Kate Remembered (30 page)

 

 

One early afternoon in late July 1984, Kate and I were in the backyard at Fenwick, weeding one of the flowerbeds, when Phyllis came running out of the house. She had just taken a call from “Mr. Jackson” and said he would be calling back in five minutes. “I must go in to take that call,” Kate said. “You keep weeding.”

A few minutes later she returned, stood over me, and said, “Guess who's coming to dinner.”

I didn't put two and two together, until she said, “Michael.”

Kate had met Michael Jackson in the summer of 1979, when she filmed On Golden Pond on Squam Lake in New Hampshire. Jane Fonda—who, Kate said, “wanted to do the film with her father to work out her life's problems with him”—had invited the pop star to the New England location, then all but disappeared when he arrived. Feeling sorry for him—having come all that way only to be abandoned in the woods—Kate befriended him.

“He fascinated me,” she said. “He's an absolutely extraordinary creature. He's worked his entire life, entertaining professionally since he was three, and he's never lived a single moment, I mean not a moment, in the real world. He doesn't know how to do anything but write his songs and thrill an audience. He's this strange artistic creature, living in a bubble, barely touched by anything in the outside world.” Kate had been quite stern with Michael one morning in New Hampshire, when she discovered that he had not made his bed, then was stupefied to learn that he didn't know how. “He had never made a bed in his life!” she exclaimed. “He's E.T.!”

Over the next few years, Kate and Michael cultivated a friendship. She invited him to dinner when he was in New York City; and he reciprocated with tickets to his concerts. She showed up at one of his events at Madison Square Garden (with Phyllis in tow); and a lot of pictures of the two stars together were snapped that night. Frankly, it was a good photo opportunity for each of them. Kate didn't really care much for the music, but she thought he was a masterful showman—“a great dancer,” she said, “with a cute little backside.”

Alas, Katharine Hepburn and Michael Jackson didn't have a lot to talk about. So, I didn't even have to invite myself to dinner the following week. Kate said, “I don't think I can do this alone.” She wouldn't have to. With Michael Jackson at the peak of his fame, tickets for his upcoming “Victory Tour” performances at Madison Square Garden being scalped for $700 apiece, and “Michael Mania” in the air, she would have no difficulty rustling up guests for a private dinner. (Kate called Irene Selznick that week, ostensibly to get a doctor's name but really to drop that of her upcoming dinner guest. Uninvited, Irene did ask me a little longingly who was to be at the dinner, and she insisted I remember every detail.) Kate invited her niece Katharine Houghton, who had become friendly with Michael as well, and Cynthia McFadden. We were all told to keep the event under wraps.

As the night approached, it occurred to Kate that perhaps Michael had something personal to discuss with her. And so she told Cynthia and me that we were invited for drinks . . . and if she signaled us to leave when dinner was being served then—as she said—we “would have to blow.” Fair enough.

We were all in our places in the living room at 244 East Forty-ninth Street a few minutes before six that evening—Kate in her chair, the others seated around the room, while I tended the fire. (Yes, even on hot summer nights a fire was necessary, to compensate for the air-conditioning, which Kate cranked up.) Nobody was more excited than Norah, who had been anxious for days. Because there might be as many as six of us for dinner, it had been decided that we would eat downstairs in the dining room—a rare occurrence. As she carried up the tray of whiskey and glasses, she was visibly nervous. “Norah, you must calm down,” Kate said. “We've had dinner guests before.”

“But Miss Hepburn,” she protested, “this is Michael Jackson. He's the greatest staaa—I mean, the second greatest star in the world!”

Moments later the doorbell rang, and Norah ran down to answer the door. “Now, don't wet yourself!” Kate called out. Norah was hardly listening. In a moment our visitor had ascended the staircase.

He was wearing sunglasses and a satiny blue uniform trimmed in gold braid. Onstage, it would probably look dazzling. Up close it looked flimsy and gaudy, like something Professor Harold Hill might have sold to some boys in Iowa along with some tin trombones. Kate held out her hand to him, apologized for not standing because of her bad foot; and he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. They were happy to see each other. Kate introduced us all, and Michael found a place on the couch, at Kate's immediate right.

