Touched by the Sun: My Friendship With Jackie

by Carly Simon

  Jackie was curious about this “little act of courage,” as she called it. “Did someone teach you? Did you learn it from someone? Imitate it?”

  “I think I must have unconsciously learned the Glint from Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Remember what he did to Scarlett? But only to Scarlett?”

  We talked about various other people who we thought had the Glint. We agreed that one of the conditions of having the Glint is that you know you have it. Marlon Brando had the Glint, especially when he makes his first appearance in his sweat-soaked T-shirt in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire. As he prowls the cramped room with Blanche DuBois looking on, I remember feeling a waviness, a suspension of gravity, in the pit of my stomach, one that correlated with the same feeling somewhere in the center of my forehead. I wanted to laugh. Not because Brando was funny, because he wasn’t. He was in charge, and his physical confidence made my whole being lift up like a balloon. I felt an airy mirth, just as I had when I was hypnotized once for smoking.

  Like Rhett Butler and Marlon Brando, Bill Clinton seemed to know the same trick. His eyes could entice women into a dangerous neighborhood. Bill would get into trouble. Jackie and I agreed that our new president most definitely had the Glint.

  Back the way it was before

  Before the door was opened

  Back the way it was before

  Before the ice was broken

  Back the way it used to be

  Everyone thought I was funny

  But nobody ever asked me

  If I wanted tiny little sandwiches

  Sent up to my room

  —“BACK THE WAY”

  7

  The Show Must Go On

  IT WAS EARLY WINTER 1991, and I was past holiday parties and in the midst of recording a score for Nora Ephron’s directorial film debut, This Is My Life, based on Meg Wolitzer’s novel, about a female comedian and her fraught relationship with her two young daughters. One of the songs, “Love of My Life,” which I had written for and about Ben and Sally, fit the movie perfectly. I shot a video, starring teenage Ben, who played guitar and moved gracefully around the set, and in general played a mildly Oedipal version of himself, while I gazed at him with very real love.

  Jim and I were getting along, at least until one thing or another interrupted our daily meanderings in the confused forest of our marriage. The interruption this time centered around a poem that I found on top of Jim’s bedroom bureau. Jim had been writing more and more exquisite poems over the past few years, and in many of them I was able to recognize myself as the heroine. But in this poem, the protagonist was described as having a full head of black hair. The poem’s subject was an apparently new young love walking, with a dancer’s grace, past a church into a Greenwich Village subway station. Well, immediate panic sent me straight inside the tangled chaos of my sewing basket. Slipping my thumb and index finger into a nifty little pair of sewing shears, I grabbed Jim’s clothes off the bureau, plus a few others I pulled from the drawers—a hat, boxer shorts, a necktie—scissoring away like a mad seamstress, while also frisking them like a policewoman for whatever items might be secreted in the pockets.

  I took a closer look at the poem. The words “your dark furry beard” jumped out at me. I had a gut reaction. My heart started beating outside of my chest. I stabbed the scissors into the wall of our bedroom—our womb, our wigwam, the center of Jim’s and my togetherness. With the wall-stabbing over, I closed down. I shut myself off. I would deal with everything later. What’s the worst that it could be, anyway? The bearded lady in the circus? I was confused and overcome. But, stalwart, I reminded myself that, thankfully, I had a lot to do. I had to get ready for Jackie and Alec Baldwin, and my recently exposed husband Jim, who was late coming home with the Pouilly-Fuissé and the chocolate cake I’d asked him to buy—all ingredients for the evening ahead, which would involve half a dozen Irish spinster sisters, and a bit of subterfuge.

  A few weeks earlier, Jackie had mentioned “what fun” it would be to go see Dancing at Lughnasa, Brian Friel’s play about a family of unmarried middle-aged sisters living together in a cottage on the west coast of Ireland. At the time, Maurice was off somewhere, likely making an impressive purchase of diamond mines. With Maurice out of town, I proposed a casual “double date” consisting of Jim, me, Jackie, and a fourth person yet to be determined. Jackie responded with another schoolgirl-like utterance of excitement, which I have to think was based on her belief, erroneous or not, that I knew a lot of extremely interesting people.

