Norris Church Mailer - A Ticket to the Circus: A Memoir

ALSO BY NORRIS CHURCH MAILER Windchill Summer
Cheap Diamonds

Well, I bought a ticket to the circus.
I dont know why I was surprised to see elephants.
NORRIS CHURCH MAILER

A Note from the Author E verything in this book is true. At least, it is true for me. Memory is treacherous, and we probably all have said Glad to meet you to people we have met before. Sometimes we have had whole conversationsor even much more than thatwith them and still dont remember them, which gets complicated and embarrassing. (Once, my husband argued with a woman who claimed they had dated that she was mistaken, and then on the cab ride home, he slapped his forehead and said, Shes right!) But to the best of my knowledge, all of the things Ive written about in this book happened to me.There are instances where I have changed the names of people. If I say, for example, Lets call her it means Im not giving her real name. I have used first names for the most part, although at times Ive used whole names. No real reason, I just thought some people might not like to be totally identified. A few times, no name has been used at all. Those stories are probably not good ones.Its funny, the things that mean so much to one person and nothing to another, the small thoughtless comment that inadvertently cuts to the quick. I didnt intend to hurt anyone in the telling of my story, and if I did, I apologize now, before you read it. Please know that I went into this with a good heart, and I hope that comes through.

Prologue E very evening at six, after an afternoon of writing in our studios, Norman and I would meet in the bar next to the living room for a glass of wine. Wed look out at the sea and the boats in Provincetown Harbor, watch the gulls, and talk. After a lifetime of boozebourbon and gin and rum, scotch and vodkanow Norman liked red wine mixed with orange juice, a mild sangria punch, while I sipped a dry Kir on icesoda pop wines, a taste of sweet, a drop of alcohol, to help us unwind. Those were hard, slow days, the last days of summer 2007. Norman was still writing, but fighting to breathe, and I had my problems, too. Eternity was on our minds a lot of the time when we talked.I wonder if people will remember me when Im gone, Norman would frequently muse. Will they continue to read my books, do you think? Or will they just forget me?Most of the time, I replied, Of course youll be remembered, sweetie. Youre one of the most famous writers in the world! But he knew as well as I did that there were a lot of dead and forgotten writers who had once been famous.When Im gone, hed continue, and you write about me, I want you to sayI would invariably interrupt him. Im not going to write about you. Ill never write about you. Nobody would believe it. It was almost a game we played; he never gave up telling me what to write about him, whether it was some message to the kids, or something about his work. I always brushed him off with, Why dont you tell them yourself? Why dont you write your own memoirs?Its too late, hed answer.I might go before you. You never know, Id say. We didnt want to face it, which one of us would go first, so we just kept on playing the game.Andy Warhol had once urged me to put a tape recorder on a belt and wear it around all the time. Norris, he said, in that soft talcum powder voice, you live such a fascinating life. Every word that comes out of Normans mouth is a pearl. Its so easy. All you have to do is change the tape every hour, and youll have a complete record of your life. I laughed, but Andy was dead serious.I dont believe that every word out of my husbands mouth was a pearlwhat wife does? Although now I wish I had recorded some of those pearls Norman dropped along the way.I truly believed I would never write about Norman. And if I ever did write about him, it would not be as his secretary taking dictation. Even though wed lived together for thirty-three years, Norman wasnt my whole life; I had been married before, and had a child from that marriage. Id had a career. Family. I once had ambitions and dreams that had nothing to do with Norman Mailer. But we met, and nothing was ever the same again.After he was gone, I found myself haunted by our life together. It spooled across my mind at night like the reels of a movie. Vivid. Garish. Heartbreaking. Frustrating. Sexy. Comical. Too often, it had been public. I used to say I had no skeletons in my closet; they were all in the pages of the New York Post. Night after night, the past played out, in that space between memory and sleep, until finally I realized that Norman was going to get his way; I was going to write about him. But, as I said to his spirit, it was my life as well as his. I would write it on my own terms.Whatever you say, dear, I imagined him replying, a smile on his face, as he continued to send me notes in my dreams.