Tell-All (18 page)

But wrapped in the lace of a wedding veil my Miss Kathie always becomes a promising new future. The camera lights flare amidst the flowers, the heat wilting and scorching the roses and lilies. The smell of sweet smoke.

This wedding scene reveals Webb as a brilliant actor, taking Miss Kathie in his arms he bends her backward, helpless, as his lips push her even further off balance. His bright brown eyes sparkle. His gleaming smile simply moons and beams.

Miss Kathie hurtles her bouquet at a crowd that includes
Lucille Ball, Janet Gaynor, Cora Witherspoon
and
Marjorie Main
and
Marie Dressler
. A mad scramble ensues between
June Allyson, Joan Fontaine
and
Margaret O’Brien
. Out of the fray
Ann Rutherford
emerges clutching the flowers. We all throw rice supplied by
Ciro’s
.

Zasu Pitts
cuts the wedding cake.
Mae Murray
minds the guest book.

In a quiet moment during which Miss Kathie has exited
to change out of her wedding gown, I sidle up beside the groom. As my wedding gift to Webb, I slip him a few sheets of printed paper.

Those dulled brown eyes look at the pages, reading the words
Love Slave
typed across the top margin, and he says, “What’s this?”

Brushing rice from the shoulders of his coat, I say, “Don’t play coy.…”

Those pages already belong to him, stolen from his suitcase, I’m merely returning them to their rightful owner. Saying this, I straighten his boutonniere, smoothing his lapels.

Lifting the first page, scanning it, the Webb reads, “ ‘No one will ever know why
Katherine Kenton
committed suicide on what seemed like such a joyous occasion.…’ ” His bright brown eyes look at me, then back to the page, and he continues to read.

We continue with the audio bridge of
Webster Carlton Westward III
reading, “ ‘…
Katherine Kenton
committed suicide on what seemed like such a joyous occasion.’ ”

The mise-en-scène shows my Miss Kathie in her dressing room, backstage, the soft-focus stand-in perfect and lovely as if filmed through a veil. We watch as she sits at her dressing table, leaning into her reflection in the mirror, fixing the final smears of blood and scars and crusted scabs for her upcoming
Guadalcanal
battle scene. From outside the closed dressing room door we hear a voice call, “Two minutes, Miss Kenton.”

The voice-over continues reading, “ ‘It had long been rumored that
Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq.
, had taken his own life, after traces of cyanide were uncovered following his sudden death. Although no suicide note was ever found, and a subsequent inquest was unable to reach a conclusion, Drake
was reported to be severely despondent, according to Katherine’s maid,
Hazie Coogan
. …’ ”

On Miss Kathie’s dressing table, among the jars of greasepaint and hairbrushes, we see a small paper bag; the sides are rolled down to reveal its contents as a colorful array of
Jordan almonds
. Miss Kathie’s lithe movie-star hand carries the almonds, a red one, a green one, a white one, almond by almond, to her mouth. At the same time, her violet eyes never leave her own reflection in the mirror. A glass bottle, prominently labeled
CYANIDE,
sits next to the candied almonds. The bottle’s stopper removed.

Webb’s voice-over continues, “ ‘It’s likely that my adored Katherine feared losing the happiness she’d struggled so long and hard to attain.’ ”

We see the idealized, slender version of Miss Kathie stand and adjust her military costume, studying her reflection in the dressing room mirror.

The voice of Webster reads, “ ‘After so many years, my beloved Katherine had regained her stardom in the lead of a
Broadway
hit. She’d triumphed over a decade of drug abuse and eating disorders. And most important, she’d found a sexual satisfaction beyond anything she’d ever dreamed possible.’ ”

The
Katherine Kenton
fantasy stand-in lifts a tube of lipstick, twists it to its full red length and reaches toward the mirror. Over the beautiful reflection of herself, she writes:
Webster’s amazing, massive penis is the only joy in this world that I will miss
. She writes,
As the French would say … Adios
. The fantasy version of Miss Kathie dashes a tear from her eye, turning quickly and exiting the dressing room.

