Leaving Home

by Anne Edwards

  Letters arrived in a steady stream from Leon, sarcastic in tone but yet hopeful. He wanted us to unite for a time just as soon as all the work on the publicity of the novel was completed. He felt we should try to work things out and that he was sure we could do so—“if only your head isn’t turned now and you remember the good things we did share and could go on sharing.” In another, he closed with “I love you deeply and do not want to lose what we can have together.”

  Truman Capote’s “nonfiction” novel, In Cold Blood, had recently been published and caused a huge controversy over its subject—the real-life mass murder of the entire Clutter family in Kansas—and its new “faction” category. The book was brilliant—Capote at the top of his form—and it had been on the best-seller list for months and was to be a motion picture. The publication of my novel, quite accidentally, fit right into the theme—mass murder—without actually being like it in any other manner. My prepublication reviews in the trade papers were good, but the book had only been shipped to stores that week. To kick off my publicity campaign I was booked on a nighttime television talk show hosted by the controversial Joe Pyne, who had a huge viewing audience. However, Truman Capote, without question, was the star guest, to be given a lengthy time slot after which I was to have three and a half minutes.

  I met Capote only briefly in the Green Room before he went onto the set and sat down before the camera for his interview. While there, he did not engage me in conversation nor do I recall that he even glanced at my book, which was resting on a coffee table in front of both of us. As I watched his turn on the television set in the Green Room, it was impossible not to observe his growing dislike for Joe Pyne, who was a mean-spirited, confrontational interviewer who was deliberately attempting to push Capote into a heated verbal exchange—leaving little doubt that he was antigay (among many other things). By near end, Capote was a tough adversary, hard to get the best of. But there was a moment when he seemed about to stalk off the set. Just before going to break, Pyne picked up a copy of The Survivors from his prop desk and turned it to show the cover to Capote. “I don’t suppose you’ve read this book as yesterday was its publication date,” he said. “But it also tells of the mass murder of a family.” Truman grabbed the book from his hands and stared for a brief moment at it.

  “The Survivors!” he snapped with a slight lisp. “Of course, I’ve read it. It’s the best gothic novel since Wuthering Heights!” The camera zoomed in for a close-up of the iconic Truman Capote holding up my book—which had a gray-and-black cover that was a clue to its noir content—and then cut to commercials. I was then rushed onto the set. Mr. Capote had already disappeared and I was never to see him again.

  “Well, well! The best book since Wuthering Heights,” the host said.

  “Hardly,” I smiled (rather weakly, I am sure). “Mr. Capote said ‘gothic novel.’” Pyne decided not to go there and we went through a brisk three minutes of, “You’re not English?” and then “Is The Survivors as gory as In Cold Blood?” Quickly followed by, “What’s the matter with you writers? Not enough blood being spilled in Vietnam for you?” I think I held my own.

  I returned to the Green Room where the publicity representative from Holt, Rinehart and Winston, who had accompanied me, was waiting. She was ecstatic. “I’m calling the office first thing in the morning to use Truman Capote’s quote! That was just fantastic!”

  A moment later one of the show’s staff came in to tell me to pick up the telephone, there was a call for me. I could not imagine who it could be and feared some disaster at home. An excited man’s voice—most distinctive—American, a touch of masculine bravado in it. “Miss Edwards, this is Rod Serling. I just saw you on the show and would like to meet with you as soon as possible.”

  I knew of Rod Serling from his groundbreaking television series, The Twilight Zone, but was unclear why he would be calling me on an unlisted telephone in a television studio. “I’m set to leave on a book tour,” I told him.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Next Monday.” This was a Thursday night.

  “Tomorrow. Lunch.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Three p.m., then?”

  I explained my problem. I would love to meet with him (I now assumed he might be considering hiring me to write an episode for a new series that I had read he was developing), but I had a lot of things to take care of before I was off on my tour. He persisted. Well, if he wanted to come to my apartment, so I wouldn’t have to travel someplace for a meeting—fine. He agreed. I gave him my address and telephone number and headed home. It had been a long, exhausting, and eventful day.

