The Swans of Fifth Avenue (19 page)

“Well, if it isn't Miss Bang Bang herself,” he had greeted her. “Seen any burglars lately?”

“Well, if it isn't Truman Capote, literary asshole and garden-variety fag,” Ann had slurred back. She was stoned. Her eyes were glazed over, her lipstick smeared all over her face, and Wallis was surveying her grimly, visibly regretting having invited her. But some people had started to feel sorry for her, trapped in Elsie's golden grip, and she was starting to make the rounds again.

Then she threw her drink in his face, chest heaving, pupils dilated. She had a twisted grin of triumph on her cherry-streaked lips. “You don't fool me, you little queer. You're just as pathetic as I am. Maybe more pathetic.”

“You'll regret this,” he assured her calmly, as she was hastily ushered away, cackling wildly, by one of Wallis's lapdogs. He was already starting to plot his revenge….

But that was for later
. After.
Right now, the only thing he wanted to work on, could work on, was his party. Throwing this party meant he didn't have to worry about what to write next. He'd worked himself raw, scraped his soul to the marrow, writing
In Cold Blood.
At first it was just a diversion, a small article in the
Times
about a murdered Kansas family that piqued his interest. He thought it might make a nice little piece for
The New Yorker
—something about a murder in a small town, the shocking randomness of it, the reverberations. So he convinced William Shawn, the editor, to send him out to Kansas so he could report on it. That was all.

But from the moment he laid eyes on Dick—stupid, blustering Dick—and Perry—mesmerizing, charismatic Perry—at the tiny Kansas courthouse, the night the two men were arrested for the murders of the Clutter family, he knew that he had something more. His masterpiece. A case study, a brilliant piece of journalism, written with the lyricism of a novel. “In fact, I've invented a new genre. The nonfiction novel,” he never tired of telling anyone who would listen, back in 1959, when the whole thing started. He spent endless weeks in Holcomb, Kansas, gathering the material, interviewing the townsfolk, trying to understand the doomed Clutters, getting cozy with the lead detective, granite-faced Alvin Dewey, and his adorable wife, Marie, getting even cozier with the arrested and then convicted murderers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith—and understanding the latter better, more intimately, than he ever did the Clutters.

When he returned to New York and settled down with his notebooks to write, it had been easy, for a change. The manuscript flowed from his fingertips on its own, and he told absolutely everyone about it, and soon everyone in New York was salivating to read it, and he would give them glimpses, little performances of certain scenes, at parties and dinners. But then the waiting; the everlasting, tortuous waiting for the end.
The End
–oh, how he longed to write it, but he couldn't, not for years, agonizing years that dragged on while Dick and Perry were granted stay after stay, pleading with him, Truman—their great hope, their chronicler—to help them. Years in which all he could do was talk about this great opus, not finish it, even while he had to watch Nelle Harper Lee win all the prizes for her story about
their
childhood,
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Oh, Christ, the pain of watching that happen to Nelle, of all people! Clumsy, inarticulate Nelle! And the fear—shocking, jolting him awake at night so that his heart raced, his body swam in clammy sweat—that people would lose interest in the story—and him. And then he would be just another writer. And not the greatest of all time.

But finally, there were no more stays, no more last-minute calls from the governor, and the executions—oh, God, oh, Jesus, oh, Mama. They'd shamed him into being there, Dick and Perry and, yes, Nelle, who'd helped him research it, and William Shawn, who expected blood, no less, for what he was paying Truman. So he'd gone to see Perry and Dick only an hour before their execution. They were white as sheets, were still trying to be brave, flippant, but obviously terrified, poor boys! What had Truman felt, talking to them this last time? He hadn't processed it all; he wasn't brave enough for that. Truman knew he was a coward in many ways; it was, he believed, one of the most charming things about him. That night—it was near midnight, dark, raining, a horrible, bone-chilling nightmare that he knew had seeped into his very being, and that he would carry with him forever—his cowardice and bravery, both, astonished him. The cowardice that had kept him from going to Dick and Perry despite their pleas, until the very last moment when there would be no time for them to say what he knew they would, that he had deserted them, given up on them—
used
them. But he had come, after all, and his bravery overwhelmed him; the courage to stay when the two murderers asked him to witness their final moments—the barbaric ritual, the last words, the hoods over the heads, the knees buckling, the tortured writhing at the end of the noose, and then, finally, the eerie stillness, the absence of breathing, the one less person in the cavernous barn despite the fact that there were still the same number of bodies. The subtraction of a soul. The tragic waste of lives not unlike his own, if he was being honest—lives of men abandoned by their parents, treated like crap, like dirt, like fungus, all their lives. Men who had taken one turn while he had taken another, and that simple act of a change in direction, in wind, in air, of one foot in front of another, was all that separated the two of them, killer and artist.

