Read A Ticket to the Circus Online
Authors: Norris Church Mailer
A Ticket to the Circus (47 page)
I was shaken, so sick I had to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was as dirty as the rest of the apartment. As I sat there, trying to get my head together and figure out what I was going to do next, it dawned on me that he must have
wanted
me to find everything. Why else would he have given me the keys to his studio? Why had he been able to cover it
up all these years, and for what reason
now
was he leaving clues big enough to drive a truck through?
I got up and flushed. Something in the tank blew up, and water started jetting out of the back of the toilet. Water was beginning to flood the floor and pour into the studio. Soon it would be going down into the floor below. There was nobody in the building except for me. There was no phone. Norman purposely didn’t have one so he wouldn’t be bothered while he wrote. Soaked from water spurting into my face, I managed to get the lid off the toilet tank and propped the ball thingy up with a book, which I hated to do, but there was nothing else at hand, so the water stopped spouting out, at least, and then I set out to mop the floor and in the process gave the place a good cleaning. I scrubbed for a couple of hours, unleashing my anger—crying and yelling and kicking the furniture with every mop stroke. Then, exhausted, I went back home and wrote Norman a letter. As I’ve said, the written word was the only way he would understand. We had been trying to talk for the past two weeks and it hadn’t worked.
Dear Norman,
Over the years I’ve often wished for some kind of psychic gift. The few times any inkling of that talent has presented itself has always been in dreams. When you went to Chicago alone that first time, I had a dream that you were leaving me. But you were so adamant about your innocence, I believed you when you swore you were only doing research. The dreams seldom occur, but they’re always disturbing, and up to now have always been put aside by your love and assurances. This morning, I woke up in a panic because the dream was so vivid. You know me well enough by now to know that the passion to know is an all consuming passion with me. I really believe I could forgive you anything if I only knew what it is I’m forgiving you for, and if I can believe that it’s over. You’re asking me to forgive you now, but something is wrong. You are lying about silly insignificant things. You are getting angry when I press you. I don’t believe you are really sorry. Even though you swore you’d never see April again, there is still the feeling that you have unfinished business with her. Why else would you tell me different versions
of the story? If the scenario was true that it was an uncompleted attempt, then perhaps you believe you have to sleep with her again to save your pride—not unlike the first time you and I made love, is it? Or is the scenario true that it happened and was better than you expected? Are you in a dilemma as to whether or not you will risk our marriage to feed the beast and continue the affair—one obviously just a bit more intense than you pretend?
With the dream sitting on me like a gray wool shawl, I went to your studio to see if I could find a clue as to why I can’t seem to get a handle on this. I know it was underhanded, but I feel like I’m fighting for my life, and you did give me the key, knowing full well I would use it. Your studio is such chaos that a systematic search would have been difficult, so I just looked through your desk drawer. Lots of interesting things in that drawer. Actually, I never found the letters from April that I had hoped would enlighten me to the intensity of your relationship, or anything that mentioned April at all, but I did find a Christmas gift, a copy of one of those fat little prehistoric women, with a card from “Your Willendorf Goddess,” Rita
*
, and then a note dated over a year ago from Linda* promising not to ask Norman Mailer for more money until March of 1990, but if you give her a thousand dollars she will love you. Have you been giving her money for sex, or just because she’s a “poor kid struggling to make it as a writer in the big tough world” as you once told me when I asked you why you were doing so many interviews with her? There was also a cute card with a row of women showing their butts, and a note thanking you for “One for the road,” from somebody in Florida, and a sex poem (one really can’t call it a love poem) from Pixie* in Washington. What in the world is THAT? Have I really been such a bad wife these last few years that you have turned away from me searching for a woman who can be all things to you? Or several that can be a little bit each? How have you had the energy? You’ve hardly lagged in that department with me. Well, maybe a little. At this point I am a very confused woman.
