The Swans of Fifth Avenue(76)

“Well,” he continued, shifting in his chair on the garishly loud Tonight Show set, looking up at the ceiling, as he always did whenever he was about to “tell a whopper,” as he so endearingly put it. “I was at this restaurant, minding my own business, when a woman came over and asked me for my autograph. I said of course, but what did she want me to sign? She proceeded to expose her breasts—” And here Truman paused, rolled his eyes, and allowed Johnny Carson to lead the audience in knowing laughter.

“I know! Anyway, I signed it. I mean, why not?” More laughter. “But then her husband, who was fuming, came over, and he, well—he whipped out his thing, and said, ‘Sign this!’ And I looked down, and said, ‘Well, I don’t see how, but maybe I can initial it.’?”

The audience was rolling in the aisles, Johnny Carson was beet red, laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes.

Babe and Bill exchanged a look.

“He told it better the first time I heard it,” Bill said.

“It’s so crude.” Babe shook her head, switching off the television with the remote. “I don’t know why he has to be so vulgar.”

“He’s always been, to a certain extent. Except around you.”

“Yes, but there was a line he wouldn’t cross. Lately, however—oh, those men!” Babe shuddered, thinking of the parade of truck drivers, bankers, and air-conditioning repairmen he brought to Kiluna, uninvited, just the way he used to bring Jack. But Jack, despite his gruffness, was a decent man, interesting, and so obviously in love with Truman. These men, this latest, particularly, John O’Shea—actually a banker! A middle-class banker who berated Truman, put him down, told anyone who would listen how lousy he was in bed—Babe simply didn’t know what to think, what to do. She couldn’t very well ask them to leave, so she did what she always did. She smiled, was polite, interested, fed them, made sure they were well taken care of under her roof. And then let Truman cry on her shoulder when they left, his heart broken every single day, every single minute, it seemed. Dan had been mean to him, called him a fag, left to go back to some horrid woman. Bob had told him he was awful in bed. John had told him he was a hack.

“I don’t know what to do for him,” she whispered. She glanced at the table next to her, cluttered with amber prescription bottles, and sighed. “If something happens to me, who will take care of Truman?”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Bill said, too quickly. “You’re getting the best care possible. The doctor said if you quit smoking, you’d live a long life, and I’m going to make sure you do.”

Babe smiled. She adjusted her wig, for even now, she wouldn’t let Bill see her at less than her best. But something had broken inside her, the day the doctor told her it was cancer, this thing that was squeezing the air from her lungs, taxing her energy, causing her feverish dreams, making every step seem as if she were climbing a mountain. Something had come tumbling down, releasing all the fetid ugliness she’d spent a lifetime stifling.

Babe could put into words feelings and emotions that she’d never been able to before. All the books Truman had made her read—none of that had given her the vocabulary the simple diagnosis of “malignancy” had.

“Let’s get you into bed now,” Bill said, reaching down to help her out of the chair.

“Leave me alone,” Babe snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of that.”

“Would you like me to sleep in here tonight, just in case you need anything?”

“Interesting that you offer this now, when I could give a shit about sex.”

Bill bit his lip, accepted his wife’s wrath. And watched her walk tremulously, but defiantly, into the bathroom, head held high; she closed the door in his face.

Something had broken inside William S. Paley, too, that terrible day at Mount Sinai, when the most famous cancer doctor in the world had sat the two of them down and given him his diagnosis.

Shock. Pure shock. That this could happen to him.

To Babe, that is. To Babe.

No, goddammit, to him.

He was older than Babe. A lot older; older than he told people. When she was diagnosed back in January of 1974, and a third of her lung removed, he was seventy-two to Babe’s fifty-eight. Bill Paley, despite his lifetime hypochondria, had never been a man who thought about death—his own, anyway. Still, he’d never imagined he’d have to grow old alone. He’d never imagined that Babe would not be there to take care of everything, as she always had.

He’d never imagined that he’d have to start looking back on his past actions with regret, remorse—shame, even—because his beautiful wife might be dying.

When they left the doctor’s office, they’d gone straight to their apartment on Fifth Avenue. Babe had gone to her room to rest. Truman was the first of her friends she called; she must have rung him before she lay down, because Bill, still in his study, his head in his hands, an untouched glass of Scotch in front of him, was stunned to see a pale Truman, tears streaming down his cheeks, standing next to him, putting his arms around him, comforting him like he’d never been comforted in his life.

“I had to come to you first,” Truman whispered, rocking the bigger man back and forth, even though Bill wasn’t crying. “I know Babe is strong. But you, my dear friend, you’re the one who will have the hardest time figuring out what to do next.”