The Gramercy Park
The press was having a blast. It was the type of story they liked best: exposing the rich and powerful at their pettiest and most peevish. Abbotsford’s story ran the gamut from front page headlines in the Post and a blow-up photo of the ‘Dead-door fish’ to a page nine blurb in the city section of the Times used to wrap dead fish. The New Yorker ignored it with it’s haughty air of propriety and New York magazine ate it up and regurgitated like a doting mommy penguin. It was a sexy story – surprising really because sexy is not a word usually associated with Gramercy Park. Other than the odd Julia Roberts sighting, Gramercy tends to be a haven for cotton-haired octogenarians and their silly, bitty pooches. Even the park tends to be more staid than glam because it’s gates remain, after a century of growth and change, locked except to a precious few.
In 1831 when real estate developer Samuel Ruggles purchased part of Peter Stuyvesant’s bowery - swampland really - he spun straw into gold, creating the model for future Manhattan moguls. He turned it into one of Manhattan’s most exclusive addresses (aren’t they all). When Ruggles sold the sixty-six building lots around Gramercy Park to the cash heavy, the deeds stipulated that only the lot owners could have access to the park. To ensure that, a fence and gate were erected and sixty-six skeleton keys were awarded to each of the lucky lot owners. Now one hundred and seventy-four years later the rule still applies. The sixty-six lots which lie beneath elegant row housing, the National Arts Club, The Players Club, a Synagogue and a gorgeous Queen Anne style coop apartment building each hold a key to unlock the cast iron gates of the private leafy oasis known as Gramercy Park. Today there are more than sixty-six keys, each co op owner in the lovely apartment building has one, the artists-in-resident at the National Arts Club each possess one, and several members of the Synagogue are key holders too. But in a city teeming with 10 million inhabitants even a few hundred keys is still extremely exclusive. Of course the original keys browned with age and crooked as an arthritic joint no longer work in the lock, but they are still held onto as dearly without their former use, a tangible memory of a history of privilege.
The park itself has hardly changed till this recent scuffle. It is reminiscent of a Parisian park. A smaller, bushier version of Parc Monceau, a shady variety of trees: Buckeyes, folksy Horse Chestnuts, cosmopolitan Norway maples, and stoic London plane trees line the wide, inviting gravel-filled walkways. The slatted benches that line the paths are painted a complimentary forest green so as not to jar the eye from the peaceful flora. Yet all one has to do is look up at the skyscrapers crowding the airspace beyond the gating to realize the greenery is an anomaly. But they suit each other well, the park and the skyscrapers, both feats of extraordinary effort and determined vision.
But there has never been a determined visionary that did not confront conflict. Some conflicts surprise like a mugging, little warning, lots of adrenaline and an added plank in your conversation platform. Others you recognize their potential at their inception, see the two participants incompatibility long before they do, and just wait to witness the developments. So it was with Gramercy Park. Abigail, from the perch of her lovely brown brick twelve-story on west 59th, when she thought of the park at all, thought about it in reference to her uncle, a holder of one of the elusive keys. Her uncle Abbotsford had lived in the picturesque Queen Anne-style coop on the park for forty years and held the honorary position of keeper of the gate. He was a trustee and longtime chairman of the Gramercy Park Trustees. Abigail suggested just before the tree debacle that her seventy-two year-old uncle designate a new lifetime gatekeeper from the neighborhood. She thought he didn’t need to mediate the constant bickering that was occurring between keyholders over things like pet pickup and what type of new-fangled lock to install. She worried, unnecessarily apparently, that a conflict would arise to which he would not be equal. True to the curmudgeonly manner earned by a New Yorker of his years, he told her to mind her own ‘God-damned business’ or he’d leave his ‘God- damned co op interest’ to a ‘God damned stray cat.’ She, in keeping with a successful 37-year old lifelong New Yorker, replied that she’d have the will invalidated but not before using it as proof of his insanity, have him committed, seize his apartment anyway and sell it to some nouveau riche, white-trash underwear model.
The discussion shut down after that. The type of conflict Abigail foresaw was the exacerbation of the classic tension between the haves and the have-nots – those in possession of a key and those who long to be, those who play inside the gilded cage, and those who watch – their faces pushed tightly against the bars, able to breath the same air, but not straddle the same ground. But she’d obviously romaticized the residents of her beloved city. In Manhattan those conflicts are strictly for the bridge and tunnel types. Manhattan 2005 has no have-nots. There are only haves. The have-nots were given the bum rush long ago, when Guiliani brought New York back from the brink and Times Square became home to Geoffrey the Toy’s R Us Giraffe.
The only conflict that could occur was the haves against the haves – Way more press worthy than the other kind anyway. By the time the full difficulty was exposed, rotten fish were smelling up fashionable stoops, lawyers (those enablers of the haves) were mass mailing letter-headed missives on creamy card stock and the op-ed pages of the New York Dailies were smudged with indignation.
It all started so simply, quietly, as befitted the Grecian Formula dawdlers of the park. A letter received by Mr. Abbotsford Gelding from an old lover of his who also lived in the coop at 34 Gramercy Park East.
Darlin’ Abby,
The English Elm that reaches outside my window has grown far too large. Thanks to its boughs my entire apartment is shrouded in darkness. Some mornings when I wake up I’m afraid for a moment I’ve been stuck in the family mausoleum before my time. Would you be a dear and bring this matter up at the key holder’s meeting. I shall be in Italy for the summer, and would love to see either the tree removed or the boughs trimmed. I’m quite sure it would affect the value of my apartment, not to mention the damage it does to my health. What is that depression caused by no light in the winter? Wel,l whatever the term, I am suffering from it all year long!! Thanks very much for your help; I promise to bring back something divine from Roma for you.
All my love and kisses, xoxoxoxoxox Bryan
Why were southern faggots more faggotty than northern fags, Abbotsford wondered, probably exposure to all that damn seersucker. Abbotsford knew, however, exactly what the old queen was complaining about. He too looked out onto the same tree, and it had grown into an unchecked behemoth these last two decades. He doubted the association would approve removing it entirely, nothing like that had ever really been done before, but the removal of a few offending boughs should not be an issue. The next meeting was scheduled for July 8 in the National Arts Council building, hosted by that flaky hippy Claire Chapin. He often missed the meetings where Ms. Chapin hosted, he did not know her well at all, but her appearance irritated him. She wore her long graying, auburn hair in a fortune- tellers bun and favored flowing, batik’d caftans - perfectly ridiculous, not to mention trite on a woman her age. To Abbotsford’s way of thinking a woman should age like a man, with dignity, in khakis, white turtlenecks, navy cardigans and deck shoes – just like Katharine Hepburn. Now there was a lady who knew what she was about. Abbotsford had seen her on several occasions when she came into the park with a member of the arts club, but had only met her once. That silly Claire had introduced them with an elaborate politesse that Abbotsford felt in retrospect may have been mocking. Still this was one meeting he would not miss, who knows he may be able to cut down the damn tree after all. Most of the keyholders should be away in the Hamptons or Vineyard, if he could convince the few who attended, he might have the tree cut down before many were the wiser, then he’d have a damn view too.
Dressed nattily in his khakis and topsiders and armed with photos of the sweeping limbs, he headed over to the arts building in the early evening. He left the letter at home, Bryan couldn’t write a business letter to save his life, he had to litter ‘loves’ and ‘darlins’ through it, as if he delighted in exposing his personal life to the busybodies in the association. He felt the crisp bite of the night air. It felt good and best of all it smelled good, or at least better than usual. New York never smelled good anymore, hadn’t really since the sixties, but some days the air seemed heavier with waste and decay. Most things in New York were better in the sixties, parking for example. One could still use one’s car instead of just renting it space and dusting it monthly. When he lived at 57th just off of Park he could park right in front of his building. Abbotsford shook his head, bringing present day back to his thoughts. He opened the cast iron gate of the park and moved slowly inside, his knee was bothering him again. He stretched it slowly then cut through the park. The trees cast soft grey shadows on the gravel and seemed to shake the weariness of the day from their limbs. He opened the gate not far from the front of the National Arts Club. Crossing the street he stepped down under the awning of 15 Gramercy Park South and pulled the heavy black and glass door of the Club. One of the bohemians-in-residence was in the foyer,
“Hullo?” The resident was scruffy-haired, but mercifully didn’t smell.
“I’m here to see Ms. Chapin please, I am Abbotsford Gelding.”
The hippy nodded, “She’s in the back parlor.” He thumbed vaguely to an area behind him.
Abbotsford twisted his lips, “Thank you that was helpful,” he grumbled, and made for the back of the building, assuming he’d either run into the ‘back parlor’ or another ruffian who could be more articulate. Paintings and photographs hung side by side on the flocked paper. The outlines of former pieces remained visible on the wallpaper around the art. Abbotsford stopped to inspect a photograph of his park, the green benches lit by twilight in the fall. He could almost feel the coolness of winter in the air.
“Mr. Gelding,” Claire Chapin called grandly from a faded velvet settee.
Abbotsford looked up to see her motioning him join her. She sat in a dark paneled room her caftan and bangles looking incongruous in the stifling Victorian setting. Why on earth, he wondered, wouldn’t the damn hippies have painted the hideous paneling and banished some of the gilt-frames? Maybe they thought it was kitschy, or worse ironic. Lord, how this generation stuck smugly to it’s irony. He looked at Claire, she was patting the space on the settee beside her. He sat down in an empty beige armchair instead, squinting.
“So glad you could be here, it seems there will be just a few of us this evening. Those without friends in the Hamptons I suppose,” she laughed ruefully.
Abbotsford didn’t find that at all amusing, he had many friends in the Hamptons, not that it was any of this lady’s business. His knee was aching keenly now, he’d better go back to the damn, useless doctor again. Why the quack couldn’t just give him a decent pain killer was beyond him. He smiled thinly at the six occupants of the back parlor. Beside hippy Claire on the settee sat Margaret Biggens, owner of 3 Gramercy Park West, one of the twin houses attributed to Alexander Jackson Davis, a big-deal architect from the early nineteenth century. Number 3 and 4 Gramercy Park West, with their intricate cast iron verandas generally represents Gramercy Park to most New Yorkers. In the uncomfortably short-looking armchair sat Fremont Scalia, a once-productive Broadway producer, who owned number 4, though if the scuttlebutt was true, not for long. Two very Versace’d ladies in their 50’s sat on the Louis XV reproduction, resting tea saucers on their laps, their important, hardware intensive handbags displayed casually at their feet. Abbotsford recognized them as representatives of the Brotherhood Synagogue at 28 Gramercy Park south. They returned his polite nod.
The meeting meandered along without point for about 30 minutes while the group gossiped about those absent and discussed the celebrity tabloids. After Abbotsford snuffled down his third stale sugar cookie he made his move.
He began, “If we could get down to business now, I’ve got some…”
“Yes, quite right,” Cecily cut him off loudly, “Let’s call this meeting to order.” Rather formal he thought, for a damned hippy. He began again.
“I’ve got a letter.” He reached down and shuffled with the file by his legs.
“Good, Mr Gelding. We will look at that shortly, but first I have something of dire importance to discuss.”
Abbotsford bristled, “Well, it couldn’t have been more important than Brad Pitt’s sex life, because I noticed that discussion was tabled first.”
Cecily looked at him sharply, then remembered to smile. “Well yes, Mr. Gelding, a little light conversation does make everyone feel comfortable, before attending to the bigger issues at hand.”
Pompous bitch. Well he wasn’t about to be railroaded. He had a keyholder’s concern in his hand and he was going to address it. Hell maybe he’d cut the damn limbs himself – what would her patchouli-touting highness have to say to that?
Monday, February 26, 2007
Table 3 - Where the swells sit - Chapter 3
“How are you going to get there?” Mutti asked.
“I thought I’d rent something grand, bold perhaps.” I widened my eyes and grinned.
Death Valley did not spell fun to most sixteen-year-olds for especially not in 1933. But then I was always on the cutting edge. It seemed romantic and larger than life to a city girl like me - a wide carved rough land of saltwater flats and alien moon landscapes. Death Valley had just been designated a National Monument in April. This meant in just a few months President Roosevelt was going to send in his newly formed Civilian Conservation Corps to build 343 miles of new roads as part of his New Deal works projects – but not before I got there. I would still need to figure out the best way to get there over meandering desert roads. People did it all the time, still it made Mutti nervous.
She tapped her cigarette into the tray. I got up to refill out coffee cups.
“Travelling by yourself…” She was skeptical. “There must be some Hoovervilles out that way.”
I shrugged, I didn’t care. I was sixteen, which translates to fearless in at least seven languages. During the dark days of the depression - the ones we were living through remarkably well, mainly because of Mutti’s new line of work which seemed to be depression-proof - camps of homeless people sprang up on the outskirts of lots of cities. It didn’t seem that Death Valley would be the most hospitable place for the homeless to set up – at ground level the salt flats in the summer could exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit
“Maybe if you took a bus?” She said pragmatically, running her hands over the soft folds of satin in her lap.
