A Complicated Marriage

by Janice Van Horne

  After about a month of this hopscotch, one day Charlie told me about the only thing he still owned, the rights to the name Madison Avenue magazine. “I’ll be the publisher, you’ll be the editor,” he said as he scurried off to Penn Station. The next day he gave me a crumpled piece of paper that spelled out the premise: a monthly editorial magazine that targeted advertisers, each issue focusing on a different industry. There would be profiles of CEOs, a day in the life of an agency VIP, a magazine review board of agency creative stars to critique the industry’s advertising . . . The first industry: airlines. It was all there. All I had to do was fulfill it. And—oh, yes—the first issue would be in October.

  He also gave me three other indispensables: a cubicle of my own, an assistant, and an art director. I hired Kathy Bernard, the young daughter of my singing teacher, Graham, and Charlie hired Nicolai Canetti, a young émigré via Israel and Kenya. What a trio—Kathy and I knew nothing about advertising or magazines, and Nicki had never pasted up a galley. We shared ignorance and enthusiasm, and that would have to do, given our zero budget.

  Charlie knew what I didn’t: Because I was a novice, I wouldn’t question his preposterous time frame for the first issue. And, most important, because I wasn’t the usual advertising hack, I stood a better chance of getting to the people he wanted represented in the magazine. He had picked up on my lack of awe of people and just about everything else, the quality that Clem always gave me high marks for, and it would pay off at the magazine that catered to a world that thought very highly of itself.

  He also gave me a modus operandi I’ve never forgotten: Don’t mess with middlemen or public-relations people—go directly to the top. My own MO was to be myself, as a person and as a writer, and to trust my instincts, especially in terms of the look and feel of the magazine. Bottom line, I was guileless. These power guys had nothing to fear from me, this WASPy, well-mannered “girl” with blond highlights in her long hair, who wore silk skirts and blouses from Cacharel, Ferragamo shoes, and tinted aviator glasses, and who, after every issue closed, sent them a copy along with a handwritten note thanking them for their “participation.” No agendas, no jargon. I wouldn’t have known a hard question if it fell on me. Homey chats, a photographer who took flattering pictures . . . a good time was had by all. I let someone else do the sidebars with the marketing statistics.

  One sidebar of my own, money. During the summer, my salary consisted of the few bucks Charlie would pull out of his pocket now and then. By September, when I was working full-time on the magazine, there were murmurs of a part-ownership down the road. My friends told me I was nuts; the guy was a loser, I was being exploited, I’d never see a dime, I should have a contract . . . What could I say except, “Yeah, but I’m having the time of my life”? I didn’t say, “Besides, I think I’m falling for the ‘loser.’”

  The airline issue came out on time, all thirty-six pages of it. I had laid it out, titled the features, edited it, and written most of it. I loved my eight-to-seven days and beating my ignorance back with a stick at every turn. I loved the adrenaline throb and the surprises, as when Charlie would pop in and drag me off to some potential advertiser’s office—mostly magazine publishers—where he would schmooze about golf while I lent credibility to his pie in the sky. He always got the ad.

  I learned fast that publishers came in several flavors. Most of these high-and-mighties looked and behaved just as I would have expected: bankerish and tailored from Paul Stuart, shiny and fragrant from the barbershop, purring of Ivy League, photos of blond wives and children posed on immaculate suburban lawns. And then there was the publisher of Esquire. Gritty, thigh-slapping loud, somewhere between the dirty jokes and latest coup on the eighteenth hole, I heard him say, “I had his tits in the ringer.” I blushed. The guys roared; I blushed redder. Once again, Charlie got the ad.

  I also depended on Charlie, who, when I would get buried in overwhelm, would make me laugh and always remind me, “If it isn’t fun, it isn’t worth doing.” I loved my new title of editor in chief, which he had conferred on me in honor of the first issue, along with an honest-to-God paycheck of $100 or so. Hodgepodge as the airline issue was, I was proud of it. Charlie was, too. Like Johnny Appleseed, he would take an armful of magazines whenever he went out and would sprinkle them at newsstands and offices all over Midtown. The master “space” man now had a new product to sell—this time, his own.

