The Swans of Fifth Avenue

by Melanie Benjamin

  “Oh, Christ. I’d forgotten about him. Or I’ve tried to, anyway,” Gloria cackled. “What was his name again?”

  “Danny. Danny something. I’ve never understood that obsession Truman had for him—he was so stupid, that one. Muscular, but dumb as a rock, out of his league. Remember when Truman brought him to Europe, took him to the best restaurants, and the poor slob was miserable, pining for hamburgers and baked potatoes? Yet Truman insisted this lug was the love of his life. He was just besotted, and heartbroken when the lug finally had enough. That’s when I just started not feeling—right—about Truman. I tried, I tried to be the same friend, but something was off with Truman then, don’t you think? And it all started after the ball.” Slim handed Gloria her stinger.

  “I’ve even felt sorry for him, lately, with all his heartbreak, all these stupid men who keep taking from him and then leaving.” Gloria nodded. “Until now, that is.”

  “Yes. There were times he tore my heart—I know he wrenched Babe’s. But he’s crossed a line.”

  “Crossed a line?” Gloria gaped at Slim. “He murdered that woman. He as good as put those pills in her hand!”

  “And he aired the Paleys’ dirty laundry,” Pam reminded them all. “And one doesn’t do that, if one wants to remain, shall we say—intact?”

  “He aired Bill Paley’s stained dirty laundry, if you want to get right down to it,” Gloria mused. “Stained, bloody laundry, according to that story. How explicit Truman has gotten in his writing! He never used to be so vulgar.”

  The other women nodded. Pam’s cleavage was so exposed, Slim leaned over and tucked a napkin into it. “For the sake of the children, dear.”

  “Yet, of course, it was Bill who betrayed Babe in the first place. And who apparently told Truman all about it. Just like a man. A foolish, vain man. Oh, why do we do it?” Gloria wailed. “Why do we put up with it, with these men? These men we married when we were young and beautiful and desirable, even though they weren’t?”

  “Money,” Marella and Slim answered simultaneously. Pam wrinkled her freckled nose; talking of money was so crass, but so American. Yet, of course, they were right.

  “Why do you even ask?” Slim added.

  “Because—oh, shit.” Gloria shrugged. This was the reward, then? Married to an ugly old fart who gave her things, yes—but kept the really good jewels locked up, doling them out to her on occasions he deemed appropriate. The Guinnesses had houses, yachts, servants, the best clothes, but now nobody cared, nobody looked at her twice in her Givenchy gowns, her Balenciaga suits. Because she was goddamn old, and she was stuck with a man who farted in bed, and she’d never get anyone else, there was no trading up, not anymore, and all she could look forward to was losing her teeth, more face-lifts, orthopedic shoes instead of Ferragamos, the constant battle of the dye bottle (Dios mío, she couldn’t go a week before the gray started to show now, at her hairline), and all the money in the world couldn’t stop any of that, couldn’t stop the ravages of time and regret.

  And that was the secret, the wonder of Truman, she realized suddenly. Truman had made them forget all that. He had amused them. Their husbands didn’t want to talk to them. They grew bored talking to one another, these glorious creatures, for they were all the same. Blond, brunette, tall, short, European or Californian, they were still the same; only the exteriors were different. And they devoted their lives to maintaining this difference, striving to shine, be the one jewel who stood out. Yet at night, they took off the diamonds and gowns and went to empty beds resigned to the fact that they were just women, after all. Women with a shelf life.

  And then Truman leapt into their midst, and suddenly the gossip was more delicious, the amusements more diverse. He had sat on the beds of every one of his swans and whispered how beautiful she was, how precious, how devoted he was to her and her alone, and even though they all knew he was saying the same thing to each one of them, they didn’t mind. Because, beneath the beauty, they were all so goddamned lonely.

  And the ball, that glorious Black and White Ball when they were so exquisite, so rare and coveted, that was their summit. Everyone’s summit—New York’s summit.

  “Nobody dresses for lunch anymore,” Gloria complained, looking around the room. Yes, ladies of a certain age, like them, still clung to dresses, hats, gloves, polished shoes. But women in pantsuits were now allowed to dine at La Côte Basque, the Colony, the Plaza. In less rarefied places, men and women both now regularly wore jeans, sometimes torn, and tennis shoes, and athletic shirts. In public.

