If it is the case that love does survive death, then you may consider this to be a happy ending. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Happily ever after or not.
In a Samuel Goldwyn touch, ham-handed as that final shot in his Wuthering Heights, we might include a quick flashback here. Just a quick reveal to show me shooting both the lovebirds in their bedroom, then staging the scene to suggest the burglary described in Love Slave. The surprise ending: that my role is not so much best friend or maid as villain. Hazie Coogan played the role of murderess. Perhaps in that last instant, Miss Kathie’s violet eyes will register the full realization that she’s been duped all along.
Slowly, we dissolve back to the Kenton crypt… With the mirror propped in its customary place, positioned just so, I step to the lipstick X marked on the stone floor and superimpose my own face over the true face of my Miss Kathie. The lifetime of her scars and wrinkles, every distortion and defect she ever suffered, it’s my own burden for the moment. The mirror itself sags with its collection of so many scratched insults. Every single one of Miss Kathie’s faults and secrets.
The fur coat I’m wearing, it’s her fur coat. My black veil, her veil. I reach into the slit of one pocket and retrieve the Harry Winston diamond ring. Kissing the ring, where it sits in the palm of my hand, I blow on it the way you would a kiss, and tumbling, thrown and flashing a low arc across the crypt, the diamond shatters the flawed reflection. What was an actual life story collapses into countless sparkling, glittering fragments. That single perfect image exploded into so many contradicting perspectives. The priceless diamond itself lost in this heap of so many worthless, dazzling glass shards.
Katherine Kenton will live for all time, preserved in the public mind, as permanent and lasting as silver-screen legends Earl Oxford and House Peters. Immortal as Trixie Friganza. Her face will be as familiar to future generations as the luminous, landmark face of Tully Marshall. Miss Kathie will continue to be worshiped, the way applauding audiences will forever worship Roy D’Arcy, Brooks Benedict and Eulalie Jensen.
From the shattered mirror, any true record of my Miss Kathie reduced to glittering slivers, from this the camera swings to focus on the newest urn. Coming closer and closer, we read the name engraved into the metal: Katherine Ellen Kenton.
To this I raise my glass.
ACT III, SCENE EIGHT
Act three, scene eight opens with Lillian Hellman throwing herself across the plush boudoir of Katherine Kenton, rocketing through the room and landing with her full weight upon the gun hand of a masked Webster Carlton Westward III. Lilly and the Webb struggle, throwing themselves about the bedroom, smashing chairs, lamps and bibelots in their raucous fight for survival. The muscles of Lilly’s slim elegant arms strain to subdue the attacker. Her Lili St. Cyr lounging pajamas flapping and torn. Her Valentino hosiery devastated. Her elegant white teeth bite deep into the Webb’s devious, scheming neck. The combatants tread on Lilly’s fallen Elsa Schiaparelli hat while Katherine can only watch in abject horror, shrieking with doomed panic.
As in the opening scene, we dissolve to a long dinner table where Lilly sits, now regaling her fellow guests with the story of this struggle. The candlelight, the wood-paneled walls, the footmen. Lillian stops regaling long enough to draw one long drag on her cigarette, then blow the smoke over half the diners before she says, “If only I hadn’t chosen to diet that week…” She taps cigarette ash onto her bread plate, shaking her head, saying, “My glorious, brilliant Katherine might still be alive…”
Beyond her first few words, Lillian’s talk becomes one of those jungle sound tracks one hears looping in the background of every Tarzan film, just tropical birds and howler monkeys repeating. Bark, squeak, meow… Katherine Kenton.
Oink, moo, tweet… Webster Carlton Westward III. A man who did nothing except fall deeply in love-passionately in love-he must now play the villain for the rest of this silly motion picture we call human history.
Miss Kathie’s movie-star flesh has barely cooled, and already she’s been absorbed into the Hellman mythos. Miss Lilly’s own name-dropping form of Tourette’s syndrome.
While the footmen pour wine and clear the sorbet dishes, Lillian’s hands swim through the air, her cigarette trailing smoke, her fingernails clawing at an invisible burglar. In her dinner party story, Lilly continues to spar and struggle with the masked gunman. In their grappling, they fire a shot, which Hellman dramatizes by slapping her open palm on the table, making the silverware jump and the stemware ring together.
From my place, seated well below the salt, I merely listen to Lilly spin more gold into her own self-promoting dross. On my knee I bounce a jolly plump infant, one of the many orphans sent for Miss Kathie to review. Under my breath, I say a silent prayer that I might die after Lilly. To my left and right, from the head to the foot of the table, Eva Le Gallienne, Napier Alington, Blanche Bates, Jeanne Eagels, we all say the same prayer. George Jean Nathan of Smart Set magazine draws a fountain pen from his chest pocket and scribbles notes on a napkin. Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times spies him, taking notes about Nathan’s notes. Bertram Block jots notes about Schallert’s notes about Nathan’s notes.
The possibility of dying before Lillian Hellman… dying and becoming merely fodder for Lilly’s mouth. A person’s entire life and reputation reduced to some golem, a Frankenstein’s monster Miss Hellman can reanimate and manipulate to do her bidding. That would be a fate worse than death, to spend eternity in harness, serving as Lilly Hellman’s zombie, brought back to life at dinner parties. On radio shows and in Hellman’s autobiographies.
It was Walter Winchell who once said, “After any dinner with Lilly Hellman, you don’t crave dessert and coffee-what you really need is the antidote.”
Even the most illustrious names, once they’re dead long enough, are reduced to silly animal sounds. Grunt, bark, bray… Ford Madox Ford… Miriam Hopkins… Randle Ayrton.
Seated to my right, Charlie McCarthy congratulates me on the success of my book. As of this week, Paragon has been at number one on the New York Times best-seller list for twenty-eight weeks.
Seated across the table, Madeleine Carroll inquires in that rich British accent of hers, asking the name of the child in my lap.
In response, I explain how this tiny foundling had been adopted by Miss Kathie, and now I have become its legal guardian. I’ve inherited the town house, the rights to Paragon, all of the investments and this child, who sputters and smiles, a perfect blond angel. Its name, I explain, is Norma Jean Baker.
No, none of us seem so very real.
We’re only supporting characters in the lives of each other.
Any real truth, any precious fact will always be lost in a mountain of shattered make-believe.
I signal, and a footman pours more wine. In my mind, I’m already crafting a story wherein Lillian Hellman thrashes and fusses and plays the boring, egomaniacal fool. Lillian Hellman plays the villain the way Webster plays the villain. In my own story of tonight, this dinner party, I’ll be cool and collected and right. I shall say the perfect rejoinder. I will play the hero.
Please promise you did NOT hear this from me.
Cut. Print it. Roll credits.