Kate Remembered Read Online Free PDF Page B

sizes. A small painting of a man reading a newspaper, his back to the artist, sat on the nightstand; the close-cropped white hair was enough to reveal that this was Spencer Tracy. “I never could get his face just right,” she explained, “. . . except when I sculpted him.” She produced a small, accurate bust she had made.
    She led me into the bathroom, one unimaginably crude for a movie star. An old freestanding sink with two taps; a small tub with a big, plain showerhead hanging directly overhead, not protruding on an angle from the wall; some drawers and shelves with pictures of family and Spencer Tracy; threadbare towels; Colgate Tooth Powder; Albolene face cream. A second bedroom, at the front of the house, had become an extension of her closets, with athletic shoes, shirts, and a lot of red sweaters everywhere. She said there was a comfortable guest room upstairs.
    As we headed down, Kate asked if I had plans for the weekend. She was going “up country,” she said, to Fenwick, her country house in Connecticut; and she felt our interview was just getting started. “Look,” I said, “we’ve got much more material than Esquire could ever possibly use. But I would love to see Fenwick.” She suggested I appear at Forty-ninth Street the next day at noon, at which time her driver planned to collect her and Phyllis. In fact, I had an appointment the next day—an interview for my Goldwyn book, which I could not break; and so I suggested that I would get up there on my own steam, by dinnertime. She said the trains to Old Saybrook were few and asked if I really wanted to bother renting a car.
    We went down to the kitchen together, where we found Phyllis lying on a small daybed in the corner, reminding me that she had been the more seriously injured in the December car accident. “Do you have a good sense of direction?” Hepburn asked me, in the same tone that she had used two days earlier when asking about fireplaces. I told her I did, and she began to reel off the route to Fenwick, a sock-shaped peninsula off the Connecticut coast at Old Saybrook, where the Connecticut River empties into the Long Island Sound. She ran through the directions again, making them more complicated the second time. I assured her I could find the way. Not convinced, she threw a pop quiz at me. “Okay,” she said, while we stood in the kitchen, “which way is south?” As I looked around to get my bearings, she muttered to Phyllis, “It’s hopeless. We’ll never see him again.”
    â€œI’ll be there, Kate,” I said, as I leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. She gave me a hug and a big pat on the back and said, “I used to be taller. I’ve already shrunk an inch or two.” With that, she slammed the heavy door behind me, sending me out onto Forty-ninth Street, yelling, “Don’t be late.”

III
    Curtain Up
    I saw a play that night called K 2 . On a spectacular set that recreated the second-highest peak in the world, an interesting drama unraveled: In quest of the summit, one of a pair of climbers becomes injured, forcing the other to choose between returning to base camp or remaining with his teammate; this incited a dialogue about survival. In the end, he chooses to remain with his climbing partner, leaving the two to perish together.
    At least, I think that’s what the drama was about, for my mind wandered throughout the performance. I kept reliving the comedy I had stepped into during the preceding three days, one that volleyed between “drawing-room” and absurdist. I kept wondering why this virtual stranger, whose reclusiveness among movie stars was second only to Garbo’s, had made herself so available to me. Katharine Hepburn and I had certainly gotten along and shared a few laughs, but that did not explain why somebody almost as famous for shutting people out as she was for her acting was suddenly opening her doors