Tell-All (20 page)

This woman dressed in widow’s weeds is myself,
Hazie Coogan
. Unescorted.

Miss Kathie was mine. I invented her, time and time again. I rescued her.

After lighting a candle, I pop the cork on a bottle of champagne, one magnum still frothing, overflowing and alive in the company of so many dead soldiers. Into a dusty glass, milky with cobwebs, I pour a bubbling toast.

This is love. This is what love is. I’ve rescued her, who she was in the past and who she will be to the future.
Katherine
Kenton
will never be a demented old woman, consigned to the charity ward in some teaching hospital. No tabloid newspaper or movie magazine will ever snap the kind of ludicrous, decrepit photographs that humiliated
Joan Crawford
and
Bette Davis
. She will never sink into the raving insanity of
Vivien Leigh
or
Gene Tierney
or
Rita Hayworth
or
Frances Farmer
. Here would be a sympathetic ending, not a slow fade into drugs, a chaotic
Judy Garland
spiral into the arms of younger men, finally to be found dead sitting astride a rented toilet.

Hers would not be a slow, grinding death or a sad fading away. No, the legend of
Katherine Kenton
required an epic, romantic grand finale. Something drenched in glory and pathos. Now she would never be forgotten. I’ve given her that.

A dramatic exit—after a suitable third act.

I raise my glass and say, “Gesundheit.” I drink a toast and pour another.

Please let me remove all doubt that
Webster Carlton Westward III
adored her. It was obvious the first time their eyes met down the length of that long-ago dinner party. He never wrote a word of
Love Slave
, despite how each draft was found in his luggage. No, all of those chapters were my doing, typed and tucked beneath his shirts, where I felt certain Miss Kathie would discover them. A woman torn between love and fear, it would be only a matter of time before she delivered a sealed copy to her lawyer or agent, where it would later implicate the Webster.

Forgive me for boasting, but mine was a perfect frame-up.

We intercut here with a tableau which the police discovered: Miss Kathie shot to death by a gun still gripped in the Webster’s hand. It would appear that the pair slaughtered each other amid the candles and flowers of her boudoir. The
result of a failed robbery attempt. Near her lies the corpse of Mr. Bright Brown Eyes wearing a black ski mask and shot by Miss Kathie’s old gun, the rusted gun she’d retrieved from the crypt. Clutched in his hand, a pillowcase spills out pilfered praise, gold-plated, silver-plated trophies and awards. The symbolic keys to Midwestern cities. Honorary college degrees awarded to her for learning nothing.

If it is the case that love does survive death, then you may consider this to be a happy ending. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Happily ever after or not.

In a
Samuel Goldwyn
touch, ham-handed as that final shot in his
Wuthering Heights
, we might include a quick flashback here. Just a quick reveal to show me shooting both the lovebirds in their bedroom, then staging the scene to suggest the burglary described in
Love Slave
. The surprise ending: that my role is not so much best friend or maid as villain.
Hazie Coogan
played the role of murderess. Perhaps in that last instant, Miss Kathie’s violet eyes will register the full realization that she’s been duped all along.

Slowly, we dissolve back to the Kenton crypt.… With the mirror propped in its customary place, positioned just so, I step to the lipstick X marked on the stone floor and superimpose my own face over the true face of my Miss Kathie. The lifetime of her scars and wrinkles, every distortion and defect she ever suffered, it’s my own burden for the moment. The mirror itself sags with its collection of so many scratched insults. Every single one of Miss Kathie’s faults and secrets.

The fur coat I’m wearing, it’s her fur coat. My black veil, her veil. I reach into the slit of one pocket and retrieve the
Harry Winston
diamond ring. Kissing the ring, where it sits in the palm of my hand, I blow on it the way you would a kiss, and tumbling, thrown and flashing a low arc across the
crypt, the diamond shatters the flawed reflection. What was an actual life story collapses into countless sparkling, glittering fragments. That single perfect image exploded into so many contradicting perspectives. The priceless diamond itself lost in this heap of so many worthless, dazzling glass shards.

Katherine Kenton
will live for all time, preserved in the public mind, as permanent and lasting as silver-screen legends
Earl Oxford
and
House Peters
. Immortal as
Trixie Friganza
. Her face will be as familiar to future generations as the luminous, landmark face of
Tully Marshall
. Miss Kathie will continue to be worshiped, the way applauding audiences will forever worship
Roy D’Arcy, Brooks Benedict
and
Eulalie Jensen
.

From the shattered mirror, any true record of my Miss Kathie reduced to glittering slivers, from this the camera swings to focus on the newest urn. Coming closer and closer, we read the name engraved into the metal:
Katherine Ellen Kenton
.

To this I raise my glass.

