I’Ll Go No More A-Roving: More Memories of a Writer’S Life: 1976-1983

By Robert Ayres Carter

Praise for Somewhere I Have Never Traveled
Th is fourth volume of Robert Ayres Carters autobiography takes the reader
back to the 1970s. From the outside, Carters life seems conventional: he was an
executive in the world of publishing and advertising, commuting between Long
Island and Manhattan. Setting this work apart from the ordinariness of that sort
of life is the clarity of his unfl inching revelation of his private aff airs, emotions,
and thoughts. His struggles to become a writer of novels, his self-doubts, and his
emotional and physical involvement with many women, and the collapse of two
marriages are all described vividly with the skill of the accomplished novelist.
Perhaps most poignant of all are his descriptions of his sense of loss from his
separation from his two sons.
-James Scanlon, Professor Emeritus of History, Randolph-Macon College

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463447151

Robert Ayres Carter

ROBERT AYRES CARTER is a widely published and versatile writer of fiction and non-fiction, as well as a poet and playwright. He has written several books on publishing topics, the novel Manhattan Primitive, and two mystery novels: Casual Slaughters and Final Edit. He is also the author of a biography, Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend, and a two volumes of memoirs: Sunday’s Child: Memories of a Midwestern Boyhood; and Nobody Yet Knows Who I Am: A Personal History: 1943-1953. A native Midwesterner, he now lives in Richmond, Virginia, with his wife Reade Johnson and their mixed-breed rescue dog Rolfe.

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© 2011 Robert Ayres Carter. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse

ISBN: 978-1-4634-4715-1 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-4714-4 (sc)

Printed in the United States of America 9/23/2011

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Contents

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

One

A New Beginning (and An Old Grievance)

Summertime

Three

Hurricane Belle

Four

Stages of Self-Destruction

Five

Missteps—and Misgivings

Six

Kiss Today Goodbye…

Seven

And Point Me Toward Tomorrow

Eight

Faits Divers: Various Events

Nine

Back at Barney’s

Ten

That Other Flesh

Eleven

Diversions and Digressions

Twelve

What Next, Little Man?

Thirteen

A Game of Musical Chairs

Fourteen

Cultivating My Garden

Fifteen

Diversions

Sixteen

Cheryl

Seventeen

Home is the Sailor?

Eighteen

Shakespeare in Gramercy Park

Nineteen

Shocks and After-Shocks

Twenty

Frogs—-and Other Distractions

Twenty-one

Love and Laughter

Twenty-two

A New Decade

Twenty-three

The Solitary Male

Twenty-four

Cranking Up for the New Life

Twenty-five

The Mating Season?

Twenty-six

Overtaken by Events

Twenty-seven

Reade

Twenty-eight

Marrying Reade

Appendix A

The Ninety Days: Inside Alcoholics Anonymous

Appendix B

Villanelle on a December Wedding

Appendix C

New York’s The Little Church Around the Corner

To my sons, Jonathan Barlow Carter

and Randall Ayres Carter,

and my wife Reade Johnson, with love

So, we’ll go no more a-roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright,

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

And the day returns too soon,

Yet we’ll go no more a-roving

By the light of the moon.

—-George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from within is simply a series of defeats.

—-George Orwell

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The Author 1983 Woodbury CT

Author’s Note

Six years ago, when I finished the first volume of my memoirs, Sunday’s Child, I thought that I had written enough about my family and me. That’s it, I thought, end of story. (Readers of that book will recall that it ended with me on the verge of taking off for that tumultuous exercise in gore and glory known as World War II. A fitting conclusion, it seemed to me.)

My wife Reade thought otherwise. Why don’t you go on with your life story? she said. I’d like to know more about you. (At least, that’s what I think she said.) So, at the end of that volume, I wrote: "To Be Continued."

There followed three more volumes of autobiography:

Nobody Yet Knows Who I Am, Tell Me the Truth About Love, and Somewhere I Have Never Traveled.

And now it is time for me to write the fifth and final volume of my memoirs, and this time I do mean to bring an end to my story. Not, I hasten to add, an end to my life, by any means; I’ve already logged another 27 years since 1983, and I’m still going strong. (Still going, at any rate.)

I have no idea when the curtain will finally come down, and I would frankly rather not know. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet puts it: "If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all."

I do know that I will be writing right up to the end. I have been working on a book called Every Third Thought: A Journal of My Last Years since 2002—-and I may take up fiction again, or even poetry. Who knows?

Summing up: the 60 years covered in my memoirs have been a grand adventure altogether, and I consider myself immensely fortunate to have lived it.

Once again, as in the preceding volume, Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, I have drawn on entries in the journals I kept during the years preceding my fourth and happiest marriage. In reading through those pages, I would have to admit that a disinterested observer could conclude that I was excessively concerned with sex. In page after page I record sexual experiences in graphic detail. Enough! a reader might well cry out. And yet to me, at the time, there never seemed to be enough.

