A Ticket to the Circus (37 page)

I’m not going to pretend Carol and I were all sweetness and light about this arrangement. I was in favor of him adopting Maggie to make her his legal daughter, while Carol had made it clear she would prefer to be married to him longer, for a year or so, and then “quietly” divorce, as if that would be possible with the ravenous press, but that was not his plan. He felt bad that he hadn’t divorced Beverly years ago when Carol had gotten pregnant, and he wanted to marry Carol to “honor their years together.” He didn’t want Maggie to be his only child whose mother he had never married, even if it was for only twenty-four hours. I truly sympathized with Carol—she hated publicity and was intensely private about her life, and now she was right in the middle of this media frenzy—but when you fall in love with somebody like Norman Mailer, you have to understand publicity is a given.

Since divorce papers can’t be signed before a marriage, Norman
had to trust that Carol would go along with the plan and sign the divorce agreement immediately after the wedding ceremony. The press was having a fine old time, constantly calling the house (every wire service in the Turkmen Republic and such places had our home phone number, it seemed), so Norman thought the best thing to do would be to call Liz Smith, who was a dear friend and the fairest columnist there ever was, give her quotes, and that would defuse the others. I think I told Liz something like, “Of course it is all a bit disconcerting, but I understand why Norman wants to do this, and I am in support of him.” And I was, finally. Really. It would have been horrible for Maggie to be the only child whose mother was never married to her father, and his years with Carol had lasted longer than some of the other marriages. Besides, Carol had never caused Norman a lot of headaches or publicly gone after him for more money or said ugly things about him in the press, as some of the others had, and she deserved better.

Still, as I watched him walk out the door that Friday night, I had a brave face, but I knew he was on his way to marry a woman he still had feelings for. (He would always have feelings for her. It was something I learned to live with, like arthritis.)

After I had a loud, cleansing cry, I layered on the makeup, put on one of my best dresses, and went out to meet Louie Cabot and his then wife, Maryellen, who had kindly invited me to the ballet that night. Rudolf Nureyev was dancing, the first time I had ever seen him, and we sat in the front row, where I had an unimpeded view of his powerful musculature and graceful moves. That pleasure aside, I vowed never again to sit in the front row. It took all the magic out of the show. We were privy to the grunts of the dancers as they jumped and executed difficult moves; we saw the sweat fly from their faces; and the shoes that from afar seemed a part of the foot, so soft and pliable, clattered alarmingly loud across the stage. I prefer to be farther back and imagine that the dancers are magically flying. At any rate, it was a diversion from the business that was transpiring at just that moment with Norman and Carol, who were being married by a friend of ours, Judge Shirley Fingerhood, in her offices. They had written their own vows, which were on the order of, “I want to honor the years we have spent together and the love that created this beautiful child, Maggie.” I’m sure if I had been there I would have been weeping.

After the ballet, I came home and checked on my sleeping children. Then I went to bed. Alone in our room, I lay awake, wondering if Carol would indeed allow him to marry me, or if she had changed her mind and decided to be Mrs. Mailer for a while and let me stew, as she had stewed for the past ten plus years while he was married to Beverly or living with me. But my worrying was for nothing. She signed the papers. Carol was a decent woman, and she knew that I, too, had a small child who was waiting to be legitimized.

Norman came back from Haiti two days later, Sunday, with the promise that the decree would be delivered on Monday. We couldn’t plan a wedding without the divorce papers in hand, and we had tickets to fly to London on Tuesday night, where Norman was acting in the movie
Ragtime
for Milos Forman, playing the architect Stanford White. I didn’t dare even tell anyone the wedding might happen. I let it be known that we would probably get married when we got back from London. Norman had secretly gone by himself on Monday morning to Tiffany’s and bought me a ring, one that made my heart sink when he presented it to me with a flourish. It was a thin band of tiny alternating diamond and ruby stones, which seemed to me like the cheapest ring he could find. It wasn’t my style at all. I am a big girl with big artist’s hands, and a ring that delicate was just not something I would have picked for a wedding ring. Although I didn’t want to be ungracious, I let my feelings be known. I couldn’t help it.

“Why couldn’t you have just bought a plain gold band? That would have been much better than this. I don’t care about diamonds [which was a big fat lie, I’d been hoping for one], but I am not going to wear these teeny diamond chips. And I hate rubies. Have you ever once seen me in a red piece of jewelry? Don’t you know me at all? How do I take my coffee?”

“Your coffee? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you know how I take my coffee in the morning?”

“I don’t know. Black?”

“
You
take yours black! I drink it with milk and sugar. See, you’ve never even noticed. You don’t know the smallest thing about me.” I was in tears, for a lot of reasons that had nothing to do with the ring or the coffee, I’m sure. He was furious that I was being ungracious about his choice of ring, so in a foul humor, we went back to Tiffany’s to
change it. We were so angry with each other that he walked down one side of the street and I the other. As a compromise, we got a plain gold band and added another little diamond and ruby band as a guard on either side, which made it look more substantial. Then we went back home and waited. There was nothing all day, then late Monday afternoon, the doorbell rang. It was the papers from Haiti.

