Slim, vaguely interested at best, had filed the anecdote in the dusty recesses of her brain. Perhaps she should have paid closer attention… Truman, she recalled, had seemed impressed less with the act itself than with the price tag.
‘Cartier, Big Mama!’ he had enthused. ‘Who do you think picks up that tab?’
Through the thick haze of Gitane smoke and palpitating samba, Slim thought that she must remember to check Leland’s pockets tomorrow for cigarette cases inscribed with ‘Some Enchanted Evening.’ Slinging back yet another round, she scanned the crowd for the bobbing cream-puff coif. Pam wasn’t difficult to spot, incandescent and matronly at once, tilting her double-chins upward to Leland.
Slim’s Hay held Madame Churchill’s beefy upper back as she stumbled through a tango, she laughing her siren’s laugh through white incisors, upon which her upper lip sat balanced with precarious joy.
IT HAD ALL Faded into a Mildly distressing dream by the time the Haywards reached Munich.
They eagerly anticipated meeting the Baroness von Trapp, in whose story they’d spotted narrative pay dirt. Perhaps it began with Hawks, all those years ago, but after two husbands in the biz, after combing through dozens of scripts, studying countless sets, costumes and budgets, Slim had become an inadvertent pro. She had, over the years, proven herself all the more valuable for having no agenda apart from that of taste; opinions dictated by gut. From the start she believed the von Trapp story would be the vehicle to revive Leland’s career (before Pacific and King and I beat it to the punch). Now it seemed a luxury, to be at the top of the game and still want more. This would mark the end of their worries, and the beginning of retirement. Not that Leland would ever retire—it wasn’t in his genes. But he might work from desire rather than need. Now that he no longer needed to prove, now that the children were grown, they could finally set about the business of making one another happy, which Slim had resolved to prioritize.
With the vision of these Valhallan days ahead, she made a point of being doubly charming to the Baroness von Trapp, who served them tea and stollen.
When Leland presented the revised offer of a ten percent share of the show, the Baroness disappeared into another room. Leland raised a peppered brow to Slim, who casually nibbled her cake. The Baroness returned and disappeared several more times until Leland leaned in toward Slim, hissing, ‘Does she have a team of lawyers in there or is she phoning each of the seven von Trapp kids individually?’
Slim suppressed a laugh as the Baroness returned, wearing a grave expression. Leland rose, removed the contracts from his briefcase, and took the chair beside hers.
‘Baroness. Where were we… ?’
‘More tea, Frau Hayward?’ asked the Baroness. Leland and Slim waited patiently while the Baroness refilled their cups, humming a Schubert lied in a clear, melodic tone. As she served another plate of stollen, Leland resumed his pitch:
‘Misters Rodgers and Hammerstein are on board. Lindsay and Crouse will write the book. And one of our finest musical-comedy artistes, Mary Martin, would like us to express personally how honored she’d be to play you. She…’ He trailed off when the Baroness lifted a serene palm. Leland and Slim waited, like chastened children silenced in church by Sister Maria.
‘Herr Hayward. As I mentioned, I do nothing without first consulting the Holy Ghost.’
Slim watched, amused, as Leland maintained a neutral expression. ‘And… ?’
‘Well, I’ve spoken with him and now he says he wants ten percent.’
Slim saw the smile play at the corners of Leland’s mouth. The Holy Ghost would get his percentage and the Haywards would get their hit. She’d later admit that she admired the Holy Ghost’s ballsy tactics, adding that he was, in fact, better than most theatrical veterans at the art of negotiation.
Returning home triumphant, no sooner had their plane hit the tarmac at Idlewild than darling Jerry Robbins bombarded them with yet another project to add to their stable of hits: Gypsy, based on the memoir of striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee. Leland simply couldn’t say no. Sure, he’d be busy—swamped, no less. But Leland was a workhorse, thriving on chaos.
And so the Haywards resumed their usual pattern of work, entertaining, and being entertained. Saturdays were Babe’s nights. Formal gatherings. Evening dresses and dinner jackets. Low music and four-course spreads. Sundays were Slim’s—barbecues and fish fries. Tiki torches, lounge records, and sundresses and capris. Boozy afternoons of strip croquet—an article of clothing forfeited for each poor shot.
