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A Time for Dreams—and Norman Mailer

I had arrived in Miami Beach at a time of great chaos. Relations between the United States and Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba had hit an impasse. As one of the last acts of his administration, President Eisenhower had closed the American embassy in Havana and severed diplomatic relations between the two countries. Cuba was a small island republic, about the size of Virginia, and just ninety miles south of Key West, Florida. Castro had formalized his alliance with the Soviet Union. Thousands of Cuban exiles fled their homeland, many in rickety boats, and made it to Florida, which already had a sizeable Cuban population.

Non-Cuban residents of Miami remained fairly detached, a feat that truly amazed me. Life simply went on as usual for non-Cuban elderly retirees, the divorcees scouting for husbands, the very rich building beach estates, and the tourists who blew in from winter sodden states up North to loll in the sun, tanning to toast perfection on the beaches, and pumping up their stomachs from the sumptuous buffets served in the splendiferous hotels on Miami’s golden shores. Current entertainment stars appeared in their glittering club rooms and lounges. The single missing indulgence were gambling houses which, before Castro’s takeover of Cuba, were unneeded as all one had to do was board an inexpensive tour boat over to Havana where hotel rates were low, alcohol cheap, and gambling open—as was prostitution.

My mother was not oblivious to the plight of the Cuban population or their families stranded in their homeland. She would sigh or whisper something of an empathetic nature when she read the newspaper reports or watched the news on television. But Marion had always been otherworldly. She lived in the past—the faraway romantic and historic past. I believe that is how she survived and also it was a part of her charm. Born into a large, upwardly mobile, Jewish family in Hartford, she had been “the beautiful sister” (there were three). Never a part of her postwar, jazz generation, she had graduated from college with a degree to teach English and had married my father, Milton Josephson, instead.

Most people called my father Merk, short for Mercury, as he had been a football hero at New York University where his swiftness down the field to score for his team was almost legendary. He had a dynamic, seemingly invulnerable presence: broad shouldered; strong chin; dark, smoldering eyes; and a hearty baritone voice. Despite his dark, good looks, his parents were Swedish and both looked very much of that stock, as did his blond, blue-eyed older sister, Beatrice. However, the family’s Jewish ancestors had escaped the Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century and made their way north, finally settling in Sweden. There had been a great deal of intermarriage during the passing centuries, and my father had seemed to have singularly carried the Sephardic gene.

His mother had died, age twenty-one, in childbirth (his lifelong claim for sympathy) leaving his twenty-three-year-old father with two infants under the age of two. But Big Charlie Josephson, an inventor, was a millionaire by then, holding the patent for the first plasticized cloth and for the snap fastener (hooks and eyes had been previously used). Milton was raised by nurses until he was six, when he was sent away to an elite boarding school. After university, he joined the marines and was shipped overseas in the last months of World War I. On return, emotional problems, which lasted throughout his life, plagued him. He never spoke about the war to me, but my mother once told me that he had been only a short distance behind two buddies when they were blown to pieces by a grenade.

Movie-star handsome and very rich, he had a cold, distant father who by then had remarried for the third time, a beautiful war widow younger than his son, and had six children, two from each marriage. With an abundant trust fund, Merk did not have to work for his living, and chose not to. Manhattan in the 1920s was a playground of pleasures for a rich young bachelor. Merk had a noted affair with a stage actress and was engaged for a short time to a scrap-metal heiress. Money slipped like fool’s gold through his fingers. Big Charlie came down hard on him with an ultimatum: if he did not settle down within a year, his trust fund would be revoked. An aunt suggested he visit her in Hartford, where she knew just the right young woman for him to meet. Marion was beautiful, bright, and receptive to the idea of such an introduction.

Merk was twenty-eight when he married my mother, thirty-two when, with the advent of the crash, his world collapsed. His trust fund was wiped out, his father’s fortune almost entirely swept away. (Big Charlie, strong immigrant survivor that he was despite the Depression, took himself and his young family across the country to Portland, Oregon—a new frontier—and made his way back up in the business world.) Merk had a wife who had taken ill, and a small child of two—me. He had never worked a day in his life and had no clue as to how one earned a living. He was angry and he would remain angry until death did they part.

