The Swans of Fifth Avenue (25 page)

Babe could put into words feelings and emotions that she'd never been able to before. All the books Truman had made her read—none of that had given her the vocabulary the simple diagnosis of “malignancy” had.

“Let's get you into bed now,” Bill said, reaching down to help her out of the chair.

“Leave me alone,” Babe snapped. “I'm perfectly capable of that.”

“Would you like me to sleep in here tonight, just in case you need anything?”

“Interesting that you offer this now, when I could give a shit about sex.”

Bill bit his lip, accepted his wife's wrath. And watched her walk tremulously, but defiantly, into the bathroom, head held high; she closed the door in his face.

Something had broken inside William S. Paley, too, that terrible day at Mount Sinai, when the most famous cancer doctor in the world had sat the two of them down and given him his diagnosis.

Shock. Pure shock. That this could happen to him.

To Babe, that is. To Babe.

No, goddammit, to him.

He was older than Babe. A lot older; older than he told people. When she was diagnosed back in January of 1974, and a third of her lung removed, he was seventy-two to Babe's fifty-eight. Bill Paley, despite his lifetime hypochondria, had never been a man who thought about death—his own, anyway. Still, he'd never imagined he'd have to grow old alone. He'd never imagined that Babe would not be there to take care of everything, as she always had.

He'd never imagined that he'd have to start looking back on his past actions with regret, remorse—shame, even—because his beautiful wife might be dying.

When they left the doctor's office, they'd gone straight to their apartment on Fifth Avenue. Babe had gone to her room to rest. Truman was the first of her friends she called; she must have rung him before she lay down, because Bill, still in his study, his head in his hands, an untouched glass of Scotch in front of him, was stunned to see a pale Truman, tears streaming down his cheeks, standing next to him, putting his arms around him, comforting him like he'd never been comforted in his life.

“I had to come to you first,” Truman whispered, rocking the bigger man back and forth, even though Bill wasn't crying. “I know Babe is strong. But you, my dear friend, you're the one who will have the hardest time figuring out what to do next.”

And Bill had to admit that Truman was right; Babe was strong, she'd know how to handle this crisis—with the same grace and beauty and guarded privacy with which she'd handled everything else. But Bill absolutely didn't know what to do when faced with a foe that money couldn't vanquish. Or a life without someone to see to his every need; a life without Babe, whom he had wronged so many times.

“I'm such a bastard,” he'd told Truman that afternoon, so eager to find absolution for his sins he spilled them all. “You don't know how big a bastard I am. I've screwed everyone. Right here in our apartment, in all our beds, in all our homes. I never thought about Babe at all. I wanted what I wanted, and I took it. God, one time—one time I was sure she'd find out, because the woman, well, she left a mess. Blood. You know, that time of the month. And Babe was due home, it was back when we had that place at the St. Regis, and I couldn't send the laundry out and get it back in time, so I scrubbed that stain, scrubbed it like I was Lady Fucking Macbeth. I didn't have any way to dry the sheets, so I baked them in the oven until I could put them on the bed, still wet, and then I fell asleep. And do you know, Babe never once disturbed me? I woke up to find she wasn't even there; she'd come home and found me asleep on the damp sheets, thought I had a fever or something, and left a note saying she'd gone on to Kiluna so she wouldn't bother me. I'm such a bastard. A lousy bastard, and now she's sick, and it's what I deserve. But it's not what she deserves.”

“No, it's not.” Truman's voice was hard, and Bill looked up into blue eyes that were not wide with obsequious approval, as they always had been. Now Truman's eyes were like chips of ice, and Bill actually shivered. “You are a goddamn bastard, Bill. I like you, I've always liked you, but I've never liked the way you treated Babe. But I'm not going to make this harder on you now. It looks like you're doing that yourself. And besides, you need to stop sniveling, and be there for her. She deserves that, at least.”

“I know, I know.” Bill shrugged Truman's arms off his shoulders, got up, and poured him a drink; his hands were shaking as he grabbed the tongs, filled the glass with ice. Both men relaxed at the blessed
clink, clink
of ice against glass; once the drink was in Truman's hands, they each exhaled.

