Tell-All (8 page)

Using a strong eye light, go to a medium close-up shot of Miss Kathie’s face, her reaction, as the senator’s off-camera voice says, “This woman offered the best of an era. She blazed paths where none had braved to venture. To her alone belong such memorable roles as
Mrs. Count Dracula
and
Mrs. President Andrew Jackson.…
”

Behind him play scenes from
The
Gene Krupa
Story
and
The Legend of
Genghis Khan
. Miss Katie, filmed in black and white, kisses
Bing Crosby
on a penthouse terrace overlooking a beautiful panoramic matte painting of the
Manhattan
skyline.

In the spotlight, the senator’s florid, naked forehead shines as bright as the award. He stands tall, with wide shoulders tapering to his patent-leather shoes. A pink-flesh facsimile of the
Academy Award
. Above and behind his ears, the remainder of his hair retreats as if hiding from the crowd’s attention. It’s pathetic how easily a strong spotlight can wipe away any trace of a person’s age or character.

It’s this pink mannequin saying, “Hers is a beauty which will linger in the collective mind until the end of humanity; hers is a courage and intelligence which showcase the best of what human beings can accomplish.…”

By praising the frailty of this woman, the senator looks stronger, more noble, generous, loving, even taller and more grateful. This oversize man achieves a humility, fawning over this tiny woman. Such beautiful, false compliments—the male equivalent of a woman’s screaming fake orgasm. The first designed to get a woman into bed. The second to more quickly complete sexual intercourse and get a man out of bed. As the senator says these words which every woman craves to hear, he evolves. His broad shoulders and thick neck of a caveman become those of a loving father, an ideal
husband. A humble servant. This savage Neanderthal shape shifts. His teeth becoming a smile more than a snarl. His hairy hands tools instead of weapons.

“Tonight, we humbly beseech her to accept our admiration,” says the senator, cradling the trophy in the crook of one arm. “But she is the prize which all men wish to win. She is the crowning jewel of our American theatrical tradition. So that we might give her our appreciation, ladies and gentlemen, may I give you …
Katherine Kenton.”

Earning applause, not for any performance, but for simply not dying. This occasion, both her introduction to the senator and her wedding night.

I suppose it’s a comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse damage to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict.

Tonight, yet another foray into the great wasteland which is middle age.

Upon that cue, my Miss Kathie takes the spotlight, entering stage right to thunderous applause. More starved for applause than for any chicken dinner the occasion might offer. The scene shattered by the flash of hundreds of cameras. Smiling with her arms flung wide, she enters the senator’s embrace and accepts that gaudy piece of gilded trash.

Coming out of the flashback, we slowly dissolve to a tight shot which reveals this same trophy, engraved,
From the Greater Inland Drama Maniacs of Western Schuyler County
. Over a decade later it sits on a shelf, the gold clouded with tarnish, the whole of it netted with cobwebs. A beat later a scrap of white cloth wraps the trophy; a hand lifts it from the shelf. With further pullback, the shot reveals me, dusting
in the drawing room of the town house. Polishing. Stray spiderwebs cling to my face, and a halo of dust motes swirl around my head. Outside the windows, darkness. My gaze fixed on nothing one can actually see.

From offscreen, we hear a key turn in the lock of the front door. A draft of air stirs my hair as we hear the heavy door open and shut. The sound of footsteps ascending the main staircase from the foyer to the second floor. We hear a second door open and shut.

Abandoning the trophy, the dust cloth still in one hand, I follow the sound of footsteps up the stairs to where Miss Kathie’s boudoir door is closed. A clock strikes two in some faraway part of the house as I knock at the door, asking if Miss Kathie needs help with her zipper. If she needs me to set out her pills. To draw her bath and light the candles on her fireplace mantel. The altar.

Through the boudoir door, no answer. When I grip the knob, it refuses to turn in either direction. Fixed. This door Miss Kathie has never locked. Pressing one dusty cheek to the wood, I knock again, listening. Instead of an answer, a faint sigh issues from inside. The sigh repeats, louder, then more loud, becoming the squeak of bedsprings. The only answer is that squeak of bedsprings, repeating, a squeak as high-pitched and regular as laughter.

