Free Kate Remembered by A. Scott Berg Page B

intensity. Over and over, I would see that this incident affected Kate more than she realized—keeping her from ever delving into the past or even dwelling in the present. Like the rest of her family, she listened to the Song of Life—the refrain of which was always, “Get on with it.”
    The tragedy hit Kate hard. (She would be loath to say it hit her the hardest, because that would suggest complaining.) A sensitive teenager going through her awkward years—a strong freckle-raced tomboy becoming an unusual-looking young woman—she entered her own private crucible. In a town where the Hepburns had been considered odd, the suicide, veiled in mystery, stigmatized them even further. Kate dealt with her renewed feelings of isolation by role-playing-becoming stronger, prouder, even haughtier. She learned to mask her feelings, to create one persona that would greet the world while she hid another that she would fight to keep private. She would cloak her loneliness and insecurities with a personality that could entrance. She was becoming an actress.
    For the second night in a row, Kate and I stayed up past midnight. Before retiring, we put the fire to bed, extinguished the lights, and checked on the kitchen, where Dick often left a gas burner lit or something cooking in the oven. We found that his “lady friend,” Virginia Harrington, had baked a gigantic chocolate layer cake. Kate insisted I take a slice, from which she scraped off a mouthful of icing with her index finger. Walking upstairs, I thought about all the personal stories Kate had imparted in the last few days and the urgency with which she shared them.
    It occurred to me that most of the people in the professional stories she had told me were either dead or dying; and while she had scores of good acquaintances and millions of fans, she had few intimate friends outside her family with whom she could share things. I also believed that because of her injured foot, Kate was slowing down for the first time in her life, and all the time and energy that she formerly had to run around was being directed inward, forcing her to remember and to ruminate. “You and I see the world the same way,” she said as we were turning down my bed.
    And then she looked me soberly in the eye and said, “You are me.” (Just like that, the way Emily Brontë’s Cathy said, “I am Heathcliff.”) I took it as a compliment, thinking she meant we both approached life with optimism . . . or, at least, that we laughed at the same things. With a kiss on my cheek and a “Night, night,” she was gone.
    By the next morning we had developed our routine. She had already enjoyed her swim, newspaper, and breakfast before I joined her. A pink grapefruit, prepared by the Lady of the House herself, always sat on my tray in the kitchen, and a discussion of the news awaited upstairs. Then Phyllis would magically appear, with a clipboard and pad, to make notes on our day’s agenda and menus. This particular Sunday was drizzly, with heavy storms forecast well into the night. I asked Kate if she had slept all right, in light of the tenderness of our conversation the night before. She said she always slept well, though we would have to stop staying up that late.
    Far from embarrassed by our conversation, Kate was eager to complete it. After her brother’s death, she said, she had stopped attending the Oxford School, the sister school of Kingswood, and was tutored at home. She succeeded in being admitted to Bryn Mawr College, though during her first year she stuck mostly to herself. She occasionally ate with the other young women; but one day, as she approached a table, she heard one of her schoolmates say, “Self-conscious beauty.” Kate easily accepted the “self-conscious” part but puzzled over the rest. She never returned to the dining room again, eating her meals in town.
    Over the next three years, Katie Hepburn gradually