I shook my head, “That doesn’t seem too bold or adventurous at all.” I protested.
“Well, look into it.” She blew the steam from her coffee. “I suppose you will stay at the Furnace Creek Inn.”
I nodded. The Furnace Creek Inn was really the only place to stay in Death Valley in 1933. It was a snazzy resort that was getting some press. That old cat Hedda Hopper had mentioned it many times in her column. Unsophisticated whelp that I was I believed everything Hedda wrote in her column. I would for years till I became the victim of it.
Known as the Hollywood Hatchet, Hedda Hopper, whose real name was Elda Furry, was one of the most feared people in Hollywood. A gossip columnist and former starlet, she had a weekly column filled with the doings and don’tings (especially the don’tings) of everyone who mattered and a few who were expendable in the film world. She dished rumor, innuendo, and unfounded lies, pulverizing grammar along the way. She had a huge reservoir of background dish with which she avenged herself on anyone who displeased her. Imagine today’s Page Six with the authority of the Washington Post during Watergate. Awesome power, appalling judgment. If Hedda said the stars were glittering in Death Valley, I knew they would damn well be glittering.
In my mind’s eye I saw myself as a very daring bright, young thing off on a madcap adventure mingling with stars and wild creatures. So naturally my first plan of action was choosing my wardrobe.
Slipping the crisp bills into my powder blue pocket book I set off for Madame Sofia’s house at Mama’s suggestion. Madame Sofia was Mama’s nightclothes connection. One must dress for life’s great adventures.
Sofia lived in one of the fairy-cottages pocketed three miles from the ocean in Carmel. Tucked amid plush greenery and flowering bushes, it looked like the backdrop of some tepid romance novel, complete with white painted arbor and rustic, wooden swing. Being careful not to step on any errant garden sprites that no doubt hid in the blooms, I made my way across the paving stones to her hyacinth-colored door. I knocked rapidly in my excitement. She opened the door immediately.
“Come in Abigail, drágám! I’ve set a few things out you will look divine in.”
Sophia’s consignment shop in her basement was Carmel’s best kept secret. A former silent screen actress, she became one of the casualties of the ‘Talkies” thanks to her heavy Hungarian accent. Smarter than most of her contemporaries, Sophia knew her career was over, well before Jack Warner did. Thinking ahead she cut a deal with a woman in the Warner Brother’s wardrobe department to buy the used movie clothes for a small price and resell them in Carmel. Warner’s had no tracking system for its costumes back then so much of the stuff Sophia carried were ‘lost ‘goods. Their loss was my gain. For a fraction of the price I dressed in glorious designer knock-offs created by some of Hollywood’s best seamstresses.
I called ahead and told Sophia of my plans. She laid out her latest ‘steals,’ an apricot wool suit, with a fetching beret that set off my fair skin as prettily as Magnin’s walls. It was from Sophia, I refined my sense of style. I’d been learning bits and pieces from the customers I modeled for. But Sophia was different, she didn’t view clothes they way a forty-year-old matron from Pasadena would. She judged what I wore with a filmmaker’s eye. Clean lines, just like I. Magnins. No frills.
“No affektálás, drágám!” She bellowed, should my hand caress an unneccesary ruffle with desire. Because I was long and lean, the day clothes she chose for me were mannish in styling, sporty. 1920’s rather than ’30s style. After the First World War, women’s fashion evolved toward what was known in France as the Garconne Look. Women wore clothes that hung from shoulders and hips without any pretence of a waist. Their dress lengths were gradually shortened to reach just below the knees when standing. When they sat, well, that was shocking – almost a whole length of gam could be revealed.
At the beginning of the thirties, hemlines dropped to the ankle and remained there till the war. Since my legs are my star attraction, Sophia worked around this by stocking my suitcase with lots of tennis skirts. She told me to pack my racket to justify my exhibitionism. Necklines were my nemesis. They were lowered while torsos were molded beneath squared shoulders. I have no breasts to speak of. And in the thirties busts were a-blooming. Dress bodices were designed with inset pieces and yokes. Necklines were scallop-edged or ruffled, pleated or otherwise plumped. They hung on my adolescent chest. I was born a decade too late for fashion. I would have made a fabulous flapper. No breast binding necessary for this girl.
Sophia dressed me from the inside out. To help me out in the bosom department, I purchased my first bra. Underpinnings of the early thirties continued to include the body armor known as the corset – happily bone-free by then. Corsets were brassieres and girdles with garters combined. By the late thirties, the separate bra and girdle had become acceptable. Thanks to my insider status with Sophia, my undergarments were the latest and the puffiest and the separatist, though it was only 1933.
Sophia was completely approving of women’s sportswear during this period. She loaded me up with some beautiful pieces. Sport suits, a soft caramel leather jacket cut slimly around my waist. Three pairs of draping trousers. I felt so daring. I’d seen slacks on Kate Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich of course, but they weren’t acceptable daywear for regular folk. It was still considered cross-dressing. Sophia convinced me to try them on. I felt daring, naughty and, really, quite sexy. I bought everything she suggested, including shoes and a funny-looking handbag made of leather rather than beads or mesh. It was a three pocket clutch with a large flap over the front. She gave me the name of a local artisan who would emboss my initials on the front. Trés raffinee, Drágám!
By the time I left Sophia’s, my upcoming trip seemed superfluous. I had just spent three hours in a fantasy world. I drove back from Carmel in a mist, clothes-drunk and delighted with myself. I pulled into our apartment parking lot to discover some show-off had parked his shiny yellow Ford Model A cabriolet in our spot. Feeling self-important and grown-up – I’d just purchased ‘slacks’ after all, I parked directly behind the car and hopped out. I looked inside the car for any indication of who the joker was. The caramel, leather interior was the same shade as my newly-purchased, leather jacket. It was beautiful, so supple. This car was not made for a man, not really, it was too pretty. It was meant to be driven by a self-possessed girl in a beret. A trouser-wearing girl of independent means. Me dammit. I was meant to drive a car like that. I took a quick glance behind me.
It was mid-afternoon. Nobody was around. I felt a pang of desire so strong, it remained unequalled till I met the love of my life. I opened the driver’s seat and slipped across the upholstery. It was a 1931, but like brand new. My fingers played over the carved wooden steering wheel. I pretended I was crossing the Mojave Desert in this sunshine chariot.
“Abigail!” My mother’s call pulled my out of my reverie.
I looked up guilty, but defiant. “Some wise guy parked in our spot, Mutti.” Stating the obvious is rarely a good strategy for distraction. I hopped out of the car fast.
“Language, Abigail! Don’t be disrespectful.”
I looked around for the object of my disrespect, puzzled. I turned back to look at Mama. She obviously had dinner plans. Her low-cut dress was fashionably festooned with shimmering beads. I smiled at how pretty she looked.
“Mutti, you’re too nice, let’s block him in.” Remember I was feeling very powerful, clothing does make the woman.
“The him is a her and the her is me, or you, really. I rented this for you, my love, to drive across the desert. What do you think? Too flashy?”
I gulped back my excitement. “Oh Mutti, yes, yes indeed, way too flashy!” I laughed. “It’s too flashy for anyone else, but it belongs to me. It’s beautiful, it’s, it’s summer in the desert.” I was reaching for words, angling for poetry. “Thank you so much, I adore it.” If I hadn’t towered over her, I would have leapt into her arms.
“Wait a minute,” I looked at her curiously, “I thought you wanted me to investigate the bus.”
She smiled. “Well, I investigated a bus and a car for you, since you seemed to prioritize like a sixteen-year-old young woman and put clothing before transportation.” She glanced at my packages in the back of the car. “You could take a Tanner Tour car with a friend from downtown straight to the Inn for $64.50 each round trip. So by yourself, it would be over one hundred dollars!”
I shrugged.
“You could take that and it would still leave you with over three hundred,” She glanced again at my packages, “Well, under three hundred dollars to stay at the Inn. So then I went to see the bus, very cheap but,” she pinched her face in a grimace. “Very pedestrian, darling, not very bold at all. - so here it is, your grand transportation. It is in excellent condition, one of my ‘friends’ had his mechanic look it over for me.”
Her face grew more serious. “Now I want you to plan this car ride carefully, it is eight hundred miles from Los Angeles to the Inn. Two hundred of that is in Death Valley. And it’s the summer. You’ll need to wear a broad brimmed hat to protect you skin and plenty of water.”
“Oh no,” I exclaimed, “I just bought this darling little beret, it’s too beautiful and I just look a picture in it.”
She rolled her eyes, “Wear it when you arrive, it’s one thing to be bold, but trust me there is nothing glamorous about arriving at the Furnace Creek Inn burnt to a crisp and gasping for water.”
I nodded in agreement, and looked at my dazzling car. It was even more beautiful than my apricot suit. Life was wonderful.
***
Shortly before I died I watched a made-for-T.V. movie on the life of William Powell. Normally I loathed television. The idea of people sitting around a plastic box night after night watching shadows live rather than living themselves, depressed me. However Bill had been my particular friend and by the end of my life I was mostly immobile, so I was a captive audience. Interesting – at least for me - was a section of the show devoted to my ‘discovery’ in Death Valley. The show was atrocious, but it did sum up the beginning of my climb quite neatly. Unfortunately the woman playing me was chinless. I have a terrific chin and therefore think badly of those without. With the advances made in plastic surgery; you’d think the actress’s agent would have suggested slicing a bit off her bazoom and attaching it to her jaw line.
The flashback scene in the movie is particularly moronic. One character is an out of work actor sitting on a barstool talking to the other character, a journalist, about the famous Slim Keith, the dialogue is awful, but to the information is about as true as anything ever is. An unkempt character actor playing an unkempt character actor named William looks up at the narrator of the story, a perky actress playing girl-reporter, from the worn barstool and gestures to the seat beside him. He takes a long, contemplative haul on his cigarette, (his career is dead so he’s sucking drama from every moment).
“The first time I saw Sunny,” he smiles sardonically, no doubt realizing how many times those words had been spoken by many different people, “was at San Simeon, you know, the Hearst mansion. She was long, lanky and lovely.” He speaks like a movie detective in a forties flick, “She walked in to the foyer wearing khakis like crepe. Her blond streak kind of glinted in the sun. That was the strangest thing that blond streak, the rest of her hair was shiny light brown, but in the front she had this one gold hank of hair. Remember in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Audrey Hepburn had that skunk stripe in her hair? That was a reference to Sunny. All the women thought she bleached it just to stand out, but back then that wasn’t her style.”
Marta, my maid who was watching it with me, and I snorted in unison. I ordered her to get up and make us some more martinis. I had no desire to view my life sober, after all I hadn’t lived it that way.
“How’d she get there? A 19-year-old from Wilshire Blvd. with no apparent connections and no starlet aspirations stays at the Hearst mansion for the weekend?” Girl-reporter interjects, doing her damnedest to register an intelligent glint in her eye.
Insightful girl-reporter then has a voice over. “One thing I’d learned about interviewing people nobody tells the same story as anybody else and nobody tells the same story twice – unless it’s a lie.”
“Bill Powell, I guess. They met at a hotel in Death Valley. No romance, just pals. Anyway Bill was the one who first called her Slim. This was in the thirties, Bill was huge. He’d been married to Carole Lombard, was engaged to Jean Harlow and had just begun the Thin Man Series with Myrna Loy. He was one of Hollywood’s leading men. Slim met him one day at their hotel. They started talking and remained buddies forever. Men just loved her, both as a woman and a friend. She was easy to be with and soft on the eyes.” Unkempt man talking again.
“So she was pretty sophisticated even then.”
Man laughs. “Yeah, Sunny was sophisticated. But not in that fake uppity way so many actresses were aping back then. More in the smooth way, like good Italian leather. She had the right answer for everyone. She didn’t blush, lose her cool, nothing fazed her. You know that old joke?”
Girl-reporter shakes her head and signals to the bartender for another round.
“The definition of sophistication: a guy walks in on his wife and her lover making love in his bed and he says to the lover, ‘Oh pardon me, feel free to continue.’”
Girl-reporter says “That’s the definition of sophistication.”
“No, the lover replies ‘Thank you I will.’ and he does. That’s the definition of sophistication.”
Girl laughs appreciatively. Man laughs appreciating being appreciated.
“That was Sunny. She’d continue, and then ask you to light her cigarette after.”
Marta and I looked at each other and dissolved into laughter. She switched off the television, and then carried over the pitcher and glasses.
“To think, Cecily spent a fortune on therapy trying to capture my essence. She simply needed cable.” I shook my head. Sipping the drink I nodded, “Good job.”
Marta smiled her thank you. “I wonder what they’ll say about Truman, he’s at least twice as famous.”
“Then they’ll make him out to be twice the shit.” I raised my glass for a refill. “Which, when you think about it, is only fair.”
***
My adventure began when I arrived at the Furnace Creek Inn, ‘a golden vision,’ as the actor William Powell later put it, driving up in my glamorous yoke of a car.