Marion—who took “till death do we part” seriously—remained a strikingly handsome woman, tall and willowy, with a slender face, flawless complexion, cameo profile, deep-set, dark brown eyes, and remarkable auburn hair that prematurely turned a lustrous, whitish gray by the age of thirty and seemed to enhance rather than detract from her beauty. Yes, she was vain (I often caught her looking at herself in a hanging mirror as she passed it—“Just as always,” she would say in a proud manner). It was amazing how little makeup she used. Most often, just a light pencil to her finely arched brows and a carefully applied rose red to her lips. Occasionally, if dressed to go somewhere special, she would powder her face and add a blush of rouge. Lack of funds for a wardrobe (after my father lost all of his money) was never an obstacle for her to look stylish. Added to her small collection of sample dresses—my father contributed from whatever line he was representing on the road at the time—were purchases from the store Mode O’Day, where few items cost more than $2.95. She wore them proudly, a simple, coordinated silk scarf tossed over one shoulder, her posture always aristocratic (“Shoulders back, Anne Louise. Chin up,” she would instruct me). Walking through a room, she seemed to float, the verbena scent she always wore trailing faintly behind her. Her vocabulary was curious, studded with the least common words to express herself in a voice that was a bit Brahmin—broad As—prevalent among her peers in West Hartford where her family had lived in her youth (across the street from Dr. Hepburn, his wife, and four children, Katharine among them), before they moved into Hartford proper. A dedicated reader, there was always a book by the side of her bed (wrapped in brown paper if she thought it might be too “mature” for me), fiction mostly, French and English classics quite frequently, and slim volumes of poetry—which she herself wrote and kept in a folder with “POEMS BY MARION” boldly written on the cover.

It was not uncommon for an acquaintance of my mother’s to say to me, “Oh! You’re Marion’s daughter! Your mother is so beautiful!” I felt pride in her beauty, not envy, for Marion was as full of love and warmth and pride in me as my father was in anger and disappointment that I was a girl and, like my mother, not a fit companion for a man who preferred football games and boxing matches to concert halls and books.

To say my parents were mismatched is a monumental understatement. Still, they had managed to remain married all those years (albeit with long separations!). I did not understand it during my youth and really have never done so. Maybe their marriage was good sexually. When together, they always slept in the same bed with the door closed. My father seemed to be a prim man, his bathrobe tightly belted, jacket and tie always worn when he stepped outside. The few times he took me to swim at Santa Monica Beach, a white undershirt covered his chest (although, to be honest, this was somewhat the style in those times). I had little doubt that he much resented the fact that his only child was a girl and one, at that, who showed no athletic inclinations. Once, when I was four or five, he carried me over the hot sand down to the sea’s frothy edge, wading in with me until the water reached his waist. Then he pushed me hard from him and shouted, “Swim! Kick your legs! Move your arms!” I can still feel my terror when my head went under and I gagged on the salt water I had swallowed. He pulled me out and held on to me under his arm like some errant domestic animal. Marion came quickly to me. I recall that he said something like, “Even puppies by nature are able to swim!”

My mother spoke lovingly to him and of him, defending him at every turn. Yet I never saw them exchange a kiss or hold hands. He brought home gifts for me from his trips—a small Brownie camera and a tin bank painted like a log cabin. Otherwise he evidenced little affection for me. He was always able to ooze charm to outsiders and to make friends: broad smile, hand in his pocket ready to pay any check that might be placed on a restaurant table. There was a distinct duality in his persona. The man at home was not the same as the public saw. I attributed his paternal coldness to his Swedish heritage, as Big Charlie was so cool to his children and grandchildren. I have considered that he might have been bipolar. Certainly, his wartime experience had a dramatic effect on him as had his motherless childhood and the loss of his money and status. Some time after we had gone to California he had begun to earn a living as a traveling salesman. He never said a good word about any job he ever held. I had the impression that he disliked what he was doing and thought it far below him. Away a good part of the time, when he was living with us there was always a packed suitcase in the corner of some room and his car shined to mirror perfection, ready for a speedy takeoff. I have no idea what he did on his extended absences. In later years I wondered if he might have had a second family stashed away somewhere.

His presence in the house was like waiting for a bomb to ignite. I never knew him to be physically violent, but he was verbally abusive, his booming voice rising like the yowl of thunder. Marion would rush around the room they were in, closing windows as she called out, “Milton! Modulate your tones! The neighbors!” He would then slam doors, finally leaving with his packed suitcase.

He had collected Michael from the airport upon his arrival in Florida then departed two days before Cathy and I arrived. “Your father had to go back on the road,” my mother explained. “A man has to work.” She sighed and then shifted quickly into a welcoming, celebratory mood.

