Tell-All (19 page)

The homely girl might coach the pretty one, steer her into the best parts, protect her from dangerous shoals and
entanglements of business and romance. The beastly girl can boast of no prominent cheekbones or Cupid’s-bow mouth; still, such a bland face nurtures a nimble mind.

In contrast, beauty which evokes special favors and opens doors, such astounding eyes can cripple the brain behind them.

Counting backward, before the Webster was Paco, before him the senator. Before him the faggot chorus boy. Before that came the suicidal business tycoon, but even he wasn’t her first husband. The first “was-band” was her high school sweetheart—Allan …
somebody
—some nobody. Her second was the sleazy photographer who snapped her picture and took it to a casting director; good riddance to him. Her third husband was an aspiring actor who’s now selling real estate. None of those first three posed a threat.

While my position was never that of husband or spouse or partner, I was always far more important.

Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq.
, was another story. The founder of a steel smelting empire, only he possessed the resources to marry my Miss Kathie and give her a life at home, a passel of children, reduce her to the status of a
Gene Tierney
hausfrau … which is the Italian word for
loser
. Steel would buy her away from the larger world the way the
Grimaldi family
bought
Grace Kelly
, and I would be left with nothing to show for my effort.

Every husband had been a step forward in her career, but Oliver Drake represented a step forward in her personal life. By the time they’d met, Miss Kathie could no longer play the ingénue, which is Spanish for
slut
. The future meant scratching for character roles, featured cameos shot on location in obscure places. Instead of the glory of playing
Mrs. Little Lord Fauntleroy
or
Mrs. Wizard of Oz
, Miss Kathie would take billing in third place as the mother of
Captain Ahab
or the maiden aunt of
John the Baptist
.

Poised at that difficult fork in life, Miss Kathie was looking for an easier path.

It was so enormously selfish of her. The life’s work of writers and directors, artists and press agents had built this pedestal she was tempted to abandon. There were larger things at stake than love and peace. The independent, pioneering role model for millions was leaving the stage. A legend seemed about to retire. Thus the tycoon’s apparent death by suicide would preserve a cultural icon.

It was no difficult task to persuade several top film executives and directors to testify to Mr. Drake’s depressed state of mind. Some of Hollywood’s biggest names swore that Drake often spoke of ending his own life by cyanide. In that manner, the film community was able to retain one of its brightest investments.

In the flashback, we see the ugly girl wend her way closer to the pretty one. With a studied, rehearsed nonchalance the homely girl stumbles into contact with the beauty. Jostling her, the clumsy beast says, “Gosh, I’m sorry.…”

The mob mills around them, that crowd of pretty anonymous faces. The
Hay Bale Queen
. The
Sweet Onion Princess
. Lovely, forgettable faces, born to flirt and fuck and die.

All those years and decades ago, the beauty smiles that astonishing smile, saying, “My name’s Kathie.” She says, “Really it’s Katherine.” Offering her hand, she says,
“Katherine Kenton.”

Every movie star is a slave to someone.

Even the masters serve their own masters.

As if in friendly greeting, the beast offers her own hand in return, saying, “Pleased to meet you. I’m
Hazie Coogan.”

And the two young women join hands.

We slowly dissolve back to the present. The mise-en-scène: the daytime interior of a basement kitchen in the town house of
Katherine Kenton;
arranged along the upstage wall: an electric stove, an icebox, a door to the alleyway, a dusty window in said door. A narrow stairway leads up to the second floor. Still carved in the window glass, we see the heart from
Loverboy
’s arrival as a puppy, oh, scenes and scenes ago.

In the foreground, I sit on a white-painted kitchen chair with my feet propped on a similar white-painted table, my legs crossed at the ankle; my hands turn the pages of yet another screenplay. Open across my lap is a screenplay about
Lillian Hellman
starring
Lillian Hellman
written by
Lillian Hellman
.