The car ride was treacherous. At first I loved every minute of it, every second I drove I felt lighter and more powerful, like I was a Goddess just awakening to her powers. On my journey, I discovered my lifelong passion: motion. It sounds corny by I liked the rush of the wind, the control of the direction, the anticipation of going without the responsibility of arriving. Most people, certainly Christian, my second husband, and Hemingway, even occasionally Tru attributed it to fear of boredom. So much for those supposed empaths. My love of motion, be it in conversation, travel or party-hopping had more to do with optimism - the certain knowledge that there was something extraordinary around the corner.
I made it out of L.A. fairly well, got turned around a couple of times near Johannesburg but eventually found my way to RT. 190. Luckily I got a flat before I hit 190. Because there were still plenty of kind gentlemanly gentlemen to help me, after that I would have been lost for sure. California has more mountain ranges than you can shake a slimy, possibly poisonous snake at. I had no idea and all of them seem deserted. There’s the Coso range, the Argus range, the Slate range, the Panamint range, the mind reels. Then I neared the Valley. I guess I pictured big sky and glorious scenery. I hadn’t really counted on the heat. Remember there were no air conditioners in ‘33. My lovely yoke of a car was feeling more like a fried egg. The last bit of the journey I must have finished off two gallons of water, and all I wanted to do was pee. Too shy to stop at the side of the road I kept on going straight through to the Furnace Creek Inn. I stopped a few minutes before pulling into the Inn to fix my hair and fashion my pert little beret on top of my head. I flung my broad-brimmed hat in the backseat and checked myself in my compact. I looked lovely. That’s the best part of being young, the effortlessness of beauty. One can be older and beautiful, but never with the same insouciance.
Bill Powell sidled up to the passenger side door of my car, “Hey sunny princess, that’s some fancy omelet you’re driving.”
I sighed, “Isn’t she extraordinary?” looking over my dusty chariot.
“Yes, she certainly is.” Powell responded looking me right in the eye.
I had to pee really badly. “Mr. Powell your dialogue needs work,” my cockiness was purely bladder-inspired, “My bags are in the back, sir, if you don’t mind.” I smiled wide.
Bill looked mildly astonished at my cheek, after all this man was not just a matinee idol, he was also two decades my senior. Still, he did as I asked - a useful lesson for a girl like me. I was desperate for the ladies room. So I swept up quickly to the front desk at Furnace Creek Inn with William Powell as my bell hop. I left him with my bags as I asked for directions to the powder room to freshen up. I didn’t even look back at him.
Relief, as they say, is only a tinkle away.
Well Hedda was right, I thought as I washed my hands. The stars are here. I took a long time washing my hands, because now that my immediate needs were taken care of I felt a little shy.
“I thought I’d rent something grand, bold perhaps.” I widened my eyes and grinned.
Death Valley did not spell fun to most sixteen-year-olds for especially not in 1933. But then I was always on the cutting edge. It seemed romantic and larger than life to a city girl like me - a wide carved rough land of saltwater flats and alien moon landscapes. Death Valley had just been designated a National Monument in April. This meant in just a few months President Roosevelt was going to send in his newly formed Civilian Conservation Corps to build 343 miles of new roads as part of his New Deal works projects – but not before I got there. I would still need to figure out the best way to get there over meandering desert roads. People did it all the time, still it made Mutti nervous.
She tapped her cigarette into the tray. I got up to refill out coffee cups.
“Travelling by yourself…” She was skeptical. “There must be some Hoovervilles out that way.”
I shrugged, I didn’t care. I was sixteen, which translates to fearless in at least seven languages. During the dark days of the depression - the ones we were living through remarkably well, mainly because of Mutti’s new line of work which seemed to be depression-proof - camps of homeless people sprang up on the outskirts of lots of cities. It didn’t seem that Death Valley would be the most hospitable place for the homeless to set up – at ground level the salt flats in the summer could exceed 200 degrees Fahrenheit
“Maybe if you took a bus?” She said pragmatically, running her hands over the soft folds of satin in her lap.
I shook my head, “That doesn’t seem too bold or adventurous at all.” I protested.
“Well, look into it.” She blew the steam from her coffee. “I suppose you will stay at the Furnace Creek Inn.”
I nodded. The Furnace Creek Inn was really the only place to stay in Death Valley in 1933. It was a snazzy resort that was getting some press. That old cat Hedda Hopper had mentioned it many times in her column. Unsophisticated whelp that I was I believed everything Hedda wrote in her column. I would for years till I became the victim of it.
Known as the Hollywood Hatchet, Hedda Hopper, whose real name was Elda Furry, was one of the most feared people in Hollywood. A gossip columnist and former starlet, she had a weekly column filled with the doings and don’tings (especially the don’tings) of everyone who mattered and a few who were expendable in the film world. She dished rumor, innuendo, and unfounded lies, pulverizing grammar along the way. She had a huge reservoir of background dish with which she avenged herself on anyone who displeased her. Imagine today’s Page Six with the authority of the Washington Post during Watergate. Awesome power, appalling judgment. If Hedda said the stars were glittering in Death Valley, I knew they would damn well be glittering.
In my mind’s eye I saw myself as a very daring bright, young thing off on a madcap adventure mingling with stars and wild creatures. So naturally my first plan of action was choosing my wardrobe.
Slipping the crisp bills into my powder blue pocket book I set off for Madame Sofia’s house at Mama’s suggestion. Madame Sofia was Mama’s nightclothes connection. One must dress for life’s great adventures.
Sofia lived in one of the fairy-cottages pocketed three miles from the ocean in Carmel. Tucked amid plush greenery and flowering bushes, it looked like the backdrop of some tepid romance novel, complete with white painted arbor and rustic, wooden swing. Being careful not to step on any errant garden sprites that no doubt hid in the blooms, I made my way across the paving stones to her hyacinth-colored door. I knocked rapidly in my excitement. She opened the door immediately.
“Come in Abigail, drágám! I’ve set a few things out you will look divine in.”
Sophia’s consignment shop in her basement was Carmel’s best kept secret. A former silent screen actress, she became one of the casualties of the ‘Talkies” thanks to her heavy Hungarian accent. Smarter than most of her contemporaries, Sophia knew her career was over, well before Jack Warner did. Thinking ahead she cut a deal with a woman in the Warner Brother’s wardrobe department to buy the used movie clothes for a small price and resell them in Carmel. Warner’s had no tracking system for its costumes back then so much of the stuff Sophia carried were ‘lost ‘goods. Their loss was my gain. For a fraction of the price I dressed in glorious designer knock-offs created by some of Hollywood’s best seamstresses.
I called ahead and told Sophia of my plans. She laid out her latest ‘steals,’ an apricot wool suit, with a fetching beret that set off my fair skin as prettily as Magnin’s walls. It was from Sophia, I refined my sense of style. I’d been learning bits and pieces from the customers I modeled for. But Sophia was different, she didn’t view clothes they way a forty-year-old matron from Pasadena would. She judged what I wore with a filmmaker’s eye. Clean lines, just like I. Magnins. No frills.
“No affektálás, drágám!” She bellowed, should my hand caress an unneccesary ruffle with desire. Because I was long and lean, the day clothes she chose for me were mannish in styling, sporty. 1920’s rather than ’30s style. After the First World War, women’s fashion evolved toward what was known in France as the Garconne Look. Women wore clothes that hung from shoulders and hips without any pretence of a waist. Their dress lengths were gradually shortened to reach just below the knees when standing. When they sat, well, that was shocking – almost a whole length of gam could be revealed.
At the beginning of the thirties, hemlines dropped to the ankle and remained there till the war. Since my legs are my star attraction, Sophia worked around this by stocking my suitcase with lots of tennis skirts. She told me to pack my racket to justify my exhibitionism. Necklines were my nemesis. They were lowered while torsos were molded beneath squared shoulders. I have no breasts to speak of. And in the thirties busts were a-blooming. Dress bodices were designed with inset pieces and yokes. Necklines were scallop-edged or ruffled, pleated or otherwise plumped. They hung on my adolescent chest. I was born a decade too late for fashion. I would have made a fabulous flapper. No breast binding necessary for this girl.
Sophia dressed me from the inside out. To help me out in the bosom department, I purchased my first bra. Underpinnings of the early thirties continued to include the body armor known as the corset – happily bone-free by then. Corsets were brassieres and girdles with garters combined. By the late thirties, the separate bra and girdle had become acceptable. Thanks to my insider status with Sophia, my undergarments were the latest and the puffiest and the separatist, though it was only 1933.
Sophia was completely approving of women’s sportswear during this period. She loaded me up with some beautiful pieces. Sport suits, a soft caramel leather jacket cut slimly around my waist. Three pairs of draping trousers. I felt so daring. I’d seen slacks on Kate Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich of course, but they weren’t acceptable daywear for regular folk. It was still considered cross-dressing. Sophia convinced me to try them on. I felt daring, naughty and, really, quite sexy. I bought everything she suggested, including shoes and a funny-looking handbag made of leather rather than beads or mesh. It was a three pocket clutch with a large flap over the front. She gave me the name of a local artisan who would emboss my initials on the front. Trés raffinee, Drágám!
By the time I left Sophia’s, my upcoming trip seemed superfluous. I had just spent three hours in a fantasy world. I drove back from Carmel in a mist, clothes-drunk and delighted with myself. I pulled into our apartment parking lot to discover some show-off had parked his shiny yellow Ford Model A cabriolet in our spot. Feeling self-important and grown-up – I’d just purchased ‘slacks’ after all, I parked directly behind the car and hopped out. I looked inside the car for any indication of who the joker was. The caramel, leather interior was the same shade as my newly-purchased, leather jacket. It was beautiful, so supple. This car was not made for a man, not really, it was too pretty. It was meant to be driven by a self-possessed girl in a beret. A trouser-wearing girl of independent means. Me dammit. I was meant to drive a car like that. I took a quick glance behind me.
It was mid-afternoon. Nobody was around. I felt a pang of desire so strong, it remained unequalled till I met the love of my life. I opened the driver’s seat and slipped across the upholstery. It was a 1931, but like brand new. My fingers played over the carved wooden steering wheel. I pretended I was crossing the Mojave Desert in this sunshine chariot.
“Abigail!” My mother’s call pulled my out of my reverie.
I looked up guilty, but defiant. “Some wise guy parked in our spot, Mutti.” Stating the obvious is rarely a good strategy for distraction. I hopped out of the car fast.
“Language, Abigail! Don’t be disrespectful.”
I looked around for the object of my disrespect, puzzled. I turned back to look at Mama. She obviously had dinner plans. Her low-cut dress was fashionably festooned with shimmering beads. I smiled at how pretty she looked.
“Mutti, you’re too nice, let’s block him in.” Remember I was feeling very powerful, clothing does make the woman.
“The him is a her and the her is me, or you, really. I rented this for you, my love, to drive across the desert. What do you think? Too flashy?”
I gulped back my excitement. “Oh Mutti, yes, yes indeed, way too flashy!” I laughed. “It’s too flashy for anyone else, but it belongs to me. It’s beautiful, it’s, it’s summer in the desert.” I was reaching for words, angling for poetry. “Thank you so much, I adore it.” If I hadn’t towered over her, I would have leapt into her arms.
“Wait a minute,” I looked at her curiously, “I thought you wanted me to investigate the bus.”
She smiled. “Well, I investigated a bus and a car for you, since you seemed to prioritize like a sixteen-year-old young woman and put clothing before transportation.” She glanced at my packages in the back of the car. “You could take a Tanner Tour car with a friend from downtown straight to the Inn for $64.50 each round trip. So by yourself, it would be over one hundred dollars!”
I shrugged.
“You could take that and it would still leave you with over three hundred,” She glanced again at my packages, “Well, under three hundred dollars to stay at the Inn. So then I went to see the bus, very cheap but,” she pinched her face in a grimace. “Very pedestrian, darling, not very bold at all. - so here it is, your grand transportation. It is in excellent condition, one of my ‘friends’ had his mechanic look it over for me.”
Her face grew more serious. “Now I want you to plan this car ride carefully, it is eight hundred miles from Los Angeles to the Inn. Two hundred of that is in Death Valley. And it’s the summer. You’ll need to wear a broad brimmed hat to protect you skin and plenty of water.”
“Oh no,” I exclaimed, “I just bought this darling little beret, it’s too beautiful and I just look a picture in it.”
She rolled her eyes, “Wear it when you arrive, it’s one thing to be bold, but trust me there is nothing glamorous about arriving at the Furnace Creek Inn burnt to a crisp and gasping for water.”
I nodded in agreement, and looked at my dazzling car. It was even more beautiful than my apricot suit. Life was wonderful.
