Swan Song

by Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott

  ‘—is no small feat,’ they finish together, laughing.

  ‘Well, did you thank me for Dill in Mockingbird… ? I like to think he couldn’t exist without me. You simply stole all of my mannerisms! Like a shameless soul-snatcher! My looks, my speech, my whole damn background!’ He feigns upset, but she knows him too well. It’s merely verbal jousting. Lance-blows he’s better at throwing than receiving…

  ‘Like what you did to Slim and Babe… ?’

  He takes the jab. ‘That… is an entirely different matter and you know it.’

  ‘Is it though?’ When he shuts down, picking the skin from his chicken, she changes the subject. ‘How is Jack?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘Truman. How’s Jack?’ The second time more a warning to pony up the goods.

  ‘I think Jack hates me.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘Well, it is. He talks about me like I have a fatal illness.’

  ‘Maybe you should listen to him.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘Get some help, for Chrissakes. You’ve done it before, you can do it again.’

  ‘Aaactually, I’m not sure I can.’

  ‘Truman, you look like hell on a plate. I’m worried. I’m sure Jack is too.’

  ‘Don’t laugh’—almost a whisper—‘but I think that Jack is shape-shifting into Nina—I said don’t laugh! I’ve seen it happen! One minute he’s yelling at me, harping on about this or that—he leaves the room as Jack and walks back in as her. I swear to God, Nelle. He goes away and she appears. Then she’ll leave the room and it’s Jack who’s back yelling. I promise you, he’s possessed by Nina’s spirit.’

  ‘I can’t think of two people more different than your Mama and Jack Dunphy. Now, you get your act together or you’ll scare that poor man away.’

  He doesn’t bother to tell her that’s what C.Z. told him, or about Christmas or the break-in or the hit men. That he’s likely already sent Jack packing for good.

  Softening, she places a hand on his arm. ‘Truman… I called the hospital. They said you attacked that man because you were having a seizure.’

  Silence.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Hmmmmmm?’

  ‘How long has this been going on?’

  He starts to lie, but he knows she’ll see through him—like an old country wife with the gift of prophecy. ‘About two years.’

  Nelle’s eyes widen. ‘And what have you done about it?’

  ‘Nothin’,’ almost cheerful in his casualness.

  ‘Truman…’

  ‘Can I tell you a secret, Nelle?’

  She nods as he lowers his voice, quivering with excitement, reminding her of a kid who used to speak the same way when he had a Big Idea to share.

  He takes a breath before imparting his secret. ‘You can’t tell a soul, or quelle mess! How the folks who hate me would just loooove to get hold of this tidbit…’

  He makes her cross her heart, that childhood gesture of utmost seriousness, then he tells her—‘I died last summer. Not once… but twice!’ He beams proudly.

  ‘You what?’ She frowns, skeptical, sure that he’s gotten his facts wrong.

  ‘I literally died—two separate times. The first time I was dead for thirty seconds. Then I was alive for four hours. Then I was dead again for thirty-five seconds. And let me tell you, it wasn’t in any way unpleasant. I don’t know why we’re taught as kids that death is something to be scared of. I had two different deaths, both of them fascinating…’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘The hospital in Southampton. My doctor told me all about it, but he didn’t have to. I remember it clear as that bottla’ gin over there.’

  Nelle looks to the gin, thinking (as we do) that maybe that’s the problem.

  ‘Well… ? Don’t you wanna hear what happened?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘First of all, there’s no sense of time. It coulda been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, or frankly thirty days. It isn’t about that. The first time it happened I was on a riverboat, like the ones that used to dock in N’awlins? And I was on a stage—a rough old vaudeville stage—planks of wood, footlights, very crude. Like in Showboat, y’know? Anyhoo, I had my taps on, and I was in the most darling tux with tails and a tall top hat. And I was dancing like I’ve never danced in all my days. It was like one last glorious curtain call. You were there with your Daddy, and Ole Mrs. Busybody—’

