by Leo Lerman
AUGUST 25, 1987 The secret life of children—in prehistoric caves under dining room and drawing room tables, in lavatories when old enough to “go” alone, in bed after “lights out,” at times when by some strange juxtaposition of comings and goings the house is empty save for children, in basements so dark that to venture down into them unaccompanied by some other children bent on some sort of secret would be horror. Some of us, very little boys, were very curious about one another. Were we all the same in those parts which grownups seemed to consider shameful? We wanted to compare. Playing doctor, but not interested in playing with girls. So we compared, and one thing led to another, and some of us went right on that way for the rest our lives, while most of us did not.
When I was about fourteen, I came upon a pile of books hidden beneath a nightdress in a drawer of my mother's bureau (the one with the time-spotted oval looking glass held in place by a brace of muscular, flower-topped fairy figures). I did not understand much of what those books contained—so much Latin—but Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis described in detail sufficient to my understanding to leave me feeling that I had a high fever. The shock of recognition disturbed me less than it exhilarated me. I no longer felt alone, although I continued to feel singular.
One day, I heard Momma say to Aunt Rose on the telephone: “Listen, Rose, don't tell me I should make my Leo go out and play ball like the other boys. Leo doesn't like to play ball. He reads. He writes. He makes shows with the other kids…. He likes making believe. He's a born macher…. So he doesn't play ball. Playing ball isn't everything…. Listen, Rose, my Leo won't get married. He will never get married…. So, what do you care, Rose … and he's a mother's boy … I'm his mother.”
Momma was not modernistic. She was Momma—a law unto herself and to anyone else who didn't watch out. Momma was law; Grandpa was terror. But a Presence in the Sky, a Presence I knew had a huge white beard and fierce, flaming eyes and bore aloft a flaming sword, was greater than Momma or Grandpa or Aunt Minnie. Did I think he lived in the shul? I begged him to bring back our dog when I heard that something awful had happened to that large, placid, trusting beast. I prayed to him, begging Him to save the life of an ailing kitten, kneeling in the embrasure of one of the deep-set windows of our bedroom, promising to do anything He wanted of me, even to be good…. I was suddenly wrenched up off my knees and slapped hard by Aunt Minnie, enraged, almost incoherent. “Not God for that! You don't ask God for that! Don't be a little fool! What do you wanna be, a sissy?” She slapped me again. I did not know at that time what a sissy was, but I knew that I would never again let anyone see what I was really feeling. I knew that Grandma was up there watching over me, as she always had, as she always would.
AUGUST 26, 1987 As years went on, I increasingly sat pumping away at the Pianola (piano rolls with transcriptions of Carmen and so forth). I was being the Great Pianists—Paderewski, Leschetizky, Hofmann. Or I sat, clamped by my ears to disks through which I heard, from far-off, fabled Chicago, voices Singing Opera, waiting patiently for [the baritone's] spreading, twilight voice, so different from the bird-noted women, the sob-caught-in-the-throat men. So, I fell in love with opera, as I had fallen in love with anything that moved me onstage or on a flickering screen. My secret life was so active that I scarcely had strength left for the everyday business of living. I went to school sometimes. I had the best excuse, the always-present fear so strong in Momma and Poppa that something could happen to me, because: “You know, he's not like other kids. He's not so strong. He had—well, he wasn't born so good.” I stayed at home, endlessly reading—Muzzie's History of the United States, Little Women, A Child's Garden of Verses—believing every exotic word I read. All of the books came to me from Poppa and Uncle Charlie, who at this time painted the walls of schoolrooms and seemed to have no scruples in heisting a book, a package of paper, a bundle of pencils.28
SEPTEMBER 5, 1987 The pear-shaped, excessively restless man in a black suit and off-white shirt, who sits momentarily against the wall on the [Gritti] bar terrace, then wanders in, wanders out, and who only stopped to admire Martha (Paloma Picasso's bulldog) drinking water, is Giorgio Bassani! I had had a feeling, a premonition, but we never could have recognized this wonderful writer whom we so much admire and who came to lunch with us in the dining room of the Plaza over twenty years ago—his mother sitting at a nearby table, watching (we didn't know until later). Now he acts as if he has had a stroke, or has been impaired by time. At the table next to his—inevitably—the Vendramina sits, also impaired, leaning her somewhat girlish, but always Roman-senator head on one hand. What a juxtaposition: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis and a woman who was one of the staunch Fascists, now both old and worn, both bewildered by time. I talked to him and patted his hand, and he said he would talk to me, but I will not go down today—Regatta Day.29
OCTOBER 4, 1987 • NEW YORK CITY First glimpse of choirboy life in the choir building: Several dimly seen Sunday-suited boys flitting about, obviously rushing not to be late. I am a born voyeur, which in the most positive sense means: I love life.