***
Shortly before I died I watched a made-for-T.V. movie on the life of William Powell. Normally I loathed television. The idea of people sitting around a plastic box night after night watching shadows live rather than living themselves, depressed me. However Bill had been my particular friend and by the end of my life I was mostly immobile, so I was a captive audience. Interesting – at least for me - was a section of the show devoted to my ‘discovery’ in Death Valley. The show was atrocious, but it did sum up the beginning of my climb quite neatly. Unfortunately the woman playing me was chinless. I have a terrific chin and therefore think badly of those without. With the advances made in plastic surgery; you’d think the actress’s agent would have suggested slicing a bit off her bazoom and attaching it to her jaw line.
The flashback scene in the movie is particularly moronic. One character is an out of work actor sitting on a barstool talking to the other character, a journalist, about the famous Slim Keith, the dialogue is awful, but to the information is about as true as anything ever is. An unkempt character actor playing an unkempt character actor named William looks up at the narrator of the story, a perky actress playing girl-reporter, from the worn barstool and gestures to the seat beside him. He takes a long, contemplative haul on his cigarette, (his career is dead so he’s sucking drama from every moment).
“The first time I saw Sunny,” he smiles sardonically, no doubt realizing how many times those words had been spoken by many different people, “was at San Simeon, you know, the Hearst mansion. She was long, lanky and lovely.” He speaks like a movie detective in a forties flick, “She walked in to the foyer wearing khakis like crepe. Her blond streak kind of glinted in the sun. That was the strangest thing that blond streak, the rest of her hair was shiny light brown, but in the front she had this one gold hank of hair. Remember in Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Audrey Hepburn had that skunk stripe in her hair? That was a reference to Sunny. All the women thought she bleached it just to stand out, but back then that wasn’t her style.”
Marta, my maid who was watching it with me, and I snorted in unison. I ordered her to get up and make us some more martinis. I had no desire to view my life sober, after all I hadn’t lived it that way.
“How’d she get there? A 19-year-old from Wilshire Blvd. with no apparent connections and no starlet aspirations stays at the Hearst mansion for the weekend?” Girl-reporter interjects, doing her damnedest to register an intelligent glint in her eye.
Insightful girl-reporter then has a voice over. “One thing I’d learned about interviewing people nobody tells the same story as anybody else and nobody tells the same story twice – unless it’s a lie.”
“Bill Powell, I guess. They met at a hotel in Death Valley. No romance, just pals. Anyway Bill was the one who first called her Slim. This was in the thirties, Bill was huge. He’d been married to Carole Lombard, was engaged to Jean Harlow and had just begun the Thin Man Series with Myrna Loy. He was one of Hollywood’s leading men. Slim met him one day at their hotel. They started talking and remained buddies forever. Men just loved her, both as a woman and a friend. She was easy to be with and soft on the eyes.” Unkempt man talking again.
“So she was pretty sophisticated even then.”
Man laughs. “Yeah, Sunny was sophisticated. But not in that fake uppity way so many actresses were aping back then. More in the smooth way, like good Italian leather. She had the right answer for everyone. She didn’t blush, lose her cool, nothing fazed her. You know that old joke?”
Girl-reporter shakes her head and signals to the bartender for another round.
“The definition of sophistication: a guy walks in on his wife and her lover making love in his bed and he says to the lover, ‘Oh pardon me, feel free to continue.’”
Girl-reporter says “That’s the definition of sophistication.”
“No, the lover replies ‘Thank you I will.’ and he does. That’s the definition of sophistication.”
Girl laughs appreciatively. Man laughs appreciating being appreciated.
“That was Sunny. She’d continue, and then ask you to light her cigarette after.”
Marta and I looked at each other and dissolved into laughter. She switched off the television, and then carried over the pitcher and glasses.
“To think, Cecily spent a fortune on therapy trying to capture my essence. She simply needed cable.” I shook my head. Sipping the drink I nodded, “Good job.”
Marta smiled her thank you. “I wonder what they’ll say about Truman, he’s at least twice as famous.”
“Then they’ll make him out to be twice the shit.” I raised my glass for a refill. “Which, when you think about it, is only fair.”
***
My adventure began when I arrived at the Furnace Creek Inn, ‘a golden vision,’ as the actor William Powell later put it, driving up in my glamorous yoke of a car.
The car ride was treacherous. At first I loved every minute of it, every second I drove I felt lighter and more powerful, like I was a Goddess just awakening to her powers. On my journey, I discovered my lifelong passion: motion. It sounds corny by I liked the rush of the wind, the control of the direction, the anticipation of going without the responsibility of arriving. Most people, certainly Christian, my second husband, and Hemingway, even occasionally Tru attributed it to fear of boredom. So much for those supposed empaths. My love of motion, be it in conversation, travel or party-hopping had more to do with optimism - the certain knowledge that there was something extraordinary around the corner.
I made it out of L.A. fairly well, got turned around a couple of times near Johannesburg but eventually found my way to RT. 190. Luckily I got a flat before I hit 190. Because there were still plenty of kind gentlemanly gentlemen to help me, after that I would have been lost for sure. California has more mountain ranges than you can shake a slimy, possibly poisonous snake at. I had no idea and all of them seem deserted. There’s the Coso range, the Argus range, the Slate range, the Panamint range, the mind reels. Then I neared the Valley. I guess I pictured big sky and glorious scenery. I hadn’t really counted on the heat. Remember there were no air conditioners in ‘33. My lovely yoke of a car was feeling more like a fried egg. The last bit of the journey I must have finished off two gallons of water, and all I wanted to do was pee. Too shy to stop at the side of the road I kept on going straight through to the Furnace Creek Inn. I stopped a few minutes before pulling into the Inn to fix my hair and fashion my pert little beret on top of my head. I flung my broad-brimmed hat in the backseat and checked myself in my compact. I looked lovely. That’s the best part of being young, the effortlessness of beauty. One can be older and beautiful, but never with the same insouciance.
Bill Powell sidled up to the passenger side door of my car, “Hey sunny princess, that’s some fancy omelet you’re driving.”
I sighed, “Isn’t she extraordinary?” looking over my dusty chariot.
“Yes, she certainly is.” Powell responded looking me right in the eye.
I had to pee really badly. “Mr. Powell your dialogue needs work,” my cockiness was purely bladder-inspired, “My bags are in the back, sir, if you don’t mind.” I smiled wide.
Bill looked mildly astonished at my cheek, after all this man was not just a matinee idol, he was also two decades my senior. Still, he did as I asked - a useful lesson for a girl like me. I was desperate for the ladies room. So I swept up quickly to the front desk at Furnace Creek Inn with William Powell as my bell hop. I left him with my bags as I asked for directions to the powder room to freshen up. I didn’t even look back at him.
Relief, as they say, is only a tinkle away.
Well Hedda was right, I thought as I washed my hands. The stars are here. I took a long time washing my hands, because now that my immediate needs were taken care of I felt a little shy.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Table 2 - Where the Swells Sit chapter 2
My funeral was not as well attended, as it should have been. Bad timing really. What a difference a decade makes, actually twenty-two years, I’m so used to shaving years off my birth date I shave them off my death date automatically.
Now I have fans, all of us do, the beautiful Babe Paley, the sophisticated Gloria Guinness, that whore Pamela Harriman and even little bad girl Brahmin C.Z.Guest. Vogue actually did a story on her original style. Hah! What was original about her style she stole from me. The rest was just laziness remembered as intentional. She had the good fortune to live just long enough for people to notice.
If I died today it would be a media event, gay and straight designers – are there any decent straight designers really, certainly not any male ones – would be genuflecting at my coffin. Perhaps they would even have bothered to discover the truth of my death.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t have settled for that ghastly couch my daughter Cecily picked for me to be buried in. I shouldn’t have left the choice up to her; poor thing’s always been so fragile I wanted to empower her. Babe was the clever one; she left nothing to chance, not even her own funeral. The one day she could be guaranteed off from being ‘Babe Paley’ and still, she orchestrated it. Do you know she not only left all the details in order, including guest list and instructions for the eulogy co-authored by Betsy and yours truly, she actually penned two menus for her funeral lunch, one for fall/winter the other for spring/summer?
‘A beacon of perfection in an era of casual convenience,” That’s what Babe’s sister Betsy Whitney and I wrote. So true, and utterly beside the point. We meant it kindly, the ultimate tribute – instead it was a life sentence. Bill was her warden. His demands, his standards, his liaisons – I was only one of many – cancer killed her, but despair was the penultimate villain. The Times did a better job by her “…a gracious woman with a ready and warm smile. Her friends readily noted her sense of humor, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness.” Now, why didn’t we write that, we were the friends that readily noted her kindnesses. We loved her. In many ways, we did her as great a disservice as Truman. No I take that back, nobody did her as great a disserve as Truman Capote.
A pine box, I should have expressly asked for a pine box. Sets the tone - a good quality pine - but pine nonetheless, austere, self-effacing perhaps, and utterly irreverent. Especially now that I know that death doesn’t hurt, and tufted cushions are completely superfluous. Especially pink, polyester satin ones – really what was Cecily thinking? I loathe pink.
That’s exactly what she was thinking: Mother loathes pink. She was still completely pissed off at me. I died in the summer of 1983 at the age 66. Another decade would have made all the difference. The public rediscovered Truman’s swans and our legendary charm in the ‘90s. There would have been legions of fans at my funeral in the 90’s.
With all that therapy Cecily has since squandered her inheritance on – my ill-gotten gains - she would now be emotionally ready to lay me to rest in a more becoming fashion. She’d have to, since she’s traded on my name to become this generation’s, generation X or is it Y now - who knows - a perfectly ridiculous thing to call a generation anyway, utterly unromantic or telling. The Lost Generation, now that’s a tasty label. However, I’m digressing; Cecily has become the home decorator, in the manner of Sister Parish or Billy Baldwin, for Manhattan’s moneyed. She would now do something graceful, understated and a touch provocative. Not just something effusive and impressive, reminiscent of the Gambino crime family.
My murder on the other hand was exquisite.
Elegant and well-planned, it remains undetected. I don’t even blame my grim reaper for ending my life, I suffered no pain, he saw to that. It might have been revenge, but he wasn’t vengeful. And truly by the time he slipped into my apartment my body was barely sputtering.
I designed a lovely bathroom, white. Arctic snow. A pure, clean gray white. Imagine white absent of warmth, completely tiled – even the ceiling – if my maid Marta cursed the grout once if she cursed it a thousand times. If we create our own heaven – I’m still not sure – then we create our own hell too. Marta’s hell is a room with endless white tiles and endless grout.
They found me on my bathroom floor, arranged on the oversized terrycloth bath mat. Truman was the one who called for help. He popped by to bring me a present, one of his famous snakebite kits. Accidental overdose, the coroner deemed it. No surprise really, considering all the meds I was on, and of course, I was a lavish drunk, nobody denied that. Truman was questioned of course. Our falling out was famous. But he easily proved we’d started up a friendship again, ‘made our peace.’ I had visited his apartment in recent years, as his doorman later attested.
Tru created hundreds of these snakebite kits, and gave them to the significant in his life. He covered each box with bits of colored and metallic paper. Very clever things – some astonishingly pretty. He glued images he snipped from magazines and newspapers or even art books - he was terribly irreverent about his books, odd for a writer. Sort of cannibalistic. Tru considered this gift an honor. Mine was covered in yellow paste stones and jet beads.
Post-death I’m simply delighted with how pre-occupied people are with me, how my name has become an adjective for American style. ‘The original California girl,’ that’s what they call me. America needs us now more than ever, icons to her industry and self-importance. Proof that all that glitters is gold – high-end, high-brow and precious. We weren’t exactly Grande dames, but we sure as hell were great dames. Even that Harriman whore, she wasn’t American of course, though she did manage to win the American Ambassadorship to France. With her talents she assimilated quickly – tea and fellatio. It’s all in the steeping I understand.
I don’t see Pamela Harriman here, but I know she must be. The space is quite white, noticeably white, not eggshell or ivory, but stark, high noon white. Which is strange, because I’d always envisioned Hell red, however, the white is more disturbing, even suffocating. I can see nothing else. I wonder how long I will be here. I expected I’d run into all sorts of folks in the afterlife. Kind of like a gauzy Piccadilly Circus or Gare St. Lazare, where you eventually run into everyone you know. Perhaps they are all here, maybe my version of hell is being alone – Christ, I hope I was more complicated than that. Yes, I take the Lord’s name in vain whenever I want to now. I’m kind of like one of those Scottish Covenanters who believes because of predestination that whatever act they commit is okay because they are either chosen by God to be saved or going to Hell anyway.
Have you noticed something does not have to be true for most people to believe it? It doesn’t even have to be an outright lie; it just has to capture the imagination. I learned that in my life – imagination is more important than truth. Profound? Sorry, philosophy isn’t really my forte. Nothing is, at least nothing you could name.
I did nothing to earn the privileges of fame or fortune – nothing real except capture people’s imagination – but I’ll be remembered anyway. A fair comment on the 20th century really.
