Searching for Grace Kelly

by Michael Callahan

  She gave him a royal wave as he dashed down the street, smiling weakly as Oscar finally opened the door and the cool lobby of the Barbizon enveloped her. Late Saturday afternoons were always quiet. Girls were out at matinees or lunching with visiting parents or outfit-shopping for that night’s date.

  Dolly lollygagged, debating whether to go upstairs and take a bath, go upstairs and retrieve The Tree and the Blossom and take it with her to the park, or ditch both ideas and simply go into the coffee shop for an ice cream soda, when a voice across the room halted her train of thought. “Dolly! Over here! Come join us!”

  Ruth—Vivian’s favorite, the girl who had sung Rodgers and Hammerstein in the conservatory—was sitting on one of the long sofas surrounded by two friends, one a homely girl with spindly limbs and large feet whose name was either Marion or Miriam—Dolly could never remember—and another girl Dolly couldn’t recall seeing before. Dolly walked over, pulling up a chair next to Marion/Miriam across from Ruth and the other girl.

  “Dolly, this is my friend Helen,” Ruth said, waving to the full-cheeked girl next to her, who looked like Shirley Temple. Not Shirley Temple grown up from Since You Went Away, but Shirley Temple from the Good Ship Lollipop, only filled with helium and dropped into a grown-up dress. “And of course you already know this girl.” Marion/Miriam just laughed.

  Dolly smiled back, nodded, exchanged all the expected pleasantries about the three topics every girl here never seemed to tire of: the weather, the cute men who arrived for dates, and Agnes Ford and the other models inside the Barbizon, the latter conversation covering their hair, makeup, jewelry, fashions, suitors, latest magazine spreads, and any other ephemera of note. “We’re all gathering in the TV room tonight to watch the Miss America Pageant,” Marion/Miriam said. “We’re sneaking in s’mores!”

  “You should come. It’s going to be so much fun,” added Helen.

  “Oh, I’m sure she has another date, girls,” Ruth said, girlish admiration in her voice. “Don’t you? We haven’t seen as much of you lately. I guess you’ve been too busy with your fella.”

  Oh no. Do I have to do this again? Am I really going to keep doing this?

  “Tell, tell,” interjected Marion/Miriam, hopping to the edge of her chair.

  I’m going to keep doing this.

  “Wellll . . .” Dolly said, trying to will flushness onto her cheeks, “I guess I’ve just been having too marvelous a time to notice the weeks flying by.”

  “Hold it, hold it! I’m coming into this from the outside,” Helen said, “so, who is this mystery man?”

  Good question. “His name is Jack, Jack Lyons,” Dolly answered, trying to shove out the memory of an entire afternoon two weeks ago she had spent doodling “Mrs. John Lyons” and “Mrs. Dolores Lyons” on the back page of her steno notebook. “He’s a graduate student here in the city.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. What’s he studying?”

  I have no idea. “Philosophy,” Dolly answered.

  “What college is he at?” Ruth interjected.

  No idea of that, either. “Fordham.” Fordham had its main campus in the Bronx. Jack lived in Yonkers. Close enough. It wasn’t like she had not asked Jack these questions herself. But his deftness at answering without revealing anything had proven almost surreal. When she pressed, he became uncomfortable and fidgety, which made her feel insecure, which made her back off, which only fed her frustration that she hardly knew anything about him.

  “How’d you meet?” said Marion/Miriam, who of the three definitely seemed the most invested in the whole thing.

  Well, at least this one I can actually answer. Dolly regaled them with the story of the stolen glances inside the restaurant after her breakfast with the girls (“Oh . . . her,” Ruth snorted upon hearing Vivian’s name), adding a few theatrical flourishes (somewhere along the road of constantly telling the tale she had added a fallen handkerchief and Jack’s gallant rescue of same). Unfortunately, the meet-cute story tended to only feed the interrogation, as she was quickly discovering once again.

