That divorce was sin, no one doubted. It was so reprehensible that it was unobtainable in the state of New York except in rare circumstances. If a man beat his wife daily, his behavior did not constitute grounds for legal disunion. If a couple lived apart and despised each other, they still did not qualify. The only exception was provable infidelity. Provable meant photographs or eyewitnesses. Even in those rare cases, the law imposed a one-year delay between the ruling and marital dissolution. In the meantime, both spouses’ reputations withered. Especially, of course, the reputation of the one who was not the breadwinner.
In Reno, however, divorce was a red-hot industry. For those who could afford to travel and establish residency there, the wildest town of the West offered a greased escape from the shackles of marriage and motherhood, even from reputation. Among the wide range of acceptable pretexts: impotence, rarely demonstrable in court, and mental cruelty, a deliberately vague term. Proof was optional.
In the privacy of her Pullman roomette, Kay reflected on her seventeen years of wedlock. Marriage was supposed to bring joy, procreation, and fulfillment. But what did any woman at twenty understand about sexuality, its relation to human emotion, or parenting? At that age she had assumed that with all their charm, intelligence, and money, she and Jimmy would effortlessly surmount any obstacles. The idea that they would experience loneliness or sexual restlessness did not cross their minds. She reminisced on their dating, their verbal jousting, their sense of complicity. As for motherhood, the classifieds overflowed with nursemaids and nannies. In their milieu, everyone did it that way.
The train proved the best psychoanalyst. The rhythm of iron wheels ba-bumping over track joints, the clickety-clack of car platforms banging against one another, the thud of footsteps in the corridors, and the opening and shutting of doors all contributed to a soporific rataplan that lulled her into contemplation and dreams. The train was speeding her not only from the metropolis but from every certainty and responsibility of matrimony. Her move was bold; it was rash; it felt inevitable; but she would miss certain milestones. That was the cost of freedom. She would not attend her daughter April’s high school Christmas program. Alfred Knopf would be publishing The Money Muddle, a nonfiction follow-up to Jimmy’s book of poetry that tried to explain the current crisis in international finance. Kay would miss the book launch party, probably much to Jimmy’s relief.
Most momentous of all, Alma Mater would début without her. She opened the burled-walnut bar under the window, removed a bottle of Scotch, and poured herself a glass. She stood at the window sipping as Pennsylvania’s forested hills and river gulches rushed by.
Beyond missed appointments, she would experience social sliding. Jimmy’s bankers and investment managers would no longer recognize her. Who cared? She chanted Ira Gershwin’s lyrics sotto voce to the wilderness:
My bonds and shares may fall downstairs.
Who cares? Who cares? I can’t be bothered now.
Unlike George, Kay reflected, Ira viewed himself not as a creative whiz but as a craftsman. In his unassuming way, though, he was brilliant. During the last few years, Cole Porter had emerged as the most celebrated lyricist on Broadway. His songs “Let’s Do It” and “Love For Sale” had stiffened, as it were, his reputation for urbane, risqué wit. In contrast, Ira never sought to call attention to the words. He wrote them rather to showcase George’s music and its underlying emotions. It brought him joy when the audience applauded his brother. Ira Gershwin wanted none of that applause for himself. What a dear, dear man. She set down the tumbler, lay on the sofa, and gazed at the swaying crystal chandelier.
On the train one slept and woke at random moments. Time stretched and shrank. Memories and hopes rippled into one another, currents in the river of life. The landscape of America rolled past as the scenery of recollection flowed through one’s mind. She could not remember a time when she had strayed this far from a piano for this long. Who am I, without a piano? She picked up Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, which Jimmy had recommended, having read it during one of his transatlantic crossings. It occurred to her that the protagonist’s surname, K, sounded like the nickname Gershwin had assigned her. Like K, she was caught up in a life-devouring process—in her case a marriage, in his a trial—that increasingly made no sense. The Twentieth Century Limited rattled over the Mississippi River and into the great prairie, the heartland of America. The air tasted fresh and new.
* * *
And then, just when you think you’ve found your direction, life hurls a gust at you that spins you around. At the Reno station, a reporter flashed a shot of Kay disembarking. “Just a few questions, Misses Warburg. Does this mean the end for you and James? Is it true about you and George Gershwin?”
