Kissing the Beehive

I opened the envelope and took out the tape. There was no label, nothing describing what was on it. Wrapped around it was a handwritten letter in the emerald green ink she liked so much.

Sam,

There are over five hundred people named Bayer in the Vie

I hope your book is going well. I treasure the memory of that su

Thank you for making many dreams come true. Thank you for watching this film, if you do find the time. Even if we had never met, it would make me so proud to know Samuel Bayer spent part of a day watching something I did. I mean that with all my heart.

I put her tape right into the machine.

It began with toast. That familiar scratchy noise of someone buttering a piece of toast. Black screen, scratchy sound. Then a male voice starts to speak and, recognizing it even before his face appeared, I hooted with glee.

"Samuel Bayer is a dreadful writer! He was also a dreadful student in class. It amazes me how successful he has become with those tepid little thrillers he writes." My old high school English teacher (and Pauline's) Mr. Tresvant stops buttering. Sighing, he shakes his head. He is in a bathrobe with a pattern on it that looks like 1950s wallpaper. The robe is open at the throat. His scrawny neck and old man's wattles are sad and unattractive. There are a bunch of moles across his chest, things we students never saw because Mr. Tresvant's shirts were always buttoned right up to the top. He takes a bite of toast. Crumbs fall down around him but he pays no attention. How did Veronica convince the uptight fuddy-duddy to go on camera in his robe and pajamas? One of the most controlled people I'd ever known, he looks here like a bum in an eleven-dollar-a-night Utah motel room.

He rambles on, all grumble and gripe. Veronica's brilliant trick is to shoot him in such a way that after a while you don't believe a word he says. This old man is one repellent flop of a human being. Why would you want to hear, much less trust, his opinion on anything?

Off camera, Veronica asks, "Why aren't you proud that one of your former students went on to become a world-famous writer?"

Tresvant sneers. "One should never take credit for participating in mediocrity." He looks away and takes another bite of toast. More crumbs fall. A small piece sticks to the corner of his mouth. He doesn't notice. The camera lingers on him. It is lethal because everything about this man – his pretentious tone, the dingy robe and unshaven face – exudes nothing but mediocrity.

"Would you like to hear what Bayer said about you?" Veronica's voice is emotionless.

Which stops the old pedant in midchew. His toast goes down and the eyes narrow. You can see he thought she was just going to let him pontificate and throw all the punches. Not so, lago.

But right there the film blacks out! What the hell did Bayer say about Tresvant?

The picture comes back up. I'm in a hotel room, pulling on a pair of pink socks. When we traveled together, Veronica carried a small video camera with her everywhere. I never paid attention after the first days because it seemed to be her third eye – she was always filming something.

Socks on, I sit back and smile. "School? The only thing I learned there was what I didn't like. That's what school's for – it teaches you what to avoid the rest of your life. Cell mitosis, calculus, the complete works of George Bernard Shaw . . . things like that."

Cut to a horse-drawn carriage, clopping down Vie

I had casually mentioned to Veronica that both sides of my family came from Vie

From the top of St. Stephen's Church they talked about the Bayer who had helped rebuild the cathedral roof after it was destroyed by Allied bombing at the end of World War II. Over di

Any family memoir is a flock of small stories that periodically collide with history's propellers. The Bayers were no different. Although I was nominally the subject of her film, Veronica chose to paint a much larger, more panoramic picture. By cutting back and forth across time, across continents, from the astonishing to the forgettable, she was able to paint one of those gigantic canvases that portray whole battles, or the building of the Tower of Babel, a day in the life of a great city.

When the story returned to me and my life, she interviewed people and showed events I had forgotten long ago. I kept blinking or gasping, "That's right! God, I forgot all about that." I was spellbound throughout, and not just because it was my own life on the screen. She chose a narrative line so precise and encompassing that the result was the most thorough and loving biography any person could ever hope for. It saddened me because it brilliantly displayed a side of Veronica Lake I had never seen but could only admire. How I wished things had gone differently between us. Here was a great love letter. Tragically, it was created by a woman who came as close to scaring me as any intimate I had ever known.

Fra

At a good market in my town I had bought a large array of groceries, hoping he'd take one look at the bounty on his kitchen counter and be inspired to help me cook a few fabulous meals.

After my third trip, he followed me out to the car in his pajamas.

"What is all this?"

"Resurrection soup."

"What do you mean?" He put both arms behind his back. Standing there shrunken in his wrinkled pajamas and flyaway hair he looked like an alumni from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

I hoisted a jumbo bag of groceries out of the trunk. "Fra

Once we'd gotten everything into the kitchen, I pushed him out and said he could come back when I was ready. It took a while because the look and presentation had to be both dramatic and inspiring. I did my best. When it was done, I thought it looked pretty damned spiffy.

A few minutes before, the telephone rang but I barely heard it. Coming out of the kitchen, I heard him laughing very loudly. I was thrilled when I got him to answer anything with a full sentence. Who could reach him to laugh like that?

He was alone talking on his portable phone, wearing a big happy smile. He waved when he saw me and held up a finger for me to wait a second. "Here's the man, fresh out of the kitchen. He's doing something mysterious in there and won't let me see. You wa

My eyebrows went up as far as they could go. The only contact I'd had with her in weeks was the videotape from Vie