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A Question of Adultery

The extended book tour was considered an enviable endowment bestowed singularly by a publisher on an author whose book appeared headed for success. This was not unlike a bank granting loans to people with excellent credit and considerable assets. My publisher had 50 percent of the book’s purchase for softcover to Dell as a selection of the Literary Guild Book Club and for a condensation in Cosmopolitan magazine. However, Holt, Rinehart and Winston did not have a percentage of any stage, film, or foreign rights, except for Canada. They had already made in sub-rights well over thirty times my extremely conservative $5,000 advance. (I had received six figures from Dell alone and would not receive a royalty statement for six months with the accounting of and a check for the book’s sales.) Lost in this loaded literary reward system were books by some excellent authors who had not had the luck of a spectacular debut such as mine. True, The Survivors was no Gone with the Wind, nor in my opinion could it be compared to the more recent In Cold Blood. But, if indications proved reliable, it had a chance to do exceptionally well in the marketplace.

My job was to help boost sales beyond current estimates. I was to be a live, talking advertisement, appearing on local and national television and radio shows, giving press interviews, signing books in bookstores, and appearing as a speaker at the popular book-and-author luncheons that were the fund-raising staple for women’s clubs across the country. Most fair-sized cities had a local early-morning television show. Radio interviews were generally conducted either very early in the a.m. or in the evening (to catch the daily commuters and late-night drivers). The idea was to push your book, to intrigue, to sell yourself and your subject. Some very fine authors who I knew found this a difficult, often impossible, task. They were comfortable only with the written, not the spoken, word. My experience and training as a child performer had finally come in handy. I loved to face an audience and felt rewarded with the sound of applause. I was also an unrepentant storyteller at dinner parties and was not intimidated by a microphone, a camera, or a room filled with three hundred women (and a few good men) picking away at a lunch that was generally boring and tasteless in the hope of breaking their tedium with a bit of culture or amusement. To get their attention, I always told a funny story first, preferably one that involved their area that could connect in some way to my being there (I made a habit of reading the local papers before starting off for the day).

Although I had appeared on that one program in Los Angeles, my tour officially started in New York City where I stayed for two and a half days at the Plaza Hotel, with its marble floors, Grecian columns, and the rarified air of grander, past decades. There was still what might be called “a gentleman’s bar” and the strong scent of expensive cigars. The hotel’s famous nightclub, the Persian Room, featured a glamorous singing star, seen on the poster outside wearing a gown worthy of an MGM designer, sleek and silvery, a thief’s ransom of diamonds about her neck and dangling from her ears (or good imitations). At the heart of the grand, ground floor (highly polished brass humidors placed about conveniently, great vases with massive floral arrangements vying for space), was the area called the Palm Court, with red-jacketed waiters and ersatz palm trees. I hated it (so damned American chi-chi!); I loved it (so damned American chi-chi!). My room was somewhat of a letdown—high ceilings, skimpy on furniture, and a black-and-white all-tiled bathroom that when you flushed the toilet must have sent a gushing sound several floors above and below it! But, hey! This was the Plaza New York and, like the Ritz in London, where the best people stayed. I appreciated the fact that my publisher had put me there.

A member of their publicity staff accompanied me on all my rounds. I recall that her dresses were too long, her hair too short, and that she constantly forgot if we were going uptown, downtown, east, or west. Late-night radio was the most tedious and the hosts generally quite rude, whereas daytime radio was lighter and often fun. My favorite television appearance was on the Virginia Graham talk show where the great opera diva, Beverly Sills, was the other guest. We had a lively on-camera conversation about pickles (her father’s business)—in which we both agreed they were best bright green, firm, and crunchy. Finding a segue back to my book was not easy. “Funnily enough,” I managed, “a London police officer, named Pickles, was a great help in my research for The Survivors.” Miss Sills looked like she would fall off her chair to contain her laughter, but I carried on quite seriously about crime and the law in London, slid into a comment on the current rash of grisly mass murders being reported, and then explained that although my book was a suspense story and involved a mass murder and the search for the person responsible, it was first and foremost the story of the survivor of that heinous crime. People often forgot the survivors who were irreparably marked by such crimes and concentrated, instead, on the horrific deaths of those who had not escaped.