  “You know, the funny thing is that Danny, the air-conditioning man, wouldn’t have been invited to Truman’s ball, back then,” mused Slim. “God, we were all so beautiful, weren’t we? The gowns, the masks. It seemed fun at the time, just another day at the office, but now, I don’t know—it seems like a lost dream, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s all lost. Truman giveth, and Truman taketh away,” muttered Gloria. “And now he’ll get away with murder.”

  “No. We taketh away. I’ll bet anything the little shrimp has been phoning us all day long. Well, I gave my maid instructions to tell Mr. Capote that Lady Keith was unavailable. Indefinitely.”

  “Yes, I did the same thing.” Gloria nodded. So did Marella.

  “I wonder what he’ll do, without us—without her, especially? He didn’t know it, but he needed us. More than we needed him.”

  “Slim!” Gloria raised her glass in a toast. “That may be the most insightful thing I’ve heard from you all day. You’re damn right. Come.” Gloria set the glass down, signaled for the bill. “Let’s do something truly cruel. Let’s go home and rest up, then dress, and all of us go out on the town together, as if there’s nothing at all wrong. As if the bastard simply doesn’t exist. I’ll have my secretary call Suzy Knickerbocker and Liz Smith and let them know; of course, they’ll tell Truman.”

  “That is one hell of an idea, Gloria.” Slim reached for her purse. “Except—well, it doesn’t feel quite right, without her.” And once again, they all looked at the empty chair.

  “Oh, it’s not fair, not her. We’re all shits, all of us at this table. We’ve all done mean things to each other, we’ve all had our moments.” Slim slumped back down. “But Babe never did. She never said a bad thing about anyone, or did anything cruel or catty.”

  “Life isn’t fair,” Gloria reminded her briskly. “We all know that. If life was fair, we’d be the ones with the fortunes and our husbands would look like Paul Newman. Come on, we’re doing this. I insist. We need some cheering up. And more importantly, we need to show that little shit we could give a fuck what he says or does—or writes. Babe would understand.”

  “Yes, mamacita.” Slim drew herself up, stifled a burp. “Oh, I wish Papa were still here! We could take your plane and fly to Cuba, wouldn’t that be grand?”

  “For God’s sake, stop it with the Hemingway crap. I’m not Truman. I’m not that easily impressed,” Gloria snapped, handing several hundred-dollar bills to the waiter.

  “I think that’s what I’ll miss the most about him,” Slim said as the four ladies rose, unsteadily, to their feet.

  “What?”

  “Truman. I’ll miss having someone to tell my stories to. Say what you want about him, Truman was a very good listener.”

  “And a very good thief, remember? If it wasn’t for us, he’d have nothing to write about. He stole our stories. He’s a thief. And a murderer, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “He’s a storyteller.” Slim shook her head. “Just like Papa—”

  Gloria cut her short with one flash of her dark eyes. The others followed, their heads held high, smiling at one and all. Stopping in the ladies’ room to repair the damage of alcohol and time, as best they could; elbows out, powder flying, lipsticks wielded like daggers. Just in case there were photographers outside.

  There were. The familiar, loving click; the adored flash of bulbs, more intimate, more caressing than any kiss. The reverent “Mrs. Guinness! Look this w
ay!” “Lady Keith, give us a smile!”

  But then—a cold breeze blew past. Another door opened. A couple—the woman in a floppy hat, wide-legged trousers, the skinny man clad in a fur vest and striped pants—emerged, standing uncertainly on the sidewalk a few feet down. The photographers rushed away.

  “Bianca! Mick! Mick Jagger!”

  The Swans were forgotten.

  Long live the king.

  CHAPTER 16

  …..

  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….

  The Manhattan of the late sixties, early seventies.

  Well, actually, it was just the worst of times.

  After the ball is over, after the break of day…

  Did they know, the morning after Truman’s party, that nothing would ever be the same again? No, they did not. Some claimed, later, that they did know it; that even as they were dancing, they felt a bit like Nero fiddling while Rome was burning. And some newspapers and magazines, in the days and weeks following the bash, did question the whole endeavor, likening it to Marie Antoinette during the Revolution.