  In the past, Jackie and I had talked about Ken Burns, who was not only a close friend of mine, but someone I had recently worked with on his PBS series Baseball. I got in touch with Ken, but he was out of town, filming yet another epic PBS series. Ken asked for—no, strongly requested—a rain check. I suggested Joe Armstrong, Jackie’s close friend. She said, “Absolutely.” But Joe was in Texas. That’s when Jim suggested Alec Baldwin, a buddy of his.

  “We’ll have to go undercover.”

  “What about wigs? I can be Jean Harlow!” Jackie exclaimed. She was fully in the moment and also looking forward not only to another routine escapade but also to an evening that might well require advanced levels of dexterous espionage!

  “I’ve got wigs!” By now I was outside of myself, feeling as excited as a dog when his food is coming in a few seconds, his tail gone wild on serotonin.

  “Yes—” And Jackie brought up the video for my song “Tired of Being Blonde,” which was directed by Jeremy Irons, who had been a guest in my house with his wife, Sinéad Cusack, and their little boy Sam—one of those families that are English, yes, but American enough to put their drinks on the table. “You must have all kinds!” Jackie said, meaning wigs—not English actors.

  “Oh, yes,” I told her. I had red wigs, pixie-cut wigs, purple wigs, and even wigs designed to be worn by Madame de Pompadour. Our excited chatter rose like an overture of big, deep, swelling Jackie-laughter, especially when she told me how much she would love to see Alec Baldwin in a Madame de Pompadour wig. “Oh, do get Jim to ask Alec.”

  Jim was good to his word, and Alec, who had never met Jackie, was in a state of hyper-disbelief. “Jackie Kennedy wants to go on a date with me?” he said. “Are you kidding?” Alec’s incredulity gradually gave way to “What should I wear?” followed by “Uh—what was the name of the play you say we are going to?”

  Despite the devastating poem I’d found on Jim’s dresser, I acted as though nothing was wrong, the evening ahead blotting out the shock of my own reality distortion. I would think about it later, tomorrow, next week, never. I wasn’t about to ruin everybody’s evening with my worried little face. The show must go on!

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT, Jackie, Alec, Jim, and I sat around my small pine wine-tasting French provincial table, eating chicken I’d prepared with dark syrup cherries and hollandaise sauce. As anticipated, Jackie doted on Alec, and Alec, despite his been-there, seen-everything show business poise, occasionally revealed the lightest possible slick of sweat on his brow. Dressed in a black-and-white cashmere Armani sweater, her businesswoman’s gold Cartier watch flashing like a possible UFO, Jackie was ravishing, her rapt, wide-eyed “just for you” expression seeming to shut out everyone in the room but Alec. Did I recognize the Glint?

  Jackie seemed at peace that night, inspired by what I’d always imagined to be a lifelong sense of mischief, borne during her debutante days, carried through numerous horseback rides and jumps, maintained through decades of flashbulbs and photographs, and grief, and relief, then relived grief. No doubt that mischief had carried her places she never imagined she would go. It had helped cushion her from the haunting and the horror of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition she feared might never leave her alone. But that night she was in deliriously good form, a mischief-lover and mischief-maker delighting in the altogether ridiculous prank the four of us had up our sleeves, or rather, atop our pates.

  When the meal was ov
er, but before the chocolate cake was served, I went into my bedroom, stepping over the ribbony casualties of Jim’s cut-up boxer shorts. Had Jim been in our room to see the damage yet? If so, it would have been hard for him, or anybody, to put two and two together. Determined, I brought out my suitcase of wigs. There must have been half a dozen of them in all—one for each of us, and two extras, if the mood struck.

  Jim, brave-faced and laughing, was the first to put his on, a long, curly Eddie Van Halen wig that prompted a chorus of laughter. Alec chose a short, brown one; mine was comely, blond, and Grand Ole Opry–esque, and Jackie reached impulsively for the one befitting Madame de Pompadour. Our shrieks of laughter made us sound like chickens being chased around a barnyard. Jackie’s wig became her, a sign of her lineage, the sides of her own brown hair setting off two new gray Gallic sideburns.

