The group arrived at the Seigniory in time for dinner. In the morning, they woke to views across the Ottawa River and mountains frosted with snow as bright as wedding cakes. That weekend they skated on the frozen lake and hiked in snowshoes into the hills. Grace and Carolyn also ventured out together for an afternoon drive, leaving the men behind, so they could have time together to talk. Grace informed Carolyn that she had no interest in Jack, and Carolyn understood.
That same afternoon, Carolyn realized that she had forgotten to affix the new car registration to the window, so she asked Grace to look for it in the glove compartment. Grace handed the registration to Carolyn, who noticed that Malcolm’s license was pinned to the back. This was how Carolyn discovered that her new husband had lied to her about his age. He had told her he was thirty-two. In fact, Malcolm Durbec Reybold had been born on February 25, 1910. It wasn’t difficult for Carolyn to do the math. Her own mother had been born that year. That meant he was nearly forty, the same age as her mother.
Grace and Carolyn drove back to the lodge, where Grace urged Carolyn to confront her husband. They found Malcolm at the bar and asked him to explain the license and the birth date. Malcolm didn’t flinch as Carolyn explained how hurt and betrayed she felt. Instead, he laughed loudly, slapping her on the back and claiming it had all been a great joke. For the rest of the weekend, he made a point of bringing up the license often, laughing again at Carolyn’s foolishness in taking him seriously.
After they left Canada, Carolyn tried to put the subject of Malcolm’s age aside. Perhaps her new husband was right. Maybe it was just a joke, nothing important in the greater scheme of things. Besides, she was too busy—and too happy—to dwell on it much. Work was going so well. For the next year, she appeared each month in Mademoiselle’s “Scoops of the Month” feature, as “Joan,” the magazine’s quintessential reader. In the coming months, she traveled to Washington, D.C., to Princeton, and to Puerto Rico for her new job. For the magazine’s Christmas issue of 1950, she stood in a window at Lord & Taylor’s department store posed beside a mannequin. By now, she was completely at ease in front of the camera, radiating a kind of effortless joy. The editors at the magazine took note: marriage agreed with Carolyn.
Grace had still not been cast in another Broadway show, but she was faring better going up for parts in plays being staged for the new medium of television. It turned out that Grace had the kind of subtlety and looks that played well on camera. In 1950, she appeared in eleven televised plays, shuttling back and forth from Philadelphia to New York for rehearsals and shoots. Meanwhile, a producer at 20th Century Fox had seen Grace in The Father and invited her to audition for a tiny role in the movie Fourteen Hours. She won the part and accepted, but all the travel between New York and Philadelphia was wearing on her nerves. Reluctantly, her parents finally agreed she could rent an apartment of her own in the city. In October of 1950, Grace moved into the Manhattan House, a sleek new building on East Sixty-sixth Street that her father had helped to construct, providing the gleaming white bricks for the exterior. Mr. and Mrs. Kelly demanded that Grace find a roommate, so she asked a friend from the Academy, Sally Parrish, to move in with her.
Although it wasn’t easy to gain entry to the Manhattan House—references were required, and family background was taken into account—Grace informed the management company that when the final apartments became available in the New Year, she would like to put in a good word for her friends the Reybolds.
Malcolm and Carolyn were going to need an extra bedroom: Carolyn was pregnant. Grace had been among the first to know. The baby was due in June 1951. Malcolm was the proud husband; Carolyn was glowing. She had always loved children and had a special affection for them. Growing up, her half brother and sister were so much younger that she babysat them often, wiping their little faces and tending to their scrapes and bruises with a mother’s care. Pregnancy felt like a fulfillment of purpose, the tiny fluttering of the baby inside her a prediction of future joy. Since the wedding, they had been living in Malcolm’s bachelor apartment overlooking the construction site of the new United Nations building. It wasn’t nearly big enough for a family, and Carolyn was grateful that Grace stepped in to help them find the apartment at the Manhattan House.
In the new year, Carolyn and Malcolm moved into their new home on the eighteenth floor, with Grace downstairs on the ninth. The Reybolds’ apartment had views looking out across the city from wide, long windows. Malcolm picked out the furnishings, all of them custom made and in the latest modern style. The walls of the living room were painted a daring azure blue, offset by an accent wall covered in plaid wallpaper and a plush beige carpet. The couch was striped in blue, pink, and orange sateen. There was a tall rust-colored easy chair for Malcolm, sleek mahogany wood furniture, and rows of shelves to house his collection of books. The master bathroom was tiled in white, with deep red walls and towels monogrammed R in a matching red. Their neighbors at the Manhattan House were a young and accomplished crowd: architects, advertising and television executives, journalists, musicians, and actors. Manhattan House was being written about in the newspapers and nominated for architecture awards, considered ahead of its time. Malcolm—who coveted all that was modern and fashionable—took enormous pride in their new living arrangements.
In the mornings, Carolyn kissed her husband good-bye, and he strode out