Marion was a joy to be with. She loved the radio, listened to the soap operas, and sang along in a modestly trained high, coloratura voice with the music programs. She was a fabulous cook, and the small house we were in was tantalizingly redolent of the spices she used. Each plate she served was a work of art. She did most of her cooking without the help of a cookbook, a feat I considered quite amazing as she tended toward complicated dishes, cakes, and pastries made from scratch. Within a week, I began to gain a few pounds and also to relax. Mother would read to me from Mary Baker Eddy’s book on Christian Science. She was as devout as ever. “I know you don’t believe as I do,” she told me. “But just do me a minikin favor and listen to this passage.” “Minikin” was one of her favorite words. It meant minimal or a little bit and was archaic. “Just eat a minikin for my sake,” she would plead when my appetite wasn’t up to where she thought it should be.

Michael was a happy kid. The house was across Collins Avenue and one of Miami’s smaller hotels, the Beachcomber. He went there every morning, and finally the owner asked if he would like to earn a few dollars (and tips) at the pool by fetching lounge cushions for guests. I was not in favor of the idea. Still, he put up a convincing argument. He thought he might not be able to continue going there if he did not take the offer, and he liked the people and being able to swim in the pool. He was an extremely strong-willed boy. He was also rather short for his age and picked up the nickname “Stretch” as he managed those lounge pillows which were about six feet long.

Cathy was a vivacious, very pretty child, not fond of swimming, or enthusiastic about anything too athletic. Extremely social, she made young friends easily and won over adults. She was thriving beautifully with the attention she now had from both me and her grandmother. I did not know how it would all work out once my father returned from the road. Also, Marion was managing on next to nothing and my abortion, the move from the apartment, and our airfares had eaten up most of my reserve. A month into our stay in Miami, my health considerably better, I answered an ad for a model/salesperson for H & J Blitz, a jewelry store in the Americana Hotel. Model for jewelry? The idea was intriguing. I was hired. It was surreal. Every two hours, the elderly Mr. Blitz, a delightful Dutch gentleman, would drape me with jewelry—bracelets, necklaces, broaches, and rings on my fingers. I would then walk around the pool area, stopping at the cabanas and poolside lounges, a security guard a few steps behind me. I was paid a smallish wage, but if any of the merchandise I wore sold, I got a hefty commission. I did surprisingly well. This would be the only job I would have in my life that was outside the world of entertainment and publishing.

Marion decided that I needed to meet some people my age (a euphemism for eligible men). One of her friends had a bachelor son who was a doctor (every mother’s dream for her daughter in those days). Ben was a heart-and-lung specialist with a successful practice. Obviously prompted by his mother (who had been prompted by my mother), he called and asked me out to dinner. He was a well-dressed man about thirty-two, a bit plump (“Hardly plump,” Marion had countered when I described him. “A bit adipose, perhaps”) with a small, trim mustache beneath a rather large nose. However, he took me to one of Miami’s best restaurants—so at least he was not a skinflint. My smoking became the central topic of conversation for the evening. Did I realize it could kill me? First, though, I would become addicted. In fact, I probably was already addicted. My heart and lungs would become diseased (if they already were not). I might have to live out my life reliant on an oxygen tank. He refused to let me smoke after dinner. “You have children. Do you want them to get a life-threatening disease as the result of your smoking?”

I was not a heavy smoker. Maybe three or four cigarettes a day smoked during breaks in my writing, and one after dinner. “It’s your body, fine,” he said. “But you are poisoning the atmosphere every time you exhale.”

I took great offense at his turning our evening into a lecture.

“Look,” he finally said when driving me home. “You may not like me, but I want to see you break this habit.”

“Why me? You hardly know me,” I asked.

“It has to be done one by one until the cigarette companies are stopped. It’s my mission,” he asserted. Then he made me agree to accompany him the next morning to the clinic where he was on staff.

He arrived at our door promptly at seven a.m. What I saw that day in the clinic was a wake-up call. Wearing a white doctor’s jacket, he had me walk beside him in a ward. There were patients unable to speak, a hole surgically made in their throats so that they could breathe, their speech sounding robotic. Yet some were inhaling from a lighted cigarette, the smoke entering and exiting through that hole. I never dated Ben again. I did, however, eventually stop smoking, that image of the people in the clinic unable to erase.

