Kate Remembered (37 page)

“Mmm,” she said, not wishing to make much of it. “Is it all right?”

“Yeah, it's great. Thank you for your kind words. But honestly, Kate. I'm not a
critic.”

“What are you talking about? Of course, you are. You're always correcting and criticizing, and having the last word.”

“That's not true,” I protested. “I may make the occasional suggestion—”

“It's
quite
true. You're doing it right now. My God, you're completely hopeless!”

One day later that week, when we were back in New York and
Me
was number one on the bestseller lists, I asked Kate what her most satisfying role had been. “I'd have to say,” she replied, pausing, then looking up at the wooden goose hanging from the ceiling as it had years earlier back in the Cukor guest cottage, “—those years I wasn't working.”

I knew she meant those five years just before Spencer Tracy's death. And then she surprised me by remembering exactly the first time that topic had come up. “But,” she added with a smile, now that we had covered a lot of ground in the years since then, “I never talk about that time.”

 

 

“Who's Donovan?” Kate asked over the phone one day in the summer of 1990.

“Donovan?” I asked back. “Why do you want to know about Donovan?”

“Who is he?”

“Well, he's a singer, kind of a folk-rock singer from the sixties. Why do you want to know about Donovan?”

“Because I'm going to do his program.”

“His program? What kind of program?”

“His television program.”

“Kate, this guy was a hippie singer and songwriter from the sixties. I don't think he has a television program. What sort of show do you think he has?”

“It's one of those talk shows. Like Cavett. Only it's during the day, and he's apparently very popular with all the housewives.”

“Got it. Kate—his name is Dona
hue
. Phil Donahue. Yes, he's got a very popular show. It'll be great for your book. But you had me worried for a minute. I thought you were going on some show wearing a headband and love beads.”

It didn't take much to promote Kate's book; and she did what she was asked. Cynthia McFadden made her promise not to appear on
Sally Jessy Raphael
or any of the other down-market shows. There was no need to worry. Nobody knew how to sell Katharine Hepburn better than Katharine Hepburn. In fact, she often talked about herself in the third person—as “the creature.” She said “the creature” had become an institution, much like the Flatiron Building or the Statue of Liberty, a bastion that had withstood the tests of time.
Me
became a phenomenal success, cresting the bestseller list for over a year.

After the rush of the book, however, as the sales, interviews, and publicity died down, there was little on Hepburn's plate. For the first time in a long time—at age eighty-five—she didn't know what she even
might
do next. Scripts still arrived regularly, but most of them were terrible—patronizing screenplays about “cute little old ladies—what a goddamned bore,” she said. She received umpteen renditions of
The Aspern Papers
, one of which, she hooted with incredulity, was pornographic.

Her primary occupation became her mail. A secretary sorted through most of it, then presented her with those letters that required a response. A few warranted handwritten replies—usually written with a black Flair pen on KATHARINE HOUGHTON HEPBURN notepaper. Others received dictated responses later in the day. The important missives were alphabetized and filed in fat accordion folders and stored away.

Most of the mail came from rapturous fans. Little peeved Kate more than an extravagant letter from an admirer who rhapsodized about her talent and beauty and influence on his or her life, then addressed the envelope to “Katherine Hepburn.” “God,” Kate would splutter, “you'd think the first thing they'd learn is how to spell my name.” It pleased her that people enjoyed her work, but she found the letters from those who wrote of spending countless hours watching her movies, night after night, deeply disturbing. “If they're really inspired by what I've done with my life,” she asked, “—why don't they do something with theirs? Not just watch old movies.”

More disturbing were the occasional crank letters, sometimes hate mail, usually about her position on abortion. Occasionally there were threats. Whenever she received such a letter—or read about an abortion clinic being bombed by some religious fanatic—Kate would declare, “So much for ‘God is Love!' ” The hate mail was separated from the rest; but Kate held on to it, tucking it away in a closet off the living room.

For Kate, the most distressing aspect of the 1990s was Phyllis's behavior. Her age had long been a mystery, but everybody presumed she was at least a few years older than Kate. As such, she was something of a medical miracle, still going through the motions of her rigorous job every day, seven days a week. In truth, Kate had really looked after Phyllis more than the other way around for years. Everything about her had slowed; she often needed to lie down; she was frequently confused. “Phyllis needs a Phyllis,” Kate said; and she hired people to look after her, mostly to see that she didn't wander into harm's way. One Sunday afternoon I came upon Phyllis in the foyer at Fenwick, just standing there in a daze with one arm in the sleeve of her coat. I asked her if everything was all right. “Oh, fine. Just fine,” she insisted. “I just can't remember whether we're coming or going.”

Kate was becoming lonely. Although Cynthia McFadden saw Hepburn as much as possible, her fast-paced career, new romances, and a baby consumed more and more of her time. Tony Harvey in the Hamptons and David Eichler in Philadelphia found themselves in Manhattan with less frequency, while Kate's pianist friend Laura Fratti suffered from ill health and didn't get around much. And I finished my research on Lindbergh and had to go home to Los Angeles to write. For the next few years, I had little reason to travel to the East Coast except to visit Kate.

At first I tried to steal away every month or two. Gradually, my visits decreased to four times a year, then two. I tried to stay in touch by telephone, but Kate always acted slightly hostile toward the instrument or those at the other end. Whenever I called, she would ask where I was, then say, “Well, you're of no use to me there.” Then she'd usually add, “You should come back soon . . . before I'm dead.”