Although Rod had a copy of my schedule, we had not been in contact since my departure from Los Angeles. I don’t know what I expected, but I experienced a sense of disappointment when he was not at the gate upon my arrival in Chicago. Maybe he had decided not to involve himself further. I could understand that. Everything had happened so fast. During the flight to Chicago, I had myself felt conflicted. What did I really know about Rod other than our mutual, immediate sexual attraction? We had talked endlessly about so many things—what we liked, what we did not, movies opposed to television, political beliefs (we were both what was most commonly referred to as “left wing”), our early lives—but can you know the truth about anyone in less than a week’s time? We really had only skimmed the surface of who we were. And, not uncuriously, neither of us had discussed our present situations regarding our marriages and our relationships with our spouses. Neither of us had wanted to go there.

As I stepped into the waiting room of my arrival gate, I was greeted by a uniformed chauffeur holding a card high that read ANN EDWARDS (wrong spelling, I always hated the deletion of the final e in my first name). At my request, the publisher had replaced the publicity aide, who had scurried about like a demented nursemaid, with a car and driver. Maybe I just wanted a bit more privacy. Mainly, I had been an independent sort of person since childhood who had always been accustomed to looking after myself (and close adults, as well) and was impatient and inwardly cross when being fussed over. I had been in enough hotels in my life to handle checking in and out, and was not the least bit shy at introducing myself to a producer or host of a television or radio program. Also, any local chauffeur would know how to find a building in Chicago (or St. Louis or Atlanta—wherever) better than a scatty lady resident of New York City. As the expense was equitable, the publisher had agreed not to send the publicity woman on the road with me. Hereafter, I was to have a car and driver at my disposal in each city on my tour.

A note awaited me at the front desk of the imposing, old-world Palmer House. “We’re on the same floor—just three doors between us. Call me when you arrive. Rod.” I waited until I was settled into my room (comfortable but stodgy) and had at least put a brush through my hair before I picked up the receiver and dialed his room.

“Rod Serling, here,” he answered, sounding a lot like the host of The Twilight Zone.

“I’m alone and rather frightened,” I replied.

“Of what?”

“All those mysterious objects in outer space.”

“I’d make it down to your room. But, after all, I’ve had the longer journey. I vote that you come to mine.”

We were acting like kids. There had also been an element of childlikeness and impetuosity in our short relationship. Time, I thought, to begin acting adult. “I yield to the senior Senator in the House,” I said. When I opened the door to my room, I could hear another door opening at the end of the corridor. Rod stood in the hallway watching me as I approached. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me inside and wrapped his arms around me in a tightly held bear hug. The strength in his arms always came as a surprise, despite the knowledge that he had done some competitive boxing in his youth. He had doused himself with cologne, a pleasant male scent that he often used, but it did not completely mask the detectible odor of nicotine. Rod was a chain-smoker and the ashtrays in the room held the crushed out, burned ends of numerous cigarettes. He had been waiting, it appeared, a long while for my call.

There was a terrible joy in our reunion. He had a smallish suite. The door was open to the bedroom which featured a large bed covered in a patterned spread with a matching fabric headboard. A dark, striated marble fireplace dominated one wall of the living room. A lovely crystal chandelier glistened in the reflected lights of the city that shone through the expansive window along the outside wall. He had made a reservation in one of the noted restaurants in the hotel, but suggested (strongly) that it might be nice just to have dinner served to us here. I agreed. He ordered up a bottle of champagne—I assumed because it seemed romantic and celebratory, for when it arrived neither one of us consumed more than one glass.

I had wanted us to approach our rendezvous in a slower, evolving manner. By meeting me in Chicago, Rod had stepped over the line from a romantic liaison to an affair—adulterous for both of us. Seeing his glowing face with that whimsical half smile (half insinuating, half sheer happiness) weakened any objectivity I might have had. For a long time there had been a cloud of gloom whenever Leon and I were alone together. I had felt it strongly. Leon could laugh and he could love, but he was never able to forgive himself for having done so. After we had sex (and Leon was a generous lover if not in the more material aspects of his life), I would find myself feeling disturbingly uncomforted. There was something very Russian, very Dostoyevsky, about Leon. At times this could be intriguing. In all our years together I had not been able to penetrate the many veils that his true self hid. This had seemed a challenge to which I was committed—find the real Leon, release him from his self-imposed bondage. With Leon in Europe, I felt free to be me. Rod was all boyish enthusiasm. He saw the glass half-full, not half-empty. We made love with unrestrained passion and arose from it filled with laughter (we could, it seemed, find humor in even small things) and a robust appetite.

The cover on the bed had long been displaced when we finally ordered dinner delivered to the suite and ate it dressed in the white terry robes supplied by the hotel management (with a subtle note slipped into a pocket that explained politely that the robe could be purchased before departure if the guest chose to acquire it). We talked until midnight. I agreed quite willingly to stay the night with him. Rod asked the operator for a six a.m. wake-up call. I was to be collected by my driver at seven a.m. for a morning television show. After that I had a radio interview and a stop at one of the city’s largest bookstores for a book signing. I then returned to the hotel to freshen up before speaking at a book-and-author luncheon to be held in a ballroom on the main floor. When I had left in the morning, Rod had gone back to sleep. On my return I found a note. “I’ll be in the audience to cheer you on.” I think this was one of the first times in my life that I had a measure of stage fright. This was quickly dissipated when I located him seated at a table toward the back with two men. They were, it turned out, two members of his LA staff, whom he had flown in for a meeting (as a “beard” I suspected, a message to my brain I should, perhaps, not have shoved aside). I noticed that some women stopped by his table for an autograph and he smilingly obliged.

I was to be one of two speakers. The other was director Elia Kazan, the embodiment of the auteur, whose films were famous for their sexual and social realism. Kazan had recently published a novel, The Arrangement. I knew from my schedule that I would be sharing the bill with Kazan and had discussed it with Rod. There was always a sense of apprehension when an expat was placed in a social situation with an informer—and there was no more famous informer than Elia Kazan, or one viewed with more contempt by the expats and left-wingers in general. I had met Kazan only once, in the early spring of 1947 on a Sunday afternoon at the Rossens’ when they lived on Warner Drive in Westwood, a lovely section of Los Angeles that surrounded the UCLA campus. He was with his wife Molly and they were on the coast, as I recall, as Kazan was filming Gentleman’s Agreement. Jule and Robbie Garfield were also guests. The conversation centered emotionally on the subpoenas to appear before HUAC that had arrived or were currently making their way to friends and coworkers and the fear their imminent receipt was stirring. Bob was demonstrably resolute in his position of never betraying a colleague and in his contempt for those who had done so. Kazan shared these beliefs with equal vehemence.

Something in the American credo ranks informing high among the dark list of activities—murder, incest, treason—that incense their moral values often to the point of vengeance. To inform on a friend, was to many, an even greater crime than to inform on your country. In the old Warner Bros. hard-core gangster pictures (Bob’s and Jule Garfield’s home studio), the stoolie always got his just deserts. The three men foreswore their silence. No names. No betrayals. Fuck the Committee bastards! Time would see Bob and Kazan buckle once things got truly tough.

I was sure that Kazan did not remember me from that brief Sunday afternoon encounter. I was just a young woman engaged to marry his host’s nephew and until this encounter, our paths had not crossed. I believed I had rid myself of the bitterness to which so many of my fellow expats held fast. My agenda was to be as casual as our current situation demanded. Still, I admit, I had a heavy feeling inside me. Kazan had caused more harm in his naming of names than almost any other informer. Because of his fame, of the kind of deeply moving message films and stage plays he had directed, his betrayal was the most shocking of all. Also, he did not look at all like the vital middle-aged man I had seen at the Rossens’ two decades earlier. He was smaller in all ways—shorter, thinner, his mass of dark, kinky hair now receding. He had been nicknamed Gadget (and called “Gadge”) because he had been constantly in motion, energized like some kind of lifetime battery. He now had the look of an unhappy man. The leanness of his face had made his large nose more prominent than I remembered, and his dark eyes had retreated further into his anatomy.

We sat at a long table on a raised dais facing the room. The president of the organization that was sponsoring the event and another woman who was to do the introductions sat between us. At either end were two people who were to be presented with an award of some kind. We had been notified that each of us (Kazan and I) would have twenty-five minutes at the very most. We would hear a little rap on the table when our time was almost up. Kazan was the first speaker. He discussed his book, which was about a Madison Avenue advertising man who self-destructs, thus bringing down all those close to him. I could not help but see an autobiographical analogy in this. But then he went on and on and on. There was a rap on the table. A second one. Then a third. His talk was now fifteen minutes overlong. Finally, our host got to her feet when he momentarily paused, thanked him, and then announced that Mr. Kazan had to leave for another engagement and so he could not personally sign books after the speeches and awards, but that he had presigned a large stack that would be on a table outside the ballroom that would be available for purchase. Although he must have arranged his early departure, Kazan was momentarily startled. He quickly regained his composure, smiled as though posing for a camera, waved his hand to the audience, turned, and with applause following him, walked out through the partings of the two curtains at the rear.

