Boys in the Trees: A Memoir

by Carly Simon

  It was shortly after midnight. Mick and I, we were close together—the same height, same coloring, same lips. I could feel him, eyes wide on me. I felt as if I were trying to stay within a pink gravity that was starting to loosen its silky grip on me. I was thrilled by the proximity, remembering all the times I had spent imitating him in front of my closet mirror. Only now we were both Narcissus, each desiring our reflection in the other; I was moving in step with him. Not trying to, but Richard gave us directions that seemed more football coach than record producer: “Mick, step back just a bit, your voice cuts more than Carly’s. Try doubling your parts and stand a little further away, both of you.”

  The farther away we stood, the closer we got. Electricity. That’s what it was. I wanted to touch his neck and he was looking at my lips. The electricity was raw and hardly disguising its power. Having sex would have actually cooled things off.

  I started to withdraw, which I thought was the only correct thing to do. It corresponded with Richard’s wanting to listen to a couple of playbacks and then—nobody wanting to miss a chance to see Mick—an opening of the studio door and the appearance of George Martin, Paul, and Linda.

  Conversation struck up between the Beatle and the Stone and I went to the ladies’ room to play with my hair, mess it up to be like Mick’s—only mine didn’t fall into the perfect shiny piece of glass that his did—put on some natural lip color, and try to dry off a little. I had taken a swig of Harry’s brandy, but it hadn’t relaxed me at all. It had just made me sweat.

  When I went back to the studio, it was empty except for Mick sitting at the piano. I joined him and he asked me to play the chords of the song for him.

  “How do you know all those chords?”

  “I’m just a stuck-up chick,” I said, and he started fooling around on a song he was working on, “Funny, funny, funny, funny, how love can make you cry.” He looked right at me. Then back at the keys. I could feel my face flushing. I harmonized with him as it became a chorus, an improvisation that was later searched for and never found among the multitracks at AIR Studios.

  Mick is that genius of an artist who thrives on the dark and the daring. And you could say that the love affair between us that appeared to be brewing contained both of those things. And if Mick could have his way, it would be Romeo and Juliet tragic. We couldn’t have each other. Mick had been married only a short time to Bianca, who was waiting for him in a first-class lounge or hotel suite somewhere not too far away. And more important to me, there was the seriousness of my love for James. He wasn’t the horse Mick was, nor was James as naughty or as willing to destroy the status quo. Mick was compelled by a difficult situation as much as anything. He would not have been as interested in me, I believed, if there hadn’t been an insurmountable obstacle between us. That is true for most men.

  Funny, funny, funny, funny, how love can make you cry.

  It did not end there, though. We spent some evenings together at the studio where he was recording, and some other times in rooms at the Portobello Hotel, which was dangerous and conspicuous. I was genuinely drawn to the part of him that I suspected he didn’t let out for a walk all that often. The only reason that I got what I imagined to be the tender, appreciative side of Mick was that I wasn’t asking for it.

  I was holding back with Mick—not giving him exactly what he wanted—but I knew it was still more than James would be all right with. The most touching moment I can remember, almost ever, happened later, the night before James and I actually tied the knot. We were in bed, getting ready for the big day, when the phone rang and James answered. It was Bianca Jagger. She told James that he shouldn’t marry me because her husband and I were having an affair. She muttered some things I couldn’t believe she was saying and James couldn’t quite make out due to the connection and the language barrier.

  Then James said, “I’m sure that’s not true. Carly has told me about it and it’s not what you think. I trust my wife-to-be. I trust Carly.”

  Following were the complicated, awful, proud, guilty, and life-changing feelings that have remained with me since. I can still wallow in regret to this day about things I did, versions of the truth I perpetrated. James was more than a prince. He was everything that a man could level his woman with. And I loved him miles beyond.

  Recording “You’re So Vain” at AIR Studios in London with Richard Perry. Paul and Linda McCartney were in the next studio and stopped by.