Our visits remained pleasant, but they were changing. With less stimulation, her life had become stagnant. She moved more slowly; her energy ebbed. Gone were the conversations until midnight, or ten, or even eight. Sometimes she'd want dinner as early as five o'clock; and she'd clamber up the stairs to bed—literally using her hands and feet—by six, before the sun had set.

The only thing that kept her downstairs a little longer was to have a drink or two after dinner. In the late eighties she had changed brands of Scotch, from her King William IV to Famous Grouse. She had been introduced to it by her wealthy relatives in Boca Grande, Florida. “Now, Kate,” I said, in mock irritation, “I've been telling you about this Scotch for years, that all the right people in England drink it. And you ignored me. Now because some Houghtons drink it, it's okay.” She recalled my having discoursed on the subject of Famous Grouse more than once. “You've caught me, and now you know the truth,” she said. “I'm a hopeless snob.”

I learned from Norah and the other caretakers around both houses that these days Kate was usually having two drinks before dinner and one or two postprandially. They never seemed to affect her physically, but they fogged her mind. She was forgetting things. This new condition worried Norah enough for her to take it upon herself to water down the whiskey. During my visits, she told me she was pouring half the Scotch out of the Famous Grouse bottles and diluting the rest with water. “It's funny,” Kate said to me one night at dinner. “I've completely lost all sense of taste. I take a drink, and it has no flavor.”

Unconsciously, Kate was using the liquor as an anodyne—not only to kill the mildly depressing bouts of loneliness but also her physical pain, which I had long suspected was worse than she ever let on. Emotional situations—a sad scene in a movie, a touching story, a death—could bring her to tears; but only once did I see her cry because something physically hurt. It was a late afternoon in 1992, when she was trying to step onto the bench in the living room to water some plants. She thought she was alone in the room, and I could see she was in agony. At last, she swung her bad foot up and it clearly ached. She let out a small cry, and I ran in to help her. There were tears in her eyes, and she said she had tripped.

Another time in the summer of 1992, we drove to a park near Fenwick to take a walk. It had just started to sprinkle when Kate came upon a great bunch of Queen Anne's lace. There was one absolutely magnificent blossom she insisted on having. She pulled and pulled on the huge flower but it would not uproot. Then she tried to snap the stalk, but it would only bend, not break. She asked me for the car key, which she used as a saw on the fibrous stem. For several minutes she stood hunched over the flower, hacking away, as the drizzle turned to rain. Mother Nature was clearly going to win this round; so I said, “Kate, let's go. It's really starting to come down.” As she gave up on the plant, I noticed how wet her eyes were, and not from the rain. We drove back to Fenwick in silence.

That disturbed me far less than another drive some months later, in the spring of 1993. Kate's chauffeur of the last few years, a man of great equanimity, had suddenly died, and a new man was at the wheel. On a Saturday morning we made the trip from Fenwick to Peg's house for lunch, a trip she had made several thousand times. Approaching Hartford, US 91 offered exits to the east and west, and the driver called out for directions. “East,” Kate said firmly.

“Aren't we going to Peg's?” I asked.

“Of course we're going to Peg's,” she said. “Where do you think we're going?”

“Well, Peg lives to the west of Hartford.”

“East. East,” she called out to the driver, then said to me, “You never had any sense of direction. She lives to the east.”

“Kate,” I said, reaching for a map, “unless Peg has moved, she lives to the west of Hartford.” I spread Connecticut out on my lap and said, “Here's where we are, and here to the left is Peg.”

Kate looked thrown but tried to shrug it off. “All this time,” she said, “I always thought that was to the east.”

Close to six months passed before I was again able to leave Los Angeles and visit Kate. By then, she was spending most of her time in Fenwick, using the trips to New York City for meetings with doctors, lawyers, and accountants—appointments that seemed merely a way of differentiating the weeks. In the early fall, I found a free weekend. Because I didn't want her to anticipate my visit for too long with the possibility of my canceling at the last minute, I didn't call her until Thursday afternoon. I said that I would arrive at Fenwick in time for dinner the next night. We had a nice long talk, and we joked that she would have to wait at least until five-thirty before eating dinner.

Early the next morning I left for New Haven, where I picked up a car and drove on to Old Saybrook. The timing was perfect. I crossed the causeway to Fenwick a little after five and pulled into the driveway. A concerned woman looked out at me from the kitchen. This was Hong Luong, the new housekeeper at Fenwick, a strong but kind soul and an able cook. “I hope you're expecting me?” I said, reading on her face that she was not.

“Don't worry,” she said. “There's plenty of food.”

But I was worried. As I walked into the living room—which was darker than usual, and dead quiet—Kate and Phyllis were sitting in their places with television tables set before them, waiting to be served. “Remember me?” I asked.

“What are you do—” she started to say, then stopped to amend her greeting. For the first time, I saw Kate embarrassed, even a little ashamed, as she said, “You are entering a house of the very old.”

I poured a glass of Famous Grouse—a double, neat. And it tasted of nothing.

A
ctors occupy a peculiar place in the social phylum—people who literally stand out from the rest of the species, wanting to be looked at as much as the rest of us want to look at them. They bring stories to life, tapping into our emotions, often becoming the vessels that allow us to experience a moment of realization, sometimes self-recognition. Many become reference points common to people around the world, elements in universally shared experiences. We tend to look upon the practitioners of the acting profession as special. We pamper and praise them; some people practically worship them.