Tell-All (3 page)

Next to her bed, the night table built from a thousand hopeful dreams, those balanced screenplays, it supports two barbiturates and a double whiskey. Miss Kathie’s hand stops petting and scratching the dog’s muzzle; there the fur looks dark and matted. She pulls back her arm, and the towel slips from her head, her hair tumbling out, limp and gray, pink scalp showing between the roots. The green mask of her avocado face cracking with her surprise.

Miss Kathie looks at her hand, and the fingers and palm are smeared and dripping with dark red.

Katherine Kenton
lived as a
Houdini
. An escape artist. It didn’t matter … marriages, funny farms, airtight
Pandro Berman
studio contracts … My Miss Kathie trapped herself because it felt such a triumph to slip the noose at the eleventh hour. To foil the legal boilerplate binding her to bad touring projects with
Red Skelton
. The approach of
Hurricane Hazel
. Or the third trimester of a pregnancy by
Huey Long
. Always one clock tick before it was too late, my Miss Kathie would take flight.

Here, let’s make a slow dissolve to flashback. To the year when every other song on the radio was
Patti Page
singing
“(How Much Is) That Doggy in the Window?”
The mise-en-scène shows the daytime interior of a basement kitchen in the elegant 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.

In the foreground, I sit on a white-painted kitchen chair with my feet propped on a similar table, my legs crossed at the ankle, my hands holding a ream of paper. A note flutters, held by paper clip to the title page. In slanted handwriting the note reads:
I demand you savor this while it still reeks of my sweat and loins
. Signed,
Lillian Hellman
.

Nothing is ever so much signed by Lilly as it is autographed.

On page one of the screenplay,
Robert Oppenheimer
puzzles over the best method for accelerating particle diffusion until Lillian stubs out a
Lucky Strike
cigarette, tosses back a shot of
Dewar’s whiskey
, and elbows Oppenheimer away from the rambling equation chalked the length of a vast blackboard. Using spit and her
Max Factor
eyebrow pencil, Lilly alters the speed of enriched uranium fission while
Albert Einstein
looks on. Slapping himself on the forehead with the palm of one hand, Einstein says, “Lilly,
meine liebchen, du bist eine genious!”

At the window of the kitchen door, something outside taps. A bird in the alley, pecking. The sharp point of something tap, tap, taps at the glass. In the dawn sunlight, the shadow of something hovers just outside the dusty window, the shining point pecking, knocking tiny divots in the exterior surface of the glass. Some lost bird, starving in the cold. Digging, chipping tiny pits.

On the page, Lillian twists a copy of the
New Masses
, rolling it to fashion a tight baton which she swats across the face of
Christian Dior. Harry Truman
has herded together the world’s top fashion mavens to brand the signature look of his ultimate weapon.
Coco Chanel
demands sequins.
Sister Parish
sketches the bomb screaming down from the Japanese sky trailing long bugle beads.
Elsa Schiaparelli
holds
out for a quilted sateen slipcover.
Cristobal Balenciaga
, shoulder pads.
Mainbocher
, tweed.
Dior
scatters the conference room with swatches of plaid.

Brandishing her rolled billy club, Lilly says, “What happens if the zipper gets stuck?”

“Lilly, darling,” says
Dior
, “it’s a fucking atom bomb!”

At the kitchen window, the sharp beak drags itself against the outside of the glass, tracing a long curve, scratching the glass with an impossible, high-pitched shriek. An instant migraine headache, the point traces a second curve. The two curves combine to form a heart, etched into the window, and the dragging point plows an arrow through the heart.

On paper,
Adrian
sees the entirety of the atom bomb encrusted with a thick layer of rhinestones, flashing a dazzling Allied victory.
Edith Head
pounds her small fist on the conference table at the
Waldorf=Astoria
and proclaims that something hand-crocheted must rain fiery death on
Hirohito
, or she’ll pull out of the
Manhattan Project. Hubert de Givenchy
pounds on
Pierre Balmain
.

