Swan Song

by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott

  ‘I don’t think my husband loves me.’

  ‘That can’t be true!’ he took care to whisper back. ‘Just look at you—you’re perfection! How could anyone fail to appreciate such loveliness?’

  Babe, more confident now, for having voiced it the first time—

  ‘I know Bill doesn’t love me.’

  ‘That must be wrong…’

  ‘I’m useful to him. I suit his image. He can appreciate me from afar—a thing on the mantel. But he doesn’t love me. Like you said… not how I want to be loved.’

  The imp took this in, and she felt certain he understood.

  ‘Oh, Babyling. I know exactly how that feels. My poor darling.’

  It was then that he reached out his tiny hand and touched her for the first time. He allowed himself to ever so gently sweep his fingers past the outline of her chiseled jaw.

  As his flesh brushed hers, Babe had a flash of memory of standing in an empty ballroom years before, in the darkness. She’d gone back to fetch a stole or a clutch or a missing earring, after the guests had departed. She had heard a ghostly tinkling in the dimly lit chandelier above. She looked up to see a moth, caught in the crystal cage of the Baccarat droplets. Itsgray tissue-wings battering the glass. Babe held her breath, looking upwards into the glare, hearing the soft rattle—the futility of its effort. She hated to see anything trapped, especially something so fragile. Her heart leapt when the moth dove beneath the lower tier of crystals and flew across the ballroom, liberated. Then, selecting its next random landing spot,the moth flew toward her, grazing her cheek, then neck.

  She stood very still as it landed on her shoulder. A moment passed and it fluttered even lower, settling just inside the décolletage of her evening gown.

  Babe held her breath, not daring to move as the moth beat its delicate wings against her heart—or breast—she couldn’t remember which.

  Something at once erotic and chaste.

  Something she’d not felt since…

  Until Truman’s trembling fingers traced the line of her jaw.

  She looked into his eyes and felt certain that he felt it too—a sensation that had no name beyond communion. They recognized something in each other, the lonely little boy from Alabama and the disappointed tycoon’s wife. It was as if each had recovered a missing bit of themselves.

  AS THEY DISEMBARKED in the sticky island heat, walking down the tarmac in the hibiscus-scented breeze, Truman slipped his arm through Babe’s and whispered in her ear—

  ‘Now you’re my friend. A friend is someone you don’t have to finish your sentences with.’

  FIVE

  1933/1966

  VARIATION NO. 4

  MR. TRUMAN STRECKFUS PERSONS REQUESTS THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY AT A HALLOWE’EN GOODBYE PARTY,

  FRIDAY OCTOBER 28, 1933

  7 O’CLOCK (IN THE EVENING!)

  THE FAULK BACKYRRD

  COSTUMES A MUST—ELSE YOU’LL BE TURNED AWAY!!!

  THE BOY IS beside himself, perched at the farmhouse table in the drafty kitchen, typing up his first invitation on the Remington with keys that stick, having carefully threaded a new ribbon for the occasion.

  ‘Just beside myself,’ he rhapsodizes to Nelle, Sook, and just about anyone who’ll listen. ‘Absolutely pleased as punch!’

  He’s gonna give little ole Monroeville a night they won’t soon forget. Long after he’s moved to the city, his legend will loom, bigger than a tit through a telescope.

  Yessir, after what he has in mind, they’ll remember him when he’s gone. He’s made a special trip to the five and dime and bought a brand-new three-cent composition book: black confettied with white flecks, its pattern reminding him of granite slabs in the stoneyard.

  In it he has, for the better part of two weeks, carefully recorded the name of every child in town. He’s weighed with great consideration his feelings for each, and either placed a star by their name or drawn a line through it.

  He’s both judge and jury. He can choose benevolence— hadn’t he crossed Summer Clewett off last week when she’d refused to let him skip rope, yet reinstated her when she shared the oyster po’ boy from her lunch pail the very next day? In equal measure he could retaliate, having struck Chipper Daniels clean off when he’d mocked the boy’s speaking voice in class.

  The boy carries his composition book everywhere. To the play-ground. To the swimming hole, where he sits a distance from the ruckus, way up the mossy bank, shielding his precious pages from wayward splashes. It’s his constant companion, the black-and-white book.

