You, Truman… are the last person in the world that I’m safe with.
She stares not into his eyes, but through them, and he knows that he has lost her.
FOR THE REST of the hour-long visit they chat. The William S. Paleys, the eldest and youngest Cushing girls, and their twisted little cherub—he who fell from paradise.
When later pressed, none of the individuals in the room that day could say what it was they talked about. When the company rises to depart and Minnie walks them to the door, Bill, Babe, and Truman venture out into the vestibule. They’re all smiles as they turn to wave at Minnie, who watches them make their way to the elevator bank. The triumvirate of old.
As they turn toward the closed doors and Bill punches the call button, the smiles disappear. All three stare straight ahead. Lost in their private thoughts. Dreading, with every fiber of their beings, the ride in that claustrophobic car down thirty-nine floors to the lobby.
What if I break down? What if I break down in front of you? the little shit says silently, willing Babe to hear him. He turns his gaze toward her… But her graceful profile doesn’t move. Doesn’t turn to catch his eye. Chooses not to. One of the last choices she’ll ever have.
She continues staring straight on, waiting for the doors to open.
After what feels an interminable wait, Truman panics when the door dings open. The Paleys move forward, but he doesn’t budge. Feet suctioned to the hall carpet. They step into the elevator and turn coolly to face him—they inside, he out.
‘Oh, mercy me!’ He feigns shock. ‘Don’t you know, it’s only just come to me—I left my wallet behind at Min’s. I’ll just pop back and get it.’
Bill presses the ‘hold’ button, with a sigh of irritation.
‘No, no, Bill. No need to wait—I wouldn’t want to hold you up! You have to get our beautiful girl home to rest.’ Again the old familiarity, the chumminess. He waves them on, flashing a mega-watt smile.
Babe stares at him, expressionless.
‘Fine, Truman.’ Bill releases the hold button. ‘Take care.’
Truman shifts his eyes to Babe, anxious.
Please, Baby. Please—
You’re the only one who could hurt me.
And in that lilt of a breath before the doors close, a muscle twitches in her bourbon-colored eye. He thinks he sees a tear gathering, spilling down an expressionless cheek, mask of neutrality in place. This just as the doors close, and she disappears from him forever.
IT’S JUST AFTER easter, when she’s moved into her dressing room, that the dreams of Kiluna begin. The more Babe retreats from the world outside, the more she fixates on her house and its grounds… feeling, as she told us on our visits, that her gardens are calling her back to them.
Her life seems increasingly distilled to such absolutes, which no one who knows her dares challenge. She seems to relax into the knowledge that the end of her life is near, secure in the last things she wants from it.
As summer approaches, she begins to mention wanting to see Kiluna one last time. Of wanting a final pilgrimage.
We’ve dreaded this day, for we know that it heralds the finality we’ve each been avoiding. Bill refuses to consider any suggestion of a finite end, still making phone calls to specialists the world over, in search of experimental cures, the wildcards that still might save her.
But Babe has insisted, and Bill can’t bear to refuse her.
She makes her farewell journey in June, when the blooms still retain the newness of spring, yet have had time to flower to full, glorious fruition.
Kiluna’s sunken lawns prove as magical as remembered, their fresh-cut grass tickling her nose. She appreciates the hay fever, the sniffling and eye-watering, for they help conceal her tears. She enjoys the series of sneezes that before would have seemed an inconvenience, but now serve to remind her that she’s still alive.
A golf cart is procured to drive her on one last survey of her sloping, verdant space. When they reach the pond, eldest son Tony lifts her from the cart and carries her down to the bank, where she sits for a very long time.
After several hours absorbing every detail, sounds and fragrances heightened, colors taking on a saturation even more pronounced than usual—a brightness almost blinding in its intensity—Babe turns to her children and nods. She even manages to give Bastard Paley’s arm a squeeze of thanks—a shard of residual affection.
They drive the golf cart back to the house and after a simple dinner of sandwiches which Babe declines to eat, they make the long drive back to the city.
