He approached her and smiled.
‘Good evening,’ he said.
‘Good evening.’
‘Are you lost, sugar? Can I help?’
The woman looked embarrassed. ‘I—I’m so sorry. I just read all about it, you see. And I did so much want to see what it looked like.’ She could be his Mama, in her Lillie Mae days.
‘Well, come right on in. Would you like a glass of champagne?’
Her plain face brightened. ‘Oh yes. Yes, please.’
Truman took her hand and led her into the ballroom. He watched with pleasure as her eyes widened, taking in the scene. His creation. A galaxy of supernovae, blinding in their brightness. Beauty and light. His own tiny universe.
He motioned a waiter, who swooped in with a silver tray of crystal champagne coupes.
‘It’s Taittinger,’ Truman said proudly, handing her a glass. ‘Four hundred bottles. And I designed these glasses myself.’
The woman nodded, accepting the coupe, from which she took a long sip.
Then, without warning, she threw the rest of its contents in Truman’s face. As if something snapped and the lost lamb bared wolfish fangs—‘How dare you?’
Truman stared at her, stunned. ‘But—’
‘Four hundred bottles of champagne?! You and your rich friends and your excess! What about the hundreds of men who’ll come home in a body bag or missing a limb? What about the victims of the bombings in Cambodia? The napalm strikes? Innocent children burning alive? Or the hundreds of homeless just outside those doors? You should be ashamed!’
Truman listened to her diatribe, his face graying. He felt a hand grip his arm protectively, and turned to see C.Z., Sidney the doorman-turned-bouncer at her side.
‘Sidney,’ she said pointedly, in her stern drawl, ‘I believe this young lady has lost her way? Do be a dahhhling and take her for a spin… just out those doors and right down the stairs.’
‘It’s you who’s lost the way. You’re like horrid aristocrats— ripe for the guillotine. And trust me, sister, the revolution is coming.’
C.Z. yawned. ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re right, dear. But it’s not coming tonight before dawn. Ahhfter all, there’s a time and place for everything.’ And with that she pulled Truman from the wreckage, marched him across the room to a table, where she sat him down and tenderly dried his face with a dinner napkin. Tears streamed down his wide, flushed cheeks.
‘Now, Truman. I cahn’t dry your face if you’re just gonna wet it all over again.’
‘Oh, Sissy. Am I a terrible person? Have I done something bad?’
‘That’s not even worthy of an answer.’
‘I just wanted to throw a party—was that so wrong?’
C.Z. rose abruptly. ‘Get up.’
‘No, Sissy. It’s ruined.’
‘Truman Streckfus Persons Capote. You get your ahhhsss outta that chair and dance with me this instant.’ Her tone was so tough he could do nothing but comply. She led him to the dance floor, holding him in her forceful grip.
‘Now you listen to me, bustah,’ she said as they moved in triple time. ‘Nothing is ruined. Look around you. Look at what you’ve created! All these people… The best and brightest of the gahddamn century, all here for you!’
‘For Kay…’ he said sheepishly.
‘Truman. We’re all here for you. Because of what you wrote. Because of who you ahhrre. You’ve thrown the best gahddamn pahty anyone has ever seen. An act of creation, like a book or a play or a painting. We’re all here because we love you. You, bustah, have arrived.’
He looked at her, his little heart nearly bursting with joy. ‘Do you really think so, Sis?’
‘I know so. And besides,’ she grinned, ‘you’re a gahddamn genius.’
Slim sailed by in Jerry’s arms, beaming at her Truheart in passing. Between Jerry’s footwork and Tru’s champagne, Slim felt as if she were floating; as if the iridescent balloons hanging from the chandeliers had traded places with the floor. She scanned the space, looking for the person she’d most like to share the feeling with. The person she had shared her whole adult life with, identity and all. The person she’d given up so much to resurrect, knowing in her bones that Betty would gladly have done the same for her. She spotted her at a table, alone, Robards having gotten rat-assed enough to have taken a taxi home. Slim suspected she’d only married him to bandage her pride après Frank. She was and would always be Mrs. Bogart.
