A Tragic Honesty (52 page)

Dubus and the other married students were almost ideal companions for Yates: Most were hard-drinking men's men who loved to stay up late and talk about books, and they admired Yates both as a writer and a personality. When he wasn't shouting them down on some literary point or lost in the throes of another hilarious coughing fit, he'd teach them his vast repertoire of show tunes, ribald ditties, and patriotic anthems. He loved the clever rhymes of Cole Porter and Lorenz Hart (particularly the latter's “Mountain Greenery”: “While you love your lover, let/Blue skies be your
coverlet
…”), which he'd linger over with leering relish as he sang verse after verse in their Quonset-hut duplexes. Along with his occasional cartoons, the nearest thing Yates ever had to a hobby was learning old songs and working out routines for performing them, and his memory for lyrics was flawless. Sometimes he'd prefer obscurity for its own sake, whether a parody version (e.g., “Honey Suck My Nose” for “Honeysuckle Rose”) or an old Wobbly
*
variation (“You'll Get Pie in the Sky When You Die [That's a Lie]”)—but the climax of almost any night's recital was an old WWII hillbilly anthem called “There's a Star-Spangled Banner Flying Somewhere.” The sentimental vet Yates would become when singing this song was an affecting sight, and fellow servicemen such as Bob Lacy couldn't resist joining him in joyous harmony. One verse in particular elevated them into a kind of ecstasy:

Though I realize I'm crippled that is true, sir,

Please don't judge my courage by my twisted leg,

Let me show my Uncle Sam what I can do, sir,

Let me take the Axis down a peg.

“God, how we loved that song!” Lacy remembered. “And, God, how Yates used to love to lead us in it! No doubt there were happier moments in his life. But those were the happiest I ever saw. We'd be gathered in someone's kitchen, our heads, including Yates's, all leaned in close together in a drunken bouquet, and the look on his face as he put us through our musical paces would be positively beatific. Occasionally a spouse or girlfriend might stick a head in the door to see what was going on, see what all the racket was. But after one look they'd shake their heads and go away.”

Yates's high spirits were a necessary outlet, because he was miserable in almost every other department of his life. “Dick walked around with the weight of the world on his shoulders,” said Kittredge. “On the one hand you had the poet Marvin Bell, who'd just written a poem that day and would write another tomorrow, whistling on the way to his eleven o'clock class. Then three o'clock would roll around and here comes Yates shambling down the hallway, depressed as hell because he's got a six-hundred-page novel and doesn't know if it's any good.” Somehow he needed to make his unwieldy manuscript cohere by Christmas, but teaching proved too much of a drain on his time and energy. “If that goddamned movie thing had panned out I wouldn't be fucking around here!” he'd grumble, faced with at least two hundred pages of student writing a week—with lectures and conferences and chaotic workshop sessions—all in exchange for a gross income of $666 a month, almost $400 of which went to alimony and child support.

Then in October, to make matters worse, he was hospitalized with pneumonia. The Iowa weather was ill suited for a consumptive chain-smoking alcoholic: Scores of pigs were slaughtered each year by hailstones, and it was all but suicidal to run out of gas on a country road in winter. But whatever the season, the creaky old wind-moaning mansion on South Capitol Street was meager shelter at best, and Yates was felled by the first bitter drafts. For two weeks he lay abed in the hospital, deathly ill, alone in a cold alien land, thinking he could scarcely afford to be there. He said as much to Wendy Sears, and sounded so weak and depressed she wanted to “hug [him] to pieces,” while the stolid Sheila was moved to write a kindly note advising him to get well and stop worrying about money (for now). He was somewhat cheered by the concern of his students—one of whom, Jonathan Penner, recalled their hospital visit as an unexpected lesson in Yatesian style: “Steve Salinger sneaked in whiskey. Immediately, Dick poured a shot for his roommate, an elderly farmer. We studied that. That was style.” But such admiration went only so far to alleviate loneliness, to say nothing of paying the bills. “I don't think I'm at all cut out for this teaching scene,” the convalescent Yates wrote Monica McCall. “It becomes increasingly clear that screenwriting is the only way I can ever hope to achieve minimal solvency and still have the freedom to write fiction.” McCall replied with maternal reassurance: She'd look into getting him that Hollywood job, and meanwhile a further advance on his novel was forthcoming.

