Boys in the Trees: A Memoir (43 page)

Though I never leave my name or number

I’m locked inside of you

So it doesn’t matter

There’s always someone haunting someone

Haunting someone.

—
“Haunting,” 1978

*   *   *

James and I spent the winter in L.A. renting a house on Rockingham Drive in Brentwood, the very house that O. J. Simpson would buy a year later. Both of us were working on new albums. I must have been on the lookout for omens—Will James and I stay together? Will he be okay? Will
we
be okay?—but the only omen I was ever aware of was that I awoke one morning at 2:50 a.m., noting the time on my watch—Should I put on the oatmeal yet?—and glanced through the bedroom skylight just in time to see a comet streaking down through the dark blue sky. I fell back asleep, not bothering to wake James, as the comet would be long gone, but not before first touching legs with him, my darling husband, who forever kept me on my toes.

As much as motherhood was a diversion from worrying about myself, so was my continued sense of falling in love with James—with his mannerisms, his profundity, his wit, his insights. Any worries I had shrunk in the presence of the love I felt for him, one so strong that it banished any concerns that James, in return, didn’t love me as much as he had when we spent our first night together in another city, another apartment, another time.

Although James and I were both glued to Sally, we spent our time in L.A. working on new music, thanks to our beloved babysitter, Patty Kelly, whose presence made it possible for us, James and me, to leave Sally each day and drive half an hour to our respective recording cells in Hollywood. On the days we brought Sally with us, she got quickly used to the heavy bass pulsing through the floorboards, making her blue elephant shake and quiver along to the beat.

Like most new parents, we found it hard to be without her. Still, in the interests of a getaway, one night James and I decided to drive up the coast to Santa Barbara. Sally wasn’t even three years old, but James and I hadn’t tried for a grown-up honeymoon since her birth, and our night away, at least as I foresaw it, would be devoted to lovemaking. But almost as soon as we pulled out of the driveway, we began remembering her, nostalgically, as though she were a beloved song we couldn’t get out of our heads. As we drove north, we suffered together as we discussed her delicious smell, the sound of her giggles, each of us bemused by the other’s imitations of her two-year-old voice, expressions, yawns, twitches, stretches, movements—the entire glorious baby package that was
her
.

We arrived at our destination, and once our bags were parked in our sumptuous hotel suite, I went into the bathroom to tidy up. Raising my eyes to a window to the right of the toilet, I let out a sudden scream. The bellhop, who had lugged our bags to our room, and was no doubt accustomed to guests making their way directly to the bathroom after a long car ride, had found himself a perfect perch from which to peek.

The bellhop was bad enough, but outweighing even a stray peeping employee was … Sally. Our little girl. James agreed with me: Why stay? When we told the concierge what had happened, he didn’t charge us, and having been settled in our lovers’-lane getaway for less than ten minutes, we returned our unopened luggage to the car and hit the highway back to Brentwood. All the way home, relieved and excited, James and I both talked about how much we missed Sally, more than we could have possibly imagined, and how dazzlingly great—what a homecoming—it would be to see her again.

*   *   *

Parenthood didn’t get in the way of James’s and my writing, singing, and, in his case, touring. Sally, bless her heart, made our already complicated lives even more complicated, while exaggerating the volatility of our domestic life, with a soupçon of my postpartum hormones thrown into the stew. The sheer theater of the following few years, with its mixture of bad news followed closely by good news, of births and lies, kicked off in the spring of 1976.

May 18th, 1976:

Dear Diary:

Something happened in Knoxville. Maybe our marriage was too good. Maybe he just had to hurt me out of love. It was most probably simpler than that. Just drugs and the spirit of the occasion and the influence of loose southern jackasses. Anyway, James announced to me yesterday that he had to get checked out for clap. I reacted predictably (for me)—very understanding and guarded. The first thing out of my mouth was “You poor darling. It must have been so hard to tell me that. We’ll go together to the doctor. You must feel awful. I understand.” That was 3:00 p.m., maybe 3:30 latest. Ironically I was just about to tell him that I thought I was pregnant. I was waiting to see his face light up, waiting to kiss him and tell him our boy was on his way (though we didn’t know it then that it was a boy).

