A Complicated Marriage

by Janice Van Horne

  That art scene was becoming mine, at least insofar as that was where I spent most of my time. If someone had made a movie about that world, I would have been a nameless bit player, the girl who stood off to the side of one of the leads. As the novelty wore off, I grew accustomed to that bit part and, not knowing how to change it, succumbed to it. More unsettling were my behind-the-scenes, unstructured days. There had always been school, a job. Now, for hours, I read and thought about poems that I would never write. I hadn’t the words. Soon I stopped thinking about it.

  I was amazed by how insular the art world was. Not that I knew anything about culture “worlds,” but I figured it was because the New York scene was so relatively new and small. I was particularly disappointed that there was so little interaction between artists and writers. Clem, associated with all the avant-garde magazines, from his Partisan Review days on, had always moved in both circles, but, unfortunately for me, the literary people had turned out to be the social casualties after his breakdown. As he had told me that first night at Delaney’s, he had pretty much made a clean sweep. True to his word, there would be only a few forays into the literary crowd, during our first months together, and then none.

  Yet even as I prepared myself for total art immersion, an exception presented itself, a party at Lionel and Diana Trilling’s where I met Mary McCarthy. She outranked any movie star, thanks to her sexy, cut-to-the-chase short stories in The Company She Keeps, which I had gobbled up at school. Fabulously beautiful, with her pale delicacy, she had all the litheness of a swan and, with her gleaming dark hair, all the sly sleekness of a panther. I even managed an exchange with Jessica Mitford, who so flustered me with her cool British-ness that while gushing and blushing about how much I loved her books I made a senseless hash of titles and characters, none of which she had written. She rewarded me with a smile of ill-disguised pity for which I was abjectly grateful.

  More sustaining were the parties given by Oscar Williams, the poet and anthologist, and his poet wife, Gene Derwood. Oscar, almost leaping out of his shoes with the joy of life. I was glad he had escaped Clem’s clean sweep. Oscar lived on top of a small industrial building on Water Street near the fish market. Dark, not a soul to be seen except the poets climbing those rickety steps to the promise of spending an evening with writers who wrote. One night, I stood on the roof next to Saul Bellow, looking at Brooklyn and its beloved bridge. We talked about the Dodgers and I told him how, as a child, my older brother, a fanatic Giants fan, had for years made me memorize all the Giant lineups in order to impress his friends. Saul smiled and said, “Not a bad thing to know.” I remember thinking, This is a moment.

  And then there was a quintessential New York moment. Rush hour, pouring rain, no umbrella, not a bus in sight. I had just come out of Macy’s, having had a lousy haircut on the cheap, when a taxi from nowhere appeared. As I reached for the handle, another hand covered mine. She smiled fiercely and growled, “Mind if we share?” Somehow, between 34th Street and Bank Street, we warmed to each other, exchanged names, and I almost fainted. My new best friend was Jean Stafford, the woman who couldn’t write a bad short story if her life depended on it and whose novels The Boston Adventure and The Catherine Wheel had opened my eyes to what it might be like to write from the inside out.

  I gushed compliments and then, overcome by sheer abandon, I blurted out that I had just moved in with Clem, who I figured she probably knew. She did, and I asked her up for a drink. She accepted, and the three of us hung out drinking for an hour or so. I was delirious—finally, a conversation I could bathe in. Then, too soon, my new best friend dashed off into the night and out of my life forever. Well, except for an occasional wave across some vast bar or restaurant. She, by then married to A. J. Liebling, I, by then married to Clem, we were evidently not destined to be a foursome. All for reasons, past and not forgotten, such as happen in a social enclave too close for comfort, and such that I could not begin to unravel.

  Yes, there were a few time-outs, but for the most part life was art, art, and more art. My days, unstructured as they were, slipped into the semblance of a routine. Usually, having been out late, we would sleep until ten o’clock or so in the sanctuary of our air-shaft bedroom, which would turn into bedlam on weekends, when the building’s weekend drunks would get it on, loud and violent, the women, to my surprise, outlasting and outcussing the men. I’d make breakfast for Clem: orange juice or half a grapefruit, one fried egg sunny side up, yolk runny but not too runny, two strips of well-done bacon, one piece of rye toast, and one cup of coffee, half with the egg and half after. Me? I was more of a corn flakes and orange juice sort. Then Clem would go off to Commentary, just like the husband in my “picture.” Well, with a few tweaks here and there. And I would busy myself with what I thought a wife-to-be would do—I nested.

