Even for Neal—Neal’s success in life wasn’t as sure as Jack’s. His star might not have been shining as brightly as Jack’s, but it was there. Neal would have had absolutely no trouble handling the work at Columbia, if he had ever managed to get admitted. Neal had a fantastic mind, he really did. And his mind was going in the right direction too; his life wasn’t wasteful then. But once Neal came to San Francisco and settled down with Carolyn, I never heard him talk anymore about making something of himself. After we came back to California from Denver, I never heard Neal talk any more about his writing or his future or getting an education. I never heard any more of that at all. And that was all he talked about for the four years that I knew him before that. When I first came to San Francisco, in November of 1947, Neal was working at a filling station. He used to make me come out there and sit with him for his eight-hour shift, and he was still talking then about going to school and becoming a writer. He was still full of anticipation and plans. But then Carolyn got pregnant, and we had to make that trip to Denver just before my eighteenth birthday to get an annulment, so that he could come back and marry her. After we came back from Denver, I never once heard him talk about his old dreams.
Years later, when we were both a lot older, we discussed this—discussed what had happened to his dreams. He said, “Well, you know, I had a responsibility then.” Although Neal and responsibility didn’t always go hand in hand, Neal felt it greatly. Regardless of what other people have thought, or anything else people have said or written about him, Neal did feel a big sense of responsibility! A lot of those things they say about him make me angry. Being raised the way Neal was, Neal hadn’t been given a big sense of security—he didn’t have a lot to work from. He didn’t really know how to handle responsibility because no one had ever been responsible for him. And the only one he’d ever had to be responsible for was himself. But he still tried to be responsible, when he could. Even with me, he did the best he could. He was always very gentle with me and tried to make everything nice for me, because he felt I had been shortchanged by being on my own so young. He knew I wasn’t prepared for life on my own, the way I had been raised—which was always a proper and protected environment. So he felt a sense of responsibility toward me, but at the same time he felt sure I could learn to take care of myself—that I could make it on my own if he gave me a little help in that direction.
Neal had a large sense of responsibility, or he would never have married Carolyn. He would never have married Diana either. He would never have gone through the whole bullshit of annulments and divorces just so he could keep getting remarried and taking care of his different families. And he would never have even tried to get Carolyn alimony at various times when she told him that she and the kids were desperate for money. He was always really worried about her and the kids. He really tried to help them out. I know that, especially in the earlier years, Carolyn thought that Neal could have cared less whether they were eating or had a roof over their heads. The truth is, he really was concerned. Unfortunately, he just didn’t know what to do about it, but he felt it greatly.
In a way, he was just like Jack with his emotional dependency thing with the women. Look at what happened with Joan.25 When Jack was with a woman he cared about, I think he would love to have been in the traditional role of husband and father; he would love to have been able to take over the reins and do the things that he knew might have to be done, or should be done, to take care of his family. But since all these things had been done for him all his life—and done by a woman, his mother—he really had no way of knowing how to do it. Jack’s mother had made him dependent on her, and it made him helpless in a lot of ways. It was the same with Neal in that respect. He didn’t have a mother making him dependent, but he had nobody giving him a responsible model either. Neal really wanted desperately to take care of his responsibilities, and live up to them, and he just really didn’t know how to go about it.
Jack used to talk about how “the place for a woman is handling the money.” He really felt that way—that the woman should take care of the practical things in life. With Neal, because of his upbringing on skid row, where you had to fight to protect whatever belongings you had—with Neal, it was always a “This is yours, and this is mine!” type of thing. It was hard for him to feel a togetherness thing with anyone—to really open up and share with anyone. I mean, we had a tremendous togetherness; but from a material standpoint, Neal didn’t even begin to understand what it might mean to say the word ours. If he had five bucks in his pocket, it was his five bucks! And he needed it. If Jack had five bucks, of course, it was his mother’s five bucks.