Here is a taste of an excerpt of Cory Leadbeater’s memoir, The Uptown Local: Joy, Death, and Joan Didion:
In the fall of 2013, my days and nights were wonderful and simple. I would wake in the morning to find Joan standing at the table, reading the paper, and as I edged into the kitchen, she would head to the stove to make me a one-egg omelet while I made sure her things were in order for the day. I took in the mail, I handled the bills, I booked her a car if she had a dinner, I sent flowers if a friend had a birthday or a show opening at a gallery. Before I left for class, I would be sure to sit and eat with her.
I learned quickly that Joan did not do small talk—a relief to me, as I am socially anxious to a fault. Instead I learned to say affirming, simple sentences, imperative sentences like, “You stay safe,” or, “You call me if you need me.” I went to class, and after class, I would say to my peers that I could not go for drinks, I could not go to eat, I had to get back to work, though I did not say what work was. I feared to isolate myself further but also took immense pleasure in possessing such a delicious secret. In a crosstown cab on my way back to Joan’s apartment, I would call Sette Mezzo, I would call Marché, I would call Shun Lee or Elio’s, to see what their specials were.
“What sounds good to you,” Joan would say when I would call her to list the options.
Often I did not know what the dishes I was reciting to her were. “John Dory?” I would tentatively offer.
“I think not,” Joan would say, and we’d land on the roast chicken.
We ate on an eighty-year-old’s schedule: dinner at five with wine, a second glass after (“Just a swallow,” Joan would say), and then a cigarette, and then Joan would head to bed. She would ask three or four times if I had what I needed—blankets, pillows, anything else—and then she would hug me and kiss my cheek and shuffle slowly down the long hallway that led from her foyer to her bedroom.
Sometimes I would delay her, ask for her advice before she went off. I was learning then that self-delusion around Joan was impossible—not only impossible, but potentially lethal. I had problems, I was not writing well, my family, my memory, my inability to see beyond myself, or the fact that I lived only superficially and gave all my real love and feeling to my characters. I would take great pains to articulate these issues as clearly as possible, stripped of their half-accurate language. I was not “worried about my writing,” I was “worried about my brain,” for instance.
Read the rest at LitHub.