Tell All

ACT I, SCENE SEVEN

In the establishing shot, a taxicab stops inthe street outside Miss Kathie’s town house. Sunshine filters throughthe leaves of trees. Birds sing. The shot moves in, closer and closer,to frame an upstairs window, Miss Kathie’s boudoir, where the drapes aredrawn tight against the afternoon glare.

Inside the bedroom, we cut to a close-up shotof an alarm clock. Pull back to reveal the clock is balanced atop thestack of screenplays beside Miss Kathie’s bed. On the clock, the largerhand sits at twelve, the smaller at three. Miss Kathie’s eyes flutteropen to the reflection of herself staring down, those same violet eyes,from the mirrors within her bed canopy. One languid movie star handflaps and flops, stretching until her fingers find the water glassbalanced beside the clock. Her fingers find the Nembutaland bring the capsule back to her lips. Miss Kathie’s eyelashes flutterclosed. Once more, the hand hangs limp off the side of her bed.

The forged version of the love letter, thecopy I traced, sits in the middle of her mantelpiece, featured centerstage among the lesser invitations and wedding photos. Among thepolished awards and trophies. The original date, Saturday, revised toFriday, tonight. Here’s the setup for a romantic evening that won’thappen. No, Webster Carlton Westward III willnot arrive at eight this evening, and KatherineKenton will sit alone and fully dressed, coiffed, as abandoned asMiss Havisham in the novel by Charles Dickens.

Cut to a shot of the same taxicab as it pullsto the curb in front of a dry cleaner’s. The back car door swingsopens, and my foot steps out. I ask the cabdriver to double-park while Icollect Miss Kathie’s white sable from the refrigerated storage vault.The white fur folded over my arm, it feels impossibly soft but heavy,the pelts slippery and shifting within the thin layer of dry cleanerplastic. The sable glows with cold, swollen with cold in contrast to thewarm daylight and the blistering, cracked-vinyl seat of the cab.

At our next stop, the dressmaker’s, the cabstops for me to pick up the gown my Miss Kathie had altered. After that,we stop at the florist’s to buy the corsage of orchids that MissKathie’s nervous hands will fondle and finger tonight, as eight o’clockcomes and goes and her brown-eyed young beau doesn’t ring the doorbell.Before the clock strikes eight-thirty, Miss Kathie will ask me to pourher a drink. By the stroke of nine, she’ll swallow a Valium.By ten o’clock, these orchids will be shredded. By then, my Miss Kathiewill be drunken, despondent, but safe.

Our perspective cuts back and forth betweenthe bedside alarm clock and the roving taxi meter. Dollars and minutestick away. A countdown to tonight’s disaster. We stop by thehairdresser’s to collect the wig that’s been washed and set. We stop bythe hosier’s for the waist cincher and a new girdle. The cobbler’s, forthe high heels Miss Kathie wanted resoled. The bodice of the eveninggown feels crusted with beads and embroidery, rough as sandpaper orbrick inside its garment bag.

The camera follows me, dashing about,assembling all the ingredients—breathless as a mad scientist or agourmet chef—to create my masterpiece. My life’s work.

If most American women imagine Mary, Queen of Scots or theEmpress Eugenie or Florence Nightingale,they picture Miss Kathie in a period costume standing in a two-shotwith John Garfield or GabbyHayes on an MGM soundstage. In thepublic mind, Miss Kathie, her face and voice, is collapsed with the Virgin Mary, Dolley Madison and Eve,and I will not allow her to dissipate that legend. WilliamWyler, C. B. DeMille and Howard Hawksmay have directed her in a picture or two, but I have directed MissKathie’s entire adult life. My efforts have made her the heroine, thehuman form of glory, for the past three generations of women. I coachedher to her greatest roles as Mrs. Ivanhoe, Mrs. KingArthur and Mrs. Sheriff of Nottingham.Under my tutelage, Miss Kathie will forever be synonymous with thecharacters of Mrs. Apollo, Mrs. Zeus and Mrs. Thor.

Now more than ever the world needs my MissKathie to personify their core values and ideals.

According to WalterWinchell, “menoposture” refers to the ramrod straight backbone ofa Joan Crawford or an EthelBarrymore, a lady of a certain age whose spine never touches theback of any chair. A Helen Hayes, who standsstraight as a military cadet, her shoulders back in defiance of gravityand osteoporosis. That crucial age when older picture stars become what Hedda Hopper calls “fossilidealized,” the livingexample of proper manners and discipline and self-restraint. Some Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davisillustration of noble hard work and Yankee ambition.

Miss Kathie has become the paragon I’vedesigned. She illustrates the choice we must make between giving theimpression of a very youthful, well-preserved older person, or appearingto be a very degraded, corrupt young person.

My work will not be distracted by somepanting, clutching, brown-eyed male. I have not labored my entirelifetime to build a monument for idiot little boys to urinate againstand knock down with their dirty hands.

The cab makes a quick stop at the cornernewsstand for cigarettes. Aspirin. Breath mints. In the same moment, the bedside clock strikesfour, and the alarm begins to buzz. One long movie-star hand reaches,the fingers searching, the wrist and forearm clashing with goldbracelets and charms.

At the curb outside the town house, I’mpassing a twenty-dollar bill to the cabdriver.

Inside, the alarm continues, buzzing andbuzzing, until my own hand enters the shot, pressing the button, whichceases the noise. In addition to the wig and white sable, I’ve broughtthe gown, the corsage, the shoes. I’ve filled an ice bucket and broughtclean towels and a bottle of chilled rubbing alcohol, everything asclean and sterile as if I were kneeling bedside to deliver a baby.