When I turned around 180 degrees and snapped, it was 8:30 p.m., and I was lying in bed. I went downstairs to break the Whitebook guitar on his head. He caught me in time, and I hit him with my fists as hard as I could, got in my car, and went driving 80 mph around the curvy narrow roads of West Tisbury—returning because I loved him and didn’t want him to worry about me behind the wheel in such a state—oh, a state of hate. Blind, convulsive, killer rage—the thought of those other bodies.

James is vomiting in the bathroom. Suitable to this entry. He’s really sick. Maybe he was poisoned. With a little more hate, I could have slipped something in his dinner. How I loathe him and the thought of those secrets he has and those memories he’ll always keep. Of those Knoxville groupies and their putrid, scented, magnolia bodies. Spit spit spit. I don’t want him to touch me again. He did last night—but he was passionate and loved me and I actually felt that he loved me more than ever. But my blood has turned to ice again, and I wonder how he’ll melt it.

June 5th, 1976:

Yesterday I found out, via the usual rabbit test, that I really am pregnant. It sort of calmed me down a little—the definite knowledge. I will certainly have doubts about my self-image.… With two children, you’re a dowager, and just too old for rock ’n’ roll … and then … what about Knoxville?

In the times when my head

Was together about you

I was an expert at silence

I enjoyed the blondes in their red jeeps

Stopping you on the streets

Knowing no one could compare with me

In my airy skirts and my cool retreats

You could have told the truth all the time

I was that at ease inside

You never made me cry

And then one night I lied

I got down with a boy in the back woods

I didn’t tell you and you didn’t see

And that’s when jealousy got the dog up in me …

But in times when my head was together about you

I was an expert at silence

Now every look you get

Seems like another threat

I pick your pockets almost hoping to find

Something to be hurt about

To prove you unkind

Oh but I still love you baby

Though now I just can’t sit still

And though that boy

Meant nothing to me,

I believe I’ve lost that simple thrill

Of the times

When my head

Was together

About you, and I was an expert at silence

—“In Times When My Head,” 1976

*   *   *

By 1976, James and I had sold our town house on East Sixty-second Street and were scoping out other places to live. Where, though? James and I went so far as to look at houses in Greenwich, Connecticut, though I could never picture him as a southern country squire in an uptight suburb filled with finance people wearing coral-pink pants and docksiders. We began subletting Apartment #2N in a beautiful rent-controlled building at 135 Central Park West called the Langham, a block north of the Dakota, and we ultimately ended up moving just upstairs to a sprawling north-facing rental on the sixth floor of the same building.

*   *   *

Ben was born on the twenty-second of January, 1977. Nine pounds, two ounces. “Carly, Carly, Carly Carly, Carly Carly Carly” … it went on and on. Through labor and finally the delivery of our boy, Ben. James with his deliberate calling forth to me and to the boy he had wanted so very much after the sweet girl of his heart, Sally. James had predicted, when we were first falling in love, that we would have a girl first and then a boy. When the shoulders came out first (upside down), Dr. Martens said: “If this is a girl, she’s going to be a football player!” Indeed, he was a very big boy.

James had a tape recorder on him, one of those little ones available in the late seventies. The tape currently lurks somewhere in the stash in the Sony archives. On it is James chanting. He was moaning with me, he was giving me songs, on and on, two syllables in a row, for hours. “Carly Carly Carly.” It felt like I had never heard my name before. It had such significance coming out of his mouth, such a primal yearning for attachment.

