‘It’s simple,’ she can hear a voice saying, tone coaxing. ‘You just lean forward, cover the back of your head with a towel, slip the cap off, then twist the front bit up till it stays… like so!’
Her own voice. And then another—an octave higher—the voice of a child.
‘I don’t want to swim.’
‘But darling, you have to want to swim. All children want to swim.’
Babe is transported back to a cabana, just off the beach at the Hôtel du Palais in Biarritz. She’s here with Kate, a girl of eight, wearing a striped bathing costume. She has Bill’s features and a blunt Buster Brown bob, low bangs hanging to her eyes.
Standing before her, Babe is marvelous-looking in a white beach romper, strapless. As glamorous as the little girl is plain. She is demonstrating how to wrap one’s hair into a towel, removing a red bathing cap underneath.
‘See how easy? Now you try.’
‘No, thank you,’ says the girl.
‘Go on…’ Babe coaxes, handing her the towel and cap.
‘NO!’ The girl throws them back, defiant.
‘Darling,’ Babe regroups, speaking slowly, with the exaggerated patience adults are so often guilty of inflicting on children, ‘I know that you don’t want to swim, because you’re afraid everyone will see… But I promise you they won’t. You’ll wear your bathing cap, then you’ll cover your head with the towel— then we’ll come back here and fix everything. I promise.’
The girl shakes her head.
Babe resorts to bribery. ‘You know the Madame Alexander doll you said you had your eye on? Well, if you try just this once I promise we’ll get it for you…’
Now the girl is listening. (She is, after all, her father’s daughter.)
‘You promise?’
‘Cross my heart.’
Reluctantly the girl takes the bathing cap from her mother.
She reaches up to her haircut and pulls it off, revealing a bald head beneath. Above her eyes where her bangs once hung, a complete absence of eyebrows. She quickly slides on the bathing cap, attempting to pull it low. Babe removes an eyebrow pencil from the makeup bag in her straw beach tote. She leans in, filling in the spaces, drawing Kate a plausible set of brows, as long as one doesn’t look too close.
‘There we are,’ Babe smiles. The girl furrows her new brows, concerned.
As if reading her mind, her mother reassures, ‘It’s waterproof.’
She holds up a compact mirror so that the girl might check her appearance. She seems satisfied, even giving her mother the concession of a shrug. ‘It’s okay, I guess.’
‘You look gorgeous.’ (Both must know this is pushing it.) ‘Now, after you’ve had a lovely day, you’ll do the towel trick, then we’ll come back here and put your hair back on—perfect.’ She tucks the child’s-size wig into her beach bag, safe from view, as they open the cabana door to a breathtaking seascape.
BABE NEVER REALLY Stopped Blaming Herself for Kate’s condition.
Three years earlier, on a rare vacance en famille in Cap d’Antibes, one evening Babe noticed a great deal of hair coming out in Kate’s brush, when detangling her locks before bed. The next morning Babe examined her pillow and the bath drain to find the same: clusters of brown hair, shed from Kate’s shoulder-length bob.
Day by day the hair continued to fall. First in tufts, then in clumps. By the end of the holiday, the child was completely bald.
In a panic, the Paleys took her to every specialist in Manhattan.
Alopecia universalis, they were told. Incurable. Cause unknown, but thought to be associated with severe stress.
‘Stress?’ Babe had cried. ‘But she’s five!’
The specialists couldn’t be sure if the strain of having her favorite nanny sent packing had played a part (for while doting on Kate, she beat the older children), or if her parents’ frequent absences contributed to her malady.
For our two cents we always thought it a bit bizarre that Babe and Bill moved their combined brood—her two, his two, and their two—to a separate house on the grounds of Kiluna, apart from the main residence. Of course, any of us can agree children are more enjoyable seen than heard—and even that can wear thin. But to throw those kids together in a separate house, practically in their own world… We’d never dream of telling Babe this, but we wonder if perhaps the youngest Paley simply couldn’t take the strain.
While a cure was sought and shrinks were hired to help confront the shock of it all, nothing could be done to reverse the process.
Babe ordered Kate the finest wigs money could buy, and took her to Kenneth’s to have them cut and styled in a private room, as if this were perfectly natural.