  My new nest came with a new neighborhood. Ninety Bank Street marks the spot where Hudson Street becomes Eighth Avenue as it continues to Central Park. Then, as always, it was a major truck route northward through the city. Problem was, Hudson Street was still paved with cobblestones. Day and night, starting around 4:00 AM, the trucks would ker-thump past our second-floor apartment. The bigger the trucks, the more our windows rattled.

  Across Hudson, on the corner of Bleecker, was the last public toilet and watering hole for horses in the city. An elegant Greco-Roman octagonal structure, it could easily have passed for a monument to the heroes of a forgotten war. I never saw anyone, living or dead, enter. Directly across from us was a storage facility with blind windows, and to our north, a massive GE warehouse. All of which provided us absolute privacy; no shades ever need shroud our windows. A block north, Abingdon Square, established in 1836, sat as a gateway to the smooth macadam of Eighth Avenue. For all its high-tone name, it was in fact a small woebegone triangle with a few splintery benches and a forbidding statue of a war-weary soldier dedicated to the neighborhood casualties of the Great War. No one, except an insouciant pigeon or two, ever sat or played inside the park’s iron fence. A pall lay over it, and I fantasized about what dreadful thing might have once happened there.

  Of course, on the ground floor of our five-story building was the Imperial Liquor Store with its neon sign, which on warm spring nights hummed and sizzled. Al, its owner, was like family, except better. He cashed checks and stocked Tanqueray for Clem, an exotic brand of gin in 1956, and a big step up from the $2-a-quart Mr. Boston’s from my college days. Also under us on the corner was an appliance store with air conditioners and television sets that sang siren songs to me as I walked by. Within the year, I would talk Clem into buying both. The TV in time for the World Series. The air conditioner was a harder sell to someone who had lived his whole life in New York without one. But like so much that I introduced Clem to—like having a Christmas tree—he took to it. Especially the TV.

  Unlike me, Clem never watched indiscriminately; it had to be funny or real. In particular, Imogene Coca and Sid Caesar, and the fights. We would each score rounds to see who made the best call. He was chagrined that I usually had him beat. On Sunday afternoons the set would be on to whatever game was on, with Clem wandering between his desk and the bedroom, a drink in one hand, a book in the other. Somehow, he never missed a big play. But the best was when we curled up for late nights with Jack Paar. He was right up our psychological alley. For five years, from eleven thirty to one fifteen, it was like watching a striptease of the man’s id, ego, and superego. It was such a New York show, so hometown.

  I may have assumed a new role, but I didn’t have the props. A cook with no pots, a housekeeper with no vacuum. One Saturday afternoon, on the way to a movie at the Greenwich, we went to a hardware store and bought two Revere Ware pots and a frying pan. I foresaw that this might well be a one-time shot at domestic togetherness. And I was right. But that day Clem was as exacting as if he were looking at paintings. The pots must be the precise size to suit our needs, and they should last for millenniums. To me, a pot was a pot. Then, as if on cue, a salesman arrived at
our door, selling vacuums. I wasn’t home, but to my amazement, Clem bought one. He was very proud of that major purchase. To me, it was better than diamonds. I was now a bona fide housewife, and as such, I began to gussy up the bare bones of my domain.

  At a fabric store on West Fourteenth Street I bought a nubby, mold-green remnant of mysterious origin for a dollar to re-cover our upholstered chair. Also a curved needle, edging, and fabric glue, all recommended by a motherly saleslady. On the chair’s weary frame I cut and draped and sewed and pasted, then stood back to admire my handiwork. If I squinted it looked fine, except for the bilious color and the springs poking up that hardly showed at all. Next, with a scrap of shiny white cloth with large gold dots, a piece of string as a curtain rod, and thumbtacks, I fashioned a curtain for the tiny window in the bathroom. For my finale, I painted the bedroom a dark rose, with grim results. Terrified ever after of wall color, I would never again venture beyond white.