The host leaned in close to me and whispered to me to please keep my speech to twenty minutes maximum or there would not be much time for book signing. I did the best I could. Rod left with his companions at the end of my speech. I was handed a note when I sat down to sign books. (“You were terrific,” it read. “Rap three times when you get back to the hotel.”)

That evening I would be seeing Kazan again, as we were both on a television panel discussion show that included four men with various political views and was hosted by Chicago’s well-loved television host, Irv Kupcinet. Only Kazan and I had books we were promoting. The seven of us sat around three sides of a huge dark-wood table with individual microphones set up before us. Kazan was on an end seat. I was in the center. Kazan and I were told that we should place our books on the table in front of where we were seated and when we spoke the camera would zoom in to the covers when there was a logical time for doing so. The show ran an hour with commercials. On most talk shows, guests are wired to a microphone. But we had unattached stationary mikes—so we could move during these interruptions. I got up to stretch my legs during the last break (fifteen minutes to go) and did not realize—until it was too late—that Kazan’s book had been placed over mine. I turned to get his attention. He gave me a broad smile. I was not amused. When I knew the camera was not on me, I reached down as inconspicuously as I could and slid his book off and aside. It nearly knocked over a coffee mug and caused a minor moment of confusion. But when I next spoke, the camera was spot on the front cover of The Survivors.

I stood talking to our host for a few moments after the show. Kazan was about to leave the studio as I made my way back to the Green Room. We came face-to-face. “Mr. Kazan,” I said, “I outgrew one-upmanship games a long time ago. But I hope I never grow too old to combat rudeness.” He just smiled and shrugged his shoulders. I stood aside and let him pass and then watched him scurry down the hallway.

On April 4, three weeks before I was to leave for the tour (prior to my meeting Rod), I had attended a gala dinner party of about sixty people, given by Harold Cohen, a producer. It was held under a tent on a grand estate that he had rented in Beverly Hills, having recently come out to the coast from New York to inaugurate his new film company. My former agent, Blossom Kahn, was now working for him, and I attended the affair with her. Sometime between courses, a rising buzz saw of voices cut through the enclosure. Then someone ran into the tent and screamed, “Martin Luther King has been shot by a white man in Memphis!” A chill went through me. “Oh my God!” I thought. “Just like John Kennedy! Why always do they target the good men?” When we had been seated, I had made no note of it, but suddenly I realized that there was not one black face among the guests and not one white one among the dozens of the serving staff. There was pandemonium. People were sobbing. No radio or TV had been set up in the tent. Guests ran into the house or to their cars to find out what had happened. The black staff completely deserted their posts. Cries of deep anguish echoed. Blossom, a small woman, grabbed my arm. She was trembling, fearful, she confessed, of some of the staff turning on the guests.

Just two days later, and three weeks before I was to arrive, Chicago had been under siege for twenty-four hours by rioters. Arson fires flared. There was mass looting. Ten people died before the governor sent in five thousand state troops to try to control the mayhem. My publisher had wanted to omit Chicago from the tour. Several days passed before the city appeared to have come to a peaceful resolve and, as they had obtained some prime publicity outlets for me there, a decision was made (with my approval) that Chicago would be included. The reality of the riots did not hit me until I was driven through the streets where burned-out buildings were grim reminders of the fierce confrontation between the fired-up, anti-Vietnam protesters and the gun-toting troops.

I had returned home from so many years abroad, to see my country shedding the blood of its own people. We were a land in turmoil and even now, one hundred years after the Civil War, equal civil rights for blacks had not been won. Hope rested in men like Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. And now the man who so hoped for “peace in his time” was dead. And we were still sending our young men to be wounded and to die in a foreign place facing an enemy that had not invaded the United States.

“What has happened to my country?” I thought. I felt a terrible sadness, a sickening in the pit of my stomach. Now, here in Chicago, as I viewed the burned-out wreckage of the riots, that sickness returned.