It occurs to me now, many years later, that I may in fact have been suffering from sexual addiction, an obsession not unlike alcoholism, and requiring much the same treatment for recovery. I was then, quite possibly, what is called a sexaholic. Maybe so, I think, that must have been it! Oh well, I say to myself, ruefully, it’s too late now to mend my ways. Time itself has slowed me down considerably.

However, I believe that readers of this volume will find, as they read on in my book, that I had many other things on my mind during those years than sex. It was, like all our years, full of memorable events and revelations. I am glad, however, that I lived through them; and glad, too, that I have made some kind of record in my memoirs of what life was like back then.

RAC, 2011

Acknowledgments

As she prompted the continuation of these memoirs of mine, so has my wife Reade Johnson inspired and encouraged me in my efforts to complete them. She has been my faithful first reader as well as my muse, and I am deeply indebted to her.

To Gerald Wadsworth, who designed the cover of this book, as well the covers of all the preceding volumes, what can I say except: You’ve succeeded above and beyond the call of duty, old boy—-my thanks and my gratitude. And to make this a true family affair, Gerry’s wife Amy Burman has applied her critical eye and sharp red pencil to my text; my thanks to her, as well.

—-RAC

BOOK ONE: A Stairway to the Sea

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Winnie in the Old Greenwich House 1976

One

A New Beginning (and An Old Grievance)

In June of 1976, Winnie and I moved into what would be the last of our three homes: 68 Binney Lane in Old Greenwich, Connecticut—-an old remodeled boathouse on Long Island Sound.

This is how I described the place in a letter to my parents, George and Doris Carter, on September 11, 1976:

"We like the house we’re renting enormously. It’s right on the water, with a big deck overlooking the Sound, and a deep water dock, which we swim off at high tide. We have a mooring and a boat, which sank, alas, shortly after we moved in, but the insurance claim paid for all the repairs to the engine and the boat itself.

"The house is not especially large, but it’s roomy: three downstairs bedrooms and a bath; a galley-type kitchen with a breakfast room next to it; a large living-family-dining room with a fieldstone fireplace at one end and a picture window fronting Long Island Sound at the other end. Upstairs is a master bedroom with a view over the Sound, a bathroom, a shower room, and a study cum guest bedroom with a wood-burning fireplace, where I write and where we put up company."

I should say more about our boat. It was a cigarette boat, a speedboat, that we had bought from its owner after answering an ad in the Westport News. The young man who sold it to us had listed it for $1,200, which we thought a fair price. He had kept it on a trailer in his back yard. When we got it to Old Greenwich, we moored it out in front of our dock. I couldn’t wait to try it out, so as soon as I could, I took Winnie’s son John Scott for a spin out around the Sound. We had a lovely time opening her up full throttle, and skimming over the whitecaps.

When we got back home, we tied her up and headed for the house in our rowboat. During the night, while we slept, our new boat (I should say our new used boat, sank.) In the morning, we found it largely under water. I soon realized what had happened. The boat’s owner had never left it moored anywhere, but had always brought it back to his own yard on a trailer; as a consequence, he was unaware of any leaks—-and so, sad to say, were we.

There was, however, a happy ending to the story. I had insured the boat with our agent for $1,200—-the first marine policy he had ever written—-and we were able to restore the boat to seaworthiness and enjoy it all summer.

From my journal, June 16, 1976:

It was fun being in the house last night. Our furniture had not yet arrived from Weston, so we put sleeping bags out on the floor of a bedroom, and such pillows as we could find (Greenwich Cardinal football team souvenir pillows, covered by towels) and hit the sack. It was cool, and we slept as well as could be expected on such a hard floor. A foghorn blew the night through and it was lovely. We felt close and happy. One day soon we should christen the house with a good fuck.

About the new bathtub, Winnie was rhapsodic again this morning. She likes its size, its depth and the curve of its back, which fits her back. Deep enough for both of us at once, she pointed out—-and I can use her bathroom if I wish to.

Lots to do in the new place, however. Nails to be pulled out, painting, bookshelves, you name it. Good thing Winnie isn’t working just now.

Because Winnie had lost her job as Executive Director of the New Haven Arts Council and had been unable to find work, we were hard-pressed for money at the time. My salary at Franklin Spier was adequate for most of our needs, but my alimony and child support payments kept us from saving any money at all, and there were still a few lingering debts to pay.

My chief problem with Winnie at the time, however, was not money; what I found increasingly vexatious was Ben Mahmoud’s continuing presence in her life. Although they had broken off the love affair that had prompted my original separation from Winnie, the man was still a presence in her life. As far as I knew, she was not seeing him, but he continued to write her. I intercepted a few of the letters, and read them, shamelessly, I suppose, with a mixture of morbid curiosity and mounting anger. Why was he still writing, after he’d simply dumped her?

In a letter to Winnie’s brother David Allen and his wife Julie, I said: "If the subject [of Ben Mahmoud] ever came up, I hope you suggested to her that you thought she should ‘slam a firm, final door in his face.’ I realize that it is not easy to give Winnie advice, and impossible to give her advice she really doesn’t want, but if the opportunity ever presents itself, I’m sure you can do it better than anyone.