I stand and cross to the alley door. There we discover my Miss Kathie standing in the alley, bundled in a fur coat, both arms folded across her chest, hugging herself in the cold dawn.

I ask, Isn’t she home a few months early?

And Miss Kathie says, “I found something so much better than sobriety.…” She waves the back of her left hand, the ring finger flashing with a
Harry Winston
diamond solitaire, and she says, “I found
Paco Esposito!”

The diamond, the tool she used to cut her heart so deep into the glass. The heart and
Cupid
’s arrow etched in the alley window. Yet another engagement ring she’s bought herself.

Behind her stands a young man hung like a Christmas tree with various pieces of luggage: purses, garment bags, suitcases and satchels. All of it
Louis Vuitton
. He wears blue denim trousers, the knees stained black with motor oil. The sleeves of his blue chambray shirt rolled high to reveal tattooed arms. His name, Paco, embroidered on one side of his chest. His cologne, the stench of high-test gasoline.

Miss Kathie’s violet eyes twitch side to side across my face, up and down, the way they’d vacuum up last-minute rewrites in dialogue.

The sole reason for
Katherine Kenton
’s admitting herself to any hospital was because she so enjoyed the escape. Between making pictures, she craved the drama of overcoming locked doors, barred windows, sedatives and straitjackets. Stepping indoors from the cold alley, her breath steaming, my Miss Kathie wears cardboard slippers. Not
Madeleine Vionnet
. She wears a tissue-paper gown under her silver fox coat. Not
Vera Maxwell
. Miss Kathie’s cheeks scrubbed pink from the sun. The wind has tossed her auburn hair into heavy waves. Her blue fingers grip the handles of a shopping bag she lifts to set atop the kitchen table.

In the screenplay’s third act, Hellman pilots the controls of the
Enola Gay
as it skims the tops of Japanese pine trees and giant pandas and
Mount Fuji
, en route to
Hiroshima
. In a fantasy sequence, we cut to Hellman wielding a machete to castrate a screaming
Jack Warner
. She skins alive a bellowing, bleeding
Louis B. Mayer
. Her grip tightens around the lever which opens the bomb bay doors. Her deadly cargo shimmers pristine as a bride, covered with seed pearls and fluttering white lace.

In her own kitchen, my Miss Kathie sinks both hands into the shopping bag and lifts out a hairy chunk of her fur
coat. The ragged pile of hair seems to tremble as she places it atop the Hellman screenplay. Two black button eyes blink open. On the table, the damp, hairy wad shrinks, then explodes in a
hah-choo
sneeze. Between the two button eyes, the fur parts to reveal a double row of needle teeth. A panting sliver of pink tongue. A puppy.

Around the new diamond ring, her movie star hands appear nicked and scabbed with dried red, smudged with old blood. Spreading her fingers to show me the backs of both hands, Miss Kathie says, “This hospital had barbed wire.”

Her barbed wire scars as gruesome as any wounds Lillian shows off from the
Abraham Lincoln
brigade. Not as bad as
Ava Gardner
’s scars from bullfighting with
Ernest Hemingway
. Or
Gore Vidal
’s scars from
Truman Capote
.

“I picked up a stray,” says Miss Kathie.

I ask, Which one? The dog or the man?

“It’s a Pekingese,” says Miss Kathie. “I’ve christened him
Loverboy.”

The most recent of the “was-bands,” Paco arrives after the senator who arrived after the faggot chorus boy who arrived after the steel-smelting tycoon who arrived after the failed actor who arrived after the sleazy freelance photographer who arrived after the high school sweetheart. These, all of the stray dogs whose photographs line the mantel in her lavish upstairs boudoir.

A rogues’ gallery of what
Walter Winchell
would call “happily-never-afters.”

Each romance, the type of self-destructive gesture
Hedda Hopper
would call “marry-kiri.” Instead of plunging a sword into one’s stomach, you repeatedly throw yourself on the most inappropriate erect penis.

