felt that she had betrayed him, as Arch had done so many times before. The difference was that Arch had promised only books and toys and trips to the Gulf Coast. Lillie Mae had promised herself, and that, it seemed, was the one thing she would not give him.
Her new husband commanded most of her attention, in any event, and there was little room in her life for Truman or anyone else but Joe. They were consumed by each other: instead of taming their romance, turning it toward the ordinary and the domestic, as is usually the case, marriage had made it more ardent and impassioned than it had been before, and all the affection they had been unable to give their former spouses they now rained upon each other. “They were madly in love,” said Lyn White, one of Lillie Mae’s closest friends. “They didn’t want to do anything but be together.”
To outsiders, their life together seemed charmed, almost enchanted. Living at the top of Joe’s salary, and above, they appeared to have the best of everything: weekends at the racetrack, evenings at the theater or in fashionable nightclubs, vacations in East Hampton, Cuba, Bermuda, or even Europe, which they toured twice during the thirties. They were rarely still, and for them the Depression brought not hard times, but one long, boisterous party. All of Lillie Mae’s ambitions had been realized. She was exactly where she wanted to be, doing precisely what she wanted to do, in the company of the only man she wanted to do it with. Like a lovely plant that had been stunted by lack of light, she blossomed under the sunshine of a happy, prosperous marriage, and before the decade was over, she had transformed herself from an unsophisticated country girl into a woman of worldly tastes and glamorous occupations.
The metamorphosis even included a change in her first name. Along with most of her Southern accent, she discarded the hillbilly name of Lillie Mae in favor of one that was more cosmopolitan, more in keeping with her new life—Nina—and to everyone but her friends and family in Alabama, Nina was what she was called henceforth.
The new Nina Capote had only one serious regret, and that was, having had a child with a man she did not love, she could not, several years into her new marriage, have one with a man she so fervently did love. But she had only herself to blame. Jennie and Arch had prevented her from having an abortion when she was pregnant with Truman, but Joe was not able to stop her from terminating the two pregnancies that followed after she came to New York. “I will not have another child like Truman,” she told him, “and if I do have another child, it will be like Truman.” Something went wrong on the operating table during the course of one of those abortions, however, and she very nearly lost her life. The doctor, in a panic, called Joe in his office, demanding that he come and take her home. Although she soon recovered, she had suffered permanent damage to the reproductive organs, and a few years later, when she had changed her mind and finally did want to have a baby, she was no longer capable of doing so. She conceived two, perhaps three times; but each time she had a tubal pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage. “I think it did something to her head, because she was never the same afterward,” Truman said. “She really wanted to have a child with him.”
“If a man has been his mother’s undisputed darling,” Freud wrote, “he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings success with it.” The reverse might also be said, and a man who has been denied maternal esteem has also been denied that easy confidence, that wonderful feeling of triumph, with which the mother’s darling automatically greets every morning. If he does manage to achieve success, he often views it not as a gift, not as a birthright, but as a loan, and for the rest of his life he worries that it may be snatched away and given
Her new husband commanded most of her attention, in any event, and there was little room in her life for Truman or anyone else but Joe. They were consumed by each other: instead of taming their romance, turning it toward the ordinary and the domestic, as is usually the case, marriage had made it more ardent and impassioned than it had been before, and all the affection they had been unable to give their former spouses they now rained upon each other. “They were madly in love,” said Lyn White, one of Lillie Mae’s closest friends. “They didn’t want to do anything but be together.”
To outsiders, their life together seemed charmed, almost enchanted. Living at the top of Joe’s salary, and above, they appeared to have the best of everything: weekends at the racetrack, evenings at the theater or in fashionable nightclubs, vacations in East Hampton, Cuba, Bermuda, or even Europe, which they toured twice during the thirties. They were rarely still, and for them the Depression brought not hard times, but one long, boisterous party. All of Lillie Mae’s ambitions had been realized. She was exactly where she wanted to be, doing precisely what she wanted to do, in the company of the only man she wanted to do it with. Like a lovely plant that had been stunted by lack of light, she blossomed under the sunshine of a happy, prosperous marriage, and before the decade was over, she had transformed herself from an unsophisticated country girl into a woman of worldly tastes and glamorous occupations.
The metamorphosis even included a change in her first name. Along with most of her Southern accent, she discarded the hillbilly name of Lillie Mae in favor of one that was more cosmopolitan, more in keeping with her new life—Nina—and to everyone but her friends and family in Alabama, Nina was what she was called henceforth.
The new Nina Capote had only one serious regret, and that was, having had a child with a man she did not love, she could not, several years into her new marriage, have one with a man she so fervently did love. But she had only herself to blame. Jennie and Arch had prevented her from having an abortion when she was pregnant with Truman, but Joe was not able to stop her from terminating the two pregnancies that followed after she came to New York. “I will not have another child like Truman,” she told him, “and if I do have another child, it will be like Truman.” Something went wrong on the operating table during the course of one of those abortions, however, and she very nearly lost her life. The doctor, in a panic, called Joe in his office, demanding that he come and take her home. Although she soon recovered, she had suffered permanent damage to the reproductive organs, and a few years later, when she had changed her mind and finally did want to have a baby, she was no longer capable of doing so. She conceived two, perhaps three times; but each time she had a tubal pregnancy that ended in a miscarriage. “I think it did something to her head, because she was never the same afterward,” Truman said. “She really wanted to have a child with him.”
“If a man has been his mother’s undisputed darling,” Freud wrote, “he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings success with it.” The reverse might also be said, and a man who has been denied maternal esteem has also been denied that easy confidence, that wonderful feeling of triumph, with which the mother’s darling automatically greets every morning. If he does manage to achieve success, he often views it not as a gift, not as a birthright, but as a loan, and for the rest of his life he worries that it may be snatched away and given
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