  The next afternoon at near the appointed time, I glanced out my windows on the lanai to see parked in front of the building, the most extraordinary, fire-truck-red car, long body, lots of shiny chrome, the convertible top down. I had never seen anything like it. Custom made or European, I thought. The driver jumped out and stood staring up at the building. The sun was very bright and he wore sunglasses. I wasn’t sure it was Rod Serling, but as he was making a beeline for the private entrance to the two penthouse apartments, it seemed likely. I watched as old Mrs. Kanin, seated on a bridge chair in front of her apartment, gave him the once-over. He must have taken the steps two at a time as my doorbell rang almost as soon as he disappeared into the building.

  He looked to be a longtime resident of Southern California, skin tanned to light leather color, some pale spots around his eyes where he had worn his sunglasses (now removed). A short man, perhaps five foot, five inches as we were eye level and I was wearing flats. He was firm of body and handshake, wide of smile, a bit boyish as he swept his dark hair back from his forehead. The dogs were immediately all over him and when he sat down on a living room chair, Biba jumped up on his lap. He laughed and let her settle in with him. You would never have guessed this was the first time he had come to visit.

  He lit a cigarette and told me he had spent the morning reading the novel and liked it a lot. Someone had sent him a prepublication copy, which he had just begun when he tuned in to Truman Capote’s advertised television interview the previous night. From what we both had said (it seemed he believed Mr. Capote’s praise, although I am quite sure Truman Capote had never read a word of the book before that astounding quote), he felt moved to contact me. Indeed, he was developing a new series and I seemed to be someone who might have a story he could include. Having now finished reading the book, he wondered if the film rights were available. I told him that they had been bought by 20th Century-Fox. He did not seem too disappointed to hear this and commented that it would make a good movie. We got on to other things—England, people he knew there (a few expats whom I also knew), and his car.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Excalibur. There aren’t many of them.”

  “I can see why.”

  Cathy came bursting in with a friend. I introduced them to Rod and they went upstairs to her room.

  “Would you like to take a ride in it?” he asked eagerly, a young boy showing off his latest toy.

  “I think I would,” I replied.

  He advised me to fetch a scarf and when I returned, he grabbed me by the hand and hurried me out, past a disapproving Mrs. Kanin and to the car. I walked around it in awed admiration. No wonder it was called Excalibur. It was something King Arthur might well have fancied. He headed up toward the ocean at a clip as fast as traffic and the speed limit permitted. He was a confident driver, and he and Excalibur had obviously become fast, close buddies. He drove to a spot on the oceanfront where there were no buildings—just a wide, golden expanse of sand and the deep blue Pacific washing up on it in great frothy white waves. Something had happened between us. He swore later that he really had come to speak to me about possibly doing some writing for his company. But although we talked about everything imaginable, and seemed in harmony with views—political and philosophical—we never spoke about what had actually prompted that first call. He asked me if I had a guy in my life. I to
ld him I was separated from my husband, who was in London. “And you?” I asked.

  “Married with two daughters. But currently separated,” he replied.

  The tentative word “currently” caught my attention, but I did not question him further. There was no doubt in my mind that we were mutually attracted. I had not dated another man since leaving England (or even considered the idea during our life together). If there were danger signals, I closed my eyes to them. After all, I was leaving town just three days later for an extended trip and I thoroughly enjoyed his company. We had dinner together that evening at Armstrong Schroeders, which was on my corner and quite a popular restaurant. He came by the apartment on Saturday and Sunday and, to my extreme surprise, showed up at my flight’s departure gate early Monday morning just before I was to take off on my book tour.

  “See you in Chicago,” he said after taking me in his arms and kissing me rather soundly. Chicago was only three days away.

  • 12 •

  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.