To the best of my knowledge, Mahmoud wrote to Winnie as recently as June 1, so he shows no sign of ever stopping his correspondence, though why anyone would want to read letters so self-centered and dull (my opinion only), would remain a mystery to me. At one point, I thought of writing him myself, and asking him, in a polite way, to desist—-in order to give Winnie and me a better chance to find our way back into our marriage; then I thought otherwise: it would probably do no good and only offend Winnie.

If only someone would tell him—-or at least tell her, I thought, that if they continue to keep that relationship alive, even if it’s only letters and phone calls, it could be disastrous for Winnie and me. I only wished she realized that, and thought enough of our life together to do something about it!

However, David felt, and I agreed with him, that her love for love itself, and therefore for whatever Ben Mahmoud represented to her, was still strong, and could yet undo everything we were putting together.

Outside of that, I had nothing much to complain about. The anger I felt about Winnie and Mahmoud, oddly enough, was only felt when I was away from her. When we were together, it all evaporated. The relationship we had then, I felt, was more real and more precious, as well as more pleasant, than the one we had before the separation.

I still felt, somehow, that the beauties and joy of growing old with a loved mate was one of the best reasons for Winnie and me to be together again, when we first spoke of reconciling. However, one still had to get through the dangerous years, when other partners were still attractive, and while she still felt restless at having her options run out.

From my journal, June 17, 1976:

Last night was the first overnight for me at 370 E. 69th Street, the new studio apartment I’ll be splitting with Bob Phillips [a poet and good friend]. It was all quite pleasant, and I got four pages done on the novel, two last night and two this morning. As soon as I arrived, I turned on the air-conditioner to cool the place off and poured myself a scotch and water. I read, ate some soup, wrote awhile, and then went out to a pay phone on the corner to call Winnie.

She was dismayed to learn the place has no phone, and told me she couldn’t possibly stay there if it didn’t. I felt, and said, that it was one of her hang-ups, being unable to do without a phone. What about an emergency? she said. What if I get word that your father has had a heart attack? My answer to that was that we have had few if any emergencies that couldn’t wait a day for attention, and that when I stayed in I would call her every night anyway. I would rather keep the place phone-less, but to tell the truth, I do miss being able to chat with Winnie. We use the phone not for emergencies, but for chitchat and getting each other up on the news—-pillow talk by phone, in other words.

So I expect I’ll ask Bob to put a phone in, but use it as little as possible and call home on the credit card. Who needs more long-distance bills? With a phone there, also, I suppose I’ll feel less lonely and cut off.

Money troubles: Winnie is awfully short of it just now. Her unemployment checks won’t start until mid-July, and I still don’t have my bonus check.

From my journal, June 17, 1976:

Winnie’s birthday. We celebrated by seeing Julie Harris in The Belle of Amherst. Utterly charming play, beautifully produced and acted. Julie Harris was an absolute marvel, at the very peak of her powers. And quite a script. She read, among other lovely Emily Dickinson poems, the Wild Nights poem that [Judith] gave me and I gave Winnie (and which she may have given Ben Mahmoud) and while Julie Harris read I squeezed Winnie’s hand. We had a fine dinner just before the theater at Le Alpi, an extremely good Italian restaurant near the Longacre Theatre. Winnie refused to stay overnight in New York because the new studio at E. 69th St. does not have a phone, so we went home and made love before going to bed quite late.

For me, the lack of a phone in the studio is a godsend, but I have asked Bob Phillips to put one in. So far it’s not there, nor has he replaced his typewriter, which is quite the worst I’ve ever used. The keys stick so badly that you have to bang them hard to get anything at all out of them. I feel like Don Marquis’s Archy the Cockroach, who used to type by diving off the typewriter and hitting the keys with his head…

Sunday the 20th was Father’s Day. It was quiet and pleasant, with funny cards from Winnie, John and Pete [two of Winnie’s three sons; Jamie was the third]. We all had a Father’s Day dinner at Bonanza, which, because it has a bar as well as steaks and garlic bread and rich desserts, qualifies as the complete family restaurant, and much more appealing to me, and I think to Winnie too, than any of the child-oriented fast food places. Then: another good fuck for Father.

I did not write in my journal again until June 28, when I wrote "no writing in the book (my novel in progress, Rainbow Territory) since I last stayed in the city. Went down to The Players for dinner. I wrote in the reading room for awhile, longhand on yellow sheets, to be typed later, then dined at the Club and went to a movie: Family Plot, the new Hitchcock film. I liked it, as I had liked Frenzy and most Hitchcock movies; it was entertainingly done and had its share of surprises. The old master appeared in it as usual, but only as the shadow on the frosted glass door of a Medical Examiner’s office. How can one possibly complain about Hitchcock, who has given so much entertainment and who still insists that movies ought to move? And his always do. That night I went to bed late. It was hot in the apartment, so I needed the air-conditioner all night…"

On June 21st, the first day of summer, I had a lunch date with Judith Gold, one of the two women who had given me so much joy and carnal satisfaction during my separation from Winnie. I took her to see the studio I’m sharing with Bob Phillips. Bob arrived at the same time we did, bearing a new bookcase (portable and easily set up), which he’d just bought at The Apartment Store. We all admired the bookshelf and loaded some of the loose books into it. Drinks and chitchat with Bob followed, until we got hungry, and then Judith and I lunched at the Recovery Room, a pleasant pub near New York Hospital.

