Kathryn Sermak - Miss D and Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis

July 22, 1985, Paris

Dont Be Afraid to Face Your Fears; They Wont Go Away Until You Do.

I LOOKED OUT the window of my apartment on the Rue Robert Fleury to confirm that the car and driver were waiting for me in the street below. Miss Davis plane was scheduled to at the Charles de Gaulle airport in three hours, and it had been my practice as her personal assistant to arrive two hours before the plane landed to ensure that all arrangements were in place. I saw the chauffeur, Patrick, well dressed in his pressed black suit and tie, standing next to the gleaming black Mercedes. The driver was new to me, recommended by the U.S. Embassy, which assured me he was trustworthy, discreet, and skilled at evading the paparazzi. The date of Miss Ds arrival had been the top item in Celebrity News, a weekly bulletin that announced prominent people visiting Paris and their agendas. Patrick had to get us past customs and out of Charles de Gaulle, to the Orly airport on the other side of Paris, and onto our flight to Biarritz. Given the state of Miss Ds health, I wanted to make sure that no one got any photos of us as we made our way to Orly.

As the car glided down the Peripherique, I took out my datebook to triple check the preparations for our stay in Biarritz and the return to Paris. Id met two weeks earlier with the manager at the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, a resort town on the Atlantic near the French border with Spain, and had spoken with him again yesterday to reconfirm the details.

Miss D and I would stay ten days at the Hotel du Palais, where we would work on her second memoir This N That. I had reserved her an ocean-view suite with a large terrace facing the Bay of Biscay, while I would be across the hall in a junior suite. Her rooms would be decorated with gardenias, if available. If not, daisies were Miss Ds second choice. A bottle of Pouilly Fuisse would be chilling in an ice bucket with a bottle of club soda when we arrived. Since her stroke two years ago, Miss D could only drink wine spritzers. I had met also with the head chambermaid to ensure that the same maids attended to the suite morning and evening, arriving precisely at 9:00 a.m. to clean, and returning at 8:00 p.m. to turn down the beds and place a sheet over the top blanket making a proper coverture. The head chambermaid assured me that there would be enough hangers in the closets to hold the clothes I would unpack from Miss Ds multiple suitcases.

Satisfied that everything was arranged, I closed my datebook and settled back into my seat as Paris rushed past the window. I pictured Miss D, easy to do as we had seen each other in New York a few months before. In my six years as her full-time, live-in assistant (a position Id just recently left, though I was still part of her intimate inner circle) Id rarely seen her so rattled.

The storm had been brewing for several weeks. I had flown back to New York for her birthday in April and to attend a meeting with Miss Ds lawyer, Harold Schiff. Harold had discovered that Bede (her nickname for her daughter, Barbara Hyman) had written a tell-all memoir in the style of Mommie Dearest, scheduled to be published that Mothers Day. Miss Ds agent, Robbie Lantz, had joined us in her suite at the Lombardy Hotel to discuss how to handle Bedes upcoming public betrayal of her mother. The timing could not have been worse. Miss D had just started working again after a 1983 stroke that nearly killed her. We did not tell her about the book before she flew to London to work on the film Murder with Mirrors, fearing that if she knew she might suffer a setback or worse. We told her only after the movie had wrapped. She was deeply wounded, but she seemed to have bounced back. That afternoon in the Lombardy she was very much in charge.

With Harold and Robbie seated on the beige sofa in the large living room of the suite, Miss D was smoking and pacing. I stood at the edge of room, ready to act if anyone needed anything. Miss D wore a crisp navy blue dress with a flared skirt, nipped in at the waist, and with a stiff, angled collar that accentuated her neckline. She had three of these stylish tailored dresses in different colors, all made of sturdy poplin that did not wrinkle when she sat.

She rarely sat! Miss D thought more clearly when she paced. That afternoon she was quietly seething, her eyes ablaze with energy. She took firm, quick steps and turned decisively on her heel, with the same pace she had that summer in 1979 when she hired me. Since her stroke, those steps had become more tentative and her turn was not as quick. At the Lombardy that day her vigor had returned and she stepped and turned crisply back and forth across the room.

I cannot believe she is doing this to me! Miss D said. How could she?

She paused at the credenza and consulted a list of questions on a yellow legal pad, taking the pad with her as she finally sat in a chair opposite the sofa.

How do we know for sure its a wretched book? Miss D asked Harold.

My sources tried to get me a copy, but the publisher has it securely locked up. Those allowed to read it are only permitted to do so in their offices. Rumor has it that she paints a very unflattering portrait of you, Harold said.

Well, find a way to read it and then tell me, Miss D said.

BetteIm told the same thing, Robbie said in his gentle voice with a slight German accent. Word has it that it is a scathing book and a ferocious attack on you. We must discuss what your response to the press will be.

This is just horrible. Bede has no idea what the press will do to her, Miss D said. She told me she wrote this book so we would have a better understanding of one another. Im now utterly confused by who she is and her way of life.