Tell All

ACT I, SCENE TEN

The scene opens with LillianHellman grappling in barehanded combat with LeeHarvey Oswald, the two of them wrestling and punching each othernear an open window on the sixth floor of the TexasSchool Book Depository, surrounded by prominent stacks ofHellman’s The Little Foxes and The Children’s Hour and TheAutumn Garden. Outside the window, a motorcade glides past,moving through Dealey Plaza, hands waving andflags fluttering. Hellman and Oswald gripping a rifle between them, theyyank the weapon back and forth, neither gaining complete control. With aviolent head butt, slamming her blond forehead into Oswald’s, leavinghis eyes glazed and stunned for a beat, Hellman shouts, “Think, youcommie bastard!” She screams, “Do you really want LBJas your president?”

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

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

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

Arrayed on the kitchen table are varioustrophies and awards, tarnished gold and silver, displaying differentdegrees of dust and neglect. An open can of silver polish and a soiledbuffing rag sit among them.

Clasping something in both hands, concealedbehind her back, my Miss Kathie says, “I

bought you a present …” and shesteps aside to reveal a box wrapped in silver-foil paper, bound with awide, red-velvet ribbon knotted to create a bow as big as a cabbage. Thebow as deep red as a huge rose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t want the placement agency gettingany idea that you’re more than a servant,” says my Miss Kathie. Shecranks the dial switch one click to another television station, where Terrence Terry dances lead for the Lunenburg battalion against Napoleonat the Battle of Mont St. Jean. Still drawingthe comb through her hair, Miss Kathie clicks to a third station, whereshe appears, Katherine Kenton herself, inblack and white, playing the mother of Greer Garsonin the role of Louisa May Alcott opposite Leslie Howard in a biopic about ClaraBarton. She says, bark, oink,cluck …Christina and ChristopherCrawford.

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

Cluck, buzz, bray… Margot Merrill.

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

I ask, Newborn what?

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

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

My position in this household is not that of amere maid or cook or lady-in-waiting. I am not employed in any capacityas domestic help.

This is not a birthday present.

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

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

I sit staring at the wrinkled uniform, thetorn wrapping paper. The stray hairs. The screenplay laid open in mylap.

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

Placing the white cap on the crown of myhead, she says, “Voilà!” She says, “It’s aperfect fit.” Pressing the lacy cap snug, Miss Kathie says, “That’sItalian for prego.”

On my scalp, a sting, the faint prick ofhairpins feel sharp and biting as a crown of thorns. Then a slow fade toblack as, from offscreen, we hear the front doorbell ring.