Tell-All

by Chuck Palahniuk

  The shadow of a head falls against the outside of the window, the pane where my Miss Kathie cut the shape of her heart. From behind the fogged glass, the voice says, “Katherine?” His knuckles knocking the glass, a man says, “This is an emergency.”

  Unfolded, the letter reads: My Most Dear Katherine, True love is NOT out of your reach. I flatten the letter to the damp window glass, where it sticks, held secure as wallpaper, pasted there by the condensed steam. The sunlight streaming in from the alleyway, the light leaves the paper translucent, glowing white with the handwritten words hung framed by the heart etched in the glass. The letter still pasted to the window, I flip the dead bolt, slip the chain, turn the knob and open the door.

  In the alleyway, a man stands holding a paper tablet fluttering with pages. Each page scribbled with names and arrows, what looks like the diagram for plays in a football game. Among the names one can read Eve Arden … Marlene Dietrich … Sidney Blackmer … In his opposite hand, the man holds a white paper sack. Next to him, the trash cans spill their roses and gardenias onto the paving stones. The gladiolas and orchids tumble out to lie in the fetid puddles of mud and rainwater which run down the center of the alley. The reek of honeysuckle and spoiled meat. Pale mock orange mingles with pink camellias and bloodred peonies.

  “Hurry, quick, where’s Lady Katherine?” the man says, holding the tablet, shaking it so the pages flap. On some, the names radiate in every direction from a large rectangle which fills the center of the page. The names alternating gender: Lena Horne then William Wellman then Esther Williams. The man says, “I’m expecting twenty-four guests for dinner, and I have a placement emergency.…”

  The diagrams are seating charts. The rectangles are the dinner table. The names the guest list. “As added incentive,” the man says, “tell Her Majesty that I’ve brought her favorite candy … Jordan almonds.”

  Her Majesty won’t eat a bite, I tell him.

  This man, this same face smiles out from the frontline skirmishes on television, amid the Battle of Gettysburg—this is Terrence Terry, formerly Mr. Katherine Kenton, former dancer under contract at Lasky Studios, former paramour to Montgomery Clift, former catamite to James Whale and Don Ameche, former cosodomite to William Haines, former sexual invert, the fifth “was-band,” in crisis about whom to seat next to Celeste Holm at a dinner he’s hosting tonight.

  “This is an entertainment emergency,” the Terrence specimen says, “I need Katherine to tell me: Does Jack Buchanan hate Dame May Whitty?”

  I say that he should’ve gone to prison for wedding Miss Kathie. That it’s illegal for homosexuals to get married.

  “Only to each other,” he says, stepping into the kitchen.

  I close the alley door, lock the knob, slip the chain, flip the dead bolt.

  Whatever the case, I say, a marriage isn’t something one undertakes simply to pad one’s résumé. Saying this, I’m retrieving a sheet of blank stationery from the kitchen table, then positioning this sheet on the damp window so that it aligns with the love letter already pasted to the glass.

  “Her Majesty doesn’t have to come dine with us,” this Terrence Terry says. “Just tell me who to stick next to Jane Wyman.”

  Using a pen, blue ink, I begin to trace the writing of the original letter as it glows through this new, blank sheet.

  “Lady Katherine can tell me if John Agar is right- or left-handed,” says this Terrence specimen. “She knows if Rin Tin Tin is male or female.”

  Lecturing, still tracing the old letter onto the new paper, I suggest he begin with a fresh page. An empty dinner table. Seat Desi Arnaz to the left of Hazel Court. Put Rosemary Clooney across from Lex Barker. Fatty Arbuckle always spits as he speaks, so place him opposite Billie Dove, who’s too blind to notice. Using my own pen, I elbow into Terry’s work, drawing arrows from Jean Harlow to Lon Chaney Sr. to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Like Knute Rockne sketching football plays, I circle Gilda Gray and Hattie McDaniel, and I cross out June Haver.

  “If she’s starving herself,” says Terrence Terry, watching me work, “she must be falling in love again.” Standing there, he unrolls the top of the white paper bag. Reaching into it, Terry lifts out a handful of almonds, pastel shades of pink and green and blue. He slips one into his mouth, chews.

  Not only starving, I say, but she’s exercising as well. Loosely put, the physical trainers attach electric wires to whatever muscles they can find on her body and jolt her with shocks that simulate running a steeplechase while being repeatedly struck by bolts of lightning. I say, It’s very good for her body—terrible for her hair.

