The Swans of Fifth Avenue(93)
But when the day arrived, he couldn’t get out of bed. He felt crushed by a despair more enormous than his good intentions. He watched those intentions fly right out the window; weightless, fluttering, silly little things, chased away by the rhinoceros that settled on his chest.
So he reached for a drink; the vodka bottle was on the nightstand.
Soon, he’d had enough to enable him to shove that rhinoceros off the bed, throw on some clothes, cover himself in a black opera cloak—and in a corner of a drawer, a flash of color caught his eye. It was the orange flower he’d bought at the market in Jamaica that wonderful, glorious day with her, when the sky was azure, the sun was a luscious golden dream, and everyone was smiling, bright white teeth flashing, the air scented with jasmine and Babe’s perfume—what was it again?
Oh, yes. Vent Vert, that grassy, crystalline fragrance.
Truman’s hands shook as he picked up the flower, now faded, the edges frayed. He pinned it to the cloak with fat, fumbling fingers; he stuck his forefinger with the pin and sucked the droplet of blood. Tasteless, he thought, only mildly curious. My blood has no taste. I have pickled it beyond its essence.
Then he stumbled out the door, into the elevator, and into the arms of the doorman. He mumbled that he needed a taxi.
“Where to?” inquired the doorman.
“Manhasset.”
“Long Island?”
“Where else?”
The doorman shrugged, picked up a phone, and in five minutes a taxi was at the door. Truman handed the man a wad of cash and croaked, “Christ Episcopal Church in Manhasset.”
The driver pocketed the money and they drove off; once in a while, he looked in his rearview mirror, unsure if his passenger was or was not Truman Capote. The bloated, pink face, the outrageous black hat, black opera cloak, flaming flower—they sure looked like something a fag would wear. But the eyes were obscured by dark round glasses, so he didn’t know for sure.
“Hey, are you Truman?” He couldn’t stand it; he had to know.
“Yessss,” Truman lisped, exaggeratedly, like a snake hissing. “Yesssss, I ssssure am.”
“Thought so!” And the cabbie left him in silence the entire way, except for when Truman asked him to stop at a liquor store and he said, “Sure thing!” and waited while Truman lurched inside, only to emerge with a bottle of vodka.
“Proceed,” Truman instructed. So they did.
“What’s the traffic for?” the cabbie asked, when finally they drew near the church fronting a tree-lined street packed with limousines and Town Cars and cabs. “Is it a wedding?”
“No.” Truman told the cab to stop and wait; then he got out, still grasping the bottle. He looked about, furtively; he seemed to tuck his head into his cloak, like a turtle, and he sank back into the embrace of a wisteria tree. The cabbie rolled down his window; it was hot this July of 1978, and he wondered how Truman could stand the heavy cloak.
Truman, safely hidden, watched as they gathered on the sidewalk in front of the church, embracing, air-kissing, dabbing eyes. There was Diana, the divine Mrs. V, in a fabulous long-sleeved embroidered dress with a dragon-red mandarin collar; there were Betty Bacall, Kay Graham, Kenneth himself, and, of course, all his swans, Slim and Marella and Gloria and Pam and C.Z. Those bitches. Those glorious creatures. Oh, what were they talking about? Were they mourning Babe?
Had they ever mourned him, as he mourned them?
And did they hate him, as he hated them? For being so stupid, so breathtakingly idiotic, as to not understand who he was, after all?
“I made you all,” he whispered, the words as tart upon his tongue as his blood had been bland.“You were just material. And I fooled you. I fooled you all.”
As he watched them air-kiss and shake their glorious heads—goodness, Gloria’s turban was absolutely to die for, he could see the ostrich egg–sized jewel all the way over here!—it was like his ball, all over again, all the same players, only this time, everyone was wearing black. A black ball. And he was blackballed—Truman giggled, and drank more, and his stomach was like a vat of gurgling lava, everything bubbling up and over, and he belched, hiding it behind his hand even though he was across the street and in a bush, and nobody could see him.
And then he saw the casket come out, and Bill was following it, his hands clasped in front of him, his head bowed, and Truman studied him for a moment, silently applauding his performance. The man did look devastated, he’d give him that. He wondered if the bastard would pick up someone at the funeral reception?
But then Truman forgot Bill, and vowed that he never would again think of him, Big Bill, the Great White Father. Instead, he watched the casket, very small, covered in flowers, carried on the shoulders of men he couldn’t identify from so far away, presumably Babe’s nephews and cousins. The casket was his only focus, and inside it was the very best part of him and he knew it would be buried deep within the ground, and soon it would be autumn, then winter, and snow would fall upon it, covering all traces of the only good thing that had ever happened to him. He heard sounds coming from deep within himself, moans, songs of sadness, broken lullabies, as he rocked back and forth, registering, finally, the loss of love, the shattered romance of it, the tragic ending handed to him by fate and disease.
It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t hers. It was simply the universe, deciding to tear them apart, like all great lovers. Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde.