Pages from a Cold Island (17 page)

I then went to the professor, an elderly woman who by the students was rumored to have got her Ph.D by counting the
thous
and
thees
in Shakespeare, and asked her if I could, under the circumstances, circumvent the three-cut
per-semester rule and come to her class for examinations only. She said no. So it was that I spent an entire term, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, at eight o
’
fucking clock in the morning, listening, dopily and dreamily, to this wan soul talk in ritualistic phrases about material I
’
d al
ready had presented to me. The one thing that made the semester memorable was falling madly, utterly, hopelessly in love with an absolutely stunning ash blonde who sat to my immediate left. Miss Diane Disney, the daughter of none other than the genius Walt! When I discovered this fact, I found it utterly precluded the son of a lineman approaching her
“
romantically
”
; but when a couple of years later I read in the society pages of the New York newspapers that she had married a USC tight end, I smiled sadly and decided that
“
the poor little rich girl
”
had no doubt been more accessible than I and about a hundred other
“
haunted
”
guys at USC had imagined. In any event, I wish now to tell her. across all these years, how much I worshiped her from
“
afar,
”
notwithstanding that in our close-cramped seats our elbows and toes brushed each other three gloomy mornings a week.

Prior to discovering who Diane was, I had detected that the professor pandered shamelessly to her—And what does Diane think of this? And what does Diane think of that?—and one day, when we were discussing Byron
’
s
Pris
oner of Chillon
, I recall the exchange as something like this: That summer Diane had done her
“
grand tour
”
of Europe, the fact of which the professor was somehow aware, and she now asked Diane if she
’
d seen the castle at Chillon on which Byron had based descriptive aspects of his poem. Indeed Diane had. The professor then said that in his poem Byron had given either a very scant or a very elaborate description (I always thought Byron an old fraud and hence don
’
t remember the poem) of the castle and asked Diane to give us her reminiscence of that structure as compared with Byron
’
s. It was a stupid question, unfair to my adored Diane, assuming as it did that a stunning nineteen-year-old coed would run around Europe taking notes to check against the works of famous poets! Diane red-facedly pondered the question for many moments, try ing to call back the castle at Chillon, then offered the line that has endeared her to me forever:

“
Oh, it was a
real
castle all right!
”

Lord, dear reader, how I chuckled over and brooded on that line for days afterwards, thinking that in fairness to my lovely Diane, and compared with those castles created by her genius papa, wherein Snow White, Prince Charming, Grumpy, Dopey and all the other guys mucked about, the castle at Chillon had indeed been a
real
castle! And though, as I say, I don
’
t precisely remember Steinem
’
s response to my suggestion that she parallel her life to Augie
’
s, and though I would continue to prompt her and learn that in the Steinem household there had been embarrassing
“
boxes of stuff
”
piled in the hallways or someplace, and that the Steinems had once had a welfare tenant upstairs or downstairs or someplace in their hous
e, a guy who with charming regu
larity used to get smashed and beat the bejesus out of his bride, for whatever reason I vividly recall that Gloria
’
s ini
tial response to my query summoned up the long-ago Diane and it was as though Gloria had said:

“
Oh, I had a
real
childhood all right!
”

Although we continued to talk and to laugh, to go through the motions, I guess that for me the interview ended with something Gloria said a few moments later. The break-ups of both my marriages had been dreadful affairs (none of those cool, suave, lightly ironical,
New Yorker
magazine partings for Exley); and though I get along jolly well with one of my exes now, the situation with the other is still and always will be horrendous—ghastly, man, ghastly —and probably a lot closer to my reader
’
s predicament than that sophisticated dri
vel novelists contrive. In read
ing about Gloria I had sensed that no matter how much she
“
had it together
”
in most respects, like me she had had difficulties sustaining relationships with the opposite sex. Having been asked in interviews about some of her past partners, she had not been altogether kind. About the famous and brilliant director Mike Nichols she
’
d been quoted as saying she
’
d mistaken his
“
head for a heart,
”
and she now admitted that she had indeed said that but that she and Mike were still
“
close
”
and that he had in fact called her up to sympathize with her over the
“
cruelty
”
of that particular piece (not likely,
not at all likely
, I later learned from a man who knew Nichols well enough to have spent days on Nichols
’
sets watching him make his movies). I then went through the names of all the other
“
famous
”
men with whom Gloria had been
“
linked,
”
as Louella used to say. There was old
“
Ken
”
Galbraith, and
“
Teddy
”
Sorensen, and the great alto
sax Paul Desmond, and Herb Sar
gent, and Rafer Johnson, and—well, to Gloria they had all been merely
“
friends,
”
which, it goes without saying, had me gritting my teeth, biting my tongue and repressing a terribly naughty-boy urge to ask Gloria if she fucked her friends.

