Tell-All (13 page)

Those hands, the soft tools he would use to commit murder. Behind that smile, the cunning mind that had planned this betrayal. To add insult to injury, the lies he’d written about my Miss Kathie and her sexual adventures, they would eventually be cherry-picked by
Frazier Hunt
of
Photoplay
,
Katherine Albert
of
Modern Screen
magazine,
Howard Barnes
of the
New York Herald Tribune
,
Jack Grant
of
Screen Book
,
Sheilah Graham
, all the various low-life bottom feeders of
Confidential
and every succeeding biographer of the future. These tawdry, soft, sordid fictions would petrify and fossilize to become diamond-hard, carved-stone facts for all perpetuity. A salacious lie will always trump a noble truth.

Miss Kathie’s violet eyes waft to meet my eyes.

A bus roars past in the street, shaking the ground with its weight and trailing the stink of diesel exhaust. Around us the air swirls, gritty with dust and heavy with the threat of imminent death.

Then Miss Kathie steps up to the stoop where the Webster specimen waits. Standing on her tiptoes, she begins to knot the white bow tie. Her movie-star face a mere breath from his own. For this moment and for the immediate future, placing herself as far as possible from the constant, marauding stream of omnibuses.

And Webb, the evil, lying bastard, looks down and plants a kiss on her forehead.

We cut to the interior of a lavish Broadway theater. The opening mise-en-scène includes the proscenium arch, the stage curtain rising within the arch, below that the combed heads and brass instruments of musicians within the orchestra pit. The conductor,
Woody Herman
, raises his baton, and the air fills with a rousing overture by
Oscar Levant
, arrangements by
André Previn
. Additional musical numbers by
Sigmund Romberg
and
Victor Herbert
. On the piano,
Vladimir Horowitz
. As the curtain rises, we see a chorus line which includes
Ruth Donnelly, Barbara Merrill, Alma Rubens, Zachary Scott
and
Kent Smith
doing fan kicks aboard the deck of the battleship
USS
Arizona
, designed by
Romain de Tirtoff
and moored center stage. The Japanese admirals
Isoroku Yamamoto
and
Hara Tadaichi
are danced by
Kinuyo Tanaka
and
Tora Teje
, respectively.
Andy Clyde
does a furious buck-and-wing as Ensign
Kazuo Sakamaki
, the official
first Japanese prisoner of war.
Anna May Wong
tap-dances a solo in the part of Captain
Mitsuo Fuchida
, and
Tex Ritter
fills in for General
Douglas MacArthur
. With
Emiko Yakumo
and
Tia Xeo
as Lieutenant Commander
Shigekazu Shimazaki
and Captain
Minoru Genda
, the principal dancers among the Japanese junior officers.

Choreography by
moo, cluck, bark
…
Léonide Massine
.

Staging by
tweet, bray, meow
…
W. MacQueen Pope
.

As the orchestra pounds away, the
USS
Oklahoma
explodes near the waterline and begins to sink stage right. Burning fuel oil races stage left, moving upstage to ignite the
USS
West Virginia
. Downstage, a Japanese
Nakajima
torpedo lances into the hull of the
USS
California
.

Japanese
Zeros
strafe the production number, riddling the chorus line with bullets.
Aichi
dive bombers plunge into
Pearl White
and
Tony Curtis
, prompting an explosion of red corn syrup, while the cruising periscopes of Japanese midget submarines cut back and forth behind the footlights.

As the
Arizona
begins to keel over, we see
Katherine Kenton
clamber to the position of port-side gun, wrestling the body of a dead gunner’s mate away from the seat. Embroidered across one side of her chest, the olive-drab fabric reads: PFC H
ELLMAN.
My Miss Kathie drags the dead hero aside, laying both her palms open against his chest. As grenades explode shrapnel around her, Miss Kathie’s lips mutter a silent prayer. The eyelids of the dead sailor, played by
Jackie Coogan
, the eyelashes flutter. The young man opens his eyes, blinking; cradled now in Miss Kathie’s arms, he looks up into her famous violet eyes and says, “Am I in heaven?” He says, “Are you … God?”