Judith and I had decided to write a novel together, purely to make money, under the pseudonym Alison Ayres. My suggestion for a title was Windswept Love. Our aim was to write one of the Rosemary Rogers genre, a novel for women to consume the way they eat chocolates and devour Ann Landers. It was a wholly cynical project, of course (and like so many novels written in that crass, mercenary fashion, it was unsuccessful—-never completed, still less published). We decided that we had to watch the writing carefully so that it wouldn’t become too lit’ry, leave no cliché unturned, in other words, spice it up with sex and violence.

I wanted to set the novel in a period where we could have duels and swordplay, and maybe put it in on the moors in the 18th century—-other than this one, my favorite century. In time, at Judith’s suggestion, we set it in Philadelphia in 1793. Among the elements that period provided were Ben Franklin, a plague, a slave uprising, and the presence of numerous émigrés from post-Revolutionary France, all lending much charm. Nobody, apparently, had used the setting for years. Benjamin Rush, who played such an important part in early American medical history, would appear in the book, along with other actual historical figures.

With the change of venue, we had to give up the title Windswept Love, and settled on The Fevered Heart. When I spoke to my agent and good friend George Wieser about the idea, he said, Sensational! Give me an outline and two chapters and I’ll sell it on the spot! In your dreams, George, in your dreams!

I also reported in my journal: Our first fuck in the boathouse was the morning of June 23. Fine and dandy.

On the following day, I had my first appointment with the new therapist that Winnie and I had decided to see, both separately and together. He was Dr. Ted Smith, a minister as well as a therapist. His office was in the Universalist Church on West 76th Street—-a devastated building, a real shambles: dust and broken stone and ladders and scaffolds everywhere, a renovation in progress. Although the building was old and decrepit, I found it still fascinating in a Chas. Addams New Yorker cartoon fashion.

I met with Dr. Smith on the third floor of the old church. We talked—-that is, I talked, he listened, and as I was late because of subway problems, I didn’t get my full 45 minutes. I’ve always felt, talking to a therapist, that I am giving a performance, that I have to keep talking, talking, talking—-ex tempore, quite like giving a speech, as a matter of fact. Above all, don’t stop; the silences are much too expensive. Keep talking at all costs!

I told Dr. Smith about Ben Mahmoud, which I was sure Winnie wouldn’t like. I doubt that she intended to bring that subject up, for the good reason that she would want Ted to like and admire her, as she wants everyone else to do, always. That, of course, is a waste of both time and money with therapists. You shouldn’t give a damn whether your therapist likes you or not; that’s not his job. The point is to unburden your self and be honest. Winnie felt, after a second talk with the good Dr. S., that he did not disapprove of her, and thought that if she’d only straighten out, the rest of the family would be fine, too.

Our sessions were going to be a bit more complicated, of course, because Dr. Smith was also a minister, and must surely have some moral point of view in those matters. Still, we liked him well enough to carry things a step further and see what might happen. Winnie, though, was already talking of dropping the whole thing—-and yet she was the one who needed therapy most—-needed it badly, in my opinion.

Later that week, I expressed some concern to Winnie that she wasn’t having any orgasms, and that our sex life was entirely geared to my needs and demands. Fine, said she, "I couldn’t care less—-couldn’t care if I never had another orgasm again." (Doubtful statement, I thought, bullshit, in fact.) So what could I say? That if I waited for her to initiate sex, and after three or four days went by and she didn’t initiate it, I did—-there we were, back where we had been again, at an impasse.

My fear, as I expressed it to her, was that she would want to go outside our marriage again for excitement. She understood that fear, and found it altogether normal that I should feel that way, having been hurt as I had been by her affair with Ben Mahmoud. However, my chief distrust lay in those letters from B.M. I found another one in her purse and also annotated it. When he spoke, at the end of the letter, about how he was thinking and praying for her, I wrote, He’s all heart, that boy. I wondered if Winnie had discovered those notations of mine in re-reading his letters…

George Wieser, when I confided in him, felt that I should find the opportunity to confront her with the letters, and demand a truth-telling time. Perhaps I would find one of his letters in the mailbox. Why was he writing? I was sure that I knew now. Not out of guilt, although that may have been true at the beginning. He wanted to keep the wound open—-that was it—-hang on to her, keep her in reserve, so to speak. Then, when he felt he was safe, he could take her on again, no chance of her wanting marriage then, no chance of his getting entangled. He would simply suggest they meet in a motel somewhere, and it would be off to bed again, lucky Ben, great sex with no responsibilities.