These were issues that Rod shared with me. He was not a “joiner”—that is, to political organizations. He had found, much as I once had in writing westerns, that he could get a message across against intolerance, bigotry, racism, and the futility of war in the form of stories set in outer space or “another dimension.” After the Kazan confrontation we discussed the blacklist and how everyone who was concerned, Kazan included, were victims. He was passionate in all his views and beliefs, revealing a vigorous anger against the injustice of the blacklist. I did not look at him as a cynic, for he was equally vehement in his certainty that good could in the end overcome evil.

He accompanied me in the limo to the airport. We were both flying to New York for a much-anticipated weekend together at the Plaza Hotel. He had one carry-on bag to my mountain of suitcases, packed with outfits for all occasions. I had nineteen more stops in several climates, formal and informal appearances to make, and no time to have clothes cleaned or pressed.

“Sure you don’t want to change your mind?” I asked, just before we got into my waiting limo.

“Not on your life,” he replied.

My original intention in spending two days in New York before continuing with my tour (instead of remaining in Chicago over the weekend) was to give me an opportunity to see some of my dear friends with whom there had been no time before I had flown to Chicago. Now, as Rod and I entered the Plaza together, I knew my agenda had changed. This was to be a very private time of coming to know each other better. I was getting in deeper and I was not sure that was the right thing for us to do, but it seemed we could not help ourselves. There had been this need to cleave together.

My publisher had taken care of my reservation. Rod again had his own room on the same floor. We both had families to consider, children who might need to reach one of us. This time the hotel had upgraded my reservation to a small suite. Rod had a standard room, so he remained with me and checked his messages frequently. We had perfect spring weather. The Plaza was across from Central Park and we had lunch, supplied by a street vendor, as we sat on a park bench. We walked—not too far from the hotel as Rod had a trick knee (a piece of shrapnel was in it, a leftover from service in World War II) and it was not behaving too well. We could not get over the fact that we both had same-leg problems (“How often does that happen?” he laughed), and we made love—now in a more familiar way. Ideas, opinions, remembrances from the times of our lives were told as though they had happened yesterday.

He came from a Jewish home (his father had been a hardworking butcher) and grew up in the small town of Binghamton, New York. He had loved his life there, his parents, his older brother, the high school he attended. He felt deeply, small-town American. Life changed for him with his youthful wartime service, which interrupted his college education. He was with the paratroopers and had been given a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He did not go into how these were won. But he did tell me once about seeing a close buddy of his crushed to death. (This resonated strongly with me as I recalled my father having witnessed the death of two comrades killed by a grenade.) Rod’s wartime experience had badly scarred him. He still woke up at night from nightmares, haunting images of what he saw, how scared he had been at times, how close to losing a leg, his life, and witnessing the horrifying deaths of both friends and foes. Twenty-five years had passed and he still could not forget. After the war, he returned to college, which is when and where he met Carol. His parents had been upset about the fact that she was not Jewish, but he was very much in love with her; they married, and later he converted to the Unitarian religion, which he explained was based on ideals and not idols.

I did not press him on his current feelings toward Carol and he, only once that I recall, brought up my situation with Leon. I was clear that we were separated, an ocean between us and divorce not yet a settled matter. “Do you want to go back to Europe?” he asked (perhaps meaning to Leon). I had to answer honestly that I wasn’t sure what my future held.

“And your writing?”

“Next to my kids, the most important thing in my life.”

“Tough for a husband to accept that.”

“Or a lover?”

“No. Not this one, at least.”

What do I remember most about that weekend? Well, we never once turned on the television. We held each other all night, both nights. We talked and talked and talked—serious talk, nonsense talk. We went to see an old film, Brief Encounter, adapted by Noël Coward from his play Still Life, at the small revival movie house near the hotel and when the lights came up, both of us had tear-streaked faces. The story and performances were moving, but we had not expected how close Coward’s fictional tale of an adulterous affair of two married people would resonate our own. It had an unhappy ending—but maybe the right one for them. Neither of us said it, but we both knew our affair might very well end in the same manner. Instead of returning to the Plaza, we got into one of the horse-drawn carriages that parked alongside the hotel and had the driver take us through Central Park. It was crazy. It was pure corn for tourists. It was romantic. What we did not do was hide out. We held hands when we walked through the Plaza lobby. Rod’s arm went around my waist when we crossed a street. Terms of endearment were exchanged, a close intimacy established. We made no commitments and accepted the small world we had made for ourselves.