Now it is Babe who goes to Kenneth’s wearing her wigs, to style hair that isn’t hers, to cut tresses that aren’t really growing, if only to maintain the ritual.
In her St. Regis closet dressing room, Babe lowers her scarf, setting it down on the vanity. For the first time, when she looks very closely at her reflection, she can see a shade of her younger daughter in her own weary expression. Feeling for the first time in years—perhaps ever—a genuine pang of empathy. Something like recognition.
She grips the vanity edge, rising with some difficulty. She makes her way back to the campaign bed, to her index cards and catalogues, where she opens her planner to the final list of endowments. She removes the cap from her fountain pen and adds a name to the end:
Kate Paley: Schlumberger turquoise necklace, six hundred diamonds; gold coral Panos choker; painting by her uncle Jimmy Fosburgh entitled Mittens.
Sum total: $30,500.
This listed just below where she had previously been crossed out, Kate’s resentments and rebellions pardoned.
BABE THINKS A Great deal, in her final days and hours, about the last time she managed to venture out into the world, before the protracted vigil at the St. Regis commenced. The memory is significant for being the last time she felt truly herself—when her health rallied, which of course meant the last time we were able to foster, with reason, hopes for a full recovery.
It was on board the Guinness’ yacht—last June, where Babe sat for hours, soaking in the sun. For the first time she could recall, since the initial bout of pneumonia that led to her diagnosis, she found that she didn’t feel ravaged. Nothing was expected of her. No badgering to join the expeditions to various ruins that Gloria once forced her guests to partake in. No pressure to read a book, the days of ‘improving’ oneself with culture having waned. There were no demands, apart from the collective desire on behalf of her fellow passengers that she might feel a little stronger each day, but even that ceased to be a requirement.
She was able to sit from sunrise to sunset on the deck in a lounge chair, doing nothing more than staring out at the sea or up at the sky. Appreciating the turquoise shimmer of the Mediterranean. Feeling the breeze kiss her skin. Listening to the foreign cadences of the sailors on various boats in the ports in which they anchored, wondering what their lives must be like. Did they have happy marriages? Offspring? Were they fulfilled in their vocations? Was their life overall worth more than their monetary value?
She’d watch the light in the sky fade up or down, running the gamut from grapefruit to onyx. She’d survey the stars at night, no longer bothering with known constellations.
It was the unknown that now held her interest.
Though it was summer, she hid her skeletal frame in oversized knits, not wanting to shock her companions. She had one piece of luck in that her face remained largely unchanged, so while the rest of her wasted away, from the neck up she still looked like Babe. She wore the same Valentino cashmere five days running, simply because it was comforting. She no longer cared what others thought. She had to chuckle recalling a time when such things mattered. When she and Gloria were at the height of their unspoken rivalry. She remembered as if it were yesterday those consecutive summers, decades before, when Gloria famously hoodwinked her.
‘What’s the dress code?’ Babe
had asked her on the phone while packing for the annual Guinness-hosted cruise—ten days on the Adriatic.
‘Oh Bebé, it’s very intimate, very low-key. Just a few close friends. Relajado.’
Babe had arrived with cases full of cotton slacks and palazzo pants and white blouses, the occasional shirtdress thrown in for good measure.
Awaiting cocktails in a pair of dark blue jeans, striped marinière, and jacket with nautical buttons, Babe was perplexed when the female guests, one by one, emerged from their cabins in evening dress. She watched, gobsmacked, when La Guinness floated onto the polished deck—‘Oh my, I’m the last to arrive’—in a strapless Balenciaga gown, flamenco hem trailing behind. Clinging to Gloria’s frame like a second skin.
Truman, always one to appreciate a good shit-stirring, was delighted by the mischief of it all. Chewing an olive from his martini, he’d leaned in and enthused—‘Well, Babyling, she’s certainly trumped you there!’