OCTOBER 19, 1987 Puss, suddenly stricken by a massive blood clot, was saved from annihilation and is now “safely” home, after nine days in Doctors' Hospital, in a room notable for splendid views over the East River and the mayor's house. Under the punctilious care of young Dr. Anthony Cahan [Bill Cahan's son], Puss is delicately with us. With us!
OCTOBER 29, 1987 Dreadful weeks—eating up all possibility, save that of pulling Puss through these frequently horrible times. Now, perhaps, we are emerging from the most awful time. I am not sure. The only help I could be was to be calm, calm at all times.
NOVEMBER 4, 1987 In the evening, Richard rang and said, “Leo, please don't call every day. Howard says that, because when I was living there [at the Osborne] you told him not to call so much.” I was astonished at this. And my astonishment was secure, because of the irrelevance of what I had heard to any of our current problems—some of them involved with mortality, all of them exhausting. I was bitterly disappointed in Richard. That is an exaggeration: I was sad, sad at how removed from the seriousness of living he (and they) are. I know that this is some part of a fight they have with one another. So we now have—what?—a hiatus in a fifty-five-year-long friendship? All so unnecessary— so silly and so upsetting. That last word is inadequate. There is no depth of feeling in that which I have just written because what has happened is such a trivialization of our deep devotion to one another during all of these fraught years. I can't take any of Richard's behavior last night seriously nor even believe that this silliness will cause any real break.
NOVEMBER 22, 1987 A Dr. Lewis diagnosed my tremendous bouts of hacking coughs. My left vocal cord is paralyzed. The goiter presses against that cord. The right cord is healthy and has taken over. I am grateful that some parts of the machine come in twos. I must carefully sip all liquids, and I must erase intensity from my speech. I chaired Spelvin [Playbill luncheon for the cast of Cabaret] after Dr. Lewis's advice, spoke in my “new” angelic voice. [Soprano] Regina Resnik and Joel Grey, who have known me for years and did not know of the paralyzed cord, said: “My, your voice sounds so good—so different—so wonderful—and projects marvelously.”
Momma may yet “have the last word.” This is one of the many “illnesses” she had—and the one she feared the most.
NOTE: The doctors warned Leo that his fragility and complex health concerns could complicate surgery, and he chose not to pursue aggressive thyroid treatment. Gray's mother, Maebelle, came for the holidays and stayed six weeks.
JOURNAL • JANUARY 1, 1988 The long, dark year 1987 is ended, a black corridor in which were wonderfully lighted spaces—the Venetian month, the London two weeks—rather like those brilliant Mediterranean open spaces between the many tunnels as the train comes from Milan to Nice, or the motor carries us from Venice to Nice. But that was so many years past…. Nevertheless, we are still here. We have each of us been “saved.”
Now we plu
nge into 1988. I count my blessings: Puss and Richard, [me] still able to get about, more than enough money comes in, loved ones, this remarkable apartment, possibilities. But 1987 was mostly a bad, black year, in which I wrote one “good” bit [for Vogue]30 and read some “good” books and loved and was loved. I will not count the bitter losses.
And soon Puss will be up and about, when he comes to “rescue” me, with a green glass of cool water at five a.m. He promised “a breakfast full of surprises.” Surprises—I love them, but not shocks. At this time, a rapture of quiet, which I would not revel in if I did not know that down the little passage, Puss is sleeping, I hope, dreaming of doggies. 1888—A remarkable year, all those eights, but 1988 … Nine is a lucky number.
JANUARY 16, 1988 Nora's memorial [on January 4]—Perfectly balanced in structure and emotion. Now, in a pocket of Gray's overcoat, a handful of paper rose petals, gathered from the floor of the City Center stage, flung there during the Isadora corybantics Freddie Ashton devised for Lynn Seymour.31 I never thought to see Jerry Robbins cry—he did—as did [director] Mike Nichols, each while talking to the thousands gathered in this theater, where Nora created The Cage, where she danced Antony's works, to celebrate her.