  The kids watch with curiosity as he scribbles his secrets on the ruled sheets inside. He’s not like the rest of them, in his sailor swimming trunks and smart linen jacket, sent in a box from his Mama. But they’ve learned that he’s something of a magician—‘a pocket Merlin,’ Nelle calls him—never failing to come up with something to pass the time on days that seem slower than watching cream rise on last year’s buttermilk. Whether it’s building a sideshow from scratch in his cousin Jenny’s shed, convincingly playing General Tom Thumb, World’s Smallest Man, or sticking horsehair on Nelle’s chin with spirit gum, transforming her into The Bearded Lady, or even convincing a couple of colored farmhands, Lucian Cole and John White, to play Siamese twins, their separate forms hidden behind a suit-draped hat rack—the boy can call in favors, he being friendly with everyone in town, black, white, or red all over.

  The kids know he can be a spitfire too, and have learned to keep their distance when he’s on the warpath. The boy enjoys the panic that flashes across their dull little faces when they see him cross a line through a name on his list, keeping the page in question close to his chest.

  Kids worry that they’ve been the one he’s crossed off, and bring him Snickers bars and chewing gum and fireflies caught in jars as offerings.

  ‘Why thank you, sugar,’ he gushes, scrawling notes in his ledger. ‘Maybe I just might have to invite you to my shindig after all…’

  Grown-ups say he’s out of control. Gotten too big for his britches, they insist, ever since his crazy Mama’s summoned him up to New York City.

  ‘She’s gone and married herself a Yankee, lordee mercy!’

  ‘And of the Latino persuasion…’

  Such is the chat that dominates Mrs. Lee’s under-read book club. The Monroeville doyennes in their Sunday best loll on the porch, fanning themselves with their folded Forum magazines, pages dog-eared to Mr. Faulkner’s ‘A Rose for Emily.’ From the bits they’ve skimmed, they like his heroine in her big drafty house, whose fiancé ‘disappears one day.’ She reminds them of at least a dozen shrews in town they know. That bunch of spinsters next door, especially.

  ‘I’ll bet a hundred dollars and my firstborn that ole Cousin Jenny’s got a corpse rotting up in that dump too,’ Mrs. Lee clucks wickedly, and they all cackle like a coop of satisfied hens.

  The boy no longer cares what they say. He’s already sprouted wings and flown high above their tawdry company.

  ‘You know, I’m the first out of Monroeville to cross the Mason– Dixon Line,’ he boasts to the kids down by the river dock. The first except his Mama, that is, who has returned for him as promised, with a brand-new life and a brand-new name. She’s Cuban now—having traded the hillbilly ‘Faulk’ and Southern ‘Persons’ for the more exotic ‘Capote.’ The boy is about to become Cuban too, he brags. He promises he’ll bring back crates of fancy cigars when he next comes to visit, that being the only thing Cuban that he’s sure of.

  Folks don’t believe him. This sounds like another of the boy’s tall tales, but then they say the poor little bastard seems so over-joyed, they can’t help but be happy for him. He knows this because Nelle, moving in and out of shadows, perhaps her greatest talent, has heard them.

  He’s waited for this moment. Waited since he first watched his Mama drive away in a Silver Bullet convertible, backing out of the driveway of the Faulk cousins’ house—barreling down the long dirt road, tires leaving clouds of red smoke
billowing in their wake. The boy had run down the road after her, his screams drowned by the roar of the engine. He’d begged her to take him with her, promising he’d be so good, she’d hardly even notice him. He had sprinted like a little ole greyhound after that car, until his legs buckled beneath him and he crumpled to the ground, unable to run anymore. An abandoned racer pup, muscles smarting from the effort. (For added impact he makes sure that we all know that racing dogs who run too slow are either shot in the head or left in fields to starve, their purpose all used up.)

  He’s told us he’d cried himself to sleep the first time she’d driven away. The second time, he’d stolen a bottle of her perfume—Shalimar—and drunk the whole thing dry like a bottle of Mama-juice, part of him hoping to ingest her beauty and keep her inside him, part of him hoping to overdose on her rancid poison, relishing the thought of the tears she would shed when his little body was all laid out at Johnson’s Funeral Parlor, pint-sized legs barely stretching halfway down, covered in hundreds of glorious calla— —

  BUT THAT’S BEHIND him now. He has been summoned. All the way to New York City.

  He’d been there before, mind you.

  ‘I was taken there,’ he frequently reminds us, ‘on my own special merit.’ He’d been taken there by the team of seersuckered researchers from the Mobile Works and Progress Administration, who had brought their box of IQ tests to the little ole country school.