When she returns to the St. Regis, Babe moves out of her special closet lair. Back into her bedroom, with its tangle of Moroccan vines and pillows of jade-plumed lovebirds.
And in the weeks she spends awaiting the inevitable, she remembers that in her gardens the heliotrope remains as fragrant as ever, its lilac inflorescences turning their rows of delicate flowers toward the sun.
CODA
SITTING DOWN TO Babe’s final luncheon, served on the portico at Kiluna, we reach for napkins folded into the shape of calla lilies, cross-pollinating sculptural floral centerpieces on the linen-draped picnic tables (her one nod to tradition), and we think of the streamlined bouquet she’d clutched as she married Bill Paley in a modest ceremony, careful not to call attention to her Waspishness or his Jewishness, or to their dual divorces.
We’re transported through her Poulet à l’Estragon to Paris in the Fifties, when we were thirty years younger, at the height of our beauty and vigor.
We agree with Babe, the varietal of wine in the sauce is as vital as the tarragon. We think we detect the citrus and vanilla notes of a Rhône Viognier.
Babe had chosen a soufflé for the last dessert she’ll ever serve, a rich, bitter cocoa, spiked with Grand Marnier. Beautifully presented, piping hot, in individual ramekins, a jigger of cream on the side.
‘Not everyone cares for cream, you know,’ she would have informed us with authority. ‘Best to serve it on the side, so that everyone has options.’
And when we lift our spoons from the bubbling pots of soufflé chocolat, we can almost taste her loneliness in its lightness, her disappointment lingering on our tongues, as we savor its perfection.
SIXTEEN
1978
VARIATION NO. 8
HE LIES ON his chesterfield, flipping through the Sunday Times, enjoying himself, perspiring in the summer heat.
Truman’s always been a bit of a newspaper hound.
He’s expanded his range to include all the New York dailies, plus darling Kay-Kay’s Washington Post, for while he doesn’t give a hoot about politics, he likes to support his friends. He takes the Garden City Telegram to keep up with the Midwest doings of his Kansas bunch and, to his own chagrin, the LA Times—written by ‘Moron Zombies with the purpose of sucking the last braincells of other Moron Zombies,’ according to Tru. Best to prepare for the apocalypse.
When he’s spent long stretches of time in Europe, the papers have proven a lifeline to the world he left behind. When he and Jack were in Taormina for nearly a year, Truman would make the journey each afternoon down to the tiny newsagents in town, to whom he had arranged to have a New York Times sent each day.
He has the papers delivered to Sagaponack and Verbier when he’s in residence, and puts them on hold when he leaves. At the U.N. Plaza, Sidney the doorman brings his subscriptions up and leaves them on his doormat each morning, in a neat, pleasing stack.
He can yak your ear off about which journalist worked for which editor, for which publication and when. He is a student of fonts and typesets. He’s picky about his layouts—and don’t get him started on headlines! He can sniff a gimmick caption a mile away, and holds a particular disdain for ‘punny’ ones. For while Truman is the first to lean toward flights of fancy in his speech— or fable in his fiction—he’s a bit of a purist when it comes to his journalism.
He feels a special kinship with the world of newsprint, we believe, because he is, in a strange way, in
debted to it. It was, after all, the New York Times that gave him the subject for his masterpiece. He’d been horizontally reading his paper in bed, per routine, when he saw it:
HOLCOMB, KANSAS, NOV. 15 [1959] A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged… There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut.
He had paused. And for a fraction of a second, he found that he could hardly breathe. Just from that tiny piece, he sensed something… The germ of a story.
There was more in the blurb, but not much. Three hundred words in all. But that was enough. Truman had instincts for such things. He had been searching for the ideal subject to apply the techniques he had been turning over in his mind—journalism as art; fact as fiction.
But this is beside the point—the point is that without that newspaper clipping there would be no In Cold Blood, and without In Cold Blood there would in essence be no Truman.
As he lies reading his Times, he reaches to switch on a standing floor fan, which rustles the papers as it oscillates, blowing cool air toward his damp skin.
