Tell All

ACT I, SCENE TWELVE

Act one, scene twelve opens with anotherflashback. Once more, we dissolve to Katherine Kentoncradling a polished cremation urn in her arms. The setting: again, thedimly lit interior of the Kenton crypt, dressed with cobwebs, the ornatebronze door unlocked and swung open to welcome mourners. A stone shelfat the rear of the crypt, in deep shadow, holds various urns craftedfrom bronze, copper, nickel. The urn in her arms, engraved, Oliver “Red” Drake, Esq.,Miss Kathie’s fifth “was-band.”

This took place the year when every othersong on the radio was Frank Sinatra singingthe Count Basie arrangement of “Bit’n the Dust.”

My Miss Katie hugs the urn, lifting it tomeet the black lace of her veiled face. Behind the veil, her lips. Sheplants a puckered lipstick kiss on the engraved name, then places thisnew urn on the dusty shelf among the others. Amidst the bottles ofbrandy and Luminal. The unlit prayer candles.The only other cast members in this three-shot, myself and Terrence Terry, each of us prop Miss Kathie by oneelbow. What Louella Parsons would call “palbearers.”

The collection of crematory urns stand amongdusty bottles and magnums of champagne. Vessels of the living and thedead, stacked here in the chilled, dry dark. Miss Kathie’s entirecellar, stored together. The urns stand. The bottles lie on their sides,all of them netted and veiled with cobwebs.

Bark, oink, squeal… Dom Pérignon 1925. Bark, meow, bray …Bollinger 1917.

Terrence Terrypeels the gilded lead from the cork of one bottle. He twists the loop,loosening the wire harness which holds the mushroom cork in the mouth ofthe bottle. Holding the bottle high, pointed toward an empty corner ofthe crypt, Terry pries at the cork with both his thumbs until the popechoes, loud inside the stone room, and a froth of foam gushes from thebottle, spattering on the floor.

Roar, cluck, whinny… Perrier-Jouët. Tweet, quack, growl… Veuve Clicquot. That Tourette’s syndromeof brand names.

Terry lifts a champagne glass from the stoneshelf, holding the bowl of the glass near his face and pursing his lipsto blow dust from it. He hands the glass to Miss Kathie and pours itfull of champagne. A ghost of cold vapor rises from and hovers aroundthe open bottle.

With each of us holding a dusty glassful ofchampagne, Terry lifts his arm in a toast. “To Oliver,” he says.

Miss Kathie and myself, we lift our glasses,saying, “To Oliver.” And we all drink the sweet, dirty, sparklingwine.

Buried in the dust and cobwebs, the mirrorlies facedown in its silver frame. Following a moment of silence, I liftthe mirror and lean it to stand against the wall. Even in the dim lightof the crypt, the scratches sparkle on the glass surface, each etchedline the record of a wrinkle my Miss Kathie has had stretched or liftedor burned away with acid.

Miss Kathie lifts her veil and steps to hermark, the lipstick X on the stone floor. Her face in perfect alignmentwith the history of her skin. The gray hairs gouged into the mirroralign with her hair. She pinches the fingertips of one black glove,using her opposite hand, tugging until the glove slides free. MissKathie twists the diamond engagement ring and the wedding band, handingthe diamond to me, and placing the gold band on the dusty shelf besidethe urns. Beside the urns of past dogs. Beside past shades of lipstickand fingernail varnish too bright, deemed too young for her to wear anylonger.

Each of the various champagne glasses, setand scattered within the crypt, cloudy with dust and past wine, the rimof each glass is a museum of different lipstick shades Miss Kathie hasleft behind. The floor, littered with the butts of ancient cigarettes,some filters wrapped with these same ancient colors of lipstick. Allthese abandoned drinks and smokes set on ledges, on the floor, tuckedinto stony corners, this setting like an invisible cocktail party of thedeceased.

Watching this, our ritual, Terry dips a handinto the inside pocket of his suit coat. He plucks out a chromecigarette case and snaps it open, removing two cigarettes, which heplaces, together, between his lips. Terry flicks a flame to jump fromone corner of the chrome case, and lifts it to light both cigarettes.With a snap of his wrist, the flame is gone, and Terry replaces the thincase, returned to inside his coat. He plucks one cigarette from hismouth, trailing a spiral of smoke, and reaches to place it between thered lips of Miss Kathie.

