J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [33]
For Salinger, the timing could not have been better. Life with Laurene certainly softened the blow during the months of Oona O’Neill’s rejection. It might well explain his declared loss of affection for O’Neill in a January letter to Elizabeth Murray. And it gave him a path along which to channel his romantic energies. Laurene recalls that Salinger proposed marriage to her. Whether such a proposal was ever actually made or not remains an open question, but the timing of her recollection does coincide with Salinger’s letters expressing his intention to marry. He was certainly serious enough about the relationship to bring his mother and sister down from New York to meet her.*
Whatever the true depth of feeling, the association was good for both parties. Laurene’s mother, Cleata, however, instantly wary of this slick boy from New York, was less thrilled by the romance. One evening in early spring 1943, Laurene and Jerry stood in the living room of the Powells’ Bainbridge home. Peeking through the dining room doors was Cleata, lying in wait, watching the couple’s reflection in a mirror. According to Laurene, when Salinger bent over to kiss her, “the door flew open, Mama came rushing out and demanded he leave the house, and not see me again.” Jerry, seldom one for confrontation, quickly fled, and Laurene ran sobbing to her room. The romance ended there. By May, the Georgia Peach was engaged to a more acceptable New Yorker, a lieutenant in the Air Corps whom Salinger knew and disliked.
Salinger himself either remained perplexed by the relationship’s sudden termination or was reluctant to recount its details. His feelings of bewilderment or reticence were expressed in his unpublished 1944 short story “Two Lonely Men,” which takes place at Bainbridge. In another example of Salinger slipping a personal episode into a story and fleeing before he is forced to explain it, the narrator of “Two Lonely Men” describes the main character’s life at the army base with a clear reference to Laurene Powell:
sometimes—in the beginning, anyway—he dated a good-looking brunette who worked at the Post Exchange; but something happened there—I’m not sure what.…34
After the breakup, The Saturday Evening Post published three Salinger stories between February and July 1944. These were written (or at least started) while he was stationed at Bainbridge. A fourth story was published in March 1945.
After Laurene had begged her mother for months for permission to read the Post pieces, Cleata finally agreed and Laurene obtained one of them. The memory of it remains strong because she saw herself in the story’s character. The story that she read is most likely “Both Parties Concerned,” which Salinger originally entitled “Wake Me When It Thunders.” If so, it not only gives us an image of Laurene as a sensitive young woman but might also explain a drastic redirection in Salinger’s writing. The character of Ruthie is the first completely sympathetic woman found in Salinger’s literature. If readers have anyone to thank for Salinger’s sudden sensitivity toward his stories’ female characters, it could well be Laurene Powell.
“Both Parties Concerned” is the story of a young couple grappling to cope with responsibilities brought on by marriage and parenthood. Modern readers are likely to be distracted by a series of clichés, but to 1940s readers, it was a timely and intimate mirror of contemporary life. Billy and Ruthie Vullmer are new parents who admit to marrying too young and against the wishes of Ruthie’s mother. Despite the new circumstances, Billy is determined to retain an adolescent lifestyle, taking Ruthie