The next summer Babe took no chances. She brought three suitcases full of meticulously chosen ensembles. Structured gowns, smart suits, tailored dresses that showcased her slender form. The first evening Babe pulled out all the stops, proving an absolute vision: an extraordinary Dior in two shades of pink, a deep raspberry floor-length skirt, topped with a plunging neckline—skin-toned, which lent the illusion of nakedness. From her lobes hung a pair of morganite drops; her hand was swallowed by an enormous black-diamond cocktail ring. Paste, of course—by Kenneth Jay Lane, king of the costume fake. This element was Babe’s private joke, testing to see if La Guinness might notice. But when Babe materialized on deck, dressed to the nines, she found Gloria & Co. lounging on cushions, in jeans and T-shirts, barefoot. To make matters worse, dinner was revealed to be baby-back ribs that one ate with one’s hands, spreading a sticky russet sauce over everything in sight. As Babe sat, overdressed, feeling faintly ridiculous, quietly fuming, Gloria sweetly offered, loud enough for the length of the deck to hear—
‘Why, Bebé, that’s the most beautiful dress you’re wearing! It makes me wish I’d thought to dress up too! But I would be simply mortified if you got sauce on that divine crêpe de chine…’ Then, a mischievous smile playing at the corners of her mouth, ‘Would you like a bib, darling? I’m sure we can rustle something up.’
‘Trumped again, Baby! Guinness: two, Paley: zip!’ Truman had kissed her cheek and roared.
Their last cruise to St. Tropez bore no trace of the former quietly waged battle for preeminence. Gloria couldn’t have been more solicitous, bringing Babe items the former knew the latter particularly loved. A pot of Moroccan mint tea on a tray with a Turkish delight on the side. A margarita on the rocks, salt lining the rim. A single oyster on a plate, resting on a pillow of shaved ice—just a taste, as Gloria knew Babe lacked the appetite for more. Babe savored the lingering minerality, like a single silver penny on her tongue.
When Gloria returned to collect her plate, Babe had taken her hand and held it.
Gloria sat down in the lounger beside her.
Babe looked to her. Smiled… to which Gloria nodded.
They sat in this manner, Babe and Gloria, for the better part of the afternoon, watching the sun dip below the horizon.
ON THE DAYS when babe can manage (and they’re growing fewer and fewer) she forces herself to dress and go and visit her oldest sister. Sick as she is, Babe reasons that Minnie is even worse off, and feels it the duty of the younger sister to care for the elder.
Minnie has been through a terrible time, having just lost her husband Jimmy to cancer as well. If one didn’t know better, one could say that the Cushing girls’ illnesses appear to be contagious, were it not for Betsey and her irritatingly glowing health, flaunting her lack of cancer like a pageant trophy. Now, apartment empty, her days numbered, Minnie confides she is terrified to be facing the same curtain Babe is, all on her own.
They have a silent pact not to discuss Truman, who Minnie refused to shun. They have so little time left, neither sister can bear to waste it arguing about anything. All might have continued in this fashion, with his name never passing their lips…
But for one rainy afternoon, when Babe and Bill ring Minnie’s bell at her East 64th Street apartment. They’re hardly on speaking terms themselves at this moment, the Paleys—Babe having managed to give Bill an earful in the taxi about some transgression or another. As they wait, he attempts to take her arm, to make peace post taxi-rift.
‘Darling, I was only saying that I don’t understand why you can’t just consider talking to Dr. Berman about—’
‘Oh fuck off, Paley.’ Babe shrugs his hand away. She rings the bell again, rapidly growing concerned at the lack of answer—then knocks. ‘Minnie?’ she calls through the door. She’s relieved when she hears from within a surprisingly cheery ‘Coming!’
A moment later, the door opens to reveal Minnie, a dowdier version of Babe, wearing a far less effective wig—closer to Kate Paley’s childhood Buster Brown. Smiling like Babe hasn’t seen her smile in ages. Holding an innocuous-looking highball of orange juice.
‘Babe! Billy! What a surprise… !’ she giggles, embracing them. ‘Come in… We’re just having the most marvelous chat.’
‘“We”… ?’ Babe looks wary.
Minnie opens the door, leading them inside, wobbly. The Paleys follow her down an entry hall lined with Jimmy’s paintings, opening into the living space.
And there, perched in a wing chair in a striped sweater and cap, is Truman.