Our flights left at approximately the same time but from different gates, so we rode to the airport together in the limo and clung together as we kissed good-bye in the terminal for anybody to see. No one seemed to have taken notice—or recognized Rod. When we disengaged ourselves, I broke away to follow the porter wheeling my suitcases to the check-in point.

“Hey, Red!” A shout uttered in Rod’s inimitable voice (a reference to my hair, not my politics).

I turned and he waved. Then he was gone—but certainly not from my thoughts.

As my itinerary was arranged to accommodate the time of special venues, it did not follow a logical progression. It took me south, back up to the East Coast, down to Florida, to Texas, the Southwest, Midwest, east again and over the border to Toronto, then to St. Louis, halfway across the country and over the border again to Vancouver, down the Pacific Coast through Washington, Oregon, California—San Francisco to San Diego—and finally, after three weeks in the skies and on the road, I was back to Los Angeles. Along the way I reconsidered what being an American meant. We were a much-varied society. I was amazed at how both alike and unalike the people of each state I visited were. It was more than their regional accents—which were many, their political views—which were right or left, seldom both in one state, and the marvelous diversity of ethnicity and color.

Certain incidents on that inaugural tour stand out in my memory even after all the years that have since passed. No blacks in the Southern states had attended the book-and-author luncheons at which I spoke, whereas in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, two fine black authors shared the podium with me.

Pittsburgh is recalled because of a bizarre incident. A woman, obviously suffering mental problems, grabbed me as I came out of a bookstore where I had signed books. She was diminutive, under five feet, and almost skeletal, dressed abstractly, pieces of clothing hanging at all lengths from sharp bones. Her face was heavily made up, thick black lines encircling the clearest, cold blue eyes I had ever seen. She spat at me and I pulled back. She spat again. “Jesus is returning and those who don’t believe will be struck by a nuclear bomb!” she hissed. The store manager and several bystanders moved between me and the woman, and my driver was immediately by my side to guide me into my waiting limo. I had never had anyone—mad or sane—spit at me before. It was an upsetting experience.

This was the spring of 1968—a presidential election due in November. The Vietnam War was not yet quashed. Lyndon Johnson had just announced he would not run for reelection. The country was challenged by disunity. Violence was in the air with the upcoming political conventions. What we did not need were outward displays of religious intolerance, or a growing discrimination among the silent majority. The woman in Pittsburgh was mentally ill, but I was suddenly conscious on my tour of people taking their anger out onto the streets.

I flew over our magnificent mountains and vast, still unpeopled, lands. It is only when you have lived in a small country like England, and an even smaller one such as Switzerland, that you become aware of the awesome size of the States. All of Europe could possibly fit inside our boundaries. That is a startling realization. My flights, when lowering for landings and rising for takeoffs, revealed the remarkable new cities of high-rises and mirrored buildings, new for me as the only other time I had made such an intense crossing of the States was at the age of four, in 1931, the Great Depression at its abyss. My father, with the reality of his sudden loss of status and funds, had piled my mother, his sister and brother-in-law, their two teenage children, and myself into the one commodity he still possessed—a grand 1929, shiny black Packard, purchased before the 1929 stock-market crash and formerly driven by our chauffeur. (Also left behind had been my beloved, cross-eyed governess, Josephine, and several members of our domestic staff.) I sat in the front between my parents (my father driving, my aunt Bea and her family in the back, my two cousins on the jump seats). This was a terrible time for everyone else in the car—but at my young age, I knew nothing about the situation we were in except that we (my parents and I) were together and we were going on a great adventure (or so it seemed).

That early car trip across America was the happiest memory I have of us as a family. To me, my father was like a commander of a ship. He was in total charge (no one else drove). He directed our route, where and when we stopped, and where we ate. People in small towns came out on the streets and walked around the Packard in awed admiration. On the road, my father sang in his college-cheer kind of voice, “Life’s Just a Bowl of Cherries,” “You’re Just Too Marvelous for Words,” “Mademoiselle from Armentieres,” “Over Hill over Dale” (actually the Marine Corps anthem—but I always called it that), and “Fine and Dandy,” which was from the Broadway show of the same title in which my uncle Dave had costarred. It was to Uncle Dave’s house—at that time, pre–my mother and my residing with him—on a steep hillside in the Hollywood Hills—that was our destination. Uncle Dave had always been Marion’s protector, and he had stepped forward to suggest he might be able to get my father work in some facet of the film industry. Until then, my mother, father, and I could stay with him and my aunt Theo. The rest of the passengers in the car (also without funds) were to be guests of an aunt of Aunt Bea’s and my father’s, my aunt Dean, Big Charlie’s youngest sister.