“How is she?” Truman asked, after taking a greedy gulp.

“Quiet. She didn't say a word on the drive home. What did she say to you?”

“She said, ‘Please come. It's cancer.' That's all.”

“So go. Go to her. I know she needs you, you're better for her than I am, you always have been, and God knows if I understand why, but I don't care right now.”

Truman finished his drink, set the glass down on a mahogany table.

“I'm better for her because I love her.”

“So do I,” Bill whispered. “Funny how it takes something like this to remind you.”

“Funny how it shouldn't.” And Truman left Bill, strode through the fabulous duplex, for once not pausing to gape and admire the magnificent furniture, the crystal chandeliers, the precious
objets
grouped like still lifes on the polished furniture. What did any of it matter to the Paleys now? Except to provide Babe with a fabulous setting in which to be sick, perhaps die?

Truman knocked on Babe's door that awful afternoon; softly, for the first time ever not sure of his reception. And he was terrified, he was ashamed to admit; terrified of what—who—she might become. Would this ruin her beauty, this awful thing that was eating away inside? And then he hated himself for thinking that, but he was honest enough to admit that that was Babe's greatest appeal, even now, after decades of friendship and intimacy and confession. She was simply so lovely, so restful, to look at. And Truman did love beauty so.

“Come in,” she said, sounding like herself, and so he did.

Babe was pacing around her fabulous room—all vivid Oriental fabric on the walls, the curtains, the spread. Priceless paintings hung on her walls, yet this was the room in the house that felt the least like a museum; she had made it personal with framed photos—so many of just the two of them, Truman and Babe in happier times!—silly little knickknacks from dime stores mixed with exquisite antiques from Third Avenue. That old white paper flower, now encased in glass as if it were from Tiffany's and not a market in Jamaica. Truman recognized it and tears scalded his eyes; tears he hastily blinked away, before Babe could see.

“Well, it's cancer,” Babe said bluntly, no self-pity in her husky voice. “Cancer. They're going to remove part of my lung.”

“Oh, Bobolink!”

“I have to stop smoking.” But her hands were reaching to light one up even as she spoke. She did so, taking a defiant drag. Then she stabbed it out viciously after only one puff. “My last one.” She opened a gold filigree casket full of her L&M brand cigarettes, raised a window—letting in the city sounds of cars honking, brakes squealing, the far-off wail of a police siren—and dumped the contents out. Cigarettes spun through the air. Then she slammed the window shut.

“Oh,” she said, looking suddenly stricken. “I should have saved those for the help. That was wasteful.”

“Babe!” Truman held out his arms, walking to her, but she refused to run into them. She was paler than usual, but other than that, she looked like herself, only livelier, more vivid; as if the painting had finally come to life.

“No, no, I'm fine. Really. I'm not afraid. I'm just angry. Angry at myself for somehow allowing this to happen. Angry at the damn cigarettes. Angry at Bill, to tell the truth, although I really don't know why.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Yes, I do. Of course. You know that. How is he? I assume you saw him just now?”

“He's a mess. Very remorseful, if you want to know. Very afraid for you.”

“I doubt that will keep his dick in his pants.” Babe's hand flew to her mouth; her eyes grew wide. And then she giggled.

So did Truman. And then the two of them were seated in a chaise longue, entwined, her head on his chest. Strange, she thought, as she appreciated his surprisingly strong arms about her, how it always was the other way around. Except for that one night, that precious night when she'd bared herself to him, she was always the comforter, even as he was always her confessor.

“You'll be fine,” Truman soothed.

“I might not be.”

“No, you might not, but still, you don't know that. You don't know anything right now.”

“Do you know what I keep thinking? I keep thinking that I'll only be remembered as the woman who tied a goddamned scarf around her handbag one day, and sparked a national trend.”

Truman laughed; he remembered that day, how, after walking out of one of their favorite restaurants, Babe found the day had turned sultry, so she removed the colorful scarf she'd tied around her neck, and wrapped it around the handle of her Hermès bag, tying it in a jaunty bow.

