Tell-All (6 page)

Over the telephone, a man’s voice says, “Is Miss
Katherine Kenton
at home?”

Who, I ask, may I say is calling?

The front doorbell rings.

“Is this Hazie, the housekeeper?” the man on the telephone says. “My name is Webb Westward. We met a few days ago, at the mausoleum.”

I’m sorry, I say, but I’m afraid he has the wrong number. This, I say, is the State Residence for Criminally Reckless Females. I ask him to please not telephone again. And I hang up the receiver.

“I see you’re still,” the Terrence specimen says, “protecting Her Majesty.”

My pen follows the handwritten lines of the original letter, tracing every loop and dot of the words that bleed through, copying them onto this new sheet of stationery, the sentence:
My Most Dear Katherine, True love is NOT out of your reach
.

I trace the words,
I’ll arrive to collect you for drinks at eight on Saturday
.

Tracing the line,
Wear something smashing
.

My pen traces the signature,
Webster Carlton Westward III
.

We all, more or less, live in her shadow. No matter what else we do with our lives, our obituaries will lead with the clause “lifelong paid companion to movie star
Katherine Kenton”
or “fifth husband to film legend
Katherine Kenton …
”

I copy the original letter perfectly, only instead of
Saturday
I mimic the handwriting, that same slant and angle, to write
Friday
. Folding this new letter in half, tucking it back into the original envelope with
Miss Katherine
written on the back, licking the glue strip, my tongue tastes the mouth of this Webster specimen. The lingering flavor of
Maxwell House coffee
. The scent of thin
Tiparillo
cigars and
bay rum
cologne. The chemistry of Webb Westward’s saliva. The recipe for his kisses.

Terrence Terry
sets the bag of candied almonds on the
kitchen table. Still eating one, he watches the television. He asks, “Where’s that awful little mutt she picked up … what? Eight years ago?”

He’s an actor now, I say, nodding at the television set. And it was ten years ago.

“No,” says the Terrence specimen, “I meant the Pekingese.”

I shrug, flip the dead bolt, slip the chain and open the door. I tell him the dog’s still around. Probably upstairs napping. I say to leave the almonds, and I’ll be certain that Miss Kathie gets them. Standing with the door open, I say good-bye.

On the television, Paco pretends to kiss
Vilma Bánky
. The senator on the evening news kisses babies and shakes hands. On another channel,
Terrence Terry
catches a bullet fired from a Union musket and dies at the
Siege of Atlanta
. We’re all merely ghosts who continue to linger in Miss Kathie’s world. Phantoms like the scent of honeysuckle or almonds. Like vanishing steam. The front doorbell rings again.

Taking the candy, I slip the forged love letter into the paper bag, where Miss Kathie will find it when she arrives home this afternoon, thoroughly shocked and shaved and ravenous.

In the establishing shot, a taxicab stops in the street outside Miss Kathie’s town house. Sunshine filters through the leaves of trees. Birds sing. The shot moves in, closer and closer, to frame an upstairs window, Miss Kathie’s boudoir, where the drapes are drawn tight against the afternoon glare.

Inside the bedroom, we cut to a close-up shot of an alarm clock. Pull back to reveal the clock is balanced atop the stack of screenplays beside Miss Kathie’s bed. On the clock, the larger hand sits at twelve, the smaller at three. Miss Kathie’s eyes flutter open to the reflection of herself staring down, those same violet eyes, from the mirrors within her bed canopy. One languid movie star hand flaps and flops, stretching until her fingers find the water glass balanced beside the clock. Her fingers find the
Nembutal
and bring the capsule back to her lips. Miss Kathie’s eyelashes flutter closed. Once more, the hand hangs limp off the side of her bed.

The forged version of the love letter, the copy I traced, sits in the middle of her mantelpiece, featured center stage among the lesser invitations and wedding photos. Among the polished awards and trophies. The original date, Saturday, revised to Friday, tonight. Here’s the setup for a romantic evening that won’t happen. No,
Webster Carlton Westward III
will not arrive at eight this evening, and
Katherine Kenton
will sit alone and fully dressed, coiffed, as abandoned as
Miss Havisham
in the novel by
Charles Dickens
.