I found it difficult to take my eyes off him-not because he was a star, but because he looked so unusual. His body was even slighter than pictures suggested; his skin was taut and a beautiful tawny shade; his nose, with its tiny bridge, bore little resemblance to any other I had ever seen. At twenty-five, he had the demeanor of an extremely polite ten-year-old. He spoke in a gentle voice, full of sweetness and wonder.

“Is it too bright in here?” Kate asked her guest. He said no.

“Well, then, Michael, you really must take off your sunglasses, so that I can see your eyes. If you don't, then I'll have no idea where you're looking.” He reluctantly obeyed. “I think you wear your sunglasses far too much,” she continued. “It can't be very good for your eyes, and in the getups you wear, it's hardly as if you go anywhere unrecognized. So let us see your eyes. They're the window to your soul.”

After a moment of silence, I asked if I could fix Michael something to drink. Kate interjected that Michael didn't drink alcohol and asked what he wanted—“Juice, soda, fizzy water, plain water, tea, ‘funny' tea?” He wanted nothing. “Are you sure?” Kate asked, then ran through the entire menu again. “Nothing, thank you,” he said sweetly, then sank back into silence. Having had her glass of grapefruit juice, Kate handed me her glass to be filled with Scotch and soda, tossing me a look that suggested this was going to be a bumpy night.

For the next few minutes, everybody took a turn at trying to get the ball rolling, but the best our guest could muster were monosyllabic answers to perfunctory questions. Thinking we might have appeared to him like the Inquisition, Cynthia and Kathy and I peeled off into our own private conversation. But we could all overhear that it was rough sledding for Kate, left alone to chat with him. We were drawn back into their conversation when Michael raised Charlie Chaplin's name. Kate said she knew him a bit and had played tennis with him but that Michael should really talk to Phyllis. Constance Collier had been a great friend of Chaplin, she explained, and Phyllis had spent a lot of time with him. “Yes, that's true,” Phyllis said. “He was very amusing.”

And that was it. Conversation ground to a complete halt. “Thank you very much, Miss Phyllis, for enlightening us with those fascinating comments,” said Kate.

I asked Michael if he liked movies, and he sparked to that subject. Oh yes, he assured me. He spent most of his afternoons and nights watching videos of old movies. Katharine Hepburn, he said, was his favorite movie star. “Mine too,” I said. “And which of Kate's pictures are your favorites?” He turned to me with the sweetest smile; and, with what looked like heavily made-up eyes glowing right into mine, he said, “I'm not sure.”

I told him my favorite was
The Philadelphia Story
. He said he had not heard of that one. “What about
Holiday or Bringing Up Baby?”
—vintage comedies that I thought would appeal to a video junkie. He didn't recognize those titles either. Trying the other end of the spectrum, I asked if he had seen
Long Day's Journey or The Lion in Winter
. No, he didn't know those.
The African Queen?

“Is that the one in Africa?” he asked. Never saw it.

“On Golden Pond,”
I said assuredly—after all, it's how they met. Never saw it. Aha, I finally realized; he liked this older, white liberal woman because of
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
. Nope, never saw that one either. “Well, Michael, there's got to be some movie of Katharine Hepburn's that you've seen!”

“That one with Spencer Tracy,” he chimed in.
“Adam's Rib?”
No. Thinking sports, I say,
“Pat and Mike?
” No.
“Woman of the Year?” “Desk Set?”

“No, the one where Spencer Tracy plays a fisherman, and he saves the little boy. . . .”

“Captains Courageous?!”
Kate asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Michael said. “He was very strict, but he was sweet to the little boy.” Kate, with a look of madness I hadn't seen since the last act of
Long Day's Journey,
simply held up her empty glass.

Cynthia came to the rescue by inquiring about Michael's famous menagerie, asking him what animals he had. At last, he felt at home. With great enthusiasm, he spoke of his ranch with his llama and monkey and his boa constrictor, Muscles. “Now, Michael,” Kate said, “I have always liked animals, but honestly, what do you do with a boa constrictor?” Excitedly he described his huge terrarium, behind a curtain, in which Muscles lived, and how every few days, he and special guests would sit down in front of the great glass window, open the curtain, and watch as a small rodent was placed in the snake house. This was an evening's entertainment, watching the snake capture, constrict, and consume the animal. We all sat there speechless. Kate held up her glass and, in a choked voice, called out, “Too weak.”

