Boys in the Trees: A Memoir

by Carly Simon

  Standing there, I glanced at myself in the mirror over the sink. The overhead lighting did strange things to my features, and for a moment it was hard to recognize who I was exactly. Something from deep inside me seemed to be overtaking my features, my expression, a transition I’d seen only in special-effects movies. The person before me wasn’t a character, or a monster, in a movie. No, it was just me, my own reflection. Whatever was coming through at this moment was something I’d been afraid of my whole life, but in its emerging outline I wasn’t afraid of it at all. I didn’t have to squint to see it. No, it was purely, completely mine, filling me with something that felt, uncannily, like awe. I could control what I was seeing, but I no longer had to. It was in command. It had no competitors. It might not stick around permanently, it might come and go, and even vanish for long stretches of time, but I knew now, for certain, that it was there. In the light of the mirror, I didn’t look pretty, for sure—nor was that the point—but I did look fierce. In truth, I was staring the Beast in the eye. I held its gaze and I thought, Cool, God is in me.

  * * *

  I wasn’t exactly being a pacifist. Nor was I being a coward. Instead, I was where I’d found myself many times in my life—somewhere between those poles—the difference being that tonight I had defined what I felt in a way I never had before: I felt unshackled, strong, finally freed.… Our marriage was the only god I knew, my only religion. Religion was my home. “Over everybody else. One over everybody else.”

  My next thought, as I needlessly flushed the toilet, was: Poor Evey. She’s not my problem.

  I came out of the bathroom and without a single word put on my coat. I held out my hand to Evey: Shake? Instead, she looked down at the floor: “Evey,” I said, “I’m really glad I came here tonight. I’m sure it didn’t make you happy, but I want you to know that I will tell James that I saw you.” I tried not to sound pompous, or insincere, and considering the context, felt as though I’d succeeded in being decent.

  When our eyes connected for a split second, I smiled broadly. Evey didn’t smile back, nor had I expected her to. I didn’t need her to.

  * * *

  On the way home, the Charivari mannequins glanced past me, disjointed and erotic, but did they really have any choice? I felt strangely settled, weirdly satisfied. Back on Central Park West and Seventy-third Street, I let myself into the apartment, turned off some lights, and checked in on Sally and Ben. Ben was clutching a couple of uncuddly battery-operated mechanical dogs, a gift to James from a Japanese promoter, whose hard metal bodies weren’t exactly what most children would want to cuddle in the moments before sleep. Quietly, softly, I lifted his arm, my goal being to set the dogs on his bedside table, but as I was lifting it, Ben called out in his sleep, quite loudly, “Where are the dogs?” I couldn’t help but laugh. Even in his sleep, that boy was funny. I leaned down to kiss his head, replacing the hard-bodied dogs back in their proper spot under his arm. Ben’s room was stuffy—the damn heaters were loud and clanking, and always left the rooms either too hot or too cold—and I opened his windows a few inches.

  When I went into our bedroom, I saw that James had lit a candle. Was there a message in that? I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. I felt good. James was asleep, and I lay down on the bed beside him. “I love you so much, my darling man,” I said, feeling a forgiveness much, much larger than myself. Of course my husband didn’t hear me. He was dreaming, no doubt, about his own fascinating rhythms and moods, his comedy, his codas, his craziness, the sawing, hammering, musical, lyrical circus that was his life. Somewhere in the soft gulf between dreams and sleep, maybe he could intuit the love I had for him, and love me back in return. I undressed, put my hair up in a hasty ponytail, and got under the covers. This was destiny. That’s what destiny is: This.

  One of us slipped last night and said “Darling”

  There in the middle of the night

  Between dreams and sleep

  Did you say it, or did I?

  I don’t know

  But it interrupted the war

  That’s the way these cold wars are

  I love you, we said

  Or one of us did

  And the other agreed from the heart

  One of us slipped last night and said “sorry”

  There in the middle of the madness

  Between the dark and the light

  Who cares if all the doors had been closed

  And no love had entered for days

  Cold wars like these go up in a blaze

  “I love you,” we said, or one of us did

  And the other agreed from the heart

  Through the haze of the dream

  The truth could come through

  You can see that I’m still open to you

  “I love you,

  I love you,” we said, from the heart

  —“From the Heart,” 1980

  Destiny—Tranquillo.

  On stage at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh, 1981.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  sheets the color of fire

  A year later, James and I were—somehow—still together—and I was in Pittsburgh, as part of a fourteen-show tour with my band. I was at an all-time low weight. I was looking shrivelled, scared, and anyone aware of the serious bundle of nerves I was should never have allowed me to leave home, much less perform.

  The previous six months had been incredibly challenging, starting on the day when a physician informed James and me that Ben had been born with a “dysplastic kidney,” which, in layman’s terms, meant his kidney had been busy recycling urine back inside his one-, two-, and three-year-old body. His whole life, Ben had been worrisomely sick far more often than was usual, and it wasn’t until his grandfather, Ike, urged us to make an appointment with a kidney specialist that we found out Ben had a congenital problem that surgery would fortunately be able to rectify. We set a date for the operation in early June.

