He could write a eulogy—or a poem perhaps—? A poem called ‘Heliotrope,’ after Babe’s favorite flower… Could C.Z. just talk to Bill and Slim? He’d be so good—he’d do whatever they asked. He’d be a fly on the wall, if only they’d just let him be there…
C.Z. can’t bear to hear the desperation in his voice. She knew what he’d done in Esquire was wrong, but frankly, she blamed us for being equally culpable.
‘How can you think such a thing? We’re the victims!’
‘We knew he was a writer,’ she reminds us, never wavering from this view. ‘You shouldn’t have told him those things. What did you think he would do with all those tales?’ Hearing him now, so desperate just to see his Babe one last time, even after she’s gone, C.Z. can’t help but see Truman as another casualty.
The bargaining is starting in earnest now. No more conspiracies. No recriminations. Just plain, desperate begging.
‘Please, darling, may I come to her funeral? Won’t you please ask Bill? I promise, I won’t cause trouble. I swear I won’t drink. I swear I won’t take anything. No booze. No pills. I just want to be there. I think Babyling would have wanted— —’
And finally C.Z., unable to bear it, unable to protect him any longer, shouts: ‘TRUMAN—’ a harsh edict, for his own sorry good ‘—STOP!’
Cutting into his diatribe, frightening him into silence.
A long pause from her end, he trembling in wait.
‘It wasn’t Bill. It wasn’t Slim.’ Deep breath. ‘It was Babe who didn’t want you there.’
And with those words, he feels the earth ripped out from under him, severing his last tethers of hope.
PHASE VIER: GEDRüCKT (DEPRESSION)
IT’S THE ART expert John Richardson who provides our next curiosity.
A few weeks ago, Richardson tells us that he’d wandered into the Westbury, late one afternoon, having all but missed lunch.
He had just come from assessing pieces in Mrs. X’s collection, which took an hour longer than anticipated. Not that Mrs. X had any intention of selling, but art experts do take a professional interest in knowing who has what pieces and what they’re worth, if only for future reference. Of course he was clever enough to call his collectors Mrs. X or Mr. Y when telling tales, something Truman never would have considered. English, debonair, former head of Christie’s, Picasso biographer in four planned volumes—what’s not to like about Richardson?
The restaurant was eerily calm, in that post-lunch hush that falls between meals, before preparations for dinner. Its dark wood and gents’-club leather booths abandoned. The dining room empty, but for one table, where a lone figure sat, hunched over a glass. Frail, open-mouthed, like a parched bird in need of a drink. Richardson tells us from the posture and the thinning hair, at first glance he assumed it was a very old person. A little old man—or woman? Occupying a dark booth, tucked in the corner. He wondered from the bobbing head if the figure had fallen asleep.
Approaching an adjacent table, Richardson looked closer, recognizing something in the profile, when suddenly the apparition raised its eyes, meeting his gaze dead on. He said he was some-what stunned to recognize the specter…
‘Well hello, Truman! Fancy seeing you here.’
He tried to conceal his shock that the figure looked no younger when seen straight-on.
‘It hadn’t been that long since I’d seen him…’ Richardson tells us in the weeks following, at our own impressive homes, flattering our own paintings. ‘A few months at the most? It was at the Fabergé auction in early May. This was July, and he looked ten years older, without question.’
Mouth slightly sloping down on one side. Eyes rolling back in his head. For a moment Richardson wondered if he’d had or was having a stroke. But then the pupils focused from a squint. He picked up the glass containing the remains of what looked once to have been a Scotch on the rocks. Holding his glass at a sloppy angle, he sucked the last drops left.
‘Hallllooooo…’ (searching his brain for the name) ‘… John.’ Managing a muddled smile. He waved a hand to a waitress, who from across the room looked frightened. This was not Charming Truman—not even Charming Rat-Assed Truman, paying Gladys, Madge and Ruthie sweet (if slurred) compliments at Bobby Van’s in Bridgehampton. This was something with a darker edge, Richardson will later clarify.
It wasn’t that the waitstaff was frightened of anything he might do to them—to them he was perfectly civil, perfectly polite. It was what he seemed to have in mind for himself that scared the living hell out of them. Still, the waitress timorously brought Truman another double-double, handing Richardson a menu.
