The Swans of Fifth Avenue(8)
But then the clock on her mantel struck seven soft, discreet chimes. And suddenly Babe Paley was not unruffled. Panic flared in her eyes as she turned in horror to the clock. Her hands reached out in the first abrupt, involuntary gesture he had seen from her.
“Oh! It can’t be seven! It simply can’t be!”
“So?”
“But Bill will be home any minute. And I’m not ready to greet him.” Babe slid down from the bed and walked—gracefully, with her shoulders squared and straight, her long legs as strong yet supple as a ballerina’s—to her dressing room. Truman jumped down off the bed and capered after her.
“Oh, Babe! What an Aladdin’s cave!” He looked around in awe; Babe Paley’s dressing room was nearly as big as her bedroom, and decorated in the same pattern of chintz from ceiling to floor. Her vanity was enormous, draped in beautiful pink fabric that echoed the chintz, and covered with crystal perfume flacons, powder puffs, mirrored trays, bottles of makeup devoid of any trace of fingerprints or smudges, silver-plated brushes (both hairbrushes and makeup brushes), several mirrors of different sizes—handheld, upright, lighted. Babe was seated on the vanity stool, studying herself in the largest mirror with the intensity of an artist assessing his just-finished painting.
“You look perfect,” Truman soothed her, sensing his role.
But Babe shook her head. “I always remove my makeup and reapply it just for him. But now I don’t have time.”
“There’s no need,” Truman insisted, putting his hands on her shoulders and peering into the mirror, gazing at the apparition before him. She must be forty, he thought. But her face did not give away such sordid secrets.
Babe was not a natural beauty, although you sensed that she had the potential to be. But something—some insecurity, Truman felt, instantly determined to locate its source—prevented her from showing it. No, Barbara Paley’s style, her beauty, her legendary polish, was artificial, cultivated over a lifetime of discipline and discernment, and she did not take pains to hide the fact. She was heavily made up, eyebrows perfectly groomed and brushed and colored, those glittering, deep-set eyes coated in subtle, complementary eye shadows and liners and mascara. Those high, sculpted cheekbones were further enhanced, with the precision of a professional, by blush, several shades artfully blended together. And her skin, while luminous, was that way due to foundation, thickly applied yet somehow not appearing to be; buffed completely, no lines of demarcation, dewy-looking, fresh.
But still, it was makeup. Beautifully, painstakingly applied; you could gasp at the mastery of it, and appreciate the skill and time necessary. Babe was no blank canvas; her face was a work of art, and she, not God, was the artist. Her hair, too, so perfectly, yet naturally, sculpted and waved to give the appearance of insouciance, thick and brown but with silver streaks weaving through it, catching the light, so chic, and unexpected. Yet again, one sensed the effort that went into it, while marveling at the result.
And the clothes, the accessories! A still life, artfully arranged. Taken separately, they were not spectacular: black Italian loafers, perfectly tailored khaki slacks, a crisp white linen shirt. A glittering diamond necklace. But it was the way they were arranged, the shirt tucked in the front, not the back; the diamond necklace not worn about the throat, but wrapped casually about Babe’s left wrist. Expected, yet not. Recognizable, yet unattainable.
And here was this woman, this icon whose face had graced the pages of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Life, peering worriedly into her mirror, taking a small brush and blending something beneath her eyes, blotting at her nose with a powder puff, a delicate blue vein on her forehead beginning to dance with tension.
“I hope he’s not home yet. Oh, if I’m not there, standing in the hall, to greet him, to look wonderful for him—”
Suddenly there was a pounding on the bedroom door. Two brisk knocks, then the handle turned and he was there, striding into the bedroom, shouting, “Babe? Babe?”
Babe jumped up from her stool, swiftly swiped her lips with a lipstick, not a smudge or a smear, smoothed her shirt, and gazed at Truman with heartbreakingly helpless, uncertain eyes.
“How do I look?” she whispered.
“Perfect,” he replied. For it was only the truth.
Grasping his hand for confidence, a gesture that touched his heart, she sucked in her stomach and took a big breath.
“Bill, darling!” she cooed in that soothing voice. She walked unhurriedly into her bedroom to greet her husband, as if she’d been sitting in a beauty parlor for hours, idly paging through a magazine. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re home! I’ve simply been bored all day without you. Would you like a drink, darling? I know you would! I’ll get it in a jiffy. Meanwhile, you remember Truman, don’t you? You two go downstairs and wait for me in the drawing room. I’ll just change quickly for dinner, and get you that drink before you know it.”
Truman smiled, put out his hand. “Bill. I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed your beautiful wife for the afternoon. But I return her to you now, no strings attached!”
William S. Paley, founder and chairman of the board of CBS, adviser to President Eisenhower, the man who discovered Bing Crosby, and Edward R. Murrow, and the zany redhead and her Cuban husband who were currently the most popular stars on that still-new medium called television, squinted down at the graceful, lily-white hand extended to him. He frowned at his wife, who stood before him, gazing worshipfully at him as if he were Zeus himself come down from Mount Olympus. He pulled himself up, all six feet, two inches of him, and grunted.