Upstage, Miss Kathie’s feet appear on the steps which descend from the second floor. Her pink slippers. The hem of her pink dressing gown. The gown flutters, revealing a
flash of smooth thigh. Her hands appear, one clutching a ream of paper, her other hand clutching a wad of black fabric. Even before her face appears in the doorway, her voice calls, “Hazie …” Almost a shout, her voice says, “Someone telephoned me, just now, from the animal hospital.”

On the page, Lilly Hellman runs faster than a speeding bullet. She’s more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Standing in the doorway, Miss Kathie holds the black fabric, the ream of papers. She says,
“Loverboy
did not die from eating chocolates …” and she throws the black fabric onto the kitchen table. There the fabric lies, creating a face of two empty eyes and an open mouth. It’s a ski mask, identical to the one described in
Love Slave
, worn by the Yakuza assassin wielding the ice pick.

Miss Kathie says, “The very nice veterinarian explained to me that
Loverboy
was poisoned with cyanide.…”

Like so many others around here …

On the scripted page, Lilly Hellman parts the
Red Sea
and raises
Lazarus
from the dead.

“After that,” she says, “I telephoned
Groucho Marx
and he says you never invited him to the funeral.…” Her violet eyes flashing, she says, “Neither did you invite
Joan Fontaine, Sterling Hayden
or
Frank Borzage.”
Her dulcet voice rising, Miss Kathie says, “The only person you
did
invite was
Webster Carlton Westward III.”

She swings the ream of paper she holds rolled in her fist, swatting the pages against the black ski mask, making the kitchen table jump. Miss Kathie screams, “I found this mask, tucked away
—in your room.”

Such an accusation. My Miss Kathie says that I poisoned the Pekingese, then invited only the bright-eyed Webster to
join us in the crypt so he could arrive bearing flowers at her moment of greatest emotional need. Throughout the past few months, while I’ve seemed to be warning her against the Webster, she insists that I’ve actually been aiding and abetting him. She claims I’ve been telling him when to arrive and how best to court her. After that, the Webster and myself, the two of us poisoned Terry by accident. She says the Webster and myself are plotting to kill her.

Bark, honk, cluck
…
conspiracy
.

Oink, bray, tweet
…
treachery
.

Moo, meow, whinny
…
collusion most foul
.

On the screenplay page, Lilly Hellman turns water to wine. She heals the lepers. She spins filthy straw into the purest gold.

When my Miss Kathie pauses to take a breath, I tell her not to be ridiculous. Clearly, she’s mistaken. I am not scheming with the Webster to murder her.

“Then how do you explain this?” she says, offering the pages in her hand. Printed along the top margin of each, a title. Typed there, it says,
Paragon: An Autobiography
. Authored by
Katherine Kenton
. As told to
Hazie Coogan
. Shaking her head, she says, “I did
not
write this. In fact, I
found
it tucked under
your
mattress.…”

The story of her life. Written in her name. By someone else.

Flipping past the title page, she looks at me, her violet eyes twitching between me and the manuscript she holds. Her pink dressing gown trembles. From the kitchen table, the empty ski mask stares up at the ceiling. “ ‘Chapter one,’ ” my Miss Kathie reads, “ ‘My life began in the truest and fullest sense the glorious day I first met my dearest friend,
Hazie Coogan.…’ ”

We continue with the audio bridge of
Katherine Kenton
reading from the manuscript of
Paragon
, “ ‘… the glorious day I first met my dearest friend,
Hazie Coogan
…’ ”

Once more we see the two girls from the casting office. In a soft-focus montage of quick cuts, the ugly girl combs the long auburn hair of the pretty girl. Using a file, the ugly girl shapes the fingernails of the pretty girl, painting them with pink lacquer. Pursing her lips, the ugly girl blows air to dry the painted nails as if she were about to kiss the back of the pretty girl’s hand.

Miss Kathie’s movie-star voice continues, “ ‘… living and playing together, cavorting amidst the adoring legions of our public …’ ”

In contrast, we see the girl with beady eyes and a beaky nose, watching as she tweezes the eyebrows above the violet eyes. The ugly girl kneels to scrape the dead skin off the
pretty girl’s heels using a pumice stone. Like a charwoman, the ugly girl rocks forward and back with the effort to scrub the pretty girl’s bare back using sea salt and elbow grease.

