Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold Page #2

---

Deep in that part of my heart

where the artificial rain forever falls...

that is still the line I wait to hear.

As it happened, I did not grow up to be

the woman who is the heroine in a Western.

All of the men I have known

have had many virtues

and have taken me to live in

many places I have come to love,

they have never been John Wayne.

They have never taken me to that bend

in the river where the cottonwoods grow."

He's, you know, a protector.

You married a protector.

I did.

Although...

Also... Also a hothead.

- Quick with a gun.

- Yeah.

I met John Gregory Dunne at

TIME magazine.

We were sitting in this building,

late at night

with too much to drink.

And, so, there were a lot of

affairs going on.

But people were very quiet about it.

John was a great gossip...

and, uh, always came into my office...

and held up his hand and said,

"This, you will not believe."

I made him a character in a novel

about working at a news magazine.

The beginning of the book had a claimer

instead of a disclaimer. And it said,

"The character of Andy Wolferman is

based on John Gregory Dunne,

though it tends to flatter."

Later, he said,

"Calvin, I was wondering, what's the...?

Why was I Jewish in the book?"

And I said,

"That's the 'tends to flatter, ' John.

You don't want to be a

lace curtain Irish all your life."

As Irish Catholics become assimilated,

they lose something.

They lose their Irish

which makes them, uh, unique.

It's sort of a very sort of

dark, uh, sense of humor that they have.

The Irish sense of humor is

"A man kisses the Blarney Stone

and falls and fractures his skull."

That makes the Irish laugh.

There is that sense of storytelling,

and the Irish are great storytellers.

As Joan's family

crossed the frontier,

John's grandfather came through

Ellis Island at the age of 11

with only a 3rd-grade education.

It was his love of storytelling that John

said influenced him to become a writer.

He'd offer the kids a quarter,

a lot of money at the time...

to recite a Shakespeare sonnet or poem.

John went on to write 13 books,

both fiction and non-fiction.

His older brother

and my father, Dominick Dunne,

also became a journalist and novelist.

I went to Hartford and

fell in love with his family...

and determined that I was

gonna marry him...

and did.

I don't know what "fall in love" means.

Um... It's not part of my...

world.

But I do remember having a very clear

sense that I wanted this to continue.

I liked being a couple.

I liked having somebody there.

I could not have been with

somebody who wasn't a writer

because that person

would not have had patience with me.

In the spring,

after we got married,

Joan and I got fearfully drunk

at this party.

And the next morning,

uh, we had breakfast at a...

On Madison Avenue.

At a coffee shop, a drug store.

And Joan started to cry at breakfast.

And so I had to go to work.

I got into work. I called her.

"Would you mind if I quit?"

And she said, "No."

I said, "We'll figure out

what we're going to do."

And I went in and gave my notice.

End of story. End of time.

It's easy to see the beginnings

of things and harder to see the ends.

I remember now

with a clarity that makes

the nerves on the

back of my neck constrict...

when New York began for me.

But I cannot lay my finger

upon the moment it ended.

All I know is that it was

very bad when I was 28.

Everything that was said to me,

I seemed to have heard before.

And I could no longer listen.

I hurt people I cared about...

and insulted those I did not.

I cried until I was not even

aware when I was crying.

Cried in elevators, and in taxis,

and in Chinese laundries.

That was the year, my 28th, when I began

to understand the lesson in that story...

which was that it is distinctly possible

to stay too long at the fair.

Then we decided to

move to California for six months.

I put an ad in the Los Angeles Times.

"Writer, wife, desire house." You know.

And the writer and wife...

specifically desired a house

on the west side of Los Angeles.

And we wanted to pay...

something like $300 for it.

I mean, the whole thing was ridiculous.

We finally got a house. Your mother

went out and looked at it for us.

That house in Portuguese Bend.

Only your mother would drive 60 miles

to look at a house for somebody.

We loved going to Portuguese Bend.

Their house was on a bluff

overlooking the Pacific.

Joan would point out migrating whales.

And John would take my sister, Dominique,

my brother, Alex, and I down to

these tide pools

where we'd catch sand crabs.

There was this cave, and we would swim.

You had to get into

the water at a certain point

and get beyond the... The surf.

"The tide had to be just right.

And you had to be in the water

at the very moment the tide changed.

We had to be in the water

at the very moment the tide was right.

Each time we did it,

I was afraid of missing the swell,

hanging back, timing it wrong.

He never was.

You had to feel the swell change.

You had to go with the change."

He told me that.

Do you remember...? Do you remember

meeting me for the first time?

Maybe it was at Portuguese Bend.

Here's my, like...

five-year-old memory of meeting you.

We were at the pool.

Alex and I had matching swim trunks,

these tight, like, bicycle pants

with gold buckles on it.

And, uh, we were, uh...

This is how... This is during

our leisure time in our matching...

- Uh...

bathing suits. And everybody was very

excited about you and John coming over.

Mom was kind of nervous

and was telling us about

we're gonna meet John's wife.

I'm meeting you.

And, uh, John... says, uh...

"Griffin, you got a little... You got a

little something poking out of there."

And I looked down and one ball

has come out of the seam

that was broken in the tight bathing suit.

And Dad, and John, and I think

my mom roared with laughter.

And I was scarlet.

I was so embarrassed.

You were the only one that didn't laugh.

You just kept right on going, just like...

With a totally straight face.

I always...

I always loved you for that.

But John, of course, was relentless.

Six months at Portuguese Bend

became a year.

John was writing a book about Cesar

Chavez and the California grape strike.

Joan traveled through the central valley

to help with research and reporting.

To pay bills, they wrote magazine articles

for the Saturday Evening Post,

Holiday, LIFE, and Esquire.

At one point, they even shared a column.

And despite how different their styles

and points of view were,

they would never turn in a piece

without running it by the other

for a final edit.

They were each other's

most trusted reader.

Were you thinking about

children at that point?

I was thinking about children.

He was thinking about children.

But we couldn't have one.

Suddenly, we got offered one.

What do you mean?

I mean...

the phone rang one day.

"I was taking a shower and burst

Rate this script:5.0 / 1 vote