Marion did not give up on her matchmaking. Another friend had a son who was a dentist (perhaps not as “select” as a heart-and-lung specialist, but guaranteed not to have as many emergency calls late at night and on weekends, she counseled). His name was Jerome and I was most resistant. “Just meet him, darling, for me.” She suggested I make an appointment for either myself or Cathy. Since Cathy’s teeth had not been checked for quite a while, I made an appointment for her.

Jerome was youngish—in his thirties. Nothing special, but not unattractive. The office was not child friendly, leading me to believe that he did not have many children as patients. I stood by my daughter as she sat down warily in the dental chair. Jerome and I exchanged a few words. “I met your mother recently at our house,” he said. Aha! He still lived at home. “Beautiful woman.” Not too tactful. Then he turned to concentrate on his young patient.

“Open wide—there’s a good girl.” He leaned in close with a small metal tool and a dental mirror to see better into her gaping mouth. He probed deeper, toward her back molars. ZAP! Cathy bit down hard. He let out a very unprofessional, “SHIT!” as he swiftly withdrew his hand the moment she opened her mouth again. There was blood oozing all the way down the starched white sleeve of his medical jacket.

Forget Jerome.

Miami did not offer a great deal of intellectual stimulation. But what it lacked, the nearing presidential election, covered on television, supplied. The race was between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, the latter an incomprehensible choice for any liberal. In my free time, I was glued to my parents’ small TV set watching the debates and the commentaries. Kennedy was young and inspirational, a war hero, married to the intelligent and most attractive, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. They were a couple who could proudly occupy the White House.

Physically I was doing well, walking with a minimum of discomfort and, best of all, an even gait and was able to handle the job at the Americana Hotel without much strain. Still, the money I was paid was not enough to refill my coffers so that we three could return to London—which I was determined to do, especially after my father returned from the road and an uneasiness settled like thunderclouds over the house again. I knew I had to find myself a writing assignment. I contacted Ted Ashley in New York, and he came through a few weeks later with an offer of two television segments of a series being shot in New York. Still skeptical about the credit, Ashley drew up the contract in another name. That was fine with me. By now, television was a means for survival. It was not what my heart and mind told me I should do for the rest of my life. Yet, neither did it prevent my writing short stories or a chapter or two of that novel that was still brewing in my head even if very little of it was being transferred to paper.

As September approached, the children were enrolled in Miami schools, and I felt compelled by that (and finances) to leave them with my parents for the eight to ten weeks I would be in New York (coming down to Florida for weekends whenever possible). I was not happy about them living in the same house with my father for such an extended period, for it had never been helpful to me as a child. But, as it turned out, two weeks after he returned, he went right back out on the road again. Marion was thrilled with the prospect of having Michael and Cathy in her care, and I would be earning enough to send her funds and still stash some away. From what I could glean from my mother, my father was having “some problems” in Miami. There never had been a problem that my father could not run away from. He was an expert at it.

Early autumn in New York can be a place of extraordinary beauty—and it was. The fairly low-priced Adams Hotel, where I had a small but comfortable room (and a closet with a hot plate and a minisize fridge), was on East Eighty-Sixth Street off Fifth Avenue and just a few steps from Central Park. The place had a rather clubby feel to it. Many visiting theater people and playwrights stayed there. Arthur Miller had a two-room accommodation on a higher floor while I was resident (I can’t remember what play he was working on—but he pretty much locked himself in and was seldom seen in the lobby). A few of my California friends now lived in Manhattan—writer Vera Caspary (probably best known for Laura), who had been one of my mentors in my Hollywood days; Greta Markson, my closest childhood friend, now an actress appearing on Broadway in a supporting role in a Joseph Cotten play; and, of course, the Rossens, who had moved from 1010 Fifth Avenue to a building on the corner of West Eighty-Sixth Street and Central Park West. I had seen Bob and Sue in London several times. Bob had gone through much emotional stress. His affair with Elise was over and had not ended well. Sue had been forgiving. But he was not in good health, due to diabetes and other complications.