After more than sixteen years I feel like I’m living with a stranger. Incredibly, insanely, the sex has been better with you these last two weeks than it has ever been, and I’m remembering the early years. You are all consuming to me now. I only want, more than anything, to go on with you in the life we have. I want us to continue to love our children and have the home life we perhaps have taken for granted all these years. But if you truly are dissatisfied—even a small part of you—and you really need other women in your life to make you complete, then I won’t stay with you. I don’t want to end up a bitter wife, searching phone bills and Visa receipts for clues of infidelity, dying inside when you take a trip; not believing you when you say in that flat voice, “I love you.” I deserve better than that. I’ve given you my youth, but I’m not yet old, and I can still find happiness elsewhere.
Don’t call me right way. Use these next few days to think about what I’ve said. Sort out your feelings. For the first time, be honest with me. If you decide to go on with me, I want to know the extent of your affairs. Have the courage to tell me. Did you take someone to Paris that time you went to see Jean? Did you arrange to meet women at your lectures? Have you had women to our house in Provincetown all those weeks I thought you were there alone writing? If you can tell me the truth, all of it, I really believe I can come to terms with it, but I have to have the air cleared before I can start over and begin a new life with you—assuming you want to begin a new life with me, and you may not because to me, that means fidelity. For both of us. Talk to me. If in your heart of hearts you don’t want to give up other women, then get your balls together and tell me. Trust me. It’s not so difficult. My Alpha, at least, is a very understanding soul. And I do love you, it seems. I can’t help myself. We can have one of the great loves of this century, or you can finally, truly be free and alone—in Paris—if that’s your choice.
I’m not like my mother now. I’m not weeping. I’m dead serious. I won’t go on like this, so you have to do some hard thinking and make a decision.
Still your wife,
Norris
I faxed the letter to him in Provincetown, and within ten minutes the phone was ringing.
“Hello.”
“That was some letter. You really are a writer.”
“Are you trying to flatter me?”
“I’m trying.”
“You didn’t have to call. I told you to wait and think about it.”
“I don’t need to. I want to be with you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure.”
“Then I think you’d better come home.”
“I think I had.”
HE ARRIVED IN BROOKLYN
that night. He kissed the kids and then said we were going out for dinner. Instead, we went over to my studio, where I sat on the couch and he pulled up a chair to face me. Then he started to confess. He had been working on
Harlot’s Ghost
, his book about the CIA, for several years and it was due to come out soon. He said his double life started when he began researching that book, and I suppose it could even be true. The timing was about right. All the clandestine talking on pay phones, making secret plans, hiding and sneaking around, were perfect spy maneuvers. He said he needed to live that kind of double life, to know what his characters were going through. (It was an imaginative excuse. I do give him credit for that.)
He said he had been totally true to me, except for one or two tiny one-night stands with old girlfriends when he was on lecture tours, for eight years after we got together, which might even be mostly true. It was his grand experiment in monogamy, and I had believed him. While it could hardly be said the experiment was a total success, it was the longest he had ever been true (more or less) to a woman in his life. His nature was to be a philanderer. Still, if he was (more or less) true for the first eight years of our relationship, that left the last eight years in which he was totally, blindingly, a cheat.
“Why didn’t I know?” I said, incredulously. “How could I have been so ignorant all this time?”
“It’s not hard to fool someone who loves you and trusts you,” he
said, with perfect sincerity. No. I guess it’s not. I sat there silently and thought about that. “I’m going to tell you everything,” he continued, “but there will be no divorce. I don’t want this to break us up. You are my life, and I will not let you leave me.”
“You tell me everything and then we’ll talk about it,” I said. “I’m not promising anything now.” So he began, and the more he told, the angrier I got. Detail after detail, woman after woman. Once he began, it was like he was vomiting up a bad meal and had to get it all out. At one point, I started screaming at him, then I was on my feet, hitting him and scratching him, trying to really hurt him. He just buttoned up and let me do it, protecting himself as best he could. He never hit me back once. When I was exhausted, I fell back down on the couch and he continued. I couldn’t believe how much he had to tell me, how blind and stupid I had been. It went on until I could take no more, and then we went back to the apartment, where we went to bed, totally exhausted, fell into each other’s arms, and had wild sex. Go figure.