  After that ordeal, my Miss Kathie is having her legs shaved, her teeth whitened, her cuticles pushed back.

  Chewing, swallowing, Terrence Terry says, “Who’s the new romance? Do I know him?”

  The telephone mounted on the kitchen wall beside the stove, it rings. I lift the receiver, saying, Hello? And wait.

  The front doorbell rings.

  Over the telephone, a man’s voice says, “Is Miss Katherine Kenton at home?”

  Who, I ask, may I say is calling?

  The front doorbell rings.

  “Is this Hazie, the housekeeper?” the man on the telephone says. “My name is Webb Westward. We met a few days ago, at the mausoleum.”

  I’m sorry, I say, but I’m afraid he has the wrong number. This, I say, is the State Residence for Criminally Reckless Females. I ask him to please not telephone again. And I hang up the receiver.

  “I see you’re still,” the Terrence specimen says, “protecting Her Majesty.”

  My pen follows the handwritten lines of the original letter, tracing every loop and dot of the words that bleed through, copying them onto this new sheet of stationery, the sentence: My Most Dear Katherine, True love is NOT out of your reach.

  I trace the words, I’ll arrive to collect you for drinks at eight on Saturday.

  Tracing the line, Wear something smashing.

  My pen traces the signature, Webster Carlton Westward III.

  We all, more or less, live in her shadow. No matter what else we do with our lives, our obituaries will lead with the clause “lifelong paid companion to movie star Katherine Kenton” or “fifth husband to film legend Katherine Kenton …”

  I copy the original letter perfectly, only instead of Saturday I mimic the handwriting, that same slant and angle, to write Friday. Folding this new letter in half, tucking it back into the original envelope with Miss Katherine written on the back, licking the glue strip, my tongue tastes the mouth of this Webster specimen. The lingering flavor of Maxwell House coffee. The scent of thin Tiparillo cigars and bay rum cologne. The chemistry of Webb Westward’s saliva. The recipe for his kisses.

  Terrence Terry sets the bag of candied almonds on the kitchen table. Still eating one, he watches the television. He asks, “Where’s that awful little mutt she picked up … what? Eight years ago?”

  He’s an actor now, I say, nodding at the television set. And it was ten years ago.

  “No,” says the Terrence specimen, “I meant the Pekingese.”

  I shrug, flip the dead bolt, slip the chain and open the door. I tell him the dog’s still around. Probably upstairs napping. I say to leave the almonds, and I’ll be certain that Miss Kathie gets them. Standing with the door open, I say good-bye.

  On the television, Paco pretends to kiss Vilma Bánky. The senator on the evening news kisses babies and shakes hands. On another channel, Terrence Terry catches a bullet fired from a Union musket and dies at the Siege of Atlanta. We’re all merely ghosts who continue to linger in Miss Kathie’s world. Phantoms like the scent of honeysuckle or almonds. Like vanishing steam. The front doorbell rings again.

  Taking the candy, I slip the forged love letter into the paper bag, where Miss Kathie will find it when she arrives home this afternoon, thoroughly shocked and shaved and ravenous.

  ACT I, SCENE SEVEN

  In the establishing shot, a taxicab stops in the street outside Miss Kathie’s town h
ouse. Sunshine filters through the leaves of trees. Birds sing. The shot moves in, closer and closer, to frame an upstairs window, Miss Kathie’s boudoir, where the drapes are drawn tight against the afternoon glare.

  Inside the bedroom, we cut to a close-up shot of an alarm clock. Pull back to reveal the clock is balanced atop the stack of screenplays beside Miss Kathie’s bed. On the clock, the larger hand sits at twelve, the smaller at three. Miss Kathie’s eyes flutter open to the reflection of herself staring down, those same violet eyes, from the mirrors within her bed canopy. One languid movie star hand flaps and flops, stretching until her fingers find the water glass balanced beside the clock. Her fingers find the Nembutal and bring the capsule back to her lips. Miss Kathie’s eyelashes flutter closed. Once more, the hand hangs limp off the side of her bed.

  The forged version of the love letter, the copy I traced, sits in the middle of her mantelpiece, featured center stage among the lesser invitations and wedding photos. Among the polished awards and trophies. The original date, Saturday, revised to Friday, tonight. Here’s the setup for a romantic evening that won’t happen. No, Webster Carlton Westward III will not arrive at eight this evening, and Katherine Kenton will sit alone and fully dressed, coiffed, as abandoned as Miss Havisham in the novel by Charles Dickens.