“Who are you?” she asked him as she marched through the station. “What outfit?”
“New York Times, ma’am.” The reporter lifted his hat.
Kay spotted the horse and carriage of the DB Guest Ranch and climbed up. “Let’s scram,” she told the tan, weathered female driver.
“Ho, ho, ho, gotta slow down, hon. You ain’t in New York no more.”
Seven miles outside Reno, the DB Guest Ranch, known locally as the DB Divorce Ranch, sprawled over twenty-three oak-studded acres. With a steep ravine, a corral, a swimming pool, and three stucco-and-wood houses that surrounded a brick courtyard with a fountain, the outrageously overpriced resort catered to eight socialites at a time, all female. The gimmick: no gimmicks. No facials, manicures, or mineral salt scrubs. No organized outings or campfire sing-alongs. Just the dry breeze that carried a sweet reek of horse manure and a month and a half of riding, reading, and rest.
State laws required that a woman seeking divorce reside in the area six weeks and pledge to remain. After thus proving her allegiance to the Silver State and obtaining the necessary papers, she was free to hop on the next train back to New York.
DB stood for Deb and Bill. These days, though, all that remained of Deb and Bill was Deb. Ironically, divorce had not caused their separation. Bill had perished consequent to a riding accident three years earlier, and to hear Deb tell the tale, none too soon, bless his heart.
Although Deb professed to be “only forty-two years young, honey,” her ponytail was as silver as her cigarette ash, and even longer. She met guests at the station in a horse-drawn buggy, drove them to town and back, and oversaw the two Mexican laborers and three cowboys who cooked, fed and exercised the horses, and cleaned the stables.
The linens and flowered bedspread in Kay’s room were clean. Worn copies of The Virginian, David Copperfield, and Douglas Fairbanks’s Laugh and Live lined the bookshelves in the common room. The piano was not terribly out of tune. While Kay sauntered through Fauré’s Ballade opus 19 or Debussy’s “Rêverie,” two or three guests lounged on the sofa and armchairs, chatting and thumbing through six-month-old copies of Vogue and Vintage Antiques. One of the cowboys, an athletic, tan man with deep-set gray eyes, who went by the unlikely moniker of Faye, leaned against the door sill.
“Yer somethin’ else, ma’am,” he said.
Kay turned and smiled. A couple of divorcees were watching him with appreciation. He did not seem to notice. What a setup. Eight women discontented with marriage, yearning for escape from their Beacon Hill or Streeterville penthouses, most likely deprived emotionally and sexually. Young, muscular ranch hands who probably agreed to sweep the stables for a pittance in exchange for a shot at erotic play. Kay shook her head, amused. She missed George.
But if Faye enjoyed impressionist piano music, or walking through the leafy gully talking about New York and show business, why not? As a sweetener, he knew how to manhandle an Arabian mare. He understood how to give her a workout until she was soaking. And he was always patient and encouraging.
Kay too rode hard these days. When they reached an open field she kicked her stallion into high gear. Her hair blowing, her horse huffing, she galloped as if Deb and Bill’s were a competitive equestrian center rather than a leafy refuge. Faye slowed his
horse, hand on hip, allowing her to overtake him.
“Where’d you learn to ride like that?” he asked after she looped around to trot back to the ranch beside him.
“You let me win, you scoundrel,” she told him.
He laughed. “I didn’t know we were racing, ma’am.”
“Oh, come now, Faye.”
He stayed for dinner. Kay sat at the far end of the table, apart from the other women.
“Mind if I join you?”
Off her nod, Faye straddled the bench across from her. He topped off her glass with California burgundy. “Where’d you learn to make those keys sing like that, anyway?”
“New York. I’ve spent my entire life in New York.”
The cowboy looked out the window. “You got oak trees in New York?”
“Some. I think. But not like here,” she admitted.
“You got horses?”
“Not as many as when I was a kid, but yes.”
“Rodeos?”
Kay savored a forkful of sweet pepper chili. “There you got me. I don’t believe we have rodeos.”
“Well that’s a goddamn shame, you ask me,” said Faye. “Ever been to a rodeo?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t.”