I wasn’t the most attractive – that would be Babe – though I was pretty damn gorgeous. 5’9” (at death I measured 5’7” – too much bourbon, not enough Goddamn milk), skinny, skinny, skinny, with legs like muscled straws and brush loads of gold-colored hair marked by a platinum skunk-stripe right in the front, around my face. That skunk stripe was my claim to fame, completely natural, at least initially. Bazaar editor Carmel Snow rhapsodized about it, and my ability to wear clothes well. But as any mannequin will tell you, that gift has little to do with mythical style and everything to do with long, visible bones.
I would hate to be a young woman right now, too exhausting. All that jabber about having it all or not having it all. Terribly unattractive. Why should the ‘all’ involve a work ethic? Tiresome feminists. Anybody can work. It takes a lot of personal style to avoid it. Being interesting is a far greater accomplishment than reading a balance sheet. Who wants to talk about balance sheets? The only things worth talking about are people and art, after that it’s just administration.
I’ve been damn lucky. I met most of the celebrated folks of the century. Those I didn’t meet were either pricks or abstainers. Not that I minded the pricks, long as they were lively. Abstainers, however, I have no use for.
I just can’t figure out whom they are abstaining for? God? How enormously arrogant to assume God is watching their petty little sacrifices. Banal goodness seems both smug and fearful. God people in general strike me as a nasty lot, loving thy neighbor’s dirty little undies. I’m pretty sure they don’t meet St. Peter either. Then again, I didn’t get to meet him. Hell, unlike Walmart has no greeters. Otherwise I suspect there are similarities.
God-people and I parted ways when I was a child. I discovered their ever-ready bromides offered little comfort for real pain.
That being said, you should have a sense of where I came from – if only so you can be suitably impressed by where I went.
Why now? Why tell you about me twenty-two years later? Because you don’t know me really and you should. You want to. Your need to know me is why there are two, not one, but two Truman Capote films out. It’s why lovely buttery leather gloves are back in fashion for daytime, why brooches and garnets are enjoying a renaissance. It’s why my friend, society photographer Slim Aarons, that lanky, tall drink of water, re-released his book A Wonderful Life, a collection of photographs of the beautiful people from six decades and was able to sell it for $75. Seventy-five dollars. Outrageous. In 1948 Clark Gable filled my hotel room with flowers for $10; took me to a scrumptious dinner in New York City that I, of course would never finish, for $2.50; successfully seduced me in his full-floor terraced apartment at 57th and Park rented for a mere $63 a month.
Up until now I have been only a footnote in Truman Capote’s life story. Now I want him for a footnote to mine. My name is Abigail Gross Hayden Marcus, but you can call me Sunny.
Now I have fans, all of us do, the beautiful Babe Paley, the sophisticated Gloria Guinness, that whore Pamela Harriman and even little bad girl Brahmin C.Z.Guest. Vogue actually did a story on her original style. Hah! What was original about her style she stole from me. The rest was just laziness remembered as intentional. She had the good fortune to live just long enough for people to notice.
If I died today it would be a media event, gay and straight designers – are there any decent straight designers really, certainly not any male ones – would be genuflecting at my coffin. Perhaps they would even have bothered to discover the truth of my death.
In retrospect, I wouldn’t have settled for that ghastly couch my daughter Cecily picked for me to be buried in. I shouldn’t have left the choice up to her; poor thing’s always been so fragile I wanted to empower her. Babe was the clever one; she left nothing to chance, not even her own funeral. The one day she could be guaranteed off from being ‘Babe Paley’ and still, she orchestrated it. Do you know she not only left all the details in order, including guest list and instructions for the eulogy co-authored by Betsy and yours truly, she actually penned two menus for her funeral lunch, one for fall/winter the other for spring/summer?
‘A beacon of perfection in an era of casual convenience,” That’s what Babe’s sister Betsy Whitney and I wrote. So true, and utterly beside the point. We meant it kindly, the ultimate tribute – instead it was a life sentence. Bill was her warden. His demands, his standards, his liaisons – I was only one of many – cancer killed her, but despair was the penultimate villain. The Times did a better job by her “…a gracious woman with a ready and warm smile. Her friends readily noted her sense of humor, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness.” Now, why didn’t we write that, we were the friends that readily noted her kindnesses. We loved her. In many ways, we did her as great a disservice as Truman. No I take that back, nobody did her as great a disserve as Truman Capote.
A pine box, I should have expressly asked for a pine box. Sets the tone - a good quality pine - but pine nonetheless, austere, self-effacing perhaps, and utterly irreverent. Especially now that I know that death doesn’t hurt, and tufted cushions are completely superfluous. Especially pink, polyester satin ones – really what was Cecily thinking? I loathe pink.
That’s exactly what she was thinking: Mother loathes pink. She was still completely pissed off at me. I died in the summer of 1983 at the age 66. Another decade would have made all the difference. The public rediscovered Truman’s swans and our legendary charm in the ‘90s. There would have been legions of fans at my funeral in the 90’s.
With all that therapy Cecily has since squandered her inheritance on – my ill-gotten gains - she would now be emotionally ready to lay me to rest in a more becoming fashion. She’d have to, since she’s traded on my name to become this generation’s, generation X or is it Y now - who knows - a perfectly ridiculous thing to call a generation anyway, utterly unromantic or telling. The Lost Generation, now that’s a tasty label. However, I’m digressing; Cecily has become the home decorator, in the manner of Sister Parish or Billy Baldwin, for Manhattan’s moneyed. She would now do something graceful, understated and a touch provocative. Not just something effusive and impressive, reminiscent of the Gambino crime family.
My murder on the other hand was exquisite.
Elegant and well-planned, it remains undetected. I don’t even blame my grim reaper for ending my life, I suffered no pain, he saw to that. It might have been revenge, but he wasn’t vengeful. And truly by the time he slipped into my apartment my body was barely sputtering.
I designed a lovely bathroom, white. Arctic snow. A pure, clean gray white. Imagine white absent of warmth, completely tiled – even the ceiling – if my maid Marta cursed the grout once if she cursed it a thousand times. If we create our own heaven – I’m still not sure – then we create our own hell too. Marta’s hell is a room with endless white tiles and endless grout.
They found me on my bathroom floor, arranged on the oversized terrycloth bath mat. Truman was the one who called for help. He popped by to bring me a present, one of his famous snakebite kits. Accidental overdose, the coroner deemed it. No surprise really, considering all the meds I was on, and of course, I was a lavish drunk, nobody denied that. Truman was questioned of course. Our falling out was famous. But he easily proved we’d started up a friendship again, ‘made our peace.’ I had visited his apartment in recent years, as his doorman later attested.
Tru created hundreds of these snakebite kits, and gave them to the significant in his life. He covered each box with bits of colored and metallic paper. Very clever things – some astonishingly pretty. He glued images he snipped from magazines and newspapers or even art books - he was terribly irreverent about his books, odd for a writer. Sort of cannibalistic. Tru considered this gift an honor. Mine was covered in yellow paste stones and jet beads.
Post-death I’m simply delighted with how pre-occupied people are with me, how my name has become an adjective for American style. ‘The original California girl,’ that’s what they call me. America needs us now more than ever, icons to her industry and self-importance. Proof that all that glitters is gold – high-end, high-brow and precious. We weren’t exactly Grande dames, but we sure as hell were great dames. Even that Harriman whore, she wasn’t American of course, though she did manage to win the American Ambassadorship to France. With her talents she assimilated quickly – tea and fellatio. It’s all in the steeping I understand.
I don’t see Pamela Harriman here, but I know she must be. The space is quite white, noticeably white, not eggshell or ivory, but stark, high noon white. Which is strange, because I’d always envisioned Hell red, however, the white is more disturbing, even suffocating. I can see nothing else. I wonder how long I will be here. I expected I’d run into all sorts of folks in the afterlife. Kind of like a gauzy Piccadilly Circus or Gare St. Lazare, where you eventually run into everyone you know. Perhaps they are all here, maybe my version of hell is being alone – Christ, I hope I was more complicated than that. Yes, I take the Lord’s name in vain whenever I want to now. I’m kind of like one of those Scottish Covenanters who believes because of predestination that whatever act they commit is okay because they are either chosen by God to be saved or going to Hell anyway.
Have you noticed something does not have to be true for most people to believe it? It doesn’t even have to be an outright lie; it just has to capture the imagination. I learned that in my life – imagination is more important than truth. Profound? Sorry, philosophy isn’t really my forte. Nothing is, at least nothing you could name.
I did nothing to earn the privileges of fame or fortune – nothing real except capture people’s imagination – but I’ll be remembered anyway. A fair comment on the 20th century really.
I wasn’t the most attractive – that would be Babe – though I was pretty damn gorgeous. 5’9” (at death I measured 5’7” – too much bourbon, not enough Goddamn milk), skinny, skinny, skinny, with legs like muscled straws and brush loads of gold-colored hair marked by a platinum skunk-stripe right in the front, around my face. That skunk stripe was my claim to fame, completely natural, at least initially. Bazaar editor Carmel Snow rhapsodized about it, and my ability to wear clothes well. But as any mannequin will tell you, that gift has little to do with mythical style and everything to do with long, visible bones.
I would hate to be a young woman right now, too exhausting. All that jabber about having it all or not having it all. Terribly unattractive. Why should the ‘all’ involve a work ethic? Tiresome feminists. Anybody can work. It takes a lot of personal style to avoid it. Being interesting is a far greater accomplishment than reading a balance sheet. Who wants to talk about balance sheets? The only things worth talking about are people and art, after that it’s just administration.
I’ve been damn lucky. I met most of the celebrated folks of the century. Those I didn’t meet were either pricks or abstainers. Not that I minded the pricks, long as they were lively. Abstainers, however, I have no use for.
I just can’t figure out whom they are abstaining for? God? How enormously arrogant to assume God is watching their petty little sacrifices. Banal goodness seems both smug and fearful. God people in general strike me as a nasty lot, loving thy neighbor’s dirty little undies. I’m pretty sure they don’t meet St. Peter either. Then again, I didn’t get to meet him. Hell, unlike Walmart has no greeters. Otherwise I suspect there are similarities.
God-people and I parted ways when I was a child. I discovered their ever-ready bromides offered little comfort for real pain.
That being said, you should have a sense of where I came from – if only so you can be suitably impressed by where I went.
Why now? Why tell you about me twenty-two years later? Because you don’t know me really and you should. You want to. Your need to know me is why there are two, not one, but two Truman Capote films out. It’s why lovely buttery leather gloves are back in fashion for daytime, why brooches and garnets are enjoying a renaissance. It’s why my friend, society photographer Slim Aarons, that lanky, tall drink of water, re-released his book A Wonderful Life, a collection of photographs of the beautiful people from six decades and was able to sell it for $75. Seventy-five dollars. Outrageous. In 1948 Clark Gable filled my hotel room with flowers for $10; took me to a scrumptious dinner in New York City that I, of course would never finish, for $2.50; successfully seduced me in his full-floor terraced apartment at 57th and Park rented for a mere $63 a month.
Up until now I have been only a footnote in Truman Capote’s life story. Now I want him for a footnote to mine. My name is Abigail Gross Hayden Marcus, but you can call me Sunny.
Friday, February 9, 2007
The Bar - Adelaide's corner
The old coots are in this week and they're all a twitter. Their flapping about the doings in Gramercy Park. You all probably heard something about it - a feud, a fish, a garden, a and a hippy. Come join them in a sherry neat.
Table 3 - Yummy Mummies seeking libation (liberation, whatever)
I have two children, one is perfect and the other has personality. Lest the former statement make you think I favor one over the other, think again, perfection can be grating and personality exhausting, but nonetheless I overvalue the little darlings exceedingly, and that’s that. There ends the bio information. Since is a column about Motherhood with a capital “M” as the title indicates, what further information do you need? It’s not like it’s about me anyway, right? I gave up that little luxury about seven years ago when my blue-eyed boy, also known as he-who-must-be-catered to, came along with his younger, though more powerful acolyte, she-who-must-be-feared.
He-who-must-be-catered-to was a picture of collagen-plumped perfection when he was six months old. Blond sticky-uppy hair, pink bracelets of fat circled his wrists and ankles and glorious blue eyes I could stare into for hours. Okay not really hours, more like minutes before I needed to change his diaper, prepare a bottle, take his temperature (just in case) or wash another load of precious, tiny white T-shirts. I was one of those moms that bought into the whole Gap version of babyhood. No diaper bags for me, instead I had my funky leather backpack, no stupid bear outfits for my puddin’, instead he needed clean white-T’s that displayed rather than detracted from his baby beauty. It took me five minutes to discover that spit-up is yellow on tiny white T-shirts and baby bottles – no matter what the brand – leak all over funky leather backpacks.