I was still reading for him. Two years earlier I had come across a softcover edition of a Walter Tevis novel, The Hustler, which had not been a best-seller and had been passed over by the studios. Before coming to Hollywood in the 1930s, Bob had written Corner Pocket, a play set in a pool hall about pool-hall hustlers. Never produced in New York, he had tried to get studio interest when he was under contract to Warner Bros. They found the setting—a dingy, smoke-filled lower East Side, 1930s pool hall—too seedy and the tough, beer-swilling characters not likeable enough. Corner Pocket remained Bob’s one lost, but favorite, work. Tevis’s novel, updated to the 1950s, had brilliantly managed to bring more action, better characters, and suspense. Bob took an option on the book and, with an excellent adaptation by Sidney Carroll, directed and produced the film. I am sure he was a close advisor on the screenplay. But Bob, like Sidney, believed that taking on all three top tasks on a movie was riding a slippery slope. The film was enjoying excellent reviews. It would play a major role, along with Body and Soul and All the King’s Men, in cementing Robert Rossen’s legacy as a filmmaker.

The Rossens’ new apartment was on a direct route through Central Park to the Adams. One night I joined them for a small dinner party that included Shelley Winters, Charlie Katz (a powerful left-wing lawyer), movie producer Bernard Smith and his stylish wife, Frances, and Norman Mailer, the controversial young novelist known as much for his macho public behavior as for his early World War II literary sensation The Naked and the Dead. Bob was interested in Norman’s satiric novel of Hollywood, Deer Park, published a few years earlier to dismal reviews. Despite the book’s muddled plot and mainly unsympathetic characters, the novel contained one major, interesting figure (at least to Bob)—an informer during the early years of the blacklist—through whom Bob might have thought he could channel some of his own emotions.

Shelley Winters, recently divorced from the actor Anthony Franciosa, was more Raphaelesque than I remembered from her movies. Her frankness was a revelation. The evening was lively. Hollywood was skewered. Bob was in especially sharp form, throwing words like a veteran boxer’s precisely aimed left-hand jabs, his cool, blue eyes never missing a move of anyone within his sight range. His smile was more of an appraisal than an expression of pleasure, but it seemed clear he was, indeed, enjoying himself. Many people found Bob difficult to like. But, through the years, I had been drawn to a warm and magnetic side of him. He had a strong belief in family bonds, a sentiment which probably had weighed in against continuing his affair with Elise.

Watching Bob at a gathering of like, bright people was always fascinating. He was expert at engaging them in controversial issues. He was not a man who could tell jokes or relate stories of his colorful past history. He spoke in a low, confidential manner that demanded attention, and doted on one-to-one confrontation. At times, a conversation with him was somewhat of a sparring match. A kindred spirit was evident between him and Norman. Both were keen wordsmiths, short, weighty, but vital, ego-driven, Jewish men with a pulsing need to prove themselves right and to come out on top in any debate or competition. Even Shelley—who could throw a pretty good verbal punch herself and whose voice was a sharp, ragged-edged knife—was no contender.

Norman paid scant attention to me except for those moments when he thought he had shot a zinger—at which point he would glance slyly over to where I was seated across the table from him and raise a bushy eyebrow. After dinner, when I rose to leave, Bob said he would have the doorman hail me a taxi. Norman jumped to his feet. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Crosstown. East Eighty-Sixth.”

“I’ll take you,” he offered.

Sue was quickly at my side. “Stay awhile longer,” she insisted with unusual urgency.

“No, I should have an early night,” I declined. “I have a breakfast meeting.”

She took me by the arm and steered me toward her bedroom. “You can’t go with Norman! You know, he knifed his wife!” she said, eyes wide, back stiff.

That had been last year’s news. Adele, although seriously injured, had recovered and had not pressed charges. Norman had received a suspended sentence—no jail time. The Mailers were living apart and Adele was petitioning for divorce. She was his wife, his domestic partner, someone with whom Norman had a troubled history before what was surely a vicious and unforgivable attack. Still, I did not see him as a danger to me, a woman he hardly knew. I thanked Sue for her counsel and rejoined the group, where I accepted Norman’s offer. After all, we would only be alone during a five-minute ride through Central Park.

The road was brightly lit on this warmish, autumn night. Norman asked me many questions. What was my relationship to the Rossens? I told him he was my children’s uncle through my ex-husband. How did I feel about his being an informer?

“At first I was furious, disappointed. I wrote him a very nasty letter. He replied, ‘Sorry you feel that way, kid. Someday, maybe you’ll understand.’” I thought about it a moment before adding. “It’s complicated.”

He let it go at that. “Rossen seemed primed to make toast of me,” he laughed. “I gave him the edge. He was buying dinner, after all.”