This flashback takes place before thecrow’s-feet caused by Paco Esposito. Before Iscratched the frown lines related to the senator into this mirror of Dorian Gray.

Wielding the diamond, I get to work drawing. Itrace any new wrinkles, adding any new liver spots to this long-termrecord. Sketching the network of tiny spider veins puckered around thefilter of Miss Kathie’s burning cigarette.

Terry says, “A word of warning, Lady Kath.”Sipping his filthy champagne, he says, “If you’ll take my advice. Youneed to be careful.…”

As Terry explains, too many lady stars in hersituation have opened their doors to a young man or a young woman,someone who’d sit and listen and laugh. The rapt attention might lastfor a year or a month, but eventually the young admirer would disappear,returning to another life among people his own age. The young womanwould marry and vanish with her own first child, leaving the actress,once more, abandoned. On occasion a letter might arrive, or a telephonecall. Keeping tabs.

In the same manner TrumanCapote kept in touch with Perry Smithand Dick Hickock while they sat on death row.Biding his time. Capote needed a finale for In ColdBlood.

Every major publisher in America harbors abook, the advance money already paid to some pleasant young person, ahandsome, affable listener, who’d spun a few evenings of dinner into amovie-star tell-all biography and needed only a cause of death tocomplete the final chapter. Already, that pack of stage-door hyenaswaited on Mae West to die. They phoned Lelia Goldoni, hoping for bad news. Scanned theobituary pages for Hugh Marlowe, Emlyn Williams,Peggie Castle and Buster Keaton.Vultures circling. Most were already finagling introductions to Ruth Donnelly and GeraldineFitzgerald. At this moment, they sit in front of a fireplace inthe parlor of Lillian Gish or Carole Landis, vacuuming up the thorny anecdotesthey’d need to flesh out two hundred pages, their vulture eyescommitting to memory every gesture of ButterflyMcQueen, every tic or mannerism of Tex Averythat could be sold to the ravenous reading public.

All of those future best-selling books, theywere already typeset, merely waiting for someone to die.

“I know you, Kath,” says Terry, turning hishead to blow smoke. The stale air of the crypt heavy with the smell ofsmoke and mold. He takes the wedding ring from the dusty stone shelf,saying, “I know you’re a sucker for an audience, even an audience ofone.”

Some grocery delivery boy or a girlconducting a door-to-door survey … these ambitious stray dogs, they eachsit clack-clacking on a rusty typewriter athome. A pretty, wide-eyed, starstruck youngster will steal MissKathie’s life story. Her reputation. Her dignity. Then pray for her todie.

With the diamond, I cut the furrows ofsadness across her forehead. Updating Miss Kathie’s life story. The mapof her. The mirror already scratched with years of worry and grief andscars documenting Miss Kathie’s secret face.

Judy Garland, Terrysays, and Ethel Merman never again walkedout, not in public, not with as much of their previous pride andglamour, after Jacqueline Susann cast them asthe fat, drunken, foulmouthed characters Neely O’Haraand Helen Lawson in TheValley of the Dolls.

In response, the diamond shrieks against theglass. The high-pitched, wailing sound of funeral keening.

Dropping to one knee on the cold stone floor,Terry looks up at Miss Kathie and says, “Will you marry me? Just tokeep you safe?” He reaches out to take her hand. He says, “At leastuntil something better comes along?”

This, a sodomite and a faded movie star, iswhat Walter Winchell calls a “match made inresignation.” Terry proposes becoming her emotional bodyguard, a live-inplaceholder between real men.

“Just like your portrait here,” says Terry,nodding at the mirror in its silver frame, “any friendly youngbiographer is only going to showcase your flaws and faults in order tobuild his own career.”

As always, I drag the diamond in straightlines to mimic the tears running down Miss Katie’s face.

I shake my head, Don’t. Don’t let’s repeatthis torture. Don’t trust another one.

As always, another duty of my job is to neverpress too hard lest the mirror shatter.

My Miss Kathie slips a hand into the slit ofone fur coat pocket, fishing out something pink she sets on the dustyshelf. Exhaling cigarette smoke, she says, “I guess I won’t be needingthis.…” So many years ago, this something Miss Kathie meant to leavebehind forever.

It was her diaphragm.

Terry slips the wedding band onto her finger.

Miss Kathie smiles, saying, “It still feelswarm.” She adds, “The ring, not the diaphragm.” And I pour everyone another round ofchampagne.