  ‘You mean my mother.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And Nina and Joe and Sook and Cousin Jenny, but not just folks from here. Everyone was there, and I mean everyone. Those dimwit schoolmarms, and the men who saved me with their briefcases and IQ tests. Mean ole Robert Frost and that vile cunt Hemingway. Everyone I’ve worked with, everyone I’ve known. All the guests at my party, masks resurrected. Madge and Gladys and Ruthie, from Bobby Van’s in Bridgehampton. George and Gene from the Colony. Bogie and Betty and Big John Huston. All clapping, wildly, applauding my efforts. Even Gore was forced to clap, and we know how much he’d hate that! The Barnacle Bouviers and the Kennedy boys, looking young and fine and alive. C.Z. and Winston and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Gloria and Loel and Gianni and Marella. My doctors and lawyers and publishers, naturally. Oh, and la famille Felker—Clay and Gail and clever little Maura. Cole and White— from my sideshow in Monroeville. And that horrid Chipper Daniels, who laughed at my bathing costume! My lovely, lovely Jack, beaming with pride. Maggie and Bunky and Charlie J. Fatburger, howling with deeelight. Gawd, so many, Nelle… Everyone I’ve ever met, cheering my last appearance on the great stage of life! Leland was watching in the wings and offered me a Broadway gig before my— —’

  ‘Was Slim there, Truman?’ Nelle’s drawl cuts through his rhapsody. ‘And Babe… ?’

  He stops, pained. Nods.

  ‘You know…’ Nelle pulls a cigarette from her handbag and lights it, perhaps in subconscious tribute, ‘I saw Babe… Not long before she died.’

  He stares at her. That certainly shut him down. ‘You—never told me that.’

  ‘We weren’t seeing much of each other at the time. Besides, I wasn’t sure if you could handle it.’

  He nods, looking very small.

  ‘Anyway,’ Nelle exhales a puff of smoke, ‘it was at a dinner. Neither of us knew that the other knew the host. She wasn’t going out much in those days—it was pretty near the end.’

  ‘What happened?’ his voice timorous.

  ‘She was going into the powder room, I was coming out. We bumped smack into each other. Well, she took one look at me and burst into tears. She apologized time and again throughout the evening, hugged me as only Babe could, and told me how pleased she was to see me. But she couldn’t stop crying. She felt just awful about it.’

  ‘Why did she cry, Nelle?’

  ‘Oh, Truman. For someone as smart as you, you can be so awfully thick.’

  He stares at her, blinking. Waiting.

  ‘She cried because she hadn’t expected to see me… And she couldn’t look at me without thinking of you.’

  LATER THAT EVENING they sit back out on the faux porch, creaking in their rocking chairs. The faintest trace of a breeze. Night descending like a veil over the purple hues of dusk.

  ‘Would you like to hear about the second time I died?’

  ‘Let me guess. Jesus gave you the Nobel Prize.’

  ‘No. It was much simpler than that. I was in an airport, being checked in by those darling girls at the Aeroméxico counter— those ones in the smart pillbox hats—?’

  Just like Jackie used to wear… by now an acknowledged refrain.

  ‘Exactly,’ unaware of the extent to which his stories have become ours. ‘Anyhoo. They printed up my ticket and I picked up my bag and proceeded down a conveyor belt. It was in a hallway, the longest I’ve ever been in. And ahead of me in the distance was a figure… waiting.’

  ‘God?’

  ‘I don’t think so, seeing as I don’t believe in him.’
<
br />   ‘Babe… ?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your Mama?’

  ‘No… I’m pretty sure it was a man.’

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘That’s preposterous, Nelle. I live with Jack. In the here and now.’

  ‘Okay, then who… ?’

  ‘I’m not sure. There was light at his back, so I couldn’t make out his features. But I thought I saw the flash of a golden wing… an appendage wrapped in Cartier.’

  ‘Oh, Truman. Cartier? What’s goddamn Cartier gotta do with heaven?’

  ‘I don’t know…’ he says cryptically. ‘It just reminded me of someone I met once. I did something kind for him, and he did something kind for me in return.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘I lost my words, and he gave them back to me.’

  Nelle snorts. ‘Well, I don’t know if we should thank him for that, or issue a warrant.’

  ‘It was thirty-five seconds, the whole shebang. Apparently if I’d been dead three more, I woulda been dead for good.’

  ‘Well, thank your lucky stars.’

  ‘Nelle? Do you remember, with the contest—in the children’s Sunshine Page?’

  ‘You’ve never let me forget it.’