Slim and Babe had long ago agreed upon this schedule, to avoid conflicting invitations, and had, in doing so, solidified their bond.
With Leland consumed with work, and travel behind them, Slim blocked out a week in her calendar to sneak away to the Maine Chance health spa in Tempe to drop a few pounds. Christmas indulgence on top of rich European food had begun to take their toll. One couldn’t very well be stuck with ‘Slim’ as a nickname and fail to live up to the promise.
Leland grasped the added inches lustily, biting her thigh. ‘I’ll take you whatever way you come, Nan Hayward.’
‘You like a fat wife, do you?’
‘You’re the sun and the moon and the stars. That’s all I know,’ he replied.
HE CALLED HER three times a day while she was at Maine Chance, steaming and starving. He told her how desperately he missed her, how home wasn’t home without her. Slim smiled on the other end of the line, and said she’d see him soon. Lying beneath an infinite desert sky in the middle of nowhere, she sensed how profoundly Leland was the center of her own small universe. She wanted to tell him—face to face, staring into his kind, azure eyes—that he was the sun and the moon and the stars for her as well, the constellation around which she revolved.
Slim canceled her traditional Sunday barbecue the day she returned to Manhasset.
Even for her casual shindigs, it had been too much to organize from Tempe. Besides, she’d been looking forward to an evening in with Hay. They’d open a bottle of Château d’Yquem— ‘The wine that never fails to get a man laid,’ Leland often chuckled. Toss a baguette and cheese onto a tray, with cornichons and salty Parma ham—god, how good it would be to eat again! They’d tuck into their cold supper and chilled wine. They’d talk and kiss and laugh, and she’d tell him what she had realized in the desert on her own. That she wasn’t—now that they were reunited—going anywhere. Not with Tru. Not with Papa. Not with Betty. She was his. That she never, ever wanted an ‘I’ without a ‘we.’ That they, the glorious Haywards, added up to one lovely shimmering ‘us.’
When she walked in the door and set down her bags, she called his name. She proceeded down the hall to their bedroom, unbuttoning her silk blouse and stepping out of her skirt as she went. She found him sitting on the bed, on the phone. He looked up, smiling, motioning her near. Sweet Hay, Slim thought, warm with fondness for the familiar. She crawled panther-like across the bedspread, curling into his lap. She studied his face, reaching up to stroke his jawline.
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ said Leland, wrapping up the call. ‘Yes. Seven o’clock. See you then.’
He hung up, setting the phone aside, leaning down to give Slim a kiss. She purred happily, closing her eyes. He nudged her— ‘Hey, kid. Where’re your clothes?’
Slim motioned with a limp gesture to the hallway. ‘Won’t need’ em for days. I don’t think I’ll be moving from this spot—except to walk to the kitchen and back. And maybe, if I’m feeling really ambitious, I’ll venture out into the garden and lie there stark naked.’
She pulled his face back to hers. He pecked her cheek, gently nudging her upward. ‘Well, as much as I wish that was the case, we gotta get a move on.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘We’re going into the city for dinner.’
‘What?… Why?’
He rose. ‘I’ll run you a bath.’
Slim sat up, groaning. ‘But I just got in! And it’s Sunday! We have the dinners on Sundays! What kind of rus
tler would dare tread on our patch?’
Leland had moved into Slim’s closet. ‘The white Mainbocher or the yellow?’
‘Neither.’
‘Nan. C’mon.’
‘Which is it? Von Trapps or Gypsy?’ She followed him into their dressing room.
‘Which is what?’
‘I’m assuming a mandatory dinner in Manhattan is related to some form of business crisis. Is it Slippery Strippers or Loose Lederhosen?’ she joked, dipping a toe in the bath.
‘Actually it’s neither. It’s Pam. Churchill.’
Slim stared at him blankly. ‘What?’
‘Pam Churchill’s in New York, at the Carlyle, and she’s invited us to dine.’
‘Why?’
‘I think to welcome you back to town?’
