Tell-All (7 page)

She draws her legs in close to her body, her knees pressed to her chest. All of her wadded as tight as the ruined fistful of flowers.

Throwing back a swallow of gin, she says, “I’m such an old ninny.” She swirls the ice in the bottom of the glass, saying, “Why do I always feel so degraded?”

Her heart, devastated. My plan, working to perfection.

The rim of the glass, smeared red with her lipstick, the curved rim has printed her face with red, spreading the corners of her mouth upward to make a lurid clown’s smile.
Her eyeliner dribbles in a black line down from the center of each eye. Miss Kathie lifts her hand, twisting the wrist to see her watch, the awful truth circled in diamonds and pink sapphires. Here’s bad news presented in an exquisite package. From somewhere in the bowels of the town house, a clock begins to strike midnight. Past the twelfth stroke, the bell continues to thirteen, fourteen. More late than any night could possibly get. At the stroke of fifteen, my Miss Kathie looks up, her cloudy eyes confused with alcohol.

It’s impossible. The bell tolling sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, it’s the doorbell. And standing on the stoop, when I open the front door, there waits a pair of bright brown eyes behind an armful of roses and lilies.

We open with a panning shot of Miss Kathie’s boudoir mantel, the lineup of wedding photos and awards. Next, we dissolve to a similar panning shot, moving across the surface of a console table in her drawing room, crowded with more trophies. Then, we dissolve to yet another similar shot, moving across the shelves of her dining room vitrines. Each of these shots reveals a cluttered abundance of awards and trophies. Plaques and medals lie displayed in presentation boxes lined with white satin like tiny cradles, each medal hung on a wide ribbon, the box lying open. Like tiny caskets. Burdening the shelves are loving cups of tarnished silver, engraved,
To
Katherine Kenton,
In Honor of Her Lifetime Achievements, Presented by the
Baltimore Critics Circle
. Statuettes plated with gold, from the
Cleveland Theater Owners Association
. Diminutive statues of gods and goddesses, tiny, the size of infants.
For Her Outstanding Contribution. For Her Years of
Dedication
. We move through this clutter of engraved bric-a-brac, these honorary degrees from Midwestern colleges. Such nine-carat-gold praise from the
Phoenix Stage Players Club
. The
Seattle Press Guild
. The
Memphis United Society of Thespis
. The
Greater Missoula Dramatics Community
. Frozen, gleaming, silent as past applause. The final panning shot ends as a dirty rag falls around one golden statue; then the camera pulls back to reveal me wiping the award free of dust, polishing it, and placing it back on the shelf. I take another, polish it and put it back. I lift another.

This demonstrates the endless nature of my work. By the time I’ve done them all, the first awards will need dusting and polishing. Thus I move along with my soiled cotton diaper, really the most soft kind of dust cloth.

Every month another group entices Miss Kathie to grace them with her presence, rewarding her with yet another silver-plate urn or platter, engraved,
Woman of the Year
, to collect dust. Imagine every compliment you’ve ever received, made manifest, etched into metal or stone and filling your home. That terrible accumulating burden of your Dedication and Talent, your Contributions and Achievements, forgotten by everyone except yourself.
Katherine Kenton
, the Great Humanitarian.

Throughout this sequence, always from offscreen, we hear the laughter of a man and woman. Miss Kathie and some famous actor.
Gregory Peck
or
Dan Duryea
. Her ringing laugh followed by his bass guffaw. As I’m dusting awards in the library of the town house, the laughter filters downstairs from her boudoir. If I’m working in the dining room, the laughter echoes from the drawing room. Nevertheless, when I follow the sound, any new room is empty. The laughter always comes from around another corner or from behind
the next door. What I find are only the awards, turning dark with tarnish. Such honors—solid, worthless lead or pig iron merely coated with a thin skin of gold. After every rubbing, more dull, worn and smutty.

