The Swans of Fifth Avenue

by Melanie Benjamin

  “No, it was I who first discovered him,” Gloria insisted with a flash of her exotic dark eyes; that flash that always threatened to expose her real origin, concealed so nearly completely beneath the Balenciaga dresses and Kenneth hairstyles—and studied British accent. “I’m surprised, Slim, that you don’t recall. It was soon after he adapted The Grass Harp for Broadway. I don’t generally go in for Broadway, naturally,” she said with an arch look at Slim, who bristled. “But I’m very glad I went to that opening night. I told you all about him then, Babe.”

  “My dear, no. I invited him for the weekend, in Paris, don’t you recall?” Pamela broke in, her voice so veddy, veddy British that they all, instinctively, leaned in to hear her (and they all, instinctively, recognized the ploy for what it was, and the many times their husbands had done the same thing, only to encounter Pamela’s magnificent cleavage displayed in a low-cut Dior). “Long before any of you—back when he had just published Other Voices, Other Rooms. Bennett Cerf, you know, the publisher”—and she could barely suppress a shudder; one simply did not like to admit one knew those types—“asked me if I could entertain this young novelist of his, as he was rather nervous about reviews. You were there, Babe. I’m certain of it.”

  “Ladies, ladies,” admonished C.Z., unflappable and untouchable as ever, never quite “in” but never quite “out” of their world—simple and uncomplicated, a Hitchcock blonde with a sunny smile (and a clenched, exceedingly proper Boston drawl). But C.Z., they all knew, was happier puttering around in her garden, spade in hand, or tending to her horses than she was lunching at Le Pavillon. “I don’t usually care about this sort of thing, but I do believe I was the one who introduced Truman to Babe. We were shopping at Bergdorf’s. Truman is marvelous at picking out just the right handbag. You were there that afternoon, Babe.”

  “No, I propose it was on our yacht,” Marella said in her uncertain English; her entire manner was shy and tentative around her friends, since she was much younger than they were, never entirely sure of her place, despite her fabulous wealth and exquisite beauty—and a face that Truman had pronounced “what Botticelli would have created, had Botticelli had more talent!” “Alec Korda brought him along, one summer. I believe you and Bill were there, Babe, were you not?”

  Babe Paley, cool in a blue linen Chanel suit that did not crease, no matter the radiator heat of a New York summer, didn’t reply; she merely looked on, amused, as she removed her gloves, folded them carefully, and slipped them inside her Hermès alligator bag. Seated in the middle of the best table at Le Pavillon, she surveyed her surroundings.

  This was her world, a world of quiet elegance, artifice, presentation. And luncheon was the highlight of the day, the reason for getting up in the morning and going to the hairdresser, buying the latest Givenchy or Balenciaga; the reward for managing the perfect house, the perfect children, the perfect husband. And for maintaining the perfect body. After all, one generally dined at home, or at a dinner party; why else employ a personal chef or two? But one went out for luncheon, at The Colony or Quo Vadis. But especially Le Pavillon, where the owner, Henri Soulé, displayed his society ladies like the objets of fine art that they were, seating them proudly in the front room, spreading them out in plush red-velvet banquettes, setting the table with the finest linen, Baccarat glasses, exquisite china and silver, and cut crystal bowls of fresh flowers. They drank their favorite wine, pushed the finest French cuisine around their plates (for in order to wear the kind of clothes and possess the kind of cachet to be welcome at Le Pavillon, naturally one could not actually eat), gossiped, and were seen.

  Photographers were always gathered on the sidewalk outside, waiting to snap the beautiful people inside, and Babe, tall, regal, a gracious smile on her face, was the most sought-after of all, to her friends’ eternal dismay and her own weary disdain—although the most observant, like Slim, might notice that Babe would pause, imperceptibly, if no photographer happened to be around, as if looking, or wishing, for one magically to appear.

  Why was Babe Paley such a favorite? Why was she the most fussed over, the most sought out for a quick, reverent hello by those not privileged to be seated with her? She was not the most beautiful; that honor must go to Gloria Guinness, with her exquisite neck, lustrous black hair, and flashing eyes. She was not the most amusing; that was Slim Hayward, with her quips and her quick wit, honed at the feet of men like Ernest Hemingway and Howard Hawks and Gary Cooper. She was not the most noble; no, that would be a tie between the Honorable Pamela Digby Churchill, daughter of a baron, ex-daughter-in-law of a prime minister, and Marella Agnelli, a bona fide Italian princess, married to Gianni Agnelli, the heir to the Fiat kingdom.