‘Goodness, but I’m peckish! Haven’t had a bite all day. I got stuck into a rather extensive collection…’ He smiled. The specter merely stared. ‘So sorry—didn’t mean to disturb. Lovely to see you, Truman. Let’s lunch soon, shall we?’
This last bit was disingenuous, but really, what else could one say… ?
Richardson settled into his own booth, quickly deciding on an omelet and salad, if only to order, dine, and get the hell out.
Then—
‘John… ? Whyyyyy not now… ?’
Richardson, with a forced smile, ‘Sorry?’
‘Why don’t you come sitttt heeere? Doooo lunch now… ?’
Christ. The very thing one could not decline—a direct invitation, from a genius no less. A genius teetering on the brink of god knows what.
Concealing his discomfort, Richardson rose and joined him in the corner booth, sitting opposite, Tru tackling the new Scotch at a rather alarming pace.
‘So, Truman. Tell me—what are you working on these days?’ An attempt at small talk. Best, under the circumstances, to steer clear of the personal.
‘Heeeeeee…’ Truman slurred, ‘leeeeeeeeeooo…’ spitting it out, ‘TROPE.’
‘You’re working with tropes?’ Richardson frowned, attempting in vain to follow.
‘NO.’ He tried again—lord only knows how many whiskies he’d been through.
‘Heeeeeee-leo-trope.’
‘Heliotrope? As in… the flower?’
The specter seemed to nod, satisfied with having broken through, adding—his features softening—a single word. ‘Babe.’
‘Babe… Babe Paley?’ This like some sort of deranged game of Password.
Truman nodded, vigorously. ‘Beeeeeautiful Babe… Writing’ bout… Babe—Heeeliooootrope. It’ll be a—?’ He failed to remember the word he was searching for.
‘A novel?’
‘No—Short——’
‘… Story?’
‘Longer…’
‘A novella… ?’
‘YEEESSSSSSSS.’
‘A novella about Babe Paley,’ Richardson clarified.
The specter nodded—‘Heliotrope.’
‘Interesting.’
‘I looooved her, you know. I was in love with her—still in love with Babe.’
‘I see.’
‘She’zzz having lunch today.’
Richardson frowned, knowing that Babe had passed away the previous week. Naturally he assumed that Truman had his facts wrong. But as we’ve always said, there’s generally a sliver of truth in what Tru says.
‘Not Bill… Not Slimmmm… Babe doesn’t want me. She’zz the only person who could ever reeeallly hurt me. And sheeeee did.’
‘Didn’t you hurt her, Truman? By writing what you did?’ Tru’s reluctant lunch date allowed himself.
‘I did hurt… but I didn’t meeeean to. Meant to hurt him… One who betrayed… Bazzzzztard. Couldn’t see her… Otherrr-nesssss…’ He trailed off, as if lost in thought.
‘Ah.’
Then—
‘John… you know about infllooor-essences? An inflooor-essence is clussster of flowers, one stem—branch. Individual flowerzz—each unique… But they’re ssssstuck together, to the same vine… stem. Allllwayzz in a group. Can’t ezzcape each other. You see?’ He leaned across the table, anxious that Richardson understand. ‘Heliotropezz separate, ye
t ssstuck. Like Siamese… or a two-headed…’
For a moment (Richardson says) Truman seemed to lose the plot.
Then, as if beginning afresh—‘John, you know the name “heee-liotrope” comes from a veeeeerrrrry old idea that inflooor-essence turn their rowzzzz of flowers to the sun?’
‘No, Truman. I didn’t know that.’
And as if to demonstrate, Truman turned his own face sky-ward, angling it to the imaginary rays inside the darkened restaurant, as if feeling the warmth on his toad-like cheek.
Eyes closed. His expression rapturous.
Richardson says he paid his portion of the table’s ongoing tab, and excused himself to pop to the gents.
When he returned, Truman was sitting, hunched as he’d first found him, mumbling into his drink, over and over again— Heliotrope… Heliotrope.
Barely audible.
Heliotrope…
PHASE FüNF: ANNAHME (ACCEPTANCE)
TEN DAYS AFTER babe dies, Truman goes on television.
Funnily enough, ‘unleashing one’s demons in a national forum’ isn’t mentioned, from what we can recall, in the Kübler-Ross scheme.
