The Original, page 3
Six days before Tom’s funeral, Dr. Hepburn’s younger brother does it. He and his wife are meant to leave Virginia, catch the train from Richmond and travel four states northward to Connecticut for Tom’s funeral. They have already bought the tickets and telephoned long distance to book a room at the Hartford Grand. Instead, Dr. Hepburn’s younger brother Sewell comes home from work late on Wednesday, puts the car in the garage and leaves it on. He balls up his overcoat under his head and lies down on the cement. His wife finds him the next morning, his handkerchief folded and folded again in his hand. Was he going to cover his mouth and nose? Delay and live a small moment more? His wife will say he looked peaceful but Kate will not believe it when her father tells her why her Aunt and Uncle Hepburn are not coming. She knows better. Dead people are not peaceful; they are just gone. Kate’s father decides not to travel down for that funeral. Kate’s mother wishes her husband had not told the children.
* * *
—
Now, Kate’s father will not speak of his brothers, he will not speak of his son, but after a scotch in the evening, he will talk about his wife. Her monied, aristocratic, intellectual blood. Dr. Hepburn says there is weakness there, and blood will out. Blame is easier to push outward.
* * *
• • •
As they drive away from the cemetery, Kate knows they will never come back. Never. They will not be one of those families who know the florist by name and pile into the car on Sundays. Tom’s small rectangle will grow knotty and wild; no one will come to weed that patch of earth. Kate understands. Her parents see no point in keeping something alive when it is dead.
Kate is squashed in the back seat with Bob and Dick. Marion and Peg are too small to come and are at home with Fanny. Marion will always believe she can remember how her brother Tom pushed her on a backyard swing once, but she never mentions it to her family. They would say she was too young to remember. She is sure she can feel the moment the swing arced upward and the way her stomach dropped to her knees. Peg will remember nothing except for the pool of quiet around his name and the way her mother stiffens whenever she meets anyone called Thomas. Really, what the younger Hepburn children know is that there is something broken where there was once a sense of triplicate, three daughters, three sons, teams of children paired together like dancing partners, or harnessed oxen. They know they are lopsided.
It is over and the car pulls around in a wide left turn. Kate slides into Bob. She twists around to look back. That’s it. They will leave him there, on the damp, spring ground, inside a short, brass handled box.
A List of Missing Things:
A red Schwinn bicycle, the one with the loose handlebar and white seat, a silver snow shovel—someone else will wake up early to clear the front walk, a tennis racquet from the mudroom basket, a set of golf clubs—given away, a jar of white sea pebbles kept by the bed, a school blazer and camel hair topcoat—donated to St. Michael’s in Bridgeport, eight pairs of socks and a pair of blue mittens—also donated, a knitted Christmas stocking, the bedroom at the end of the hall—a guest room now but no guests will be invited to sleep there, a yellowed, soft paged copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, a place setting and chair at the kitchen table, a name mentioned at prayers, a name mentioned at all.
* * *
• • •
Kate looks like Kate but she is hollowed out, un-twinned. The days keep happening, weeks piling up. She is surprised by this basic fact. Some things should be so big that the days stop, that the mechanics of the planet fail and the sun doesn’t come up, out of respect. Kate resents each new month.
In their bedroom, her parents are disagreeing. Her mother wants to let Kate get on with it her own way and says they should just leave her be. Her father wants to push Kate to be more. More vivid, more alive. He says she should be sharper, quicker. He wants to shake her out of her dense silence and tell her to fill up the space. She has to pick up slack, be son and daughter. He wants her to study medicine, to take her golf more seriously and get out to the tennis court early to work on her backhand, her ground strokes. The only place he does not push her is in the water. In the water she is beyond all of them.
Her family could get closer. They could pull the planks from her windows or get under her siding if they wanted, but they don’t. The Hepburns are loud and known for their bold ideas and knife sharp conversation, but they are not a personal kind of family. No one came to speak to Dr. or Mrs. Hepburn when they lost their favorite people in this world, the ones they could not live without. Now, they do not know how to speak to Kate. In any case, Dr. Hepburn believes speaking of one’s personal life is weak and Mrs. Hepburn was raised never to air dirty laundry.