Babe freezes in her tracks; Bill places a protective hand on the small of her back.
‘Hello, Bill,’ says Tru, as if nothing is wrong.
‘Truman.’ Bill. Clipped.
Tru turns to Babe. Softer—‘Hi, Babyling.’ He manages a weak smile, daring for a moment to hope. Eyes locking as they always did, communicating without speech.
Please. Please forgive me.
Babe says nothing. Just stares.
Minnie beams, clearly several Orange Drinks in. Delighted by what seems, from her perspective, a long-overdue reunion. ‘Well. Here we all are! Come sit, Babe.’
She pats a place on the sofa beside her, opposite Truman— kicked back like a pasha in Jim’s old wing chair.
It occurs to Babe that she hasn’t seen Minnie this happy since Jimmy’s death. Her sweet face—poodled though she may be, thanks to him—moves Babe in a way she hadn’t expected. As much as she would have insisted she would rather be burned at the stake than sit in the same room with Truman after what he did to her, now that it’s upon her, she finds she cannot bear to deny her dying sister this one moment of happiness, simply for the sake of her own heart-break. And so it is for Minnie that Babe perches stiffly on the sofa.
Truman looks to her, eager. ‘Can I get you something, Babyling?’
‘No, thank you,’ she replies, civil.
‘You sure… ? Coffee? Tea? Orange Drink?’ He attempts to raise a playful eyebrow.
‘No, thank you.’
‘How about a Bloody-Blood? I know how much you love my Bloodys…’
Bill takes over. ‘Actually, Truman, my wife…’
There it is again—‘my wife.’ As if Truman hadn’t known her better than Paley ever could. Bill feigns clearing his throat, just to have the pleasure of repeating it—‘My wife is on a number of medications for her illness, which is quite serious. She’s been advised by her doctors not to mix medications with alcohol.’
Minnie, likely on the same medications, happily sips her Orange Drink.
Truman looks to Babe. Eyes wide. Concerned.
‘How are you, Babyling?’
‘Fine, thank you.’ Like ice. She can’t help it. She’s never loved and loathed anyone so much in her life. It kills her to be distant, but she can’t bear to trust him in the way she once did. She doesn’t have the strength to scrape herself off the floor again, in case of another — —.
Out of nowhere, Babe feels short of breath. Her heart—it feels like someone is taking a cudgel to the center
of her chest. Can’t… breathe… ..…
Oh God… is this it? Is this what it will be like, after all she’s… ….
‘Babe?’ says Bill, concerned. He goes to her—‘Babe?!’
Her face red. Tears stream down her cheeks as she coughs. And coughs… … God, the fucking pain… Truman…. ! she cries out, in silence. She looks to him—their eyes lock.
He hears her. It still works—the old telepathy.
Truman leaps up, but Bill is there, rubbing her back, shouting—‘Barbara, what do you need?!’
He doesn’t know how to help you, Truman says wordlessly.
‘Babe?’ Minnie too rises, frightened off her Orange Drink cloud.
Babe sees Minnie’s oxygen tank across the room. Her eyes meet Truman’s… then she flicks them toward the tank. In an instant, Truman has bounded the length of the room and back again, delivering the air to Babe in what seems an instant.
She chokes in the oxygen, panicked gasps, punctuated by coughs.
Throughout, Babe’s eyes stay fixed on Truman, who silently reassures her.
Gradually shallow breaths come, then deeper ones.
In and out… in… ssssssssspppppp… and out… hhhhhhss-seew… ssssssssssppppp… hhhhhhhhhhhhssseew… for several minutes, until her breathing returns to a regular pace.
He sees it happen: As her breath calms, her eyes begin to cool again.
He feels her receding.
Babyling… his eyes plead. Can you still hear me?
From her expression, he knows that she can.
Of course I can hear you, Truman… but I’m choosing not to listen.
She sits back against the sofa, as Bill fetches a glass of water.
Aloud Truman says, ‘Are you all right… ?’
When Babe speaks, it’s over her voice, rather than in it.
‘I’m fine, now. Thank you for asking.’
You’re safe with me—not him. I’ll take care of you.
Swan Song Page 28
