The Swans of Fifth Avenue (5 page)

TRUMAN AT WORK

S
o many wanted to catch him at it! Watch as genius burned! Not his fellow authors, of course;
they
were far too blasé and jaded to care. But his swans, in particular, all longed to see Truman Capote write. They went out of their way to offer him help—for if they weren't patrons of the arts, then who were they?

They weren't patrons of the arts.

But Gloria offered him his own beach villa at her place in Palm Beach. Slim provided him with hampers of food from 21 so he would be properly nourished. Pamela offered to sit at his feet, literally, a muse. Marella invited him to work on her yacht, bobbing up and down in the Mediterranean.

Truman refused. As much as he loved and appreciated their lives, their comforts, their wealth and bounty, when it came to his work, he displayed a monastic discipline none of his new friends could have suspected. Work was work; play was play. And never the twain shall meet.

Except—

Well, perhaps there was a time ahead when they could; he wondered. There were marvelous stories here, ripe for the picking. And if Truman wasn't a storyteller, then who was he?

Truman was a storyteller.

But for now, the story he was telling was not theirs, although he already knew they would all want to lay claim to it when it was done. But this particular story was entirely of his own invention; he resented the implication by so many that he could write only from his own life.
Other Voices, Other Rooms—
why, that wasn't autobiographical at all! It was a story. Made up in his own mind. The story of a young boy without a family, without a home, seduced into darkness, born into light—but the darkness beckoning, always beckoning.

No, his first novel wasn't autobiographical at all.

And this new story; he had an idea for a title. He'd heard a sailor on leave, during the war, tell another sailor that he'd take him to breakfast at the most expensive place in town. Where did he want to go?

“Well,” the naïve sailor had replied, “I always heard that Tiffany's was the most expensive place in New York.”

Breakfast at Tiffany's.
It was a great title, that much Truman knew. Beyond that—

Truman gathered up a notebook. A simple composition book with lined paper. He sharpened his pencils, settled in on a velvet sofa beneath a window, and propped up the notebook on his knees.

His forehead furrowed, he read what he had written the day before, the words in his tiny, squared-off handwriting, meticulous, spare.

“Listen, Fred, you've got to cross your heart and kiss your elbow—”

And Truman was lost in the words. Awash in sentence structure, agonizing over punctuation. Studying the picture on the page; rearranging paragraph breaks so that there was just enough white space. Going back and forth, in his mind, between the words
approximation
and
facsimile
until finally choosing
approximation.

Perhaps contortionists can kiss their elbow; she had to accept an approximation.

Truman worked through the entire afternoon, then stopped. Some internal alarm inside him, as nascent as the primordial switch that turns winter to spring, simply said, “Enough. Enough for today. One more word and you will question everything you've written so far.” And he put the notebook and pencil away on his desk, scratched himself in those patient places that required scratching, having been ignored all day, and went into the kitchen, where Jack was flinging pots and pans about, preparing dinner. Gruffly. Which was how Jack approached life.

Gruffly.

“Good day's work?” Jack grumbled, viciously grinding pepper over a flank steak.

“Hmm-mmm.” Truman reached for the cocktail shaker with one hand, the vodka with another. “I'll read you some tonight, if you want.”

“Sure.”

“And you?”

“It's rubbish. It always is.”

“It's not. And you just want me to tell you that, so stop fishing. By the way, the Paleys invited us both to Kiluna this weekend.”

“I don't want to go.”

“Jack.”

“I don't like those people.”

“Jack, you've not even met them.”

“Yes, I have. In various guises over the years. They're all the same. Phonies.”

“No, they're not, Holden Caulfield. The Paleys are different. Babe is, for sure. And Bill, well, I think he might be, too. There's something about him.”

“They distract you,” Jack growled. “They're not worthy of you. I have no idea why you're so fascinated with the rich and famous and pretentious.”

“But they're beautiful, Jack! Their lives are so quietly beautiful, devoted to graciousness, taste, decorum. I admire that—I think that's the epitome of living, to be able to create art out of your life. It's what we do, in a way, isn't it? In writing?”