The scene opens with
Lillian Hellman
grappling in barehanded combat with
Lee Harvey Oswald
, the two of them wrestling and punching each other near an open window on the sixth floor of the
Texas School Book Depository
, surrounded by prominent stacks of Hellman’s
The Little Foxes
and
The Children’s Hour
and
The Autumn Garden
. Outside the window, a motorcade glides past, moving through
Dealey Plaza
, hands waving and flags fluttering. Hellman and Oswald gripping a rifle between them, they yank the weapon back and forth, neither gaining complete control. With a violent head butt, slamming her blond forehead into Oswald’s, leaving his eyes glazed and stunned for a beat, Hellman shouts, “Think, you commie bastard!” She screams, “Do you really want
LBJ
as your president?”

A shot rings out, and Hellman staggers back, clutching her shoulder where blood spouts in pulsing jets between
her fingers. In the distance, the pink
Halston
pillbox hat of
Jacqueline Kennedy
moves out of firing range as we hear a second rifle shot. A third rifle shot. A fourth …

More rifle shots ring out as we dissolve to reveal the kitchen of
Katherine Kenton
, where I sit at the table, reading a screenplay titled
Twentieth Century Savior
authored by Lilly. Sunlight slants in through the alley windows, at a steep angle suggesting late morning or noontime. In the background, we see the servants’ stairs, which descend from the second floor to the kitchen. The rifle shots continue, an audio bridge, now revealed to be the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, the sound of the fantasy sequence bleeding into this reality.

As I sit reading, a pair of feet appear at the top of the servants’ stairs, wearing pink mules with thick, heavy heels,
clop-clopping
lower down the stair steps to reveal the hem of a filmy pink dressing gown trimmed in fluttering pink egret feathers. First one bare leg emerges from the split in front, pink and polished from the ankle to the thigh; then the second leg emerges from the dressing gown, as the figure descends each step. The robe flapping around thin ankles. The steps continue, loud as gunshots, until my Miss Kathie fully emerges and stops in the doorway, slumped against one side of the door frame, her violet eyes half closed, her lips swollen, the lipstick smeared around her mouth from cheek to cheek, the red smeared from nose to chin, her face swooning in a cloud of pink feathers. Posed there, Miss Kathie waits for me to look up from the Hellman script, and only then does she waft her gaze in my direction and say, “I’m so happy not to be alone any longer.”

Arrayed on the kitchen table are various trophies and awards, tarnished gold and silver, displaying different degrees
of dust and neglect. An open can of silver polish and a soiled buffing rag sit among them.

Clasping something in both hands, concealed behind her back, my Miss Kathie says, “I bought you a present …” and she steps aside to reveal a box wrapped in silver-foil paper, bound with a wide, red-velvet ribbon knotted to create a bow as big as a cabbage. The bow as deep red as a huge rose.

Miss Kathie’s gaze wafts to the trophies, and she says, “Throw that junk out—please.” She says, “Just pack them up and put them away in storage. I no longer need the love of every stranger. I have found the love of one perfect man.…”

Holding the wrapped package before her, offering the red-velvet-and-foil-wrapped box to me, Miss Kathie steps into the room.

On the scripted page, Lilly Hellman holds Oswald in a full nelson, both his arms bent and twisted behind his head. With one fast, sweeping kick, Lilly knocks Oswald’s legs out from under him, and he crumbles to the floor, where the two grapple, scrabbling and clawing on the dusty concrete, both within reach of the loaded rifle.

Miss Kathie sets the package on the kitchen table, at my elbow, and says, “Happy birthday.” She pushes the box, sliding it to collide with my arm, and says, “Open it.”

In the Hellman script, Lilly brawls with superhuman effort. The silence of the warehouse broken only by grunts and gasps, the grim sound of struggle in ironic contrast to the applause and fanfare, the blare of marching bands and the blur of high-stepping majorettes throwing their chrome batons to flash and spin in the hard
Texas
sunshine.

Not looking up from the page, I say it isn’t my birthday.