  She told them the truth when she could and her quickly cementing version of the truth when she couldn’t. In a bizarre way she was almost proud of the fact that she had memorized some of these anecdotes so well, to the point where she had occasionally questioned whether they might have actually happened. She invented love notes and flowers, long walks in the rain (actually, one short stroll into a hardware store), romantic dinners with loving gazes over candlelight (actually rice pudding at Stouffer’s—Jack was addicted).

  And what was the harm, really? Didn’t she deserve it? After her humiliation with the Gardenia Incident, wasn’t she entitled for once to be the envy of other girls, to be the one dating the tall, handsome guy, instead of constantly being the lady-in-waiting for her roommate? Must she spend all of her time watching as Laura hastily unrolled her curlers to get ready for another night out on the town with Box Barnes or going to a set of jazz with her sensitive poet-bartender? Or walking with the girls on Fifth Avenue, observing every man’s salacious glance as he surreptitiously let his eyes wander over the hourglass shape that was Vivian Windsor?

  Wasn’t it her turn?

  “So,” Ruth was now asking, “is it serious?”

  This, Dolly had quickly discovered, was where the land mine lay. Answer “yes” and then everyone will want gory details for days if Jack stops appearing, and expect your heart broken instead of just your pride. Answer “no” and you were reduced to the desperate girl on her way to being the town trollop.

  She had feelings for Jack, no doubt about it—would she keep going to these lengths to keep him in the picture if she didn’t?—but her heart, that was firmly under lock and key. At least that was what she constantly reassured herself. She couldn’t allow herself to get invested, to have her heart smashed again. Not until she was able to determine what Jack was hiding. Because he was hiding something. Or someone.

  She had developed three theories. One, he had a girlfriend, a fiancée, or, God forbid, a wife stashed somewhere, which would explain why, after two months, she was still getting vague answers about his address, why she had yet to meet any of his friends, why she knew little about his upbringing (born in Ithaca, raised in Buffalo) and almost nothing about his family. Several times she had almost come out and just asked, but had then taken the exit ramp, too fearful of getting an answer she didn’t want to hear.

  The second theory was just as ghastly. He was queer. No one talked about such things out loud, not even in New York, though Dolly suspected they might at the Greenwich Village saloon where Pete Kelly tended bar; the Village types were like that, they liked things that were taboo and seedy, and could pass off talking about them in polite company as intellectual art. Her cousin had dated a guy who had turned out to be queer. After word spread, he had been beaten to a pulp one night by the local boys, then moved out of state to stay with an aunt. No one had ever mentioned his name again.

  She clung to her third theory. He was shy. Inexperienced. A big galoot. Just somebody who wasn’t all that comfortable around women, or with romance, and was just trying to find his footing. This was the theory that steadied her at night, when she lay in her bed across the room from a deeply sleeping Laura, covers pulled to her chin, closing her eyes tight and praying feverishly that God would give her this one gift. She’d gotten Jack to come into the Barbizon just once to meet Laura and Vivian. He’d been surprisingly affable, if still emanating a slight sense of paranoia, as if the cops were on his trail and he had only a few minutes before his imminent arrest.

  Oh God. She hadn’t even considered that. Could he be a criminal?

  “Oh, look at her,” cooed Helen. “She doesn’t want to kiss and tell.”

  Dolly almost laughed. Almost. Because the evidence she could never explain away was the kissing. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof. Almost three months and nothing but chaste pecks on the cheek or forehead.

  She went to her safety valve and pulled it. “I wouldn�
��t say I’m ready to buy the car,” she said, smiling just a bit too brightly, “but I’m definitely kicking the tires.”

  Walking up Sixth Avenue, Vivian heard the criticism banging inside her brain over and over, like a tropical drumbeat.

  You’re smarter than this. You have always been smarter than this. How could you have let this happen if you are smarter than this?

  She had a million errands to run and couldn’t think of one of them. Instead she kept walking, marching, making random right turns and left turns, vaguely heading back uptown, but staying firmly on the West Side, until she found herself back on Sixth Avenue again at Fifty-Ninth, by the entrance to Central Park. She stopped by a cart vendor, bought a sausage sandwich, and walked into the public garden.