“Hardly.” Jack flung the pepper grinder down with a snort. Jack, tall and freckled and lean, reddish-blond hair balding, glared down at Truman, short and pale and lean, blond hair receding. “I can't bear the thought of you comparing yourself, with your talent, to them. It's ridiculous. And I thought you said you despised Paley, after that weekend with those parasites.”

“Well, I barely know him. I should be fair.”

“Men like that don't deserve your charity, Truman. People in general don't.”

“Oh, my misanthropic darling.” Truman sighed, putting his arms about Jack's waist, allowing one hand to slide between the waistband of his pants and warm, yielding flesh. “What would you do without me to shine light on your dark and dreary world?”

“I did just fine without you, before,” Jack growled. But he did not throw off Truman's embrace. The two leaned into each other for a moment, surrendering to blissful, ordinary domesticity—oil sizzling in a pan on the stove, fragrant rosemary in a pot on the windowsill, their two dogs warming their ankles with their heavy, stupid dog breathing. A quiet meal ahead, a martini or two, reading in bed before the lights were out. Familiar yearnings satisfied by familiar bodies; Jack had been a dancer, which never ceased to thrill Truman as he traced those muscles still retaining their disciplined sculpture, those battered feet with their astonishingly high arches. Truman's body was much less disciplined but still wiry, with a surprising hardness of the abdomen and biceps, so slender that lanky, raw-boned Jack could almost put two hands about his lover's waist—“like Scarlett O'Hara,” Truman liked to boast. Then sleep, in their ordinary basement apartment in ordinary Brooklyn Heights, Manhattan and all its tempting glitter safely across the bridge, for now.

It should have been enough, Truman knew. Enough to be with Jack, wrapped in his arms, satiated and sleepy, a good day's work behind him, another ahead. He had projects galore on his plate, because he was Truman Capote, literary darling: a trip to the Soviet Union with a touring company of
Porgy and Bess
paid for and the resulting story to be published by
The New Yorker,
his old employer (and his first real publishing disappointment, long ago but never forgotten).
House of Flowers,
based on one of his short stories, was still running on Broadway, even though it was only a matter of time before it closed.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
was simmering, percolating, proceeding one agonizing word at a time.

He was at the top of his game, he knew. He'd never doubted he'd be there, not even when he'd been fired from
The New Yorker.
And he loved a darling man, who loved him in return—in his own gruff way.

But it wasn't enough, and late that night, as Truman turned away from a softly snoring Jack, there was a dancing flame inside of him that would not be extinguished, could never be extinguished no matter how many sleeping pills he took. No matter how many times he told himself that it could be lit again by the morning sun. But there was always
more.
More beauty to be seen, more places to travel, more acclaim to be won. More love to earn, to barter, to exchange or withhold. To miss, always.

Outside, looking in. Why did he always feel that way, every moment of every day?

Even when he was at the center of attention, standing at a lectern reading, slicing into a cake with the cover of his book depicted in the icing—it was never completely his. There were always other things going on; two heads bent in conversation in a dark corner of the room; a secret smile between lovers; a peal of laughter prompted by a joke he hadn't heard. People exchanging telephone numbers—not his. A whispered “I'll get a taxi for us all,” and suddenly a group of four had vanished with a hurried waggle of their fingers in his direction, blown kisses in perfumed air that never quite reached his cheek.

Leaving him behind. He was always left behind.

So he had to try harder. Be more. Be better, more sparkling, more vibrant—a spotlight shining up to the heavens, lighting the dark, drawing everyone to his brilliant beacon. If he only dressed a little more outrageously—why not a velvet cape to go with a velvet suit? If he only danced a little more vigorously—doing the Charleston when everyone else was doing the two-step. If he only leapt into a room, arms outspread, legs kicking up behind him, instead of merely walking into it.

If he only told the best stories, dished the most delicious gossip, dropped the grandest of names.

Then, perhaps. Then. Would he truly belong?

Would Mama come get him so that it would be the two of them, finally? And he would be loved, embraced, and see only pride and understanding in those eyes, those shining, shining eyes, brown, almost black, peering out of a face sculpted out of marble, high cheekbones, aquiline nose, a slender neck, a swan's neck, black, black eyes like a swan, feathers ruffling, arms beckoning.