His appearance on The Stanley Siegel Show has been, oddly enough, planned for months. More airtime booked to promote the as-yet-unfinished Answered Prayers to the masses, fanning their fervor, and strange as it sounds, there’s indeed been fervor. While we don’t live in a particularly literary age, we do live in a salacious one, and people really did talk about the goddamn thing.
Someone should have stopped him. But let’s be honest: there was really no one left to.
He arrives at the studios, or so our sources say, managing to pop a handful of Tuinal (though some claim it was Thorazine) before cameras roll.
They’ve propped him in Siegel’s swivel chair, neutral beige like all such sets, eyes rolling, tongue lolling. A sick grotesque in a turquoise knit, brown felt fedora askew, waiting for the cameras to roll. Eyes bulging, tongue protruding, he looks like one of Babe’s Sacré-Coeur gargoyles—or half of a two-headed snake.
Slimy Siegel must have foreseen the shame it would cause— the sheer humiliation. Any host with a conscience would have pulled the plug.
The segment opens on a joke, to which Truman’s forgotten both setup and punchline. He then babbles on about Answered Prayers, with a bit of Babe—confusing the two—
‘And McCloud, Kate, izzzz not who you… I never even went to her funeral… Not McCloud, not real, you seeee… The other… Wazzn’t allowed at lunch… But I’m writing… ummmmmm… about Heliotrope, you see.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
Sensing his moment, like any bloodthirsty shark, Siegel circles the water, preparing to go for the kill.
‘Truman, you told me backstage that you haven’t been to bed in forty-eight hours. Is that true?’
‘We-ull, I’ve been to bed, but not to sleep…’ He laughs salaciously, enjoying his own private thoughts. ‘I mean a number of people…’ He trails off, the thought scampering elsewhere. ‘I mean my life is so ssssstrange. I’m not like other people.’
‘Yes, I’m sure of that… Can I ask you some serious questions?’
‘Sssss-sure,’ Truman slurs. ‘Go right ahead. I feel perfectly—’
‘Truman, I need to ask you—are you an alcoholic?’
Truman pauses, processing. ‘Ohhhh, my gawd,’ he says with an air of disdain, as if dismissing the point as trivial. ‘I mean alllllcohol is the least of it.’ He rolls his eyes to the whites, like a demon-possessed soul. ‘I mean, that’s just the joker in the cardzzzz…’
He keeps touching his eyes, his fingers forming a hook. Scratching an itch that he cannot relieve. He laughs again, and the live audience laughs with him. A Pavlovian response, a symptom of discomfort. But a collective one, allowing Truman to think he’s among friends.
‘Have you taken anything, Truman? Marijuana? Cocaine? Pills?’
‘To-daaaaaay?’
‘Yes, Truman—this morning.’ Siegel feigns concern.
The cunt, we think, our buried loyalties flaring. Much as we loathe Truman for what he has done, we still can be protective, when someone is taking advantage. The poor little shit is so pathetically trusting, so sweetly clueless when it comes to such moments. Presuming all would want to know what the boy genius has to say.
Frankly, we can spot an opportunist when we see one.
Siegel goes on, playing concerned clinician. Handing him the rope with which to hang himself. ‘What’s going to happen, Truman, if you don’t lick this problem with drugs and alcohol?
‘What. Is. Going. To. Happen. To. Truman?’ Siegel ends each word with a full stop for emphasis. Truman stops and thinks for a moment, as if pondering a particularly interesting riddle.
‘Weeeeeeeulllllll… I supppppose that eventually… I’ll kill myself.’
‘Yeeeessssss,’ Siegel urges, excited, just feeling his ratings surge.
Tru adds as a hazy afterthought, ‘I’ll kill myself—without meeeean-ing to.’
That’s the first piece of non-bullshit Truman has spoken in some time.
And as much as we can’t stand who he has become, seeing him crumble on a third-rate morning talk show, it rips our hearts in two.
Afterwards, he remembers nothing.
He’s shown a tape of his appearance, and he’s bewildered by his behavior. It’s like watching someone else—a person he doesn’t quite recognize.
He’s so distraught, so mortified, we’re concerned from afar for his safety.