  Then, once more, as if on cue, another salesman appeared—probably a relative of the vacuum guy—and sold us a rug off his truck for the bedroom. Puce, which effectively transformed grim to grimmer. The rug shed and smelled iffy, but we hadn’t expected too much for $15. I took on the entry into the kitchen, stacking and restacking Clem’s paintings that were stored there, hoping each time to further compress them. I needed the space because I wanted to put away Clem’s paints, card table, and easel. I wanted a living room.

  Clem turned a disinterested eye on all these “improvements.” Except for the rug. Being a barefoot guy, he relished its softness and in later years became addicted to wall-to-wall carpeting. While relieved that he didn’t criticize my efforts, I was disappointed that as much as I puttered and pasted, no one really cared but me. That was on gloomy days. Most days I suspected Clem got a kick out of it all. And I knew he loved the eggs and bacon.

  On rare occasions, we would invite four people for dinner, that was my limit. I would set up our two card tables and, to disguise their different heights, cover them with the damask tablecloth my mother had given me. I would serve my only dish, beef Stroganoff and mashed potatoes from the Good Housekeeping cookbook, a present from my college friend Nancy Spraker. One night, right before Esther and Adolph (Gottlieb) and Ileana and Leo (Castelli) arrived, Clem made some remark about the potatoes and I threw them at him. He laughed, I cried. Though I was secretly thrilled by my audacity.

  Any criticism was agony, but with cooking I was most vulnerable. I had never learned how. Helping in the kitchen as a child had meant mashing an orange pellet of food coloring into a pound of lard to make “butter” during the war rationing years. My mother was a hamburger, hot dogs, Jell-O, and open-a-can kind of cook. Best times were when we would go across the Boston Post Road from our apartment house to the diner. A real diner, silver on the outside, with porthole windows grimy with steam and torn-up red booths. Turkey with soggy dressing and bright yellow gravy and soft rolls topped off with gelatinous cherry pie. Heaven. Our hair would frizz from the steam. And my mother wasn’t tight-lipped and cranky from having to do something she loathed.

  Unfortunately, I followed my mother’s ways and ever after felt alienated in the kitchen. When I cooked for people, it was not with love but with trepidation. Coupled with that, my taste for food remained that of a child, a diner child. Before college I had never tasted anything as exotic as lasagna or pizza. An analyst would tell me one day that food hadn’t been “validated” for me—my first encounter with psychobabble—which I found marvelously funny. It was also true.

  About once a month, Clem and I would give a party. Unlike our drop-in gatherings, these were the real thing, where we actually called and invited people. “Spit backs,” Clem would call them. Cheese, chopped liver, and some nuts would suffice. And no A and B list; uptown, downtown, and sideways, we invited everyone who had recently invited us, plus close friends and anyone who happened to be passing through. In fact, parties were often prompted by out-of-towners, usually young artists who Clem thought should meet as many locals as he could round up. He believed strongly that artists should get to know each other, talk about art, see what was going on in New York up close and personal.

  One such evening was a particularly large party for Pierre Soulages, in from Paris. There was the usual throng of Bennington girls and art types, among them Lee and Jackson. By now, I had gotten to know them a bit. We had been out to their place in Springs for a few weekends. Uncomfortable times, for me. Things were easier in New York when they would sometimes come by on Jackson’s weekly trip to town to see his analyst. Such was that occasion.

  Mid-party, mid-crush, Jackson pinned me against the stacked paintings in the kitchen and started in on all the reasons why Clem and I shouldn’t get married. Clem was too old, I was too young. Why would he want to marry me? Fucking was one thing, but you don’t have to get married. What the hell did I think I was going to get of it? On and on, ending with the inevitable coup de grâce, “If you think it’ll last, you’re crazy.” Nothing new, except for the language, from the garbage I’d already heard from my family and even ex-teachers at Bennington. But this was the first, and only time, anyone close to Clem had confronted me, and the only time I was the bitch who was out to hog-tie Clem.