Faye took off his hat and placed it on the table. “What the piano is to you, that’s what the rodeo is to me.”
She gave this a moment’s thought. “But what exactly is a rodeo?”
“It’s where cowboys show what they’re made out of.”
“You mean, their expertise?”
“I mean roping, jumping, steer wrestling, and my favorite, bareback bronc riding.”
“What’s a bronc?” asked Kay.
“It’s a wild horse that ain’t in the mood to have a man on its back an’ll do just about anything to throw him off.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“Well you’re in luck.” He invited her to a rodeo where he would perform in two weeks. “I’ll try to hold onto that bronco as good as you tinkle that piano.”
“Say, play us some more Gershwin, will you Kay darling?” asked a freckle-faced beauty from Philadelphia. She treated them to parts of the Rhapsody in Blue, parts of Alma Mater, and other pieces she and George had written. The women talked. Faye listened.
After the other guests had retired to their rooms he resumed questioning Kay about New York, music, and show business. He seemed fascinated with the process of mounting a musical, the auditions, the ruthless revisions to script and songs, the impossibility of predicting an audience’s response.
“That ain’t what matters,” said Faye.
“What matters?” asked Kay.
“It’s that you wrote that score.”
* * *
The rodeo was, to put it mildly, an informal affair. Dressed in jodhpurs and white shirt she sat with other guests of the DB Guest Ranch in the first row of bleachers. Across from them, the corral fence, animal stalls, hitching posts, a parking area with automobiles and black ambulances, and the desert field.
Horses and bulls snorted in the pens. Men in loose pants with leather chaps, vests, neckerchiefs, and wide-brimmed hats herded a riderless horse into its stall. Once the corral was empty they opened a gate, releasing a calf that dashed as fast as its little stick-legs could propel it. Within seconds a cowboy raced up to it on his horse, waving a lasso, and flung the loop around its neck. The calf’s momentum tightened the noose as the cowboy jumped off his horse, bounded over to it, wrestled it onto its back, and tied its feet all in a flash.
A second calf. A second cowboy. A failed roping. The rider hung his head in shame, his hat obscuring his face.
A third, successful but not as swift as the first. And a fourth, this calf larger than the others, which complicated the wrestling part. Kay saw it as ballet, a staccato dance to clopping hooves and drum-roll applause.
Following the roping exercises, the bucking bronc show began. This time, when the gate opened, a horse jumped out and proceeded to fling its rear and front ends alternately into the air kicking up dust, its tail leaping, its head bobbing. The cowboy held the reins with his right hand and waved his left arm for balance, flopping like a Dean’s Rag Book doll shaken by a toddler, his head shooting backward and forward as if connected to his shoulders only by a string. Losing balance, the cowboy reached for the rein with his left hand before being thrown. He landed on his back and as he regained his feet, brushing the dirt off his chaps, Kay noticed a gash in his vest.
Three others herded the now-riderless horse into the pen. Another gate opened to reveal Faye, flopping on a second bucking bronc, his spurs dug into its neck, his body horizontal at times, at other times doubled over or flipping to the side. The horse lunged and danced. Faye flapped and snapped like a flag in a shifting wind. And then, boom! The bronc ejected him head-first to the dirt. Kay caught her breath, shocked by the immediacy and drama of the moment. The horse quieted. Faye, the brave cowhand facedown in the dirt, struggled to raise himself. Other cattlemen rushed to him with a stretcher. Within minutes an ambulance was sirening him away. She felt his dismay and shame as if it were her own. His song—his audience-stirring belter, his impeccably rehearsed spectacle—had flopped.
She asked herself, what was it about performance that motivated people like her and Faye and George to test their dignity, to court heartbreak, to risk everything? Why could they not find contentment in the ordinary pursuits of the common mortal? In endeavors with predictable outcomes. Why were ordinary results—material comfort, social standing, happy children—not enough for such people? She grabbed her handbag and turned to Deb. “Let’s go.”
“What’s the rush?”
“We’re driving to the hospital.”
Deb frowned. “You’re askin’ me to miss the whole thing?”
“I’m asking you to take me there. He works for you. Don’t you care?”
