A Ticket to the Circus

by Norris Church Mailer

  By the time I’d been there awhile, I’m sure she knew what Norman’s and my relationship was, but we didn’t discuss it. I had the feeling she didn’t really care. He had been around the mulberry bush so many times with other wives and women that I imagined she thought I was just one more and would soon be gone, so she might as well have fun with me while she could. I went with her to synagogue, and the whole congregation was buzzing about it. “Who is that tall redheaded shiksa with Fan?” they whispered. We giggled over how mystified they were. She cryptically introduced me as her friend. And I was. I really don’t know what I would have done without her during that time.

  Fanny and me in Ptown.

  I spent the first days after Norman went back to Maine cleaning the apartment. I got down on my hands and knees with an S.O.S. pad and scrubbed the kitchen floor until I could recognize the terra-cotta color of the tiles, and worked on the soy sauce fridge for a whole day. I was afraid to throw anything out, even the fish heads, but it all got a good scrubbing. I was dying to paint the place. I have never liked primary colors, and he had done the whole place up in red, white, and blue, to match the Lego Vertical City of the Future, which was on the cover of Cannibals and Christians and took up much of the living space, but I didn’t dare even broach the subject. (The LEGO city itself was dirty but uncleanable. I tried it, and it was so fragile the pieces fell apart.)

  But finally all the cleaning I could do was done, and I realized that it was late summer, Norman was still in Maine with the family and would be for another few weeks, and I was alone; I didn’t know exactly when he was going to come back, or what was going to happen when he did. I didn’t want to push him for any commitments. I knew that would drive him away, like with Annette, whom he hardly mentioned. So I pretended to be stronger and tougher than I was. He liked strong and tough, and in a way I was deceiving him, but in the acting, I did become stronger. Still, it was hard on me, and hard on him, knowing I was so close but yet so far away. I missed my son and worried he was going to forget me. He wasn’t much on the phone. He was always in a hurry to get back to his toys or TV or whatever he was doing. I told Matthew stories of New York, and all the things we would do when he got here, and I hoped he understood how much I loved and missed him. I wondered at times, when I hung up the phone after an unsatisfactory talk with him and my parents, if I was doing the right thing, but then I would look out at that view and I knew that there was no place in the world I wanted to be more than right there. Just walking the streets gave me energy, a solitary kind of purpose, as if I were finally entering my real life.

  AFTER WE’D BEEN apart a couple of weeks, Norman arranged for me to come and spend the night in Maine in a little motel near where they were staying. I flew to Boston and then Bar Harbor (the first time I had ever been on a small plane, which was frightening) and checked into this seedy little motel. He came over in the morning and spent the day with me, but had to go back home by dinnertime. I had dinner alone, read for a while, went to bed early, and then got up the next morning and took the little plane back to New York. It wasn’t a good visit; we both felt too guilty. He had to lie and make up some excuse for being away all day, and I had to lie to his mother about visiting friends in Boston for the night. I felt bad about Carol, too. Although I was in love with her man and would have done anything to get him away from her, that didn’t mean I liked myself for it, and for the first time I left Norman with a sense of myself, ourselves, as bad people. I wrote Norman a letter as soon as I got home.