Cut to a shot of the same taxicab as it pulls to the curb in front of a dry cleaner’s. The back car door swings opens, and my foot steps out. I ask the cabdriver to double-park while I collect Miss Kathie’s white sable from the refrigerated storage vault. The white fur folded over my arm, it feels impossibly soft but heavy, the pelts slippery and shifting within the thin layer of dry cleaner plastic. The sable glows with cold, swollen with cold in contrast to the warm daylight and the blistering, cracked-vinyl seat of the cab.

At our next stop, the dressmaker’s, the cab stops for me to pick up the gown my Miss Kathie had altered. After that, we stop at the florist’s to buy the corsage of orchids that Miss Kathie’s nervous hands will fondle and finger tonight, as eight o’clock comes and goes and her brown-eyed young beau doesn’t ring the doorbell. Before the clock strikes eight-thirty, Miss Kathie will ask me to pour her a drink. By the stroke of nine, she’ll swallow a
Valium
. By ten o’clock, these orchids will be shredded. By then, my Miss Kathie will be drunken, despondent, but safe.

Our perspective cuts back and forth between the bedside alarm clock and the roving taxi meter. Dollars and minutes tick away. A countdown to tonight’s disaster. We stop by the hairdresser’s to collect the wig that’s been washed and
set. We stop by the hosier’s for the waist cincher and a new girdle. The cobbler’s, for the high heels Miss Kathie wanted resoled. The bodice of the evening gown feels crusted with beads and embroidery, rough as sandpaper or brick inside its garment bag.

The camera follows me, dashing about, assembling all the ingredients—breathless as a mad scientist or a gourmet chef—to create my masterpiece. My life’s work.

If most American women imagine
Mary, Queen of Scots
or
the Empress Eugenie
or
Florence Nightingale
, they picture Miss Kathie in a period costume standing in a two-shot with
John Garfield
or
Gabby Hayes
on an
MGM
soundstage. In the public mind, Miss Kathie, her face and voice, is collapsed with the
Virgin Mary, Dolley Madison
and
Eve
, and I will not allow her to dissipate that legend.
William Wyler, C. B. DeMille
and
Howard Hawks
may have directed her in a picture or two, but I have directed Miss Kathie’s entire adult life. My efforts have made her the heroine, the human form of glory, for the past three generations of women. I coached her to her greatest roles as
Mrs. Ivanhoe, Mrs. King Arthur
and
Mrs. Sheriff of Nottingham
. Under my tutelage, Miss Kathie will forever be synonymous with the characters of
Mrs. Apollo, Mrs. Zeus
and
Mrs. Thor
.

Now more than ever the world needs my Miss Kathie to personify their core values and ideals.

According to
Walter Winchell
, “menoposture” refers to the ramrod straight backbone of a
Joan Crawford
or an
Ethel Barrymore
, a lady of a certain age whose spine never touches the back of any chair. A
Helen Hayes
, who stands straight as a military cadet, her shoulders back in defiance of gravity and osteoporosis. That crucial age when older picture stars become what
Hedda Hopper
calls “fossilidealized,” the living
example of proper manners and discipline and self-restraint. Some
Katharine Hepburn
or
Bette Davis
illustration of noble hard work and Yankee ambition.

Miss Kathie has become the paragon I’ve designed. She illustrates the choice we must make between giving the impression of a very youthful, well-preserved older person, or appearing to be a very degraded, corrupt young person.

My work will not be distracted by some panting, clutching, brown-eyed male. I have not labored my entire lifetime to build a monument for idiot little boys to urinate against and knock down with their dirty hands.

The cab makes a quick stop at the corner newsstand for cigarettes. Aspirin. Breath mints.

In the same moment, the bedside clock strikes four, and the alarm begins to buzz. One long movie-star hand reaches, the fingers searching, the wrist and forearm clashing with gold bracelets and charms.

At the curb outside the town house, I’m passing a twenty-dollar bill to the cabdriver.

Inside, the alarm continues, buzzing and buzzing, until my own hand enters the shot, pressing the button, which ceases the noise. In addition to the wig and white sable, I’ve brought the gown, the corsage, the shoes. I’ve filled an ice bucket and brought clean towels and a bottle of chilled rubbing alcohol, everything as clean and sterile as if I were kneeling bedside to deliver a baby.

My fingers hold an ice cube, rubbing it in a slow arc below one violet eye to shrink Miss Kathie’s loose skin. The ice skims over Miss Kathie’s forehead, smoothing the wrinkles. The melting water saturates the skin of her cheeks, bringing pink to the surface. The cold shrinks the folds in her neck, drawing the skin tight along her jawline.