My Miss Kathie’s voice-over continues, “ ‘… living and playing together, working seemingly endless hours, Hazie and I always supported and urged each other forward in this festive endeavor we so blithely refer to as life …’ ” She reads, “ ‘We lived so much like sisters that we even shared our wardrobes, wearing one another’s shoes, exchanging even our undergarments with complete freedom.…’ ”

As the montage continues, the ugly girl sweats over an ironing board, pressing the lace and frills on a blouse, then giving it to the pretty girl. The ugly girl bends to lather and shave one of the pretty girl’s long legs as it extends from a bathtub overflowing with luminous bubbles.

“ ‘I scratched her back,’ ” the voice of Miss Kathie reads, “ ‘and Hazie scratched mine.…’ ”

On-screen, the ugly girl delivers a breakfast tray to the pretty girl, who waits in bed.

“ ‘We made a special point to pamper each other,’ ” says the voice-over.

In the continuing ironic montage, the pretty girl puts a cigarette between her own lips, and the ugly girl leans forward to light it. The pretty girl drops a dirty towel on the floor, and the ugly girl picks it up for the laundry. The pretty girl sprawls in a chair, reading a screenplay, while the ugly girl vacuums the rug around her.

The voice of Miss Kathie reads, “ ‘And as our careers began to bear fruit, we both savored the rewards of success and fame.…’ ”

As the montage progresses, we see the ugly girl become a woman, still plain-looking, but aging, gaining weight,
turning gray, while the pretty girl stays much the same, slender, her skin smooth, her hair a constant, rich auburn. In quick cuts, the pretty girl weds a man, then weds a new man, then weds a third man, then a fourth and fifth, while the ugly woman stands by, always burdened with luggage, shoulder bags, shopping bags.

In voice-over Miss Kathie says, “ ‘I owe everything I’ve become, really everything I’ve attained and achieved, to no one except
Hazie Coogan
. …’ ”

As the ugly woman ages, we see her pretty counterpart laughing within a circle of reporters as they thrust radio microphones and photographers flash their cameras. The ugly woman always stands outside the spotlight, offstage in the wings, off-camera in the shadows, holding the pretty woman’s fur coat.

Still reading from the manuscript of
Paragon
, Miss Kathie’s voice says, “ ‘We shared the trials and the tears. We shared the fears and the greatest joys. Living together, shouldering the same burdens, we kept each other young.…’ ”

In the montage, an adoring crowd, including
Calvin Coolidge, Joseph Pulitzer, Joan Blondell, Kurt Kreuger, Rudolph Valentino
and
F. Scott Fitzgerald
, looks on as the ugly woman places a birthday cake before the beauty. At that beat, we cut to the ugly one presenting another cake, obviously a year later. With a third quick cut, yet another cake is presented as
Lillian Gish, John Ford
and
Clark Gable
applaud and sing. With each successive cake, the ugly woman looks a bit older. The beauty does not. Every cake holds twenty-five blazing candles.

The reading continues, “ ‘Her job title was not that of secretary or acting coach, but
Hazie Coogan
deserves credit for all of my finest performances. She was not a spiritual guide
or swami, but the best, truest adviser any person could ever treasure.’ ” Her voice rising, my Miss Kathie says, “ ‘If posterity finds continuing value in my films, humanity must also recognize the obligation of respect and gratitude owed to
Hazie Coogan
, the greatest, most talented friend for whom a simple player could ever ask.’ ”

With this statement, the beauty inhales deeply, surrounded by the beaming countenances of celebrities, everyone bathed in the flickering light from the birthday cake. Leaning forward, she blows out the birthday candles, and the festive scene drops to total and complete black. A silent, blank void.

Against this darkness, Miss Kathie’s voice says, “ ‘The end.’ ”

My life’s work is complete.

For one final time we open in the crypt below the cathedral, where the veiled figure of a lone woman enters carrying yet another metal urn. She sets the urn alongside the urns of
Terrence Terry, Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq.
, and
Loverboy
, then lifts her black veil to reveal her face.