My hands, smeared black and filthy from thehandle of the fireplace damper. Smudged with soot from the burned placecard. I wipe them in the folds of my tweed skirt. I tell her I wasmerely disposing of some trash. Only incinerating a random piece ofworthless trash.
On television, Leo G.Carroll kneels while Betty Grablecrowns him Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Pope Paul IVis Robert Young. Barbara Stanwyck plays agum-chewing Joan of Arc.
My Miss Kathie watches herself, sevendivorces ago—what Winchell would call “Reno- vations”—and threeface-lifts ago, as she grinds her lips against Novarro’s lips. Aspecimen Winchell would call a “Wildeman.” Like DorothyParker’s husband, Alan Campbell, a manLillian Hellman would call a “fairy shit.”Petting her Pekingese with long licks of her hand, Miss Kathie says,“His saliva tasted like the wet dicks of ten thousand lonely truckdrivers.”
Next to her bed, the night table built from athousand hopeful dreams, those balanced screenplays, it supports twobarbiturates and a double whiskey. Miss Kathie’s hand stops petting andscratching the dog’s muzzle; there the fur looks dark and matted. Shepulls back her arm, and the towel slips from her head, her hair tumblingout, limp and gray, pink scalp showing between the roots. The greenmask of her avocado face cracking with her surprise.
Miss Kathie looks at her hand, and thefingers and palm are smeared and dripping with dark red.
ACT I, SCENE THREE
Katherine Kentonlived as a Houdini. An escape artist. Itdidn’t matter … marriages, funny farms, airtight PandroBerman studio contracts … My Miss Kathie trapped herself becauseit felt such a triumph to slip the noose at the eleventh hour. To foilthe legal boilerplate binding her to bad touring projects with Red Skelton. The approach of HurricaneHazel. Or the third trimester of a pregnancy by Huey Long. Always one clock tick before it was toolate, my Miss Kathie would take flight.
Here, let’s make a slow dissolve toflashback. To the year when every other song on the radio was Patti Page singing “(How Much Is)That Doggy in the Window?” The mise-en-scène shows the daytimeinterior of a basement kitchen in the elegant town house of Katherine Kenton; arranged along the upstage walclass="underline" an electric stove, an icebox, a door to the alleyway, a dusty window insaid door.
In the foreground, I sit on a white-paintedkitchen chair with my feet propped on a similar table, my legs crossedat the ankle, my hands holding a ream of paper. A note flutters, held bypaper clip to the title page. In slanted handwriting the note reads: I demand you savor this while it still reeks of my sweatand loins. Signed, Lillian Hellman.
Nothing is ever so much signed by Lilly as itis autographed.
On page one of the screenplay, Robert Oppenheimer puzzles over the best method foraccelerating particle diffusion until Lillian stubs out a Lucky Strike cigarette, tosses back a shot of Dewar’s whiskey, and elbows Oppenheimer away fromthe rambling equation chalked the length of a vast blackboard. Usingspit and her Max Factor eyebrow pencil, Lillyalters the speed of enriched uranium fission while AlbertEinstein looks on. Slapping himself on the forehead with thepalm of one hand, Einstein says, “Lilly, meineliebchen, du bist eine genious!”
At the window of the kitchen door, somethingoutside taps. A bird in the alley, pecking. The sharp point of somethingtap, tap, taps at the glass. In the dawn sunlight, the shadow ofsomething hovers just outside the dusty window, the shining pointpecking, knocking tiny divots in the exterior surface of the glass. Somelost bird, starving in the cold. Digging, chipping tiny pits.
On the page, Lillian twists a copy of the New Masses, rolling itto fashion a tight baton which she swats across the face of Christian Dior. Harry Truman has herded together theworld’s top fashion mavens to brand the signature look of his ultimateweapon. Coco Chanel demands sequins. Sister Parish sketches the bomb screaming down fromthe Japanese sky trailing long bugle beads. ElsaSchiaparelli holds out for a quilted sateen slipcover. Cristobal Balenciaga, shoulder pads. Mainbocher, tweed. Diorscatters the conference room with swatches of plaid.
Brandishing her rolled billy club, Lillysays, “What happens if the zipper gets stuck?” “Lilly, darling,” says Dior,“it’s a fucking atom bomb!”
At the kitchen window, the sharp beak dragsitself against the outside of the glass, tracing a long curve,scratching the glass with an impossible, high-pitched shriek. An instantmigraine headache, the point traces a second curve. The two curvescombine to form a heart, etched into the window, and the dragging pointplows an arrow through the heart.
On paper, Adriansees the entirety of the atom bomb encrusted with a thick layer ofrhinestones, flashing a dazzling Allied victory. EdithHead pounds her small fist on the conference table at the Waldorf=Astoria and proclaims that somethinghand-crocheted must rain fiery death on Hirohito,or she’ll pull out of the Manhattan Project. Hubertde Givenchy pounds on Pierre Balmain.
I stand and cross to the alley door. There wediscover my Miss Kathie standing in the alley, bundled in a fur coat,both arms folded across her chest, hugging herself in the cold dawn.
I ask, Isn’t she home a few months early?
And Miss Kathie says, “I found something somuch better than sobriety.…” She waves the back of her left hand, thering finger flashing with a Harry Winstondiamond solitaire, and she says, “I found PacoEsposito!”
The diamond, the tool she used to cut herheart so deep into the glass. The heart and Cupid’sarrow etched in the alley window. Yet another engagement ring she’sbought herself.
Behind her stands a young man hung like aChristmas tree with various pieces of luggage: purses, garment bags,suitcases and satchels. All of it Louis Vuitton.He wears blue denim trousers, the knees stained black with motor oil.The sleeves of his blue chambray shirt rolled high to reveal tattooedarms. His name, Paco, embroidered on one side of his chest. His cologne,the stench of high- test gasoline.
Miss Kathie’s violet eyes twitch side to sideacross my face, up and down, the way they’d vacuum up last-minuterewrites in dialogue.
The sole reason for KatherineKenton’s admitting herself to any hospital was because she soenjoyed the escape. Between making pictures, she craved the drama ofovercoming locked doors, barred windows, sedatives and straitjackets.Stepping indoors from the cold alley, her breath steaming, my MissKathie wears cardboard slippers. Not MadeleineVionnet. She wears a tissue- paper gown under her silver fox coat.Not Vera Maxwell. Miss Kathie’s cheeksscrubbed pink from the sun. The wind has tossed her auburn hair intoheavy waves. Her blue fingers grip the handles of a shopping bag shelifts to set atop the kitchen table.
In the screenplay’s third act, Hellman pilotsthe controls of the Enola Gayas it skims the tops of Japanese pine trees and giant pandas and Mount Fuji, en route to Hiroshima.In a fantasy sequence, we cut to Hellman wielding a machete to castratea screaming Jack Warner. She skins alive abellowing, bleeding Louis B. Mayer. Her griptightens around the lever which opens the bomb bay doors. Her deadlycargo shimmers pristine as a bride, covered with seed pearls andfluttering white lace.