In her boudoir, on the television, my Miss Kathie rides in an open horse-drawn carriage through Central Park, sitting beside
Robert Stack
. Behind them trails a huge looming mass of white balloons. At a crescendo of violin music, Stack rolls on top of Miss Kathie, and her fist opens, releasing the frenzied balloons to scatter and swim upward, whipping their long tails of white string.

On some shelves balance scissors big enough for the
Jolly Green Giant
, brass buffed until it could pass as something precious, the pointed blades as long as Miss Kathie’s legs. She brandished one pair to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremonies for the six-lane
Ochoakee Inland Expressway
. Another pair of scissors cut the ribbon to open the
Spring Water Regional Shopping Mall
. Another pair, as large as a golden child performing jumping jacks, these cut the ribbon at a supermarket. At the
Lewis J. Redslope Memorial Bridge
. At the
Tennessee
assembly plant for
Skyline Microcellular, Inc
.

On the television in the kitchen, Miss Kathie lies on a blanket next to
Cornel Wilde
. As Wilde rolls on top of her, the camera pans to a nearby spitting, crackling campfire.

Filling the shelves are skeleton keys so heavy they require both hands to lift. Tin treated to shine bright as platinum. Presented by the
Omaha Business Fathers
and the
Topeka Chamber of Commerce
. The key to
Spokane, Washington
, presented to Miss Kathie by his honor, the right esteemed
Mayor Nelson Redding
. The engraved keys to
Jackson Hole
,
Wyoming
, and
Jacksonville, Florida
. The keys to
Iowa City
and
Sioux Falls
.

On the dining room television, my Miss Kathie shares a train compartment with
Nigel Bruce
. As he throws himself on top of her the train slips into a tunnel.

In the drawing room,
Burt Lancaster
lowers himself onto Miss Kathie as ocean waves roll onto a sandy beach. On the television in the den,
Richard Todd
throws himself onto Miss Kathie as July Fourth fireworks explode in a night sky.

Throughout this montage, the actual Miss Kathie is absent. Here and there, the camera might linger on a discarded newspaper page, a half-tone photograph of Miss Kathie exiting a limousine assisted by
Webster Carlton Westward III
. Her name in boldface type linked to his in the gossip columns of
Sheilah Graham
or
Elsa Maxwell
. Another photograph, the two of them dancing at a nightclub. Otherwise, the town house is empty.

My hand lifts still another trophy, a heroic statuette, the muscle of each arm and leg as small and naked as a child Miss Kathie never had, and I massage its face, without pressing, to make such thin gold, that faint shine, last as long as possible.

“The most cunning compliments,” playwright
William Inge
once wrote, “seem to flatter the person who bestows them even more than they do the person who receives them.”

Once more we dissolve into flashback. Begin with a swish pan, fast enough to blur everything, then gradually slow to a long crane shot, swooping above round tables, each dinner table circled with seated guests. The gleam of every eye turns toward a distant stage; the sparkle of diamond necklaces and beaming, boiled-white tuxedo shirts reflect that far-off spotlight. We move through this vast field of white tablecloths and silverware as the shot advances toward the stage. Every shoulder turns, twisted to watch a man standing at a podium. As the shot comes into deep focus, we see the speaker,
Senator Phelps Russell Warner
, standing behind the microphone.

A screen fills the upstage wall, flashing with gray images
of a motion picture. For a few words, the figure of
Katherine Kenton
appears on-screen, wearing a corseted silk ball gown as
Mrs. Ludwig van Beethoven
. As her husband,
Spencer Tracy
, snores in the background, she hunches over a roll of parchment, quill pen squeezed between her blue fingers, finishing the score to his
Moonlight Sonata
. Her enormous face glowing, blindingly bright, from the silver-nitrate film stock. Her eyes flashing. Her teeth blazing white.