  When Ben finally came out of surgery, the relief was enormous. Six months later, in a daze of sleep problems, stress-related weight loss, adult acne, worry, and nerves, I was pressured to go ahead with rehearsals for my upcoming tour, trying to connect with my band, forcing a smile onto my stuttering lips. After all, I kept telling myself, it’s only fourteen shows. I continued to pour my really heavy emotions—my nerves, my utterly lost feelings—onto the shoulders of my sweet lover, Scott Litt, in the same way James still had Evey or maybe even someone else entirely.

  I’d been writing songs, too, some of them about James. Far more painful than writing about shadowy crushes was writing about my own husband. My method was often mildly passive-aggressive, in the hopes James might pick up or learn something about how I felt, that way bypassing an actual conversation likely to end up in an argument. Or sometimes my lyrics were direct, hopeful. In 1980 I remember writing the song “James” when he was asleep on the couch, totally wasted on one thing or another. “Your voice is like the water / when I lift the shell I can hear you pouring out your heart to me / James, the beauty of your voice fills me with sadness / James…”

  Warner Bros. had invested a lot of money into backing my tour. My manager, Arlyne, strongly believed that it would be good for me to get my mind off the two crazy, empty shells my homes in New York and Martha’s Vineyard had become, as well as off James. I was consoled by the fact that my children were in good hands. Sally was in elementary school, and well taken care of at home, plus I would be gone no more than a few nights a week. Ben, now fully recovered from his surgery, would either stay in New York or travel with me, depending on how near the venue was.

  As I began rehearsals, I felt oddly detached and disembodied, a stranger to my own image and self. I had a hard time reading people’s feelings for me or mine for them. Despite the revelation in the mirror at Evey’s, all of a sudden, it seemed, I knew nothing about myself, including what I should wear, and why, or how to wear my hair, which, at the time, looked just wrong, like a hayfield shorn by an anxious, fluttering scyt
he. Internally, banging around inside the cage of my frazzled brain, I felt equally lopsided, as if my entire being had now tuned to the wrong note, one that had been further distorted by the high-pitched EQ of an early 1970s heavy-metal guitar, the words on repeat: Ben. Sally. Ben. Ben. Sally. Sally. James, oh lord, my darling James: I need you. I can’t go on without you. I want our marriage back. I want the day we were born back.

  Backstage at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, everything was well appointed. There were flowers everywhere, in ultrabright colors of yellow, orange, red, and even bright blue, the latter no doubt genetically modified to assume the rich, regal hues befitting a star. I felt less like a star than a gangster’s girlfriend receiving a withering bunch of those unnatural, food-dyed azure flowers. They depressed me right away. Worse, Arlyne wasn’t around that night. No doubt she was fed up with me—I’d been nothing but drama for her, and Arlyne, like most people, had other drama to deal with—or maybe she intuited that I would fail and embarrass us both. But Lucy, my wonderful sister, had insisted on flying to Pittsburgh and attending the concert in person. She understood how much I was struggling. She got it.

  It was the first time Lucy had ever shown up at one of my solo concerts, not that there’d been that many over the years, just a few short tours’ worth and various public appearances with James. Of course, in our early years, the two of us had performed and traveled here and there as the Simon Sisters. When I broke out on my own, I missed Lucy terribly. Ever since we were children, Lucy was always my boss, the sister I knew would always take care of me. Now, tonight, she had come to Pittsburgh. Had she known, somehow, that she would have to take care of me? Did she have any inkling of how dire the situation was? I doubt it. Even I didn’t realize it yet.

  * * *

  My solo act had begun one April night in 1971 at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. That night kicked off my career. I was all of a sudden on the “A-list,” being compared to Janis Joplin, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, even Julie Christie. I’d joined a new club, was given a new ladder to climb, the scene not much different from high school popularity games. In truth, each and every group to which you are assigned is illusory; the ground perpetually shifts, and new groups pop up all the time. Fame is manic and terrifying, especially when your identity and status become gradually and exclusively dependent on others’ opinions, jealousies, and rivalries. Show business is no place for any normal person, as you develop an overwhelming need to retain the highest possible position on the world’s popularity rosters, your fear of slipping a notch gradually overshadowing talent, art, creativity, empathy, and, hardest to lose, love.

  Countless times over those years I’d come face to face with the Beast, which understood, intuitively, that for any one wish to come true, ten would never be granted. Whenever I was gratified by a good review, a flattering remark, or a compliment on my dress, I knew I could look forward to the next time a magazine voted me the Worst-Dressed Woman of the Year. At Evey’s, I thought I’d put the Beast to bed, but that night in Pittsburgh it returned.

