A Ticket to the Circus

by Norris Church Mailer

  In the couple of years before I got cancer, I gained a lot of weight, maybe because of menopause, or inactivity. I’d stopped doing yoga, and then after the first surgery, I didn’t do any kind of exercise. I felt really unattractive and bad about myself but couldn’t seem to diet. I needed food as a comfort, I guess. I still hate to see pictures of myself during that time. We were living in Provincetown all year by then, so the two of us didn’t do much except hang around the house and write or watch TV. We had a few friends in for dinners and went out to eat once or twice a week, but life was definitely in the slow lane.

  In order to have something to do in the community, I joined the board of the Provincetown Repertory Theatre, and in 2002 there was a crisis and the director quit. I volunteered to take over and plan a season that year. I thought I could do it for little money, as we used to do at the Actors Studio, and somehow we pulled it off. John Buffalo came up with some of his friends from Wesleyan, one of whom was Tommy Kail, who went on to direct In the Heights, which was written by another friend of theirs, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and which won the Tony for best musical in 2008. They did a series of short plays that we once had done at the Actors Studio that were cheap and funny and were a big hit. I called in a couple of my studio friends, too, to do one-person shows, and somehow we put together a season. Which was truly a miracle, because a week after I volunteered to do all this, I got a call that my father had gone to the hospital again and wasn’t expected to live.

  Everything came crashing down. I turned over the theater business to my assistant, David Fortuna, who single-handedly saved everything, and I went to Arkansas. My father had severe heart damage. Over the years he’d had heart attacks and two bypass surgeries, and he wore a pacemaker and defibrillator. My parents and I spoke on the phone twice a day, a habit we started when I got sick, and when I had spoken to him that morning, he’d been in a great mood. The previous night he had cooked chicken and dumplings and homemade peach pie while my mother worked in the beauty shop. They invited a neighbor for dinner, and I remember him saying, “I haven’t felt this good in years. I have so much energy.” Then, only an hour or so after he hung up, the defibrillator started going off and it wouldn’t stop. He likened it to being kicked in the chest by a horse, and usually once it went off, that was it, the heart went back into rhythm and life went on, but not this time.

  They called my aunt Chloe and uncle Ira, who came and picked them up to take them to the hospital in Little Rock, a drive of more than an hour. By the time they got there, my father was in agony, repeatedly being kicked without pause, over and over. They didn’t expect him to make it through the night, so I got there as quickly as I could. But the staff at the Arkansas Heart Hospital were heroic. They brought him around, and somehow he got better. I stayed a couple of weeks, sleeping on a lounge chair in his room, my mother on a sleeping bench, or we went back and forth to Atkins, which was a tiring drive. Then we brought him home. He was not able to do much for himself, and my mother, who was eighty-three, wasn’t able to take care of him, so we hired a nurse to come in every day to help with his bath, meds, and generally take care of things. I rented a hospital bed, which we set up in the dining room.

  Then when I thought they would be okay, I went back to Provincetown and tried to work on the theater stuff and be with Norman, who was not doing so well by himself, either. Not long after I got home, my father had to go back to the hospital. That began five months of going and coming, back and forth, to the hospital and home. John or some of the other kids started coming to stay with Norman while I was away, and Matt came to Arkansas to help me with my father a few times. Or John would come with me to Arkansas and Matt would stay with Norman.

  All of this was made even crazier by a project Norman and I had gotten ourselves involved with that George Plimpton had started, a play about the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway called Zelda, Scott and Ernest. It started when John Irving’s wife, Janet, wrote and asked Norman and me to do a reading of A. R. Gurney’s play Love Letters as a benefit for a school she and John had founded called the Maple Street School. Norman said that he wasn’t the right type to play the role, which was a patrician WASP, but why didn’t I do it with George Plimpton? I called George, who was willing, but he said, “I have a play we all three can be in.” It was a blast of fresh air in our staid existence at that time. It was written by George and Terry Quinn, all taken from the works of Zelda, Scott, and Ernest, from letters and books, stories and essays. I loved being onstage again, and the two of them were such hams that it was marvelous to watch them. Norman wore his safari jacket, and George wore an orange Princeton tie. I wore some kind of twenties era glamorous garb and did a broad Alabama accent. We had a great time, the audience loved it, and the second time we did it was in Provincetown for a benefit, which raised a lot of money for the theater.