  WEDNESDAY

  Hello, Darling—

  Whether or not you will read this is something I haven’t decided yet, but I need to write it down to get it out of my system, if nothing else. For the first time since I’ve gotten here I am in total misery. The plane ride back was awful—I sat next to a little old lady who talked constantly about her children, grandchildren and dear departed husband, who were all geniuses, fantastic artists (at 41½ years) etc. etc. Then I called your mother who was out, Matthew, who didn’t have time to talk to me because he was playing, and my mother was busy working. Even you seem far away from me now. Neither of us was at our best these last two days—there were too many things on both our minds. You have this terrible confrontation with Carol to constantly dread, and I know there must be times when you are not sure if I am worth it. We haven’t been together long enough to establish a middle ground. We don’t have fifteen years of shared experiences and children to bind us together when one of us is a bit off and we start to get dull. You were feeling blue this morning when I left because that marvelous high we give each other hadn’t come—and you knew how much we both needed it to tide us over until the next time we are together again. Norman Mailer, I am deeply in love with you. I am saying this to a man with whom, if you count on your fingers, I have spent slightly more than three weeks—but in that length of time, or even the first time we were together if you prefer, I found in you, and in myself when I am with you, a life-giving force that I take from you and return in a current so strong it frightens and exhilarates me at times into a pitch nearing frenzy. Never before have I met a man with whom I could so completely let go—all of the animal instincts that have been lying dormant these years have been touched by you. You have the power to look into my head and sort through the dusty stacks of whatever miscellany has collected in the 26 years of my narrow existence, and find—occasionally—something worth taking a second look at. If there were no other reasons I would love you for that alone—but there are other reasons. Both of us are enormously physical people. With us sex is as much a need to be satisfied as hunger. Your body has become an obsession with me. More so each time I see you—you charming little chunk of muscle, hair and musk—you have me wrapped around that splendid cock of yours. You can’t possibly have an inkling of the feelings you have unleashed in me. There are times when I start coming and can’t stop that I want to scream and ask God to please let me remain intact because every nerve in my body is on fire. And you were surprised when I said I was jealous. There are times when I turn a fetid pea soup green because it should be me jumping off the deck with the boys and climbing mountains with you—being there out of the way when you’re writing, in case you need me—sleeping with you every night, lying close to you, feeling my soul leave my body to glide over and briefly enter your body—making us one while I waver on the edge of dreams. Yes, I want you. I am a greedy, selfish bitch at times, and if I could get you by tearing hair and scratching faces, I would—believe me—but you wouldn’t want me on those terms, because the only way I will truly have you is for you to have me in the same way—to give you as much (or more, for you are even greedier than I, my dear) as I get from you. That’s why we get so upset when one of us is a bit off—we want all of it all of the time. But the middle ground will come in time.

  So here it is a few hours later. I feel much better. Your mother called and invited me over for dinner. She was quite upset when I didn’t come home last night—I guess I didn’t make it clear I would be away all night. We had a good (low calorie, bless her) dinner and I told her all about my adventures in Boston with Martin and JoAn. It eats at me to have to lie to her, but by the time I’ve finished the story I believe it myself! I did have a good time with you in Bangor, and in spite of the horrible sense of loss that kicked off this letter, it was worth it. Seeing you under the worst of circumstances is infinitely better than not seeing you at all.

  It’s beautiful here tonight. The sunset was fabulous. I went for a walk around the neighborhood at dusk, and the feeling of tranquility I got has carried over and given me a tired sweetness. All the poisons have worked themselves out now.

  I’ve thought carefully, and have decided to go back on the pill. I hesitated because you were right—I’ve noticed subtle changes for the better taking place in me since I’ve been off the pill, but the alternatives are repugnant to me—I believe they will kill something between us. And I know this is not the time for the baby—he will come in his own time—God! What a
boy he will be! I know I’m not pregnant, but I don’t know what I would do if that were the case. I cannot conceive of killing our child, or of bringing him into the world when even a small part of us doesn’t want him. I hope it’s a decision we don’t have to make.

  I’m tired now, and going to bed. I feel drained, but not as lost and desolate as I was. I miss you terribly, but that is something I’ve lived with since I met you.

  Goodnight, Darling.

  I love you.

  Barbara

  MOUNT DESERT

  Darling,

  Looking back on it, my Love, we were stacking a few odds against us last Tuesday. I was sick with a cold I’d been holding off by way of much Vitamin C—it doesn’t stop the cold so much as put a manhole cover over the symptoms until you stop taking the C pill & let the nose begin to weep. And that infection on my chin was backing up. Once in the Army I almost got blood poisoning. Had an infection on my knee—a mean-looking scab—much like my chin presents now and then the lymph gland in my groin began to swell. I was a day away from blood poisoning when they stuck me in the hospital.