  Not to say that over the years there wouldn’t be critics of my performance as Clem’s wife. My reviews would trickle in and were often harsh, but they were never said to my face. But to Jackson that night I was a nobody who had crashed the good-old-boy party. I wasn’t shocked by his words; I had grown up with a raging drunk. But I was hurt and bewildered. Who was this angry guy breathing Scotch all over me? Why did he care so much? Was he afraid I would break up his buddy times with Clem? As if I ever could, or would. But I never had the chance to say a word. I was trapped. Tears were welling, and Jackson backed off.

  I probably told Clem the gist of what Jackson had said. And he probably replied, “Fuck’m, he’s drunk,” or some such. Jackson soon left to continue his own party and no doubt forgot all about it. I would have to do the same. It was painfully clear to me that other people were never going to get Clem and me right. Also clear was that Clem was an old hand at not giving a damn about what others thought. I was going to have to learn fast how to toughen up. And then we all went out to dinner at El Faro, the cheap Spanish hole across the street on Bleecker, and that was that.

  The post-party drill was always the same. After dinner, depending on the crowd, we might wind up going back to Bank Street for a nightcap and more art talk. Sometimes Clem would put Fats Domino on the portable record player and we’d get it on to the thrills of “Blueberry Hill,” or Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” and we’d dance. But most often, dinner would be followed by a walk down Hudson to the White Horse for drinks in the back room, or the Half Note for jazz. That was always the destination if artists David (Smith) or Ken (Noland) were along, or if the out-of-towners were from abroad. To them, jazz was the big thing. So American, after all. So like abstract expressionism, they would say. With that, they would segue into rhapsodies about the American West, cowboys, and, for some reason, San Francisco. Clem would shrug and call that kind of thinking a bunch of crap picked up from second-rate writers in American art magazines. A trip west? A waste of time. Just look at the art, all of it, he would say. Go to studios, see what’s going on here, where it’s happening.

  And for happening jazz there was the Half Note, the Five Spot on Cooper Square, the Vanguard—those were the places. We heard Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and so many others. For me, it was all Thelonious, though it would be an acquired taste. Ever since the days when my high-school boyfriend and I and a bunch of friends would drive into the city to Eddie Condon’s, the girls in their crinolines primly tapping their feet, smoking, drinking Horse’s Necks, feeling sophisticated, listening to music we couldn’t dance to, couldn’t sing along to, I had found the sounds discordant, jarring, and boring. My heart was still with Patti Page and “The Tennessee Waltz.” But Thelonious now brok
e through to me. “Blue Monk,” “Round Midnight” . . . I didn’t know all the names, but whatever he played, he and the music were one. I could let go and not think about what I was listening to. Being there was all. A new experience. I couldn’t listen to jazz on the radio or on a record. Canned, congealed versions of the real thing. I needed the darkness, the smell of booze and smoke, and the sweat and passion. What came out of them was raw. I never could accept that what I heard had names or had been put on paper.

  Some weeknights at the Five Spot there were now poetry readings. Among the dreadful were a sprinkling of stars: Kenneth Koch, Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg—who would later knock our socks off, and everyone else’s, with his Howl—and all the Beats, who would soon be packing them in. And the capper for me was that the jazz clubs weren’t the Cedar Bar.

  There were also the quiet evenings with Clem’s closest friends, one of whom was the painter Friedel Dzubas. Wiry, dark, a lingering German accent that on Friedel, even to my German-phobic ears, sounded charming. A dedicated womanizer, he seemed to be wrapped around a different dazzler every week. I liked him. He was fun and lively.

  Clem’s other close friend was Sidney Phillips. Clem had met him in 1938 within weeks of moving into the city from Brooklyn, where Clem had been living with his family. Thanks to a $30-a-week government job at the Customs House, he had finally been able to afford a place of his own, a room with a bath down the hall for $25 a month. Sidney was in publishing, first at Scribner’s, then at Dial, and by the time I met him, he and his wife, Gertrude, had founded Criterion Books. We saw them often, usually for dinner at their place. Talk was about books, a relief for me, and sometimes we would dance to Belafonte records. For Clem, Sidney was that soul-mate confidant, that touchstone of common sense who was always there for him. They were a perfect choice to be witnesses at our wedding. In turn, they asked if we would like a party afterward. Yes. And if we would like to use their farmhouse in Great Meadows, New Jersey, for a weekend honeymoon. Yes, again. They even offered the use of their car.