Tell-All

diamonds and pink sapphires. Here’s bad news presented in an exquisite package. From somewhere in the bowels of the town house, a clock begins to strike midnight. Past the twelfth stroke, the bell continues to thirteen, fourteen. More late than any night could possibly get. At the stroke of fifteen, my Miss Kathie looks up, her cloudy eyes confused with alcohol.
    It’s impossible. The bell tolling sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, it’s the doorbell. And standing on the stoop, when I open the front door, there waits a pair of bright brown eyes behind an armful of roses and lilies.

ACT I, SCENE EIGHT
    We open with a panning shot of Miss Kathie’s boudoir mantel, the lineup of wedding photos and awards. Next, we dissolve to a similar panning shot, moving across the surface of a console table in her drawing room, crowded with more trophies. Then, we dissolve to yet another similar shot, moving across the shelves of her dining room vitrines. Each of these shots reveals a cluttered abundance of awards and trophies. Plaques and medals lie displayed in presentation boxes lined with white satin like tiny cradles, each medal hung on a wide ribbon, the box lying open. Like tiny caskets. Burdening the shelves are loving cups of tarnished silver, engraved,
To
Katherine Kenton,
In Honor of Her Lifetime Achievements, Presented by the
Baltimore Critics Circle . Statuettes plated with gold, from the Cleveland Theater Owners Association . Diminutive statues of gods and goddesses, tiny, the size of infants.
For Her Outstanding Contribution. For Her Years of
Dedication
. We move through this clutter of engraved bric-a-brac, these honorary degrees from Midwestern colleges. Such nine-carat-gold praise from the Phoenix Stage Players Club . The Seattle Press Guild . The Memphis United Society of Thespis . The Greater Missoula Dramatics Community . Frozen, gleaming, silent as past applause. The final panning shot ends as a dirty rag falls around one golden statue; then the camera pulls back to reveal me wiping the award free of dust, polishing it, and placing it back on the shelf. I take another, polish it and put it back. I lift another.
    This demonstrates the endless nature of my work. By the time I’ve done them all, the first awards will need dusting and polishing. Thus I move along with my soiled cotton diaper, really the most soft kind of dust cloth.
    Every month another group entices Miss Kathie to grace them with her presence, rewarding her with yet another silver-plate urn or platter, engraved,
Woman of the Year
, to collect dust. Imagine every compliment you’ve ever received, made manifest, etched into metal or stone and filling your home. That terrible accumulating burden of your Dedication and Talent, your Contributions and Achievements, forgotten by everyone except yourself. Katherine Kenton , the Great Humanitarian.
    Throughout this sequence, always from offscreen, we hear the laughter of a man and woman. Miss Kathie and some famous actor. Gregory Peck or Dan Duryea . Her ringing laugh followed by his bass guffaw. As I’m dusting awards in the library of the town house, the laughter filters downstairs from her boudoir. If I’m working in the dining room, the laughter echoes from the drawing room. Nevertheless, when I follow the sound, any new room is empty. The laughter always comes from around another corner or from behindthe next door. What I find are only the awards, turning dark with tarnish. Such honors—solid, worthless lead or pig iron merely coated with a thin skin of gold. After every rubbing, more dull, worn and smutty.
    In her boudoir, on the television, my Miss Kathie rides in an open horse-drawn carriage through Central Park, sitting beside Robert Stack . Behind them trails a huge looming mass of white balloons. At a crescendo of violin music, Stack rolls on top of Miss Kathie, and her fist opens, releasing the frenzied balloons to scatter and swim upward, whipping their long tails of white string.
    On some shelves balance scissors big enough for the Jolly Green Giant , brass buffed until it could pass as something precious, the pointed blades as long as Miss Kathie’s legs. She brandished one pair to cut the ribbon at the opening ceremonies for the six-lane Ochoakee Inland Expressway . Another pair of scissors cut the ribbon to open the Spring Water Regional Shopping Mall . Another pair, as large as a golden child performing jumping jacks, these cut the ribbon at a supermarket. At the Lewis J. Redslope