  Then add getting up very early in the morning and leaving a note that I’d be gone for the day for writing—a lie I’d never quite told before. Ah, baby, there was heaviness in me. And when we made love right away, I felt this godawful dead space in me after I came. So empty. In all the time I’ve known you, I never felt anything like that before. I literally wondered in the half-hour preceding breakfast how we could uncover enough to talk about for the rest of the day. And all that dull heavy stupid guilt.

  So we spent that afternoon and evening chasing after magic and secretly furious with each other and ourselves when it would not come, not the way we were used to it. And all the while there was never enough energy. I felt as if I were chasing after my own energy all day.

  I know now how I could relive that day. I’d recognize that it always takes us the first day to get started. Then after the first day, it starts, and we’re in that place where all we want to do is find a way to separate out six or eight hours to spend in one room in bed or else there won’t be time to do it all, every last ambitious greedy thing we want to fuck, tease, implore, shake and slyly elucidate out of each other and then go again. No wonder it takes a day to begin. Next time I have a day alone with you, and only a day, I swear we’ll take hours before we even touch each other—I want every part of us to wake up to the fact that we’re together before we even kiss once. Can you imagine what a sweet torture that will be? I don’t know if we’re near to that, but it’s our next step so long as we are forced to see each other for only a day or overnight. There’s too much between us for it to be ready all of it at once from all the crossroads of our body and the knots in our nerves right from the start after days or weeks of not seeing each other.

  It’s like I want to wine you and dine you and just get the tip in, and then, please Gawd! just let an elephant step on my ass.

  I’ve been lying around with my cold finally come, and happy with your letter—sometimes it’s as if you speak with my private critical sense of things—and enjoying the recollections of yesterday on the mountain. I don’t know when I’ve been more tired than going to bed last night, but my body feels so honest today. I think I would like to spend a week in that park with you—we could have some long and crazy walks, and some of the cliffs are as close to rock climbing as we’re likely to get. I wonder if you would be too tired in the evening to revolve me in the sleeping bag?

  I love you angel.

  Norman

  Nineteen

  Norman had strong ideas about birth control. He thought the pill was absolute poison for women. Maybe that was why he had so many kids. (You think?) I don’t know that he was wrong. It certainly has been under the microscope, and anything powerful enough to alter a woman’s ability to conceive has got to do strange things to her system. Not that he totally influenced me. If I had wanted to be on the pill, I would have been, but I’d been on and off it for years—on it when I met him—and it wasn’t good for me. It made me bloat and gain weight. So when I went on the diet to get ready to meet Wilhelmina, I got off the pill and we tried using other methods, none of which we liked. After I lost the weight, I went back on the pill, thinking I would just work harder and keep on eating less. That didn’t work so well, so I got off it again, at his suggestion, to dire consequences.

  … And the pill. God, I admire you for living seriously with everything I say. I think you must stop it. It’s insanity for us to have a child right now—and that means we’ll have to live on our sexual wits to keep from impregnating you before we can begin to do anything about it, but there are ways and we’ll talk about them. The first thing, apart from love and fidelity and commitment and children is that there’s something evil about the pill as if one’s most beautiful fucks go directly to the devil. Besides, I think the pill is terrible for a woman’s health, and if she’s in love, it’s next to cancer. No, we’ll have to splice the rope and do without it…

  It was madness, but the week he arrived for the second time in New York, I got pregnant. I was terrified. Here I was, fresh off the boat, so to speak, all alone and nobody to confide in except his mother or sister, whom I obviously couldn’t tell. He couldn’t just up and leave the family in Maine and come and be with me. It would have been too disruptive for everyone. So it was a tough time for both of us, me not knowing if he was really going to be with me or what, and him worried about and wanting to be with me while having to be the consummate dad—hiking and sailing and pretending everything was normal. He swore to me he was going to leave Carol, but it wasn’t something he could do overnight in the middle of summer vacation. We discussed it and decided that whatever happened with the baby, he would split his time between New York and Maine—then Stockbridge—until after Christmas, and then on the first of the year he would come and live with me full-time, and we would go back to Arkansas and bring Matthew to live with us. What would make it bearable was that we had two big trips to tide us over until he moved. In September, there was the Muhammad Ali boxing match in the Philippines—the Thrilla in Manila—and then we were going to Rome for a month in October and November because he was writing a movie script for Sergio Leone, based on a book called The Hoods, that Leone was calling Once Upon a Time in America. Our life together was just beginning; we were like two excited kids. And then I got pregnant.