  It was her style, that indefinable asset. It was said that the others had style but Babe was style. No one noticed Babe’s clothes, for instance; not at first, even though she was always clad in the chicest, most exquisite designs. They noticed her, her tall, slender frame, her grave dark eyes, the way she had of holding her handbag in the crook of her arm, the simple grace with which she pushed her sunglasses on top of her hair or unbuttoned a coat with just one hand, allowing it to fall elegantly from her shoulders into the always-waiting arms of a maître d’.

  What they did not notice was the loneliness that trailed after her, along with the faint, grassy scent of her favorite fragrance, Balmain’s Vent Vert. The loneliness that, despite fabulous wealth, numerous houses, children, the most vibrant and powerful husband of all her friends, was her constant companion—or, at least, had been. Until now.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Babe finally pronounced, settling it once and for all. “I’m simply so very glad to know him. To Truman!” And she raised a flute of Cristal.

  “To Truman!” her five friends all echoed, and they toasted to their latest find, excited and hungrily anticipating fresh amusements galore, nothing more.

  “To Truman,” Babe whispered to herself, and smiled a private little smile that none of her friends had ever seen before. But the Duchess of Windsor had just entered the restaurant, her harsh little face turned first to the left, then to the right, as if she really were royalty, igniting a small wildfire of catty conversation—“Isn’t the duke the most boring man you’ve ever met? But those jewels! The one thing he’s ever done right!”—and none of Babe’s friends was even looking at her.

  Except for Slim, who narrowed her eyes and bit her lip. And wondered.

  CHAPTER 2

  …..

  There was another young woman who dreamed of New York; another young woman who knew that if she could only find her way there, she could live happily ever after—with or without her young son. Her name was Lillie Mae Faulk, and she was from Monroeville, Alabama. She came to New York, too.

  Once upon a time.

  “My mother’s name was Nina,” Truman told Gloria, told C.Z., told Slim. His eyes gleamed softly, reverently. “Nina was beautiful—a real lady. She was too much for Monroeville, Alabama! She always told me, ‘Truman, my little man, I’m going to take you to New York one day.’ And she did, when I was eleven. That’s when my life really began—because it’s New York! Not sleepy little Monroeville, where nothing ever happened. Although I did get bit by a cottonmouth once, and nearly died. Nearly—oh, my goodness, I was one foot over the line! But they saved me. Nothing can kill me, not even a snake!”

  “Oh!” Slim gasped. Then she grinned. “Let me see the scar!”

  “Big Mama!” Truman wagged a finger at her but obliged, rolling up his shirt to reveal a thin, supple arm, paler than the moon, covered with a fine down of silken blond hair, as white as the hair on his head, the hair brushing his eyes, always falling, falling over his face like a curtain or a veil. “See?”

  Slim did see: two faint punctures on his forearm, barely visible.

  “These are my scars, my only scars,” Truman told her, triumphantly. “I don’t have any others!”

  —

  “MY MOTHER’S NAME WAS really Lillie Mae,” Truman revealed to
Babe. It was early in their friendship, those days when they had to catch each other up on everything that had happened to them, so that they could mark their lives—Before. And After.

  “Lillie Mae Faulk. And she was a selfish bitch,” Truman said, his voice flat for once. He wasn’t trying to captivate or ensnare; he knew he had Babe, knew it in his heart. Knew it as a dream come true, for that was what it was.

  A beautiful—an exquisite—woman. Loving him, Truman. Needing him, as he needed her. For what, neither could precisely express just yet. They only recognized each other, not as a reflection in a mirror, but as a reflection of a deeper, darker, murkier sore, or hole, or something gaping but always, always hidden. Until the moment they locked eyes on the CBS plane, each so startled their masks fell, and Truman was, for only a fragment of a moment, no longer the startlingly self-assured prodigy but a lost little boy, forgotten. And Babe was, beneath the couture and makeup, a shy, unsure woodland creature, hugging herself for comfort.

