J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [220]
Salinger remarried in 1992. He had met his new bride some years before, ironically at the Cornish Fair, a venue reminiscent of where his own parents had met in legend. She was a local woman named Colleen O’Neill, a professional nurse and amateur quilter, good-natured and modest. The couple was soon spotted frequently in town, often arm in arm, grocery shopping and dining at Windsor restaurants. Since the marriage was unannounced, the exact nature of their relationship remained unclear, even to many of Salinger’s neighbors. Muddying the waters further, Colleen was born in June 1959, making her forty years Salinger’s junior and, perhaps, an unlikely partner.
Salinger accompanied by his third wife, Colleen O’Neill, on a Windsor, Vermont, shopping trip in 1998. (New York News Service)
• • •
In early December 1992, Salinger’s house caught fire. The blaze roared out of control despite teams of firefighters dispatched from surrounding towns. The fire trucks were followed by news vans alerted to exactly whose house was burning. Salinger and Colleen were standing on the lawn watching their home go up in flames when reporters appeared and approached them for an interview. The couple rushed off. The incident became nationwide news, and every major newspaper described how the reclusive author had run from reporters to avoid being questioned. The papers also revealed Colleen as being Salinger’s wife and emphasized her young age. Because the fire avoided his study and therefore his manuscripts, Salinger’s own accounts of that night contain no mention of reporters or concern for his house and its heirlooms.24 Salinger was upset for the well-being of his dogs, a pair of Italian greyhounds that had bolted into the woods in terror of the fire.25
In time, the bastion was rebuilt exactly as it had been. Incursions into Salinger’s world like those invited by the 1992 fire became increasingly rare as he grew older and left home less frequently. Reinforcing his refuge, the residents of Cornish remained faithful in their shared protection of his privacy. It became a tradition—indeed, a sport—to purposely misguide strangers asking for directions to Salinger’s house. Would-be trespassers were told that no one had ever heard of the author. Many found themselves directed onto meandering dead-end roads deep within the woods or sent to the driveways of the hamlet’s least popular citizens. The people of Cornish relished such diversions much as they enjoyed telling Salinger stories among themselves, quips about how the aging writer had angrily demanded his salami sliced at the deli counter (thin to the point of translucence) or about the year he had forgotten the approach of Halloween, leaving him to sheepishly distribute pencils to the children in lieu of candy. Such tales and ruses bound the townspeople together, but there was also a pragmatic side to their devotion. Cornish shared in Salinger’s image. It had become synonymous with hermitage, a reputation its inhabitants willingly exploited. It was extolled as an ideal location for the wealthy to escape from the world. Property values soared.
*This trip shows the high level of accord between Claire and Salinger regarding the children, after the divorce. The settlement included a stipulation that neither could take the children out of the country without the consent of the other, and even then not for more than ten days at a time.
*Andreas Brown later recounted one of Salinger’s visits to the Gotham Book Mart to Paul Alexander. He described Salinger entering the store