The rhythm of it made me think of one time in the waves at Windy Gates. Before
Jaws
and being afraid in the water. I was eleven. Mommy was on the shore and couldn’t hear me. There the grown-ups sat smiling and passing a juice and vodka jug. I had been pulled by the tide way out of my depth, until I was just a small head on the horizon, bobbing up and down. Then, thank God, someone saw me: Jonno (Jonathan Schwartz), our mate, my mother’s godchild, our friend, jumped into the waves and swam to me and carried me back to shore. Under a wave and then with a wave and then over a wave again. He stayed with the energy of the current but just subtly enough to lead us against the riptide. We washed up on the beach in one enormous wave, both of us breathless. My mother and Peter and everyone on the beach came running. We were coughing and spitting up water and everyone was congratulating Jonno. The only way to survive that is to go into shock. I withdrew into my heart. I remember the feeling, and I felt it again while giving birth to Ben. The other parts of the body can be dancers, but the heart must be resilient and feed the rest.

*   *   *

With the ever-joyful presence of baby Ben and his older sister, as well as the various great friendships I developed during that time, including with Mia Farrow and Anna Strasberg, two other residents of the building, I remember the Langham as the setting of pretty fun times, mixed as always with the difficult ones. There was a big career change for James, too. I remember one night around that time when producer Russ Titelman and Lenny Waronker, the president of Warner Bros. Records, who had produced James’s last two albums,
Gorilla
and
In the Pocket
, flew from L.A. to New York to convince James to re-sign with the label. Peter Asher and Nat Weiss, James’s manager and lawyer, were equally eager to sign James to Columbia Records. Lenny Waronker went so far as to offer James Warner Bros. stock (James owned some already, but Lenny upped the amount). That night in our apartment, the overall vibe was
We need an answer now, now, now.
The pressure on James was torturous, and I remember his sky-high anxiety levels, how at one point he lay prostrate on the floor of our bedroom, nearly crying and banging his fists on the floor. By night’s end, James had gone with Columbia, and the subsequent album,
JT
, released in 1977, with its handsome, eye-contact cover photo and songs including “Handy Man,” “Secret o’ Life,” and “Your Smiling Face,” served as a comeback of sorts for James, not that he needed one.

August 5th, 1977:

Our relationship is far from the idyllic one that the general public reads about. James continues to escape. He can express his angry feelings to me much more readily than his loving ones. He tells me he loves me either in songs (no little measure) or when I am sleeping and he’s just turning he will say “I really love you, Carly, I’m sorry I’m being a bummer,” and I’m too tired to respond. Still, by the end of every day, I always soften back to my default position of delight and thankfulness that I’m married to James.

I toured in 1978 after the release of
Boys in the Trees
(the album). “You Belong to Me” was a big hit as a single going somewhere very nice on the charts. I could look it up, but I’m one who doesn’t like to remember the very good or the very bad in positions of popularity. I had a mysterious response to performing at that time. Sometimes I could sing in front of an audience without problems and other times I was overtaken by forceful heart palpitations and felt I was about to die. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason. Different things would rattle me and I would end up looking for another reason, another syndrome, another dream, or hire another therapist. James wasn’t involved but was bemused. It was really the heyday of grand group-encounter sessions. (Remember EST?) Everyone was demeaned and called names, reduced to sub-human turds and then raised again under the guidance of an enlightened trainer who doled out praise in very small amounts and had us all in his thrall. We left after a weekend and we were all still “pigs” but we’d learned to like being “pigs.”

I was just one more typical idiot of her time who was trying to replace religion with New Wave good intentions. Even skeptical Jake was not beyond the infection of his mind with the talk of New Age Sufi-ism. Meditation classes and yoga classes, and reissues of books by retired or ancient swamis were on everyone’s bedside table. The usual arguments about the after-life and past lives took place at every dinner party. There were those who could bifurcate and those who could levitate and those who had been abducted by aliens. I had so many different wise men and women from different sects casting predictions and suggestions, but hardly did two of them ever agree. Surprisingly, the Beast would let me know when I was going over the line. With all the contradictions, my faith became somewhat confused and eventually I stopped collecting pamphlets. It was a grown-up decision, after years of wandering from agreement to disillusionment. Growth is wisdom and resulted in a decrease in bitterness. My values became clearer and more pointed. I had less anger toward James. Also less passion.