The Swans of Fifth Avenue(50)
“I do hope you’ll like it, my dearest Babe,” he’d whispered, gazing up at her with his solemn eyes after he dated his inscription January, 1966. “Your opinion means the most to me, truly.”
And she had been touched, as always; touched, and made to feel special and needed and important, and those were feelings that she cherished, clutched to her heart, polished up, and took out to marvel over with more pride of ownership than her finest pearls.
Babe had stayed up all night to finish the book—when it had first appeared in four parts in The New Yorker last fall, Truman had implored her to wait until it was published in book form, so she could read it all in one sitting. And so she had, although before settling down with it, she’d first tiptoed around the house to make sure all the doors and windows were locked, for she was sure it would be rather a frightening book to read alone, at night. And while it was, initially, soon that wore off and she became simply fascinated by the character studies. Yes, the portraits of the killers, Perry and Dick, were mesmerizing, but it was the characterization of one of the victims—Mrs. Clutter, Bonnie—that Babe couldn’t get out of her head.
For Bonnie Clutter was something of a mess, in Babe’s opinion. Frail and neurotic. Unable to cope with life, beset by doubt and inadequacy and fear. Bonnie Clutter hid in her room, slept all day, didn’t run the house—all that was left to her daughter, poor doomed Nancy. And the thing is—everyone in Holcomb, Kansas, apparently knew all about it! And accepted Bonnie, and worried over her, and didn’t seem to judge Bonnie Clutter for being who she was—weepy, fragile, depressed, withdrawn.
All traits that had threatened Babe, in her darkest moments when she felt she couldn’t put up with Bill, with her high-profile life, with the image she herself had spent so much time perfecting. But never, not once, had she given in to the temptation to do what Bonnie Clutter had done right up until the night she was murdered—allow the mess, the darkness, to triumph.
Babe picked up the book again and turned to the photograph insert; there was a picture of Bonnie Clutter in better days. A plain, unfortunately bespectacled woman in one of those dreary Mamie Eisenhower getups, with the full flowered skirt, the enormous corsage pinned to her shoulder, the unflattering, lacy hat perched on tightly permed curls. Bonnie was smiling, with a beguiling dimple. She looked happy.
But Truman’s portrait was of a woman who was anything but; a woman who once explained to a friend that she regretted not finishing nursing school despite the fact that she was no good at it, “just to prove that I once succeeded at something.”
Oh, how Babe could relate to that! She had a diploma, but it was merely decorative; Gogsie had decreed that all her girls attend Westover, a finishing school, rather than a college. And while Babe had graduated at the top of her class, still—it was just a finishing school. Her years as a fashion editor had given her a taste of accomplishment at something other than being her own fabulous self, but they’d been fleeting. Marriage had been her destiny, as it had been Bonnie’s, as it was for most women. At least Babe had succeeded at that, in the only way her mother defined success: marriage to wealthy, desirable men. But Bonnie had done that, as well; Herb Clutter, as portrayed by Truman, had been the alpha male of Holcomb, Kansas, a leader in the community.
But Bonnie couldn’t keep up, couldn’t cope, and while Babe understood this more than anyone but Truman ever suspected, she didn’t give in, she didn’t allow anyone to see her life as anything but a triumph. That was how Babe would be remembered, at least; unlike poor Bonnie, who was now immortalized, vanquished by the life determined for her. How did her surviving daughters feel about this? Did Bonnie Clutter herself somehow know that Truman had stripped her naked, bare? Exposed her for who she really was?
But Bonnie Clutter was dead. No, of course she didn’t know.
Babe shuddered, stamped out her cigarette, lit another. She was alone at Kiluna; Bill was in Los Angeles for business. The children were at school, but even if they’d been home, she wouldn’t really know it. They were housed in a separate little wing of their own. And so, isolated, Babe indulged in dark thoughts; it was as sinful, as clandestine, as if she’d eaten an entire cake by herself, and just as satisfying. And disgusting.
Would her children mourn her, were she to die suddenly, horrifically? Babe was no fool; she knew they would not, and it was her own fault. She was close to her oldest son, Tony, now that he was an adult, but she hadn’t been when he was a child. She didn’t like children very much, she had to admit; her arms simply didn’t ache to hold her babies; she wasn’t tolerant of the odors and stains of childhood. And as the children grew, each with their special problems—Amanda terribly shy; Bill Junior hyper, afraid of his father; poor Kate so permanently stressed she’d lost her hair as a child, something Babe could never fully accept despite the fact that she and Bill had had every specialist in to examine her, and the finest, most natural wigs made—Babe found herself letting each one of them down, incapable of fixing them, molding them, as her mother had molded her. So she withdrew from her own children, and hoped others could do it for her. She employed the very best nurses and nannies and governesses and tutors, interviewing them herself, treating the help like family, making sure they were well compensated—she’d even had a separate pool put in just for these helpers, away from the main pool, so they’d have some privacy, some release. She saw that her children attended the best schools. She oversaw their playmates, invited them to stay at Kiluna or Kiluna North; she filled the children’s wing with all the newest toys and record players and televisions and games. She made a point of dropping in once a day, spending time with each child when they were small, reading or playing board games or applauding swimming prowess, new dance moves.