There was some commotion downstairs, which was explained when Norah came scurrying up with a tray of hors d'oeuvres—none of which Michael ate—and a note for Miss Hepburn, which she read on the spot. “Unbelievable,” said Kate. The missive had come from Stephen Sondheim's house (formerly Max Perkins's) next door. “The nerve!”

“I didn't think you and Mr. Sondheim spoke to each other,” I said, knowing the only real communication between the neighbors came on the occasional nights when he played piano too loudly and too late—“entertaining gentlemen callers,” Kate said—and she had to go outside in her nightclothes and pound on his rear windows.

“We don't,” she said. “This is from his dinner guest, Mr. Stoppard.”

The playwright Tom Stoppard had dashed off a note saying that he had young sons at home in England and that he had heard that Michael Jackson was having dinner next door and that if he didn't do everything he could to obtain an autograph for them, he would never forgive himself. “Out of the question,” Kate barked. As we had all been sworn to secrecy, I asked Kate how Sondheim had even caught wind of the dinner. “Norah,” she said, without having to think about it. “She and Louis [Sondheim's housekeeper] know everything about everyone on the block.” Then it occurred to her that perhaps she was being harsh.

“Of course, it's not really my decision. Michael, how do you feel about signing autographs?” Kate explained that Stoppard was a great playwright.

“I like to do things for the children,” he said. “I'll sign something for them.”

Kate deputized Kathy and me to go to Sondheim's and notify Stoppard that he would be granted a brief audience with Michael Jackson. We were graciously received by Sondheim, who seemed tickled by the whole turn of events, even as his dinner guest left with us to go to Kate's. Stoppard was effusively grateful to his hostess and her special guest, who signed some pieces of paper. It wasn't until Stoppard left that I noticed that Michael was wearing his sunglasses again. All the hubbub genuinely amused Kate, her perturbation notwithstanding.

Dinner was served. We all descended to the dining room, where we sat at the big round table—which normally served as Hepburn's secretary's desk and was usually covered with correspondence and an IBM Selectric typewriter. Because Michael did not eat meat, Norah had prepared a vegetarian meal, starting with bowls of cold beet soup. A plate of toasted Portuguese bread got passed around, as did a small tub of whipped butter. When the butter reached Michael, he dipped in his soup spoon, then dropped a big white dollop into his soup, which he started to eat. Kate saw what was happening and apologized, saying it was her fault that he had mistaken the butter for sour cream. She called for Norah to get Michael a fresh bowl of soup. No, Michael insisted, he would eat this one. Kate said absolutely not, that it would taste terrible with all that butter. But Michael persisted—finishing the entire bowl, glob of butter and all. The rest of the dinner—which was a lot of beautifully prepared vegetables, potatoes, and a macaroni-and-cheese casserole—ensued with neither incident nor much conversation. Kate was astonished when Michael, who ate little more than vegetables all his life, did not know the “white broccoli” on his plate was something called cauliflower.

Before the dishes were cleared, Kate suggested we all move upstairs again. It was a little after eight. As we paraded up the narrow staircase, with Kate and Michael bringing up the rear, I heard him ask if he could speak to her privately. Cynthia, Kathy, and I returned to the rear living room, while Kate and Michael entered the front living room and stood by the windows overlooking Forty-ninth Street, their heads bowed down in serious conversation. Every now and then we could hear Kate say, in a low but firm voice, “Absolutely not. I'm terribly sorry, Michael, but absolutely not.” Within minutes, they had rejoined us, but Michael did not sit down. He said his goodbyes, and we all followed him to the front door, where a driver-bodyguard stood waiting. He ushered Michael from the door into a waiting vehicle, a television repair truck with no rear windows. They zoomed off into the night.

Kate closed the door and looked at all of us assembled and cried, “Whiskey! Norah, get the whiskey!”