I was saving one guy, Thomas Guinzburg, who seemed to me such an ideal mate for Queen Gloria, and about whom I
’
d heard many nice thin
gs, until last. Guinz
burg owned one of the half-dozen most prestigious publish ing houses in America; he was wealthy; he was said to number among his friends and entertain at his town house dinner table the rich and the famous from the theater, the movies, the literati, and so forth; and above all, and for which one will forgive him, he had thought enough of Gloria to have allowed to
be printed, under the Viking im
primatur, her
Beach Book
. I wanted to know what the problem with Guinzburg had been.

On the morning that President Kennedy left on his trip to Dallas, Gloria had been in Sorensen
’
s White House office and from the window had watched the President walk across the lawn and board the helicopter that would take him to the airport to Air Force One and to his eventual des tiny. On learning of his assassination two days later in New York, Gloria apparen
tly went into some kind of cata
tonic withdrawal, some
epitome
of grief beyond us lesser Americans, and that was
the day she knew she and Guinz
burg couldn
’
t hack it. Gloria thought Guinzburg took the assassination too cavalierly. Now Gloria raised her right eyebrow into an ironical arc above her raspberry aviatrix
’
s spectacles, smiled tolerantly, and with wry condescension said,
‘
Tom Guinzburg should have been a sports reporter for the
Daily News
.
”

Ye fucking gads
, dear reader, where could Gloria and I go from there? One must understand that the dream of my life—
the dream of my fucking life!—
was to be a sports reporter for the
Daily News
!
I
’
d have a lovely and loving wife named Corinne; three sons named Mike, Toby and Scott; two boxers, Killer and Duchess, with bulging muscles under their fawn coats, and black ferocious masks, and like all boxers they
’
d be big whining slobbering babies who couldn
’
t even sleep when they were denied access to the boys
’
beds. I
’
d have a split-level home somewhere on the north shore of the island, say, at Northport; and just at that moment I was up to here with Corinne, the boys, Killer and Duchess, my boss at the sports desk would telephone me and cry,
“
Hey, Ex, don
’
t forget you got to fly out to the coast and cover the Mets
’
five-game stand with the Dodg
ers.
”
And off I
’
d wing, to stand in the press box, a paper cup of Coors beer in my hand, the klieg lights dissolving the faces of the crowd into one another, cheering like mad for Seaver and the guys; after which, renewed, I
’
d fly back to the loving Corinne, Mike, Toby and Scott, Killer and Duchess. A sports reporter for the
Daily News
? Had Glo
ria
’
s humble beginnings in that crummy Polack section of East Toledo been just a dream on her part, and had she sprung full-blown out of the mists, sitting in her present eminence as she sat before me now, imagining that with all that arm-raised, fist-clenched,
“
right-on
”
horseshit she was up to something infinitely grander and more noble than my dream of Corinne
, Mike, etc.. etc? From that mo
ment on, though words co
ntinued being spoken, the inter
view was over. At the end of our time together she accepted my as yet unasked questions, said she
’
d take them back to New York with her, work
on them at her earliest conven
ience, and mail them off to me. We then had a distinctly uneasy parting.

Early the next morning I telephoned to thank her for so graciously giving of her time. She was wonderfully kind and said she couldn
’
t recall having had such a stimulating day in ever so long. She also told me I
’
d left my jacket in her room. Having with the loonies on Beach Court got caught up in the spirit of shining for Gloria, I
’
d gone over —yes, actually left my island when I didn
’
t have to!—to J. M. Fields, a mammoth discount house in Lake Park, and bought a mustard-colored lightw
eight zipper jacket. It cost $5.
95
.

“
Keep it, Gloria. One day you
’
ll be trying to tell peo
ple I gave it to you and they
’
ll tell yuh you
’
re full of shit!
”

Gloria laughed. She reassured me I
’
d be getting her answers to my questions soon, and we again said goodbye. I hung up the phone on the back bar. In that spirit, and mindful that I still needed her cooperation, I called a florist connected with Western Un
ion, sent her a bouquet of what
ever it was the girl recommended, and to accompany the flora dictated a suitable sentiment. From Ms. Steinem I never got the answer to the rest of my questions.

When after many calls over a period of days I at last got through to her she was profusely apologetic, explaining she
’
d been overwhelmed giving birth to Ms. Then abruptly she did a distressing thing. Invoking what she called one of my
“
Lion
’
s Head friends,
”
whom she never identified, she used that
“
friend
’
s
”
words to accuse me of drunkenness, ir responsibility and sloth, all of which I
’
d have happily pled guilty to had she asked, and she then went on to say that her lack of diligence in getting back to me had been motivated by my
“
friend
’
s
”
persuasiveness. Aware of how precious I
’
d been with my tape recorder, my neatly typed up questions, my homemade tunafish and chopped egg sandwiches, I said,
“
Was that your impression of me?
”
By way of an answer Gloria apologized again and said she
’
d finish the questions and get them to me by the end of the Christmas holidays. She never did, of course, which lends real credence to that mean
cliché
about things working out for the best. Had Gloria honored her bargain, I
’
m certain I
’
d have had her moving in auras I never saw her moving in.