  She rarely came to Central Park, which was stupid, she thought, since she had most of her weekdays free, when only truant students and young mommies were here. On the rare occasions she did wander in, she left promising herself to return more often. But then life intervened, and she was rushing here or rushing there or late to this or had forgotten that, and it would be weeks or even months before she returned. The great open space reminded her of Hyde Park in London, another urban oasis blooming in the middle of a city. She hadn’t spent enough time there, either.

  She found an empty bench and sat down, taking another bite of her sandwich. The Americans may not know how to dance, make tea, or set a proper table, but by God they knew how to make delicious craven food.

  Celebrating. That was what she thought she would be doing today, maybe out to lunch with Nicky, then splurging for a new frock at Bloomingdale’s or Barnes & Foster, perhaps a pedicure then an ice cream with the girls in the coffee shop, or even someplace fancier. But instead she was trapped—in a dead-end job she hated and in a relationship that was becoming malevolent if not downright dangerous. When she returned to her room in the middle of the night, after yet another exhausting shift shilling cigarettes and enduring the pawing and poking of insolent men, she sometimes looked across at the window and imagined it slowly closing, just an inch more every time, threatening to seal her in for good and suffocate her.

  Nicky had finally come through with the audition with the agent, and Vivian had been nervous to the point of almost triggering a breakdown. What she’d needed was some bloody support. She’d briefly considered telling the girls—Laura would have been a good voice of encouragement, and even sweet Dolly would have no doubt brought out her pompoms for a good show—but the pain of looking into their faces if it all went wrong was somehow worse than the nerves.

  “How many songs should I prepare?” she’d asked Nicky.

  “I dunno,” he’d said, tearing into another bite of his too-rare steak. “Just sing great, he’s gonna love you.”

  Helpful.

  In the end she’d brought sheet music for three selections: Dinah Washington’s “Baby Get Lost,” Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy” (she needed something sentimental), and, for luck, Judy Garland’s “Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland,” the song she’d sung for Nicky that first night after closing at the Stork. She’d tried on at least a dozen dresses before settling on a black polka-dot number that made her pale skin appear almost translucent, and which had a bodice that jutted her breasts out like Jayne Mansfield’s and was so tight she wasn’t sure she could breathe, let alone sing. Which was probably moot, since she was certain she wasn’t breathing anyway.

  They’d gone to a small bistro somewhere in the mid-fifties on the far West Side, and Nicky had glad-handed a few men who looked like all the men Nicky knew: slick, shady, stupid. But now I’m here, I’m finally here, Vivian thought. And this is going to work or it won’t, but either way I can get out of this and move on.

  Because she knew, as well as she knew her own name, that her time as the girlfriend of Nicola Accardi had gone well past its expiration date. It was almost as if the rough sex in the alley after The Seven-Year Itch had flipped a switch, Mr. Hyde steadily appearing more and more as the memory of Dr. Jekyll, the romantic Italian with the rosary beads on his dresser mirror, had faded. After a night in a Midtown hotel last week, he’d been in the shower and she had gone to hang up his suit jacket, flung over a chair. She felt something bulky in the pocket. A gun. How could she not have known he carried a gun? And why did he need a gun?

  “Gus, this is Ruby, the girl I’ve been tellin’ you about,” Nicky said, introducing her to a short, stout man with a rubbery pink face the shape of a canned ham.

  “Nice to meet you, Ruby,” Gus said, shaking her hand like he was handling a jackhammer. His voice was thin, nasal, as if he was suffering a nasty sinus infection.

  “Actually, it’s Vivian—”

  “So let’s hear what you got, kid,” Gus said, lighting a cigar and nodding to his left. “You can stand up there.”

  The stage wasn’t a stage at all, just an alcove in the corner with a produce box, covered in a black tablecloth. A microphone stand stood nearby but was empty. There was a beat-up piano to the left.

  Vivian extracted the sheet music from her bag. “Is the player here?”