Margot [Fonteyn], now pale-haired but somewhere in that face, in that body, Princess Aurora lurking visibly, racing—soundlessly—not touching any concrete surface, fleeting down an incline into the festival hall of her Queen-Mother and King-Father, a creature, all youth, all spirit, all pale pink, earth-born, but not earthbound. “No individuals on stage today…” That was the pith of her talk [afterward at Herbert's reception]. As it was Agnes's at Antony Tudor's memorial.
JANUARY 24, 1988 Yesterday, to the “Fashion and Surrealism” exhibit, brilliantly installed [at the Fashion Institute of Technology]. Charles James's “lobster dress,” Capucci's black “gown”—triumphs of dressmaking. Yves Saint Laurent's fish-scale sheath, edged in a fringe of waterdrop glass beads—a triumph of workmanship. The set table of [surrealistically] food-hatted heads… the brick suits and dress against bricks—miraculous. Such detail, such finish.
Then home, and Maebelle said, “There isn't much laughter in this house.” What in these awful six weeks was there to laugh about?
I read two scenes in The Tempest and a clutch of metaphysics, and my heart leapt up with joy. My only garden is the carpet by my bed, but now I have a vast, flowing paradise each morning when I read The Tempest: all nature, a splendor, the flowering world after a great rain, sun-shattered, prismed, then furies of clouds, then sun-shattered again. What a feast. What a reassurance. The Psalms beat me down; The Tempest lifts me up, exalts me.
FEBRUARY 21, 1988 Yesterday, Maria Riva rang. She said that Marlene was pickled in scotch. Since Marlene never went out and no germs got at her, she would live forever. She then told me a little saga of degradation. I think that Truman could possibly have thought of it for “Answered Prayers.” Sometime last year Marlene received a letter from a man in the San Fernando Valley. He told her how much he adored her, etc. When she saw, from his letterhead, that he was a doctor, she rang him. This began endless telephone exchanges, during which he became more and more enslaved. Finally, having been told so many pitiful tales: how her family never came near her; how she was penniless; how she had no one; how she had nothing to eat, etc., etc., he said that he was coming to Paris to “rescue” her. This she could not permit. So she told him that at last her family had rallied and that they were all going, for the holidays, to a castle in Wales (she was being very creative), and that he would not be able to “contact” her for some weeks. Weeks later, she rang him. His voice was different—tortured. What was wrong, she wanted to know? He told her that he was trying to get her out of his life, that he was going to a doctor, to get her out of his life. What kind of a doctor, she wanted to know. A psychiatrist, he told her. How much did he pay the doctor? Ninety dollars each visit, five visits a week. “Why don't you give me the money?” she asked. “I'll sing to you five times a week.” He sent her a $5,000 check. She cashed it, Maria said. “Now she is singing to him five times a week.” This is so awful, so degrading. What does she sing? “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have”? Maria went on: “She sings to him, and you should excuse me, but I have to put it blankly—he jerks off.” This, then, is what “the most be-oo-tee-fool girl in the world” has come to? “Now, she's got a letter from some boy in Paris who says he's wild about her, and that he speaks perfect English and French. She called him and got his mother, who was overcome with delight, and so now she (Marlene) wants the boy to come to live with her. ‘He can take care of me…. He can help me….' Yes—he can rip her off. Who knows what he is…. If she was some little woman in Oshkosh I could have her committed….” This is age in all of its horror.
MARCH 12, 1988 Reading the [Gerald Clarke] “life” of Truman: I did not know what a monster T became during the last years when I saw him so little, then not at all—a little, maniacal Mafia chief with an entourage (wrong word) of hit men—sometimes this verges on the farcical—and a little coterie of sleazy “chums.” But all of this bother about a “legend” when all that really matters are a handful of stories and In Cold Blood. His “life” now overshadows his work— perhaps it always did. “A Miserable Person” I would title any life I wrote of him.
APRIL 22, 1988 On Monday evening: Gaîté Parisienne onstage even more disgusting than the audience in their hightums.32 We enjoyed watching women in Lacroix being jammed by their escorts, into seats—very like women with fat feet trying to jam them into too-small shoes. That was the only joy in this miserable evening. The onstage outrage had no reference to Gaîté Parisienne and all to do with Lacroix.