The Zeros screaming past, the
Arizona
sinking beneath them into the oily, fiery water of
Pearl Harbor
, Miss Kathie
laughs. Kissing the boy on his lips, she says, “Close but no cigar … I’m
Lillian Hellman.”

Before another note from the orchestra, Miss Kathie leaps to slam an artillery round into the massive deck gun. Wheeling the enormous barrel, she tracks a diving Aichi bomber, aligning the crosshairs of her gun sight. Her sailor whites artfully stained and shredded by
Adrian Adolph Greenberg
, her bleeding wounds suggested by sparkling patches of crimson sequins and rhinestones sewn around each bullet hole. Singing the opening bars of her big song, Miss Kathie fires the shell, blasting the enemy aircraft into a blinding burst of papier-mâché.

From offscreen a voice shouts, “Stop!” A female voice shouts, cutting through the violins and French horns, the rockets and machine-gun fire, shouting, “For fuck’s sake, stop!” A woman comes stomping down the center aisle of the theater, one arm lifted, wielding a script rolled as tight as a police officer’s billy club.

The orchestra grinds to silence. The singers stop, their voices trailing off. The dancers slow to a standstill, and the fighter jets hang, stalled, limp in midair, from invisible wires.

From the stage apron, in the reverse angle, we see this shouting woman is
Lillian Hellman
herself as she says, “You’re ruining history! For the love of
Anna Q. Nilsson
, I happen to be
right-handed
!”

In this same reverse angle, we see that the theater is almost empty.
King Vidor
and
Victor Fleming
sit in the fifth row with their heads huddled together, whispering. Farther back, I sit in the empty auditorium next to
Terrence Terry
, both of us balancing infants on our respective laps. Clustered on the floor around our chairs, other foundlings squirm and drool
in wicker baskets. Chubby pink hands shake various rattles, these
kinder
occupying most of the surrounding seats.

“You’d better hope this show flops,” says
Terrence Terry
, bouncing a gurgling orphan on his knee. “By the way, where is our lethal Lothario?”

I tell him that Webb would have to truly hate Miss Kathie after what happened yesterday.

Onstage, Lilly Hellman shouts, “Everybody, listen! Let’s start over.” Hellman shouts, “Let’s take it from the part where the
kamikaze
fighters of the
Japanese Imperial Army
swoop low over
Honolulu
in order to rain their deadly fiery cargo of searing death on
Constance Talmadge.”

The Webster specimen is currently undergoing treatment at
Doctors Hospital
. Just to escape the town house, Miss Kathie’s going into rehearsal, and
Webster Carlton Westward III
is recovering from minor lacerations to his arms and torso.

Terry says, “Fingernail scratches?”

At the house, I say, the nurses keep arriving. The nuns and social workers. The fresh castoff infants continue to be delivered, and Miss Kathie declines to choose. In the past few days, each baby seems less like a blessing and more like an adorable time bomb. No matter how much you love and cuddle one, it still might grow up to become
Mercedes McCambridge
. Regardless of all the affection you shower on a child, it still might break your heart by becoming
Sidney Skolsky
. All of your nurturing and worry and careful attention might turn out another
Noel Coward
. Or saddle humanity with a new
Alain Resnais
. You need only look at Webb and see how no amount of Miss Kathie’s love will redeem him.

Wrapped around one wrist, the foundling I hold wears a
beaded bracelet reading,
UNCLAIMED BOY INFANT NUMBER THIRTY-FOUR
.

It’s ludicrous, the idea of me raising a child, not while I still have my Miss Kathie to parent. A baby is such a blank slate, like training the understudy for a role you’re planning to leave. You truly hope your replacement will do the play justice, but in secret you want future critics to say you played the character better.

“Don’t look at me,” Terry says, juggling an orphan. “I’m busy trying to raise myself.”