Besides my misguided attempts at hipness early in motherhood, I settled into stay-at-home parenting fairly well - mostly because I was still freelancing as a journalist. I still had an outlet, as they call it. The word is backwards, it should be letout, as in ‘let me out.’ That’s what work did for me, it let me out of mommydom for a welcome few minutes. Then came She-who-must-be-feared. Unlike her older, benign brother, she did not giggle impishly or greet the world with a grin the moment she awoke. Instead she seemed to know, even at birth that fourteen months earlier her place had been usurped by a mere scrap of a boy and she would never truly get the all the attention she so richly deserved. Life as I knew it was over. I don’t think people with one child ever truly experience parenthood at its most challenging. At least I didn’t. With one child, I was still able to carry on a conversation with, if not wit, at least focus. With one child I could get my legs waxed while reading him a story and he actually sat still. With one child I could stack some blocks at my feet, plunk a sippy cup beside them and type. Type for sometimes a half-hour. I know, some of you are horrified that I could ignore my precious little sweet’ums for 30 minutes at a time, but it was delightful. Frankly, I think he needed time off from my intense mommying. Don’t worry though; my thirty blessed minutes of uninterrupted typing did not last once the princess arrived.
People with three children commented to me that it was their third child threw them over the edge. Before then they could keep a grip on their lives. I guess my edge was much closer. My second bundle of joy - a mere fourteen months after the first, was enough to confound me completely. Good-bye spare thirty minutes, good-bye typing, good-bye any thought but the ones concerning basic human needs, theirs, mine, the dogs or my husbands (yes, in that order too, sorry honey). It wasn’t here that my Extreme Motherhood started, but it was here that I can see from my vantage point now, seven years later, there was no turning back. Since then everything has become about the chillun’ – their schools, their sports, their violins, their social life (are they socializing too much? Do they need more alone time? Do they have enough friends? Do they have too many? Are they really well-adjusted? What am I doing wrong?). My once perfectly competent brain set to work to make them Bionic children, custom-designing their lives so that they will learn to be kind, intelligent, athletic (but sportsman-like), artistic, musical children whom everyone will love and admire and admit into their exclusive schools, leagues, clubs, groups and (God willing) Ivy League colleges. Sound familiar? If so, you need help, we all need help. No child should live with this level of scrutiny - and no parent should administer it. more next week.
He-who-must-be-catered-to was a picture of collagen-plumped perfection when he was six months old. Blond sticky-uppy hair, pink bracelets of fat circled his wrists and ankles and glorious blue eyes I could stare into for hours. Okay not really hours, more like minutes before I needed to change his diaper, prepare a bottle, take his temperature (just in case) or wash another load of precious, tiny white T-shirts. I was one of those moms that bought into the whole Gap version of babyhood. No diaper bags for me, instead I had my funky leather backpack, no stupid bear outfits for my puddin’, instead he needed clean white-T’s that displayed rather than detracted from his baby beauty. It took me five minutes to discover that spit-up is yellow on tiny white T-shirts and baby bottles – no matter what the brand – leak all over funky leather backpacks.
Besides my misguided attempts at hipness early in motherhood, I settled into stay-at-home parenting fairly well - mostly because I was still freelancing as a journalist. I still had an outlet, as they call it. The word is backwards, it should be letout, as in ‘let me out.’ That’s what work did for me, it let me out of mommydom for a welcome few minutes. Then came She-who-must-be-feared. Unlike her older, benign brother, she did not giggle impishly or greet the world with a grin the moment she awoke. Instead she seemed to know, even at birth that fourteen months earlier her place had been usurped by a mere scrap of a boy and she would never truly get the all the attention she so richly deserved. Life as I knew it was over. I don’t think people with one child ever truly experience parenthood at its most challenging. At least I didn’t. With one child, I was still able to carry on a conversation with, if not wit, at least focus. With one child I could get my legs waxed while reading him a story and he actually sat still. With one child I could stack some blocks at my feet, plunk a sippy cup beside them and type. Type for sometimes a half-hour. I know, some of you are horrified that I could ignore my precious little sweet’ums for 30 minutes at a time, but it was delightful. Frankly, I think he needed time off from my intense mommying. Don’t worry though; my thirty blessed minutes of uninterrupted typing did not last once the princess arrived.
People with three children commented to me that it was their third child threw them over the edge. Before then they could keep a grip on their lives. I guess my edge was much closer. My second bundle of joy - a mere fourteen months after the first, was enough to confound me completely. Good-bye spare thirty minutes, good-bye typing, good-bye any thought but the ones concerning basic human needs, theirs, mine, the dogs or my husbands (yes, in that order too, sorry honey). It wasn’t here that my Extreme Motherhood started, but it was here that I can see from my vantage point now, seven years later, there was no turning back. Since then everything has become about the chillun’ – their schools, their sports, their violins, their social life (are they socializing too much? Do they need more alone time? Do they have enough friends? Do they have too many? Are they really well-adjusted? What am I doing wrong?). My once perfectly competent brain set to work to make them Bionic children, custom-designing their lives so that they will learn to be kind, intelligent, athletic (but sportsman-like), artistic, musical children whom everyone will love and admire and admit into their exclusive schools, leagues, clubs, groups and (God willing) Ivy League colleges. Sound familiar? If so, you need help, we all need help. No child should live with this level of scrutiny - and no parent should administer it. more next week.
Table 1 - The Fashionable Seats
The Meteoric Rise and Subsequent Demise of the Modern Girl
April 4, 2004, Toronto, Ontario
Violet sailed through the sanctuary anteroom looking fabulous, or should I say pretty? Pretty is the new fabulous. Her eyes scanned the crowd for the rest of us. She was dressed in navy. Pick your palette, stick to it and you’ll never falter. Her handbag and high-heeled boots were the exact shade of her narrow wool skirt. Monochromatic dressing provides visual relief, letting you dominate your look. I watched her for a bit before catching her eye. She was still lovely, if less polished. Her skin had thinned exposing the angles of her cheekbones more clearly. A slick of lip gloss was the only reference I could detect of her beauty editor past. She stilled briefly, glancing at the closed coffin in front. I felt rather than saw her quick intake of breath. She resumed her search for us. I raised my hand in a discreet wave. She saw it and looked at me, her expression warmed. Suzanne spotted her next and rushed over to hug her. Leslee and Nat clustered around. I waited my turn; after all, it had already been five years and the last words we’d spoken were angry.
I stepped forward as she grabbed at my hand. “Ton, Christ, this is like the opening scene in The Big Chill . . .”
“Except no William Hurt.” I responded.
“Hmm, hurt me, he was hot.” Nat agreed.
“Here everyone is shallower, but better dressed,” Leslee interjected.
“Speak for yourself, I feel positively dowdy in this suit. It’s two seasons old,” Suzanne responded, then added with a raised brow and fashionistas authority, “Still, it’s more respectful and funereal than an up-to-the-minute ensemb.” She looked at Nat. “It’s ghoulish buy a new outfit for a suicide.”
Nat’s a gorgeous French\Asian fusion, who would look hot in burlap, not that she’d ever wear less than designer ready-to-wear. She clicked her David’s heels on the parquet floor, and whispered, “Fuck off, I’d buy a new outfit for my own suicide, why not hers?” loudly. We all shrank visibly. She smoothed the fur trim of her dark chocolate suit and in a moderate whisper said, “Anyway, we’re not attending the suicide, it’s the aftermath, everyone is here.”
Violet smiled, falling into her old glib way of talking. Irreverence never stops being fashionable. “Ahh, the job angle, sweet. I can see the header now: Multi-tasking in The New Millennium, ‘When attending a funeral for a colleague, always look your best. The well-turned out attendee not only shows her respect for the departed, but impresses potential employers saddled with unexpected vacancies.’”
Leslee, Suzanne and I snickered, Nat just glowered. “Mock away ladies, I am at least more honest than the lot of you. Perpetua had a great job. And I, for one, would not mind replacing her.”
We circled in to shush her, as if at a dance. Nat rarely bothered to lower her voice on any occasion.
Suzanne poked her finger at Nat’s fur trim angrily, “Perpetua did not have a great job you twit, she was a great editor, our editor for a long time.” Suzanne was, as usual in a red button mood.
“Yeah, till she ditched us.” Leslee interrupted.
Suzanne continued, ignoring Leslee. “She would have a great job wherever she was because she would make it into a great job, that’s the difference between people who work for magazines and people who are the magazine.” Leslee started humming ‘O Canada.’
“You all have matured so much since MW,” I smiled at Violet. Modern Woman was the magazine we worked on over six years ago. I held myself separately because I’d been out of the business since maternity leave with my first born. Later that year we moved to Virginia, so my contact had been infrequent at best.
Violet nodded, “How many vultures do you think are here?”
“You mean, besides are own nest full?” She nodded again, “I dunno,” I replied, “Perhaps five hundred. From what I can tell it’s the entire magazine industry.
“All job hunters?” Violet smiled affectionately at Nat. Nat glared back.
“No,” Suzanne replied emphatically, “We all want to know why. Isn’t that why you flew back?” Suzanne raised an over-plucked eyebrow in Violet’s direction. Never pluck from the top when shaping your brows, angle from beneath to avoid the dreaded bald brow look.
Violet frowned and admonished Suzanne lightly, “I flew back to attend the funeral of someone who passed a lot of freelance work my way when I was starting out, who was my mentor, and who I spent endless hours of overtime with and apparently never really got to know.” then she looked at me and curled her lips to the side, “Why did she do it?”
I didn’t know. Suzanne was right, pious rationalizations aside, that was why we were here, that and of course, we were media, and she was media, which made this a media event. Perpetua was easily the most successful magazine editor in Canada, the Babe Paley of style and decorum, elegantly pretty and married to a surgeon, she had accessorized her 5000 square foot Rosedale home with four beautiful, blond girls, 5, 7, 9 and 10. The only odd step she’d made before this was spearheading the creation of Modern Woman. It was not the high end glossy title that most insiders would have assumed the high-end glossy Perpetua would invent. But then again, she bailed when the advertisers did and righted that error by producing Fashion Gate, a sexy oversized fashion/gossip vehicle more in line with everyone’s expectations.
I looked around. Not surprisingly the crowd was subdued. When faced with such earnestness as suicide, these people, paid for their frothy phrases, bon mots and ironic pith had little to say to each other. The absence of irony left them little language at all.
“Shit, Tonya. They’re here.” I looked up at Violet, she was a good six-inches taller that me, and in those boots she might as well be Magic Johnson. I followed her gaze and saw Perpetua’s girls file into the front pew. My chest tightened. My own little girl was now five, very blond, and exceedingly beloved. Leslee grabbed my hand, her little girl was eight. Suzanne and Rick had been submitting to I.V.F. for two years with no success. Nat and Violet remained childless by choice. Still, it was a bitch to see.
“Poor babies,” Suzanne whispered. Tears were already running down her cheeks. The hormones they pummeled her with each month to boost her fertility were taking a toll on her emotions, her marriage and of course, the people could let down her guard with, us.
“What the fuck was she thinking?” Even Nat was pissed. The kids really were gorgeous. I’d seen artful black and whites of them in Perpetua’s office many times, but in color they were startling. Blond with glacial blue-eyes, like Perpetua herself, they had a surreal quality of retouched perfection. More Cyan for the eyes, the eyes are the prime real estate of a cover.
“Never mind her, what is he thinking?” Violet gestured to the husband or widower, now, I guess. “Why drag them into this? Couldn’t they have avoided this public-ness?”
“They are going to speak too.” Leslee said quietly. “The three oldest are going to recite Pet’s favorite poetry. They’ve been practicing for weeks.”
Nat turned sharply to face Les, “She just did it five days ago.”
Leslee nodded, “She told them it would be their mother’s day present for her.”
My stomach felt like it had folded inside itself.
Suzanne motioned for us to sit down. The minister now stood at the front of the church. The service was to begin. We settled onto the cushioned pew. The older churches have all the perks. In my parents 1950’s Anglican Church everything was designed around blond wood and discomfort. St. James was a stunning cathedral built by Italian craftsmen nearly a century before - ancient in Canadian terms. Though Pet was a Catholic she spent as much time at St. James as anywhere else. She chose it no doubt, because of its central casting gravitas and elegance, the church stood disdainfully on King Street East, opposite the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency. A multi-taskers dream locale, Perpetua could meet with advertisers and flip a quick Hail-Mary on the way back to the office. Still it was Catholicism that suited Pet, impossibly high standards, abundant accessories. She had a different rosary for every business trip. A thought occurred to me.
“Hey I thought suicide was a Catholic no no?” I whispered to Leslee, who seemed the best informed of the five of us.
She shrugged, “That’s why were in an Anglican church – Catholic-light.”
A well-fed priest intoned from the altar, “Let us pray.”
read more next week
April 4, 2004, Toronto, Ontario
Violet sailed through the sanctuary anteroom looking fabulous, or should I say pretty? Pretty is the new fabulous. Her eyes scanned the crowd for the rest of us. She was dressed in navy. Pick your palette, stick to it and you’ll never falter. Her handbag and high-heeled boots were the exact shade of her narrow wool skirt. Monochromatic dressing provides visual relief, letting you dominate your look. I watched her for a bit before catching her eye. She was still lovely, if less polished. Her skin had thinned exposing the angles of her cheekbones more clearly. A slick of lip gloss was the only reference I could detect of her beauty editor past. She stilled briefly, glancing at the closed coffin in front. I felt rather than saw her quick intake of breath. She resumed her search for us. I raised my hand in a discreet wave. She saw it and looked at me, her expression warmed. Suzanne spotted her next and rushed over to hug her. Leslee and Nat clustered around. I waited my turn; after all, it had already been five years and the last words we’d spoken were angry.
