11/22/63: “President assassinated.”
11/23/63: “Palm Springs.”
11/25/63: “Ate to oblivion.”
11/27 or 28:
DEAD
The datebook ended five weeks short of New Year’s. A sheet was clipped to the back.
Karyn jotted down some book tides. They were psychoanalytic texts.
Beside them:
A list of all the men she’d slept with.
3
Karyn Redux
They entombed her in a Jewish cemetery. They honored her with classy endowments.
Two Karyn Kupcinet Theaters. A Karyn Kupcinet Gallery. A Karyn Kupcinet Scholarship.
Kup and Essee kept her name out there. No one knows how they defined her death and rush to self-destruct. No one knows how many what-ifs and might-have-beens they indulged over cocktails.
Karyn died moments after a freeze-frame. The camera’s in tight. She’s all passion and disorder. A close-up sends out an implication: She could go anywhere now.
It might be true. It might be a wishful conceit. She left a list of books and a list of men as her last will and testament. It might have marked a step toward self-knowledge. It might have been a Band-Aid to cover her wounds until her shitheel lover called. She had a fierce heart and no will to moral judgment. Her compulsive componentry was common to young women. She carried her own strain of a plague. It hadn’t been identified yet. The time impinged her. Her shrink cosigned her rebop and tapped Kup’s bankbook. She didn’t get the gender-role thing. She didn’t know that women took it up the shorts systematically. She didn’t know that the precept could spark a will to change. She had the juice to grasp the concept. She might have found the guts to go with it and burned her old life to the ground. She was just a kid. She didn’t know shit from Shinola. She labored under a shroud. She thought showbiz was real.
It was the Kupcinet family blessing and curse. It started with Kup. He passed it on to Karyn and Jerry.
Jerry turned 19 the month Karyn died. He loved the visual arts. He wanted to forge a Kupcinet life on the other side of the camera.
He went to Bradley U and Columbia of Chicago. He studied photography. He graduated and shot pix for Playboy. He shot stills for the Chicago stage run of Hair.
He became a TV cameraman and director. He directed segments of A.M. Chicago and Good Morning America. He married a woman named Sue Levine. They had a son and a daughter.
Jerry got a gig on The Richard Simmons Show. He moved his family out to L.A. It was ‘8 1. His daughter was nine years old. Her name was Karyn Ann Kupcinet.
Essee called it reincarnation. Kup said he almost agreed. The blessing and curse hit a third generation.
Karyn Two didn’t look like Karyn. It was all inside. The Karyns bubbled and churned. They lived to please and lived to perform. Essee pushed Karyn Two the same way she pushed Karyn. She pushed her to act and stay thin.
Karyn Two went to Parker School in Chicago. She hung out at the Karyn Kupcinet Gallery. She pretended that they named the place after her.
She knew her Aunt Karyn died young. She knew somebody killed her. Nobody fed her more details. She felt no urge to learn more.
Jerry moved his brood out to L.A. Karyn Two grew up on Karyn’s old turf.
She gained weight and lost weight. Food was a punishment. Food was a reward.
She went out on kid auditions. She got a few TV and stage parts. She played Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. She was a high-school freshman then.
She kept a journal. She wrote a play called The Porcelain Doll. It was all about a weight-obsessed girl. She writes her thoughts in a journal. She dies young. Her best friend finds the journal and reads it.
Karyn Two acted. Karyn Two gained and lost weight. Karyn Two had a nice boyfriend.
The boyfriend went to the Film Academy library. They kept files on professional performers. He asked to see the file on Karyn Two. The clerk gave him the file on Karyn.
The file freaked him out. He skimmed it and called Karyn Two. She went to the library and read the file cover to cover.