Despite repeatedly sidestepping possible death by bus accident and dinner at the Cub Room with Lilly Hellman, Miss Katie has invited Webb to share her town house—so that we might better monitor future drafts of his book-in-progress. She confessed, knowing now how Webster was actually a psychotic killer, a ruthless scheming slayer, now their sex life was more passionate than ever.

It was Webb who brought this stage project to Miss Kathie, gave her the script to read and told her she’d be ideal as the brash, ballsy Hellman seduced by
Sammy Davis Jr
. and parachuted onto
Waikiki Beach
with nothing but a bottle of sunblock and orders to stem the Imperial Army’s advance. Along the way she falls in love with
Joi Lansing
. According to Webb, this starring role had
Tony Award
written all over it.

According to
Terrence Terry
, the Webster specimen was merely grooming my Miss Kathie. These past few years, she’d fallen into obscurity. First, refusing stage and film projects. Second, neglecting her gray hair and weight. A generation of young people were growing up never hearing the name
Katherine Kenton
, oblivious to Miss Kathie’s body of work.
No, it wouldn’t do for her to die at this point in time, not before she’d made a successful comeback. Therefore,
Webster Carlton Westward III
coaxed her to slim down; in all likelihood he’d bully her into a surgeon’s office, where she’d submit to having any new wrinkles or sags erased from her face.

If this new show was a hit, if it put my Miss Kathie back on top, introducing her to a new legion of fans, that would be the ideal time to complete his final chapter. His “lie-ography” would hit stores the same day her newspaper obituary hit the street. The same week her new Broadway show opened to rave reviews.

But not this week, I tell Terry.

Daubing with the hem of my starched maid’s apron, I wipe at the face of the infant I hold. I lean near the floor and pick out a thin sheaf of papers tucked beneath the diaper of a nearby baby. Offering the printed pages to Terry, I ask if he wants to read the second draft of
Love Slave
. Just the closing chapter; here’s the blueprint for Miss Kathie’s most recent brush with death.

“How is it our homicidal hunk has landed himself in the hospital?” Terry says.

And I toss the newest, revised final chapter at his feet.

Onstage, Lilly demonstrates to Miss Kathie the correct way to
tour en l’air
while slitting the throat of an enemy sentry.

Terry collects the pages. Still holding the orphan on his knee, he says, “Once upon a time …” He props the baby in the crook of one arm, leaning into its tiny face as if it were a radio microphone or a camera lens, any recording device in which to store his life. Speaking into this particular
foundling, filling its hollow mind, filling its eyes and ears with the sound of his voice, Terry reads, “ ‘Perhaps it’s ironic, but no film critic, not
Jack Grant
nor
Pauline Kael
nor
David Ogden Stewart
, would ever tear Katherine to bloody shreds the way savage grizzly bears eventually would.…’ ”

In voice-over, we hear
Terrence Terry
reading from the revised final chapter of
Love Slave
. As we dissolve from the theater of the previous scene, we continue to hear the ambient sounds of the rehearsal: carpenters hammering scenery together, tap dancing, machine-gun fire, the dying screams of sailors burned alive, and
Lillian Hellman
. However, these noises fade as once more we see the soft-focus interior of Miss Kathie’s boudoir. We see
Webster Carlton Westward III
, shot from the waist up, his naked torso shining with sweat, as he lifts one hand to his nose, the fingers dripping wet, and inhales deeply, closing his eyes. His hands drop down, out of the shot, then rise, each hand gripping a slender ankle. Lifting the two feet to shoulder height, he holds them wide apart. Webb’s hips buck forward, then pull back, drive forward and pull back, while the voice-over reads, “ ‘… On the final day of
Katherine Kenton
’s life, I oh-so-gently nudged
the prow of my aching love stick against the knotted folds of her forbidden passageway.…’ ”

Once again, the man and woman copulating are idealized versions of Webb and Miss Kathie, seen through heavy filters, their movements in slow motion, fluid, possibly even blurring.

Terry’s voice continues reading, “ ‘The pungent aroma of her most corporeal orifice drenched my senses. My ever-mounting admiration and professional respect boiling for release, I thrust deeper into the fragile, soiled petals of her fecund rose.…’ ”