  ‘Well, do you remember the prize? The one they promised me?’

  ‘I remember licking a hundred envelopes when you didn’t get whatever it was.’

  ‘It was a puppy. A beagle puppy.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Don’t you ever think how obscene it was that they denied me that? My whole life, all I ever wanted was a dog—then I won one, fair and square, and they prevented me from having it! To deny a child like that… Don’t you think that’s an act of deliberate cruelty? There’s nothing that I hate more than deliberate cruelty. It’s the one unforgivable sin in my view.’

  Nelle looks perplexed. ‘But Truman… you had a dog as a child.’

  ‘I— —?’ As if he can’t believe his ears. As if Nelle holds the key to a part of his story he’s long forgotten, lost in lies and narrative tales and manipulated half-truths.

  ‘A sweet little mutt named Queenie. Sook bought her for you. Don’t you remember?’

  The man-boy shakes his head, trying with every ounce of his shrimpo being to separate fact from fiction.

  THE NEXT MORNING he’s called to the lobby to find a telegram waiting. It’s been so long since someone’s thought to send him one, he feels that forgotten thrill of self-importance.

  He looks closer— ‘LADY SLIM KEITH’ printed on the envelope as the sender.

  His heart leaps in its bone-cage.

  Perhaps she’s chosen to forgive him! He’s always held out hope… There isn’t a day that he doesn’t think of ringing her, or simply arriving on her doorstep, begging her pardon. He was sure she would forgive him with time. How did she know where he was, he wonders? Perhaps his trip home had worked some sort of voodoo, restoring her courtly favor. He rips the envelope open, anxious for what awaits…

  SOMEONE SENT AUNT TINY’S BOOK. SO AMUSING TO READ OF YOUR PATHETIC ANTECEDENTS AND CHILDHOOD.

  —SLIM

  He stares at the paper, as if Slim herself had flicked her tongue out from the text and struck his hand as it clutched the venomed missive.

  He returns to the room where Nelle is packing her belongings. She looks up to find his face ashen. ‘Would you like to go to breakfast?’ he asks, antsy.

  ‘I thought we were waiting till lunch.’

  ‘Can we reconsider—I really do feel like breakfast.’

  ‘I suppose, but I thought we were going to—’

  ‘Dammit, Nelle—I just need a drink!’ he erupts. Then, hanging his head, he whispers, ‘Sorry.’ She watches as he pulls his snuffbox from his pocket and chokes down an undisclosed number of pills. He passes her Slim’s telegram. Nelle reads it, eyes clouding with sympathy.

  ‘Oh, Truman… I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Can we please get a Bloody-Blood?’

  SEATED AT A counter at the hotel restaurant, having slipped the waitress a ten-dollar bill to spike their tomato juice, Nelle holds Truman’s trembling hand.

  ‘Can’t you just finish the damn thing? Maybe if it’s out there, maybe if it’s done, you can start something new and put all this behind you.’

  ‘No… I’ve waited too long.’ He shakes his head in his skeletal hand. The hand, Nelle notes, of an elderly man, yet Truman is still in his fifties. ‘It’s gotta be perfect, after all this. It can’t just be good. It’s got to be great. The best thing I ever wrote. The sum of all my talents.’

  ‘But Truman, these are bone-crushing standards.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He leans in toward her, whispering his greatest fear. ‘I’m worried… that it’s killing me.’ The terror bright in his eyes.

  Nelle, touching her forehead to his, ‘Why not just jump ship? You did with Summer Crossing—and you then wrote Other Voices. Frankly, you did it with this one and wrote In Cold Blood. Who’s to say you won’t write something else? Something better…’

  ‘I can’t give it up, Nelle. It’s become a way of life. To finish it would be like taking a beautiful dog or a child out into the yard and shooting it in the head. It would never be mine again… and I’m not sure I could bear it.’ He meets her gaze, shyly. ‘I dream about it, you know? I see it, as real as you sitting there. The whole damn book.’

  Nelle watches his eyes glaze with wonder, imagining his nocturnal visions, their splendor far removed from the harsh morning light in a cheap motel over watered-down Bloody Marys.

  ‘It’s gotta be perfect. It has to be worth all that I’ve lost.’

  She shakes her head, watching obsession engulf him. ‘Truman. Listen to me. Can’t you just talk to them—the ones who are left— and admit that you made a mistake?’