“I think he admires you. I’d guess he’s even a bit fascinated by you—the young genius, the macho man, hell-bent for destruction.”

“That your opinion?”

“I have no opinion. We’ve just met. I’m seeing you through Bob’s eyes and sifting tabloid headlines. I know him pretty well and think he sees pieces of himself in you—say twenty years ago. He’s been writing that character for decades. All those John Garfield movies he made for Warners. His own film—Body and Soul—the moxie fighter who sells out for money and possible fame. He’s drawn to tough guys who fall and then become heroes. He would have loved to have gone to war and written a novel about it like The Naked and the Dead. He didn’t fight because of the diabetes and was 4-F’d and never wrote a novel because he was too much in awe of literary works to chance failing at it. Failure is not in Robert Rossen’s vocabulary.”

When we reached the Adams, he pulled up in front and turned off the motor. For about a half hour we continued our conversation. He asked if I had read Deer Park. When I said that I had, he wanted to know what I thought. I was honest, but not unduly harsh in my criticism, which centered on what I thought was an unsatisfactory plot and flawed characters. He immediately changed subjects and asked what I was presently writing. When told, he inquired, “Why?” in a disdainful manner.

“I have two children who grow hungry three times a day and require a roof over their heads,” I explained.

“What do you really want to write?”

“A novel. I’ve started several. Lately, I’ve thought it should be about Hollywood and those of us who found ourselves in Europe after the blacklist went into effect.” This had actually been occupying my thoughts all the time I was in Florida.

“Any time you have something on paper, I’d be glad to read it.”

“I’ve never been too crazy about that idea—having a work read before I feel I have given it my all. Readers, no matter how well intentioned, at an early stage can often sway you into rewriting and then you are in danger of losing the original impetus of the story.”

He slammed his hand hard against the steering wheel. “I think that’s what happened to Deer Park!” he exclaimed. He went into some detail as to how he had insisted the early manuscript (which had been rejected by his editor) be read by an outside reader and when that opinion proved negative, passed it on to someone else. The novel had been rejected multiple times before finding a publisher. He was quite emotional about this whole episode. Accepting harsh criticism was obviously not one of Norman Mailer’s better character traits.

He asked if I would have dinner with him the next night. I agreed.

“Eight, okay?”

“Fine.”

There were three messages from Sue. “Thank God, you’re all right!” she said when I rang back. “But my advice for you is not to see Norman again,” was spoken as an order. Sue could be both abrasive and self-righteous at times. She had been raised in a tough New York neighborhood where a girl had to fight for respect and independence. It had been a struggle to secure an education, and she had achieved it and, before she married Bob, succeeded to get a job as one of the first editors on the newly formed Literary Guild Book Club.

Sue had believed in Bob’s talent as an unproduced playwright and supported him during their early years of marriage. His success had not mellowed her, but she had been a concerned friend to me, her advice—although often unsolicited—always offered with good intention.

The next evening I dressed and was ready by eight. When a half hour passed and no Norman, I figured that he had changed his mind. I was about to settle in for the evening when the telephone rang. “There is a very drunk man asking to see you, Miss Edwards,” the front desk clerk said sotto voce. “Very drunk. What shall I do?”

“Tell him I’ll be right down,” I responded in a bit of a panic. The last thing I wanted was a scene in the lobby of the hotel.

Norman was standing stage center in the small entryway. He was well dressed, but his thick head of dark, curly hair was in disarray and he was unsteady on his feet. I quick-stepped to his side, took a strong grasp of his arm, and walked with him out the front door to the street. The question was, what should I do next? He had come in a car and I thought it a bad idea for him to get back in it and drive—with or without me.

“There’s a seafood restaurant around the corner on Madison called the Captain’s Table. We can go there,” I said in an authoritative voice and, holding on to him in a tight grasp, headed him in that direction. We were given a table close to the front of the restaurant (which turned out to be a good thing). When we were seated I took a hard look at Norman. His remarkable blue eyes were bleary but he appeared somewhat more sober, perhaps due to the short walk in the evening air. He ordered lobster dinners and drinks and talked in a constant stream. I can no longer recall what he actually said as it seemed to have no relevance to me, to him, or the evening. His voice began to rise. The maître d’ nervously hovered around our table.