Even before his health took a turn for the worse, Yates was an object of tender regard among female students and wives. “He really listened to women when they talked,” said Pat Dubus, “and that was a new experience for us.” Lyn Lacy agreed: “Dick saw more in me than I did myself at the time, and I adored him for it. He was sort of an uncle or brother figure—so friendly, open and
interested
.” Such intense solicitude on Yates's part was touched with desperation: More than anything he missed the intimate company of women—a wife, a girlfriend, his daughters. And while the young women at Iowa, married or not, were used to predatory advances (particularly from distinguished authors), there was little of that from Yates: Soft-spoken and handsome, the picture of a gentleman in his coat and tie, he'd prolong the sweetness of their company with fervent curiosity, the only selfish aspect of which was a naked fear of being left alone. “Dick attracted women as a victim,” said Robin Metz, “a kind of Keatsian figure who needed to be cared for.” At least in that respect he'd come to the right place.

In the Workshop there was no particular stigma attached to the rather common phenomenon of love affairs between teachers and students; in principle they were all writers together, and “human moments” were to be expected. Cassill—who looked after Yates in a fraternal way, and was distressed by how sickly and morose he was becoming—urged their friend and mutual student Loree Wilson to help care for him. A single mother who got by on a graduate assistantship, Wilson was strong, voluptuous, and warm hearted, and she adored Yates. “Dick appealed to one's deepest sympathies,” she said. “He was so clearly unwell, and seemed to be reaching out with those big, soulful eyes, but he could be insatiably needy. He was the loneliest man I ever knew.” As Wilson soon discovered, Yates required at least as much care as that soulful aspect of his seemed to suggest. Mornings she'd find him sitting alone in a booth at the Airliner, forlornly eating a hard-boiled egg with his beer as he listened to Barbra Streisand on the jukebox. Other times he'd call from his apartment—“I'm sick, I'm cold, I'm sitting here in a sweater”—and, if possible, Wilson would drop everything and go make him warm. One day Cassill called and told her something was wrong with Yates, that he'd “lost it” and needed to be calmed down. She rushed over, but by the time she arrived Yates had already taken his “emergency kit” of pills prescribed by Kline. “You're a good kid,” he murmured as he fell asleep.

Perhaps the best part of the arrangement were Wilson's children, a boy and girl aged seven and eight. It was widely known how much Yates suffered from the absence of his daughters: He blamed himself for being a bad father, and fretted incessantly over whether he'd be able to provide for them. A necessary solace for Yates was lavishing affection on whatever children were available, whether Wilson's or the Dubuses' or the Lacys'. He'd give them his undivided attention and refuse to discuss adult matters in their presence. He was particularly attached to Wilson's daughter, who sometimes joined her mother in bringing soup and other comforts to Yates's dismal apartment. Both children were disturbed by his gaunt appearance, his wheezing, and for Christmas they gave him a muffler to keep him warm. Yates had nothing to give them in return, and later became so enraged at himself that he began weeping and beating his fist on the car.

*   *   *

Sam Lawrence's career had taken some curious turns of late. The previous April, as Yates prepared to leave Washington, Lawrence had come to town and gloomily announced that he'd parted company with Atlantic Monthly Press. As Yates remembered the episode a few years later, “He talked of prospects for a big job at Knopf and asked me, shyly, if I'd stick with him.… Not only did I promise, but we firmly and maybe even mawkishly shook hands on it.” As good as his word, Yates severed his connection with Atlantic as soon as Lawrence was established at Knopf—a somewhat sturdier firm, after all. But Lawrence had gotten used to being in charge of things (“I'm a publisher, not an editor”), and a few months later he took a leap of faith and hoped Yates would follow again: “I resigned from Knopf early this week to embark on my own and establish an independent imprint here in Boston. I want you to be on the First List which will appear in the Autumn of 65. There will be 5 or 6 books and you will be in good company: Brian [Moore], Anatole, Katherine Anne Porter, Alastair Reid.”

