.”

  “You’re not my only boyfriend out here, Sy. I like to play the field.”

  “Don’t shit with me, England. You know what I mean. You work in the Stork Club, for chrissake. You must meet interesting guys every night of the week.”

  She smiled at him. How could she possibly make him understand? Make any of them? Last month she’d spent two hours listening to one of the ladies on the lawn talk about working for Flo Ziegfeld. Flo Ziegfeld. Afterward, the woman had apologized profusely “for boring you with my old tired stories.” Vivian could have liste
ned for two more hours and not noticed the time going by. These people were not old stage vets. They were living history books, dismissed by almost everyone stupid enough to think there weren’t any pages worth reading.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a commotion on the other side of the library. A woman screaming, “Just leave me alone!”

  Vivian couldn’t place her face immediately. Edith something or other. She was one of the ones who kept to herself mostly, not much for chitchat. Which was fine. Not everyone wanted to relive their glory and not-so-glory days as they waited out their last act. She was thin and bony and wore a loose housedress with a pattern of big blue flowers that was at least two sizes too big. She was swatting wildly at an aide. “I said, leave me alone!”

  “Now, Edith, don’t be difficult—”

  As Vivian walked over, another resident, a man she’d seen but didn’t know, was barking from his adjacent chair. He was jabbing his finger in the air. “See? Didn’t I tell you? She’s foul! She shouldn’t be in here!”

  “What’s going on here?” Vivian asked.

  “It’s all under control,” the harried aide replied curtly. “We just need to get upstairs—”

  “Don’t talk about me like I’m a child! I am not a child!”

  Vivian stepped in front of Edith, careful to keep her sightline but to not crouch down the way one would to talk to a child. “Of course you’re not, Edith. No one is suggesting you are.”

  “She stinks!” the old man was screeching. “She needs a diaper!”

  Edith whipped around and flung the back of her hand right against his cheek, sending his eyeglasses flying across the library. Sy started to rise out of his chair, and two women just walking in stopped to see what all the commotion was about. As the aide scrambled to retrieve the glasses and calm the now-hysterical old man, Vivian tried to piece together what was going on. Edith was clutching the back of her dress tightly, and Vivian could now smell the problem. She looked into the woman’s eyes and suddenly saw the face of a child staring back at her.

  “I . . . I messed myself,” Edith whispered, her body shaking in frustration and embarrassment. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . I . . . I need . . .”

  Vivian slid an arm around her shoulders and began gently walking her out. “C’mon, girl,” she said. “Nothing to be upset over. We all have bad days. Don’t let that old wanker upset you. All you need is a nice warm bath and some lunch.”

  Will this be me? Vivian wondered fifteen minutes later, after she’d stripped Edith, dispatched her clothes for cleaning and bleaching, and poured the old woman into a steaming tub. As she knelt on the floor behind her, gently circling Edith’s pruny back with a soapy sponge, Vivian considered that at one point Edith had been just like her, young and pretty and in New York to make a career for herself in show business, and yet in the end she had ended up here. Did she have a family? Did they know where she was, or even care?

  Did Vivian’s?

  A sense of foreboding filled her body. It was all well and good to be the independent sort, to live life by your own set of rules. Until you needed help and discovered the price you’d paid by telling everyone else to bugger off. I’m truly alone, Vivian thought. I suppose in my own way I’ve always been alone, even when I was living with Mum and Dad and Mary and Emma. But now I am really alone. I’ve never really thought about it that way before.

  “That feels nice,” Edith was saying, swaying in the tub as Vivian continued massaging her back.

  Vivian dipped the sponge back into the water and put it against Edith’s skin again, sending sudsy trickles down her back. “I’m glad,” she said.

  THIRTEEN

  September 1955

  From the journal of Laura Dixon, Monday, September 5:

  Labor Day. Has it really been weeks since I wrote in this thing? I started out strong, journaling almost daily. After that episode in Mrs. Blackwell’s office, I went right to the stationer and bought a journal and started writing. But then every day became every other, and then twice a week. Some journalist.

  Just back from Greenwich. The trains run on a limited schedule due to the holiday, which gave me an excuse to leave the barbecue early. Though it was nice to be there, especially less than a month after the hurricane, which caused so much misery and damage everywhere. The town held up pretty well, thank God. And it was nice to spend so much time with David. Poor David, I worry about him, eleven and alone in that big house and Daddy working all the time and no buffer between him and Marmy. But he seems happy. He wanted to confirm our plans for the three of them to come for a weekend this term at Smith.