We all remember that Truman has a loaded gun in the drawer of his dresser in the United Nations Plaza. He’s always liked to brag about this; he thought it sounded macho.
Several concerned parties (C.Z. chief among them) have contacted Sidney-the-doorman, charging him with the mission of quietly confiscating the revolver Detective Dewey had given Truman as a souvenir after In Cold Blood was published, ‘with regards from his friends at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation’— afraid he’ll now find use for it.
TRUMAN FLEES TO the weathered house in Sagaponack, with the excuse of needing to write.
It’s all he has left, after all. It’s his single, fraying lifeline.
If he can only manage this chapter, this one last chapter—he’ll turn out seven volumes, surpassing even Marcel.
If only… If only…
Jack follows, reluctantly, summoned from his secluded haven in Verbier. He returns to their once beloved compound, the deeds for which he still keeps inside Truman’s butterfly-box. Returns to the wind whistling in the dunes. He arrives tofind newspapers piled up on the lawn. Jack brings them inside when he arrives at the house with his single, well-worn suitcase.
‘Truman?’ he calls, opening the kitchen door.
Covering the countertops are the remains of the boy’s last efforts—caviar jars left open. Ditto horseradish and olives. Eggs half scrambled and abandoned; a congealed effort at a hollandaise, sickly yellow, the color he’d send back in restaurants. A soup pan of Campbell’s tomato—just like Andy used to paint, we knew he’d tell Jack—another of clam chowder, both with a film-hardened top. And bottle upon bottle, carefully lining the counter—pills, alternating with vodka, alternating with Orange Drink.
Jack finds him in the loft upstairs, in bed, which he hasn’t left in days.
‘Truman…’
The boy opens his eyes, staring at the tall, freckled man, who to him, in this moment, seems the handsomest of strangers. He knows in an instant to be on best behavior, in order to win his affection.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hi,’ says Jack, kneeling at his bedside.
The boy stares at him with rheumy eyes and a dopey smile, shy at this stage of their courtship. Truly out of character, he thinks he’ll let this stranger make the first move.
‘How are you, Truman?’
‘I’m peachy, handsome. How’re yoooouuuuuuu?’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Just okay?’ The boy can’t resis
t—he reaches out and touches the man’s freckled cheek. My God, but he finds him attractive.
‘That’s about the measure of it.’
The boy’s bony fingers stroke the stranger’s skin, tracing his jawline, as a pair of almond nails had done to his own jaw in a hammock, he thinks he remembers vaguely… Or were they red nails, the color of fire engines, cradling him in a Big-Bed?
‘Truman… I don’t think you’re okay.’
‘No?’
‘No. And I’m terrified that you’re not.’
‘Thank gawd—me too!’ Relieved that someone finally noticed.
He leans in close to the masculine face, whispering his innermost fear—the thing he hasn’t told anyone. ‘You know, the terror starts in my chest, and then makes its way to my throat… Sometimes I can barely breathe. I think a lot about ending the pain. You know what I mean… ?’ He smiles at the stranger, pleased and relieved to be honest.
What a lovely man this is—how concerned. How very gentle.
And yet… he’s crying. Silent tears, rolling down his freckled cheeks, as if he’d gotten caught in the rain.
‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong, my handsome man?’
‘Truman, you don’t know who I am, do you?’
The boy focuses all his energy on the beautiful stranger’s face. Where has he seen it before?… He knows that it’s familiar. He fixes his gaze at the terrain of the freckles and focuses with all his might—a Herculean effort, if there ever was one.
Suddenly, it comes to him. Pleased with himself for knowing the answer, he takes the face in his hands and stares into a pair of greenest eyes…
‘Of course I know who you are. You’re Jack.’
Perfectly simple. As if it were the clearest fact in the world.
Handsome Jack weeps in silence. The boy takes his hand and, looking down, realizes that he’s soiled his bed, and suddenly feels embarrassed.
‘Jack… I’m so sorry, Jack.’ But for what, specifically, he doesn’t know.
‘Why, Truman? Why are you doing this? With all your goddamn talent… Why waste it? Why waste us?’
‘I do this,’ the boy says, in a rare moment of clarity, ‘because I can’t stand the pain without it.’ The man holds him in his strong, freckled arms. They cling to each other in silence, for frankly there’s nothing left to say.
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