  “I’m lookin’ forward to lookin’ back from further on down the track together in fact, forever my love.”

  —“Forever My Love,” by James Taylor and Carly Simon

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  we’ll marry

  The weekend before I went to London we had spent on the Vineyard. On the plane there, anticipating our imminent separation, James and I went so far as to write an informal prenuptial agreement on a piece of paper. He added his notes in ballpoint pen on both sides of a single lined page, and we both bent down to sign it. “This document will attest that James Vernon Taylor and Carly Elizabeth Simon will enter into a state of wedlock as defined therein…” it began. James’s handwriting was childish, sweet, alternately neat and suddenly impassioned, wilder. All material possessions would be considered common property, and in the event of “the dissolution of this agreement,” all possessions would revert to their original owner. Joint possessions will be distributed equally “to both parties.” As for “divorse” (sp), James wrote that it would be “applied for in writing, listing grievances,” adding, “Waiting period of three months before compliance.” Under the pledge, “I hereby agree to the above stipulations,” we signed our names, James’s signature forky, all bent wire, like a Calder mobile; mine girlish, well behaved, prep-school-like, lined up underneath his. I still have this sweet, sad document.

  Looking back, we must have intentionally made our decision to get married only four days before the wedding, leaving us no time to fret about the details. Twenty-four hours before the ceremony, James’s lawyer, Nat Weiss, arranged for the license, the limousine, and the Wasserman test, and James and I made a hurried trip down to City Hall in New York for a stamp here, a stamp there. Danny and Abigale Kortchmar would be our witnesses. Yes, it was a huge decision, but in every way, it felt like the right one, especially when you have only a short time to tear your hair out anticipating and worrying about it. Once we’d signed our names on the City Hall ledger, the four of us celebrated with a drink and chicken wings at a Chinese restaurant.

  With only four days until our wedding ceremony, we had to keep accordioning the various steps and rituals. That night after the signing, James and I took a long walk together through the Village, as unprepossessing as any two people could be. It was warm out, and almost dark on Eighth Street, and anyone observing us would have guessed we were just another couple out for a stroll, which, in fact, we were. A door or two off Bleecker Street, on MacDougal, we passed by a jewelry store advertising wedding rings at a discount—25 PERCENT OFF! said the sign in the window.

  James and I entered and went straight to the full-price ring section. We knew to avoid rings that were on sale—not because they were tawdry, or suspicious, but because of some mutually agreed-upon superstition that they were bad luck. A dark, handsome woman materialized behind the counter. James glanced at her fleetingly, closely, familiarly, before his gaze found his own shoes. The saleswoman was tall, her posture aristocratic, her hair in a severe bun, her white button-down shirt tucked into a black skirt. Her sexy-frosty appearance was in sharp contrast to the tinny, exotic music playing overhead and the flamboyant chains, Indian fabrics, scarves, crystal rings, different-sized Buddhas, incense sticks, and handmade Christmas tree ornaments draped, blinking, gleaming, and zigzagging, around the shop. She looked for all intents and purposes like a Mexican painter—or a Mexican painter’s muse, including the eyebrows.

  But before either of us had said a word, James, I felt, had an unspoken moment with her. It was as though the two of them shared a histo
ry, or worse, a charmed, short-lasting flicker of a future. Over the course of our marriage I would come up against this same sort of woman, in various forms and guises. But at that moment, she was just a small twitch in my gut.

  Buying a ring was not a trivial affair, and looking back, I don’t know why James and I found ourselves at some cheap Middle Eastern downtown tourist kiosk. Thinking back on it, it was James at his most New England-y: farmyard wedding rings. James and I paid for each other’s rings, each one costing $17.95, so there wasn’t much wallet shuffling, with each of us handing the cashier a twenty-dollar bill. (Remember, these were the expensive rings.) The one we decided on for James was slightly wider than the one we picked out for me. James’s was faintly curved and beveled, with a dull sheen, while mine was narrower, with a more polished look. They were both ostentatiously “non-statement.” The rings went into the store’s small, ordinary white cartons and, pocketing our boxes, we waved good-bye to the saleswoman.