“Other people are other people,” Mrs. Hepburn says. “Always remember that.”
“Children are resilient,” Dr. Hepburn says. “Expect excellence.”
So, they leave Kate boarded up. Dr. Hepburn watches his wife, quick to take every chance to lay the blame at her door. Mrs. Hepburn watches her children. Will any of them start to twitch? The younger Hepburns watch their parents. They learn which questions cannot be asked. They learn that a soul is a private beast.
* * *
—
Kate sinks. Kate grapples. Her body regains noise and bounce. At first it is fake, she is pretending, if only so that people will stop watching her. Pretending blurs into being. Her appetite for movement picks up again, slowly—the habit of living is spongy in the greasy muscles and the juice seeps back, not right away, but eventually. Her golf game improves, as does her tennis. Two sports she will play all her life. “See,” her father tells her mother, expect more and she will be more. She just needed to be pushed.
* * *
• • •
College, graduation, and then New York. Acting and elocution lessons during the week. Her father says it is a silly pursuit and will not pay for the lessons outright but agrees to send her his bridge winnings. Bad money, he calls it, but it is more than enough. And on the weekends? You can find her golfing, swimming and even loving, but she is separate. It is intentional. Why kick for the surface? She knows what is up there. All the prepositions of grief: getting over, moving on, getting past; they are insulting. There is no such place, nor should there be. Some things ought to take more than one lifetime. Recovering will be someone else’s problem.
* * *
• • •
It is 1932. Kate is living in New York; older now, taller, but still sparrow light and she always wishes on a New Year’s Eve. She does it alone. Kate is devoutly private; life is a closed affair now. In her four years at Bryn Mawr, she never once ate in the dining room. But, on New Year’s nights like this, her wishes grow thick, feathered wings. At midnight, when she should be singing or drinking or kissing her husband, or lover, she wishes. She slams down her eyelids, squeezes her teeth and blows her wish skyward.
Los Angeles
April 1932
Go East. To the Morosco Theatre, West Forty-fifth Street. Broadway. You’ll recognize her. The woman never outgrew the girl’s countertop flat surfaces and drinking straw hips. She is still rangy, horsey. All bones and freckles and sheets of milk water skin. She wears no makeup and smells of Ivory soap. Sometimes, she scrubs her face with rubbing alcohol so that it shines, clean and tight under the lights. She is playing Antiope, in gold short-skirted armor. She has impressed the critics. In Act I, she leaps down the stairs and hurls a dead stag at the feet of her sister, Hippolyta, the Amazon queen. The audience gasps. It gets applause every night. She’s feral, musky and wild. You can imagine her this way, primitive, fast. This is illusion: good lighting, mediocre writing and lots of leg. Out of costume, Kate is citrus clear and afraid of jungle things. Years later, when she is on a steamboat in the Belgian Congo, she will have to pull leeches from Humphrey Bogart. She will bite her cheek to keep from screaming.
But now, she is young. Watch her, this redhead with the long stride. She wants you to watch, throws a look over her hollow boned shoulder to make sure you are there. But she will not stop. Not for you. Not for anyone, really. All that astringent confidence looks like bravado, but it isn’t. At her root, she is straightforward, not the enigma she will become. It is simple—she bets on herself, in case no one else will. She is still new to this business and on the stage she is raw and often not much good, but a director in Hollywood has seen her screen test, seen an unlit power and is sure he can make something of her. Something new.
She has twenty-two shows left in the run. After that, she will pack it in and go west. No parts yet but she has done two screen tests in New York, one for Warners, one for RKO. Already, her photo is passed around meetings; the white border is smudged with gray thumbprints and sticky with mustard from a cinematographer’s sandwich. The ID numbers for her RKO screen test are written on the back in green ink. Black can bleed through. Men in shirtsleeves sit at folding tables and talk about her height. Five foot seven. Not many men are tall enough for her and they do not want the apple crate problems again. John Barrymore has only an inch on her but if they photograph him from below it will give the impression of size. The big head theory.