Act three, scene eight opens with
Lillian Hellman
throwing herself across the plush boudoir of
Katherine Kenton
, rocketing through the room and landing with her full weight upon the gun hand of a masked
Webster Carlton Westward III
. Lilly and the Webb struggle, throwing themselves about the bedroom, smashing chairs, lamps and bibelots in their raucous fight for survival. The muscles of Lilly’s slim elegant arms strain to subdue the attacker. Her
Lili St. Cyr
lounging pajamas flapping and torn. Her
Valentino
hosiery devastated. Her elegant white teeth bite deep into the Webb’s devious, scheming neck. The combatants tread on Lilly’s fallen
Elsa Schiaparelli
hat while Katherine can only watch in abject horror, shrieking with doomed panic.

As in the opening scene, we dissolve to a long dinner table where Lilly sits, now regaling her fellow guests with the story of this struggle. The candlelight, the wood-paneled walls,
the footmen. Lillian stops regaling long enough to draw one long drag on her cigarette, then blow the smoke over half the diners before she says, “If only I hadn’t chosen to diet that week …” She taps cigarette ash onto her bread plate, shaking her head, saying, “My glorious, brilliant Katherine might still be alive.…”

Beyond her first few words, Lillian’s talk becomes one of those jungle sound tracks one hears looping in the background of every
Tarzan
film, just tropical birds and howler monkeys repeating.
Bark, squeak, meow
…
Katherine Kenton
.

Oink, moo, tweet
…
Webster Carlton Westward III
. A man who did nothing except fall deeply in love—passionately in love—he must now play the villain for the rest of this silly motion picture we call human history.

Miss Kathie’s movie-star flesh has barely cooled, and already she’s been absorbed into the Hellman mythos. Miss Lilly’s own name-dropping form of
Tourette’s syndrome
.

While the footmen pour wine and clear the sorbet dishes, Lillian’s hands swim through the air, her cigarette trailing smoke, her fingernails clawing at an invisible burglar. In her dinner party story, Lilly continues to spar and struggle with the masked gunman. In their grappling, they fire a shot, which Hellman dramatizes by slapping her open palm on the table, making the silverware jump and the stemware ring together.

From my place, seated well below the salt, I merely listen to Lilly spin more gold into her own self-promoting dross. On my knee I bounce a jolly plump infant, one of the many orphans sent for Miss Kathie to review. Under my breath, I say a silent prayer that I might die after Lilly. To my left and right, from the head to the foot of the table,
Eva Le
Gallienne, Napier Alington, Blanche Bates, Jeanne Eagels
, we all say the same prayer.
George Jean Nathan
of
Smart Set
magazine draws a fountain pen from his chest pocket and scribbles notes on a napkin.
Edwin Schallert
of the
Los Angeles Times
spies him, taking notes about Nathan’s notes.
Bertram Block
jots notes about Schallert’s notes about Nathan’s notes.

The possibility of dying before
Lillian Hellman
… dying and becoming merely fodder for Lilly’s mouth. A person’s entire life and reputation reduced to some golem, a Frankenstein’s monster Miss Hellman can reanimate and manipulate to do her bidding. That would be a fate worse than death, to spend eternity in harness, serving as Lilly Hellman’s zombie, brought back to life at dinner parties. On radio shows and in Hellman’s autobiographies.

It was
Walter Winchell
who once said, “After any dinner with Lilly Hellman, you don’t crave dessert and coffee—what you really need is the antidote.”

Even the most illustrious names, once they’re dead long enough, are reduced to silly animal sounds.
Grunt, bark, bray
…
Ford Madox Ford … Miriam Hopkins … Randle Ayrton
.

Seated to my right,
Charlie McCarthy
congratulates me on the success of my book. As of this week,
Paragon
has been at number one on the
New York Times
best-seller list for twenty-eight weeks.

Seated across the table,
Madeleine Carroll
inquires in that rich British accent of hers, asking the name of the child in my lap.

In response, I explain how this tiny foundling had been adopted by Miss Kathie, and now I have become its legal guardian. I’ve inherited the town house, the rights to
Paragon
, all of the investments and this child, who sputters and smiles, a perfect blond angel. Its name, I explain, is
Norma Jean Baker
.

No, none of us seem so very real.

We’re only supporting characters in the lives of each other.

Any real truth, any precious fact will always be lost in a mountain of shattered make-believe.

I signal, and a footman pours more wine. In my mind, I’m already crafting a story wherein
Lillian Hellman
thrashes and fusses and plays the boring, egomaniacal fool.
Lillian Hellman
plays the villain the way Webster plays the villain. In my own story of tonight, this dinner party, I’ll be cool and collected and right. I shall say the perfect rejoinder. I will play the hero.

Please promise you did
NOT
hear this from me.

Cut. Print it. Roll credits.

(end)