  He had scored so high, the men had furrowed their brows and made him take the test again. Yet again, the boy scored a perfect 215. Never had a child in the US scored as high on an IQ test, he’s assured us. The men were so damn stunned they drove him all the way to New York City, where they only confirmed what the boy already knew—that he was a bona fide genius, so proclaimed by science.

  And now he has been sent for, by her. He’ll become Cuban like she has, perhaps change his name to Juan… Dye his white fringe black and begin his new life as a genius in the city where exotic boys with talent might speak their minds without causing a fuss.

  But first, he wants to make sure Monroeville never forgets him. That’s what’s given him his idea… to throw a party like the hick little town has never seen before and likely’ll never see again. A party to bask in his genius and good fortune. Sometimes he just wants to hug himself in a joyous chokehold, he so can’t believe his luck. This is better than a pack of beagle dogs and a herd of Shetland ponies (which he now feels confident he’s won for his stories in spades).

  In a bold gesture, he’s insisted on a nighttime gathering, even though most children under the age of ten have never been out much past sundown. He’s decided on the weekend of Halloween to add a splash of drama. He adores a masquerade.

  Why, you could be practically anybody hiding behind all that—

  MR. TRUMAN CAPOTE

  REQUESTS THE PLEASURE OF

  YOUR COMPANY

  AT A BLACK AND WHITE DANCE

  ON MONDAY, THE TWENTY-EIGHTH OF NOVEMBER,

  NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX

  TEN O’CLOCK

  GRAND BALLROOM, THE PLAZA

  R.S.V.P. MISS ELIZABETH DAVIS

  485 PARK AVENUE

  DRESS:

  GENTLEMEN: BLACK TIE, MASK

  LADIES: BLACK OR WHITE DRESS, MASK

  TRUMAN IS BESIDE himself when he collects the box of embossed invitations from Tiffany’s. Just beside himself, staring at the text, fresh from the printers, his enthusiasm dampened.

  ‘Sugar,’ he informs the manager of the stationery department in a clipped tone, not nearly so friendly as he’d been moments before, ‘an ‘E’ seems to have gone missing from Miss Davies’ name, and someone at four-eight-five will be très surprised to receive acceptance cards from five hundred of my close personal friends, while my publisher Mr. Cerf at four-six-five listens to the crickets chirping.’

  The Tiffany salesman dons glasses, examining the card. At first glance it’s exactly what his client ordered. An elegant, white embossed card, classic Emily Post, with Truman’s playful touch of a sunrise border, gold and orange pinstripes framing the perimeter. Yet turning to the RSVP line, the secretary’s name is indeed misspelled and the street address off by a number.

  ‘I mean honestly, for all the free press I’ve given you, you should be giving me breakfast—and a set of Tiffany silver to boot!’ Before Mr. Manager can grovel in earnest, Truman has snatched the stationers’ box and left in a huff, taking comfort that he’ll later milk the blunder for a discount. Truth be told, he’s already planned to alter the invites by hand.

  He’s been struck with the sudden inspiration for his pièce de résistance… a Guest of Honor. Of course those of us who know him know this is merely a prop. Let’s be honest: Truman’s throwing a party for Truman.

  Nevertheless, he’s written our names down and weighed us each as candidates. Babe is the obvious choice; if this is Tru’s version of a wedding, she’s the closest thing he has to a bride. He knows, however, that that would be expected, and he’s aiming for anything but. He considers Slim, alas away in London with Husband Number Three. Gloria, who we all know would lord it over Babe. Lee would shift the focus to the Kennedys, thoroughly unacceptable. C.Z., too twinset tweedy for what he has in mind. Marella, too European for a venue so steeped in American lore.

  Truman has naturally selected the Plaza as the setting for his drama. It has, since his early days as a copyboy at the New Yorker, served as his haven, as he tucked into the Oak Baron his lunch breaks, inhaling the signature cognac chickenhash—an upscale version of Sook’s down-home cooking. He’d peered into the hushed opulence of the Grand Ballroom after those stolen lunches, before rushing back to the office, where his tardiness was being clocked with some regularity by exasperated superiors. He’d seen dancers in those shadows, visions swaying to the big bands in his mind, when he was little more than a loud-mouthed nobody. He’d always known that this was his Shangri-La. ‘It’s the last great ballroom left in Manhattan,’ he’s insisted ever since. With its lingering glamour and old-school mystique, the Plaza remains a glimmering symbol of Truman’s most cherished, Gatsbyesque ambitions.