  When the downstairs buzzer rang to summon us, I didn’t bother to glance in the hallway mirror. I’d ordered us a car, but Jackie, no slouch, had arranged for her own car and driver to pick her up. With her Pompadour wig on her head, she whispered that she would meet us at the theater, before racing out the door onto the elevator. It wasn’t rude; it was, as usual, cagey.

  With our wigs firmly in place, Jim, Alec, and I found our own waiting car, though before we all climbed into the back seat, I took a small slug of vodka. Unfortunately, a photographer from the New York Post was hiding outside my apartment building, and a photo of me wearing my wig, tippling my flask, appeared in the paper early the next morning. Not the best photo, but what was there to lose? Jackie, the photographer’s real prize, had done some last-minute trick with mirrors and slid like air into the back seat of her fog-shrouded limousine. And as she drove off, she took with her our reason for wearing wigs in the first place and left all of us looking like fools as we exited the building.

  Pulling up to the theater, we all decided to leave our wigs behind in the car. They lay there on the back seat, dejected, like puppies disappointed there would be no walks that day. There was no fanfare except for our own secret, slightly whimsical smiles, and my overriding worry was that I had all four tickets with me, so where was Jackie, and, more important, would she still be wearing her Madame de Pompadour ringlets?

  The answer was “already seated.” When we found her, Jackie was alone in the fourth row, with three empty seats separating her from the aisle. She probably left Madame de Pompadour in the car, and undoubtedly reassured the ticket taker with her famous smile. Should I sit next to her? Should Alec? In the end, she and I sat together, and soon the room grew dark and the audience did, too.

  First thing next morning, Jackie called to tell me what a magical evening it was, how divine Alec was, and how important she felt it was to think and act and cavort like a child now and again. She also said she could now understand why I loved Jim so much. “He’s such fun and so smart.” In general, Jackie alternated between calling me on the phone and writing me the most beautiful, charming, funny little notes on her well-known light blue stationery, her name inscribed in small black block letters across the top. In a bound book I still keep all the correspondence I received from Jackie over the years. Her words and handwriting were always gracious, elegant, swooping, romantic, and quietly very funny.

  When Amy the Dancing Bear came out, Jackie called me up after a successful book signing.

  “Carly, can you believe it? All those people lining up for you to tell them bedtime stories!”

  Another time she sent me a black beanbag eye-band to help me with my insomnia, with a short note about wishing me a rapturous doze.

  * * *

  ON AND OFF my whole life, sleep had been a casualty of my anxiety. It so happened that my experiment with Prozac lasted more or less for a few years—but as is true of most of life, it didn’t save me, either. What was I looking for? As always, a bit too much. By spring of 1992, I was using pills to fill in a whole series of bad blanks. The thing about depressive thinking is that as another person is talking, you’re busy projecting hundreds of demeaning small hells into their pauses, stammers, blinks, and throat-clearings, and even when you know exactly what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter. If life were a movie, the director would step in, cutting away to a white oak bending in the wind, or a Labrador retriever rooting its nose under the bedcovers. But outside of the movies, the human brain needs to be completely occupied.

  By March of that year, I was trying, desperately and in vain, to stay away from the undertow, and talking to Jackie about the pros and cons of medicating oneself. She knew full well how anxious I was, knew I had to take Valium, and seemed to accept this state of affairs completely. I couldn’t explain how exactly, but pills were a subject familiar to her, a dance that either she’d danced herself or seen others dancing. Still, she was never someone who pried. She uncharacteristically asked me if my pill use was “a problem.” “No,” I remember telling her, “it’s an answer!” As she and I walked up Madison Avenue one day, past window after window of alien-like mannequins attired in violently overpriced clothes, Jackie told me that LSD was used fairly routinely in the 1950s.

  “Clare Boothe Luce used to have parties where guests were split up into different groups: the ones in the bedroom, and the ones pretending to be in the living room.” We both laughed, and I got the meaning, even though it was attractively obscure.