  Cut to a shot of the same taxicab as it pulls to the curb in front of a dry cleaner’s. The back car door swings opens, and my foot steps out. I ask the cabdriver to double-park while I collect Miss Kathie’s white sable from the refrigerated storage vault. The white fur folded over my arm, it feels impossibly soft but heavy, the pelts slippery and shifting within the thin layer of dry cleaner plastic. The sable glows with cold, swollen with cold in contrast to the warm daylight and the blistering, cracked-vinyl seat of the cab.

  At our next stop, the dressmaker’s, the cab stops for me to pick up the gown my Miss Kathie had altered. After that, we stop at the florist’s to buy the corsage of orchids that Miss Kathie’s nervous hands will fondle and finger tonight, as eight o’clock comes and goes and her brown-eyed young beau doesn’t ring the doorbell. Before the clock strikes eight-thirty, Miss Kathie will ask me to pour her a drink. By the stroke of nine, she’ll swallow a Valium. By ten o’clock, these orchids will be shredded. By then, my Miss Kathie will be drunken, despondent, but safe.

  Our perspective cuts back and forth between the bedside alarm clock and the roving taxi meter. Dollars and minutes tick away. A countdown to tonight’s disaster. We stop by the hairdresser’s to collect the wig that’s been washed and set. We stop by the hosier’s for the waist cincher and a new girdle. The cobbler’s, for the high heels Miss Kathie wanted resoled. The bodice of the evening gown feels crusted with beads and embroidery, rough as sandpaper or brick inside its garment bag.

  The camera follows me, dashing about, assembling all the ingredients—breathless as a mad scientist or a gourmet chef—to create my masterpiece. My life’s work.

  If most American women imagine Mary, Queen of Scots or the Empress Eugenie or Florence Nightingale, they picture Miss Kathie in a period costume standing in a two-shot with John Garfield or Gabby Hayes on an MGM soundstage. In the public mind, Miss Kathie, her face and voice, is collapsed with the Virgin Mary, Dolley Madison and Eve, and I will not allow her to dissipate that legend. William Wyler, C. B. DeMille and Howard Hawks may have directed her in a picture or two, but I have directed Miss Kathie’s entire adult life. My efforts have made her the heroine, the human form of glory, for the past three generations of women. I coached her to her greatest roles as Mrs. Ivanhoe, Mrs. King Arthur and Mrs. Sheriff of Nottingham. Under my tutelage, Miss Kathie will forever be synonymous with the characters of Mrs. Apollo, Mrs. Zeus and Mrs. Thor.

  Now more than ever the world needs my Miss Kathie to personify their core values and ideals.

  According to Walter Winchell, “menoposture” refers to the ramrod straight backbone of a Joan Crawford or an Ethel Barrymore, a lady of a certain age whose spine never touches the back of any chair. A Helen Hayes, who stands straight as a military cadet, her shoulders back in defiance of gravity and osteoporosis. That crucial age when older picture stars become what Hedda Hopper calls “fossilidealized,” the living example of proper manners and discipline and self-restraint. Some Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis illustration of noble hard work and Yankee ambition.

  Miss Kathie has become the paragon I’ve designed. She illustrates the choice we must make between giving the impression of a very youthful, well-preserved older person, or appearing to be a very degraded, corrupt young person.

  My work will not be distracted by some panting, clutching, brown-eyed male. I have not labored my entire lifetime to build a monument for idiot little boys to urinate against and knock down with their dirty hands.

  The cab makes a quick stop at the corner newsstand for cigarettes. Aspirin. Breath mints.

  In the same moment, the bedside clock strikes four, and the alarm begins to buzz. One long movie-star hand reaches, the fingers searching, the wrist and forearm clashing with gold bracelets and charms.

  At the curb outside the town house, I’m passing a twenty-dollar bill to the cabdriver.

  Inside, the alarm continues, buzzing and buzzing, until my own hand enters the shot, pressing the button, which ceases the noise. In addition to the wig and white sable, I’ve brought the gown, the corsage, the shoes. I’ve filled an ice bucket and brought clean towels and a bottle of chilled rubbing alcohol, everything as clean and sterile as if I were kneeling bedside to deliver a baby.

  My fingers hold an ice cube, rubbing it in a slow arc below one violet eye to shrink Miss Kathie’s loose skin. The ice skims over Miss Kathie’s forehead, smoothing the wrinkles. The melting water saturates the skin of her cheeks, bringing pink to the surface. The cold shrinks the folds in her neck, drawing the skin tight along her jawline.