In the audience, every face is cast in chiaroscuro, half lost in the darkness, half lost in the glare of that distant light. Forgetting themselves outside of this moment, the audience sits aware only of the man onstage and his voice. Over all, we hear the rolling thunder of the senator’s voice boosted through microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers; this booming voice says, “She serves as our brilliant light, forever guiding forward the rest of us mortals.…”

Across the surface of the screen, we see my Miss Kathie in the role of
Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell
, elbowing her husband,
James Stewart
, aside so she can listen covertly to
Mickey Rooney
on their party line, wasp-waisted in a high-collar dress. Her Gibson-girl hair crowned with a picture hat of drooping egret plumes.

This, the year when every other song on the radio was
Doris Day
singing
“Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe”
backed by the
Bunny Berigan Orchestra
. In the audience, no single face draws our focus. Despite their pearls and bow ties, everyone looks plain as old character players, dress extras, happy to shoot a scene sitting down.

At the microphone, the senator continues, “Her sense of noble purpose and steadfast course of action sets the pattern for our highest aspirations.…” His voice sounds deep and steady as a
Harry Houdini
or a
Franz Anton Mesmer
.

This prattle, further example of what
Walter Winchell
means by the term “toast-masturbating.” Or “laud mouthing,” according to
Hedda Hopper
. According to
Louella Parsons
, “implying gilt.”

Turning his head to one side, the senator looks off stage right, saying, “She visits our drab world like an angel from some future age, where fear and stupidity have been vanquished.…”

The camera follows his eye line to reveal Miss Kathie and myself standing in the wings, her violet eyes fixed on the senator’s spotlighted figure. Him in his black tuxedo. Her in a white gown, one elbow bent to crush a pale hand to her heart. Cue the lighting change, bring down the key light, boost the fill light to isolate Miss Kathie in the wings. Block the scene with the senator as a groom, standing before a congregation, taking his vows prior to giving her some tin trophy painted gold in lieu of a wedding ring.

It’s no wonder such bright lights seem invariably surrounded by the dried husks of so many suicidal insects.

“As a woman, she radiates charm and compassion,” says the senator, his voice echoing about the hall. “As a person, she proves an eternal marvel.” With each word, he climbs to her status, fusing himself to her name recognition and laying claim to the enormous dowry of her fame in his upcoming bid for reelection.

Upstage, the vast luminous face of my Miss Kathie hovers on-screen in the role of
Mrs. Claude Monet
, painting his famous water lilies. Her perfect complexion care of
Lilly Daché
. Her lips,
Pierre Phillipe
.

“She is the mother we wish we’d had. The wife we dream of finding. The woman whom all others measure themselves against,” the senator says, shining and polishing Miss Kathie’s
image before the moment of her appearance. Before he presents her to this audience of the faithful. This stranger she’s never met, coaxing her fans to a low-key frenzy of anticipation before she joins him in the spotlight.

More “projectile praise” and “force fawning” or “compliment vomit,” in the eyes of
Cholly Knickerbocker
.

Everything sounds so much better when it comes out of a man’s mouth.

Clasped in my hands, a screenplay rolled tight, here is the only prospect for work my Miss Kathie has been offered in months. A horror flick about an aged voodoo priestess creating an army of zombies to take over the world. At the finale, the female lead is dismembered, screaming, and eaten by wild monkeys.
Lynn Fontanne
and
Irene Dunne
have already passed on this project.

That trophy held by the senator, it will never shine as bright as it shines at this moment before it’s received, while this object is still beyond Miss Kathie’s grasp. From this distance apart, the senator and she both look so perfect, as if each offers the other some complete bliss.
Senator Phelps Russell Warner
, he’s the stranger who would become her sixth “was-band.” Himself a prize that seems worth the effort to dust and polish over the remainder of her lifetime.

Every coronation contains elements of farce. You must be a toothless, aged lion, indeed, before this many people will risk petting you. All of these tin-plate copies of
Kenneth Tynan
, trying to insist their opinions count for anything. Ridiculous clockwork copies of
George Bernard Shaw
and
Alexander Woollcott
. These failed actors and writers, a mob that’s never created worthwhile art, they’re now offering to carry the train of Miss Kathie’s gown, hoping to hitch a ride with her to immortality.