As the shot follows her, Miss Kathie dashes through the maze of backstage props, unused sets and loitering stagehands;
the voice-over reads, “ ‘According to the statements of Miss Hazie,
Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq.
, had often talked in private about ending his own life. Despite the general public impression that he and Katherine were deeply, devotedly in love, Miss Hazie testified that a morose, secret depression had settled over him. Perhaps it was this same secret sorrow which now drove my exquisite Katherine to eat those tainted sweets only minutes before the hit show’s finale.’ ”

Onstage, Japanese bombs pelt the ships of
Pearl Harbor
. Under this pounding cascade of exploding death, the svelte Miss Kathie leaps from stage right, bounding up the tilting deck of the
USS
Arizona
. Already, her complexion has paled, turned pallid beneath the surface of her pancake makeup.

In voice-over, we hear Webster reading, “ ‘At the greatest moment of the greatest career of the greatest actress who has ever lived, the rainbow reds and greens and whites of those fatal candies still tingeing her luscious lips …’ ”

At the highest point of the doomed battleship, the ideal Miss Kathie stands at attention and salutes her audience.

“ ‘At that moment, in what was clearly and undeniably a romantic self-murder,’ ” the voice-over continues, “ ‘my dearest Katherine, the greatest love of my life, blew a kiss to me, where I sat in the sixth row … and she succumbed.’ ”

Still saluting, the figure collapses, plunging into the azure tropical water.

The voice of Webster reads, “ ‘The end.’ ”

We open with the distinct pop of a champagne cork, dissolving to reveal Miss Kathie and myself standing in the family crypt. Froth spills from the bottle she holds, splashing on the stone floor as Miss Kathie hurries to pour wine into the two dusty champagne glasses I hold. Here, in the depths of stone beneath the cathedral where she was so recently wed, Miss Kathie takes a glass and lifts it, toasting a new urn which rests on the stone shelf beside the urns engraved
Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq., Loverboy, Lothario
. All of her long-dead loved ones.

The new urn of shining, polished silver sits engraved with the name
Terrence Terry
, and includes a smudged lipstick kiss identical to the old kisses dried to the magenta of ancient blood, almost black on the urns now rusted and tarnished with age.

Miss Kathie lifts her glass in a toast to this newest silver
urn, saying,
“Bonne nuit
, Terrence.” She sips the champagne, adding, “That’s Spanish for bon voyage.”

Around us a few flickering candles light the dusty, cold crypt, shimmering amid the clutter of empty wine bottles. Dirty champagne glasses hold dead spiders, each spider curled like a bony fist. Abandoned ashtrays hold stubbed cigarettes smudged with a long history of lipstick shades, the cigarettes yellowed, the lipstick faded from red to pink. Ashes and dust. The mirror of Miss Kathie’s real face, scratched and scarred with her past, lies facedown among the souvenirs and sacrifices of everything she’s left behind. The pill bottles half-full of
Tuinal
and
Dexamyl. Nembutal, Seconal
and
Demerol
.

Tossing back her champagne and pouring herself another glass, Miss Kathie says, “I think we ought to record this occasion, don’t you?”

She means for me to prop the mirror in its upright position while she stands on the lipstick X marked on the floor. Miss Kathie holds out her left hand to me, her fingers spread so I can remove her
Harry Winston
diamond solitaire. When her face aligns with the mirror, her eyes perfectly bracketed by the crow’s-feet, her lips centered between the scratched hollows and sagging cheeks, only when she’s exactly superimposed on the record of her past … do I take the diamond and begin to draw.

On the opening night of
Unconditional Surrender
, she says Terry had paid her a visit backstage, in her dressing room before the first curtain. In the chaos of telegrams and flowers, it’s likely Terry purloined the
Jordan almonds
. He’d stopped to convey his best wishes and inadvertently made off with the poisoned candy, saving her life. Poor Terrence. The accidental martyr.

As Miss Kathie speculates, I plow the diamond along the soft surface of the mirror, gouging her new wrinkles and worry lines into our cumulative written record.

Since then, Miss Kathie says she’s ransacked Webster’s luggage. We can’t risk overlooking any new murder schemes. She’s discovered yet another final chapter, a seventh draft of the
Love Slave
finale. “It would seem that I’m to be shot by an intruder next,” she says, “when I interrupt him in the process of burgling my home.”