  Not to say I didn’t fall on my face, hard and often, especially with the early issues. I even had a nasty habit of wanting to spell advertising with a z. But, as usual, Charlie said the right thing: “Hey, no one actually reads the thing. They just want to be in it.” I wasn’t so sure, but he was right insofar as no one ever threw my mistakes back at me. Except for Clem. A master editor, by propensity and for years by trade, he bore down on words and usage with the same intense scrutiny that he brought to art. It was what made his prose zing with simplicity and precision. But even there he was hard on himself and would sometimes grumble to me about how much he wished he could ease off and write more conversationally. As for Madison Avenue, every month he would grab it up, and the next morning it would be on the hall table. No judgment, no comments, just line-by-line red pencil. I would rifle through the pages in dismay. But I never dwelt on it, just as I never read the magazine once it was out. How could I? By that time I would be up to my eyeballs in the next issue.

  I hadn’t brought much of Norwich with me when I had come back to 275, except for some of the fossil rocks, which I stood along the back of my closet shelf. But, as single-focused on the magazine as I was, my thoughts were drawn back when a distraught Roberta called at the end of September to tell me that Steve had been arrested for the murder of Wendy Cooper. Her body had been discovered by a woman walking her dog in the woods near a shale quarry, the same quarry I had haunted during my fossil-scrabbling days. She had lain there for three months. After five hours of questioning, at two in the morning, Steve had confessed. It couldn’t be true. I envisioned him, terrified, no lawyer, coercion, brutality. Those things happened. But for Roberta and me, the unspeakable thought was that if he had done it, how had he managed to lie and carry on as usual during the summer?

  During his months in the jailhouse on the town green, I visited him twice with Roberta and brought him pizzas and talked about everything but what was. Feeling helpless, I talked to his lawyer on one visit and offered to pay for an independent lie-detector test. A sympathetic man who seemed to care about Steve, he explained that it wouldn’t help; there were facts revealed in Steve’s confession that confirmed evidence not previously revealed by the police. I heard what he told me, but my heart refused to accept it.

  As for the rest, the process played itself out over the next four months while the lawyers wrangled over the charges and Steve bungled a suicide attempt. In March he was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter and “murder in the furtherance of a felony,” i.e., attempted rape. It was the latter charge that had been at the heart of the wrangling and would result in the devastating sentence. Steve’s confession claimed the sexual preliminaries were consensual, but that he had been unable to consummate the act. Wendy had threatened to tell everyone what he had tried to do, and he had hit her to scare her. The jury deliberated fifteen days before convicting him on both charges. The sentence: twenty-five years in Attica. On leaving the courtroom, Steve tried to lunge through a window. To freedom? To his death? More likely simply out of despair.

  In the newspaper photos of him being led away after the trial, he was in bell-bottoms and a jacket too small, bone thin, his lank, straight hair below his shoulders. So diminished, so young. He had just turned twenty. Gone was the handsome boy, cocky and lovesick for his Roberta, who I remembered. I wished I could comfort him, protect him from what was to come.

  If I had any lingering doubts about leaving Norwich, they were laid to rest. I had bought into the clichés of rural living: good air, good people, a simpler life. All true, but I had also experienced narrow-mind
edness, loss of privacy, and a stultifying homogeneity. I was glad to return to the anonymity and unpredictability of a city where I couldn’t understand most of what people said, much less what language they were saying it in, and where murders didn’t even rate the first section of the Times. In a small town, small things became big things, and big things became catastrophic, and everything else festered in secrecy behind closed doors. Being a “fretter,” as Clem too often assured me I was, I had been unsuited for small-town life.

  The magazine grew, in pages and in depth, and Charlie came through on his promises. In addition to a burgeoning paycheck, I now had a one-third ownership, along with Charlie and a golf buddy silent partner. The magazine moved to its own offices at 750 Third Avenue, where a new salesman, a writer, and a receptionist joined the “staff.” No more mom-and-pop store.