  I can’t believe I didn’t tell them.

  I am a coward. There’s no other word for it, so I’ll just use it. I am a coward. I would say I tried to tell them, but that would be a lie, because I didn’t. I’ll have to settle for “I had every intention of telling them.” But there was never the right moment. I knew if I did at the beginning of the weekend, it would ruin the whole thing, and then there was the barbecue, and at one point I thought that was actually perfect—I mean, there was no way Marmy would have exploded in front of the Chadwicks and the Thornes or the rest of them. But somehow, the moment never presented itself. And now I don’t know what to do, because as of tomorrow, I am living a lie.

  Because I’m not going to go back to Smith. I’m staying here, in New York.

  I think back on the summer and I can’t believe how much has happened. Moving into the Barbizon, meeting Box and Pete, working at Mademoiselle, and that funny run-in with Mrs. Blackwell in her office, and . . . Well, everything happens for a reason, right? Or perhaps that’s just what people say when they can’t explain everything that’s happened. You need to take it on faith that it will all work out.

  I have officially deferred my senior year at Smith until January. Something that is going to become very evident very soon when the bursar’s office returns Daddy’s tuition check. It isn’t like I’m never going back. I’m just not going back yet.

  Marmy is going to kill me.

  But what’s that saying (why am I quoting all of these old sayings?): “When opportunity knocks.” How was I supposed to know that Cat Eyes would come up to my desk one day and, with clear bewilderment, pass on a message that Mrs. Blackwell wanted to extend my apprenticeship a month, after the closing of the college issue? I think she was secretly wondering if I was somehow blackmailing the boss. What other explanation could there be? And so there you have it—I was worried I’d be fired for getting caught in the editor’s office, and instead I was given an extension. Life is nuts.

  And then I saw the job posting on the bulletin board for the editorial assistant position. I would have never applied for it, but Pete insisted.

  Oh, yes, Pete. We’re still seeing one another, and I am still seeing Box. So despite my efforts, I am seeing two guys, something I am not good at (though given it’s now been almost three months, evidently I am) and which I swore I would not do. I was in the coffee shop with Vivian last week complaining that I had told a very funny story about a missing hatbox to one of them, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember which one. She laughed at that. Which was nice to see. I’m worried about Vivian, actually. She doesn’t seem herself so much these days. She’s not as quick with a quip. But every time I ask her if anything’s wrong, she swears everything’s “ducky.” She says the mysterious Italian is finally introducing her to some fancy theatrical agent this week. But I still can’t shake the feeling something’s a bit off.

  Dolly, on the other hand, is blossoming. I’ve never seen her so happy. She’s still temping at the publishing house, and she starts her new term at Katie Gibbs this week. Last week she finally formally introduced us to Jack, her big guy from breakfast. I would describe him as the strong silent type. He couldn’t be more unlike Dolly, who has gotten even more chatty. But that’s what they say, right? Opposites attract. (More old sayings!)

  So I start my new job tomorrow, back at Mademoiselle. I’ll be making enough to
pay my share of the room here, which is good, because I think there is little doubt Marmy will seek to punish me in any way she can once she finds out what I am doing, and that includes pulling the purse strings shut. But that’s okay. Maybe it’s time I figured out what I’m really capable of on my own.

  Letter from Dolly Hickey to Mary Louise Koznarski, September 6:

  Dearest Lulu Belle—

  Sorry I haven’t been able to call. I know your dad won’t allow you to accept the charges, and I never have enough change for even a three-minute call. Forget looking for a husband in law firms or doctors’ offices—we should be looking for a guy who works for Bell Tel! Anyway, it gives me an excuse to practice my typing, which is hard to do in the room, since it drives Laura mad. Though she’s always out with one of her fellas, so it’s really not much of a bother.

  Speaking of which, I have news: I met someone. (I know, I know! I can hear you shrieking from here.) His name is Jack and he’s just the most. He’s kind and funny and just the biggest teddy bear you ever saw. (I’m not even kidding . . . he makes me feel DAINTY!!) I was out for breakfast with the girls and he was staring at me, and so I just “happened” to stay behind to pay the check, and the next thing I knew, we were at a table together, talking for hours! (Okay, it was really just under an hour, but it FELT like hours.) I talked way too much, of course, because you know me and that’s what I do, blabber and blabber, but getting information out of him was like pulling teeth! Oh, but he has such NICE teeth! Big and straight and white, not like those old yellow party mints of Charlie Hackel’s. What did I ever see in HIM? Is he still dating that girl from Minoa?