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person’s age or character.
    It’s this pink mannequin saying, “Hers is a beauty which will linger in the collective mind until the end of humanity; hers is a courage and intelligence which showcase the best of what human beings can accomplish.…”
    By praising the frailty of this woman, the senator looks stronger, more noble, generous, loving, even taller and more grateful. This oversize man achieves a humility, fawning over this tiny woman. Such beautiful, false compliments—the male equivalent of a woman’s screaming fake orgasm. The first designed to get a woman into bed. The second to more quickly complete sexual intercourse and get a man out of bed. As the senator says these words which every woman craves to hear, he evolves. His broad shoulders and thick neck of a caveman become those of a loving father, an idealhusband. A humble servant. This savage Neanderthal shape shifts. His teeth becoming a smile more than a snarl. His hairy hands tools instead of weapons.
    “Tonight, we humbly beseech her to accept our admiration,” says the senator, cradling the trophy in the crook of one arm. “But she is the prize which all men wish to win. She is the crowning jewel of our American theatrical tradition. So that we might give her our appreciation, ladies and gentlemen, may I give you … Katherine Kenton.”
    Earning applause, not for any performance, but for simply not dying. This occasion, both her introduction to the senator and her wedding night.
    I suppose it’s a comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse damage to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict.
    Tonight, yet another foray into the great wasteland which is middle age.
    Upon that cue, my Miss Kathie takes the spotlight, entering stage right to thunderous applause. More starved for applause than for any chicken dinner the occasion might offer. The scene shattered by the flash of hundreds of cameras. Smiling with her arms flung wide, she enters the senator’s embrace and accepts that gaudy piece of gilded trash.
    Coming out of the flashback, we slowly dissolve to a tight shot which reveals this same trophy, engraved,
From the Greater Inland Drama Maniacs of Western Schuyler County
. Over a decade later it sits on a shelf, the gold clouded with tarnish, the whole of it netted with cobwebs. A beat later a scrap of white cloth wraps the trophy; a hand lifts it from the shelf. With further pullback, the shot reveals me, dustingin the drawing room of the town house. Polishing. Stray spiderwebs cling to my face, and a halo of dust motes swirl around my head. Outside the windows, darkness. My gaze fixed on nothing one can actually see.
    From offscreen, we hear a key turn in the lock of the front door. A draft of air stirs my hair as we hear the heavy door open and shut. The sound of footsteps ascending the main staircase from the foyer to the second floor. We hear a second door open and shut.
    Abandoning the trophy, the dust cloth still in one hand, I follow the sound of footsteps up the stairs to where Miss Kathie’s boudoir door is closed. A clock strikes two in some faraway part of the house as I knock at the door, asking if Miss Kathie needs help with her zipper. If she needs me to set out her pills. To draw her bath and light the candles on her fireplace mantel. The altar.
    Through the boudoir door, no answer. When I grip the knob, it refuses to turn in either direction. Fixed. This door Miss Kathie has never locked. Pressing one dusty cheek to the wood, I knock again, listening. Instead of an answer, a faint sigh issues from inside. The sigh repeats, louder, then more loud, becoming the squeak of bedsprings. The only answer is that squeak of bedsprings, repeating, a squeak as high-pitched and regular as laughter.

ACT I, SCENE TEN
    The scene opens with Lillian Hellman grappling in barehanded combat with Lee Harvey Oswald , the two of them wrestling and punching each other near an open window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository , surrounded by prominent stacks of Hellman’s
The Little Foxes
and
The Children’s Hour
and
The Autumn Garden
. Outside the window, a motorcade glides past, moving through Dealey Plaza , hands waving and flags fluttering. Hellman and Oswald gripping a rifle between them, they yank the weapon back and forth, neither gaining complete control. With a violent head butt, slamming her blond forehead into Oswald’s, leaving his eyes glazed and stunned for a beat, Hellman shouts,