Kate Remembered Read Free

white canvas covered with a red knit throw. She took a sip, then a gulp of her drink and said, “Too weak.” I doctored it. “Yours looks too weak,” she said. Fearing a replay of the bathroom episode, I stood my ground, saying, “I feel the need to stay one ounce more sober than you.”
    While we discussed the interview I had come to conduct with her, Phyllis Wilbourn climbed the stairs. I started to get up, as the neck-braced septugenarian appeared a little wobbly; but my hostess assured me she was just fine. “You’ve met Phyllis Wilbourn?” Miss Hepburn inquired, as the older woman passed a tray of hot cheese puffs. “My Alice B. Toklas.”
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t say that,” Phyllis insisted. “It makes me sound like an old lesbian, and I’m not.”
    â€œYou’re not what, dearie, old or a lesbian?” she said, laughing.
    â€œNeither.” With that, Phyllis fixed her own drink, a ginger ale, and sat in a chair opposite us; and I continued to soak up the room. Hepburn watched me as I gazed at a carved wooden goose hanging on a chain from the ceiling. “Spencer’s,” she said. Then I noticed a painting of two seagulls on some rocks.
    â€œDo you think that’s an exceptional picture or not?” she asked.
    â€œIt’s amusing,” I said. “Fun.”
    â€œMe,” she said, referring to the artist.
    The fire was dying, and Hepburn asked if I knew anything about fireplaces. I told her I was no Boy Scout but that I could probably kick a little life into it. “Let’s see,” she said, preparing to grade me in what was clearly an important test. I used the pair of wrought-iron tongs to turn a few logs over, and they went up in a blaze. She was visibly pleased. “How about those on the mantel?” she asked, referring me to a pair of small figurines, nude studies of a young woman. “Me,” she said.
    â€œYou sculpted these?” I asked.
    â€œNo, I posed for them.” Upon closer scrutiny, I could see that was the case and that she was pleased again.
    Over the next few minutes, we made small talk—about my hometown, Los Angeles, our mutual friend director George Cukor, who had died there just a few months prior, and our impending interview. She asked how much time I thought I would need, and I asked, “How much have you got?”
    â€œOh, I’m endlessly fascinating,” she said, smiling again. “I’d say you’ll need at least two full days with me.”
    As my fire-tending had made the room warmer, I stood and removed my blue blazer, which I set on the couch. “I don’t think so,” said Hepburn gently but firmly. “Now look, I want you to be as comfortable as you like. But look where you’ve put that jacket. It’s right in my sight line, and it’s, well, somewhat offensive.”
    â€œYes,” I said, “I can see that.” As I started to put it back on, she said that wasn’t necessary, that there was a chair on the landing and I should just “throw it there”—which I did. Upon re-entering the room, I instinctively adjusted a picture on the wall, a floral painting which was slightly askew.
    â€œOh, I see,” said Miss Hepburn with great emphasis; “you’re one of those .” She smiled approvingly and added, “Me too. But nobody was as bad as Cole Porter. He used to come to this house, and he’d straighten pictures for five minutes before he’d even sit down. Listen, while you’re still up, I’m ready for another drink. How about you?”
    Again I made mine the weaker. It was not that I was afraid of falling on my face. It was more that I felt as though I were now walking through an RKO movie starring Katharine Hepburn, and I didn’t want to miss a single frame of it.
    As the clock on the mantelpiece bonged seven, Miss Hepburn said, “Look, I only invited you for