  Then somehow, thanks to George, it took wing and we started doing it everywhere. We did it at the Ninety-second Street Y in New York, at the Folger library in Washington, D.C., and at the Fitzgerald Festival in Saint Paul, Minnesota. George was splendid at finding venues for us. He arranged a seven-city tour of Europe, and we did it in London, Paris, Vienna, Moscow (in the presence of the mayor, Yury Luzhkov), Amsterdam, Berlin, and Prague. I began to feel a kinship with Zelda that went beyond an actress’s passion for her character. We shared real elements of life. We were both Southern, married to talented well-known writers; I was a painter, as was she; and we both were writers. I was not a dancer, but longed to be one. If dancing hadn’t been on the sin list, I would have taken ballet as a little girl, and always was wistful I didn’t get to do that.

  Norman was a nicer man to me than Scott Fitzgerald was to Zelda, but he didn’t especially want me to be a writer. He discouraged me in the beginning and never really took what I did seriously. He liked a few of my paintings, but he preferred abstract impressionism, the favored painting of the fifties, the background of his best young years. It was the same with jazz. He always said he loved jazz, but in fact he didn’t really like the music part of it at all. He liked the ambiance of jazz, the language of jazz, the hipness of jazz. If we were in the car on a trip and I put on some Sonny Stitt or Thelonious Monk, he would ask me to turn it off. He preferred silence when we were driving, either silence or conversation or napping. I couldn’t listen to audio books on our car trips, either. Those set his teeth on edge worse than music, and he couldn’t bear it.

  So I felt a true kinship with Zelda and understood her madness and passions. I was never near to madness myself, but I understood it. And a part of me sometimes wished I could just give in and become mad rather than have to be the stable force in everyone’s life, the one who was always taking care of people, the one everyone turned to in a crisis. I just wanted to cry and scream sometimes and have someone take care of me, but there was no one who could.

  Matt came down to be with my father, who was in the hospital again, while we went on one of our trips with the show, this time to Paris. I worried about my father, but having sat beside his bed for weeks, I needed to get away for a few days.

  There was no one more fun to travel with than George. He was always forgetting his tickets or schedule or dirty laundry, which a concierge once ran after me carrying, as George had left it in a bundle in his room. He was constantly rewriting the script, too, and a few times he frantically made changes as we were walking out onto the stage. It was a miracle we ever got the show done, but we did, and everyone seemed to love it.

  In Berlin, there was a disturbed girl in the audience who for some reason would yell every time I spoke. She didn’t do it when the men spoke, just when I did. I have no idea why Zelda (or I) upset her so much. Everyone around her tried to shush her. They did everything short of throwing her out, which they should have done, but finally, I could take no more. I didn’t know if she spoke English or not, but I stopped the show and addressed her directly, still in character as Zelda. “Sweetheart,” I drawled, “I know just how you are feeling. I have been a little derange
d myself, from time to time, and I surely do understand that once in a while our poor minds just slip off the rails. But I need you to stop yelling while I’m talking, because poor Scott is about to die, and I need to finish this play so we can all go home. Can you keep quiet for me for just a few minutes? Do you think you can do that?” The answer was applause from the audience and more loud abuse from the woman. Somehow we got through the show, and only then did the ushers come and escort her out.

  When I got back to Arkansas a week later, my father had not improved. In fact, he was getting worse. He could no longer swallow and was starving to death. He was so thin it was shocking. I couldn’t stand the idea of him starving, and I am ashamed to say I forced him to get a feeding tube put in, which he didn’t want. But I just knew that if he could get some nutrition he would be stronger, and then maybe he could withstand an operation called an ablation that they had said was the only thing that might save him. I don’t know why they didn’t just say to me, “He’s dying. There is nothing we can do,” but they didn’t. They held out this carrot of the ablation, even though it was never realistic. I don’t think doctors ever want to give up. They look upon death as their own personal failure, and they want the family to have hope as long as they can, even if it’s false hope. Which is not good. It’s better to know the truth and work with the reality of what is happening.

