Searching for Grace Kelly

by Michael Callahan

  “Huh? What’s she talkin’ about?” Nicky’s mother shouted.

  “The bathroom, Ma,” Nicky said. “Top of the stairs.”

  Vivian could still hear Mrs. Accardi as she ascended the steps. “. . . don’t understand half the words that come out of that girl’s mouth.”

  “She seems a little uppity, if you ask me,” a thin voice said. “She thinks she’s Deborah Kerr.”

  “Oh, I loved her in From Here to Eternity!” squealed the cousin with the bad teeth.

  “What does a guy have to do to get more rigatoni?” Uncle Luigi complained.

  Vivian entered the tiny bathroom and closed the door. Standing at the sink, she willed herself to be sick. At least that way she might be able to net an opportunity to lie down or, better yet, to leave.

  She took a long look at her reflection in the mirror. Her complexion, once smooth and snowy white, was now ashy. Her face was slightly rounder, and would get rounder still as the months wore on. But it was her eyes that gave her away. They were hollow, vacant.

  Dead.

  You know what you have to do, she told herself. There’s only one way out of this. Be smart. Make a plan.

  Don’t be afraid.

  TWENTY-SIX

  December 1955

  “I hate holiday travel,” Dolly said as she slid her bulky powder-blue suitcase next to her. She began unbuttoning her coat. “I don’t understand how people do it effortlessly.”

  “They have help,” Laura replied, placing her own luggage and hatbox to her left as she flung her coat onto the back of the adjoining chair. “They hire people to carry their bags for them.”

  “That’ll be you soon enough,” Dolly smirked. “Mrs. Benjamin Barnes will not be hauling her own luggage all over Europe.”

  Laura nodded slightly, looked away. She began pulling off her gloves.

  Maybe it’s time to tell her, she thought. If not now, when?

  “You know, now that you mention that,” Laura started, “there’s been—”

  “Well, hello there!” Dolly exclaimed, looking over Laura’s shoulder. Laura turned to see Ruth and Miriam approaching their table. “I thought you girls had already skedaddled out of town!”

  “That was the plan,” Ruth said wryly, “but this one couldn’t get off work early.” Miriam, whose family was in Nebraska, was going to be spending Christmas with Ruth’s clan in South Norwalk. The pair had stopped in here, at the Oyster Bar inside Grand Central, for a quick round of Gibsons. “I’m just keeping Laura company until her train,” Dolly said, “then I am going to haul myself over to Penn to catch my own back to Utica. Come join us!”

  Mercifully, the two girls demurred, and after half-hugs and a promise to get together for dinner after New Year’s, they continued on their travels. “Sorry,” Dolly said, turning back to Laura. “Were you about to say something?”

  “Nothing important.” The waiter came with menus, and they ordered drinks. “I love the fact that we’re sitting in the Oyster Bar getting ready to go home for Christmas,” Dolly said as she scanned the offerings. “It seems so . . . continental.”

  Laura measured her across the table. What an odd duck Dolly could be. It had been over a month since she’d handed her Jack’s address and told her to get some answers, and yet Dolly—who couldn’t keep her mouth shut if you surgically stitched it so—hadn’t mentioned it. She’d been growing her hair out and she actually looked a bit more slender, a sign her eating binges had abated if not disappeared altogether. Laura had asked Dolly about all of it, the trip to Yonkers and the subsequent new look, only to be met with an airy response that it was best for everyone to just move on, and that was what she was doing. Discussion over.

  And really, what right did she have to pry? She was holding on to her own secret. Both Dolly and Vivian had remarked that they hadn’t seen Box at the Barbizon of late, that Laura didn’t seem to be going out as much. She, too, had produced her own dismissive, catchall excuse, that the holiday season was madness when you ran a department store. This had been enough to explain Box’s absence for the last few weeks. Though it wouldn’t hold after Christmas was over.

  He’d come to the Barbizon a few days after the disastrous dinner that never was, as she knew he would. She hadn’t returned his calls or acknowledged the two bouquets of flowers he’d sent, each with a plaintive note asking for a chance to explain. Finally one afternoon a girl Laura had never seen before knocked at her door, carefully reciting that Box was in the lobby and to tell her that he was going to stay there and wait for her as long as it took, because she had to leave the building sometime. The girl had then broken out in an awkward smile, as if she’d just recited the winning word in a spelling bee.

