The Swans of Fifth Avenue(81)
And face it, Truman, baby doll. Telling all the stories—all those delicious, decadent secrets—is what you enjoy the most, anyway. It’s what you’re the best at.
It’s who you are. The snake in the grass…why else do you collect snakes? That story about the cottonmouth biting him—God, he hadn’t told that story in years, but they’d all fallen for it, hadn’t they?
What they didn’t know was that he had bit the cottonmouth first.
Still, he had to write something, because that was who he was, too. He was a literary genius. Not a thieving shit like Mailer, who couldn’t write an original book if his sorry life depended on it—Truman poured himself more vodka, in the plain water glass. He didn’t even take time for the niceties anymore, the twist of lime, the chilled highball glass.
He was just as bad as everyone. Worse.
But he had been writing, some. Little sketches, picking away at this idea he’d had for more than a decade, his Proustian epic about society. Some of it was good; some of it was crap. Oh, maybe all of it was crap; Truman couldn’t really decide, anymore. Truth was, he was terrified of publishing again, because of the glorious success of In Cold Blood.
The knives were out; the knives were always out. But Esquire had just made him a lavish offer to publish a story. One story, that was all. And if it did well, maybe others. He could do that; he’d begun his career publishing stories, not novels, epics, opuses. Rivals to Proust.
Baby steps, baby. Baby steps.
He picked up his pen, turned a page, and began to scribble some of the best stories he knew; stories that were not his, but that just made them even juicier. He could tell them better than their owners could, and why else had they been told to him, if not for him to use them? Oh, those swans of his might be coy and say, “Now, True Heart, don’t you dare repeat this!” before telling him something particularly divine, and he might cross his heart and hope to die if he ever did.
But neither of them meant it. They couldn’t have. Or they wouldn’t have told the stories to him in the first place.
They wouldn’t have let him in.
—
THE FIRST STORY APPEARED in Esquire in June of 1975. “Mojave” by Truman Capote—an excerpt took up the entire cover, followed by “continued on page 38.”
Tennessee Williams declared it Truman’s best writing since the short story that had launched his career back in 1945, “Miriam.” All the critics loved it; it was received with rapture, cries of “He’s back!” and pleas of “More, more, more!”
“Well,” Truman drawled to one and all. “So you liked this? Maybe next I’ll give you a taste of my novel! It’s going to be grand, you know, my best yet! Maybe I’ll give you a little taste.”
Did anyone in Manhattan that summer of 1975 recognize the players in this work of fiction? Sarah Whitelaw, the devoted, almost geishalike wife of George, who narrates the bulk of the piece, the story within the story? Did anyone take note of the fact that Sarah massages George’s feet while he talks, that this outwardly perfect domestic scene is, in fact, completely loveless, just an arrangement? That Sarah looked an awful lot like Babe Paley, with her “tobacco-colored” hair?
If anyone did take note of this, they didn’t say a word. The story itself was too good, perhaps; they were only dazzled with Truman’s writing. And nobody ever accused Bill Paley of being as introspective as the George Whitelaw of the story.
Babe read the story, along with Slim and Marella and Gloria and C.Z. and Pam; they all sent Truman telegrams of congratulations and exhaled. Perhaps Truman wasn’t so far gone as they’d all feared. After all, he was writing again! And despite the explicitness of the story—the language! the sex!—the story was good. Or so the critics said.
Still, Babe did fold the magazine in half when she was done, a small rumble of discomfort worrying her. But it was only a tremor, so easily obscured by the greater earthquake of her failing health, more surgeries, barbaric procedures that poked and probed and irradiated and otherwise treated her previously admired, couture-clad body like a science project; medicines that gave her headaches, medicines to relieve the headaches, medicines that took away her appetite. She conserved herself now; she remained in bed for long periods at a time so that she could emerge and carefully, oh, so painstakingly, apply her makeup—an entirely different prospect now, not just to conceal and enhance but to turn her into an entirely different person. She felt like Lon Chaney, rather: the man of a thousand faces. She was an expert at turning a sick old woman into a reasonably vibrant middle-aged one.
She would emerge, makeup perfected, wig in place, wearing a superbly styled outfit, the accessories just right, the jewelry carefully chosen so as not to call attention to her emaciated wrists, neck, fingers—she wore a lot of whimsical brooches these days, like her favorite bumblebee brooch designed by Verdura with a fat coral body and glittering diamond wings—and go to lunch with her friends, and smile breezily at the cameras, and assure the world, her world, that Mrs. Paley was just fine, thank you so very much for asking.
Because to let the world know otherwise simply wasn’t an option. It never had been. She had an image to uphold. She and Bill. Mr. and Mrs.
So no, Babe didn’t trouble herself too much with “Mojave,” other than to be grateful that her friend—for he was still her friend, despite the distance, the distractions, her illness—was working again.