MAY 1, 1988 Anniversary day. I made a tribute: thirty-eight hits and one to grow on.33 Each hit—ecstasy and anguish; each hit—at times almost intolerable, and somewhere the ecstasy and the anguish are one. We spent the whole day hanging pictures.
MAY 11, 1988 Richard to have an operation—sudden and inexplicable. But Richard's cheerful and not too wan, stuck with needles, etc., like a ham to be festively baked. We were in and out of the hospital almost until midnight. Puss exhausted. I much delighted with the mica glitterings in the pavement on First Avenue. I have always been enraptured by this fool's gold in Manhattan pavements.
MAY 12, 1988 Now Hugh [Laing] has followed Nora and Antony, and all in a year. This trio is gone, while Herbert sports with the Princess [Radziwill], living on a yacht, her houses, plane trips. The grief is not that he is taken with a woman, but that she is this woman.
MAY 15, 1988 Finished reading Much Ado. The dazzlement of it! Again and again: How did he do it? Did the brilliance flow, a constant, almost blinding stream of light, a coruscation never seen before or since? This is the seed of Restoration comedy—the ceaseless flow of wit, genuine badinage, the dazzling complexities of language, the faceted puns…. How many in Shakespeare's audience blazed with this wit? How many actually talked this glorious way? I sit on the edge of my bed enraptured.
Then I finished the “Research” chapter of The Magic Mountain. Coming upon the prophetic “cinema” section. Mann foresaw the debasement of culture, the giving up of art and style and finesse to the yahoos.
JUNE 1, 1988 Great tide of rumors [about Vogue]—involving Grace [Mirabella], Amy [Gross], Alex, even [New York magazine's] Ed Kosner (reported in line to replace Alex!). Grace could have until next spring. How to rescue her?
JUNE 8, 1988 Grace Mirabella called. Liz Smith had on her television show the “news”: Grace to leave Vogue, Anna [Wintour] to take over in September. Grace: “Say I've been thinking of leaving for a long time.”
NOTE: In June, Gray and Leo went to the S. I. Newhouses' home in Palm Beach, then to Laguna Hills for a visit with Maebelle, and finished in Los Angeles, seeing friends and scouting potential locations for House & Garden photo shoots.
JOURNAL • june 26, 1988 • laguna hills, California I miss my early morning transfusions of Shakespeare. The Old Testament does
not nourish me at this time—too much beholding to On High—glorious language, but at too high a price? I cannot find the necessary fear in me. I need the radiance Shakespeare found—the terrible black radiance, the pure joyful radiance—not the almost unrelieved demand to fear of the Old Testament.
JULY 1, 1988 • LOS ANGELES To [architect] Richard Meier's eyrie—Japanese gone Richard Meier. There Kate [Meier], lovely children, and Richard live as if never a violent divorce. Richard outdoor-cooking several fish. Kate baking a crumble. Two perfect children helping, showing Gray their secret walk and most beloved flower—a sunset-flamboyant secret calla lily. All Los Angeles, to the Pacific, lost in the mist—a giant buzzard questing overhead, high in a skim-milk sky. A perfect evening.
JULY 4, 1988 To Dagny Corcoran.34 That was horrible. Dickens could have written this evening; Hogarth definitely would have painted it. Dogs everywhere, under the table, underfoot, leaning through windows, baying in the distance. Twenty-two people. I never met most of them. More din than a popular yuppie Manhattan restaurant. The dining room was done up in a Beverly Hills mural of banana-leaf paper. I liked this—could be a treehouse, a folly—but, oh, the blackness of that room. A huge, oblong, gleaming black-glass table, on which black plates and black napkins and silver cutting implements—a brace of flickering candles, an enfilade of American flags (a Fourth of July touch!) in wine bottles. Din and darkness. Poor David Hockney to my left, affably: “I turned my hearing aid off. Perhaps I can hear better.” [Actress] Coral Browne to my right, talked with the whites of her eyes across the blackness, or directly into my ear. Gray and Vincent Price occasionally surfaced for a moment. The food was uneatable. It went mostly to the dog rabble, standing under the table—and some of the pack stank. The dessert was a large strawberry-shortcake map of the U.S.A. “I don't know why,” [the baker] said, “but Florida always drops off.” I ate absolutely nothing. Save for Coral recounting in detail, I heard nothing. A positive hell. We fell into our beds.