Essentially, I thought, a man like that, a confirmed womanizer, marries a dull, conventional, complacent woman who will cook, clean and sew for him (and spread her legs when needed). Then, bored by what he has chosen precisely for its boredom, he would need more exciting women like Winnie to stimulate him. So he would go from one to another, careful not to rock the boat and spoil his comfortable, secure nest at home. Why would he turn down the glorious opportunity to bed a woman as eager and willing as Winnie, once she was infatuated with him? So he would be back, unless she had the pride, the dignity and good sense to tell him to buzz off. That was doubtful, however. She might still need her swarthy Armenian rug salesman to give her the feeling of youth and romance and possibilities——lovely possibilities. A bad man, Ben Mahmoud, bad for Winnie, and deserving of all the bad luck that might befall him! The trouble is that he would probably go from success to success!

Perhaps, I thought, my problem was that I had always married strong, intelligent, imaginative and demanding women—-and not the other kind. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I couldn’t stand the kind of women the Ben Mahmouds of this world would always marry; I’d be too bored.

Two

Summertime

We had a fair number of guests during the summer, bur the most eagerly awaited—-for me, certainly—-was my younger son Randy, who was coming from Denver. On June 22, my former wife Marjorie wrote me that his final report card is marvelous, has him on Cloud Nine. His final grades were six A’s, two of them in accelerated courses and a third in Senior-dominated Humanities [Randy was still only 15], and one B. His grade average stands at 4.2 (4.0 represents plain old A). He seems to be doing well in Driver’s Ed, which continues through this week…he works hard on his job, socks his money away faithfully toward ownership of his own car as soon as he can manage it.

In my letter of reply, I told Marjorie that I had ordered Randy’s ticket for his trip, which would bring him east between Friday, July 16, and Friday, August 13.

On June 29 I wrote Randy, telling him how proud I was of his grades and his enterprising spirit, and of my plans for his summer visit. We’ll probably 1) be climbing a mountain, maybe one in the Adirondacks this time (remember Mt. Marcy?), and 2) going to Norfolk and Lake Doolittle. Not that we really need to go anywhere—-the house in Old Greenwich is like a resort, since it’s on the water. You’ll be able to boat, swim, fish, etc., all you want. You’ll have a bedroom all to yourself, and we can give you practice driving lessons, too.

A few days later I wrote his brother Jonathan, who was out in California job-hunting, enclosing a check for his allowance. I told him that I had talked to Fred Hill at the Sierra Club, and that Fred had told me that he had a possible job opening for Jon, but didn’t know how to reach him. I gave him your phone number, I wrote, and hope he’s been in touch with you.

From my journal, July 6, 1976:

Winnie’s note to me, found early last Friday morning:

"Robert,

I resent your invasion of my privacy. I am not betraying you, I will never hurt you again, I am horrified that I did, and I will be faithful to you to the end —- and for a lot of reasons.

I appreciate your forgiveness, I can cope with your bitterness, I hope to win your trust. Don’t forget that it took failure on both of our parts to set the scene for last year; and likewise it will take forgiveness from both of us, and effort, commitment, patience and loving endeavor to move forward (not back) into a new and better relationship.

Let’s therefore deserve each others’ devotion by our acts!"

I could not disagree with anything in Winnie’s note, though I thought the emphasis on my share in setting the scene last year might have been overdone; it was not as important a factor as Winnie’s vulnerability and determination to disrupt our marriage. (And her fall was so sudden and violent: meeting the man one day and in bed with him the next.) Moreover, her note dealt in generalities; the only specific charge was her resentment that I had been reading and annotating Ben M’s letters.

My complaint, however, was not at all general, but quite specific: Why was she still writing and phoning Ben Mahmoud after all this time? What did she hope to gain by it? What need does it satisfy? And when, if ever, will it stop?

I knew that Winnie’s note had to be answered, so the day after I received it, I wrote:

"Dearest Win:

I don’t blame you for resenting my invasion of your privacy. I don’t want to do it any more; it makes me feel too diminished; it diminishes us as well. I want to trust you, to have as much faith in you as I have love for you!

But isn’t it better to live with nothing to hide and no reason to lie? For us, shouldn’t it be truth-telling time?

I know that the love affair is over, and I believe you when you say you’re not going to betray me again—-if I thought you were going to see him again, or even that you wanted to see him again, I would prefer to be out of your life altogether and for good. I was sure you understood when you and I decided to be together again that you were making a choice between him and me—-for it was such a choice, either him or me. I can’t feel happy with a Winnie who needs Ben Mahmoud anywhere in her life.

Whatever his reasons are for writing or calling you, I am sure they are unhealthy; either guilt (doubtful), self-indulgence or narcissism (he loves the sound of his own voice, it is true) or selfishness—-he may want to keep you on his string of women, for he is, as you must know by now, a womanizer in the classical mold. I have tried to convey this message to you in any way I could—-call it a warning if you will!