  Fred Leighton, a Mexican-import-clothing store that had recently begun selling precious jewelry, was our next stop. I was hoping to find something useful and original to wear at my wedding that I could maybe wear in the future, too. I found the right dress at once and held it up, silently offering James veto power. He asked me to try it on, but when I said, “It’s pretty loose-fitting, and it’s a medium. It’ll fit,” he said, “Done!”

  A simple gray-and-white, long-sleeved Mexican dress, vertically striped and floor length, it reminded me of the outfits Lucy and I wore when we performed at the Moors in Provincetown. That dress—my wedding dress—is one of the many articles of clothing that, along with various other irreplaceable things, have mysteriously vanished from my house. Gone, too, is the beautiful diamond necklace that James bought for me after we were married. Over the years, countless pairs of my best, worn-in leather boots have gone missing, too. Some of James’s belongings have also disappeared, including a beautiful book that Joni Mitchell gave him containing pen-and-ink drawings and handwritten lyrics to the songs on Blue, most of which were originally inspired by James. I remember distinctly Joni’s drawing of a girl’s face, with a gleaming diamond instead of a teardrop. A friend of mine said she’d keep it safe for me.

  * * *

  Even at the eleventh hour, James and I still hadn’t figured out an exact time or location, much less gotten in touch with a justice of the peace. I was hoping a simple notary could handle the job, but this, it turned out, was beyond a notary’s job description. I hurriedly placed a phone call to my mother in Riverdale, explaining that James and I wanted to get married the following day at five in the afternoon—James was playing a show that night at Radio City Music Hall—and that we desperately needed to track down a justice of the peace.

  Even though Mother had already been asked by James, Mommy sounded exultant. She promised to call a Riverdale acquaintance, Judge Ash, the second we hung up, and if Judge Ash was unavailable, she assured me she would find someone else. “Darling, darling Carly…” she said. “Are you having a big gathering?”

  No, I told her. It would be just her, James’s mother Trudy, and, of course, Jake.

  “Cosa linda! Cosa linda!” It was the same endearment my mother and father had used with each other. Mommy again assured me she’d call Judge Ash the moment we hung up.

  Jake was the next call. Could he possibly show up at my apartment the following afternoon at 5 p.m. sharp? When I told him why, that James and I were getting married, there was a long pause. “Are you serious?” he said at last. “Carpe diem. What about tearful nights and angry dawns?” His lyrics for our first song infiltrated our conversation like smoke seeping under a door crack.

  I knew it seemed sudden, and impulsive, I told him, but … that’s the way it was.

  “I guess so,” Jake said.

  I couldn’t help it. “And that’s the way I’ve always heard it should be.”

  There was no laugh—just thirty seconds of breathing, from one mouthpiece to another.

  I may have cried. I can’t remember, but that’s how my memory shapes things today. It was a heavy moment nonetheless, a deep conversation, as our song, finally, had come to life, suffused as it was now with almost too much meaning. “I’ll be there,” Jake said before he hung up. “Of course I will. Dress code?”

  James placed a call to his mother, Trudy, asking if she could be at our apartment tomorrow afternoon at the same time. I couldn’t get a good grip on Trudy’s reaction, but the conversation wasn’t long. I felt a hole in my heart on behalf of our joint family members who wouldn’t be present. Neither James nor I had wanted a big festival of a wedding. In truth, the optimal wedding would have involved just the two of us, and maybe our sheer haste, plus the question of “Whom do you not invite?” gave us the excuse to keep the ceremony very small. (I also think I would have been too nervous to carry out such an intimate vow in front of a big crowd.) The fact of the matter was that it would have been impossible to assemble the most important people in our lives in such a short time, and I knew Joey, Lucy, and Peter would understand. In lieu of a huge crowd, we’d created a time, and a date, and made our decision, with everyone invited to James’s after-concert party at the Time-Life Building in Rockefeller Center. How on earth, I wondered, did James have the calm and steadfastness to even consider walking onstage at Radio City Music Hall only three hours after our wedding?