‘To welcome herself, more like…’ Slim, with a sudden chill, reached for a dressing gown, covering her body, aware that Leland had said nothing about the ten pounds she’d managed to shed. ‘Call her and cancel.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she asked us and it’s a small group and I said that we’d come,’ Leland persisted.
‘I’m not about to go into town and have dinner with Pam Churchill!’ Slim snapped, losing her famous cool. ‘I just got home— I haven’t eaten a morsel in days. I certainly don’t want her gray meat and rubber soufflé! I want to stay in, sit with you, walk in our garden, and eat your cooking.’
Leland faltered, then retreated to his own closet, returning with a necktie. Slim frowned as he knotted it in the mirror.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Well, if you’re not coming, I guess I’ll just have to go alone.’
And with that Slim knew she had no choice.
She disappeared into her closet and reemerged minutes later in a flowing black pantsuit, hair pulled back tightly in a bun, more dressed for a funeral than a dinner. Dabbing a pat of scent behind her ears, she walked past Leland, leaving the bath untouched, faucet dripping into the steaming water.
SLIM WONDERED, AS she and Leland waited for the door to be opened at La Churchill’s Carlyle penthouse, which of Pam’s many benefactors was footing this particular bill. (Rumor had it that she’d had another go at Élie de Rothschild. Who they say provided that noxious Parisian pied-à-terre after their first split—though others claim it was Gianni. That both left her high and dry when she’d issued ultimatums. And those were just the usual suspects. The suite could have been hired by any number of mystery men.)
Slim had stonewalled Leland in the taxi, so resentful was she that he’d allowed their reunion to be disrupted. She hadn’t even had the chance to spring her great surprise. She had decided in Tempe that what they needed, what they had earned, was a second honeymoon. Not a pilgrimage with friends, not a business venture. Not a visit to an asylum to see a Hayward offspring, or to a hospital to lose one. Just a month, just the two of them. Slim and Hay. No interruptions. She’d worked out the logistics. Once Gypsy was cast, they were free of commitments. They could fly first to Paris, stop briefly in Madrid, then spend the rest of the summer in Venice. She had even wired to arrange a month-long rental of an apartment in the Gritti Palace. Her big reveal would have to wait, thanks to—
Slim practically winced as the door opened to reveal Mrs. Churchill’s eager face. Looking almost identical, in her new habitat, to the matron Slim had last encountered in Paris—perhaps a bit chubbier, a bit rosier, the thickness of her arms curling around a sleeveless shift she had no business wearing.
‘Slim! Let me look at you.’ Pam stepped back and appraised her in the manner one might assess a child returned home from summer camp.
It was over her shoulder, locked in that suffocating embrace, that Slim saw it: an entire foyer, practically stuffed to the rafters with white roses.
And not just any white roses…
Special roses. Rare ones.
Her roses.
At least five hundred dollars’ worth of Bourbon ‘Boule de Neiges.’
Slim walked to one and touched it, just to make sure its velvet petals were real, not some nightmarish hallucination induced by seven days of starvation in shriveled desert plains.
She turned to Pam, looking directly into her dull, bovine eyes.
‘Where did you get these?’
Pam smiled, lip curling with satisfaction. ‘Oh, I don’t know… Someone sent them?’
Slim shifted her gaze to Leland, who smiled, innocently.
Pam slipped into hostess mode. ‘Slim, may I tempt you with a cocktail after all that abstinence? Leland tells me it’s just been dreadful for you.’ She brushed a hand across his lapel as she moved into the body of the suite. In passing, in that prim English-rose tone, coated in familiarity—‘Leland, you know where the ice bucket is. Be a dear and refill it, won’t you?’
Slim looked to Leland, shaking her head. He took a step toward her.
‘Nan…’
‘You son of a bitch.’
Then, like any seasoned pro, Slim entered the dinner theater and put on one helluva show.
SHE’D NOT MET his eyes the remainder of the evening.
She had been perfectly civil, perfectly polite. No one could fault her there. At the end of a surprisingly uneventful dinner of chicken roulade over rice—perfectly acceptable pinwheels of blandness— Slim had thanked her hostess and walked with Leland to the elevator.