  Our preparation for tonight, all of her rest and my work, as much fuss and sweat as my Miss Kathie would invest in any screen test or audition.

  With one hand I’m blotting the melted water. Dabbing her face with cotton balls dipped in the cold rubbing alcohol, reducing the pores. Her skin now feels as frigid as the sable coat preserved in cold storage. At one time, every fur-bearing animal in the world lived in terror of Katherine Kenton. Like Roz Russell or Betty Hutton, if Miss Kathie chose to wear a coat of red ermine or a hat trimmed in pelican feathers, no ermine or seabird was safe. One photo of her arriving at an awards dinner or premiere was enough to put most animals onto the endangered species list.

  This woman is Pocahontas. She is Athena and Hera. Lying in this messy, unmade bed, eyes closed, this is Juliet Capulet. Blanche DuBois. Scarlett O’Hara. With ministrations of lipstick and eyeliner I give birth to Ophelia. To Marie Antoinette. Over the next trip of the larger hand around the face of the bedside clock, I give form to Lucrezia Borgia. Taking shape at my fingertips, my touches of foundation and blush, here is Jocasta. Lying here, Lady Windermere. Opening her eyes, Cleopatra. Given flesh, a smile, swinging her sculpted legs off one side of the bed, this is Helen of Troy. Yawning and stretching, here is every beautiful woman across history.

  My position is not that of a painter, a surgeon or a sculptor, but I perform all those duties. My job title: Pygmalion.

  As the clock strikes seven, I’m hooking my creation into her girdle, lacing the waist cincher. Her shoulders shrug the gown over her head, and her hands smooth the skirts down each hip.

  With the handle of a long rattail comb, I’m hooking and tucking her gray hair into the edges of her auburn wig when Miss Kathie says, “Hush.”

  Her violet eyes jumping to the clock, she says, “Did you hear the doorbell just now?”

  Still tucking away stray hairs, I shake my head, No.

  When the clock strikes eight, the shoes are slipped onto her feet. The white sable draped across her shoulders. Her orchids, still chilled from the icebox, she cups them in her lap, sitting at the top of the stairs, looking down into the foyer, watching the stree
t door. One diamond earring pushes forward, her head cocked to hear footsteps on the stoop. Maybe the muffled knock of a man’s glove on the door, or the sound of the bell.

  A whiskey later, Miss Kathie goes to the boudoir mantel and her violet eyes study the letter I forged. She takes the paper and holds it, sitting again on the stairs. Another whiskey later, she returns to her boudoir to fold the letter and tear it in half. She folds the page and tears it again, tears it again, and drops the fluttering pieces into the fireplace. The flames. One of my creations destroying another. My counterfeit Medea or Lady Macbeth, burning my false declaration of love.

  True love is NOT out of your reach. Saturday replaced with Friday. Tomorrow, when Webster Carlton Westward III arrives for his actual dinner date, it will be too late to repair tonight’s broken heart.

  By a third whiskey, the orchids are worried and bruised to a pulp between Miss Kathie’s fretting hands. When I offer to bring another drink, her face shines, sliced with the wet ribbons of her tears.

  Miss Kathie looks down the stairs at me, blinking to dry her eyelashes, saying, “Realistically, what would a lovely young man like Webb want with an old woman?” Smiling at the crushed orchids in her lap, she says, “How could I be such a fool?”

  She is no one’s fool, I assure her. She’s Anne Boleyn and Marie Curie.

  Her eyes, in that scene, as dull and glassy as pearls or diamonds soiled with hair spray. In one hand, Miss Kathie balls the smashed flowers tight within her fist, to make a wad she drops into one empty old-fashioned glass. She hands the glass to me, the dregs of whiskey and orchids, and I hand her another filled with ice and gin. The sable coat slips from her shoulders to lie, heaped, on the stairway carpet. She’s the infant born this afternoon in her bed, the young girl who dressed, the woman who sat down to wait for her new love.… Now she’s become a hag, aged a lifetime in one evening. Miss Kathie lifts a hand, looking at her wrinkled knuckles, her marquise-cut diamond ring. Twisting the diamond to make it sparkle, she says, “What say we make a record of this moment?” Drive to the crypt beneath the cathedral, she means, and cut these new wrinkles into the mirror where her sins and mistakes collect. That etched diary of her secret face.