“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Bill said, too quickly. “You’re getting the best care possible. The doctor said if you quit smoking, you’d live a long life, and I’m going to make sure you do.”
Babe smiled. She adjusted her wig, for even now, she wouldn’t let Bill see her at less than her best. But something had broken inside her, the day the doctor told her it was cancer, this thing that was squeezing the air from her lungs, taxing her energy, causing her feverish dreams, making every step seem as if she were climbing a mountain. Something had come tumbling down, releasing all the fetid ugliness she’d spent a lifetime stifling.
Babe could put into words feelings and emotions that she’d never been able to before. All the books Truman had made her read—none of that had given her the vocabulary the simple diagnosis of “malignancy” had.
“Let’s get you into bed now,” Bill said, reaching down to help her out of the chair.
“Leave me alone,” Babe snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of that.”
“Would you like me to sleep in here tonight, just in case you need anything?”
“Interesting that you offer this now, when I could give a shit about sex.”
Bill bit his lip, accepted his wife’s wrath. And watched her walk tremulously, but defiantly, into the bathroom, head held high; she closed the door in his face.
Something had broken inside William S. Paley, too, that terrible day at Mount Sinai, when the most famous cancer doctor in the world had sat the two of them down and given him his diagnosis.
Shock. Pure shock. That this could happen to him.
To Babe, that is. To Babe.
No, goddammit, to him.
He was older than Babe. A lot older; older than he told people. When she was diagnosed back in January of 1974, and a third of her lung removed, he was seventy-two to Babe’s fifty-eight. Bill Paley, despite his lifetime hypochondria, had never been a man who thought about death—his own, anyway. Still, he’d never imagined he’d have to grow old alone. He’d never imagined that Babe would not be there to take care of everything, as she always had.
He’d never imagined that he’d have to start looking back on his past actions with regret, remorse—shame, even—because his beautiful wife might be dying.
When they left the doctor’s office, they’d gone straight to their apartment on Fifth Avenue. Babe had gone to her room to rest. Truman was the first of her friends she called; she must have rung him before she lay down, because Bill, still in his study, his head in his hands, an untouched glass of Scotch in front of him, was stunned to see a pale Truman, tears streaming down his cheeks, standing next to him, putting his arms around him, comforting him like he’d never been comforted in his life.
“I had to come to you first,” Truman whispered, rocking the bigger man back and forth, even though Bill wasn’t crying. “I know Babe is strong. But you, my dear friend, you’re the one who will have the hardest time figuring out what to do next.”
And Bill had to admit that Truman was right; Babe was strong, she’d know how to handle this crisis—with the same grace and beauty and guarded privacy with which she’d handled everything else. But Bill absolutely didn’t know what to do when faced with a foe that money couldn’t vanquish. Or a life without someone to see to his every need; a life without Babe, whom he had wronged so many times.
“I’m such a bastard,” he’d told Truman that afternoon, so eager to find absolution for his sins he spilled them all. “You don’t know how big a bastard I am. I’ve screwed everyone. Right here in our apartment, in all our beds, in all our homes. I never thought about Babe at all. I wanted what I wanted, and I took it. God, one time—one time I was sure she’d find out, because the woman, well, she left a mess. Blood. You know, that time of the month. And Babe was due home, it was back when we had that place at the St. Regis, and I couldn’t send the laundry out and get it back in time, so I scrubbed that stain, scrubbed it like I was Lady Fucking Macbeth. I didn’t have any way to dry the sheets, so I baked them in the oven until I could put them on the bed, still wet, and then I fell asleep. And do you know, Babe never once disturbed me? I woke up to find she wasn’t even there; she’d come home and found me asleep on the damp sheets, thought I had a fever or something, and left a note saying she’d gone on to Kiluna so she wouldn’t bother me. I’m such a bastard. A lousy bastard, and now she’s sick, and it’s what I deserve. But it’s not what she deserves.”