  ‘Ohhhhh no. Notta chance,’ he laughs. The old moxy returns, fueled by a cocktail of vodka and defiance. The rage he feels for each of us, in tandem with the love. The fury for our having failed to understand him. ‘The minute they smell the weakness, they’ll come for me like sharks sniffing blood in the water. Besides, why should I back down? I’m in the right! They’re the ones who are wrong! I have a responsibility to my art—to my talent!’

  She touches his cheek, at once ancient and newborn.

  ‘It’s so beautiful, Nelle, when I see it before me… I can hardly believe anyone could be capable of writing such beautiful prose. I have to try… you know? To see it through to the end.’

  ‘That’s what worries me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Nelle’s Bells. I’ll come through this—you’ll see.’

  THE BOY RETURNS to an empty apartment.

  No Jack. No Nelle.

  It’s the quiet that troubles him most. He finds it unnerving.

  He hasn’t been sleeping of late. Two hours a night at most? His jangling nerves prevent more, even should he desire it. He’s procured from his doctor a new pill to treat insomnia, which appeals for the fact it’s poetically named: Halcion.

  Even with the spelling gaffe, he likes to think the pale blue oval a magical passport to the shimmering days of old. Each night his greatest pleasure is the moment when he can place that sacred object on his tongue, swallowing halcyon days as he once gulped his Mama’s Shalimar, hoping against all hope that by ingesting it he might find himself happily possessed. These moments are sacrosanct, his own special communion with all that he’s loved and lost.

  Upon his return from Montgomery, Sidney carries his luggage to his door, but more than that he has traveled the twenty-two flights for moral support, spotting that the boy seems too frightened to make the journey alone. He opens the door with Truman’s keys, turns on the lights for him, and sets his suitcase in the hall. ‘There you go, Mr. Truman. All set.’

  ‘Sidney—’ The boy stops him as he turns to go. ‘Could you do me the hugest of favors and check each of the rooms?’

  ‘Check them… for what?’

  ‘Oh. You know. People. If you cou
ld do that for me and turn on a light in each, I’d be so grateful.’

  ‘Sure thing, Mr. Truman,’ Sidney humors him. He moves from room to room, the boy hanging back, lingering in thresholds. Kitchen to study to hallway to beds.

  ‘All clear,’ the doorman says brightly, emerging from Truman’s boudoir.

  ‘Could you possibly—I know it sounds silly, but would you mind looking in the closet? And under my bed? I’ve just been so damn jumpy since the break-in…’

  Sidney complies, though rumors in the building have circulated that there was no break-in, nor were there assassins. It was just Mr. Capote, going around the bend.

  ‘All good, sir,’ Sidney reports in the end. ‘And don’t you worry—I’m right downstairs if you need anything.’

  ‘Sidney, that really is terrific,’ then, in his most confidential tone, ‘And that little favor we discussed before I left… Did you manage to get around to that?’

  ‘Of course, Mr. Truman. It’s waiting in the freezer.’

  Truman looks relieved. ‘That’s fine, Sidney. Just fine.’ He walks him to the door.

  ‘You have a good night, sir.’

  ‘Sidney, wait—’ Truman pulls up his sleeve, removing his watch, pressing it into the doorman’s hand. ‘For you. Bogie had one, Francis has one. I’ve got…’ He forgets the rest.

  ‘Oh no, Mr. Truman, I couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘Don’t offend me, Sidney—for your trouble.’

  ‘Beg your pardon, sir, but I consider you a friend.’

  Truman brightens. ‘You do?’

  ‘Of course, sir. I appreciate the gesture, but why don’t we save it for my birthday. That’s what friends would do.’

  ‘That’s a terrific idea! When’s your birthday, honey? I’ll jot it down.’

  ‘Fifth of July.’

  ‘Done!’ Truman beams.

  ‘Goodnight, sir.’

  ‘Nighty-night, Sidney.’ He closes the door, walking back to his study, where he removes his battered datebook. Flips to the 5th of July, thinking with pleasure how close it is to the Fourth, which he loves, with its explosions and homemade bombs and spurts of Roman candles. Flipping another page he sees what he knew he’d find: 5 July… Barbara Paley.