  Two souls, exposed like raw wounds. Visible only to each other, they firmly believed.

  “My mother hated me. Hated me! Despised, loathed.” Truman gnashed the words with his teeth. “She abandoned me to those horrible cousins in Monroeville, and I thought I’d never see her again. She used to lock me in hotel rooms, did you know? Lock me in while she went off with her ‘gentleman callers’—thank you, Tennessee!—and I’d cry and cry, but she’d left instructions, you see. Told the staff not to let me out, no matter how I hollered. And I did! But then I’d finally tire myself out and fall asleep, never knowing when—if—she’d come back for me.”

  Babe was shocked; she wanted to fold her new friend up in her arms, hug him to her heart, which was pierced on his behalf. But she did not; she knew the effort it took to keep one’s exterior self together, upright, when everything inside was in pieces, broken beyond repair. One touch, one warm, compassionate hand, could shatter that hard-won perfect exterior. And then it would take years and years to restore it.

  So Babe did not hug Truman, who looked, in that moment of confession, as if he were still that six-year-old boy abandoned by his mother in Monroeville, Alabama. Forgotten by his father, too—“Arch Persons! What a farce he was. Is. Someday I’ll tell you about him, but not today, Babe, dear. I’m a little weary today.” And he rubbed his eyes tiredly, with his two small fists.

  “But she did bring you here, Truman. That’s the good thing. The blessed thing.”

  “Yes, Lillie Mae did get here, after all. She married my stepfather, Joe Capote. She changed her name to Nina and she had a fabulous apartment on Park Avenue, just as she’d dreamed. She finally sent for me and put me in military school, to butch me up. She hated who I was. Called me a fag one moment, then asked me when I’d marry a nice girl the next. She never was proud of me, never. I could have written the Bible, and she’d still call me, to my face, the greatest disappointment in her life.”

  “Never! You’re no disappointment, Truman. You’re a beautiful person, a great artist. You must know that!”

  “Well”—and Truman did grin up at her, a sly, satisfied little boyish grin. “I will admit to overcoming my childhood, anyway. The hell that it was.”

  —

  “I HAD THE MOST MARVELOUS CHILDHOOD!” Truman exclaimed to Slim, to Gloria, to C.Z., at their parties, where they would surround their new discovery, these glamorous wives of glamorous men, while their husbands looked on in confusion, for they’d never seen a Truman Capote before, and hoped, at first, never to see one again. This tiny, effeminate creature dressed in velvet suits, red socks, an absurdly long scarf usually wrapped around his throat, trailing after him like a coronation robe, who pronounced, after dinner, “I’m going to go sit over here with the rest of the girls and gossip!” This pixie who might suddenly leap into the air, kicking one foot out behind him, exclaiming, “Oh, what fun, fun, fun it is to be me! I’m beside myself!”

  These men, titans of industry, old money, heirs to fortunes, looked on, agape. And told one another, “Well, at least we don’t have anything to worry about from him,” as their wives fluttered and cooed and preened and fought to sit next to him.

  But Truman, watching them, recognizing the sneering disdain—and the barely concealed fear—in their eyes, smiled to himself, even as he kept chattering to their wives. “These eccentric old cousins who raised me—such material! You’ve read The Grass Harp, of course. Sook was such a wonderful, crazy old lady! She adored me. They all did—I was the pride of Monroeville, Alabama! The star! And you must meet my friend Nelle. Nelle Harper Lee. She’s in New York now, working on a novel about our childhood, apparently, although I’m sure she’ll need my help, poor thing. She’s bright, but not quite as gifted as moi—but shh, you didn’t hear that from me!”

  —

  “NELLE WAS MY ONLY FRIEND in Monroeville,” Truman told Babe, bitterly. They were in her bedroom, her sanctum of sanctums, at Kiluna Farm. That was her home—oh, of course the Paleys had many homes; an apartment in the St. Regis, a summer house in New Hampshire, the beach house in Jamaica. But it was the sprawling estate—“Eighty acres!” Truman exclaimed to his lover, Jack Dunphy, who only grunted and said “So what?”—on Long Island that was their constant, their true north. After the fateful plane trip, during which the two of them had immediately tumbled into a conversation neither could recall, except for the fact that it seemed to bind them together with an invisible golden thread none of the others present could unravel, Babe immediately invited Truman out for the weekend. She had installed him in a guest room equipped with a personal valet, fresh flowers, the finest Porthault linens, and a view of her spectacular gardens. Truman—after first allowing himself to roll around the plush carpet like a puppy, bounce on the bed like a ten-year-old, and bury his elfin face in the flowers—knocked on her bedroom door and walked right in without waiting for a reply, as if he’d been there a thousand times before.