Great sex aside, my life was in tatters. Now that he had begun, every day brought more revelations, and in the midst of all this Sturm und Drang, our life somehow went on. We accepted social dates, we had family dinners, we became adept at showing one face to everyone and another to ourselves, although I’m sure we weren’t fooling anyone. Alone, I was scathing to him. He was brutal to me.
I remember once we were going to have dinner with Jason Epstein, Norman’s editor, and his wife, Judy Miller. On the way up in the elevator, Norman said something that made me so angry I reached out and scratched his face, just before I rang the doorbell. I couldn’t help it. It was a reflex, like my hand had taken on a life of its own. Three long, red marks appeared on his cheek. As the door opened, I smiled brightly and said, “Jason! How wonderful to see you!” He looked startled as Norman fumbled in his pocket for his handkerchief, and mumbled, “Oh, the cat got me, ha, ha.” I swept into the room, Jason following behind me looking confused, and nothing else was said about it.
It wasn’t the first time I attacked him. I couldn’t control myself, and he couldn’t stop confessing, giving me detail after detail, trying to explain why he had done all the things he had, over and over and over again. We might be in the back of a taxi, going to a black-tie dinner, and he would suddenly remember someone else he had slept with that
he had forgotten to tell me about. I would dramatically tell the driver to pull over, and I’d get out, either going on to the dinner in another car or making Norman get out and chase after me. It went on for weeks, his confession and my rage.
Then
Harlot’s Ghost
came out and publicity started for the book. To my horror, one of the girlfriends, Linda, the author of the note asking for a thousand dollars, a woman he had been giving money to for nine years, came to the book party. She was shockingly brazen, bringing photographers over to take her picture with Norman, standing close to him, looking in my direction as if daring me to come and do something about it. I ignored her. Finally, she came directly up to me, photographer in tow, and taunted me while he took pictures. Norman stood silently a few feet away, drinking, trying to ignore the whole thing. I was about to explode but refused to get into a fight with her, which was exactly what she wanted, a big hair-pulling fight that would land her in the newspapers. So I just told her in a low voice to enjoy the party, that she had gotten the last nickel she was going to get out of Norman, and I walked away. I could feel my insides roiling into a knot. This nightmare was never going to end. How could I continue to live with a man who would have a relationship with such a woman?
But it got worse. I went with him on the publicity tour for
Harlot’s Ghost.
He wanted me to. He insisted upon it. One of the first stops was Chicago. As we landed at O’Hare, he told me that the woman who was meeting us, the one who was to be our guide, driving us to the radio shows and appearances, was the woman he had been having the affair with. He had gotten her the job. But her name wasn’t April. He had made that up. I’ll call her Helen.
I was a wreck as we came off the plane. It was like a scene out of Fellini as she came to meet us at the airport gate. She was his age if not older; she wore a gray wig, was about five feet tall, and must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds or more. She was nervous, of course. How could she not be? I felt sorry for her; it was awkward in the extreme. Later, when I asked Norman what had attracted him to her, he said that sometimes he needed to be the good-looking one, and that he didn’t want to have someone who was competition for me. My head was swimming. It was so cruel to her, as well as to me, and she obviously adored him. I found myself chatting with her, trying to put her
at ease, and once when Norman introduced her by the wrong name, I cringed. What was I doing? The world had turned upside down.
We went on to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where there was another old girlfriend in the audience, also around his age. Again, it was awkward; again I was polite to her. I saw a pattern here, and wasn’t sure what to make of it. All of the women he had been seeing were older than I was; some were older than he was. But it didn’t make me feel any better that they weren’t young, nubile beauties. Did he think that made it all right? These women took over my life. I couldn’t think of anything else; we couldn’t seem to talk about anything else.