The men Miss Katherine marries, they’re less husbands
than they are costars. Souvenirs. Each one merely a witness to attest to her latest daring adventure, so much like
Raymond Massey
or
Fredric March
, any leading man she might fight beside in the
Hundred Years War
. Playing
Amelia Earhart
stowed away with champagne and
beluga caviar
in the romantic cockpit of
Charles Lindbergh
during his long flight over the Atlantic.
Cleopatra
kidnapped during the Crusades and wed to
King Henry VIII
.

Each wedding picture was less of a memento than a scar. Proof of some horror movie scenario
Katherine Kenton
has survived.

Miss Kathie places the puppy on the Hellman screenplay, smack-dab on the scene where Lilly Hellman and
John Wayne
raise the American flag over
Iwo Jima
. Dipping one scabbed hand into the pocket of her silver fox coat, Miss Kathie extracts a tablet of bound papers, each page printed with the letterhead
White Mountain Hospital and Residential Treatment Facility
.

A purloined pad of prescription blanks.

Miss Kathie wets the point of an
Estée Lauder
eyebrow pencil, touching it against the pink tip of her tongue. Writing a few words under the letterhead, she stops, looks up and says, “How many Ss in
Darvocet?”

The young man holding her baggage says, “How soon do we get to
Hollywood?”

Los Angeles
, the city
Louella Parsons
would call the approximately three hundred square miles and twelve million people centered around
Irene Mayer Selznick
.

In that same beat, we cut to a close-up of
Loverboy
, as the tiny Pekingese drops its own hot, stinking A-bomb all over
General Douglas MacArthur
.

The career of a movie star consists of helping everyone else forget their troubles. Using charm and beauty and good cheer to make life look easy. “The problem is,”
Gloria Swanson
once said, “if you never weep in public … well, the public assumes you never weep.”

Act one, scene four opens with
Katherine Kenton
cradling an urn in her arms. The setting: the dimly lit interior of the Kenton crypt, deep underground, below the stony pile of
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
, dressed with cobwebs. We see the ornate bronze door unlocked and swung open to welcome mourners. A stone shelf at the rear of the crypt, in deep shadow, holds various urns crafted from a variety of polished metals, bronze, copper, nickel, one engraved,
Casanova
, another engraved,
Darling
, another,
Romeo
.

My Miss Kathie hugs the urn she’s holding, lifting it to
meet her lips. She plants a puckered lipstick kiss on the engraved name
Loverboy
, then places this new urn on the dusty shelf among the others.

Kay Francis
hasn’t arrived.
Humphrey Bogart
didn’t send his regards. Neither did
Deanna Durbin
or
Mildred Coles
. Also missing are
George Bancroft
and
Bonita Granville
and
Frank Morgan
. None of them sent flowers.

The engraved names
Sweetie Pie
and
Honey Bun
and
Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq.
, what
Hedda Hopper
would call “dust buddies.” Her beagle, her Chihuahua, her fourth husband—the majority stockholder and chairman of the board for
International Steel Manufacturing
. Scattered amongst the other urns, engraved:
Pookie
, and
Fantasy Man
, and
Lothario
, the ashen remains of her toy poodle and miniature pinscher, there also sits an orange plastic prescription bottle of
Valium
, tethered to the stone shelf by a net of spiderwebs. Mold and dust mottle the label on a bottle of
Napoleon brandy
. A pharmacy prescription bottle of
Luminal
.

What
Louella Parsons
would call “moping mechanisms.”

My Miss Kathie leans forward to blow the dust from a pill bottle. She lifts the bottle and wrestles the tricky child-guard cap, soiling her black gloves, pressing the cap as she twists, the pills inside rattling. Echoing loud as machine-gun fire in the cold stone room. My Miss Kathie shakes a few pills into one gloved palm. With the opposite hand, she lifts her black veil. She tosses the pills into her mouth and reaches for the crusted bottle of brandy.