Tuesday morning dawned, a cold, bright November day, and I woke up early to find Norman sitting on his side of the bed holding his head in his hands. I studied him with sleepy eyes. He looked so depressed. A feeling of woe came off him, as if he would rather do anything today than go through another marriage; as if he were thinking he couldn’t keep on having children with women and marrying them, there had to be a stopping place. The woe crept into me. I thought, “Maybe I should tell him to forget the whole thing.” Maybe he was sorry he had left Carol and wanted still to be with her. Maybe he just didn’t want to be married at all, to have no responsibilities and do as he pleased. I had been looking forward to this day for years, but if even a little part of him didn’t want to marry me, then I didn’t want to marry him.

“Sweetie? What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

“All my life, all I have ever wanted was to be free and alone in Paris.” He said it so sadly. I was right. He didn’t want to marry me. Should I offer to step aside and let him go to Paris? Was that what he really wanted? I leaned up on my elbow and gently put my hand on his arm.

“Look, sweetie. What would happen if you were free and alone in Paris? You would be walking down one of the boulevards and you’d sit at a sidewalk café to have a cup of espresso. A pretty girl would walk by and you would give her one of your twenty-five-cent smiles. She would smile back and stop to talk. You would invite her to sit and buy her a cup of coffee. You’d go to a museum, and then take her out to dinner. Soon she would be living with you, and then she would get pregnant, and you wouldn’t be free and alone in Paris anymore, would you?”

John Buffalo, two and a half, came in, sleepy-eyed, climbed into bed with us as he did every morning, and snuzzled down under the covers. Norman laughed and said, “You know me too well. It’s scary. Okay. Let’s go get married and legitimize this little bugger.”

Norman, me, and the “little bugger” Buffalo.

So we kicked it into high gear. I called my mother and daddy and my closest friends. Pat Lawford sent over a case of champagne. Jan Cushing, who was my eight-months-pregnant matron of honor, had a wedding cake delivered. I ran out and bought a champagne-colored satin suit, and Judith got on the phone with our other friends and family. “What are you doing today at five? Want to come to a wedding?”

Norman and I rushed to get the marriage license. David Dinkins (later the mayor) was the city clerk who gave it to us. We invited him to the wedding, as well as Mayor Ed Koch, both of whom came. Everyone came. It was all a big crazy blur of our friends and family. Michael, unfortunately, was away at school in Andover and Sue was in Mexico, but most of the kids were there. Matt and John Buffalo, of course, Betsy, Kate, and Danielle. Stephen, fourteen at the time, was the best man. John wore a little burgundy velvet sailor suit with a white satin collar. During the ceremony he kept asking, “When are we going to cut the cake?”

We hadn’t thought about pictures at all, but Dotson wanted to take
pictures, and the only film we had in the house was an old Polaroid camera, which jammed after the first one, so our only wedding picture was of me, Norman, and Father Pete Jacobs in the kitchen after the ceremony. Norman looks like he is in shell shock, I am smiling so wide my face is about to crack, and Father Pete looks worried because he was always in trouble with his church. He couldn’t marry us, of course, because Norman was Jewish and I was Baptist—forget our checkered marital pasts—but he was a friend and we wanted him to do something, so he read a poem—for which he was reprimanded when his church found out. A rabbi named David Glazer performed the actual ceremony, and for years I heard he told everyone we were members of his congregation. I was so grateful to him, I didn’t even care. If he had asked us to join his temple, I would have.

Norman, me, and Father Pete Jacobs at the wedding.

It would have been nice if my parents had been able to come, but they were so thrilled that we were finally getting married, it didn’t matter. I was no longer the tootsie; I was the wife. What a difference it made, not just in my feelings, but in the way the world treated me. Now we got invitations to Mr. and Mrs. Norman Mailer, not Norman Mailer and guest. I could say “my husband”; I was Mrs. Mailer when I called a restaurant for reservations; I had the same last name as my son. A hundred little things changed with the signing of one piece of paper. We had been living together for more than five years, talking about it every single day, and finally we were married. I had never been so happy.

We left the guests eating cake and drinking champagne, and off we went for a week in London. I spent my wedding night, high over the Atlantic Ocean, staring at my wedding rings, which sparkled in the overhead reading light. I had changed my mind about the tiny rubies and diamonds. Never underestimate small stones. They have their fire, too.

The morning after our arrival, I was as emotionally worn out by everything that had preceded the trip as I was by the jet lag. Norman had to get up early and be at Shepperton Studios by seven o’clock to shoot his big scene, but I was going to sleep all day if I could. He had been gone only a short while when the phone rang. It was Milos Forman.

“Norris, are you asleep? I’m sorry, but can you come out here at once? Norman is in a scene where he is enjoying a show of dancing girls, and he just pointed out that Stanford White would not be at a table alone at such an event. He would have a beautiful woman there with him. I want you to be that woman. I want you to be in the picture.”

I jumped out of bed, threw on clothes, and ran out to the waiting car. The movie was based on the book
Ragtime
by E. L. Doctorow, which was set in 1906 and centered on the killing of the famous architect Stanford White by socialite Harry K. Thaw, who was married to Evelyn Nesbit, a former showgirl and ex-lover of White’s. Thaw discovered Evelyn was not a virgin on their wedding night, and she then implied that White had raped her at age sixteen. Thaw became obsessed with the architect and finally shot him at close range in Madison
Square Garden, which White had designed, in the middle of a show,
Mamzelle Champagne.