In her current state, going out to parties and restaurants simply wasn’t done. There were no more weekends at Sherman’s, no evenings at the Stork Club or the Colony. When Malcolm went out, he went alone or with his work colleagues and clients. Like all women of a certain class and income, Carolyn knew a proper pregnancy should be a discreet affair, kept between a husband and wife and close family and friends, not something in which the outside world should share. Usually so stylish, Carolyn bought herself comfortable wrap dresses, smocks, and shirtwaists to wear at home. In her confinement, she began decorating the baby’s nursery, picking out the crib, the curtains, the rugs, and the dresser with elaborate care. Often alone in the evenings now, she stood in the living room of the Manhattan House, looking across the glittering towers of the city, in her nest in the sky.
Grace’s new apartment was downstairs, number 9A. It had parquet floors, its own terrace, and a wood-burning fireplace, with long windows overlooking the private landscaped courtyard in the center of the complex. Everything about the apartment was modern and new, but as if to counteract its glamour, Grace’s mother had furnished it on Grace’s behalf, and the resulting decor was awash in shades of brown, filled with bland and practical family furniture shipped from Philadelphia. It didn’t matter to Grace. She was back in New York. It was as if her Barbizon days had been restored, this time without the curfew.
Grace’s apartment became the hub of their social lives. In the middle of the living room sat a large round black Formica table, which doubled for dinner and drinks: you could swivel it up for food and then down again for coffee or cocktails. Grace cooked for her friends, serving up hearty meat-and-potato dishes, with home-baked lemon pie for dessert. Carolyn often joined these gatherings, either alone or with Malcolm. She was grateful that despite her swelling figure, she could still see friends at Grace’s. After dinner, there were jokes and confidences, charades, and their favorite activity, fortune-telling.
It was Malcolm who had introduced the group to astrology, and the Manhattan House friends quickly adopted horoscopes as a kind of faith. Malcolm had given them a book, The Pursuit of Destiny, written by an occultist by the name of Muriel Bruce Hasbrouck. Like other astrologers, Hasbrouck believed that the movement of the planets and human fate were intimately connected, but hers was a new approach. Instead of assigning twelve astrological signs by birth date as other astrologers did, she divided the year into ten-day cycles, each of them represented by a card in the tarot pack. To read your fortune, you found the ten-day cycle that included your birthday, then read the description that followed.
Born on November 12, Grace was a Six of Scorpio. Her tarot card was the nine of cups, representing “Pleasure.” According to the book, she was possessed with “magnetic charm, showmanship, creative imagination and staying power.” People born under the sign of Six of Scorpio, the author wrote, “take center of any stage, as by divine right, and occupy it successfully with popularity and charm.” For Grace, still a struggling actress, this was comforting, confirmation she was on the right track. But although Six of Scorpios “contain the greatest creative power, they are also capable of the most compelling harm.” On the negative side, Six of Scorpios are prone to disregard the feelings and sufferings of others. “Their one desire is to succeed, to gain possession of what they want, or to get their own way by imposing their will on other people, and this desire is so strong that it outweighs everything else, especially kindness or justice.”
In order to achieve happiness in life, the book advised, it was important to keep both negative and positive elements in the correct balance.
Carolyn was born on August 19 and was a Seven of Leo. Her tarot card was the seven of wands, representing “Valor.” People born under this sign have “courage and resourcefulness, imagination and intensity.” This was absolutely true of Carolyn, who had come to New York alone, with nothing more than two suitcases and her wits. But Seven of Leos, the book explained, struggle with a central conflict, namely their desire to succeed and their tendency to “scatter their energies so widely that the effort to concentrate on a number of things at the same time destroys their mental balance, making them highly irritable, nervous and undependable.”
Malcolm was born on February 25, so his sign was Eight of Pisces. His positive qualities were his “constructive intelligence, compassionate intensity and practical executive ability,” a description that he loved. On the negative side, the book explained, those born under Eight of Pisces can be “intolerant and narrow minded, self-righteous, and unfriendly … ultra-critical of other people’s ideas, behavior and actions.… When negative, their human sympathy turns destructive, taking the form of cruelty and bitterness toward people who do not conform to their rigid standards.” Malcolm’s tarot card was the eight of cups, “Abandoned Success.”
Grace and Carolyn revisited the pages of The Pursuit of Destiny often, searching for new insights and explanations. Grace was still only twenty-one; Carolyn, twenty-two. The larger part of their lives lay ahead, not behind; their characters were still only half formed. Grace was at the beginning of her career—she’d just made her first film, Fourteen Hours, appearing on-screen for about two minutes in an uncredited role. Carolyn was about