See them? There, on the RKO lot, in the upstairs office? The short, rounded director and the taller, beveled producer. They are director George Cukor and producer David Selznick and they are talking about casting a new picture, A Bill of Divorcement. They need someone fresh, unseen. John Barrymore is a big name and can carry the billing. George Cukor is the one with the affected enunciation. David Selznick is the one with the loud voice. People say they look alike and when you don’t know them, they do. They have lots in common. Both from New York, both wearing glasses, waving imprecise hands, with kind, fleshy, rectangular faces framed by dark curling hair. But the similarities stop at the skin, you’ll see.
At first, producer David Selznick does not see it. He has heard about her, this Miss Hepburn. He has seen the screen test. The director, John Ford, over at Fox, wants to test her too. Knowing another studio wants her makes David Selznick want her more but he still feels a resistance. Miss Hepburn chose a good scene but did the whole damned thing with her back to the camera. Irritating. George Cukor doesn’t mind. He sees something else. There is a moment when she sweeps forward, puts down a glass and George knows they’ve found her. It’s a certainty. Selznick rewatches the test, looking for that moment. She isn’t one of those Oklahoma farm girls who have to relearn how to walk for the camera, he’ll say that for her. Cukor thinks the girl has East Coast breeding and class. Normally, the studio has to pay for comportment and elocution, Kate Hepburn has it all built in; Selznick thinks of the money they’ll save. Cukor is already trying to imitate her glassy vowels and narrow consonants.
They have it all wrong of course. She is not rooted in ease and privilege. Her family just had a head start in pretending.
* * *
—
Later, in his living room, David Selznick describes Miss Hepburn to his wife, Irene. Irene watches, her legs folded under her on the sofa, as her husband describes George Cukor’s belief in this girl. She watches him describe George’s perception until he is convinced it’s his own. Half listening, Irene is watching to see if his hands shake, if his nose runs.
Someday, David Selznick will say that he spotted Katharine Hepburn’s beauty and talent right away but he didn’t. It is Irene who sees it first. When she watches the test, she sees what George has seen. Kate Hepburn does not move like other starlets. Her strides are long, her arms swing wide, her voice is metallic, her mouth turns down, her lips are thin and her nostrils flare, but none of that matters. This woman does not apologize. There is no calculation, no hesitation. Here is something new, Irene Mayer Selznick says and Irene’s opinion matters. She is steeped in the movie business, born to it in a way none of the rest of them can ever be. David worries Irene might tell her father about the screen test and then Louis B. Mayer and MGM will grab this new and magical girl. And so, he bids for Miss Hepburn. Her agents, Leland Hayward and David Selznick’s own brother Myron don’t tell anyone, but Kate Hepburn has insisted she set her own price, and she has set it high. Leland Hayward tells her it is an outrageous figure, but he is wrong. Kate Hepburn knows that something feels more precious if it is expensive.
Now, her name has been sent to the printing firm on Wilshire, the one upstairs from the greasy blue-tiled café. RKO uses them to print up the names for the chairs: white letters on navy canvas. The designers have spelt her name wrong and it will have to be redone. It is Kath-a-rine with an a not an e. George Cukor and David Selznick want it to be right. They have plans for her. And so, Kate is part of it now; part of the sporty, rich film glamour, that bright bolt of electric youth lighting up the left side of the country.
And watch them. The circus acrobat, the Catholic and the boy who can fly. They have already left and are on their way to meet her. They will intersect on the wide sun-wet avenues of Los Angeles under the coconut palms. White toothed and young, they will push their sunglasses on top of their heads to get a better look at each other.
* * *
• • •
Hollywood is a storied place. There are things that happen and things that don’t. People talk. Everyone says they were there; they saw it. But people lie. They say they were on the Paramount lot when Clara Bow first saw Gary Cooper. They were at the Chateau Marmont the day Garbo jumped into the pool in gold heels. They were at Mocambo when Tallulah Bankhead left with Billie Holiday. They were playing five card draw, at the Clover Club the night David O. Selznick lost ten thousand on one hand. They were at the counter at Schwab’s when Harold Arlen wrote “Get Happy.” They were still at the counter when Ava Gardner worked the soda fountain. They were at the Brown Derby when Louella snubbed Hedda. They weren’t. People who were really there don’t talk about it. They don’t need to.
