A Ride in the Hills

By the 1990s, my wife, Jane, and I were in different places. "I don't want to do this anymore," she said one day. "I don't want to run to all the premieres and parties. I want to paint. I want to read. I want to be with my children in my house and look at the ocean." In this way, while still loving each other deeply, Jane and I began to move in separate directions. We saw less of each other, and usually slept in different cities. It created a space, and it was in this space that the other great love of my life bloomed.

When people hear the details of my existence, they focus on the geometry of my romantic life.

Let me start at the beginning.

One morning, as I came into my office at Warner Bros., I noticed a new girl in the office, a redhead, a knockout. I waited a few minutes, then called my secretary.

"Who's the new girl?" I asked.

"Do you mean Susie?" she asked.

"With the red hair?" I said.

"Yes, she has red hair. That's Susie."

"Great," I said. "Talk to her for me. See if she knows how to ride."

"How to ride?"

"Yeah, ask if she wants to go horseback riding with me tomorrow morning."

So they called Susie and said, "Mr. Weintraub wants to take you for a horseback ride. Do you know how to ride?"

Susie said, "Sure I know how to ride."

When she got off that call, she phoned her sister and asked, "Is it hard to ride a horse?"

"No, it's easy," he sister told her, "just grab those leather things and hang on."

I met Susie at the Equestrian Center. She was beautiful, petite, with long hair and a smile that made the day. She was outfitted like a rider, in jeans and cowboy boots. I had a gorgeous horse picked out for her. It was a spirited animal, but she said she knew how to ride. As soon I saw her in the saddle, though, holding the horn with fear in her eyes, I knew she had never been on horseback in her life. I admired Susie even more for not being able to ride, for the way she took the challenge, put out her chin, and tried her best. It was like something I would do.

"Come on, Susie," I said, holding out my hand. "Let's get you on a better horse."

We found a grandma of an animal and rode into the mountains. The hills were studded with wildflowers, the meadow grass stirred, the horses whinnied as they cantered over the passes. We talked about this and that. I made jokes, some funny, some not. Susie laughed at them all. We got off the horses and walked under the trees. I made a pass, which Susie pretended to miss. Then one thing led to another, which is an oblique way of saying I fell in love.

Susie and I courted for months. I use the old-fashioned word deliberately, as there was something proper about it despite my being married. We went to dinners and to shows, on picnics and for car rides. I knew I had to tell Jane. A little dalliance here and there, okay, but this was something else, something wonderfully serious.

Jane and I talked in Malibu. This was one of the most remarkable conversations I've ever had. I told Jane everything: about how I met Susie and about how I felt. I said, "Jane, I have fallen in love with another woman."

She sat there, listening, thinking, then spoke. Did she say, "You bastard!" Did she say, "I will see you in court!"? No. Jane was in a different place in her life. She had lived as a star, she had lived as a wife, she had lived as a liberated woman and as a working woman and as a career woman and, most important, as a mother. She loves me and I love her, but her identity was never bound up with mine. She understood what had happened and why. She understood what she could give me and what I needed. When I offered her a divorce, she said, "No, I do not want a divorce."

"It's silly to get a divorce unless you really need a divorce," she explained. "It doesn't matter to me. I'm not with anybody, and I don't intend to be with anybody. I want to paint and have a quiet life. Your life is not quiet, I know that. You have a busy life and I support it and will never stop supporting it, because I love you. And I know you love me. And we have children and grandchildren. And those things are important. They're not to be thrown away. They're not to be treated like they're something that doesn't mean anything. And what will divorce give us? Contention. Aggravation. I don't want to sit with a lawyer, and go through this and that, and you shouldn't either. You worked hard for your money-do you really want to pay millions of dollars to figure out a divorce? For what? To someday, hopefully, get back to the situation we already have today, where everyone can sit in a room together at a wedding or a funeral? There is no reason for a divorce. We can work it out. If Susie doesn't need to get married to you right now, let it go. I'm fine with it."

She was so wise, so wonderful.

"What about the children?" I asked. "What about the grandchildren?"

"We will talk to the children and grandchildren," she said. "I will explain it to them. I will say, 'Look, there is no reason for animosity. I am fine with this, you should be fine with it, too. There is no reason for you not to be friendly with Susie or close to Susie.' "

And that's what we did. We sat with the children and grandchildren, and told them, and they were all right with it. We told our friends, and some could not understand and were terribly bothered about this arrangement-okay, you are not us, you don't have to live like us.

The simple fact is, Jane no longer wanted my life. She didn't want to go to parties, didn't want to have sex with me. Not interested. Good. She needs what she needs and I need what I need, which is to be with somebody who wants to be involved in every part of my life: mentally, emotionally, sexually. Warren Beatty, lothario of lotharios, once asked me the secret. "How did you make it work, Jerry? How do you pull it off?"

Well, the answer is, I didn't. Jane and Susie did. I have a life with Susie and I love Susie, but I'm still with Jane, too. I see her all the time, and we're on the phone constantly. I will be there whenever she needs me. Otherwise, I am off, in my own life. I think this works only because Jane had such a long and successful career. She was a singer, she was a star, she was a mother. She had many lifetimes without me and I have had many lifetimes without her. She never lived through me. We used to live together; now we live apart. When marriage was invented, people didn't live very long. When I was a kid, if a couple had a fiftieth wedding anniversary, they were ancient. Nowadays, with the medicine and the longevity we have, when you marry somebody, you are in it for a very, very long time. I don't know if that's the way it's supposed to be. It's not for me, anyway. I have been with Jane for forty-eight years. I'm one of the ancients now. But I am still here, which means I am still living, still changing.

I later learned that Susie descends from Hollywood royalty. Her mother's godmother was Fanny Brice. Her mother's father was an Academy Award-winning writer. Her father was Bud Ekins, the legendary stuntman. Bud always had a passion for motorcycles. Wheels, crankshafts, throttles-he could not get enough. He used to ride wide open, burning up the desert east of LA. He was a legend in the racing world. In the 1960s, he won four gold medals at the Six-Day Trials in France and England. He won or came close to winning dozens of races in America and all over the world. He was known as the desert fox, a charismatic star, cool before that attitude went mainstream, tough as hell, with a cigarette forever hanging from the corner of his mouth.

His motorcycle shop in LA-he sold Triumphs-was a haunt of leather-clad riders and wannabes, including young movie stars eager to soak up Bud's authenticity. Steve McQueen was a regular, hanging around the garage talking to Bud, who, in his greasy white T-shirt, grimaced and said, "Yeah, yeah, hand me that spring hook over there." When McQueen was shooting The Great Escape, he asked Bud if he would be his stuntman double. It was Bud Ekins who, on a Triumph TR6, performed the famous jump that carried Steve McQueen over a wall of concertina wire. Bud was sought out after that. He appeared in dozens of films and TV shows: racing a Mustang up and down the streets of San Francisco in Bullitt, running a motorcycle up the stairs of the fraternity house in Animal House, doubling for Ponch in the more hair-raising sequences of Chips.