  Laura had made him wait another hour, then walked matter-of-factly into the lobby, silently cursing herself for applying perfume and lipstick before coming down. But she’d had little choice: She didn’t want him to see her as she really was—pale and tired, her eyes bleary from all the crying.

  They’d exchanged the briefest of terse greetings before they walked into the coffee shop and taken a back booth. A scene witnessed by half of the Barbizon was not at all what Laura wanted, but the thought of having to walk even a block with Box somewhere else was too awful to imagine. Better to just get it all dispatched quickly.

  They talked—actually, he rambled was more accurate, about early Christmas season sales at the store, about his parents’ upcoming trip to Mexico, some story about his sister she couldn’t follow and didn’t care to—until the coffee came, and a painful quiet settled over the booth. “I am so sorry, I can’t even put it into strong enough words,” he said finally, looking down as he stirred his cup.

  “I know you are.”

  “She doesn’t even—”

  Laura put her hand up. “No. Not another word about . . . her. It doesn’t matter. You’ve apologized. It’s over. There’s nothing more to say.”

  “That’s not true, Laura. I have so much to say. If I can only get you to listen. To understand.”

  “Understand what, exactly? That you needed a wife who would pass inspection and Joanne Connelly wasn’t available? That you were going to marry me and carry on with another woman right from the start? That you lied to me the entire time we were together? Do you know what I’ve been spending my days thinking about? Do you? That I came this close to ruining my entire life. My God, how stupid I’ve been. You two must have been roaring with laughter behind my back.” A small stab hit her heart. It was the exact charge Pete had leveled against her.

  “You’ve got it all wrong. It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t seeing her the whole time. My parents—”

  “Stop! Just stop. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know. We’re all done.” She began scooting out of the booth. Box grabbed her forearm, pinned it to the table.

  “Please, please. I did love you. Do love you. You can ask my mother. The night of the anniversary party, the night I proposed, I told her that you make me want to be a better person.”

  She shook her arm free. “Evidently not enough.”

  “My father has had a mistress for years.”

  Laura found herself almost speechless. “So that’s it? That’s your excuse? ‘It’s good enough for Dad, so it’s good enough for me’? Do you hear yourself?”

  “It’s all I’ve known. I’m not saying that to excuse my behavior. I’m not. I am just trying to get you to see where all of this is coming from. You do make me want to be a better man. I don’t want anyone but you. It’s all over with her. I love you.”

  Laura sat back in the booth, withdrawing her hands to her lap. She’d never seen such a look of pure anguish on a man’s face. Strangely, she actually believed that he did love her. But he no doubt had also told Agnes Ford that he loved her. And who knows who else. It was no longer about love, anyway. It was about trust. And that had been broken. Smashed, actually. Irrevocably, permanently smashed.

  “You know what I keep thinking?” she asked. “How indignant you wer
e that night you were cooking me dinner in your apartment, when I had the gall to ask you about her. How affronted you were.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “At last, a point of agreement.” She slid out of the booth. “I have to go. Please don’t contact me again.”

  A rowdy burst of laughter nearby took her out of the memory. Laura glanced around the Oyster Bar, taking in the assorted faces slurping the bar’s namesake product, drinking martinis, laughing over cigarettes and platters of cold lobster salad. In an instant another memory returned, of her standing in this very train station, listening to Marmy correct her grammar as she daydreamed of sitting here, inside the Oyster Bar, flirting with a visiting businessman and drinking a Tom Collins. That was six months ago, she thought. Who could imagine that your life could change so much in six months?

  The din inside the restaurant was very loud, a direct result of its stone archways—but above the chatter and clattering silverware and revelry, you could still hear the faint sound of Perry Como crooning “Home for the Holidays.” Fitting.