  Getting the feeding tube down his throat was a horrible experience for him, and he couldn’t deal with it, so they pegged it directly into his stomach. It only prolonged his suffering. I am so sorry I insisted on it. I hope wherever he is, he has forgiven me for that. Matt and my mother and I stayed with him for several weeks longer, sleeping on the chair or the bench, Matt sleeping on the floor. Occasionally we would go to Atkins to bathe and change clothes, or go to Aurora’s house. I was nearing the breaking point.

  Then one day I hit it. Matt and I were in a little family room off the waiting room by ourselves, and I began to cry and say that I couldn’t take it anymore. I prayed to God, “Why have You let him suffer all this time? It’s enough! Whatever he had to learn, whatever we all had to learn from this, it’s enough! Just take him and let us all stop suffering!” Matt held me while I ranted to God, and he cried along with me. I have never felt so helpless. It was like we were in hell and couldn’t get out. Hell was the waiting room and the recliner and my father lying in a coma on his back, his mouth open and dried out, me constantly rubbing Vaseline on his cracked lips and swabbing his poor dry mouth with a lime-colored sponge dipped in ice water.

  That night was the worst. I didn’t sleep at all. He would make a noise and I would jump up to see if he was all right. He hadn’t been able to speak in weeks, or even open his eyes and look at us, but that night he made whispering noises that I desperately tried to interpret but couldn’t. Then I watched the sun come up in a clear blue sky. It was July 21, a Sunday morning, like all the sunny Sunday mornings of my childhood when we would get up early, play Tennessee Ernie Ford gospel songs on the record player, eat breakfast, and then get ready to go to church. I was looking out the window thinking about all this when I heard a noise behind me. It was my father, sitting up in bed. He was wide awake; his blue eyes were clear and shining. His skin was rosy and he looked happy. “Daddy!” I said. “You’re awake! Can I get something for you?”

  He said, as clearly as if he had been talking to me all morning, “I want you to take your mother and go down to the cafeteria and get her something to eat. She hasn’t been eating right and it’s going to make her sick.” Well, okay! Look at this! He’s better!

  “Oh, I’m so happy you are talking again! I’ll get her some breakfast and then we’ll come back and we can talk this afternoon.” I got my mother together, and she was happy he was talking again, too, and kept on hugging and kissing him. I lingered behind a minute as she went to the door.

  “You just want to get rid of us for a few minutes, don’t you? We’ve been driving you crazy, I know.” He nodded. My mother couldn’t keep from rubbing him and touching him, and even when he was asleep, he flinched away from the touch. He was too sensitive to be touched; he wanted to be left alone.

  “Take your mother up there with you and take care of her,” he said. I knew he was talking about Provincetown. I kissed him and promised I would, that he didn’t have to worry about her, and I followed my mother to the elevator.

  As we were eating breakfast, she shivered. “Did you feel that cold wind blow through here?” she asked, rubbing her arms as if she had a chill.

  “No, I didn’t feel a breeze at all,” I said. There were no windows in the cafeteria; she must have just imagined a wind. We started back to the room, but before we got there, we were met by the nurses. I could see on their faces that he was gone. I guess my talk to God the night before had been taken seriously.

  John and Norman flew in the next day for the visitation and funeral. Small towns really come into their own at a time like that. Women from the church brought food, and our neighbors all came by with a dish of something. We had picked out Daddy’s favorite blue suit with a white shirt and a beautiful silk tie I had gotten him one Christmas, and I had it over my arm, ready to go to the funeral home for them to dress him, when our neighbor Euleta, who was in her nineties, came up on the porch. She was carrying a dish of ambrosia and trying to get the screen door open at the same time, and she scraped the back of her hand on the door latch. A whole big piece of skin peeled back, like the skin on an overripe peach. Blood started to go everywhere. I threw the clothes down onto a chair and ran and got a wet rag to wrap around it. But there was nothing I could do. I had to get her to the doctor’s.