‘Jerry…’ Slim said. ‘There’s a dame over there who could use a spin with a maestro such as yourself, and not mangle your toes like me…’ Jerry followed Slim’s gaze and gave a conspiratorial wink. In a fluid motion he spun Slim toward Betty’s table, exchanging one man’s broad for another. Betty looked surprised, but pleased. Slim took her cigarette, smiling. ‘Floor’s yours. Knock’ em dead, kid.’
From his perch at the piano Duchin spotted Jerry leading Betty onto the floor. A showman in his bones, he knew a ‘moment’ when he saw it. He stopped the orchestra mid-tune, in order to draw attention to Robbins and Bacall. A few oblivious couples continued dancing as the band struck up the opening phrases of Irving Berlin’s ‘Top Hat, White Tie and Tails,’ but most parted like the Red Sea. Betty and Jerry glided across the floor improvising what seemed the most carefully choreographed of routines. Like the lyric said—they simply reeked class.
This is what Slim had wanted for Betty that long-ago summer in Spain. The sheer joy she’d seen in Betty’s eyes whenever she looked at Bogart. Life itself! Beauty so profound one hardly dared breathe in its presence.
Lee had pulled Mr. Harry Winston aside to watch with a girlish grin that seldom broke through all that coolness. Gloria forgot the stabbing of the migraine in her eye—healed for the length of the song. Truman squeezed C.Z.’s hand with elation. ‘Oh, Sis…’ he breathed. ‘No one could ever forget this… !’ Babe, still fumbling in the dark recesses of an alcove in the mezzanine, would later be told that it was a vision to behold.
When the song drew to its conclusion, the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza burst into rapturous applause. Duchin—knowing to alter the pace in order to spare Bacall and Robbins the tedium of endless encores—struck up the simplest of shuffles and the floor filled again. Betty and Jerry continued to dance, laughing and chatting.
Slim smiled, satisfied. She turned to head for the bar, bumping smack into…
‘Hiya, Nan.’
Leland. Her Leland. Looking as sharp in a tux as he always had. God. He still had the power to take her breath away.
‘Hiya, Hay,’ Slim replied, hoping he couldn’t see the color rising in her cheeks. What was she, twelve? She’d been married to the man for a decade, for Chrissakes!
‘Too bad we didn’t spot that chemistry years ago.’ He nodded to Jerry and Betty on the floor. ‘We coulda made a killing.’
They smiled, taking a moment to ponder all those productions that never were. Then they looked at each other and laughed. Nerves palpable, yet something else… Relief. Relief to be in one another’s company, if only for a moment, if only in passing.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘Not terrible. You?’
‘Same.’
‘So. Two old-timers who aren’t terrible.’
She forced a smile. ‘Not bad, considering.’
He smiled back. She studied the terrain of lines on his face, the ones she remembered having deepened, new lines shooting off them like unknown tributaries.
‘So, listen, Nan…’ He paused, scratching the nape of his neck, an old tic she knew well. ‘We’re about to head off.’
Slim felt her heart sink. ‘I see. Well… Good to have seen you.’
‘Frank wants to swing by Jilly’s, you know how it is.’ He shifted uncomfortably.
‘Yeah. As I say…’
Overlapping—‘But first I thought—’
‘It was good to have—’
‘Dammit, Nan,’ he said, exasperated. ‘I’m trying to ask you to dance before we go.’ He ran a nerv
ous hand through his silver boyish crew cut. His voice softened. ‘Would that be okay?’
Slim smiled. Same old Leland. What a prince.
‘Okay.’
They walked out to the floor, where Leland, who had yet to dance all night, naturally took his turn at a Duchin homage. Which’ll it be? Slim thought. South Pacific? The King and I? On the piano’s cue, the orchestra began to play a swing rendition of ‘The Sound of Music.’
Slim looked to Leland, shaking her head.
‘Really? That old can of worms?’
‘Of all the goddamn shows…’ Leland agreed.
Nevertheless, she slipped into his formal dance hold and they began a gentle two-step to the soundtrack that had ended their marriage. By the time the medley had moved on to ‘My Favorite Things,’ the former Haywards had started to snicker, which— when eyes met—couldn’t help but break into full, contagious laughter.
‘Stop it!’ Slim giggled, unable to look at him. ‘Let me breathe!’