Finally, our dinner plates—each holding a large, glaringly red, boiled lobster, giant claws rubber banded as though to keep the monster from rising from hell and jumping up to attack—were placed before us. I glanced up to thank the waiter. The man’s expression suddenly changed from servility to one of shocked horror. I looked back toward Norman. He had collapsed facedown on his plate, melted butter sputtering and splattering onto the table. The maître d’ immediately reappeared. My first thought was that Norman had suffered a heart attack, and I asked the man to call the paramedics. “I don’t think so, madam,” he whispered to me. “The gentleman has simply had too much to drink and has passed out.”

I told him to get me a taxi, took out what money I had to cover the bill, and with his help and that of the waiter (Norman only showed a slight sign of awareness) got him out of the restaurant, onto the street, and finally into the backseat of the cab, a feat—since Norman was a man of some girth—not an easy task. It dawned on me at that moment that I did not know where he lived. Also, I had given the restaurant all the cash I had. We could not return to the Adams. No way could Norman remain in my room for the night. I reached inside his jacket and found his wallet (shades of Samuel Taylor!). Inside was his driver’s license with an address in Brooklyn, which was a long ride from Eighty-Sixth Street. I retrieved two twenties from it, handed them to the driver, and told him to take Norman to that address and to see him to the door and make sure someone took him in. “If there is any problem, call me,” I added. I gave him the number of the hotel. Then I slid the wallet back in Norman’s jacket pocket.

After the taxi disappeared, I felt acute apprehension. I had no idea what I would do if no one was at the address the driver had been given. And what if the man did not take Norman to Brooklyn? There had been quite a large sum in his wallet. I was up the entire night with visions of Norman being thrown unconscious out of the vehicle into a ditch off some dark road. I had not taken the taxi’s license plate number. I did not know any of Norman’s friends, or how to reach Adele. There was no one I could call (I supposed Sue as a last resort). My phone remained silent throughout the night. That could be good—or it could be bad. Midafternoon, Norman rang.

“Do you know where you sent me last night?” he shouted into my ear.

“No. Where?” I replied weakly.

“To my mother’s house.” Then he burst into raucous laughter. It seemed that he and Adele had been in California and Mexico for an extended period before his attack on her and the breakup of their marriage and, when he returned to New York, his driver’s license had expired. Not yet having a permanent address, he used his mother’s. Fanny Mailer had given him a tongue-lashing for appearing on her doorstep in such a drunken state. I later learned the control Fanny had over Norman. His father had been powerless in family affairs. Fanny had run the house and made the decisions for Norman and his sister Barbara. Her only son was everything to Fanny. She fought like a tigress for him during his youth, defended him to the world once he was an adult and a celebrity. Privately, Fanny Mailer was, at least at that time, the one person in Norman’s life to whom he felt he had to answer to.

He appeared at my hotel an hour or so later, intending to collect his car. By this time, however, the traffic police had towed it away. No explanations for what had occurred the previous evening were offered, none requested, no apologies rendered (he did, however, insist on repaying me for the uneaten dinners). I never had the courage to revisit the Captain’s Table. But I did see Norman quite often while I worked on my assignments. One night we went to an Italian restaurant in Spanish Harlem where he apparently was a frequent customer. Norman’s choices for dining, companions, or entertainment were unusual. He invited me to a boxing match and I refused. We went to some off-off-Broadway shows. We had a few peppery exchanges. I accused him of being antifeminist. “The hell I am!” he shouted back. “No one loves women more than I do!”

“Only in the bedroom!” I countered. Actually, Norman liked women and subscribed to Momism. But he could become venomous toward women who he felt were militant or defiant of men. Following the contentious discussion we had previously had about Deer Park, I did not mention his writing again—although we extensively discussed the work of other writers.

Norman was a great fan of Ernest Hemingway. I don’t think he deliberately tried to emulate him—either in his writing or his creature habits. From the back history of his life that he revealed to me (and it was difficult, as he was a consummate storyteller, to know what was real, embroidered, or borderline lies), I gathered that he had possessed a combative nature since early youth. There were two Normans, really. One was the short, feisty son of a dominating Jewish mother, who more than anything courted her approval. The other saw himself as a younger Hemingway: adventure loving, shock provoker, new-world writer. Hemingway was his unique idea of the macho, intellectual man. He was also obsessed with the idea of the writer as celebrity.