You may have your own reasons for wanting the communications to continue, though I don’t see what they might be. He is not a good man (certainly he was in no way good for you); he is not a wise man (he’s intellectually half-baked, as a matter of fact); he’s not even an interesting man, for Pete’s sake! The only thing on God’s green earth I can say in his favor is that he’s a talented artist, but that’s no reason to cultivate a friendship with him.

Leaving my feelings aside, I think your own pride and self-respect would impel you to shut the door firmly and politely in his face——to tell him in no uncertain terms that there is nothing to be gained by continuing to send you letters and tapes or making phone calls; that you would rather he went his way and you went yours, with whatever pleasant memories you have and no need for anything else. So it seems to me, but the decision has to be yours.

I’ll live with whatever the decision is, but you should know that as long as you feel the need or desire to communicate with him, I will feel that our happiness is threatened; and as long as it does go on, my trust in you will be less complete than I would wish it to be. I love you and I love our life together; my love is strong enough to survive all the ordinary shocks and many extraordinary ones; but I doubt that it could co-exist with your loving him!

Robert"

About this time, the Fourth of July arrived, and this year it came with the Bicentennial and the arrival of the Tall Ships in New York Harbor. In our little town of Old Greenwich, we were all excited by a thrilling mass church service at the high school, in which Winnie and I sang with 200 other voices, choirs from the various local churches in Greenwich, all under the leadership of the choir director from the First Congregational Church, along with a full orchestra and what must have been a congregation of 3,000 people. We sang, among other songs, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a Negro spiritual, In the Morning When I Rise, My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, and several other traditional hymns, Chester and the Thanksgiving hymn among them.

From my journal, July 11, 1976:

This is the first anniversary of the beginning of Winnie’s affair with Ben Mahmoud in Cleveland. It is a day I hope both of them will pass over without commemoration. Winnie should, certainly, because we had all that out last week once and for all. She was asked to go to Seattle to work for ACA [American Counseling Association) for a couple of weeks, setting up their annual meeting, and when I learned how long a trip it was going to be, I rebelled. She immediately thought I was reacting to Cleveland again—-which she said was just not possible because our marriage was so much stronger this year than last. I agreed…and added that I also hated the idea of her leaving us for so long just at this time, when we’ve barely moved into our boathouse, and when our marriage has just been renewed, so to speak.

When Winnie pursued the subject of my suspicions, I repeated that there was only one weakness in our marriage now and that was her continued correspondence and phone calls with Ben Mahmud.

Look, Winnie said, in his last letter he said I hadn’t been in touch for a long while—-doesn’t that say something? Besides, my last phone call to him was to ask him to stop writing. What else can I do?

My suggestion was that she send any letters back unopened, marked Return to Sender.

The upshot of all this was, that because she believed our marriage might be in danger, Winnie decided not to take the Seattle offer. Then she was miserable about her decision, because she really wanted to go; she just found it hard (as it was for her in so many ways then) to make up her mind. Still, she was willing to give up the chance to go, to miss the conference, miss seeing her brother David in Portland—-because it would make me feel better.

I was grateful for that, but when I realized how unhappy she was, and would continue to be, I insisted she reconsider her decision—-and she did; she would go to Seattle after all. She would be earning the cost of her trip out, her expenses, and about $200—-pin money when you considered how hard she would probably have to work, but the important thing was her sense of mission, and being back in the limelight again—-at least being visible. So she would be leaving on July 12, and back on the 23rd.

Fortunately for me, Randy was arriving on the 15th, and Winnie’s folks would be staying with us for most of the following two weeks to help out. I would be busy with a great many things, including the novel I’d started with Judith Gold: The Fevered Heart, a project we were both excited about, when we thought of all its elements: seductions and love affairs, a glamorous émigré from the French Revolution, a fake Spanish grandee, a doctor who looked like Robert Redford, an uprising of blacks, blood, gore, death, fever, the works! What fun!

I had already written part of the first chapter, which Winnie had read and liked and, after all—-she was one of the readers the book would be written for—-the Sweet Savage Love crowd.

Winnie had asked me to return any letter that might come from Ben Mahmoud while she was gone, unopened, and I’d agreed to do it—-happily, to tell the truth.

In my final journal entry that day, I wrote: "I find living by the Sound extremely erotic; I don’t know why. Last night was the full moon and it was so beautiful. The tide was high when we got home from seeing That’s Entertainment, Part II (I loved it) but I didn’t swim because I’d cut my hand badly opening oysters.

If Winnie and I make love tonight or tomorrow morning, as I profoundly hope we will, it will be the 915th time. And I’m looking forward to both the first and second millennium!

The following day, July 12, I felt should certainly be the first page in a new volume of my journal, which I decided to call New Love in an Old Boathouse.

Winnie and I were alone for most of the day, because Pete was on Long Island with his father (where Jamie was spending the entire summer), and John was working at Viva Zapata, a local fast-food restaurant. I was getting in some writing time, working on my journal, when Winnie knocked and came into the study. I pulled the sheet of the journal out of the typewriter (it was the last entry in the preceding volume) rather hastily, and buried it under some other papers, because I was writing about Winnie and Ben Mahmoud and didn’t want her to see it. Winnie was understandably offended; it was a rude and unloving gesture on my part.

