Free Boys in the Trees: A Memoir by Carly Simon

whether it was exhalations of relief and anger I heard coming from my father at the piano while I was in my bed at night, or the sounds of Davy Gude’s guitar as I gazed at the lost, mystical, beautiful expression on his face. Music brought me closer to the idea of God. Music gave me the energy to revise, revive myself; renew, rebirth myself. It was a palliative, a relief. I have always known it would rescue me, as it had bandaged Daddy, bypassed my stammer, brought my families together. Both of them: my family of origin, and the children I would eventually give birth to. There was always an Orpheus in my orbit.
    Orpheus was a boy who could quiet the wind, charm the rocks, silence the trees, the stones, the fish, the animals, who could divert the course of rivers and even take up arms against the Underworld, his lyre eventually transported to heaven by the Muses to take its permanent place among the stars. A boy who sang the sun up to red-orange, who played the guitar with such delicacy it made every girl swoon and every boy want to be him, in whatever form it took, Orpheus was a teacher. Whatever he knew the rest of us would borrow, add on to as we would. Eventually I would come up with my own sound, my own voice. I hoped and prayed, and still do, that Orpheus will always find me when I dip into my own private underworlds, and that when my soul loses direction—as it has so many times since my discovery—I will be able to find it again. That I will remember:
    Orpheus, it could have been,
    You could have held me again
    You said your songs had all gone
    That the road back up was too long
    But it was there for us, it was there for us
    I loved you all along, Orpheus
    Out of despair and believing I was gone
    You gave up on my love
    You gave up on us,
    But it was there for us
    It was there for us
    I loved you all along, Orpheus.
    —“Orpheus,” 1983

 

    The Vineyard beach at a time when you could count the footsteps in the sand.

Joey: the only person who could get the brush through the knots.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    the dinner party
    I t was July 28, 1956, and my parents were hosting a dinner party in honor of the esteemed English publisher Victor Gollancz. Peter, too young, always got a pass, but as usual, Joey, Lucy, and I were expected to make a formal appearance—never forgetting Mommy’s whispered instructions: no jeans, no bare feet, no sneakers, no nail polish, no hair in curlers (of course!), no hats, no tight dresses, and if we insisted on wearing makeup, only a little, since Daddy had recently yelled at Joey for overdoing it. In fact, he had called her a trollop. She cried very long and hard, which told me what trollop might mean.
    Joey and I shared a front bedroom. Our second-floor bathroom had a balcony overlooking the front lawn, affording us stealthy glimpses of the guests as they drove in and around the circular driveway, a procession of Cadillacs, woodies, and Bel Airs. Occasionally, one of us would be lucky enough to spy a private moment—a kiss, or a front-seat argument, before the couple in question carefully reattached their dinner-party masks, that sneak spyglass-peek of lust or vitriol all the more thrilling for having been seen from our hidden aerie. A man’s body came into view. It was Dickie Bauerfeld, the boy who trimmed dead branches and picked fruit from the fruit trees. It was late in the day for him to be there. We all had crushes on him. Or at least his shoulders. Sometimes we’d stare at him for five minutes straight, but even so I hardly ever saw his face.
    That night began innocently, with no hint whatsoever of the surprise that would come at its climax, causing my diary to overflow with page upon page of coded entries over the next few months. I took a shower before Joey, having won the coin toss. That year, my hair was shoulder-length, and after removing the knots with a broad-tooth comb, I set about copying Lucy’s and Joey’s method of creating pin curls around the base, plus a few