Every morning before we set out, my cousin Dickie’s job (he, who traveled on a jump seat) was to wipe the car of all dust so that the black finish shone—a hard task when we drove through the dust belt where there had been a drought and then a wind and the dust clouds were nearly blinding. My cousin Aline (on the second jump seat) was charged with cleaning the car windows. I don’t know who financed the journey, but my father was the banker. We stopped at motels (which I thought were fantastic, like little playhouses). Farmers stood along the highways (no super ones then) selling what little produce they had for pennies. Marion put together bag lunches for us and managed some dinners in our rooms cooked on a hot plate that traveled with us. Aunt Bea (blonde and blue eyed, skin pale, still beautiful and strangely fragile looking although weighing in at over two hundred pounds) was, to my recall, in a state of near collapse for almost the entire trip.

Our grand vehicle took us from small town to small town, up two-way roads to the ones with a passing lane in larger cities. There was heavy traffic along a good part of our route. It seemed the whole country was traveling west in any kind of vehicle that would move. Hitchhikers lined the way. We never picked up anyone. A man who thought Dickie—sitting on a curb, resting as our car was being refueled—was a hitchhiker, told him, “Boy, hunt for cows, never catch any ride on a mule,” a story my cousin would repeat for years.

We passed caravans of migrant workers with their barefoot children and their junk heaps; gaunt, hungry faces at broken windows; dead animals—once pets—deserted (“Look away, Anne Louise,” my mother would whisper to me and clasp her hand over my eyes). When we pulled into gas stations there would often be a woman there, a baby in her arms, begging for milk money for her tot. Men came up to my father asking for a gallon of gas to feed a car that was ready for the junk heap (in both cases my father proved benevolent). Going through Oklahoma, Native Americans, donned in full costume, performed Indian dances near roadside restaurants and passed a basket around for contributions from those who gathered to watch (dignity gone, pride vanished). The one most memorable scene in my memory of the entire journey from New York City to Los Angeles (which took us well over a week), took place after we had driven all night through the desert (to avoid the heat and the possibility of the car overheating and breaking down). Dawn, the sun just rising, I awoke to a scene of utter paradise. Everything green and lush, heavily fruited orange groves on both sides of the road.

Suddenly, a migrant family came in sight, their car parked (stalled and out of gas) to the side of the road in front of us. They were all out of the car barely dressed in tatters, the children (three or four of them) shoeless, newspapers for glass in their old jalopy car windows, boxes tied to the roof. My father parked behind them and got out to offer help to the one male occupant. He returned to our car, took a container of gas we kept in the trunk, and went back to give it to the man. The children began to run towards the ground where there were fallen oranges, an elderly woman with them. They were ravenously biting into their found fruit when a state trooper’s car passed us and pulled up in front of them. Two uniformed men got out, went over to the group, knocked the fruit from their hands, and forced them back to the car. They said something to my father, who returned to our car. The small amount of gas he had given them got the jalopy going—but who knew for how far. The troopers came over to us, looking through the windows inside. “Good day, ma’am,” one said, tipping his hat to my mother, and then withdrew. Both officers seemed amazed at the shiny black, neat-as-a-pin, luxury vehicle. They asked my father some questions about it and then waved us on. We passed the jalopy thumping along just a short way up the road. We all waved.

That world had disappeared along with those history and literature has called “the lost generation.” I suppose one should be glad of its demise when there was so much suffering and poverty throughout our land. Still, as I flew from city to city and saw and felt the enormity of the despair and disconnect between ordinary people and the government, the young and their elders, I wondered if some things might not have been better in those days, and if we—the people—had not tried harder we might well have had the best of both worlds. A certain innocence had been lost at the gain of creature comforts, better technology. But home no longer had the same meaning.

When I arrived back from the book tour, the dogs jumped all over me as a welcoming committee of two. Cathy had arranged a special dinner including candlelight and a dessert she had made. There were several reconciliatory letters from Leon and a loving note of welcome attached to a large bouquet of flowers from Rod.