This, Yates thought, was getting a bit thick. Certainly it was the wrong time for him to be taking any kind of financial gamble: He was already in debt for a novel he couldn't finish, his teaching income was a joke, and there were no other prospects in sight. He and Sheila had also decided to take Sharon out of that “dumb, blue-collar” high school in Mahopac and send her to a proper boarding school (“I don't want Bigger to be finger-fucked by the motorcycle crowd,” he told the Schulmans); just the week before, in fact, both mother and daughter had visited—and set their hearts on—a Quaker school called Oakwood, where the annual tuition was a whopping $2,435. Sheila thought she could arrange a partial scholarship ($800), but either way the expense was grim for a man who could barely pay his bar tab. And though they'd made a gentleman's agreement, Lawrence's recent employment record hardly inspired confidence. Monica McCall was adamant: “Sam's attitude is rather deplorable, certainly arrogant. Not for one moment could I advise you to commit yourself to any editor, I don't care who it might be, only just starting out on their own.… I told [Lawrence] that your illness had set you back desperately in regard to your work … and that probably he wouldn't get any answer to his letter. So that lets you off
that
hook!”

Yates's poor health, poverty, and general malaise made for a strained Christmas. In New York he stayed with the Schulmans, who were shocked by his deterioration over the past three months. That first evening, as he dined with Grace at the Blue Mill (Jerry was out of town), he told her he was badly in need of medication and had an emergency appointment with Kline in the morning. But any further mention of his mental state became redundant when they returned to the Schulmans' apartment, where Yates began shouting and kicking furniture. For the first time Grace felt a little afraid of him; they were alone together, and he seemed capable of anything. More than fear, though, she felt a kind of weary exasperation: “Insanity is no excuse for bad behavior,” she told him, then turned around and went to bed. Yates was demonstratively calm the next day, though further outbursts followed and it was a long visit all around.

“I know apologies are a bore,” he wrote afterward, “but I
am
sorry as hell about those several loud-mouth evenings, and am filled with admiration for your patience in putting up with me.” The Schulmans replied graciously as ever (“people don't stop caring for one another because of some silly thing like that”), though they were slowly but surely coming to the end of their tether. After a ruckus Yates was sometimes sorry, but seemed incapable of conceding actual insanity and often blamed others for his behavior. If the Schulmans asked him to leave when he lost control, or offered to take him to the hospital, he'd only wax more belligerent—and later, in moments of seeming lucidity, he'd
still
look back on the incident with a sense of injustice (“Why'd you ask me to leave? Obviously there was nothing wrong with me!”). Though he often complained about his awful childhood—indeed more so all the time
*
—any suggestion that he augment drug treatment with some form of psychotherapy was met with table-pounding scorn: “Why go to a two-man to tell me what a ten-man has discovered?” By “two-man” he meant an ordinary shrink, and by “ten-man” he meant Freud—or rather (since he didn't like Freud) some personage of ideal wisdom and tact, which pretty much ended the discussion.

Back in Iowa Yates was “lonesome as hell.” If nothing else, New York had been a blessed respite from his novel, during which he'd almost managed to convince himself it wasn't as bad as he thought; on his return he resolved to undertake “a crash program to get the bleeding book finished by March One.” But within days he was gloomier than ever—the novel simply wasn't working, and he didn't know what to do about it. Also Iowa was cold, he felt sick all the time, and other people weren't much of a comfort; as for his job, it was a daily torment. “[T]he ‘teaching' routine grows increasingly dreary,” he wrote the Schulmans. “It's easy work, but so basically lacking in substance—and even fraudulent—that I'm damned if I can understand how full-grown men can find it rewarding in its own right, year after year. I've now firmly decided not to come back here next fall, even if they ask me real pretty.… I'd rather rot in Hollywood than go on performing the ponderous bullshit-artist role I'm expected to play in this place.”

But the privilege of rotting in Hollywood remained purely speculative, and his only immediate chance for escaping the Middle West lay in finishing his novel. So far the only part he'd dared show around was that unimpeachable prologue; meanwhile he'd “tinkered and brooded and fussed” so much with the rest he could scarcely see it anymore—though he sensed something was terribly, organically wrong—and in February he finally accepted the fact that he'd have to get an outside opinion before he went any further. His friend Cassill was the inevitable choice: The author of
Writing Fiction
and one of the leading practitioner-teachers of same, Cassill was an astute if somewhat captious critic, who for months had bullied Yates to quit “digging himself into a trap” and move on. Yates could count on the man's probity, but that was rather the problem—if Cassill said the book was bad, the book was bad. And Yates had once told him it might turn out to be better than
Revolutionary Road
!