No one could say Ed Burroughs was not a family man, even if he did spend most of his time away from home, at the office. But few on this earth knew-besides his children, if they would admit it-how he had dreaded to come home, at the end of a long day. And even the kids could only guess that behind the happy moments of the marriage-and there had been some, even in the later years-hovered a specter of fear of what he knew would inevitably come the next day or the next….
He blamed himself. He'd always been proud of the way he could hold his liquor, and had urged Emma-who had no tolerance for alcohol at all, and whose personality changed radically under the influence-to moderate her drinking. They had been party goers for years, but as Emma's problem worsened, he had cut back on the invitations they accepted, and didn't stay long at the parties they did attend.
And so Emma had begun to drink at home. Alone-in secret, that open secret the families of all alcoholics know too well.
He never knew what condition he would find her in-she might be in a vicious state or a comatose one. Whatever the case, countless hours of hideous suffering for both of them followed. Once he flew into a rage and dumped all of her liquor into the swimming pool-of course, since it had no filtration system, the pool had probably only benefited from the alcohol's sterilizing effect.
He had never wished to make Emma unhappy. But he could not overlook how horribly unhappy she had made him; she treated her pet dog more kindly. Ten years before he left her, Emma had said to him mat she no longer liked him-for some reason, those simple words had inflicted a wound that had never heated. Many people-friends and strangers alike, their appetites for the misfortunes of others fed by lice tike Walter Winchell and other low-life gossipmongers-assumed his relationship with Florence preceded, even initiated, the breakup with Emma.
It was true he'd known Florence for some years, had admired her at a distance (she was the wife of a Mend, the producer of his ill-fated Tarzan movie, which he'd backed as an antidote to the unfaithful MGM versions of his work). He'd felt unrequited schoolboy pangs of love for her, before she even knew he existed.
With her fair, curly hair, and her apple-cheeked wholesome beauty, Florence had been a popular child actress in the silent-movie days, a second Mary Pick-ford with a series of two-reelers for Mack Sennett leading to starring roles in features. When talkies came in, she had begun to raise a family with her producer husband, Ashton Dearholt, that good friend of Burroughs. But Burroughs and Florence had been thrown together when his own separation was quickly followed by Florence's husband throwing her over-for an actress he had met on the Guatemala film shoot of the ill-starred Tarzan picture! Hell, even Burroughs wouldn't have dared put together a plot so contrived-but, like two lost souls, he and Florence had drifted together.
That Florence and Burroughs's daughter Joan had been good friends made the awkward situation ever more strained. Hully and Jack, who had witnessed their mother's alcoholic madness, understood far better, and tried to make peace, but Joan avoided him, for years, and never spoke to Florence again.
Perhaps it was inevitable that he and Florence would wind up in Hawaii-they had honeymooned there, delightfully, in 1935. But his return to Oahu in 1940 had been in part financially motivated. The pulp magazines-his major serialization market-had lowered their pay rates, due to the squeeze of the Depression, and the European war cut off most of his foreign markets. In Hawaii, he could drop his expenses to a third of what they'd been in California.
His financial state, too, he knew was his own damn fault-despite his businesslike attitudes toward writing, he was lousy at managing money, and he knew it-anyway, he knew it now. From buying the Tarzana Ranch back in 1919-since sold off for subdivided lots, his precious unspoiled land turned into another goddamn suburb-to the acquisition of cars, horses, and planes, Burroughs was a classic case of a man living beyond his means.
Considering his earnings over the last thirty years, the creator of Tarzan should have been poised for wealthy retirement. Instead, he was an aging small businessman supporting three grown children, an ex-wife, a new wife and her two children, as well as an executive secretary and stenographer back in California, not to mention a Japanese maid in Hawaii.
Florence had always said that his fame was not what attracted her to him; she spoke of his self-deprecatory sense of humor, and the "fun and games" of his life, the outdoor sports, parties, dinner and theater. And in the first five years of their marriage, every evening seemed to begin-and, often, end-with cocktails at their own Rodeo Drive home or someone else's. On the rare night the couple wasn't making the restaurant/ club/theater circuit, they were up till all hours playing backgammon, bridge, or mah-jongg with movie-star friends.
He'd always been an early riser, but the dazzle of a young wife and the bright lights of Southern California had seduced him into turning his schedule upside down-and his writing, the quantity and the quality, suffered accordingly.
Perhaps he had tried too hard to keep up with his young wife, burning the candle at both ends, and she eventually accused him of trying so hard to act youthfully that he had instead behaved childishly. In Hawaii, he had planned to crawl in and curl up in a hole to write, and pull the hole in after him-but Honolulu was an even bigger party town than Beverly Hills, and when he wasn't playing poker into the wee hours with his Army and Navy friends, he and his wife were at a??? or a cocktail party or off yachting.
Florence complained that she had turned into his chauffeur, since he was inevitably too tipsy to drive home after a soiree, and felt she had fallen into the role of the serious, "older" partner, while he was the child. Since his Hawaiian writing was going well-by the end of 1940, he'd written not only a new Tarzan novel but entries in his other two mainstay series, Mars and Pellucidar, with a Venus tale in the works-Burroughs didn't think the nights of revelry were hurting anything. Still, Florence began complaining, not only about his "immaturity," but the Niumalu (one of the nicest hotels on Oahu) which she found lacking, condemning it as "cramped, buggy and damp." She was dismayed when he told her they would be living on $250 a month, the salary he was drawing from ERB, Inc.
Five years ago, she had viewed him as a dapper, prosperous, respected gentleman, a father figure; now, he feared, she saw him as just another bald, overweight geezer.
Of course Florence's major complaint had been bis drinking, which led to full-blown arguments, like the time she found he was keeping a carton of liquor under the bed, for easy access. She claimed he was "drank" every night, and-worst of all-she said her children were afraid of him, that he was "taking it out" on them. This he greatly resented. He loved her two kids as if they were his own, nine-year-old Caryl especially, the little charmer. It was true he was harder on eleven-year-old Lee, trying to urge the boy to be more athletic. Florence claimed Lee was afraid of him-though he'd never laid a hand on the child-and that he was showing his irritation to both kids, "acting up," she called it.
When she packed up, gathering the two children, and announced she was leaving-when was it… eight months ago? — he could scarcely believe it. He had thought Florence's threats were empty, but-as they'd had a premarital understanding that should things not work out, either could "call it off' without objection from the other-he merely escorted mem, numbly, to the Lurline at the dock, a shell-shocked zombie among the Boat Day festivities.
Nothing had ever hit him so hard. He found it bitterly, ironically amusing that Florence had left him because he was an obese drunk…. How Emma would have relished that.