Capote by Gerald Clarke Page A

they started to talk, they found it hard to stop. “For the first time in my life I thought I could really speak to someone and share what I was feeling,” said Phoebe, “and that person was Truman. We cared tremendously, deeply and passionately, about writing and poetry. We loved
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, we loved Oscar Wilde, we loved Saki.” They talked about everything in the weeks that followed, but no matter how far they let their imaginations wander, they always ended up on their fondest, most enduring dream: to move to Manhattan and become part of the smart literary life they were certain awaited them there. “Our dream was to get out of Greenwich and to go to New York,” she said. “Manhattan was Oz to us, a place where we could let loose and enjoy ourselves.”
    Tall and attractive, with huge brown eyes and lustrous dark hair, Phoebe was a unique combination of several usually irreconcilable qualities. She was sophisticated far beyond her years, and as much as a girl in her early teens can be glamorous, she was glamorous, with a sure knowledge of how to dress and act and a never-failing ability to enliven any conversation. Even in her early teens she had the figure of a young woman; while the other girls went to parties in dresses that carefully covered the fact that they did not yet have much bosom to cover, she wore gowns that revealed that she most decidedly did. “My parents gave me a party,” said Marion Jaeger, recalling one such time, “and my father, who was very German and very strict, said, ‘Your mother will choose your dress.’ She did and it was pink, with lace up to my neck. Then Phoebe came in in a strapless gown and took over the whole party. I was never so disappointed in my entire life. Truman pulled me into a corner and said, ‘You look like a little old maid!’”
    They were not yet old enough to move there, but in their mid-teens, Truman and Phoebe would sometimes visit Oz on a Saturday night. Not telling anyone else what they were up to, they would spend weeks collecting their money and putting their clothes together; by the time they were ready, the forty-five-minute train ride into Manhattan had taken on the colors of a daring, illicit adventure. They would first stop at a couple of the jazz joints that lined West Fifty-second Street, where they would listen to Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, or Lionel Hampton; then, as midnight approached, they would walk a block or so east and fast-talk their way into those glittering seats of Café Society, El Morocco and the Stork Club. Truman had been to both places with Joe and Nina, but even his bravado wilted under the stares of headwaiters the first time he went alone with Phoebe. She looked as if she were going to a high school prom and wore white gloves and a white, full-length silk gown covered with sparklers. He looked like her little brother and was terrified that despite all their efforts, they had not scraped together enough money to pay the bill. “Don’t order anything expensive!” he whispered as they sat down on one of El Morocco’s zebra-striped banquettes.
    They were not thrown out, however, and after that first nervous night they breezed through the door, those two brassy teenagers, as if they were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. “We were such a wild-looking pair that the maître d’s never knew what to say to us,” said Phoebe, who thereafter left her gloves in their drawer and exchanged her sparkler-covered white gown for the black cocktail dresses the other women were wearing. “They always thought that Truman was too young to drink. But since I looked older, they would take a bet on us. We really got in because we were interesting to watch. We were both wonderful dancers—there was never anyone on the floor who could dance those Latin rhythms the way Truman could—and when we got onto the floor, we were forgiven everything else. We were an unusual couple, and we must have been figures of fun. So we danced for our