‘You have to admit it’s funny—a bit of black comedy.’
‘Well, of course you think it’s funny,’ she said, the old playfulness revived. ‘You made a killing in returns!’
‘Not fair. I gave you a percentage…’
‘Hay… I think the Reverend Mother made more than me in the end.’
They laughed. He held her wrist tight and pulled her closer. Lips at her ear.
‘God, Nan, but I miss this.’
Slim felt her breath catch like a faulty hinge.
‘Miss… what, exactly?’
‘You. I miss you.’ Simply. Frankly.
She cut her eyes up to his.
He paused for a moment. ‘I miss us.’
‘We were pretty great together, weren’t we?’ Slim allowed herself. She turned her head so he couldn’t see the tears. By the time she looked back she’d managed to stave them off. ‘Well.’ She tried to sound bright. Sunny. ‘Not to be.’ What she really felt was a hole in her gut that had never gone away. ‘I’m sure you’re happy.’
She permitted herself a glance and saw it in his eyes. He was as miserable as she was. He tightened his grip and leaned in to whisper in her ear once more.
‘There was only ever you, Nan.’ There it was, clean as glass. ‘You’re the only one.’
‘And you for me.’ Didn’t begin to scratch the surface, but what more could she say? They danced on, as Duchin ended his medley with a waltz of ‘Edelweiss’ that cut Slim to her very soul. She knew he felt it too, as she’d always known when they were in accord. When she dared to meet his eyes, she saw that he was the one on the brink—his eyes, still as blue as a hundred clear skies, clouding with rain.
‘Hey. What’s with the waterworks?’ She permitted herself one brush of his weathered face with her fingertips. He allowed himself to take them in his, looking to the finger that once wore the simple band that he had given her, another man’s ring in its place.
He held her hand between them for the last moments of the waltz, in the space between where their hearts should have been.
‘Just know that I’ll love you till I die, Nancy Hayward.’
‘It’s Keith now,’ she reminded him.
His hand strayed to the small of her back, lingering.
‘Not for me it isn’t.’
As Leland held her and turned her around the Plaza floor to that last love song they’d shared, Slim knew that husbands may come and go but, like Betty, she was a one-man gal, who would never really be any ‘Mrs.’ other than Hayward.
OF COURSE IT wasn’t real life. Slivers of perfection seldom are.
And naturally it couldn’t last. We knew as much at the time. But we never dreamed that the fall would be quite so great.
We recognize what easy pickings we were. Ripe for the fantasy that Truman peddled. Even then we knew that our heads could be turned by half-truths and enough booze and the illusion of beauty. We knew on some level that it was a fiction, nothing more. One of Truman’s finest. He had gathered us all there—his cast of characters.
Maybe he was right when he insisted time and again that his evening was ‘not about In Cold Blood, honey!’
It was of his future masterpiece that he was thinking, Marella for one is convinced.
‘He called us there that night for a reason,’ she’s told each of us. ‘That guest list we watched him construct—it was nothing more than the cast list for his precious Answered Prayers. He was assembling his characters, watching us as we played out our own pathetic little dramas. Gathering plots for his letteratura del pettegolezzo, poaching our lives as fiction.’
It is a convincing argument. We find it rather stunning to note how many of us were there that night who ended up in his Esquire filth, or were slated for the larger opus.
Some of us have chosen to compartmentalize, seeing this as an evening arranged by a Truman who no longer exists, therefore the memory might remain unsullied.
Because of who Truman was, that evening will always be perfect—nothing could hope to rival it. But because of who he became, it can never exist again. He has taken it with him, and for that, above all else, we can never fully pardon him.
One cannot forgive the tainting of the sublime.
NINETEEN
1961/1972/1979
LEE
MIDNIGHT RAMBLINGS
IT WAS A mild spring evening by most accounts—just between Easter and May Day, when the cherry blossoms were losing their leaves, dusting florets like snowflakes onto the pavement. The political set was aflutter, donning their ball gowns and penguin suits. The gentlemen carried mackintoshes, casually slung over forearms. The ladies favored mink stoles which barely covered their shoulders.