I stepped forward as she grabbed at my hand. “Ton, Christ, this is like the opening scene in The Big Chill . . .”
“Except no William Hurt.” I responded.
“Hmm, hurt me, he was hot.” Nat agreed.
“Here everyone is shallower, but better dressed,” Leslee interjected.
“Speak for yourself, I feel positively dowdy in this suit. It’s two seasons old,” Suzanne responded, then added with a raised brow and fashionistas authority, “Still, it’s more respectful and funereal than an up-to-the-minute ensemb.” She looked at Nat. “It’s ghoulish buy a new outfit for a suicide.”
Nat’s a gorgeous French\Asian fusion, who would look hot in burlap, not that she’d ever wear less than designer ready-to-wear. She clicked her David’s heels on the parquet floor, and whispered, “Fuck off, I’d buy a new outfit for my own suicide, why not hers?” loudly. We all shrank visibly. She smoothed the fur trim of her dark chocolate suit and in a moderate whisper said, “Anyway, we’re not attending the suicide, it’s the aftermath, everyone is here.”
Violet smiled, falling into her old glib way of talking. Irreverence never stops being fashionable. “Ahh, the job angle, sweet. I can see the header now: Multi-tasking in The New Millennium, ‘When attending a funeral for a colleague, always look your best. The well-turned out attendee not only shows her respect for the departed, but impresses potential employers saddled with unexpected vacancies.’”
Leslee, Suzanne and I snickered, Nat just glowered. “Mock away ladies, I am at least more honest than the lot of you. Perpetua had a great job. And I, for one, would not mind replacing her.”
We circled in to shush her, as if at a dance. Nat rarely bothered to lower her voice on any occasion.
Suzanne poked her finger at Nat’s fur trim angrily, “Perpetua did not have a great job you twit, she was a great editor, our editor for a long time.” Suzanne was, as usual in a red button mood.
“Yeah, till she ditched us.” Leslee interrupted.
Suzanne continued, ignoring Leslee. “She would have a great job wherever she was because she would make it into a great job, that’s the difference between people who work for magazines and people who are the magazine.” Leslee started humming ‘O Canada.’
“You all have matured so much since MW,” I smiled at Violet. Modern Woman was the magazine we worked on over six years ago. I held myself separately because I’d been out of the business since maternity leave with my first born. Later that year we moved to Virginia, so my contact had been infrequent at best.
Violet nodded, “How many vultures do you think are here?”
“You mean, besides are own nest full?” She nodded again, “I dunno,” I replied, “Perhaps five hundred. From what I can tell it’s the entire magazine industry.
“All job hunters?” Violet smiled affectionately at Nat. Nat glared back.
“No,” Suzanne replied emphatically, “We all want to know why. Isn’t that why you flew back?” Suzanne raised an over-plucked eyebrow in Violet’s direction. Never pluck from the top when shaping your brows, angle from beneath to avoid the dreaded bald brow look.
Violet frowned and admonished Suzanne lightly, “I flew back to attend the funeral of someone who passed a lot of freelance work my way when I was starting out, who was my mentor, and who I spent endless hours of overtime with and apparently never really got to know.” then she looked at me and curled her lips to the side, “Why did she do it?”
I didn’t know. Suzanne was right, pious rationalizations aside, that was why we were here, that and of course, we were media, and she was media, which made this a media event. Perpetua was easily the most successful magazine editor in Canada, the Babe Paley of style and decorum, elegantly pretty and married to a surgeon, she had accessorized her 5000 square foot Rosedale home with four beautiful, blond girls, 5, 7, 9 and 10. The only odd step she’d made before this was spearheading the creation of Modern Woman. It was not the high end glossy title that most insiders would have assumed the high-end glossy Perpetua would invent. But then again, she bailed when the advertisers did and righted that error by producing Fashion Gate, a sexy oversized fashion/gossip vehicle more in line with everyone’s expectations.
I looked around. Not surprisingly the crowd was subdued. When faced with such earnestness as suicide, these people, paid for their frothy phrases, bon mots and ironic pith had little to say to each other. The absence of irony left them little language at all.
“Shit, Tonya. They’re here.” I looked up at Violet, she was a good six-inches taller that me, and in those boots she might as well be Magic Johnson. I followed her gaze and saw Perpetua’s girls file into the front pew. My chest tightened. My own little girl was now five, very blond, and exceedingly beloved. Leslee grabbed my hand, her little girl was eight. Suzanne and Rick had been submitting to I.V.F. for two years with no success. Nat and Violet remained childless by choice. Still, it was a bitch to see.
“Poor babies,” Suzanne whispered. Tears were already running down her cheeks. The hormones they pummeled her with each month to boost her fertility were taking a toll on her emotions, her marriage and of course, the people could let down her guard with, us.
“What the fuck was she thinking?” Even Nat was pissed. The kids really were gorgeous. I’d seen artful black and whites of them in Perpetua’s office many times, but in color they were startling. Blond with glacial blue-eyes, like Perpetua herself, they had a surreal quality of retouched perfection. More Cyan for the eyes, the eyes are the prime real estate of a cover.
“Never mind her, what is he thinking?” Violet gestured to the husband or widower, now, I guess. “Why drag them into this? Couldn’t they have avoided this public-ness?”
“They are going to speak too.” Leslee said quietly. “The three oldest are going to recite Pet’s favorite poetry. They’ve been practicing for weeks.”
Nat turned sharply to face Les, “She just did it five days ago.”
Leslee nodded, “She told them it would be their mother’s day present for her.”
My stomach felt like it had folded inside itself.
Suzanne motioned for us to sit down. The minister now stood at the front of the church. The service was to begin. We settled onto the cushioned pew. The older churches have all the perks. In my parents 1950’s Anglican Church everything was designed around blond wood and discomfort. St. James was a stunning cathedral built by Italian craftsmen nearly a century before - ancient in Canadian terms. Though Pet was a Catholic she spent as much time at St. James as anywhere else. She chose it no doubt, because of its central casting gravitas and elegance, the church stood disdainfully on King Street East, opposite the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency. A multi-taskers dream locale, Perpetua could meet with advertisers and flip a quick Hail-Mary on the way back to the office. Still it was Catholicism that suited Pet, impossibly high standards, abundant accessories. She had a different rosary for every business trip. A thought occurred to me.
“Hey I thought suicide was a Catholic no no?” I whispered to Leslee, who seemed the best informed of the five of us.
She shrugged, “That’s why were in an Anglican church – Catholic-light.”
A well-fed priest intoned from the altar, “Let us pray.”
read more next week
Table 2 - Where the Swells Sit
Prologue
“Sunny, wait! Stop!” Babe dashed after me, her two-inch day heels clattered on Fifth. I breakfasted at a café on Museum mile across the park from my apartment. Knowing my routine, she caught me just as I was marching off, clasping Esquire in hand.
I whirled to face her. “That two-bit fucking little shit. That goddamn worm. Did you read this piece of filth?” I shouted. People quickly walked by, their eyes averted, not stopping to inquire why this lunatic in Ferragamos is berating the lovely Mrs. Paley.
“Where are you going?” She breathed heavily, when she reached me.
“To shove his words back where they belong, down his own goddamn throat.” I was so furious I was giving myself a headache. I reached to my forehead and rubbed my temples. “He is nothing but a back-stabbing cunt.”
Babe winced. I knew she loathed that word, but dammit she was too calm and collected for my taste. “Did you even read it?” I shouted.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “This morning, just like you.” Her calmness was affecting me. She had that wonderful ability to smother anxiety with determined complacency. I looked at her more closely. The lovely Mrs. Paley looked disheveled. Not by a normal persons standards of course, but remember, Babe operated at a heavenly zenith few mortals could attain, even now, at nearly sixty years old. Yet, today, her lipstick bled into the cracks around her mouth, obviously unrefreshed since first application, her nose was shiny and her hair slightly flat on one side. Even with the advent of the cancer that was slowly killing her, she had never appeared so vulnerable.
“You should be in bed.” I replied.
“I had to see you. To find out. . .” She left her sentence unfinished.
“Has Bill seen it?” I choked the words out. La Côte Basque, 1965 laid out very clearly my relationship with him and his extensive philandering ways.
“No.” Her gloved hands were shaking. “Why are you so angry?” She looked directly into my eyes, but her face was unreadable.
I gritted my teeth, “I am always angry at people I am about to sue.” She put her hand on my forearm.
“Please can we go back to your apartment? I need to ask you something.” Her façade looked close to cracking. Her eyes were glassy with tears. I wondered whether I should just take her back to her apartment. She really didn’t look well. Instead, I nodded, weary, tucking her hand beneath my arm and we hailed a cab to my building. Smiling to my doorman we clicked along the marble foyer to the elevator. The doors met with a whisper. My thoughts were clanging so loudly, I physically shook my head. Babe looked at me strangely. What was I going to say to her? I could only deny. It was the kindest response. I’d say our little Tru-Love had been overcome by a monumental meanness of spirit, enabling him to skewer us before the entire world.
We padded into my apartment. I headed straight for the bar. I didn’t give Babe a chance to wave me off. I poured orange juice into my crystal pitcher and doused it with vodka. Carrying a tray over to the ottoman I sat down. She took the highball glass I offered and asked again, “What are you so angry about?”
I snatched my offensive copy of Esquire from the table and read aloud. “’Lady Coolbirth’ a ‘big breezy peppy broad’ in her forties grew up in the west, her latest husband is a rich English knight.” I paused, still floored at his audacity. “That is me.”
“Yes I suppose it is. And the girl is of course Ann Woodward. Elsie is going to die after all her efforts; why would he resurrect it now?” Babe shook her head in disbelief, looking to me for an answer.
My phone rang. I ignored it. Elsie Woodward was Ann Woodward’s mother-in-law and a pillar of New York society. Babe was right, all of Elsie’s efforts to protect the family name and her grandchildren by pretending that Ann had accidentally shot her husband, Elsie’s son, were now in vain, thanks to Truman. He’d exposed the murder, Ann’s sordid past and her bigamous marriage to the Woodward scion. The phone rang again. I moved to pick it up. Babe placed her hand over the phone to stop me. Her eyes were wide and very dark.
“What I want to know, Sunny, is who the man is?”
I took a deep breath before responding.
The story begins with Lady Coolbirth, yours truly, being stood up by the Duchess of Windsor for lunch at La Côte Basque. Spotting her friend, the gossipy writer P.B. Jones, she grabs him to partner her at one of Henri’s sought-after front tables. Lady Coolbirth felt particularly chatty that afternoon, because she expounded on every rarefied patron who passed their table. It was an exemplary afternoon. That group included Babe and Betsy, the Bouvier sisters, Gloria Vanderbilt, Carol Matthau and the comings and goings of two fictitious characters: Ann Hopkins and Sidney Dillon, ‘a conglomateur’ and ‘advisor to Presidents.’
Sidney was a Jewish millionaire, married to the ‘most beautiful creative alive’ who longed for acceptance in the Wasp stratosphere on whose plane the Racquet Club, Le Jockey, the Everglades, and White’s existed. In pursuit of this goal, Sidney bedded the unappealing, but exceptionally Caucasian former governor’s wife who, in spite of the fact she ‘looked as though she wore tweed brassieres’ was a symbol of all he’d never attain. She, the governor’s wife, ‘punished him for his Jewish presumption’ by screwing him during her menses and leaving him with a helluva mess to clean up just hours before his wife was to join him. There could be no mistaking it, Sidney Dillon was Bill Paley, founder of CBS and Babe’s randy husband.
I gestured for her to sit down and poured our drinks. I tried to keep my face as impassive as possible and shrugged. “Honey, I don’t exactly know who that character’s supposed to be.” Her eyes narrowed at this answer, so I continued. “I’ve been pretty much focused on how he could use me so badly. But if you want me to guess - I would say it’s Averill Harriman or Jock Whitney.” Averill and Jock were part of our circle and had been known to step outside the bonds of marriage. Jock Whitney was married to Babe’s sister, society matron extraordinaire, Betsy Whitney.
Babe shook her head. “Neither Jock nor Averill are Jewish.” She said coldly. I pursed my lips in what I hoped was a thoughtful expression and replied “No, that’s true. Bill is Jewish, but Jock was the Ambassador and Averill is far more politically involved. Perhaps it’s an amalgam.” I put down my drink and started pacing. “It doesn’t matter, it’s all lies anyway, the little fink, not that anyone will believe us. How could he do this to us?”
“But it’s not all lies,” Babe persisted. “The Ann Woodward stuff is true, almost to the letter, and well, the Governor’s wife is obviously Marie Harriman and you were going to marry a Brit and well…” her voice trailed off.