But at last she’s managed a counterattack: she’s mailed this newest final chapter to her lawyer, sealed within a manila envelope, with the instructions that he should open it and read the contents should she meet a sudden, suspicious death. After that she informed the Webster of her actions. Of course he vehemently denied any plot; he protested and railed that he’d never written such a book. He insisted that he’d only ever loved her and had no intention to cause her harm. “But that’s exactly,” Miss Kathie says, “what I’d expected him to say, the evil cad.”

Now, in the event Miss Kathie falls under an omnibus, bathes with an electric radio, feeds herself to grizzly bears, tumbles from a tall building, sheathes an assassin’s sharp dagger with her heart or ingests cyanide—then
Webster Carlton Westward III
will never get to publish his terrible “lie-ography.” Her lawyers will expose his ongoing plot. Instead of hitting any best-seller list, the Webster will go sit in the electric chair.

All the while, I drag the diamond’s point to draw Miss Kathie’s new gray hairs onto the mirror. I tap the glass to mark any new liver spots.

“I should be safe,” Miss Kathie says, “from any homicidal burglars.”

Under pressure, the mirror bends and distorts, stretching and warping my Miss Kathie’s reflection. The glass feels that fragile, crisscrossed with so many flaws and scars.

Miss Kathie lifts her glass in a champagne toast to her reflected self, saying, “As Webb’s ultimate punishment, I made him marry me.…”

The would-be assassin has now become her full-time, live-in love slave.

The bright-brown-eyed wonder will do her bidding, collect her dry cleaning, chauffeur her, scour her bathroom, run errands, wash her dishes, massage her feet and provide any specific oral-genital pleasure Miss Kathie deems necessary, until death do they part. And even then, it had best not be her death or the Webster will likely find himself arrested.

“But just to be on the safe side …” she says, and reaches to retrieve something off the stone shelf. From among the abandoned pill bottles and outdated cosmetics and contraceptives, Miss Kathie’s hand closes around something she carries back to her fur coat pocket. She says, “Just in case …” and slips this new item, tinted red with rust, blue with oil, into her coat pocket.

It’s a revolver.

Here we dissolve into yet another flashback. Let’s see the casting office at
Monogram Pictures
or
Selig studios
along
Gower Street
, what everyone called “Poverty Row,” or maybe the old
Central Casting
offices on
Sunset Boulevard
, where a crowd of would-be actresses mill about all day with their fingers crossed. These, the prettiest girls from across the world, voted
Miss Sweet Corn Queen
and
Cherry Blossom Princess
. A former reigning
Winter Carnival Angel
, a
Miss Bountiful Sea Harvest
. A pantheon of mythic goddesses made flesh and blood.
Miss Best Jitterbug
. A beauty migration, all of them vying for greater fame and glory. Among them, a couple of the girls draw your focus. One girl, her eyes are set too close together, her nose dwarfs her chin, her head rests squarely on her chest without any hint of an intervening neck.

The second young woman, waiting in the casting office,
cooling her heels … her eyes are the brightest amethyst purple. An almost supernatural violet.

In this flashback, we watch the ugly young woman, the plain woman, as she watches the lovely woman. The monstrous young woman, shoulders slumped, hands hanging all raw knuckled and gnawed fingernails, she spies on the young woman with the violet eyes. More important, the ugly woman watches the way in which the other people watch the lovely woman. The other actors seem stunned by those violet eyes. When the pretty one smiles, everyone watching her also smiles. Within moments of first seeing her, other people stand taller, pulling their bellies back to their spines. These queens and ladies and angels, their hands cease fidgeting. They adopt her same shoulders-back posture. Even their breathing slows to match that of the lovely girl. Upon seeing her, every woman seems to become a lesser version of this astonishing girl with violet eyes.

In this flashback, the ugly girl has almost given up hope. She’s studied her craft with
Constance Collier
and
Guthrie McClintic
and
Margaret Webster
, yet she still can’t find work. The homely girl does possess an innate, shrewd cunning; none of her gestures is ever without intention and motivation. In her underplaying, the ugly girl displays nothing short of brilliance. Even as she watches those present unconsciously mimic the lovely girl, the ugly one considers a plan. As a possible alternative to becoming an actress herself, perhaps the better strategy would be to join forces—combining her own skill and intelligence with the other girl’s beauty. Between the two of them, they might yield one immortal motion picture star.