But a killer could be an artist, he discovered. And an artist a killer.

The soul-searching, the exhaustion of reality, of bearing witness, of coming to the aid of a fellow man, even a killer—he must hold it all at bay. He could not examine it, for fear of what it would do to the work, which was the most important thing. This masterpiece he had crafted, astonishing himself with every perfect word, every exquisitely crafted paragraph. The book was all. He must write it, and he did, that last chapter coming quickly for a change, as usually he agonized over endings.

And the book was all he had dreamed it would be, all he had told everyone—his swans, his literary rivals, the doorman to his apartment building, the grocer on the corner, his crazy family back in Alabama, even his sniveling deadbeat of an attention-hog father.
In Cold Blood
was a masterpiece, and this time the critics all agreed. And now that he was at the top of the heap—had
become
that spire in the great city beckoning others from lesser lands—he must rejoice in his success. For enjoying the fruits of his labor was just as serious as the writing itself.

So now he was throwing a party. The most swellegant, elegant party evah.

L
ATER,
T
RUMAN SAID THAT
the morning the invitations went out, he made five hundred friends and fifteen hundred enemies.

Only one of these was an exaggeration.

A
summit. A counsel. Of utter fabulousness.

The day before Truman's party, Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney, accompanied by her sisters, Minnie Cushing Astor Fosburgh and Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley, sailed into the Palm Court at the Plaza. Her head held high, she didn't slow down, only barely nodded at a maître d' who scurried ahead of her to pull out a chair just as she sat down at an intimate table, one of her own choosing. Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney did not wait to be told where to sit, not even at the Plaza.

It was afternoon tea; all around them were adorable little girls dressed in pink dresses with matching hair ribbons, white gloves, patent-leather shoes, accompanied by indulgent parents or grandparents. There were other—lesser—socialites present, too, and out-of-towners who couldn't help but gape at the trio of fabulously dressed women, all with cheekbones as prominent as their good breeding, but the triumvirate paid the tourists no attention. This was a sister meeting, a ritual from their childhood. Long ago, their tribunals had centered around who could borrow whose hair ribbon, or what birthday present should they pool their money for and purchase for their mother. But as they grew up and into the beauty and elegance laid out for them, like their school uniforms, by their mother, the conferences had turned to more serious matters, usually presided over by Gogs. Minnie's long affair with Vincent Astor, for instance, had been discussed and dissected and determined to have run long enough at one of their summits; Vincent found himself proposing soon after. And Babe's miserable marriage to Stanley Mortimer had come to a merciful end after one of their conclaves; Gogs and her daughters had weighed the pros and cons and finally determined that Babe could remove herself with her reputation intact. And so, she did.

There had been no summit, however, when Babe decided to marry Bill.

Tea, too, was a constant from the sisters' youth; back in the big Cushing house in Brookline, their mother, Gogs, had introduced the ritual of afternoon tea, ostensibly for the family, but before long it became a salon of a sort, a place where the best and most socially desirable of the medical and academic communities could “drop in.” Every afternoon, a tempting assortment of tea and punch and finger sandwiches and pastries would be spread in the drawing room and a crush of people would arrive; the Cushing sisters grew up watching their mother preside over the tea table and flit among her guests, seeing to their every wish and comfort. Their father, however, rarely attended; he was always in surgery.

The girls watched—and it wasn't for amusement; Gogs insisted on their being involved in the preparations long before they were old enough to take part in these elegant soirees. They observed their mother see to every detail, no matter how small: the spotlessness of the aprons worn by the Irish servant girls, the ritualistic polishing of the silver, the placement of the cherries atop the pink-iced tea cakes.

There would often be music, a harpist or a pianist, some Cambridge student hired for the day. Other homes, even in Boston during those playful years of the 1920s, early '30s, might have also served cocktails in silver shakers accompanied by cheese biscuits, but not Gogs. She stuck to tradition: to bone china, English tea, lemon and sugar, clotted cream for the scones.

Betsey Whitney, Minnie Fosburgh, and Babe Paley, then, were more than capable of hosting elaborate spreads in their own homes, and they often did, but why hide themselves away all the time? It was time for a sister summit, so naturally, they went to the Plaza, for their mother had raised them to be seen and admired.

“I don't believe Mother ever had tea outside her own drawing room, did she?” Betsey, who was not the eldest but acted it, inquired as she removed her gloves. She was a shorter version of Babe, with the same cheekbones, but her coloring was less vivid; her hair a lighter shade, her eyes not quite as dark, her skin not quite as creamy. But Betsey had the more regal air; she could manage to look down her nose at anyone, even if she were the smallest person in the room.

