The Swans of Fifth Avenue(92)

There would be plenty of time for wondering, once it was all over. Too much time. Too much time without Babe, without Truman, without kindness and elegance and oh, Christ, the laughter.

A dull, dismal lifetime.

—

BABE WOKE UP ONE MORNING knowing that she wouldn’t wake up again; it had been too much effort to swim up from the darkness, and she didn’t welcome consciousness and one more glimpse of the sun; one more day lying like a specimen, her family hovering over her, counting every single breath she managed to take.

So she gestured to a nurse, who understood; the nurse brought her a tray filled with her cosmetics, a small mirror on a stand, and Babe Paley did her makeup one last time, with the same calming sense of ritual she’d always had when she’d looked in the mirror, starting first with the foundation, applied with a sponge, so shakily now—the sponge weighed like a heavy stone in her translucent fingers although she couldn’t really feel it, as her extremities were cold and numb. But she didn’t flinch from the mirror, from the ravaged remnants of a person staring back; she knew she could conceal the damage, the flaws, and emerge beautiful, the butterfly from the chrysalis, one last time. She had to pause and take long gasps from the oxygen mask; she had to rest between applications, between the foundation and then the blush and then the concealer, and then the eye shadow, the intricately applied layers, and then the liner, which, with a grim determination, a gritting of her teeth, she managed to quiet her shaking hands long enough to apply flawlessly, the line straight and smooth, and she lay the liner brush down with a sigh, and felt as if she’d won a battle, the last battle. Now she was ready.

Now they could all come in, Bill and Tony and Amanda and Bill Junior, and Kate, the bald little girl whom her mother could barely look at, because her own flaws were on flagrant display in this child. Kate was now an angry young woman, and Babe sensed that she didn’t want to be there because she still couldn’t forgive her mother for her neglect, and Babe didn’t blame her. Babe really didn’t care who was standing vigil around her deathbed, but she knew that Kate would regret it forever if she hadn’t been there. Babe remembered sitting by her mother’s bed when Gogs passed away; she had felt so very detached and even resentful, but still.

It had been the right thing to do.

“Where’s Truman?” She heard the words, and since she was too tired to speak them, they must have escaped from her heart. She was so very tired now, so weary, so done with it all. They were all there, but she had never felt so alone. Not since—before.

No one answered, and Babe had to wonder if anyone else had heard the question. She shouldn’t have asked it; she didn’t mean to. She shouldn’t let them all see how much she needed him. This was their moment, her husband’s, her children’s. She saw them, through fluttering eyelids; their eyes were red, their expressions numb. She felt them pressing around her, holding her hands, touching her shoulder, but still they weren’t enough, she was cold, she was drifting, she was alone, so alone.

And then she was nothing.

—

FOR HOURS, BILL SAT HOLDING his wife’s hand; the children drifted in and out, but he remained. Bill Paley, titan of the boardroom, king of the airways. He sat holding his wife’s chill, fragile hand, long after she had stopped breathing.

She still looked beautiful. Like a Modigliani, an Italian sculpture, etched in marble.

She’d died hating him, he knew. Hating him, but loving Truman.

But granting him the privilege of a grieving husband; one last time, covering for him, and his sins. Allowing the world to see him as who he wanted to be, and not who he was.

That was Babe, he thought. Graciously and thoughtfully arranging his life, to the very end.





CHAPTER 24


…..





Truman read of her death in the Times. “Barbara Cushing Paley Dies at 63; Style Pace-Setter in Three Decades; Symbol of Taste.”

When he read it, he had to smile; she would certainly be pleased. For despite her protests, Bobolink had reveled in her image, had worked hard at it, harder than he had ever worked on a book in his life. Every minute of every hour of every day was spent cultivating her style, perpetuating the myth, and he had always admired that about her, even when Jack and others decried it as shallow and pointless.

“You don’t understand,” he’d always said, defending her. “She’s an artist, like you, like me. She dedicates her life to creating beauty. It just happens that the product is herself instead of a canvas or a sculpture or a poem. What’s wrong with that?”

They’d never understood, his artist friends, his fellow authors, the ones he’d met back at the beginning at Yaddo, the dreary, serious souls who couldn’t afford lunch at Quo Vadis unless their publishers were paying; his “contemporaries,” as they insisted on being called. But then, they never understood Truman, either. They were jealous, that’s all. Envious. Green with it, absolutely emerald.

He knew Babe was dying; hadn’t he resigned himself to the fact that they wouldn’t reconcile? Hadn’t he taken it like a good, stoic little boy? Hadn’t he stopped calling, stopped telegraphing, letting her die in peace?

Hadn’t he known he wouldn’t be invited to the funeral, and had determined to spend that day in quiet reflection in his apartment, surrounded by the things she’d bought him over the years, the antique paperweights for his collection, a painting here, a bibelot there, the Oriental rug in the foyer, the ruby cuff links, the silly, thoughtful little things that amused him, like the scarf printed with tiny little Elvises holding guitars, because Truman had once rolled his eyes and growled, “That boy from Memphis really gets my motor running!”