  He called a few friends, among them Amy Greene, who had also become a friend to me (and is to this day), and José Torres, a boxer who had been the light heavyweight champion of the world, to tell them I was there alone and needed a friend, but not that I was pregnant. No one knew that. Of course, Norman and I talked on the phone every day and continued to write letters. Again, I pretended to be stronger than I was. I had learned that tears had little effect on Norman, and in fact were repugnant to him. So I did my crying when I was alone, and brazened out a kind of humorous cheerfulness on the phone and in letters to him.

  Then one day something odd happened. It sounds like a twisted fairy tale, but I swear it was real. It was the middle of a hot early September afternoon, and I had just lain down to take a nap on the bed in the living room. It’s possible I might have dreamed it, but it didn’t seem like a dream. A small blue fairy-like thing flitted in and out of the edge of my vision, twinkling like a little bell. “It must be a bluebird,” I thought, and I sat up in bed, thinking it had flown in through the open door to the balcony. I peered around the room, but couldn’t see it anywhere. Then I lay back down and it popped up again, flitting just around the periphery of my vision, over my head, never close enough for me to see clearly what it was. When I tried to look at it directly, it disappeared.

  The sun set and the light faded into twilight, the magic hour, and the bluebird glowed brighter. All of a sudden, I simply knew. It wasn’t a bird; it was the baby. It was trying to decide whether to come into me or not. I lay there, and tears flowed from my eyes. I prayed to God. I couldn’t ask Him for forgiveness—I
didn’t want to be forgiven. That would mean I would have to forsake my sin and leave Norman, and I wanted desperately to stay with him—and yes, one day have his baby, but I knew that now wasn’t the time. I selfishly wanted to take the trips, I wanted to be a model, I wanted to have some time to get to know Norman, for us to be out in the open about our relationship, to get married and make a life together.

  I began to talk to the baby and tell him (I knew it was a boy) that I loved him and wanted him so much, just not right now. I went back and forth between talking to the baby and talking to God. All I could ask for was the wisdom to make the right decision, whatever it had to be. I asked God to help me, to have mercy on me, and to let it all work out. I knew it was greedy of me to want a man who already had seven children and such a tangled past, but I also knew without question that it was right for us. We both knew it, as if it had always been inevitable. I slipped into a deep sleep then, and woke to the doorbell ringing.

  It was José Torres and four or five of his friends, stopping by to keep me company with a big bag of food. I didn’t know what Norman had told them, but I pretended I had a little stomach flu, and they stayed for quite a while, laughing and telling funny stories, playing music and cheering me up. No one could laugh like José. He slapped his knee and fell off his chair laughing, which made everyone else laugh, too. I will always have a soft spot for José, who has now passed over like so many of our old friends, bless him. He was the kind of friend who would pick up dinner and visit a person he hardly knew, just because his friend asked him to.

  A few days later, I met Chuck Neighbors, who was the literary agent for B. C. Hall, my old creative writing teacher at Tech. B.C. had published several novels and some nonfiction, and he’d called Chuck to see if he might represent me as a writer, too. B.C. knew I had been working on a novel I’d started in his class when I was a senior and my first husband, Larry, was in Vietnam. I still didn’t know if I was going to be able to model or not. Amy was trying to help me get more pictures to show Wilhelmina before she sent me up there, as she thought the ones I had brought from Arkansas weren’t good enough. Racking my brains for a way to make some money, I thought I might be able to write magazine pieces, or perhaps even get a publisher for my book, which I was calling Little Miss Little Rock.