  When I was sure this would be my life for some time to come, Sarah and I moved two blocks south to 257 Central Park West, close to Clem and Sarah’s school. The building, originally a hotel, had recently been converted to apartments. Though awkward and haphazard, as most conversions were, its smallish five rooms were bright and had a modern flair, thanks to the ceramic Spanish tile the previous tenant had installed in the open kitchen and long hallway. As always, decor was a snap: I simply papered the walls with large paintings. Sarah and I would both grow up there. During the next seven years, Sarah would go from Manhattan Country School to the Lenox School to Trinity to Vassar, and I would become an accomplished “woman of business.”

  As the months passed, I quickly mastered the how-tos of getting a magazine out, but it never got easier. The fatter it got, the more editorial it required and the faster I had to run. Added to the frenzy was the attraction between Charlie and me. He was coming on strong, and I found his high energy and appetite for fun irresistible. Flirtation eventually moved to the inevitable. But there was a twist that was new to me that would prove to be no fun at all: Charlie was a devoted suburban husband with two children. As with magazine editing, here was another challenge, but the guidelines kept shifting under my feet, and the guide, even more inept than I, quickly became the problem. Worse, this was a skill I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to learn.

  But, like it or not, too soon I was in the middle of a traditional marriage and, therefore, in the middle of a traditional “affair” with all the trimmings. Hush, hush, “she” must never know. It had been ten years since my marriage had moved into “open” territory, and since then, whatever our choices, Clem and I had made them freely and with forthright communication. No wonder I wasn’t prepared for the fallout.

  On a whirlwind trip to Los Angeles—our first and last out-of-town junket—Charlie laid it on thick with the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, limo, et al. Two days jammed with business calls, sandwiched between visiting old friends and haunts. Spur of the moment, he added on a weekend in Las Vegas. On the way to the airport, he told the driver to first take us to Disneyland, another of his favorite places. We dashed from ride to ride. He knew the drill; it was as if the seas parted and the place was a private playground. Yes, it was all fun, but it was also as if Charlie were putting on a high-speed, this-is-my-life show and I was the audience of one, clapping on cue. By the time we were on the plane, I was played out.

  In Las Vegas Charlie made for the craps table, and that was that. I wandered around, played some blackjack, and soon went to bed. In the early hours, I woke up and went down to see how Charlie was doing. He was easy to spot. Alone at a table, pale, his eyes glassy, he rolled the dice like an automaton, the chips pushed to him or raked away from him, mostly away. I had never seen gambling like that; as an addiction, it made alcoholism smell like a rose. I knew it was time for me to go. When I got his attention, the exchange was simple: I told him I was heading home, he told me he was going to play poker off the strip and asked me to lend him money, as the hotel had cut off his credit. That was easy. I took my AmEx card to the cashier. I went upstairs and made a reservation for the early-morning flight to LaGuardia. Later, when the phone rang, I picked it up, figuring at that hour it was probably the airline or Charlie. It was Charlie’s wife. We were both startled. The conversation was short. I wrote Charlie a note telling him about the call and left for the airport.

  On the plane I felt a surge of release. I was out of it. They would figure things out. If I felt anxious or guilty, in my usual way, I buried it. After all, we were all grown-ups. I slept until the wheels smacked the tarmac. For the will-the-plane-fall-out-of-the-sky fretter, another first.

  From then on, it was farce. She: the raging wife, screaming betrayal, threatening dire ultimatums, throwing his things out of the house. He: guilt-ridden, suicidal, falling-down drunk (Charlie rarely drank). Me: feeling woefully miscast as a femme fatale mired in the ugly mess. All feeling like victims.

  Farce aside, I felt cannibalized by them, chewed up as dinner-table fodder as they played out their marital push-pull rituals. I had nightmares of family meals deteriorating into mayhem and chaos and carving knives and ravaged food. Fanning the flames, Charlie would insist on a daily blow-by-blow of the latest he-said-she-said. I, who had always recoiled from confrontation, did my best to close my ears and closet myself in work.

  In time, things simmered down. Perspective was restored. And insights, dripping with hindsight, flooded in. Right at the top, I vowed never again to get involved with a “hush-hush” married man. Far too high-maintenance. I also recognized that beyond the magazine, which had triggered a powerful bond, Charlie and I had little in common. Madison Avenue was like a favored child that we got a kick out of, and that bond would continue. But we didn’t really think alike or care about the same things.

