“Don’t worry about it, Slim. It’s over. They’re both gone. And we’re left.”
“We’re left with the memories. Not a great love, no, Bill, I don’t think either of us was capable of that. But Truman and Babe, they were—well, Babe was, anyway, and I think that blinded her because in the end, Truman was Truman. But he did what we never could. He began to speak the truth. Not someone else’s truth, not Perry Smith’s or Holly Golightly’s or even his own. No, he began to tell the truth about us. And the thing is, Bill, darling—the truth is ugly. Yours. Mine. Even Babe’s.”
Bill made a garbled, anguished sound; Slim saw his throat working, as if he was trying to swallow something, and she grasped his hand again, and placed it against her breasts, her saggy, deflated breasts, so that he could feel her, feel her heart, her femininity, her warm, solid self. She closed her eyes, enjoyed a man’s hand upon her breasts for the first time in eons, and knew, right now, that she was alive, she was still here, not a memory, not a relic; not some old woman nobody looked at twice on the street. Not some forgotten name in a faded magazine, an answer to the question of “Where are they now?”
She opened her eyes. Bill was grinning at her with that ageless boy’s leer, quite at odds with his watery, faded eyes, his visible hearing aid. But he had relaxed, his hand still upon her breasts, until she removed that hand and tucked it back on his own lap.
“So I still like to see you, my friend. I still like to sit in La C?te Basque and sip wine and eat fine food and indulge in our memories—the good ones, the ones we want to remember. So let’s do that. That’s the story we can tell ourselves, at night when we can’t sleep. We can tell ourselves that there is one other person in the world who sees it in the same way, who remembers. Who remembers her. Babe. And Gloria. And even Truman, I guess, as he was, back then. Our fun, gossipy friend. Our entrée into a different world, for a time. An amusing, brief little time. A time before it was fashionable to tell the truth, and the world grew sordid from too much honesty.”
Slim raised her glass; so did Bill.
“To Babe. To Truman. To Papa and all the other glittering, prevaricating ghosts of the past.”
“To Babe,” Bill echoed. And they clinked their glasses together in a toast, and spent the rest of the afternoon talking about their grandchildren.
—
IN THE END, AS in the beginning, all they had were the stories. The stories they told about one another, and the stories they told to themselves.
“I loved her, she was the great love of my life, my only regret,” Truman breathed near the end, as he lay, exhausted from the world, from abuse, from himself, always himself.
“I loved him, he was the great love of my life,” Babe whispered to herself as she closed her eyes and gave up the struggle, for it was ugly, and she’d never done an ugly thing in her life, and she wasn’t about to start now.
“I’m alone,” they each thought, and one was amused, the other appalled.
“Mama,” Truman whispered, as a stranger held his hand, and called for an ambulance.
“Truman,” Babe thought she said aloud, as she felt herself sinking, sinking, and then rising. But then she knew she didn’t. And then she didn’t know anything, ever again.
“Beautiful Babe,” Truman said, and he knew he said it, he heard his own voice, very weak, strange to his ears. And then he heard no more.
Now there were no more stories to tell, to soothe, to comfort, to draw strangers close together; to link like hearts and minds.
To wound, to hurt. To destroy the one thing they each loved more than anything else—
Beauty. Beauty in all its glory, in all its iterations; the exquisite moment of perfect understanding between two lonely, damaged souls, sitting silently by a pool, or in the twilight, or lying in bed, vulnerable and naked in every way that mattered. The haunting glance of a woman who knew she was beautiful because of how she saw herself reflected in her friend’s eyes.
The splendor of belonging, being included, prized, coveted.
The loveliness of a flower, lilies of the valley, teardrop blossoms snowy white against glossy green foliage. Made lovelier because of the friend’s hand tenderly proffering the blossom, a present, a balm.
The beauty of understanding tears in an understanding face.
The beauty of a perfectly tailored shirt, crisp, blinding white, just out of the box.
The beauty of a swirl of taffeta, the tinkling of bells, diamonds, emeralds; a pristine paper flower.
Beauty.
—
THE SWANS SWAM AHEAD, always ahead, their bodies gliding so that none could see the effort of their feet beneath the surface, paddling, moving, propelling them forward, forward, to that beautiful spot far ahead, an incandescent curtain of light, a shower of moonbeams, a heavenly constellation of stars.