  But in truth, when the glittering and gay left the ball, removed their dancing shoes, sent out their finery to be cleaned and repaired (or returned, if they’d been gauche enough to have to borrow it), they simply reflected on what a grand time they’d had. And looked forward to more.

  But Manhattan, in the sixties and seventies, said, “No. No dice. I’m turnin’ on you, kid.”

  Strikes—transit strikes (which Truman and his swans did not notice), garbage strikes (which they did; goodness, even on Fifth Avenue, the garbage piled and piled, up to the sky; the air was fetid with filth and when the winds swirled, garbage took to the skies like soiled, stinking confetti from a macabre ticker tape parade; no one could even go out on the streets without a perfumed handkerchief pressed to her face). Riots—after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed (what a nice man, really; a few had met him in Washington. Kay Graham was really upset by his death), Harlem erupted, not that Babe or Gloria or Slim or Marella or Pam ever went to Harlem, mind you. But still, they could hear the sirens all night long, nobody left her penthouse for fear of—something. Then Bobby Kennedy, and Truman cried and cried; Bobby had been a neighbor of his in the UN Plaza, and they’d had a couple drinks together, although he’d always felt Bobby thought he was performing some kind of civic duty in befriending a homosexual. Still, he’d cried at his death, written poor Rose Kennedy a magnificent letter of solace, which he knew she would treasure forever, if he did say so himself—and to anybody who would listen.

  Then Stonewall, and the Village was suddenly crawling with drag queens and homosexuals, and surprisingly Truman had little opinion about all this, even though Babe and Gloria and Slim and Marella and Pam all looked at him with great sympathy in those few days. But Truman went on as normal, didn’t feel compelled to go down and march with any of the other homosexuals, or engage in kick lines in front of the police. And when they all asked him if he’d ever been to the Stonewall Inn, he wrinkled his nose and exclaimed, “God, no—that place?”

  And crime. Crime and dirt and filth, the hallmarks of Manhattan in the sixties and seventies. Of course, the swans and their consorts could flee, and they did, whenever possible. But still, they had to be in New York sometimes, carry on the banner of good taste and social responsibility; there were still opening nights, benefits, galas to attend. But crime was right outside their door; Central Park was no longer safe at night, not with all the muggings and beatings and knifings. Times Square—oh, Times Square! For Slim, in particular, who had been part of Broadway’s golden age, it was heartbreaking now to see the empty storefronts, hookers perched on stools on every corner, drug dealers lounging in doorways, cops on the beat, dirty, cheap stores that sold sex toys, inflatable dolls, plastic-looking lingerie.

  The people changed, too. No one had manners any longer. No one dressed. Those hippie young men did not hold the door open for ladies. Highballs were no longer the drug of choice; pot and coke and LSD were the new amusements.

  A few of them did try LSD, at their therapists’ urging. For a while it was the thing to do—go to a party, drop some acid, lie on velvet pillows staring at the ceiling, waiting to be told the secrets of the universe. But the next morning was always hell, and the ladies didn’t like what it was doing to their skin, so they stopped.

  Truman didn’t, however. Truman, in the years after In Cold Blood, the fabulous ball, the apex of his fame, grew puffier, less disciplined. Slept later, roamed pockets of the city he’d never roamed before, brought home men he’d never have looked at before. None of his swans ever figured out exactly what happened between him and Jack. They only knew that the relationship no longer involved sex—Truman was more than happy to let them know that, anyway! And they all found, to their surprise, that they missed Jack, that gruff, humorless, rude-to-the-point-of-insanity man (after all, he’d once told Loel Guinness that he was a Nazi, and while everyone knew this to be true of both Guinnesses, no one had ever said it to their faces!). But they all recognized the steady, no-nonsense influence Jack had had on Truman; he was the ballast to Truman’s airy sails. While they were still somehow in each other’s lives—they still took vacations together, to Verbier, Switzerland, to their twin houses on Long Island—it wasn’t the same as before. Truman was different, because of it. More unstable; some said untrustworthy, at least when they were outside of Babe’s hearing.

