Free We Are Still Married by Garrison Keillor Page B

but Mamie only laughed. Bertrand Russell glanced up from his chaise longue. “Jane swims circles around Esther,” said the tanned white-haired philosopher in his clipped English accent. The author of Principia Mathematica, from which Peyton Place was adapted by Edmund Wilson’s brother Earl (both of whom made a play for Peyton star Lana Turner after Frederick Jackson Turner, the historian, took a shine to Shelley Winters, Yvor’s ex), laughed harshly as he stood and stripped off his light-blue terry-cloth robe. “And I can take any son of a bitch in the joint,” he snarled, his icy eyes fixed on John and Ford Madox Ford, whose wives, Betty and Eileen, had vanished into the white stucco bathhouse with Danny and Dylan Thomas. “Anytime you like, gentlemen,” he added.
    The silence hung in the pale-yellow air like a concrete block. From far away came the mournful hum of rubber tires on the burning highway, a viscous sound like liquids splashing on the grass, and also there was an odor like raisin bread burning in a toaster, except worse. It was a Wednesday. John Ford squinted against the hard light. He cleared his throat, like buckshot rolling down a black rubber mat. But it was Williams who spoke.
    He stood, water dripping from his white swimming trunks. “Look at us. Fighting each other like starving rats, while the people we ought to be fighting sit in their air-conditioned offices and laugh their heads off,” he said. “I’m talking about the bosses, the big boys, the playboy producers, the fat-cat choreographers, the directors, the dream-killers. Those are the bastards we ought to be battling, Bert.”
    â€œYou sound just like John.”
    It was Donna. Dylan stood behind her, blinking, with D. H. and Sophia Loren. And Andy Williams. “Hi, Dad,” Andy said softly. Doris Day, C. Day-Lewis, Jerry Lewis, Lewis Mumford, Neil Simon, Simone de Beauvoir, Patti Page—everyone was there: the whole Rat Pack, except Bogart. Before Bacall, the wiry little guy had been with Bardot, Garbo, the Gabors, Candy Bergen, Bergman, Clara Bow, Teri Garr, but none of them were quite right. They were too different.
    â€œYou’re right, Bill.” Mark let go of Mamie’s hand, and she sank like a wet sponge as the trim critic climbed out of the pool. “We’re writers, artists, literary men, not messenger boys,” he said, lighting a pipe. “And just look at us. Look at us.”
    â€œYou look like writers,” said Ted Williams, squinting and spitting in that special way of his that his brother Tennessee had tried to copy until his mouth was dry and torn. “You can’t help but look like writers. Because that’s what you are. Writers.”
    â€œI’m as bad as any of the rest of you,” said Dylan sadly. Everyone knew his story, how the sweet voice of the poet was swallowed up in the silent, violent world of gray suits and men with blank empty faces and the watercoolers and the flat beige walls and the uncaring woman behind the desk at the dentist’s who looks up with that empty vinyl expression and says, “Next.” She doesn’t know about your pain. How can she?
    â€œLet’s walk,” said Mark.
    Mamie whispered, “Wait. Please.”
    â€œNo,” he replied, and the writers left, marching down the long driveway into the dark, the lovely dark, and across town to the airport and back east to teach in college, all of them, and somehow they knew in their hearts and nobody had to say it that when they left, the women they loved would find new men and Hollywood would forget them and never mention their names again, and they did and it has and it doesn’t, and that is the plain honest truth, you dirty bastards.

LIFESTYLE
    T HE MAN THEY ONCE CALLED The Mayor of South Roxy was Jabbo O’Brien, who ran a news shop in a storefront on Eleanor Avenue, which the O’Briens had run since back when T. B. (Sweet