It wasn’t until they’d hailed a taxi in front of the Carlyle, after they’d traveled for a good half hour in silence, that Leland cleared his throat.
INT. TAXI—NIGHT
Leland’s voice cuts through the silence—
LELAND
Nan, I think I better tell you, before Truman or some other goddamn gossip does …
(a beat, then—)
I’ve taken Pam Churchill out a few times while you were away. No big deal.
SLIM
Well now.
a bitter smile)
That should have been your opening line.
LELAND
Come on, Nan. You know you’re the only woman I’ve ever really loved…
He reaches for her hand, but Slim turns away. She stares blankly out of the window, watching the lights of Manhattan fly past in a blur.
IN EXACTLY FORTY-EIGHT Minutes and fifty-seven seconds, the taxi pulled up in front of the Hayward house in Manhasset. Slim waited until Leland had paid the driver and they walked safely back inside. Waited until she’d wandered numbly down the hall, shedding the black pantsuit, leaving it lifeless on the carpet like the shed skin of a missing corpse.
Waited until she had stepped into the bath Leland had drawn for her hours earlier, the water now as chilled as the pond beyond their garden.
Waited until he’d predictably called from outside the door that he was ‘going out to get some air’—she suspected as far as the pay phone by the corner shop to ring the thieving Mrs. Churchill. Then, lying back in the icy bath, Slim began to sob. Silently, so that no one might hear her, even though the house was empty.
After an hour she emerged, shriveled, flushed dry, ready to patch the gaping wound that was her future.
CODA
OF COURSE WE’D each Spotted pam in various boutiques, brazenly looking at wedding china.
We were sitting at lunch at Le Petit Jardin, in a circular booth, watching the maître d’ flambé our spinach salads with cognac from a rolling cart at the head of our table, applauding when the alcohol ignited in an impressive burst of flame.
The dining room was a delightful play on a Mediterranean garden, with lighting that changed hues and intensities to simulate the lifespan of a day in the indoor botanical space. Early lunch, it was a pale sky blue, deepening gradually over the hours to a rich sunset shade. We all acknowledged this wasterribly effective, and found ourselves stretching our luncheons over multiple courses, just to enjoy the shifting atmosphere.
It was at that moment that we saw Pam cross the room, carrying a large hat box from Berg
dorf’s. A few Tiffany bags as well. Of course we could only guess what those might contain—
‘Can you imagine? The audacity.’
‘To register before the body’s even cool?’
‘Surely Leland wouldn’t possibly consider that… ? Over Slim?’
‘Well, we do know what she’s like, Mrs. Churchill…’
‘And what they’re like.’ (Implied: The Husbands.)
‘We certainly know she goes for the brass ring each time.’
‘They do love that English peaches-and-cream routine—’
‘The governess fetish…’
‘Perhaps Leland’s had too much Sound of Music on the brain…’
‘That has to be the Balenciaga… The white one? The one in the window on Fifty-eighth? It’s the only hat that would take a box that big.’
‘Do you remember what she used to look like? Before. She wouldn’t have known a Balenciaga from a Barbour, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I remember seeing her in Capri just after the war, and instead of wearing, you know, appropriate slacks and espadrilles—she had horrid lizard brogues and the gaudiest dirndl skirt… Not the first clue! Within one year of meeting Gianni, she’s suddenly wearing Chanel this and Dior that, and the most stunning of jewelry… ?’
‘Well, of course! She’s the only woman Gianni ever spent money on.’
‘And that’s not to mention the parting gifts. That extortionate apartment in Paris—don’t dare tell Marella!’
‘Don’t forget the Bentley.’
‘He couldn’t even fob her off with Fiat stock!’
We cackled at this, a little too loudly. A little too… collectively. Pam turned her head, looking at our table from across the room with a curious expression.
‘Oh God—she’s seen us.’
‘Well, of course she’s seen us.’
‘Shit. She’s waving.’
‘Just smile and wave back…’
We did so, making an effort to smile across the room to a woman that we loathed, each of us waving. One or two of us even tempted fate with a disingenuous air kiss.
Swan Song Page 19