  Just as in the past I had never considered leaving or divorcing Clem to be with anyone else, I never considered doing so now. I think my relationship with Charlie had initially reminded me of the theater, where the sheer thrill and proximity of the production would lead to a liaison—short-term, long-term, whatever—where the parameters were always clear, and casual. Not to have picked up on the differences in an office relationship with a married man and the potential damage to all was short-sighted, to say the least. Overall I reconfirmed the simple homilies: Sneaky behavior is sneaky behavior, and why lie, when the truth feels better?

  Whatever the drama and insights, my work came first. And the pace accelerated when Charlie made a deal with WNEW, Channel 5, in New York, for Madison Avenue on TV. The series of shows would be aired on Sunday nights at eleven o’clock, the “dead zone.” Co-hosted by Charlie and me, the shows mirrored the magazine by highlighting an industry’s advertising, followed by a discussion by marketing and creative pros. All I had to do was get the bodies in the chairs, compose a bunch of questions, and keep things lively. Easy, except for the lively part. But what about makeup, clothes, hair? I was more nervous than I had ever been on a stage. I could hear Strasberg sneer when I blew the opening and we had to do three takes.

  When Charlie again reassured, “Don’t worry, nobody will watch it,” this time I believed him. Who would possibly be interested in the making of commercials, much less in the middle of the night? But Charlie had a nifty new sales toy. We did four shows: airlines, soft drinks, corporate advertising, and, my favorite, advertising to women. As with the magazines I never read, I never did look at the shows, so I had no idea whether I sweated through my silk or whether my fake eyelashes were fabulous or ludicrous.

  Also in the course of that first year, Madison Avenue took to the road with regional issues. Every three months, photographer in hand, I headed to a different major market. I would interview the leading advertisers and media directors, gather agency heads for a give-and-take market assessment, and then write my personal take of the city. In interviews I never used a tape recorder; it took too much time to filter out the chaff from the grain. With my trusty speedwriting notes, I often wrote up an interview in the taxi on the way to the next, or long into the night.

  Early on I recognized that industry leaders were not just mon
ey men; most were passionate and creative. Top of my list was Charles Tandy of Tandy/RadioShack, entrepreneur extraordinaire. I talked to “Chuck” in the back room of a storefront in Fort Worth, home base of his billion-dollar corporation. Scruffy, feet up, people in and out, whiskey, beer, and cigars all around. He may have looked like he was kicking back, but he sparked with energy, for conversation, ideas, and “the dream.” His credo: low overhead, hard work, focus on the product, grow big and then bigger, but stick with what you know. From selling leather crafts to being poised on the cusp of the microchip revolution to becoming a retail household name, he was always a gambler—he called it “betting on the future.” A puckish jokester surrounded by geegaws: the rubber tit on his desk to summon another round of drinks, the witch’s mask with the “pull me” string that drenched me with water, the ubiquitous fart cushions. His CB handle? Mr. Lucky. He might have used a touch of suave, but I never forgot him, and I was sad when, a year later, his luck ran out and he died of a heart attack at sixty.

  One of my most discomfiting encounters was with Hugh Hefner. Not because of my budding, if late-blooming, feminism. On the contrary, the “girls” I chatted with around the pool at the Mansion or while munching superb hamburgers around the big dining-room table were smart and straightforward. Just like Hefner, who was, in addition, generous with his time and invitations to this movie or that party whenever I was in town.

  I went several times, once in the late seventies, to a New Year’s Eve party with Sarah. For all the hype about Hefner, this event, like the others I attended, was quite tame. Even with the mandated attire of “sleepwear,” the diaphanous baby-doll creations were more PG than titillating. I am sure there was snorting and sniffing going on, but not so one would notice. Hefner was fiercely antidrugs; his addictions were Pepsi and sex. And even when Sarah and I cruised the infamous “grotto,” we saw nothing we hadn’t seen on the beaches of Saint-Tropez.