Looking from trophy to trophy, my Miss Kathie says, “All of this ‘Lifetime Achievement …’ ” Her hand dips into an invisible pocket of her dressing gown and emerges with a comb. Drawing the comb through her dyed-auburn hair, a fraction, only a day or two of gray showing at the roots, drawing the comb away from her scalp, Miss Kathie lets the long strands fall, saying, “All this ‘Lifetime Contribution’ business makes me sound so—dead.”

Not waiting for me, Miss Kathie says, “Let me help.” And she yanks at the ribbon.

With a single pull, the lovely bow unravels, and my Miss Kathie wads up the silver paper, tearing the foil from the box. Inside the box, she uncovers folds of black fabric. A black dress with a knee-length skirt. Layered beneath that, a bib apron of starched white linen, and a small lacy cap or hat stuck through with hairpins.

The smell of her hair, on her skin, a hint of
bay rum
, the cologne of
Webster Carlton Westward III. Paco
wore
Roman Brio
. The senator wore
Old Lyme
. Before the senator, “was-band” number five,
Terrence Terry
, wore
English Leather
. The steel tycoon wore
Knize
cologne.

Leaving the dress on the table, Miss Kathie crosses stage right still combing her hair, to where she stands on her pink-mule toes to reach the television atop the icebox. The screen flares when she flips the switch and the face of
Paco Esposito
takes form, as gradual as a fish appearing beneath the surface of a murky pond. The male equivalent of a diamond necklace, a stethoscope, hangs around his neck. A surgical mask is bunched under his chin. Still gripping a bloody scalpel, Paco is snaking his tongue down the throat of an ingénue,
Jeanne Eagels
, dressed in a red-and-white-striped uniform.

“I don’t want the placement agency getting any idea
that you’re more than a servant,” says my Miss Kathie. She cranks the dial switch one click to another television station, where
Terrence Terry
dances lead for the
Lunenburg battalion
against
Napoleon
at the
Battle of Mont St. Jean
. Still drawing the comb through her hair, Miss Kathie clicks to a third station, where she appears,
Katherine Kenton
herself, in black and white, playing the mother of
Greer Garson
in the role of
Louisa May Alcott
opposite
Leslie Howard
in a biopic about
Clara Barton
.

She says,
bark, oink, cluck …
Christina
and
Christopher Crawford
.

“Nothing,” says Miss Kathie, “makes a woman look younger than holding her own precious newborn.”

Cluck, buzz, bray
…
Margot Merrill
.

Another click of the television reveals Miss Kathie made up to be an ancient mummy, covered in latex wrinkles and rising from a papier-mâché sarcophagus covered with hieroglyphics to menace a screaming, dewy
Olivia de Havilland
.

I ask, Newborn
what?

Hoot, tweet, moo
…
Josephine Baker
and her entire
Rainbow Tribe
.

In a tight insert shot we see the reveal: the dress, there on the kitchen table, this gift, it’s strewn with long, auburn hairs, that heavy mahogany color that hair has only when it’s soaking wet. The discarded wrapping paper, the ribbon and comb, left for me to pick up. The black dress, it’s a housemaid’s uniform.

My position in this household is not that of a mere maid or cook or lady-in-waiting. I am not employed in any capacity as domestic help.

This is not a birthday present.

“If the agency asks, I think maybe you’ll be an au pair,”
Miss Kathie says, standing on tiptoe, her nose near her own image on the television screen. “I love that word …
au
pair,” she says. “It sounds almost like … French.”

In the screenplay, Lilly Hellman looks on in horror as
President John F. Kennedy
and
Governor John Connally
explode in fountains of gore. Her arms straight at her sides, her hands balled into fists, Lilly throws back her head, emptying her mouth, her throat, emptying her lungs with one, long, howling, “Noooooooooooooo …!” The rigid silhouette of her pain outlined against the wide, flat-blue
Dallas
sky.

I sit staring at the wrinkled uniform, the torn wrapping paper. The stray hairs. The screenplay laid open in my lap.

“You can bring up the coffee in a moment,” says Miss Kathie, as she shuts off the television with a slap of her palm. Gripping the skirt of her gown and lifting it, she crosses stage right to the kitchen table. There, Miss Kathie plucks the lacy cap from the open box, saying, “In the future, Mr. Westward prefers cream in his coffee, not milk.”