Minnie, the eldest—and kindest, Babe always insisted—sister, shook her head. Minnie was the tallest, the most down-to-earth; she didn't have Betsey's imperiousness nor Babe's uncertainty. She didn't have their deep-set brown eyes, either, although she was the thinnest. She would have been gawky had she been anyone else's daughter but Gogs's.

Babe smiled fondly. “No, Mama never did like to dine in public, did she? She always felt the best hospitality could be found at home.”

A waiter handed Betsey—how did he know she was the leader? He simply did—a beautifully lettered menu, but she waved it away. “Champagne, and Darjeeling. An assortment of sandwiches and pastries, but no sponge cake—I can't abide sponge cake. No onions on the sandwiches.” Then she turned back to her sisters as the waiter bowed and hurried away.

“I like onions,” Minnie protested. Her cheeks flamed as she resumed an argument that had begun when she was ten and Betsey eight. “Just because you don't doesn't mean that I shouldn't have them.”

“Onions aren't proper for ladies. Do you want your breath to offend? Didn't Mama teach you anything?” Betsey shook her head and turned to Babe for backup.

Babe wrinkled her nose. “I don't like them, personally, but I don't see why Minnie can't have onions if she wants them.”

“I didn't see why Minnie had to divorce Vincent, either, but she did.” Betsey didn't even look at her elder sister; it was as if she weren't there.

“Betsey, don't start. I never wanted to marry Vincent in the first place. I don't think he wanted to marry me. Gogs wanted it, and so, of course, it came off. I put up with him as long as I could, then I found him Brooke, who needed his money and name more than I did. And then he died, and so what? Who cares? Why did you divorce James, if we're playing that game? Wasn't a Roosevelt good enough for you?”

“James didn't want to be a father to his daughters. I was looking out for my girls, just as Mama always looked out for us. I'm a good mother, Minnie. Not that you'd know anything about that.” Betsey narrowed her eyes at her sister.

“Oh, please!” Babe anxiously looked from sister to sister. “Girls, please! Not here! Mama would be distraught!”

“Babe, we're not making a scene,” Betsey scolded her little sister. “Our voices are perfectly normal. You worry too much, as usual. But let's do change the subject. Tomorrow's Truman's party. Of course, we all know what we're going to wear?”

It was another rhetorical question; Betsey was fond of asking them. The sisters had coordinated their wardrobes weeks ago, just as they always did prior to a party. From their childhood friends' birthday parties to Truman's fabulous Black and White Ball—the divine Cushing sisters knew how to dress for maximum trio advantage. Babe always got the first pick, which Betsey had always begrudged but had never been able to change; the one thing, perhaps, in her life that she had not been able to bend to her will. After Babe made her selection, the other two had to somehow dress in a complementary yet unique fashion, with certain colors deemed special to one or the other. Babe was an angel in blue; that was a truth universally acknowledged. Actually, all jewel tones were hers. Betsey was often in black. Minnie didn't care and, in fact, often simply asked Babe to find something for her to wear, which was a task Babe took great pride in, happy to be of help.

When it came to jewelry, however, it was every sister for herself; Betsey had Whitney money, Minnie had Astor heirlooms. Babe had the most modern jewelry, custom-designed by newer artistes: Fulco di Verdura, Jean Schlumberger.

“Well, we're all in white, this time—so there's no coordinating to do,” Minnie said with obvious relief. “Designers?”

“I'm in a Castillo,” Babe offered, even though Betsey knew very well who she was wearing.

“Dior,” Betsey replied.

“Balmain,” Minnie offered as all three sisters nodded in approval of their choices.

“Masks? I asked Halston to do mine,” said Betsey.

“Same here.” Minnie pointed to herself.

“I asked Adolfo—actually, I asked him to make three different versions, just in case,” Babe admitted, lowering her eyes modestly. “I provided him with some paste versions of my jewels, and he made up three different designs, and then I picked the one I liked best, and he added the real stones.”

“Oh, Babe!” Minnie was so open in her admiration, her thin face glowed. “Oh, that's just like you, darling!”

“Yes, that was very smart of you,” Betsey admitted through gritted teeth.

“You know me.” Babe shrugged, even as she was enjoying Betsey's obvious jealousy. “I don't like to leave much to chance. Mama taught me that, anyway.” There was a lull while the waiter rolled a trolley up to their table filled with delicate sandwiches the size of silver dollars, luscious sugared cookies, and iced cakes. Each sister smiled in approval, allowed her tea to be poured in her cup, but when the waiter was gone, not one sandwich, cookie, or cake was selected. The onion argument had been moot, after all.

