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ACT I, SCENE EIGHT

We open with a panning shot of Miss Kathie’sboudoir mantel, the lineup of wedding photos and awards. Next, wedissolve to a similar panning shot, moving across the surface of aconsole table in her drawing room, crowded with more trophies. Then, wedissolve to yet another similar shot, moving across the shelves of herdining room vitrines. Each of these shots reveals a cluttered abundanceof awards and trophies. Plaques and medals lie displayed in presentationboxes lined with white satin like tiny cradles, each medal hung on awide ribbon, the box lying open. Like tiny caskets. Burdening theshelves are loving cups of tarnished silver, engraved, ToKatherine Kenton,In Honor of Her Lifetime Achievements, Presented bytheBaltimore Critics Circle.Statuettes plated with gold, from the ClevelandTheater Owners Association. Diminutive statues of gods andgoddesses, tiny, the size of infants. For HerOutstanding Contribution. For Her Years ofDedication. We move through this clutter ofengraved bric-a-brac, these honorary degrees from Midwestern colleges.Such nine-carat-gold praise from the Phoenix StagePlayers Club. The Seattle Press Guild.The Memphis United Society of Thespis. The Greater Missoula Dramatics Community. Frozen,gleaming, silent as past applause. The final panning shot ends as adirty rag falls around one golden statue; then the camera pulls back toreveal me wiping the award free of dust, polishing it, and placing itback on the shelf. I take another, polish it and put it back. I liftanother.

This demonstrates the endless nature of mywork. By the time I’ve done them all, the first awards will need dustingand polishing. Thus I move along with my soiled cotton diaper, reallythe most soft kind of dust cloth.

Every month another group entices Miss Kathieto grace them with her presence, rewarding her with yet anothersilver-plate urn or platter, engraved, Woman of theYear, to collect dust. Imagine every compliment you’ve everreceived, made manifest, etched into metal or stone and filling yourhome. That terrible accumulating burden of your Dedication and Talent,your Contributions and Achievements, forgotten by everyone exceptyourself. Katherine Kenton, the GreatHumanitarian.

Throughout this sequence, always fromoffscreen, we hear the laughter of a man and woman. Miss Kathie and somefamous actor. Gregory Peck or Dan Duryea. Her ringing laugh followed by his bassguffaw. As I’m dusting awards in the library of the town house, thelaughter filters downstairs from her boudoir. If I’m working in thedining room, the laughter echoes from the drawing room. Nevertheless,when I follow the sound, any new room is empty. The laughter alwayscomes from around another corner or from behind the next door. What Ifind are only the awards, turning dark with tarnish. Such honors—solid,worthless lead or pig iron merely coated with a thin skin of gold. Afterevery rubbing, more dull, worn and smutty.

In her boudoir, on the television, my MissKathie rides in an open horse-drawn carriage through Central Park,sitting beside Robert Stack. Behind themtrails a huge looming mass of white balloons. At a crescendo of violinmusic, Stack rolls on top of Miss Kathie, and her fist opens, releasingthe frenzied balloons to scatter and swim upward, whipping their longtails of white string.

On some shelves balance scissors big enoughfor the Jolly Green Giant, brass buffed untilit could pass as something precious, the pointed blades as long as MissKathie’s legs. She brandished one pair to cut the ribbon at the openingceremonies for the six-lane Ochoakee InlandExpressway. Another pair of scissors cut the ribbon to open the Spring Water Regional Shopping Mall.

Another pair,as large as a golden child performing jumping jacks, these cut theribbon at a supermarket. At the Lewis J. RedslopeMemorial Bridge. At the Tennesseeassembly plant for Skyline Microcellular, Inc.

On the television in the kitchen, Miss Kathielies on a blanket next to Cornel Wilde. AsWilde rolls on top of her, the camera pans to a nearby spitting,crackling campfire.

Filling the shelves are skeleton keys soheavy they require both hands to lift. Tin treated to shine bright asplatinum. Presented by the Omaha Business Fathersand the Topeka Chamber of Commerce. The keyto Spokane, Washington, presented to MissKathie by his honor, the right esteemed Mayor NelsonRedding. The engraved keys to Jackson Hole,Wyoming, and Jacksonville,Florida. The keys to Iowa City and Sioux Falls.

On the dining room television, my Miss Kathieshares a train compartment with Nigel Bruce.As he throws himself on top of her the train slips into a tunnel.

In the drawing room, BurtLancaster lowers himself onto Miss Kathie as ocean waves rollonto a sandy beach. On the television in the den, RichardTodd throws himself onto Miss Kathie as July Fourth fireworksexplode in a night sky.

Throughout this montage, the actual MissKathie is absent. Here and there, the camera might linger on a discardednewspaper page, a half-tone photograph of Miss Kathie exiting alimousine assisted by Webster Carlton Westward III.Her name in boldface type linked to his in the gossip columns of Sheilah Graham or Elsa Maxwell.Another photograph, the two of them dancing at a nightclub. Otherwise,the town house is empty.

My hand lifts still another trophy, a heroicstatuette, the muscle of each arm and leg as small and naked as a childMiss Kathie never had, and I massage its face, without pressing, to makesuch thin gold, that faint shine, last as long as possible.