  “Were you ever interested in trying hallucinogenics?” I asked, not wanting to overstep any boundaries but doing it anyway.

  “You know, it was the kind of thing you really didn’t talk about then. There seemed to be a restraint that came with Eisenhower. I don’t know just who pulled the plug on their legality. Let’s see if I can remember the last party where it was, you know, fun, and not too serious…”

  As we continued up Madison, I wanted to ask Jackie about Dr. Max Jacobson, known as “Miracle Max” and “Dr. Feelgood,” who was famous in the fifties and sixties for giving his celebrity clientele, including JFK, amphetamines, steroids, painkillers, and other merry cocktails before the feds revoked his medical license in the mid-1970s. Enough had been written about how Dr. Jacobson provided relief for poor Jack’s back, and how Jackie also needed to keep up “her endurance and her stride.” But I never heard it directly from her. She never let her guard down in that way, or gave even one explicit hint, except once during a party at her house, when a friend of mine had hurt his back and Jackie offered him a few pellets: “These are the ones Jack used to take for HIS back.” I wondered if they actually came from an old black leather case that the president left behind or they were just “similar” pills.

  * * *

  THAT PARTICULAR MARCH, I may have been less subtle in the amount of subduing I was doing to quiet my noise. Jim and his “program friends” decided I was worthy of a twenty-eight-day trip to a local rehab called the Summer House. It was the discovery of one of my pellet stews that drew it to Jim’s attention. I went along with it. The Summer House attracted both street types and wealthy addicts, with some emphasis on the former. The staff members, while perhaps well-intentioned, were dreary.

  What a crazy thing to say. Some were there because they really wanted to help others. I now see it as a way Jim could live his life without scrutiny: “Get Carly a little healthy holiday behind locked windows and doors.” I imagined there were many winks out of sight. That’s not really true, but when I was leaving home with my little suitcase, I wasn’t thinking kindly about those who dictated my course.

  Upon checking in, the first thing I had to do was to turn in my “sharps.” Very dangerous to have any tweezers, obviously, but had I known, I would have made sure I had my legs waxed before leaving home. Detoxing and stubbly at the same time would never be my choice. I was allowed one call a day. They all ended up being to Jackie, with the exception of one to my extended family, who were not nearly as interested as she was. I needed levity. Not that it was all that funny by any means. Group meetings did not get off to a good start:

  “You better take a good look at yourself, Mis
s Uptight Uptown.”

  The stories from the group, 98 percent men, were harrowing. No wonder I was “Uptight Uptown.” Some of them had been in prison for years. A few of them had killed family members for money to procure drugs. Still, feeling no symptoms of withdrawal, I was asked by my counselor on the third day to write a story where I was talking to my pills as if they were human beings: “Oh, hello, Hank, you handsome old thing … I sure could use your comfort just about now.”

  The group understood that I was trying to make light of it and made me start the story over for the next session. That night, I slipped into the smoking room, where there were five men (and boys) of different colors and stripes.

  “So what’s a song I might know of yours?” a man named Roger asked me slightly aggressively.

  “I don’t think you’d know one, but I heard you singing one of my favorite songs as I came up behind the door.”

  “Oh, yeah, that was ‘Lean on Me.’”

  “Can I sing with you?” The air was redolent with smoke so thick that it could put you in a real hospital.

  The room went silent until I poked my voice into the haze: “Lean on me when you’re not strong, I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on…”

  As one voice was overlaid on another, the tone and thrust got punchier. I sang harmony, and there was one very skinny older gent in overalls who was singing an octave lower than anyone else and skillfully wove in and out bass notes with an original jazz phrasing. As if he was a stand-up bass player, he moved his finger up and down imaginary frets, accenting with his head, leading with the chin. What a present. I asked him to please sing louder, as he was very humble and didn’t want to show off and maybe didn’t want to hear himself. I, on the other hand, was singing out more than I ever had. It was comforting in the most bizarre way. No threats anywhere. Except the smoke. I’d deal with that if I stayed. Only I wasn’t planning to stay.