She went downstairs and sat out on our deck. Realizing that she was depressed, I went out and joined her.

Want a drink? I said.

She shook her head.

So we started talking, and before long it all spilled out: her misgivings about her career, her lack of sexual feeling (she still held me responsible for this, feeling that I pushed sex on her too hard and too often and didn’t give her room to maneuver) but she felt that was her fault not mine—-that she was the one with hang-ups.

I just don’t find my own body attractive, she said. "It’s not just the hysterectomy, but I fell out of love with myself. I don’t care about clothes—-I don’t care about my own body.

Actually, she continued, "I didn’t have much sex with Ben Mahmoud because we didn’t see each other all that often, and when we were finally together, I was just getting over my surgery and couldn’t have sex."

Then Winnie asked me about Judith and Kay, and I told her something about my life away from her—-how I’d met the two women and how we’d parted—-until I began to feel a bit tense about her curiosity and begged for relief from that particular subject.

I didn’t think we’d ever felt so close, Winnie and I, as in those moments on the deck—-both of us—-so loving. It slowly darkened out on the Sound. The lights of ships shone fitfully on the water and a lighthouse out on the island blinked on and off in the darkness. I put my hands on Winnie’s breasts (she was braless, wearing only a playsuit), and admired the color of her bare legs in the light cast by the torches on our deck.

I thought you’d never get around to noticing, she said softly.

When we went to bed that night, we made love as a goodbye, for the next morning she was heading for Seattle, and it was good for our bodies to bid farewell to each other. I had never felt more in love with her, or more loving, and she felt the same way. It was the most marvelous companionship…

Remember how happy our first years together were? I said, and she cried out: I’m sorry that I ever spoiled them!

On July 16th, I talked again to Dr. Ted, and it was an eye-opening session. He helped me immeasurably to deal with both my Ben Mahmoud problem and the sex difficulties I still felt with Winnie. On the first issue, he pointed out that Winnie had a right to her privacy, and that I had no right to read or to open her mail, no matter how angry I might be; that was essentially a manifestation of insecurity on my part, and that much of what I said was riddled with should and musts and unnecessary moral obligations. On sex, he said that it should be natural and flow quite easily out of loving. The important thing, he said, was to be loving at all times, to everyone and to everything, to God——even to your novel. With loving, the sex will be right for both of you whenever it happens.

But, I asked, how am I going to be able to trust Winnie as much as I love her?

That was still my problem, though for the time being I was finessing it by not forcing any issue at all, by being as loving as I could be, but also staying on the alert.

Ted sounded so much like my earlier guru, Tanao Sands, but much gentler, more sensitive. His message, like hers, concerned centering, and the way one thinks about things——also the discovery of what pain means. And the answer? It’s to be more loving, more trusting. Above all, more loving. And loving Winnie as I do, that shouldn’t be too hard.

In Winnie’s first letter, headed "American Airlines" —- Somewhere in the clouds, she wrote:

"Thank you for yesterday, what a treasured Sunday! We were as close as we have ever been. How desperately ashamed I am to have interrupted our years together which you described so glowingly, with that sordid affair. I’ll never know all the whys, what the driving neuroses, what the selfish pursuits pervaded. All I can say is I am horrified to the core, stricken soul-wise, sorry—-and wish to God it had never been—-So please help us both to find whatever good came out of it, and dwell in gratitude for this new exquisite marriage we have!

We were getting busy again at Franklin Spier, as I wrote in my first letter to Winnie: At the office we are swamped. I’ve never seen such a busy summer. In addition to taking on Columbia University Press as a client, I had also been given Time-Life Books by George Lovitt. He felt that since I had all the other Time, Inc. imprints (Little, Brown first and still foremost), I might as well have that one, too.

Winnie and I wrote frequently—-almost daily, while she was in Seattle, and my letters to her took the place of entries in my journal, which I neglected for days at a time. My letters were highly erotic, for I fantasized making love to Winnie in them, in every possible kind of position and location. In one of them, after we had made love on our deck, and had broken apart from each other, I wrote: We go down hand in hand together, down the stone steps to the water and wade out together into the Sound, where we stand close together, listening to the rocking of the boats and letting the salt water rinse our tingling naked bodies…

In her letters, Winnie wrote with what I considered affection but not ardor. In addition to writing each other every day, we spoke on the phone every night.

From July 12 to July 15, 1976, the Democratic National Convention was held in New York City at Madison Square Garden. I watched it at home, while Winnie caught it on the TV in her Seattle hotel room. I loved ABC’s shots of Jimmy Carter at home with his mother, daughter, and grandson, she wrote. Lovely schmaltzy stuff, n’est-ce pas?

For me, Jimmy Carter was the un-Nixon, a quiet, pleasant relief from the ceaseless strains of the Watergate scandal and its aftermath—-Nixon’s resignation, and Ford’s pardon (which doomed his possibility of winning the Presidency in his own right, apparently). America needed a relief from all this stress, and apparently a quiet, modest former Naval officer, peanut farmer, and Georgia governor was the answer. Fritz Mondale, too, I thought, would make a fine vice president.