  Whenever James and I sang or appeared in public together, we ignited almost unimaginable amounts of excitement. I could credit our individual charisma, but as a couple, we were somehow much more than the sum of our two parts. Even as our marriage went through its agonies, James and I were still able to convey a profound, jointly held illumination. In response, the public projected something back that enveloped both of us in a radiance that neither one of us ever understood. Except that I remember that right after our wedding, I’d felt emotionally protected for life. Signing my name Carly Simon Taylor and thinking, Well, that’s just about the perfect place to be. For me marriage was a perfect island, one created for the two of us to live on. Outside our marriage, in public, we were a unit, singing songs onstage that promised a warm, positive, loving future not just for us but for everyone. Music’s two symbolic parental figures—still solid, still intact, still looking good, still making music. It seemed the two of us were living out an empty version of the lyrics of our 1972 cowritten song, “Forever My Love.”

  I’m looking forward to looking back

  From further on down the track

  Together in fact

  Forever my love

  * * *

  People still write to me today, with genuine compassion, claiming they were there “that night in Pittsburgh,” and their empathy never ceases to touch me. That night my energy was focused exclusively on maintaining my sanity. I also felt exceedingly nervous, even more than usual. The paradox, one I’ve confronted repeatedly over the course of my performing life, was that performing was an opportunity to detach from myself, to dive into the love of the ten thousand people in the audience, and ten thousand more waiting for the second show afterward. If only I could lose myself in the beat of the music. The more I needed the bliss of losing myself, the more losing myself felt as though I’d lost myself completely between drowning and bad dreams.

  After sound check, I retired to my dressing room and changed into a light pink pantsuit made of thin, shimmering satin. It clung to my bones, making my knees look like two matching medical reflex hammers. Nor did I realize before the show just how physically weak I was. An hour before I took the stage, I called home and spoke to Ben, Sally, and James, my three night-lights whose shine, I knew, would never fade, at least not until their stars led me back home. I needed that reality so badly—like hanging on to Santa with all my might.

  If I didn’t conquer this fear, I remember thinking, I would soon find myself confined to my home, and only my home, and as the years went on, sequestered in my bedroom, and finally, simply, alone in my bed with a quilt over my head.

  My opening act, a local Pittsburgh band, played for forty-five minutes. I heard the sounds of applause from out front and took one last appraising look in the mirrored wall, the fake blue flowers reflecting back at me. I looked pretty damn swank in my pink satin pantsuit. Although my bones were sticking out, overall I was feeling pretty okay. The Valium I’d taken earlier kicked in, and there was no reason to believe my Pittsburgh show would be anything out of the ordinary.

  Did things fall apart because of the accumulated stresses of the past year? Ben? James? Over the years I’ve wondered: Did I fall apart that night because Lucy was in the audience, and I still felt guilty, so many years later, performing solo, as the headlining act, without my older sister by my side? I have no answers.

  When I first appeared, the audience was giddy in a familiar way, but why wasn’t their energy and enthusiasm making me giddy in response? The set list opened with “Come Upstairs,” an up-tempo song of mine from my recent album of the same name, whose instrumental beginning sounds like a group of whirling dervishes. The song would have been vital, fun, and fresh, if only … if only I could reverse all the things that started to go so horribly wrong.

  When I began to play the tambourine for an eight-bar intro, my body started moving in some wild gyration, like James Brown, like Mick, like a dervish. I started to sense the first of several thudding heart palpitations, like giant steps across the arid landscape that was my chest. Turning my back to the audience, I found myself facing Mike Mainieri, my musical and social director, who saw trouble on my face—or, more likely, sheer panic.

  I was bent at the waist, trying to pretend I was moving along to the music, my arms seemingly groping for something, a bird-of-paradise effect that I’m afraid looked more like a wind-up monkey having a seizure. Four bars too late, and edging upstage toward the band instead of toward the audience, I began to sing “Come Upstairs,” a heart palpitation stopping me every few words, at which point I’d gaze back beseechingly at Mike, as if he had an automatic defibrillator on hand, silently begging him to scoop me up and get me into a straitjacket. I could hear the sirens now. Why? Why? Why?

  By the time “Come Upstairs” ended, I had sung at most a third of the song, and was trying to comfort the audience by blaming the microphone for whatever was going wrong.

  The bigger point
was that I’d lost my cool. It’s a good thing audiences spend most of the opening number distracted by the visuals, yet in this case the only visual they got was the thrilling spectacle of my hunched back. “The Right Thing to Do” was up next, a well-worn slipper of a song I should have settled into easily. It was a song I’d written in 1972 during the short flight from the Vineyard to New York, with James asleep in the seat beside me, breathing softly, looking so beautiful, so loved.

  That night, though, I couldn’t even seem to settle into a song I’d performed countless times. With my adrenaline still flooding me, I felt a fresh wave of dread and thirty seconds later, I stopped midsong, frozen and embarrassed, and turned my back again to the audience.

  Based on the strange, halting applause at the end of the song, the audience was starting to get alarmed. By now, I was convinced that unless I left the stage right that second I would really die, with poor Lucy given the unenviable task of pronouncing the official time and cause of my death: hysteria, mixed with ventricular fibrillation, Miss Simon leaving behind her darling brave blond children, Sally and Ben, and her on-again, off-again husband, James.… Again bending over at the waist, I tried to steady my breath, make it less frighteningly erratic. It didn’t work. That’s when I stood up straight. This is your moment, I remember thinking. You can either run away from it, or live through it.