Kate
New York City
May 1932
It is nearly eight. The room is rinsed in light. Kate is up and dressed but the woman in the bed has not moved although she is awake. Kate pins up her hair and does the Manhattan arithmetic: a cab at this time of the morning will take fifteen minutes, walking will take twenty. She’ll walk to the apartment on Thirty-ninth. She wishes she had her bicycle. Kate sweeps back the sheet and bites her lover’s soft hip, where no one will see the mark, pulling the red blue blood to the milky surface. Laura leans into Kate’s squared off teeth. An invitation. Kate rests her head on Laura’s thigh, sips in the comfort, and then stands, looking around for her shoes. Practicalities.
The alarm. Eight a.m. Damn.
Laura twists back to turn it off, sucking her stomach back to her spine; she still thinks Kate has not seen her doughy belly, but Kate gets up in the night. She sees the soft middle, the red welt where the girdle has cut across flesh, the yeasty thighs. She likes Laura’s figure, the scale, the arc, the seagull curves. She likes everything about Laura, more than she admits.
Kate is usually up and out earlier than this but she has left it too long. Will the overnight doorman tell the daytime doorman that Miss Harding’s guest has not left?
Laura
New York City
Eleven stories up, Laura watches her lover leave the building. The top of Kate’s head, a reddish smudge as she turns left and passes out of view. Laura feels the air dim when she goes.
Laura Harding’s heart will break. You should know this now. Sure as sunrise. Her heart will crack along the bright nerves, unstitching the chewy flesh from the blue valves. That is how it will end. All her privilege won’t help. And even if she knew what was coming, what would it matter? She would do it anyway.
* * *
• • •
Laura begins here. With Kate. Last year, on a summer Wednesday night in June. Everything before that night feels loose and unbuilt, fogged up by unimportance. There were the tragedies: the death of her father and the soggy, alcoholic dissolution of her mother and then when Laura came into the money, the society columnists, the clothes and parties. She knows how to play the heiress. It is instinct bred in the bone but it is being rather than living. Before Kate, Laura hadn’t articulated the difference.
Isolation is strapped to the back of inherited money. The society columns don’t mention that, but Laura knew it was coming. What else to do? She is different; money pads everything, all the sharp edges of getting through a day, a life, are wrapped in cotton and hustled out. Life is muffled in a downy egg of comfort. It’s hard to breathe in a small space. So, she breaks away from the choreography. She tosses out the familiar steps and improvises. She sells the big stone house on Fifth Avenue, the one her mother meant her to pass down to her children. The custom-built Aeolian organ has to be dismantled and leaves the house in chunks wrapped in beige dust bags; she sells the marble statues and heavy gilt mirrors. The crystal chandeliers stay with the house. Laura will not need them in her new Fifth Avenue apartment, high floor, duplex, light. She takes the El Grecos to hang in her study, and the Titian for the hall. No one believed she would sell the enormous house, but she did.
Her friends talk about her, not in groups but in discreet pairs. They tell each other they are worried about Laura’s peculiar behavior but really, they are relishing the delicious, unifying recognition that Laura has ruined her prospects. Nothing binds like gossip. These friends talk of dear Laura and how they miss her but as one social body, they take a step back, careful not to muddy their court pumps in their friend’s murky new life. The invitations dry up like old fruit and it is the end of the busy evenings of supper parties for Laura Harding and the end of the proposals. Rich with time and choice, Laura takes acting lessons and engages Mrs. Robinson-Duff, the famous voice coach and the rumors rise to a roar. Laura does not care. She wants to go on the stage. Helen Hayes, the Gish sisters, they all studied with Mrs. Robinson-Duff. Laura learns to speak from her diaphragm.