  A band of men in almost identical gray suits, fedoras pushed back from their brows, stood laughing raucously at the bar, arguing over who had blown the client presentation and finding general agreement and hilarity in blaming someone named Sid. Next to them, a single man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, dressed neatly but not expensively, sat silently sipping a scotch and staring somberly at his own reflection in the glass behind the bar, evidently trying to delay his trip home for as long as possible. Laura wondered how many nights her own father had sat just like that, parked in some out-of-the-way saloon, dreading the ride home to dinner with Marmy and his children. She turned to see two young couples at a table, diving into a messy platter of assorted seafood. One couple chortled almost uncontrollably, feeding each other snippets of lobster; the other sat across from them almost dead still, backs plastered to their chairs, as they pushed lettuce and crabmeat and lemon wedges around on their plates with their forks, trying to muster banal contentment and failing miserably. The great divide, Laura thought, between those who are happy and those who are not.

  Wouldn’t Pete be proud of her, sitting here, mentally writing the Oyster Bar?

  “What are you having?” Dolly was saying, and Laura turned to see the waiter standing, a bit harried, waiting for her to order.

  Laura smiled weakly. “Tom Collins, please.”

  “Okay,” Dolly said after he departed, “are you ever going to tell me what’s going on with you?”

  Laura eyed her evenly. “I don’t know. Are you?”

  Dolly shrugged. “There’s never anything going on with me.”

  “That’s not true and you know it. What happened when you went to confront Jack?”

  “Jack’s ancient history. Why haven’t you been seeing Box? And don’t give me this crapola about Christmas shopping, either.”

  There was silence between them for a minute until the waiter returned with the drinks. Dolly raised her sidecar in toast. “What shall we drink to?”

  Laura thought for a second. “To Metzger.”

  Dolly smiled. “To Metzger.”

  “Actually,” Laura said, putting down her tall lemony cocktail, “we should probably be making a toast to Vivian. She should be here with us.”

  “Yeah, it’s too bad. She was being very mysterious about her plans for tonight. I wonder where Nicky’s taking her. And what kind of jewelry he’s buying her for Christmas. I’m sure he’ll miss her when she’s in London.”

  Laura leaned forward. “Dolly, did Vivian seem . . . off to you?”

  “What do you mean? Vivian always seems off to me. That’s what makes her Vivian.”

  “No, I’m serious. Something doesn’t seem right to me.”

  “Oh, you,” Dolly said, taking another long sip of her sidecar. “Always looking for a tale to be told.”

  Not this time, Laura thought. A few days ago Laura had asked Vivian to come with them for a final “girls’ toast” before Christmas break, and Vivian had agreed. Laura had been relieved; Vivian’s cool behavior of the last few months had positively metastasized into almost complete withdrawal in the last several weeks. She sometimes disappeared from view within the Barbizon for days. Whenever she did resurface, there was always a reason, always an excuse for her prolonged absence—a nagging sinus headache, an extra shift at the Stork, a trip to the post office to ship Christmas presents back to England—something just plausible enough. But Vivian was depressed. She looked puffy, tired. Laura recognized the signs. It was like watching someone tumble down into a sinkhole, and you were powerless to pull them out.

  Tonight they’d expected Vivian to swan through the door to their room inside the Barbizon at any moment, as she always did when they were going out somewhere. And especially when she knew they were going away for the holidays. And yet Vivian didn’t seem to come to their room at all anymore. She had never wanted them to come to her place, reasons unknown, and somewhere along the line a tacit understanding had come to pass that whenever they’d made plans, Vivian would come to them, never vice versa.

  But when she didn’t show and with the clock ticking, Laura had gathered Dolly and the two of them had gone down to Vivian’s room five floors below. They were surprised when she answered the door. She wore no makeup, only a silk bathrobe. Laura had been even more surprised when Vivian had casually waved them inside.

  Laura had always gotten the impression that Vivian lived amid a fair amount of chaos. The lone other time she’d been allowed in this room it had been a circus, a display of boxes and empty cigarette cartons, of hangers on the floor and dresses thrown over the backs of chairs. In her mind, Laura had always imagined Vivian living with a yellow parrot inside a big gold cage hanging from the ceiling, a bird she never fed but whom, like Vivian, always managed to survive nonetheless. But when she and Dolly had walked into Vivian’s tiny unit tonight, they’d found only a tidy, orderly, spartan room, one that gave the impression that its occupant had either just arrived or was about to depart for good. It felt sterile, charmless. A suitcase and a hatbox sat by the door.