Deb twisted her mouth in a knowing smile and touched her wrist. “Honey, don’t fluff your wig for a hunky buckaroo. Swashbucklers like Faye? A dime a dozen ’round here.”
Kay recognized the opening ploy of a negotiation. She had already paid Deb plenty. “Drive me to the hospital, now.”
It was a cottage at the edge of downtown Reno, beyond the zone where saloons yielded to bungalows, which in turn gave way to Jeffrey pines and rabbit brush. The emergency room housed five beds. In one, a drunk was rehydrating. Three were empty. Faye lay in the last, his feet sticking out past the end of the sheets, his sweaty hair plastered to his forehead. “Aw, this ain’t nothin’. Just a coupla cracked ribs. Heck, I got twelve of ’em. How’d you like the show?”
“I hated the ending,” said Kay.
“You didn’t wait ’til the endin’,” said Faye. “You walked out at intermission. You missed some of the best riders.”
“Can you blame me for leaving?”
“Hell no. Just like any good show, it needs work.”
Kay decided to return every afternoon. After all, she had nothing better to do at the DB Guest Ranch. Why not help nurse a poignant cowboy back to his natural bucking-bronc swagger? Then she reminded herself that all this, the horses, the bucolic charm of the ranch, the sense of freedom, represented nothing but a transitional passage in the rhapsody of her life. Nothing was to come of it except divorce papers.
* * *
When Faye was all healed up Kay and a couple of other soon-to-be-divorcées launched a party in his honor. Betty, a recent arrival, played an energizing jig on the fiddle; Kay accompanied her, and for once the cheap piano sounded just right. Everyone drank, told jokes, and danced, except the honoree. “Come on, you lazy gaucho, kick up those feet,” Deb urged him, pulling him out of his chair. “You been lyin’ on that mattress so long it’s made a dreamer of ya.”
The cowboy shook his head. “I’m a-sittin’ here a-waitin’ fer Kay.”
As the jig wound down, Betty sawed a slow “Red Is The Rose.” Kay and Faye danced alone to a violin ballad.
The d-r-r-ing of the telephone
caused Kay to stumble. Faye caught her. Deb waved to stop the music. “DB Guest Ranch. Why yes, she’s here. Who did you say? Why sure.” She lowered the telephone and covered the mouthpiece. “Fer you, Kay. Person-to-person. Mister George Gershwin himself.”
Only then did Kay realize: this was the night of the Alma Mater opening in Hartford. And it was three hours later there. “George! How did it go?”
“Oh, Kay, it was beyond anything.” Kay heard glasses clinking and laughter. “Everyone was just wow,” gushed George. “You’re missing the most jovial booze-fest since Of Thee I Sing. Archie MacLeish is here. So is Salvador Dalí. We had lobster and Spanish rice on the train from New York, now we’re chugging chilled Veuve Clicquot, all care of Yours Truly. Hold on, Kay, there’s someone asking for you.”
Kay recognized the New England drawl. “Hello, Miss Kay Swift, this is Kate Hepburn and I just want to congratulate you on the positively delightful ballet you’ve written. It was simply sublime. Do come back to us soon so we can celebrate. Here’s our darling George.”
She passed the phone not to George Gershwin but to George Balanchine, who uttered a few words of commendation, English spiced with French, and passed it to Eddie Warburg, who sounded drunk. And so on through the New York Social Register. Kay listened to the huzzahs and merriment that zoomed through the wires all the way from Avery Memorial Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut. It seemed as remote, ephemeral, and immodest as firefly glints in a distant marshland.
“George Gershwin. Well, I’ll be damned,” remarked Faye when she hung up. “He yer beau?”
“I think so,” said Kay. “I hope so.”
* * *
The day after she collected her divorce certificate she stood railside at the Reno Station in pants, a blouse, and boots feeling apprehensive and optimistic. Packed in her suitcase were two envelopes: one for her wedding ring, the other stuffed with court documents.
She relived the last moments of her stay. That pause on the Virginia Street Bridge with Deb. As they crossed on foot over the Truckee River toward the courthouse, Deb stopped her. “This is where you toss the stone, hon.” She touched Kay’s diamond wedding ring and pointed to the water. “A Reno tradition. Brings luck they say.”
Rhapsody Page 29