I decided to hit her point dead on. “The part you’re worried about, Babe, is a lie.” I lied calmly. “I have never been to bed with your husband and neither has Marie.”
Her eyes searched mine, waiting for me to falter, but I kept my gaze steady. She held my gaze for several seconds, and then dropped hers. Her face reddened.
“No, of course not.” She sounded unconvinced. “I, just, it’s silly really. Rumors always fly about people like us. I’ve heard things . . . cruel things.”
I brazenly continued, unreasonably pleased with my skill at lying with conviction. “Of course you have, we all have, and I just wished I’d paid attention to the rumors with Christian.” Babe looked away, as I had intended. I didn’t mind shamelessly exploiting her guilt over setting up Pammy and Christian when necessary. The phone rang again, this time Babe answered it, glad for the distraction I think.
“Well, well, did you read it? Hmm, what do you think?” Truman Capote mewed into the phone, she told me later. She held the phone away from her ear, looked flabbergasted, and gestured to me. Her face visibly paled. I shook my head at her, indicating she should not tear into him over the phone, so instead, she told him I couldn’t speak to him at the moment.
“Come let’s meet for lunch then, I can’t wait to hear what you two think.”
“Truman would like to meet us for lunch to talk about his story,” she said, her voice tight. I wanted to dive through the telephone wires and pummel both his faces. But I nodded, keeping my voice as normal as possible, loud enough for him to hear over the phone wires, “Sure, tomorrow, how about La Côte Basque, say one’sh.”
Babe’s eyes widened and she mouthed, “Are you mad?” I nodded. She relayed the message and hung up.
“I do not want to meet with him,” She protested. “I don’t ever want to see that snake again. Someone will undoubtedly photograph us if we have lunch with him tomorrow. It will look like we endorse this trash.” Thankfully she was finally working up a head of steam about this. Talking to Truman must have been the kicker - no remorse, only self-aggrandizing arrogance.
“He sounded perfectly normal?” I questioned.
She nodded, sitting back on the sofa and sipping her drink. “Perhaps he thinks us too stupid. He certainly portrayed us as vapid.”
The phone rang again. I answered. This time it was Gloria Vanderbilt. “That fucking, cock-sucking little prick!”
“Hello, Gloria, done your morning reading, I gather,” I tucked the receiver between my chin and shoulder and poured another drink. I sank into the chair opposite Babe, uncertain of what exactly Gloria would rant and how loud, and took a deep breath to steady my nerves.
“I sound like a goddamn idiot,” Gloria seethed, “He portrayed me as a vacuous twit who can’t remember her first husband! I’m going to kill him!” She caught her breath long enough to ask, “Can you believe how he screwed Bill and Babe? Sunny, what will Babe say?”
“Babe is here right now, and outraged on my account, since he put all that filth in my mouth. Luckily she got off lightly, no bitchy reference to her,” I responded, turning away from Babe a bit.
Gloria cottoned on quick. “Oh that’s how we’re playing it, are we? Well, okay, fine by me, but you know as well as I do there is only one person Sidney Dillon could be.”
“Yes, I thought of Averell too.” I nodded into the receiver.
“Okay, well whatever, what are we going to do to the little fucker?”
“Lunch,” I replied
“Lunch?”
“Yes, at La Côte Basque at 1:00 tomorrow. Okay?”
“What have you got planned?” Her voice was low and conspiratorial.
“Right now, murder by castration, but I’m still working on it. Just be there.” I clicked down the receiver.
Read more next week.
“Sunny, wait! Stop!” Babe dashed after me, her two-inch day heels clattered on Fifth. I breakfasted at a café on Museum mile across the park from my apartment. Knowing my routine, she caught me just as I was marching off, clasping Esquire in hand.
I whirled to face her. “That two-bit fucking little shit. That goddamn worm. Did you read this piece of filth?” I shouted. People quickly walked by, their eyes averted, not stopping to inquire why this lunatic in Ferragamos is berating the lovely Mrs. Paley.
“Where are you going?” She breathed heavily, when she reached me.
“To shove his words back where they belong, down his own goddamn throat.” I was so furious I was giving myself a headache. I reached to my forehead and rubbed my temples. “He is nothing but a back-stabbing cunt.”
Babe winced. I knew she loathed that word, but dammit she was too calm and collected for my taste. “Did you even read it?” I shouted.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “This morning, just like you.” Her calmness was affecting me. She had that wonderful ability to smother anxiety with determined complacency. I looked at her more closely. The lovely Mrs. Paley looked disheveled. Not by a normal persons standards of course, but remember, Babe operated at a heavenly zenith few mortals could attain, even now, at nearly sixty years old. Yet, today, her lipstick bled into the cracks around her mouth, obviously unrefreshed since first application, her nose was shiny and her hair slightly flat on one side. Even with the advent of the cancer that was slowly killing her, she had never appeared so vulnerable.
“You should be in bed.” I replied.
“I had to see you. To find out. . .” She left her sentence unfinished.
“Has Bill seen it?” I choked the words out. La Côte Basque, 1965 laid out very clearly my relationship with him and his extensive philandering ways.
“No.” Her gloved hands were shaking. “Why are you so angry?” She looked directly into my eyes, but her face was unreadable.
I gritted my teeth, “I am always angry at people I am about to sue.” She put her hand on my forearm.
“Please can we go back to your apartment? I need to ask you something.” Her façade looked close to cracking. Her eyes were glassy with tears. I wondered whether I should just take her back to her apartment. She really didn’t look well. Instead, I nodded, weary, tucking her hand beneath my arm and we hailed a cab to my building. Smiling to my doorman we clicked along the marble foyer to the elevator. The doors met with a whisper. My thoughts were clanging so loudly, I physically shook my head. Babe looked at me strangely. What was I going to say to her? I could only deny. It was the kindest response. I’d say our little Tru-Love had been overcome by a monumental meanness of spirit, enabling him to skewer us before the entire world.
We padded into my apartment. I headed straight for the bar. I didn’t give Babe a chance to wave me off. I poured orange juice into my crystal pitcher and doused it with vodka. Carrying a tray over to the ottoman I sat down. She took the highball glass I offered and asked again, “What are you so angry about?”
I snatched my offensive copy of Esquire from the table and read aloud. “’Lady Coolbirth’ a ‘big breezy peppy broad’ in her forties grew up in the west, her latest husband is a rich English knight.” I paused, still floored at his audacity. “That is me.”
“Yes I suppose it is. And the girl is of course Ann Woodward. Elsie is going to die after all her efforts; why would he resurrect it now?” Babe shook her head in disbelief, looking to me for an answer.
My phone rang. I ignored it. Elsie Woodward was Ann Woodward’s mother-in-law and a pillar of New York society. Babe was right, all of Elsie’s efforts to protect the family name and her grandchildren by pretending that Ann had accidentally shot her husband, Elsie’s son, were now in vain, thanks to Truman. He’d exposed the murder, Ann’s sordid past and her bigamous marriage to the Woodward scion. The phone rang again. I moved to pick it up. Babe placed her hand over the phone to stop me. Her eyes were wide and very dark.
“What I want to know, Sunny, is who the man is?”
I took a deep breath before responding.
The story begins with Lady Coolbirth, yours truly, being stood up by the Duchess of Windsor for lunch at La Côte Basque. Spotting her friend, the gossipy writer P.B. Jones, she grabs him to partner her at one of Henri’s sought-after front tables. Lady Coolbirth felt particularly chatty that afternoon, because she expounded on every rarefied patron who passed their table. It was an exemplary afternoon. That group included Babe and Betsy, the Bouvier sisters, Gloria Vanderbilt, Carol Matthau and the comings and goings of two fictitious characters: Ann Hopkins and Sidney Dillon, ‘a conglomateur’ and ‘advisor to Presidents.’
Sidney was a Jewish millionaire, married to the ‘most beautiful creative alive’ who longed for acceptance in the Wasp stratosphere on whose plane the Racquet Club, Le Jockey, the Everglades, and White’s existed. In pursuit of this goal, Sidney bedded the unappealing, but exceptionally Caucasian former governor’s wife who, in spite of the fact she ‘looked as though she wore tweed brassieres’ was a symbol of all he’d never attain. She, the governor’s wife, ‘punished him for his Jewish presumption’ by screwing him during her menses and leaving him with a helluva mess to clean up just hours before his wife was to join him. There could be no mistaking it, Sidney Dillon was Bill Paley, founder of CBS and Babe’s randy husband.
I gestured for her to sit down and poured our drinks. I tried to keep my face as impassive as possible and shrugged. “Honey, I don’t exactly know who that character’s supposed to be.” Her eyes narrowed at this answer, so I continued. “I’ve been pretty much focused on how he could use me so badly. But if you want me to guess - I would say it’s Averill Harriman or Jock Whitney.” Averill and Jock were part of our circle and had been known to step outside the bonds of marriage. Jock Whitney was married to Babe’s sister, society matron extraordinaire, Betsy Whitney.
Babe shook her head. “Neither Jock nor Averill are Jewish.” She said coldly. I pursed my lips in what I hoped was a thoughtful expression and replied “No, that’s true. Bill is Jewish, but Jock was the Ambassador and Averill is far more politically involved. Perhaps it’s an amalgam.” I put down my drink and started pacing. “It doesn’t matter, it’s all lies anyway, the little fink, not that anyone will believe us. How could he do this to us?”
“But it’s not all lies,” Babe persisted. “The Ann Woodward stuff is true, almost to the letter, and well, the Governor’s wife is obviously Marie Harriman and you were going to marry a Brit and well…” her voice trailed off.
I decided to hit her point dead on. “The part you’re worried about, Babe, is a lie.” I lied calmly. “I have never been to bed with your husband and neither has Marie.”
Her eyes searched mine, waiting for me to falter, but I kept my gaze steady. She held my gaze for several seconds, and then dropped hers. Her face reddened.
“No, of course not.” She sounded unconvinced. “I, just, it’s silly really. Rumors always fly about people like us. I’ve heard things . . . cruel things.”
I brazenly continued, unreasonably pleased with my skill at lying with conviction. “Of course you have, we all have, and I just wished I’d paid attention to the rumors with Christian.” Babe looked away, as I had intended. I didn’t mind shamelessly exploiting her guilt over setting up Pammy and Christian when necessary. The phone rang again, this time Babe answered it, glad for the distraction I think.
“Well, well, did you read it? Hmm, what do you think?” Truman Capote mewed into the phone, she told me later. She held the phone away from her ear, looked flabbergasted, and gestured to me. Her face visibly paled. I shook my head at her, indicating she should not tear into him over the phone, so instead, she told him I couldn’t speak to him at the moment.
“Come let’s meet for lunch then, I can’t wait to hear what you two think.”
“Truman would like to meet us for lunch to talk about his story,” she said, her voice tight. I wanted to dive through the telephone wires and pummel both his faces. But I nodded, keeping my voice as normal as possible, loud enough for him to hear over the phone wires, “Sure, tomorrow, how about La Côte Basque, say one’sh.”
Babe’s eyes widened and she mouthed, “Are you mad?” I nodded. She relayed the message and hung up.
“I do not want to meet with him,” She protested. “I don’t ever want to see that snake again. Someone will undoubtedly photograph us if we have lunch with him tomorrow. It will look like we endorse this trash.” Thankfully she was finally working up a head of steam about this. Talking to Truman must have been the kicker - no remorse, only self-aggrandizing arrogance.
“He sounded perfectly normal?” I questioned.
She nodded, sitting back on the sofa and sipping her drink. “Perhaps he thinks us too stupid. He certainly portrayed us as vapid.”
The phone rang again. I answered. This time it was Gloria Vanderbilt. “That fucking, cock-sucking little prick!”
“Hello, Gloria, done your morning reading, I gather,” I tucked the receiver between my chin and shoulder and poured another drink. I sank into the chair opposite Babe, uncertain of what exactly Gloria would rant and how loud, and took a deep breath to steady my nerves.
“I sound like a goddamn idiot,” Gloria seethed, “He portrayed me as a vacuous twit who can’t remember her first husband! I’m going to kill him!” She caught her breath long enough to ask, “Can you believe how he screwed Bill and Babe? Sunny, what will Babe say?”
“Babe is here right now, and outraged on my account, since he put all that filth in my mouth. Luckily she got off lightly, no bitchy reference to her,” I responded, turning away from Babe a bit.
Gloria cottoned on quick. “Oh that’s how we’re playing it, are we? Well, okay, fine by me, but you know as well as I do there is only one person Sidney Dillon could be.”
“Yes, I thought of Averell too.” I nodded into the receiver.
“Okay, well whatever, what are we going to do to the little fucker?”
“Lunch,” I replied
“Lunch?”
“Yes, at La Côte Basque at 1:00 tomorrow. Okay?”
“What have you got planned?” Her voice was low and conspiratorial.
“Right now, murder by castration, but I’m still working on it. Just be there.” I clicked down the receiver.
Read more next week.
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