  * * *

  Once the plans were set, I hung James’s white linen suit in the shower to steam out the wrinkles. James took a nap while I tidied up around the apartment and took David the dog out for a walk.

  I couldn’t help thinking about Daddy, and how much he would have liked and approved of James. James was a Harvard boy in spirit and style, one smart enough never to have attended the college. Ivy League or not, James, in fact, was too smart, too all-seeing, for his own comfort. When he slept at night, he moved around a lot, once telling me he’d dreamed he was emerging through a black hole, that he knew he wasn’t from this planet, but had no choice but to bear up under the strain of living on this earth. I’m guessing half or more of James’s thoughts or perceptions were ones he wished were someone else’s. At the time I thought, and I still do, that he’s an uncommon genius.

  That evening, though, James was nothing more than a nervous groom-to-be, and I was pretending just as hard to remain calm and unruffled, with both of us tossing customary rituals out the window, including the wedding superstition of the bride and groom not seeing each other before the ceremony.

  “How does this look?” James asked. “Should the ivory pin stick through the tie, or should I just keep the tie tucked under the jacket?” His only small stylistic eccentricity was a hand-painted tie with a camel on it, which we both agreed he should wear.

  I fixed it for him, and then it was my turn. “Do you think I should wear my hair up, or would that look too sedate?”

  “No, wear it the way it is. I love it long.”

  Our wedding style, if you could even call it that, could be summed up as a slightly ostentatious absence of style. Neither of us considered that the occasion merited any fanfare or toys, paper hats, or long-winded, solemn speeches, and anything more than the most low-key recitation of our vows would have no doubt darkened James’s reticently jovial mood. We already had enough of a public life, one that would get even more splashy and unhidden as the years went by. Already we had the normal number of people asking us for the normal number of autographs, James always signing his name with a fast “caged animal” scrawl, me delivering a perfect schoolgirl script, making James’s, by comparison, all the more treasured. On the Vineyard, then and throughout the seventies, the attention people were paying to us would become even more pronounced. James was attracted to the Lambert’s Cove property because of its beauty and privacy, but neither of us had counted on the presence of a nearby camping site known as Cranberry Acres. Fans would come right up beyond the borders of our property, and even take pictures outside our cabin windows. James would get extremely angry,
but in general his road manager, Jock, helped ward trespassers off. As the decade went on, things got worse, with cars driving down our road at all hours, snapping photos and taking videos, and some people even knocking on our door.

  But at that moment, none of that mattered. To paraphrase Tolstoy, it’s absurd to think of charm or lipstick, feathers or hairstyles, at a time when, if you lack a proper base of ethics, you might as well forget the union. You have the wrong partner. Or at least, the wrong one with whom to build a life. We had that base of ethics. With James’s modesty and good manners, he would have been in his element living his whole life in the sand somewhere, unglimpsed from behind the blackberry bushes, perhaps stealing out for an hour or two a day for a fast, surprise appearance and a smattering of folksy applause. That same paradox lived inside me, too, wanting to disappear into the woods while simultaneously being recognized and loved for a few minutes of reassurance.

  * * *

  Side by side, with James on my left, we stood beside the Tonk upright piano in our apartment with me clutching James’s hand and shaking evenly from head to toe, and Judge Ash standing before us, presiding. On the other side of us was one of our unofficial ushers, James’s (and now our) dog, David. In search of distraction, my eyes found the colors of the camel on James’s hand-painted tie. Oh my Lord, James, problems have and will arise, but you are my whole life.

  James and I both wanted the briefest of speeches from the judge, without any allusions to religion. He finally spoke: “Will you, James, take this woman, Carly, to be your lawful, wedded wife in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”

  “Yes,” James said.

  “And will you, Carly, take this man, James, to be your husband, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?”