  In the end, we all fail to qualify for the role of honoree. Of course we know the real reasons none of us is chosen. First, we are a ‘We.’ Truman knows women, and is savvy enough to foresee that plucking one from his chorus would be bound to offend the rest. More important—none of us needs a fairy tale. Our over-feted grace would deny Tru the credit that he craves, would strip him of the art of creation. He’s planning his party with a focus normally reserved for his fiction. His real-life heroine will be no less vital to his legacy than his fictional Holly Golightly. Truman realizes, as any skilled dramatist would, that what he needs is the fantasy of transformation. An Ugly Duckling, ripe for metamorphosis.

  And Truman has just the ugly duck in mind…

  ‘Kay, sugar, it’s Tru-baby,’ he drawls, sitting at the desk in the vermillion study of his new United Nations Plaza apartment—a heady address by any account, bought with his hard-earned dough. His address book lies open to the G’s, where he’s drawn a star beside GRAHAM, Kay.

  ‘Truman!’ Kay brightens on the other end of the line.

  With a blue fountain pen Truman carefully corrects the street number on the first in a stack of invitations, phone receiver shoved between his chin and shoulder.

  ‘I’ve missed my precious Kay-Kay!’

  ‘I’ve missed my Tru-babe.’

  ‘Look, honey. We hafta have a chat. I’ve decided you’re depressed, and I’m gonna cheer you up. I’m gonna throw you a little party to shake you out of it.’

  In her Washington Post office, buried under a deadline, Kay seems more befuddled than pleased. ‘But I’m not depressed.’

  ‘Yes you are, sugar. You’re depressed and need cheering up and I’m gonna be the one to do it. You see, I’ve got this vision… a bal masqué. A sea of black and white, with you as the belle of the ball.’

  Kay, in her sensible suit, with her sensible
haircut, snorts at the absurdity.

  We know Kay, of course, some of us better than others.

  Babe had introduced Tru to her a year ago and with Truman, as ever, the wooing process commenced. She’s unusually dowdy for Tru’s bag of chips, but she has kind eyes and razor smarts, things that he admires. As publisher of the Washington Post, Kay’s an impressive addition to Truman’s flock, even if her feathers aren’t quite as smooth.

  He’d brought her along as his ‘own special date’ for last August’s Agneta cruise around the Greek and Turkish islands. The trip seemed cursed from the outset, Marella and Gianni having both come down with food poisoning—a batch of rotten oysters. They insisted, however, that Kay and Tru take the yacht as planned.

  Truman had instantly taken to Kay, loving—as he does—a tragedy.

  They were both, after all, shucking off death. He had just watched Dick Hickock and Perry Smith hanged in Kansas, the killers having requested that ‘Friend Truman’ be present at their executions. While we sensed Truman’s grief, noticed that his lunchtime martini count had all but tripled as months rolled by, we all felt wretched for Kay… Philip Graham, her husband and publisher at the Post—ghastly man, manic depressive—checked himself into a D.C. nut-bin, then convinced the doctors to spring him for a weekend. Back in their Virginia farmhouse Phil had kissed Kay goodnight, left the room, and proceeded to blow his head off with a twenty-eight-gauge Winchester repeater. Kay had bottled her pain and assumed the mantle of publisher with dignified grace in the wake of the unmentionable.

  Truman had restored for Kay the gift of pleasure on their yachting venture, where they sunbathed while cutting across the Aegean into Turkish waters. They sipped chilled retsina and ate fresh-caught fish, fried up and served with a mezze of salty cheese and sweet, ripe melon. All the while, Tru read to Kay from the galleys of In Cold Blood. In his final scene, Detective Dewey encounters the best friend of the murdered Clutter daughter in the cemetery, visiting their graves. She’s home from college. Blossoming. She recalls how she and Nancy had hoped to go away to school together, had planned to be roommates at Kansas State. Parting ways, the lawman watches the girl walk away, thinking her all the things that Nancy might have become, had her lovely head been filled with thoughts of books and boys, rather than the lead from Perry’s shotgun. Then Detective Dewey turns and wanders home for his dinner, imagining that he hears the voices of the silenced Clutters in the gentle breeze, rustling through the wheat.