Hemingway’s shotgun suicide in July 1961 and the media follow-up in years to come, which asserted that he was bisexual, was a major jolt to Norman, for he had considered him to be the symbol of masculinity with an almost mythological fixation. After all, the man was a big game hunter and was mixed in the intrigue of foreign wars. He was hard drinking and endured embattled marriages. That fatal shot left an impact on Norman. Still, as long as I knew him (and we would remain friends for many years) he never let go of his need to be considered Hemingway’s literary descendent.

Norman was a person of great warmth and sensitivity. He could also be light and fun. I much enjoyed his company during those short months in New York. He loved to hear Hollywood stories (and to tell them) and was deeply interested about life among the London expats and, most curiously, pressed me for what I knew (that the world might not), related to members of the royal family.

When I had finished my work in New York (and collected my check) I flew down to Miami and made immediate plans for we three to return to London. We arrived in time for me to cast my ballot for Kennedy in the presidential election. Letters to and from Norman hen-pecked their way across the Atlantic for a time. He considered himself a soldier in the “New Left,” an ecumenical, political, and ethical mixture that avoided narrow ideological labels, and complained that other New Leftists refused to see him as “a comrade in arms.” He sent me copies of articles he had written for the Village Voice, which was not obtainable in London. In one letter he joked that I would not believe “how respectable” he was getting. He sent along an open letter to the president that the Voice published in which he addressed him as “Dear Jack,” and then chided him in seeking advice about Cuba from the CIA when he would have been better served by artists like himself.

[Flash forward: In the early ’70s, after I had published several novels, I wrote a profile of Norman for the Atlantic. He read it, of course, and wrote back to compliment me on “the best writing you have done.”]

A year or so after my return to London, Norman married Lady Jeanne Campbell, daughter of the Duke of Argyll, granddaughter of the powerful British newspaper magnet, Lord Beaverbrook, and quite a formidable woman. They had a daughter, Kate (Norman’s fourth child), and then divorced. We remained friends through the years and he never tired of telling the story of the night I sent him home drunk in a taxi to his mother.

It is strange about England. One can be away for long periods and when you return nothing seems to have changed. By 1961, most of the bomb sites had been replaced with new-era buildings (of questionable architectural value). Still, the queue mentality remained. The obsession with the royal family was just as fervent. There was always a royal celebration to look forward to—the spectacle of the Queen’s arrival for the State Opening of Parliament, her birthday celebration (held in June and not on her birth date), the family’s seasonal peregrinations from Buckingham Palace to Sandringham to Windsor and on to Balmoral in Scotland—all covered by the press. Rain was a frequent and accepted inconvenience. The Chelsea Flower Show was the bright spot each spring as it had been since 1862 (time out for wars). There was a monotony to the sameness along with the sense of continuity. Yet, something seemed afoot, an inkling of a new period. Jet planes flew the Atlantic in seven hours. Heathrow Airport had expanded and there were moving sidewalks to take passengers from high-numbered gates into the distant terminal to collect their baggage. The British theater was alive with left-wing plays. British musicals were competing with Broadway, and Anglo-American films were a thriving industry.

Until we located we three stayed at the American Hilton Hotel, a twenty-eight-story, towering eyesore on Park Lane (the hotel advertised “509 beautifully decorated rooms all with American-style comforts,” apparently meaning central heating, constant hot water, and a small drinks cabinet in each room). The children were delighted with the hotel’s three disparate restaurants—a Swedish open-sandwich cafe, Trader Vic’s Polynesian-style restaurant serving pupu platters, and mysteriously, on Sunday mornings, bagels and smoked salmon—and the elegant rooftop dining room featuring expansive windows that gave diners a view that included the Queen’s private gardens and the windows of Her Majesty’s own apartments at Buckingham Palace. The latter remained a controversy and scandal (“those gauche Americans!”) for the year it took for the palace to relandscape the gardens so as to block the intrusion. The incident did not help Anglo-American relations. I don’t think the name of the hotel was actually the American Hilton, but that is how it was always described in the tabloid press, obviously a bit of a slur.

Behind the hotel was Shepherd’s Market, a warren of narrow streets with a jumble of unusual, small shops. Michael was allowed to take Cathy there. His favorite stores sold lead soldiers as he collected whole, miniature regimental military bands. He played the trumpet amazingly well and fortissimo and could not wait until we settled someplace so that he could blow as loud and bluesy as he wished. I was impatient to find us a home. London’s rumble of change ahead had awakened me. For too many years my career had been ruled by financial need. I had gone down the path of quick and easy. Now I was determined to concentrate on what I wanted to achieve, not only in my career but in my personal life.