Truman knows it’s July because it’s just been the Fourth. And no one living by the sea could avoid it, with the constant reminders of fireworks being shot off from boats at every turn. He smiles a pained smile each time he hears one, thinking of how Maggie would howl, circling the dunes, convinced that something was wrong. Poor Mags was not here for the pop! pop! explosions three days earlier—this being his first Independence Day without her.
Too upset to stay at home alone, in a house with no Jack and no Mags, he had called a Hope’s End Cab and taken it to Azurest. He dined at Ouisie’s, one of his regulars, ordering fried shrimp and okra, and a side of crisp hushpuppies. All drenched in cornmeal and dropped in hot oil. Truman knows that it’s bad for him—but Truman does a lot of things that are bad for him these days. Jack hates him eating all that fried shit—‘It’ll clog your arteries, Truman. That’s a heart attack on a plate!’—but he reasons it’s a holiday, and Jack, increasingly in Verbier, isn’t here to see what Truman consumes.
He sits alone on the shore, pondering the nature of pyrotechnics, listening to a jazz band further down the beach play mid-tempo swing versions of patriotic tunes, lending them an injection of much-needed soul. The smoky voices make him wistful for Lady Day—gardenia in her hair, covering the bald spot where she singed her scalp with a curling wand. The term ‘curling wand’ he associates exclusively with Southern gals (they calling it a ‘wand’ as if endowed with wizardly magic; Yankee girls reduce it to an ‘iron,’ as if grooming was a chore). The thought of Southern gals makes him homesick. He remembers reading his stories out to Nelle and Sook in the old farmhouse kitchen, sometimes making them up as he went, having Nelle take dictation. He thinks of how Sook loved his high melodic voice so much, she was happy to hear him read anything aloud. He has a vision, as the fan blows cool air onto his face, of Sook, sweet, gentle Sook, settling into her rocking chair with her sewing, waiting for him to read her the Obits. He can almost hear her down-tilts in the old rocker as she smiles and nods and mends a pair of long johns. He finds himself flipping back to the Obituary page, pondering if he should read one aloud for old times’ sake…
It’s then that he sees it.
First, her face. Her unspeakably beautiful face.
For a moment he thinks he’s made a mistake, that he’s flipped to the society section by accident. He thought she grew lovelier with time, for while any pretty young thing can turn heads just by flaunting their youth, Babe ripened and blossomed—or blossomed and ripened—with age. As ever, he’s mesmerized by her image, to the exclusion of all else.
It’s then that he bothers to process the headline:
BARBARA CUSHING PALEY DIES AT 63;
STYLE PACE-SETTER IN THREE DECADES GONE.
PHASEN DE TRAUER.
They say that the first stage of grief is denial.
The ‘they’ we refer to is technically Kübler-Ross—Dr. Elisa-beth—whose five-step field guide for battling the Grim Reaper’s harvest was all the buzz at our dinners and luncheons ten years back. Most of us at least had a quick skim—enough to feign authority. From this we know her famed five stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
PHASE EINS: VERWEIGERUNG (DENIAL)
TRUMAN STARES AT the words, which simply can’t be real.
He knows that typesetters do get things wrong and are forced to print corrections on a special page in the next day’s issue. If not a prank, surely a mistake… ?
He frantically unwraps the other dailies, hoping to find no trace of Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley, smiling serenely from their pages.
It will take rifling through the Post, the Journal, and the zombified LA Times, flipping frantically back to the Obits, meeting her photographic gaze three more times, the fan ruffling their pages, before he realizes that it might be true.
PHASE ZWEI: ZORN (ANGER)
‘HELLO, SUGAR… I’D like to speak with Mr. William S. Paley, s’il vous plaît.’
This we can hardly believe. He’s had the audacity—the bald-faced audacity!—to ring up Bill’s office at CBS?! On today of all days?
‘May I ask who’s calling?’ A receptionist, voice thrumming with cordial indifference.