Our preparation for tonight, all of her rest and my work, as much fuss and sweat as my Miss Kathie would invest in any screen test or audition.

With one hand I’m blotting the melted water. Dabbing her face with cotton balls dipped in the cold rubbing alcohol, reducing the pores. Her skin now feels as frigid as the sable coat preserved in cold storage. At one time, every fur-bearing animal in the world lived in terror of
Katherine Kenton
. Like
Roz Russell
or
Betty Hutton
, if Miss Kathie chose to wear a coat of red ermine or a hat trimmed in pelican feathers, no ermine or seabird was safe. One photo of her arriving at an awards dinner or premiere was enough to put most animals onto the endangered species list.

This woman is
Pocahontas
. She is
Athena
and
Hera
. Lying in this messy, unmade bed, eyes closed, this is
Juliet Capulet. Blanche DuBois. Scarlett O’Hara
. With ministrations of lipstick and eyeliner I give birth to
Ophelia
. To
Marie Antoinette
. Over the next trip of the larger hand around the face of the bedside clock, I give form to
Lucrezia Borgia
. Taking shape at my fingertips, my touches of foundation and blush, here is
Jocasta
. Lying here,
Lady Windermere
. Opening her eyes,
Cleopatra
. Given flesh, a smile, swinging her sculpted legs off one side of the bed, this is
Helen of Troy
. Yawning and stretching, here is every beautiful woman across history.

My position is not that of a painter, a surgeon or a sculptor, but I perform all those duties. My job title:
Pygmalion
.

As the clock strikes seven, I’m hooking my creation into her girdle, lacing the waist cincher. Her shoulders shrug the gown over her head, and her hands smooth the skirts down each hip.

With the handle of a long rattail comb, I’m hooking and
tucking her gray hair into the edges of her auburn wig when Miss Kathie says, “Hush.”

Her violet eyes jumping to the clock, she says, “Did you hear the doorbell just now?”

Still tucking away stray hairs, I shake my head, No.

When the clock strikes eight, the shoes are slipped onto her feet. The white sable draped across her shoulders. Her orchids, still chilled from the icebox, she cups them in her lap, sitting at the top of the stairs, looking down into the foyer, watching the street door. One diamond earring pushes forward, her head cocked to hear footsteps on the stoop. Maybe the muffled knock of a man’s glove on the door, or the sound of the bell.

A whiskey later, Miss Kathie goes to the boudoir mantel and her violet eyes study the letter I forged. She takes the paper and holds it, sitting again on the stairs. Another whiskey later, she returns to her boudoir to fold the letter and tear it in half. She folds the page and tears it again, tears it again, and drops the fluttering pieces into the fireplace. The flames. One of my creations destroying another. My counterfeit
Medea
or
Lady Macbeth
, burning my false declaration of love.

True love is NOT out of your reach
. Saturday replaced with Friday. Tomorrow, when
Webster Carlton Westward III
arrives for his actual dinner date, it will be too late to repair tonight’s broken heart.

By a third whiskey, the orchids are worried and bruised to a pulp between Miss Kathie’s fretting hands. When I offer to bring another drink, her face shines, sliced with the wet ribbons of her tears.

Miss Kathie looks down the stairs at me, blinking to dry her eyelashes, saying, “Realistically, what would a lovely
young man like Webb want with an old woman?” Smiling at the crushed orchids in her lap, she says, “How could I be such a fool?”

She is no one’s fool, I assure her. She’s
Anne Boleyn
and
Marie Curie
.

Her eyes, in that scene, as dull and glassy as pearls or diamonds soiled with hair spray. In one hand, Miss Kathie balls the smashed flowers tight within her fist, to make a wad she drops into one empty old-fashioned glass. She hands the glass to me, the dregs of whiskey and orchids, and I hand her another filled with ice and gin. The sable coat slips from her shoulders to lie, heaped, on the stairway carpet. She’s the infant born this afternoon in her bed, the young girl who dressed, the woman who sat down to wait for her new love.… Now she’s become a hag, aged a lifetime in one evening. Miss Kathie lifts a hand, looking at her wrinkled knuckles, her marquise-cut diamond ring. Twisting the diamond to make it sparkle, she says, “What say we make a record of this moment?” Drive to the crypt beneath the cathedral, she means, and cut these new wrinkles into the mirror where her sins and mistakes collect. That etched diary of her secret face.