  And Babe—who rarely allowed anyone into her bedroom—smiled and patted the bedspread and found herself, to her amazement, sitting cross-legged next to Truman Capote, who studied her anxiously, his eyes big and blue and innocent. He was like a child at times, she decided, as so many people did upon meeting him. A child who needed reassurance and shelter from the capriciousness of a cruel world. And so she surprised herself by sharing confidences as she had never done before, not even, really, with her two sisters back in Boston.

  “Nelle was a tomboy—tough as nails and she didn’t have too many friends herself, plus her mother was crazy as a loon. But she wanted to be a writer, too. We had that in common. No one else in that dusty Alabama town knew what a writer was. But we found an old typewriter in her father’s office and we oiled it up and got some ribbon and would take turns pounding out stories and dialogue and anything that came to mind. We called it ‘going to work.’ Nelle and I wrote ourselves out of Monroeville, since we couldn’t very well leave on our own. Lillie Mae went off to New York, divorced my father, married Joe Capote, and still she didn’t send for me. Not until I was eleven. So I was left to be raised by these kooky old cousins, mocked for my good manners, my nice clothes that Nina sent. Mocked for being me, smaller than any other boy, prettier, too.” There wasn’t a trace of bitterness in Truman’s voice; he lolled about the bed, grabbed his knees, and laid his head upon Babe’s lap.

  —

  “MY MOTHER DIED OF PNEUMONIA,” Truman whispered to Slim, to Gloria, to C.Z. To their husbands, now joining their wives by the fire, a cozy, bejeweled, hushed little group surrounding this charming male Scheherazade with the barest traces of a southern accent, the odd, enchanting lisp, the dreamy eyes. And that hair! Fairy hair, spun gold, with long bangs. Men did not have bangs; men wore their hair slicked back with Brylcreem, no-nonsense.

  But Truman wasn’t a man. He wasn’t a woman. He was an unearthly creature, a genius—or so those who weren’t inclined to read had been told by those who were. A genius whose eyes were now wet with tears. And their hearts opened to him, as of one acc
ord. “My mother was very young, still beautiful, you know. It was only a couple of years ago. I was in Europe and couldn’t get back in time. She died of pneumonia and she was all alone. And so now I’m an orphan.”

  The wives wiped their own tears. The husbands said to themselves, “Well, he’s not so bad, after all, the little fellow. I’ve never been friends with a fag before. What the hell.”

  —

  “MY MOTHER KILLED HERSELF,” Truman told Babe. His eyes were dry and frighteningly clear. “Killed herself with booze and pills. She’d tried before but always chickened out. But not this time. Old Capote lost all his money, you see. She had nothing—she was back to being Lillie Mae Faulk, not glamorous Nina Capote. She couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t bear me. I was in Europe, working on the script for Beat the Devil, and I had her cremated because she would have hated that. It’s so sordid, disgraceful. But now you know.”

  He frowned, and sighed, and seemed lost in memories; Babe thought his face most beautiful in repose, when the delicate features—the small, yet lusciously red-lipped mouth, the flushed and freckled cheeks, the surprising cleft in his determined jaw—weren’t working so hard to beguile.

  Suddenly he opened his eyes wide and peered up into her face. He smiled that mischievous smile, patted her knee, and cooed, “So now you know about me. All about me. Tell me about you.”

  And Babe felt she had no choice—and didn’t want one, anyway. This was communion, something of a nature so deep she couldn’t articulate it, only feel it rumbling beneath her ribs, tickling her heart. Surface, surface, surface—that was her life, and it had been, for as long as she could remember. But here was someone who had bared his soul to her. He had shown her his wounds, his scars; the real ones, the ones that never healed. The ones that weren’t visible to the naked eye.