“Stop.” And he took the cigarette from her, put it in an ashtray on the table next to her enormous bed.
Trembling, she stood before him. His hands were on her shoulders; he was reaching around her back, undoing the zipper on her dress, letting the fabric fall away so that her back was exposed, and she shivered, her suffocating skin now an icy glaze. As the bodice fell away from her, she put her hands up, covering herself even though she was still in her girdle, bra, panties, and stockings.
Truman undid his own shirt. His eyes never left her face; he was studying her, intense yet wistful. Searching for something. Babe didn’t know what. She didn’t know what to do, what to say, where to look. So she focused on his chest. She’d seen his chest before, of course: swimming, cavorting around the pool here and in Jamaica, on the Agnellis’ yacht last September. She’d even rubbed suntan oil on it, marveling at its smoothness, so unlike Bill’s torso with its clumps of hair, swirls of it dotted with odd bare patches.
But now Truman’s chest looked like an angel’s, innocent and fair, a fine dusting of those golden hairs all over it giving him an ethereal glow. His biceps were surprisingly defined, and he would have looked like a young Adonis, with that pouty, dreamy face, were it not for his stomach, which was a tad poochy. He didn’t even try to hold it in as Babe was holding hers, drawing every inch of flesh and muscle inward toward her spine, tightening her buttocks, clenching her teeth, trying to disappear, to be nothing but wisp.
Then Truman guided her over to the bed. “Shhh. Wait here,” he said, and he stepped out of his trousers so he was only in his boxers and his socks. Babe wanted to giggle at the red garters holding up his dark stockings; he must have sensed this, because he quickly removed them so that his muscular, perfect legs were completely exposed, and then she wanted to gasp.
Truman went into her dressing room; she couldn’t imagine why. Was he drawing her a bath, perhaps?
He returned with some cotton pads and a bottle of astringent.
“Look at me,” he said, settling next to her on the bed. “Look at me, only at me. And let me look only at you, Babe. You, just as you really are, beautiful. Real. Mine.”
Dabbing a pad with the astringent, he reached toward her face. She sucked in her breath, tears filling her eyes, and she began to protest, squirming.
“Oh, Truman, no, no, please, no—”
“Yes.” And he dabbed at her right cheek, taking away. Taking away her makeup, her mask. Exposing—everything. All the ugliness.
She turned away, letting him, but unable to look at him, unable to bear the expression in his eyes when he saw, finally, all she had to hide. She felt him trace her scar, the one along her jaw, tenderly, lovingly.
“It happened,” she replied, to the unasked question, “when I was nineteen. A car accident, with some boy. Do you know, I can’t even remember his name? We were talking, he was drinking from a flask, and suddenly the car left the road and slammed into a tree. That’s what they told me, after. I don’t remember; it happened so fast. That’s what people always say, don’t they? That it happened so fast? Well, it’s true. We were driving and then there was a loud bang, like an explosion, and then I woke up in the hospital. My parents—my father, even—they were there, and my face was completely smothered in bandages. I couldn’t move; there were harnesses, straps, and rods holding my head and neck completely still. My arms, even my chest, were strapped down. And my mother kept saying, ‘Your face! Your face! Your perfect face! What on earth will you do now, my darling, without that face?’?”
Babe swallowed as gingerly as she used to back in the hospital, completely immobile, a captive of her looks, of her future. Truman had stopped dabbing and was holding his breath, the astringent in one hand, the cotton pad in the other. Babe found herself staring at his pooch of a stomach, slightly overhanging his plaid silk boxers.
“Do you know, it was the most attention my father ever paid to me?” She laughed, but it sounded, even to Babe’s own ears, insincere. “For the first time in my life, my father was with me day and night, bringing in all the best plastic surgeons, ones who had learned from the war. And it was all because of my face. Never mind all those years when I yearned for him to pay attention to me because of my grades, or a funny joke, or simply because I loved him. Finally, I had him, all of him, and it was only to save my face. My ‘calling card,’ Mother kept saying. And I thought—I really did think this—that if, when the surgeries were done and the bandages removed and I didn’t have this face anymore, they wouldn’t love me. They’d leave me there in the hospital forever, if I didn’t have ‘that face.’?”