  “I have to take Euleta to the doctor’s, Mother. You hold down the fort. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Even though she lived only a block away, Euleta had driven over and had parked behind my car in the driveway, so we managed to get her car keys out of her bag, and I was going to take her in her car. Except I couldn’t get behind the wheel. She was so tiny that she had the seat pushed up as far as it would go, and with my long legs I couldn’t even get in far enough to push the seat back. It was a grim comedy, she with her hand wrapped in a bloody cloth trying to move the seat back, me trying to squeeze in and push it. The clinic was only a few blocks away, but there was no way she could walk it. Finally, after a long struggle, we got the seat back and went to the clinic. There was a waiting room full of people, and by that time, the smile I had pasted on my face was getting a little wobbly. I was learning another lesson in patience.

  “Good morning,” I said to the girl at the desk. “Euleta here has just cut her hand badly. I know there are a lot of people ahead of us, but I do think she needs some immediate attention.” The girl was nice, and went back to talk to the doctor, who let us go right back. I could feel the eyes of the people in the waiting room follow us, all curious to know what had happened, all disappointed they would have to wait yet longer. I knew the doctor from times I had been there with my parents, and he was sympathetic. He glued the skin back in place; there was no way stitches would hold. “Old people’s skin gets rotten,” he explained, “and stitches would pull right out.” Euleta was embarrassed she had done such a thing, and we hurried out of there. So that’s what we all had to look forward to. Our skins rotting while we were still living in them.

  My father would have had a good time at his visitation, which was held the night before the funeral. He loved visitations and funerals and went to a lot of them. It was the main social activity he had. When I went through the pockets of his suits before I gave them away, I found stacks and stacks of funeral cards.

  There was a big turnout; everyone he knew down through his life came. He was one of those people who made you feel happy, just to be around him. He was always helping someone, trying to do some good in the world. Larry was there and had bought Matt a new suit, which was nice of him. He’d always liked and respected my father, even though my parents hadn’t wanted us to get married. My mother held up pretty well as we stood beside
my father’s coffin and greeted everyone. He looked so handsome. He had beautiful high cheekbones and a thin nose, even more so than I did, and he looked like he was peacefully sleeping. I couldn’t believe I would never get to hug him or talk to him again. I wished over and over that somehow we had managed to live closer together. But he would never have left Atkins, and if I had it to do over, I still would go to New York. I had stars in my eyes, too many for Atkins, Arkansas, to ever satisfy.

  It was a hot sunny day in July as we traveled the backcountry roads up to Shiloh, the cemetery where he was to be buried. It was on the side of Pea Ridge, a hill overlooking the river valley below. The church in the cemetery was formerly the one-room schoolhouse where Daddy had gotten what education he had, up to the eighth grade, and then he’d had to go to work to support his family. He’d had a hard life, but once when I said that, he said, “No, I’ve had a good life. I’ve done everything I wanted to do. I was able to work at a job I liked and was good at, I had a wife and a daughter who love me, and I have grandchildren and friends. I’ve been blessed.”

  Norman and I, Matt, John, and my mother rode in the limousine following the hearse, and at first Norman was working at making inane comments about everything, the countryside, the weather. No one was responding. Finally, he said, “I guess I don’t have to make conversation, do I?”

  “No, sweetie. Let’s just enjoy the ride through the pretty country.” And we went the rest of the way in silence, which was like a balm. It was soothing to relax into the nice leather seats and watch the green miles slowly roll by, strange to drive up to the cemetery I knew so well, knowing I would be leaving my father there. He loved that place; it was home to him. When I was little, he would bring me out there and we’d cut open a watermelon and eat it beside the graves of his mother and father, my mule skinner grandpa Jeames and his wife, Sallie Pigg, the beauty. When Matt was little, just a baby in arms, my father started taking him up there and showing him the graves of all his relatives. Then John, in his turn. He told them stories of when he was a little boy, how he and his friends would make a flying jenny out of a tree, pulling a small sapling down until they could get on it, then letting it go, which propelled the kid into the air. It’s a miracle they all survived. He taught my boys how to drive up on those roads of Pea Ridge when they were eight, way too young to learn to drive, but they were both excellent drivers, just as I was, and I had been the same age when he’d taught me.