A “New York second” goes by, and I stand. Onestep to the sink, and I calmly begin to scrub my dripping hands,careful to pick and scrape the words sorrowand tragedy from where they’re lodgedbeneath each fingernail. Already, the lovely bouquet of pink roses andyellow lilies poisoned with salt water, the petals begin to wither andbrown.
ACT I, SCENE SIX
The next sequence depicts a montage offlowers arriving at the town house. Deliverymen wearing jaunty, brimmedcaps and polished shoes arrive to ring the front doorbell. Each mancarries a long box of roses tied with a floppy velvet ribbon, tuckedunder one arm. Or a cellophane spill brimming full of roses cradled theway one would carry an infant. Each deliveryman’s opposite hand extends,ready to offer a clipboard and a pen, a receipt needing a signature.Billowing masses of white lilac. Delivery after delivery arrives. Thedoorbell ringing to announce yellow gladiolas and scarletbirds-of-paradise. Trembling pink branches of dogwood in full bloom. Thechilled flesh of hothouse orchids. Camellias. Each new florist alwaysstretches his neck to see past me, craning his head to see into thefoyer for a glimpse of the famous Katherine Kenton.
One frame too late, Miss Kathie’s voice callsfrom offscreen, “Who is it?” The moment after the deliveryman is gone.
Me, always shouting in response, It’s theFuller Brush man. A Jehovah’s Witness. A Girl Scout, selling cookies.The same ding-dong of the doorbell cueingthe cut to another bouquet of honeysuckle or towering pink spears offlowering ginger.
Me, shouting up the stairs to Miss Kathie,asking if she expects a gentleman caller.
In response, Miss Kathie shouting, “No.”Shouting, less loudly, “No one in particular.”
In the foyer and dining room and kitchen, theair swims with the scent of phantom flowers, shimmering with sweet,heavy mock orange. An invisible garden. The creamy perfume of absentgardenias. Hanging in the air is the tang of eucalyptus I carry directlyto the back door. The trash cans in the alley overflow with crimsonbougainvillea and sprays of sweet-smelling daphne.
Every card signed, Webster Carlton Westward III.
From an insert shot of one gift card, we cutto a close-up of another card, and another. A series of card after giftcard. Then a close-up of yet another paper envelope with To Miss Katherine handwritten on one side. Theshot pulls back to reveal me holding this last sealed envelope in thesteam jetting from a kettle boiling atop the stove. The kitchen settingappears much the same as it did a dog’s lifetime ago, when my MissKathie scratched her heart into the window. One new detail, a portabletelevision, sits atop the icebox, flashing the room with scenes from ahospital, the operating room in a surgical suite where an actor’srubber-gloved hand grasps a surgical mask and pulls it from his ownface, revealing the previous “was-band,” PacoEsposito. The seventh and most recent Mr. KatherineKenton. His hair now grows gray at his temples. His upper lipfringed with a pepper-and- salt mustache.
The teakettle hisses on the stove, centeredabove the blue spider of a gas flame. Steam rises from the spout,curling the corners of the white envelope I hold. The paper darkens withdamp until the glued flap peels along one edge. Picking with athumbnail, I lift the flap. Pinching with two fingers, I slide out theletter.
On television, Paco leans over the operatingtable, dragging a scalpel through the inert body of a patient played by Stephen Boyd. Hope Lange plays the assistingphysician. Suzy Parker the anesthesiologist.Fixing his gaze on the attending nurse, Natalie Wood,Paco says, “I’ve never seen anything this bad. This brain has got tocome out!”
The next channel over, a battalion of dancersdash around a soundstage, fighting the Battle ofAntietam in some Frank Powellproduction directed by D. W. Griffith of amusical version of the Civil War. The lead forthe Confederate Army, leaping andpirouetting, is featured dancer Terrence Terry.A heartbreakingly young Joan Leslie plays Tallulah Bankhead. H. B. Warner plays Jefferson Davis. Music scored by MaxSteiner.
From the alley outside the kitchen door, aman’s voice says, “Knock, knock.” The windows, fogged with the steam.The kitchen air feels humid and warm as the sauna of the Garden of Allah apartments. My hair hangs lank andplastered to my wet forehead, flat as a Louise Brooksspit curl.
The shadow of a head falls against theoutside of the window, the pane where my Miss Kathie cut the shape ofher 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 yourreach. I flatten the letter to the damp window glass, where itsticks, held secure as wallpaper, pasted there by the condensed steam.The sunlight streaming in from the alleyway, the light leaves the papertranslucent, glowing white with the handwritten words hung framed by theheart etched in the glass. The letter still pasted to the window, Iflip the dead bolt, slip the chain, turn the knob and open the door.
In the alleyway, a man stands holding a papertablet fluttering with pages. Each page scribbled with names andarrows, what looks like the diagram for plays in a football game. Amongthe names one can read Eve Arden … Marlene Dietrich… Sidney Blackmer … In his opposite hand, theman holds a white paper sack. Next to him, the trash cans spill theirroses and gardenias onto the paving stones. The gladiolas and orchidstumble out to lie in the fetid puddles of mud and rainwater which rundown 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?” theman says, holding the tablet, shaking it so the pages flap. On some, thenames radiate in every direction from a large rectangle which fills thecenter of the page. The names alternating gender: LenaHorne then William Wellman then Esther Williams. The man says, “I’m expectingtwenty-four guests for dinner, and I have a placement emergency.…”
The diagrams are seating charts. Therectangles are the dinner table. The names the guest list. “As addedincentive,” the man says, “tell Her Majesty that I’ve brought herfavorite candy … Jordan almonds.”
Her Majesty won’t eat a bite, I tell him.
This man, this same face smiles out from thefrontline skirmishes on television, amid the Battleof Gettysburg—this is Terrence Terry,formerly Mr. Katherine Kenton, former dancer under contract at Lasky Studios, former paramour to MontgomeryClift, former catamite to James Whaleand Don Ameche, former cosodomite to William Haines, former sexual invert, the fifth“was-band,” in crisis about whom to seat next to CelesteHolm at a dinner he’s hosting tonight.
“This is an entertainment emergency,” theTerrence specimen says, “I need Katherine to tell me: Does Jack Buchanan hate Dame MayWhitty?”
I say that he should’ve gone to prison forwedding Miss Kathie. That it’s illegal for homosexuals to get married.
“Only to each other,” he says, stepping intothe kitchen.
I close the alley door, lock the knob, slipthe chain, flip the dead bolt.