The Swans of Fifth Avenue(87)

Not to the world.

Babe skimmed through the first part of the “story”—it wasn’t that, not really. It was a poisoned pen letter, a grievance, a mockery. She skimmed through it, sucking in her breath as she read about a typical lunch at La C?te Basque, narrated by Lady Ina Coolbirth, gossipy, catty—and sounding and acting an awful lot like Slim Keith, “a big, breezy, peppy broad” who happened to be married to a dull English lord. And who grew louder and drunker as the story progressed.

In the story, Lady Ina gossiped and catted about a parade of the rich and famous—Jackie Kennedy looking like an exaggerated version of herself, Princess Margaret so boring she made people fall asleep, Gloria Vanderbilt so ditzy she didn’t recognize her first husband.

And then who should enter but “Ann Hopkins,” and the entire lurid Woodward tale was laid out, by Truman’s pen, for everyone in Keokuk, Iowa—people who had no business knowing about it in the first place—to salivate over. Babe winced as she read how Lady Ina wondered about Ann and her mother-in-law, “What do they have to talk about, when they’re alone?” For Slim had asked that exact same question once, long ago. In front of Truman.

But it was when Truman—or rather, Lady Ina—started to tell the tale of Sidney Dillon that Babe felt nauseated. She had to go to the bathroom, press a cool cloth against her head, take another drink of water, before she could read the tale again.

The tale of a man, a “conglomateur, adviser to presidents.” A Jew, the story emphasized; a man forever on the outside looking in. A man with a wife named Cleo, “the most beautiful creature alive.” A man who had many affairs.

One in particular: a slovenly mess of a one-night stand involving bloodstains, sheets, a cool, collected blond shiksa whom he desired for the sole purpose, evidently, of making up for his Jewishness, for seeking revenge upon the Protestant world that wouldn’t have him in their clubs. Seeking revenge in the most disgusting, sordid way.

Babe set the magazine down once more, just as the phone rang.

“Babe?” It was Slim, breathless, cautious.

“Yes.”

“I read it. I’m—I’m horrified. Beside myself. That little twerp! How dare he put such bitchy words in my mouth? How dare he make me the centerpiece—‘Lady Ina,’ my ass. It might as well say ‘Lady Keith’!”

“Did you read the part about the man? Sidney Dillon?”

There was a silence, and Slim finally whispered, “Yes.”

“Who do you think it is?”

“I really don’t know.”

“You don’t?”

“I have no idea, Babe.”

“I’m not sure who the woman in the story, the mistress, is supposed to be. But I think I know who the man could be.”

Slim didn’t answer for a moment. Then she began to sputter anew. “I’m so furious, I’ll kill that bastard, absolutely kill him, just wait until everyone reads this—and Ann Woodward! Poor Ann Woodward! He murdered her, Babe, that’s what happened. You know she was found with the magazine in her hands? He drove a woman to suicide, Babe! And he used me to do it!”

“Oh, Ann!” Babe’s gut took another punch; she was appalled that she’d forgotten about poor Ann, and those motherless boys—orphaned boys now. “I—I don’t know anymore, Slim. I don’t know how he could have done this—why? I’m so sorry, dear, that you’ve been used in that way. That we all have been—used. I—I have to go now. I’m sorry.”

“Babe? Are you all right? Do you need me to come over?”

“No, I’m not all right. But I prefer to be alone now.”

Babe hung up the phone, and she had never craved a cigarette in her life as she did right now. And she would have had one, too—hang the doctors and their ridiculous worries! She was going to die. So what did it matter if she smoked once in a while? But she had thrown them all out, forbidden the household staff to smoke. And she wouldn’t send anyone out to buy more, that was too desperate.

Then she glanced over at the little red Moroccan pillbox. And she buried her face in her hands, remembering how Bill had found the pills, how white with fear and rage he had been when he heard her plan—so rational, she’d thought at the time. But now, now that poor Ann had done the same thing, and the way people were talking—Babe shuddered. Bill was right to have taken them from her, doling out her medicine now himself. She must spare her children—and her husband—that humiliation, anyway. She mustn’t let them be the talk of the town, like poor Ann’s boys were now.

But Truman hadn’t been that kind, had he? And Bill—she snatched up the magazine and strode into Bill’s room; he was at work, of course. She laid it on the bed, where he couldn’t help but see it. Then she went back to her room, lay down on her bed, sprawled on it, ungainly, her face pressed deep into the pillow, and she knew her makeup would stain it beyond repair, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything anymore.

There was an ache in her chest, a hole, and for once it wasn’t the memory of what had been taken from her physically—her lungs, her future; now it was the memory of what had been excised from her even more precisely than the surgeon’s scalpel. The one relationship she thought she could count on for however much time she had left.