  But Gloria and Babe and Marella and Slim and Pam weren’t any different. They held on—clung—to their disciplined lives, their shared belief that sophistication and elegance counted for something; counted for everything, in their world. Their clothes might have changed some; Gloria was one of the first to introduce the Pucci pantsuit into society, and Babe’s skirts grew imperceptibly shorter. They all flocked to Halston, their former millinery magician at Bergdorf’s, when he opened his own salon and introduced long, flowing, caftanlike dresses made of jersey, sometimes one-shouldered, sometimes halter-backed. Still tasteful, but smacking, slightly, of the younger fashions.

  They clung to their former hairstyles with strange devotion; if their skirts were looser, no longer requiring girdles (although of course, they still wore them), then their hair remained rigid, unyielding. Not for them the long, stringy styles of the flower children or the precision boy cuts introduced by Vidal Sassoon. They still looked forward to their twice-weekly visits to Kenneth’s, depended on them, really; found refuge in the soothing music, teacups, champagne flutes, stylists still clad in the suits and ties that Kenneth himself wore. They were pampered, but, more important, they were prized, still. In the reliable townhouse in which few young women would be seen, the Babes and Marellas and Glorias of Manhattan still found themselves desired, and desirable. And so they retained the kind of hairstyles that required setting, hairspray, sleeping in a hair net or curlers every night. Hairstyles that, unlike the rest of Manhattan, were impervious to the winds of change.

  But Truman, oh, Truman. How he changed! How he adopted the fashions, tragically, of the youth movement (he never wore love beads, but, good God, those caftanlike suits he wore! The Nehru jackets!). The feuds he got into! Of course, he and Gore Vidal had never liked each other, but now they were actually engaged in a lawsuit (Truman repeating a story he insisted that Gore had told him, of Bobby Kennedy decking Gore in the White House; Gore was suing for libel). And he’d always had a love/hate relationship with Norman Mailer, which devolved into hatred, pure and true, when Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Armies of the Night—awards that Truman hadn’t won for In Cold Blood. So Truman accused Mailer of ripping him off, of doing what Capote had done first, and more brilliantly; of writing another “nonfiction novel.”

  And the things he’d said about Jackie Susann! That the Valley of the Dolls author was a truck driver in drag—even if he had a point, it was a vicious thing to say. Especially on The Tonight Show.

  Truman. On The Tonight Show. Talking to
Johnny Carson on the West Coast, Dick Cavett on the East. Truman had gone Hollywood, of all things. Truman had gone global; he was everywhere and nowhere, peripatetic. He was in Rome, he was in Switzerland, he was in Palm Springs, he was in Venice. He was on the cover of Time, he was writing articles for Rolling Stone. He was dropping acid with The Who.

  What he wasn’t doing, as far as anyone could tell, was writing his next book.

  “So what are you writing next?” asked Johnny, asked Dick, asked the world.

  “It’s brilliant. My masterpiece, called Answered Prayers, after that saying by Saint Teresa of Avila—‘There are more tears shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.’ Isn’t that brilliant! It’s going to be a darkly comic observation of society, real society. I’ve had a first-class seat to it all, and darlings, the things I’ve seen! I’m a modern-day Proust.”

  “When will you be done?”

  “Oh, soon, soon! It’s all up here.” Truman tapped his now-bald head, wrung his fat little hands dripping with rings, twisted up his baby-soft lips in a smirk, shifted his caftan-clad lard about in the chair. “I’ve spent years observing this world. Years!”

  Curled up in an overstuffed armchair, an empty ebony cigarette holder in her hand, Babe eyed Truman on the television screen. Her hands itched to fill the holder with a cigarette and light up, but she swallowed, breathed as deeply as she could, and took a sip of water, chewing resolutely on an ice cube instead.

  When she set the crystal glass back down on its coaster, however, she missed; the glass hit the tabletop with a loud crack, and water spilled everywhere. Babe gasped, and let out a small cry.

  “What? What is it, Babe?” Instantly Bill was by her side, kneeling on the floor, looking up into her face. She grimaced, and laughed.

  “Nothing, I just made a little mess, that’s all.”

  “Oh.” Bill looked relieved; he ran his hand through his very thin, very silver hair, and exhaled. “I thought—I thought, well, never mind. I’ll get a towel.” He turned to see what was on the television. “Truman? What’s he up to tonight?”