My fingers hold an ice cube, rubbing it in aslow arc below one violet eye to shrink Miss Kathie’s loose skin. Theice skims over Miss Kathie’s forehead, smoothing the wrinkles. Themelting water saturates the skin of her cheeks, bringing pink to thesurface. The cold shrinks the folds in her neck, drawing the skin tightalong her jawline.

Our preparation for tonight, all of her restand my work, as much fuss and sweat as my Miss Kathie would invest inany screen test or audition.

With one hand I’m blotting the melted water.Dabbing her face with cotton balls dipped in the cold rubbing alcohol,reducing the pores. Her skin now feels as frigid as the sable coatpreserved in cold storage. At one time, every fur-bearing animal in theworld lived in terror of Katherine Kenton.Like Roz Russell or BettyHutton, if Miss Kathie chose to wear a coat of red ermine or ahat trimmed in pelican feathers, no ermine or seabird was safe. Onephoto of her arriving at an awards dinner or premiere was enough to putmost animals onto the endangered species list.

This woman is Pocahontas.She is Athena and Hera.Lying in this messy, unmade bed, eyes closed, this is Juliet Capulet. Blanche DuBois. Scarlett O’Hara.With ministrations of lipstick and eyeliner I give birth to Ophelia. To Marie Antoinette.Over the next trip of the larger hand around the face of the bedsideclock, I give form to Lucrezia Borgia. Takingshape at my fingertips, my touches of foundation and blush, here is Jocasta. Lying here, LadyWindermere. Opening her eyes, Cleopatra.Given flesh, a smile, swinging her sculpted legs off one side of thebed, this is Helen of Troy. Yawning andstretching, here is every beautiful woman across history.

My position is not that of a painter, asurgeon or a sculptor, but I perform all those duties. My job title: Pygmalion.

As the clock strikes seven, I’m hooking mycreation into her girdle, lacing the waist cincher. Her shoulders shrugthe gown over her head, and her hands smooth the skirts down each hip.

With the handle of a long rattail comb, I’mhooking and tucking her gray hair into the edges of her auburn wig whenMiss Kathie says, “Hush.”

Her violet eyes jumping to the clock, shesays, “Did you hear the doorbell just now?” Still tucking away stray hairs, I shake myhead, No.

When the clock strikes eight, the shoes areslipped onto her feet. The white sable draped across her shoulders. Herorchids, still chilled from the icebox, she cups them in her lap,sitting at the top of the stairs, looking down into the foyer, watchingthe street door. One diamond earring pushes forward, her head cocked tohear footsteps on the stoop. Maybe the muffled knock of a man’s glove onthe door, or the sound of the bell.

A whiskey later, Miss Kathie goes to theboudoir mantel and her violet eyes study the letter I forged. She takesthe paper and holds it, sitting again on the stairs. Another whiskeylater, she returns to her boudoir to fold the letter and tear it inhalf. She folds the page and tears it again, tears it again, and dropsthe fluttering pieces into the fireplace. The flames. One of mycreations destroying another. My counterfeit Medeaor Lady Macbeth, burning my false declarationof love.

True love is NOT out ofyour reach. Saturday replaced with Friday. Tomorrow, when Webster Carlton Westward III arrives for his actualdinner date, it will be too late to repair tonight’s broken heart.

By a third whiskey, the orchids are worriedand bruised to a pulp between Miss Kathie’s fretting hands. When I offerto bring another drink, her face shines, sliced with the wet ribbons ofher tears.

Miss Kathie looks down the stairs at me,blinking to dry her eyelashes, saying, “Realistically, what would alovely young man like Webb want with an old woman?” Smiling at thecrushed orchids in her lap, she says, “How could I be such a fool?”

She is no one’s fool, I assure her. She’s Anne Boleyn and Marie Curie.

Her eyes, in that scene, as dull and glassyas pearls or diamonds soiled with hair spray. In one hand, Miss Kathieballs the smashed flowers tight within her fist, to make a wad she dropsinto one empty old-fashioned glass. She hands the glass to me, thedregs of whiskey and orchids, and I hand her another filled with ice andgin. The sable coat slips from her shoulders to lie, heaped, on thestairway carpet. She’s the infant born this afternoon in her bed, theyoung girl who dressed, the woman who sat down to wait for her newlove.… Now she’s become a hag, aged a lifetime in one evening. MissKathie lifts a hand, looking at her wrinkled knuckles, her marquise-cutdiamond ring. Twisting the diamond to make it sparkle, she says, “Whatsay we make a record of this moment?” Drive to the crypt beneath thecathedral, she means, and cut these new wrinkles into the mirror whereher sins and mistakes collect. That etched diary of her secret face.

She draws her legs in close to her body, herknees pressed to her chest. All of her wadded as tight as the ruinedfistful of flowers.

Throwing back a swallow of gin, she says,“I’m such an old ninny.” She swirls the ice in the bottom of the glass,saying, “Why do I always feel so degraded?”

Her heart, devastated. My plan, working toperfection.

The rim of the glass, smeared red with herlipstick, the curved rim has printed her face with red, spreading thecorners of her mouth upward to make a lurid clown’s smile. Her eyelinerdribbles in a black line down from the center of each eye. Miss Kathielifts her hand, twisting the wrist to see her watch, the awful truthcircled in diamonds and pink sapphires. Here’s bad news presented in anexquisite package. From somewhere in the bowels of the town house, aclock begins to strike midnight. Past the twelfth stroke, the bellcontinues to thirteen, fourteen. More late than any night could possiblyget. At the stroke of fifteen, my Miss Kathie looks up, her cloudy eyesconfused with alcohol.

It’s impossible. The bell tolling sixteen,seventeen, eighteen, it’s the doorbell. And standing on the stoop, when Iopen the front door, there waits a pair of bright brown eyes behind anarmful of roses and lilies.