  Gus took a few more puffs lighting the cigar, its tip now blinking red, like a small-town traffic light in winter. “Nah, nah, we don’t need all of that. Just get up and sing a few bars, sweetie. That’s all we need.”

  Vivian felt a swell of anxiety rising. A cappella? She hadn’t practiced anything a cappella. “Well, perhaps someone could just—”

  “Jesus Christ!” Gus interrupted, glaring over at Nicky. The other guys sneered. “Nick, you didn’t tell me you were bringing fucking Lena Horne. I’m busy here. Is she gonna sing or not?”

  Nicky grabbed Vivian by the arm, quickly ushering her over to the corner. “Babe, what are you doin’?” he whispered, his eyes boring into hers. “Why you makin’ trouble? You’re embarrassing me here. Just sing the goddamned song!”

  Vivian shook off his grip. For a fleeting moment, she considered just walking out. But she was so close; she had waited so long. It would be insane to back out now. She shuffled back over to the alcove, apologized to Gus, stepped up onto the tablecloth-covered box. She sang out the first few lines of “Nature Boy”; she figured it was better to go with a song they were familiar with, especially with no piano to back her up. She hadn’t reached “a little shy and sad of eye” when Gus began barking.

  “That’s nice, honey, but people don’t want this sad-sack shit anymore. They want peppy, bouncy, happy. The kids are the ones buyin’ records, not their folks. Let’s hear a few bars of ‘Rock Around the Clock.’”

  It was over.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know that song,” she said quietly.

  Gus almost choked on his stogie. “Well, I can understand why. It was only the fucking number-one hit of the whole summer. Cutie, take some advice: Go buy it. ’Cause that’s the future. Let me know when you’ve learned the words.”

  Nicky quickly put an arm around Gus, began to apologize, thanked him for his time. Gus looked at him appraisingly. “Heard what happened to Mikey Feet,” he said. “Doctors say he might not make it.”

  Nicky nodded his head gravely. “Yeah, too bad. But you know what they say: Accidents happen.”

  Gus’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Accidents. They’re a bitch. See you ’round, Nick.”

  Mikey Feet. Where had she heard that name before? Vivian furiously worked the levers of her memory, trying to remember. She looked at Nicky standing by the door, smoking, his back to her, waiting for her to collect her things. And then she remembered. His back to her, standing nude in the room at the Plaza, barking into the telephone about Mikey Feet. If that shipment ain’t in Hoboken by tomorrow morning, you can tell Mikey Feet that they can start sending his mail in care of Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery.

  Oh, bugger.

  She let out a deep breath, squared her shoulders. She slowly crept up behind him. “Darling—” she said.

  He whirled around. “Are you fucking kidding me with that shit?! I should—”

 
; “There’s a call for you in the back. The man says it’s urgent.” She said it plainly, authoritatively. Stay calm.

  He seemed momentarily thrown. “Nobody knows I’m here.”

  “Well, evidently someone does, because there’s a call. I believe the man said it’s from Hoboken.”

  Nicky looked past her for a second. He dropped the cigarette onto the floor, stubbed it out. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered in an exhale cloud of smoke. “Wait here.” He stalked toward the back.

  He was two seconds out of view when Vivian bolted through the door and into the street, quickly flagging down a checkered cab. Twenty seconds later, she was zooming up Tenth Avenue. She’d turned to look through the rear window. All clear.

  That had been two days ago. She knew how this would play out: One night soon he’d show up at the Stork, holding a bouquet of yellow roses because “red is expected, and with me you never know what to expect,” and he’d flash his sensual smile and make sure his hair was slicked the way she liked it, and the clock would reset and start all over again. Only this time it wouldn’t. It couldn’t.

  Vivian finished the sandwich, tossed the wrapper in a bin as she wound her way slowly through Central Park toward Fifth Avenue. It was still bright and sunny, but there was just the slightest hint of crispness in the air, a small foreshadowing that soon the leaves would be turning, the riotous reds and oranges and yellows of autumn in full bore.