3 is not a Crowd

KAY: My second marriage made my first marriage look peachy by comparison. I don’t really see any point in talking about it now. If you were a psychiatrist instead of a writer, or if we were into some version of group therapy, maybe. But let’s just say that it was rotten, and he screwed around, and I screwed around, and for a while I became something of a pillhead, Dexedrine in the morning and Preludin around noon and Librium at martini time and Seconal before bed.

I don’t want to talk about that part.

After I got the second divorce I didn’t know just where to go or who to see or what to do. I was done with the pills and beginning to put myself together. I had spent some time with a shrink, and maybe if I had stayed with him it might have done me some good, but it seemed to me that he was just screwing me up more. I know I always felt worse after I saw him than before, so I really couldn’t see the point in it.

I called Ken, which couldn’t have thrilled him too much. He had remarried and has a kid, and I said something about coming to stay with him and his wife, as if they would welcome me with open arms while I got myself back together. At first he seemed to think I was putting him on and then he decided I was out of my mind, which wasn’t that far from the truth, and finally he lost his patience, a commodity he never had in abundant supply, and told me to fuck off. And then he hung up on me. I called him right back and as soon as he picked up the phone I said something along the lines of “I’m sorry, honey, we were disconnected, and I just wanted to tell you that I’m going to take your advice and fuck off, and thanks very much,” and I hung up on him this time.

JERRY: And then she went and fucked off.

KAY: Shut up.

PEGGY: Then you called us.

KAY: Then I got drunk, actually, and then the next day I called you.

PEGGY: She said, “Two marriages and two divorces. I’m the kid who batted a thousand.”

KAY: I hadn’t planned on inviting myself for a visit. Not consciously. Unconsciously I must have, because it would seem to be consistent enough. I was obviously looking for a home, which was the one thing I obviously didn’t have. And I was somehow obsessed with the idea of visiting a married couple. I mean, I had even invited myself to visit Ken and his second wife, and while that notion was perhaps not the notion of a tremendously sane person, it seems to fit the pattern, no?

PEGGY: I’ve always thought you attach too much significance to that.

KAY: Perhaps. I don’t know.

At any rate, I called and delivered my line, and said I just wanted to keep them up to date on me, and Peggy asked what I was going to do next. I said I didn’t know, which was nothing if it wasn’t the truth. Well, was I going to stay out on the Coast? No, I said, the vibrations were not all that good for me there, and the memories were even worse, and I thought I would probably come back East, but I didn’t know where or when, and I didn’t really have any place to go or anything to do, and I might just sign myself into a sanitarium and let the good doctors and nurses try to make the pieces fit again.

Peggy told me I was crazy — which I already knew — and to come and stay with them for a while, which I’m sure I wanted all along because I felt this overwhelming feeling of relief flood over me when she said it.

PEGGY: Then why the hell did you make me talk you into it?

KAY: Misplaced pride, maybe. Or maybe I wanted to be assured that you really wanted me. I guess at the time I really felt a need to be wanted.

JERRY: You were wanted all right. Once you got here, you were about as wanted as it’s possible to be.

KAY: Uh-huh. By both of you.

JERRY: There was a certain amount of awkwardness when Kay first arrived. I was glad she was coming, and I don’t think this had anything to do with the idea that something might happen sexually. This may even have been in the back of my mind somewhere but I never honestly expected anything to occur. But I did know that Peggy had been pretty lonely out here. This is country out here, and country people are the salt of earth, but we don’t generally have a whole lot to say to them or them to us. The few close friends we had were people we knew in New York and as the years went by we tended to get into town less and less frequently. I would go in now and then to see editors and publishers, but we were getting out of the habit of driving in for a social evening. Also, most of our friends had moved into suburbs or country places of their own, and New York in general, the whole scene, has had progressively less appeal for us. You can’t breathe the air, you can drink the water, and frankly the whole town gives me a pain in the ass.

So I was glad Peggy would have company, and glad I would have the opportunity to know Kay better, since l had liked her when we met and she wouldn’t have that bore of a husband along this time.