Babe's eyes. He began to relax, finally, thinking of Babe's eyes, and how they looked at him, and only him; how they shared a hurt deeper, maybe, than his own.

And how they might shine with love. True love. True Heart.

Truman.

And finally, thankfully, he was asleep.

B
ABE, IN HER LOFTY
pied-à-terre at the St. Regis hotel, Fifty-fifth and Fifth Avenue, the epicenter of glittering Manhattan, was not.

Bill, in bed beside her, had taken up the entire mattress with his tall, restless body. Hard, unyielding—and a stranger to her now. Two children together, and that was enough; she didn't mind that. Two with him, two with Stanley; Babe was a mother of four. Yes, that was enough.

But Babe, idealized and idolized, perpetually on the “Best Dressed” lists, always mentioned in columns that began, “The most beautiful women in New York,” was not desired by her own husband. Oh, yes—coveted, perhaps. Prized. Displayed, like one of his Picassos. “Mr. and Mrs. William S. Paley,” dazzling together at charity events, balls, highly sought after at dinner parties.

But Babe was not
desired.
Holding herself still, so stiff and light she wondered if she even made an imprint on the mattress, she knew only rejection, colder than the air conditioner blowing stale Manhattan air over her body. Bill hadn't reached for her tonight, as he hadn't last night, nor any night that she could remember. It wasn't as if sex was something she craved; frankly, sex with Bill was strictly a one-sided affair. She couldn't even remember it, to tell the truth—no real details, no exquisite rapture, no lovely, sated feeling after. But rejection is rejection is rejection, as Gertrude Stein might have said. And the truth was that Bill Paley rejected his own wife's body, if not her needs. Babe! Beautiful Babe! Rejected like a common wallflower by her own husband, whose roving eye was legendary.

She thought bitterly of those who had wanted her. Condé Nast, back when she worked for
Vogue.
How many times had he chased her around his desk? And he was quite handsome for his age, she could now realize. Very trim, sharply chiseled features. But at the time she thought him absurd, old enough to be her grandfather.

And Serge! Serge Obolensky! She'd adored Serge, loved his passion, his exoticism—a real Russian prince!—yet he was so courtly. Quite old-fashioned, yet so dashingly handsome with that little brush of a mustache that tickled; suddenly Babe couldn't keep still on her side of the bed. She squirmed, flexed her toes, stretched her hamstrings, turned over so that her pelvis pressed into the mattress, remembering how Serge kissed her one day, the two of them lying, entwined, upon a gorgeous velvet swooning couch in his apartment. A kiss so deep, stirring so many yearnings. And she would have given in to them, too, had she been able to stifle her mother's voice in her head.

But that she could never do. “Sit up straight.” “Don't fidget.” “Write a thank-you note the minute you receive a gift or return home from a party.” “Always have fresh flowers, no matter the cost.” “Clean gloves and shoes are the sign of a lady.” “Never let the help get the upper hand.” “Be discreet.” “Be above gossip.”

“Be a perfect little angel for Papa, because he's so rarely home, and when he is, he wants to see only the very best of you.” “Be a perfect little debutante because sister Betsey is now married to the president's son.” “Be a perfect little wife to Stanley, because he's old money, Tuxedo Park.”

“Be a perfect wife to Bill, even if he is a Jew. Because that's what he's paying for, and if you're not perfect, he'll replace you so fast your head will spin, and then where will you be? Divorced twice, with four children and no money of your own.”

“Be perfect. Because that's what people expect of you now. Because what are you, if not that?
Who
are you?”

Perfect. Babe must be perfect, in every way. She had been born to be a rich man's wife, decorative, an asset. She never remembered being allowed to dream of anything else. When she was very small, Betsey and Minnie—Minnie nine years older, Betsey seven—allowed her to play at being a flower girl for their fabulously staged weddings. It was the only pretend play that her mother sanctioned. “Now let Babe catch the bouquet,” her mother would admonish her older sisters. “Babe has to catch the bouquet, so that she'll be next.”