Some photographer—there were always photographers waiting for her, for them, for the two of them together—snapped a shot, some magazine ran it, and soon every woman from Manhattan, New York, to Manhattan, Kansas, was tying her scarf around the handle of her purse.

“You'll be remembered for much, much more than that,” Truman assured her.

“I doubt it. I'll only be remembered for the way I look, the way I dress. That's always been enough—it was what I wanted, when I was younger. I worked hard at it, cultivated the photographers, begged the designers for the clothes I wore when I couldn't afford them. It was both a way to be remembered and a way to bag a man. A wealthy man. The two grand lessons my mother taught me in life.” And for the first time, Truman detected a real bitterness in her tone as she talked about her mother. “Mission accomplished, but now, now that I'm at the—that I'm facing
this,
I'm appalled. I've wasted my life. And that's why I'm angry.”

“And I'm angry that you think that. Babe, the way you live, the way you cultivate yourself, your homes, it's not a waste. Beauty, graciousness—these things are necessary. For the soul—for my soul, anyway. I know there's so much more to you, but don't discount these things.”

“Tell me,” Babe demanded. “Tell me, would you have wanted to know me if I'd not looked the way I do?”

“No.”

Babe winced; he hadn't even hesitated. But then she was grateful. Truman was the one person who told her the truth. Always.

“But,” Truman said, stirring a little, stretching his legs, although they did not lengthen to match hers, “what's wrong with beauty being noticed? What's wrong with attraction based on appearance, if it leads to so much more, as it has done with us? Would you have wanted to know me if I'd not been famous? If I'd not looked interesting? Different?”

“I don't know,” Babe replied, shrugging. “I suppose not.”

“And see what we would have missed out on?”

Babe nodded. Then she closed her eyes, for the first time, it seemed to her, since the doctor had said “cancer.” Now she did feel herself letting go, falling, falling into a spiral of fear, of uncertainty, of nausea, a cold, metallic taste in her mouth, the beautiful room spinning behind her closed eyelids. “You'll be here, won't you? When I have my surgery, the treatments? You won't forget me?”

“Of course not! I'll be here, every step of the way, beside you.”

“Good.” And Babe had allowed herself, then, to relax, even to nap; she'd awoken later, alone, but joined Bill and Truman in the drawing room, where they had a cozy dinner in front of the fireplace, just the three of them. And she could almost convince herself everything was as it had been, before.

But Truman had not been with her every step of the way. He had resumed his life, his ruinous loves; he'd continued to cultivate his celebrity, always calling, sending her bouquets of lilies of the valley and thoughtful, scathingly witty notes.

But for the first time in their friendship, he wasn't there when she needed him.

To her friends, to society as a whole, Babe presented her usual calm, perfectly made-up face. After the surgery and the radiation treatments, during which she lost her hair, but Monsieur Marc, her devoted stylist (she'd stopped going to Kenneth years ago, simply because Monsieur Marc made house calls and Kenneth didn't), made her fabulous Babe Paley wigs, she resumed her normal life. She entertained as usual, sat on her charitable committees, went out to lunch. Slim and Gloria and Marella and C.Z. and even Pam were kind, and they never once made mention of her illness, for which she was grateful. Yet it was there, of course. This repulsive, distasteful thing that shouldn't be mentioned, should only be endured in private, yet it stained everything, the table at Le Grenouille, the flowers at Kiluna, the jewelry at Van Cleef, the shoes at Bergdorf's, with an ugly coating of disquiet. People would sometimes catch themselves in conversation, in her presence—“Yesterday I was thinking, will we really need our yacht five years from now”—and there would be a guilty swallow, an averting of the eyes by the healthy, for having the tactlessness to think five years ahead. When she, Babe, might not have that luxury.

Or her fitter at Bergdorf's might remark about how thin she was, then catch her breath, stuff some pins in her mouth, and hurry away with tears in her eyes, and Babe would think,
How funny. Being thin when one is healthy is an accomplishment. But when one is sick, it's something else altogether.

And how solicitous everyone was! How extremely interested they were in her comfort, simply begging to adjust the thermostat if she was too cold, kicking at furniture in disgust if she gave any indication that a cushion was too hard, or too soft.