“What about Truman?” Betsey asked, moving the agenda along. “Are we certain he's done everything right? Babe?”

Babe stirred her tea slowly. “This is Truman's party, Betsey, dear. Not ours. I do think you might have forgotten that.”

“Yes, yes, but, well—
Truman
! He didn't have the upbringing we did. And he's relied on us, all three of us, so much in matters of taste. That new apartment, for instance—you and Minnie practically decorated it for him, didn't you?”

“We did advise,” Minnie said, uncrossing then crossing her long legs, clad in silk hosiery, although she wore unbecomingly flat, rather plain shoes, something Betsey never did approve of. Even if Minnie was self-conscious about her height, couldn't she at least wear something stylish, like Babe? “It was quite fun, wasn't it, Babe, darling? But I do wonder at all the rattlesnakes he chose—so many stuffed specimens. Too much like the Museum of Natural History.” Minnie shuddered.

“I would say that's an apt metaphor.” Betsey pursed her lips.

“What do you mean by that?” Babe shot back.

“Babe, dear, I simply mean that little Truman has a bit of a sting to him, don't you think? Somewhat of a barbed way of looking at the world. Heaven knows he's been divine to you, to all of us. But he's not always that way to others. This whole party, really—I can't help but think that he could have managed it better. Without quite so much publicity. Why, the
Herald
leaked the guest list. Leaked? How? Who gave it to them? And now everyone who wasn't invited can't claim that they were and turned it down. The world knows who was invited and, more important, who was not. That's rather—bourgeois, don't you think?”

“Truman has a secretary, who sent the invitations out,” Babe said primly. “He wasn't the only one with access to it.”

“Babe, dear, your loyalty, as always, is touching.” Betsey's lips curled up. “Let's hope tomorrow night isn't a disaster, because of course, people will assume we all had something to do with it, even if we didn't. Especially you, Babe, as close as the two of you are.”

“I don't think we have to worry. He'll pull it off brilliantly, I know.” Babe felt her cheeks flush, heard her voice rising ever so little, and so she sipped some tea and smoothed the skirt of her Chanel day suit. “I can't wait to see what you're wearing, Betsey, dear.” Babe smiled serenely at her older sister. “I know you described it to me, but I can't wait to see you in person. Is Jock wearing a mask? I can't get Bill to wear one!”

“No, Jock won't, either.”

“Jim is!” Minnie beamed. “He's spent weeks designing it himself!”

“Naturally,” Betsey murmured with a significant look at Babe. “I'm not at all surprised, dear, to hear that.”

“What do you think Gogs would say about the party?” Minnie mused. She had been her mother's “problem” daughter; the two had clashed often in private, although in public Minnie generally conformed to her mother's ideals. Betsey was so exactly like her mother that they had always been in agreement. Babe was too insecure ever to question her mother's decrees, except for when she married Bill—that had been quite the time! Minnie grinned, remembering her mother's utter disbelief that Babe, of all her daughters, would marry a Jew! “I often wonder how Mama'd feel about Truman,” Minnie wondered.

“I hope she'd like him as much as we do,” Babe said quietly.

“No, she wouldn't,” pronounced Betsey the wise. “She wouldn't have trusted him one bit. I can't say that I'd blame her, either. But he is quite amusing. In small doses.”

“Well, I do know that Mama would never have approved of all this publicity—photographers at a party! She must be writhing in her grave!—but secretly, she'd cut out all our photos and paste them in a scrapbook. And she'd demand to be shown our gowns beforehand; heavens, the idea of us dressing ourselves, at our age!” Minnie laughed fondly; she did miss the force of nature that had been her mother. Gogs, for all her prickliness, still had been the compass, the rudder, the sail; the very wind driving her girls toward the safe harbor of wealth and privilege. And it was safe, Minnie had to admit with a sigh. And she was a coward; she knew she'd never have made a good poor man's wife. None of them would have. Well, maybe Babe.

The pop of a champagne cork caused all three sisters to shift expectantly in their seats; Cristal was poured into their glasses, and Betsey raised hers first, to give the customary toast.

“To Gogs!”

“To Gogs,” her sisters repeated, and the glasses clinked, causing everyone in the palm-filled room to look, and gape, once more.

Three beautiful women—the three fabulous Cushing sisters. Gracing the Plaza with their presence; granting their subjects a glimpse, laughing together, careless, privileged, so exquisite that it was impossible even to envy them. They were simply unattainable.