When Randy arrived on the 15th, my evenings were devoted to him, and to Winnie’s sons.

It was a great joy to me to meet Randy at the airport. I found him taller than before and extremely handsome. He was about my height then and weighed about 145 pounds. He now had a deep voice and lovely light blond hair that fell in waves instead of hanging straight down. Over the first weekend, the two of us drove to Baltimore to visit my brother Harry and his wife Janet.

Not long after Randy arrived, his older brother Jonathan also came from Colorado. Jon looked good, though I thought he was on the thin side, pale and somehow depressed. It was a pleasant surprise having Jon with me, for he hadn’t been sure what he was going to do during the summer. He was unhappy at Metropolitan State, the college he was attending in Denver (Jon was now 19), and even unhappier living with his mother.

Jon went first to Oakland, to look over colleges and to see if he could find a job. He had no luck with the job search, so he decided to come east. Once here, he found that he liked it, so he would be staying on.

Jon had decided that he wanted to study film and television at New York University, so he applied there and was accepted, thanks to the good grade average he’d had at Metropolitan State. His classes would start in September. Meanwhile, he was staying with us in Old Greenwich, and working as a messenger at Franklin Spier, a job I helped him get. He planned to room somewhere in the city after classes started, and to keep his job part-time while he was in school; he would need the extra income.

Jon had become much friendlier than he had been before. The two of us had some good long talks, and were closer than ever before. Having heard nothing but his mother’s side for so long, he now wanted to hear my side of the story. When Winnie got back from Seattle, she welcomed Jon into our family, and in time he and Winnie became extremely close, so much so that I thought he was confiding in her more than in me. All the same, his growing bond with Winnie was an unexpected bonus, a delightful plus, as I noted in my September letter to Dad and Doris.

I sent both Randy and Jon to Benny, my barber, with beneficial results for both; they no longer looked shaggy and unkempt. Randy was still concerned about keeping his body in condition, with jogging, exercise, and proud of his ability to beat me, finally, in arm wrestling and, also occasionally in Scrabble.

Winnie, meanwhile, was enjoying Seattle and her arts conference. In addition to planning the meetings, she had designed a logo and color scheme for the whole conference, and had opened a highly popular Welcome Room. She would also be running a Crisis-Solver Center.

Midway through her stay in Seattle, a letter arrived from Ben Mahmoud, and gave me a nasty turn. Wednesday night was awful, I wrote in my journal. That was the day Ben Mahmoud’s letter arrived, and it set me off on a great deal of brooding and drinking. Shortly after Winnie called that night I lost my temper and asked her ‘when that horse’s ass would be out of our lives for good.’ I was furious and drank fairly steadily until bedtime.

The next day, as I wrote Winnie, I had decided to stop drinking. "Completely—-not even wine and beer. I don’t know for how long I will stop—-maybe only for a short while, maybe forever. I would rather not make any promises I might not keep, not even to myself. I think this would be a fitting time to stop for a time, let me put it at that.

"Though you warned me it would come, and so I was half-expecting it, that letter from our persistent Pen Pal in Illinois did give me a bad turn last evening. I’m sorry you ever gave him our new address, but I suppose at that time you still expected or even wanted to go on hearing from him. By now I hope—-I feel sure—-that you agree with me that one cannot go into the future carrying the dead weight of the past around one’s neck.

"This afternoon I see Ted Smith (for the last time, I reckon) and pick up Randy at the airport. It’s Randy-day!

Sunday, July 18

Dearest one:

Life is good. It’s always better with you than without you, but it’s good nonetheless. I’m sitting out on the deck at the Harry Carters’ house in Baltimore, sipping coffee and typing on a familiar (and recognizably undependable) Olivetti. Forgive the mistakes. My mind is racing ahead of my fingers, full of things to say to you.

Emotionally, I’m quite serene, and it feels marvelous. Not drinking is a form of liberation for me, clearing the brain, freeing the spirit (part of my depression last Wednesday night, when I made you so unhappy on the phone, was alcohol, certainly) and giving me more energy than before. I’ve been sleeping well, and long hours. My appetite is good, so I’d better watch my food intake, because I don’t intend to balloon up again…no way.

Last summer my project was growing a beard; this summer it’s to stop drinking. A world of difference, no? But then it’s a different world, too—-a different world for us, and a new one.

When I awake in the morning in the boathouse, I am disoriented for a moment, only because I am still so used to finding you beside me. I suppose that’s one reason why I feel the urge to talk to you on the phone every day; I miss that daily contact; I especially miss the touching and the communication, our long talks in the morning and the evening. I love watching you as you move about the house, and sitting out on the deck, and lying catlike in bed, purring in your sleep from time to time.

(By the way, Tushy, our cat, has been spending most of the nights in the closet of the study; I hear her moving around sometimes during the night. The first night she scared the bejeesus out