He hesitates before he commits, wondering were it not better to use a clever pseudonym, in the hopes that his call be connected. (Not that he could begin to disguise that pipsqueak voice of his— so it’s not really a feasible plan.)
‘This is Truman Capote,’ he states with a note of defiance.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Capote. Mr. Paley is out of the office.’ Does he imagine it, or does her voice chill ever so slightly?
‘Well, when do you expect him back in?’
‘I couldn’t say, Mr. Capote. Mr. Paley has taken a personal leave of absence… To deal with a family matter.’ Miss Fort Knox.
‘Well, honey, I know that. That’s the very reason I’m calling.’
Silence.
‘I’m calling about the family matter.’
Silence still.
‘I’m a friend of the family. A very close friend…’
Even the secretary must read the papers, Truman. Even the secretary would know that’s no longer true…
‘I am calling about the memorial for Mrs. Barbara Paley. Could you tell me when and where it’s to be held?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Capote. I can’t disclose that information.’
‘What do you mean, “can’t disclose”?’
‘That information is of a private nature. It’s for the family to convey those details.’
‘Well, can I have an address where this top-secret event happens to be taking place, so that I might, at the very least, know where to tell my florist to send an arrangement… ?’
He hears her hesitate.
Then—‘Look, sweetheart, I was Mrs. Barbara Paley’s very best friend in the world.’ (‘WAS’ being the operative word…) ‘I just need you to tell me if they’re going to be at the St. Regis or Kiluna.’
‘I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Capote. But I just can’t disclose—’
‘Can’t—? Or won’t?’
‘Sir—’
‘Siirrrrrr,’ aping the drawl in her accent. ‘Siirrrrr? I’m not your Daddy, for Chrissakes!’
‘Sir, I’m afraid that your tone is not—’
‘Tone?! My tone? Look, you smug little bitch. I just need to know when and where the memorial for Mrs. Paley is gonna be held. Now, are you gonna tell me what I need to know, provide me with the information that I seek, or am I gonna have to ask to speak to your superior?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Capote, but there’s no one else to speak with.’
‘Oh reeaallly? I find that hard to believe. You’re actually telling me that there’s no one above you? No manager? No boss? No superior to report to?�
��
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘I’m aff-fraid not,’ repeating her cadence exactly. ‘So you’re telling me that you personally—you, Mademoiselle Secrétaire— are the sole person in charge of the Columbia Broadcasting System on this sweltering midsummer day… ?’
‘That’s correct, Mr. Capote.’ Oooh. Defiance, no less. Good for you, Miss Vassar.
‘That’s correct… Listen, pussycat. I find that very hard to believe. I think you’re an absolute cunt. So fuck you and the horse you rode in on—which knowing him as I do, is probably named Mister Bill Paley… !’
He slams the phone down in a rage.
PHASE DREI: VERHANDELN (BARGAINING)
C.Z. HAS TRIED. lord knows she’s tried.
She had spoken to Babe directly, over tea at Babe’s bedside, then to Slim over lunch at Vadis. Of course it hadn’t worked. Babe had anticipated this move. She knew him too well.
And when Truman phones C.Z. after hanging up on Bill’s secretary and begs her to intercede on his behalf—moaning to her he didn’t get to mend things when Babe was living; the least that they can do is let him say goodbye—she listens in silence to his diatribe.
How it was Bill keeping him from Babe. Bill who resented him still for The Sheets. How he had only written the goddamn thing to stand up for Babe, to defend her honor, shaming the husband who failed to see her worth.
Tru tells C.Z. it’s likely Slim, too. Who he misses and adores, but who we all know can hold a grudge—Lord knows we know that. How she’d rejected his attempts to make amends and was keeping him away from Babe as a sort of vindictive gesture…
Babe would have wanted him there, he feels certain. She told him so with her eyes the other day. They of course couldn’t speak, because the others were there, but he heard her loud and clear. Babe would have wanted him to help her plan her send-off—
Does C.Z. know where it will be, by the way? And when?
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