  “I thought you were coming with us to the Oyster Bar,” Laura said.

  “Oh, so sorry, my pets, but Nicky simply insisted we have a cozy dinner before I leave, and I couldn’t possibly disappoint him. And I am horribly late, as usual.” She put down her hairbrush. “So I’m afraid we’ll have to toodle-oo here.” She reached into her dressing table drawer, extracted two pale pink envelopes. “Just little holiday greetings to my two favorite Barbizon girls,” she said, handing them each a card. “But you must, must promise to follow the instruction, or the wishes expressed won’t come true.”

  Laura read her own name in florid script, with a line underneath that said, “Vital: Do not open until Boxing Day.”

  “When’s Boxing Day? And what is it?” Dolly asked.

  “December twenty-sixth,” Vivian replied. “It’s a very old English holiday. Back in the day, it was the day when the lords and ladies who ran the grand estates and the factory owners would give their servants and workers their Christmas gifts.”

  Laura laughed. “Are you implying we are your servants?”

  Vivian laughed as well, and Laura’s heart fluttered; it was the biggest, throatiest, joyous, most Vivian-like laugh she’d heard in ages. “Oh, well done, darling! Not at all, not at all. I wish I had been that clever. No, no, nothing like that. Just a small something to express love and joy come to you, and to you your wassail too, and all of that.” She looked at both of them. “You two—”

  Something seemed to catch in her throat, and she stopped. It was the first time Laura could ever recall seeing Vivian appear . . . vulnerable. Her eyes were shining.

  “What a nice thing to do,” Dolly said, appearing genuinely moved.

  Vivian stepped forward, drew Dolly into a hug. “Always remember you’re wonderful, my Ethel,” she whispered to her. “Don’t forget it.”

  Vivian had hugged Laura just as clos
e. “Cheers, darling,” she said. “To watch how you’ve blossomed in these few short months has been nothing short of smashing. Happy Christmas.”

  “To you, too,” Laura replied. “I’m sure yours will be a lot more interesting than mine. I picture you at some grand estate. Like Manderley!”

  Vivian had smiled resignedly. She looked incredibly fatigued, which Laura attributed to the fact that her face was now plain, unadorned by cosmetics. Vivian hugged her again, tighter this time. “Alas, no, my dear. I do not get to be the second Mrs. de Winter. I am the first Mrs. Rochester.”

  Sitting in the Oyster Bar sipping her drink, Laura felt Vivian’s words now swirling through her brain, teasing her. What had she meant? Her room had been too neat. But then a lot of people cleaned up before they went on a trip, not wanting to come home to disarray. But still, something wasn’t right.

  “Where are you now?” Dolly sighed.

  “English literature.”

  “Pardon?”

  “‘The first Mrs. Rochester.’ It’s from Jane Eyre.”

  Dolly shrugged. “So?”

  Laura felt her brain shifting into overdrive. Box’s words the night of his parents’ grand party: “The roof can be an oasis.” Mariclaire, sopping wet and wrapped in a blanket walking away with her shamefaced parents at her coming-out party, blithely stating, “Sometimes, you just have to save yourself and jump.” Bertha Rochester, the tortured, insane first wife in Jane Eyre, committing suicide as she flung herself from the top of Thornfield Hall.

  And just like that, the pieces tumbled frighteningly into place. “Oh my God, oh my God,” Laura yelled as she jumped up, attracting looks from two nearby couples and the coworkers of Sid. She began frantically rifling through her bag, lipstick and compact and handkerchief and comb tossed onto the table as she dug to the bottom.

  “What?!” Dolly looked on, alarmed. “What’s going on?”

  Laura found the pink envelope, ripped it open. As she scanned the note inside, she felt herself getting dizzy. She grabbed her coat. “We have to go. Now!!” She tossed a few dollars onto the table and raced out of the Oyster Bar, not even bothering to take her luggage, as Dolly ran to catch up.