It was the Kennedys’ first White House state dinner—the first of forty-three, in their brief three-year residency—given in honor of the First Lady’s sister Lee Radziwill née Bouvier and her husband, Prince Stanislas.
Martinis were mixed from a bar erected in the corner of the State Dining Room. Butlers made the rounds, replenishing glasses, perhaps with too much efficiency. By the time dinner commenced Vice President Lyndon Johnson had knocked back three or four bourbons. There were bowls of yellow tulips, flown in from afar, cheerful hue reflecting the glories of spring. Jackie stunned in a boatneck shift, cut to a shallow V in the back, Veronese green in hue. Lee wore ecru crêpe. As the evening’s entertainment, Pablo Casals played Bach’s Suite No. 3. Jackie’s designer, Oleg Cassini, hijacked the HiFi and introduced the Twist, which the White House press secretary later took pains to deny.
It was during the after-dinner dancing that it happened.
Jackie was standing in the Blue Room when Gore Vidal, three sheets to the wind, sidled up for a chat. In a gesture one could construe as familial, he placed his arm around her waist. Before he knew it, RFK was behind him, removing the offending appendage from the First Lady’s person. ‘That sort of thing doesn’t fly around here,’ witnesses quote Bobby snapping.
The argument moved into the hall, where the two exchanged words.
‘Says who?’ Vidal had challenged.
‘Says me. Get the hell out.’
‘Don’t offend a writer,’ Vidal had hissed at RFK, ‘without expecting revenge in print.’
Security then asked Vidal to leave, and from all accounts he departed forthwith, but not before— —
IT WAS A crisp autumn d.c. evening, other attendees will recall. Elm leaves littered the pavement, husks sticking like tissue to shoe soles in the damp.
It was at the young Kennedys’ third formal White House dinner—given in honor of Gianni and Marella Agnelli, who’d flown in from Turin.
Negronis flowed from the bar, erected in the State Dining Room. By the time the dinner commenced Lyndon Johnson had knocked back five—or was it six?—bourbons. Fires blazed in every room, despite the mildness of climate. There were dahlias arranged in silver bowls, a blend of dusky hues. Jackie looked exquisite, in a Grecian style gown of palest yellow custard. Lee wore fuchsia silk. A mi
litary panorama was staged on the South Lawn, after which the guests returned inside, where Oleg Cassini hijacked the HiFi and introduced the Twist.
It was during the after-dinner dancing that it happened.
Jackie was sitting on a settee in the Red Room when Gore —having plucked half a dozen Negronis from circulating trays— made his woozy approach, stumbling from the intake. He touched her bare shoulder, then knelt down beside her and started to chat—something about her mother, whom he proceeded to disparage, despite having hardly known her. When he tried to stand, he found that he needed to steady himself, and did so by grasping Jackie’s shoulder, using it for leverage. Bobby appeared behind him, removing his hand and throwing his balance.
Gore followed him into the hallway, enraged. ‘Listen to me, Daddy’s Boy, don’t ever touch me again!’
Bobby laughed. ‘And who are you, pal? Yeah… exactly. You’re nobody.’
‘I’m a writer,’ witnesses say Gore hissed. ‘And let me tell you something… we always have the last word.’ It was then that the Secret Service arrived, politely asking Gore to leave, and so he departed with— —
STILL OTHERS RECALL a summer fête, in the sizzling heat of July, when the thought of wearing a monkey suit held little—if any— appeal for the gents. The ladies worried about their bouffants falling, like a series of soufflés collapsing, and feared the perspiration might seep through their silk, creating unsightly rings.
It was at a state dinner, given for the Radziwills and the Agnellis in the third year of Jack’s term—though already this doesn’t add up, as we know for a fact Gianni and Marella spend their summer months exclusively on board the Agneta, cruising the Mediterranean.
Cocktails flowed from the State Dining Room bar—Polynesian Mai Tais, served in enormous tumblers, though Jackie had learned to instruct the staff to tepidly top up glasses. (They were encouraged to be less fastidious in their service to LBJ, who was by the third bourbon knocking back iced tea, unbeknownst to him.) The hearths were dormant, though slender tapers in candelabras replicated their welcoming glow. Birds of paradise provided a tropical feel.
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