I know I have posted her before, but there is something about the lovely Miss. Tautou that never tires. I wait with baited breath for her next beautiful performance...
June said she knew me- knew the kernel of me, deep inside, beneath the drugs and deceit and despair and anger and selfishness, and knew my loneliness. She said she could help me. She said we were soul mates, she and I, and that she would fight for me with all her might however she could. She did that by being my companion, friend, and lover, and by praying for me (June is a prayer warrior like none I've known), but also by waging total war on my drug habit. If she found my pills, she flushed them down the toilet. And find them she did; she searched for them, relentlessly. If I didn't like that and said so, I had a fight on my hands. If I disappeared on her, she's get Marshall or Fluke or someone else in the crew to go find me in the wee hours of the morning and coax me back to bed. If I'd been up for days until I'd finally had the sense to take a handful of sleeping pills and crash- there was always an instinct telling me when to do that, pointing to the line between "almost" and "fatal"- I'd wake up from a sleep like death to find that my drugs, all my drugs, no matter how ingeniously I'd hidden them, were gone.
She gave up only once, in the mid-'60s in the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. By that time I was totally reduced- I hate the tern "wasted"- and it's incomprehensible to me how I kept walking around, how my brain continued to function. I was nothing but leather and bone; there was nothing in my blood but amphetamines; there was nothing in my heart but loneliness; there was nothing between me and my God but distance.
I don't know what exactly brought her to the point of leaving me. I'd been up for three or four days and I'd been giving her a really hard time, but that wasn't unusual. I guess there'd just been too much of it for her. She'd set out to save me and she thought she'd failed. We had adjoining rooms; she came into mine and said, "I'm going. I can't handle this anymore. I'm going to tell Saul that I can't work with you anymore. It's over."
I knew immediately that she wasn't kidding. I really didn't want her to go, so I went straight out of my room and into hers, gathered up her suitcase and all her clothes- everything, her shoes included (she was barefoot)- and took them back into my room. Then I pushed her out and locked my door. That should do it, I thought. All she had on was a towel.
I could hear her crying in her room for a long time, but eventually she came knocking on my door. She promised not to leave if I gave her back her clothes, and I believed her, so I did. And through all the trials to come, before and after she became my wife, she never tried to leave again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I wish the whole world could know how great she is. She's smart and she's brilliant. She's got a great personality. She's easy to live with, because she makes it a point to be so. She's loving. She's sharing. The main thing, though, is that she loves me and I know it. I used to take advantage of that- because I knew she loved me, I could get away with more- but again, that's not a healthy idea, and it demonstrates one of the reasons why she needs to love me so much. I don't do it so much these days. Perhaps she prayed me out of it.
June is formidable; she's my solid rock. She's my spark plug. When there are people to talk to and my shyness is welling up inside me, she holds my hand, fronts for me, and makes it possible, though not easy, for me to act with enough grace to avoid hurting people's feelings. As I've said before, I'm just fine on stage in front of ten thousand people I don't know, but I'm all awkwardness backstage with ten. June always sees that I've got the right thing to eat, if I'll agree to eat it. She likes the same kind of movies I do, and the same kind of TV shows.
She's got charm, she's got brains, she's got style, she's got class. She's got silver, she's got gold, she's got jewelry, she's got furniture, she's got china... she's got a black belt in shopping.
She's the easiest woman in the world for me to live with. I guess because I know her so well and she knows me so well, and we get along handsomely. If it looks like there's going to be some tension between us, we talk it out and work it out, or I take a walk and she takes a drive until it's over. Grandfather Rivers taught me that- 'Your Grandma and I never fought, but I took a lot of walks,' he said, and that's what I do. By the time I'm back from a walk I'll be looking at the problem differently, and so will June. Whatever I do, I try not to blow up the way I used to, just explode and say angry and horrible things. Then the pain is there, the damage is done, and there's no taking it back, no matter how many amends I make. These days I don't even have to walk away very often. June and I are usually on a pretty even keel in our home life, our social life, and our work.
She's a vital performer, and it's vital for me to have her on my concerts. This thing between us has been happening since 1961, and I just don't want to travel if she can't come with me. She almost always does. She's my life companion, and she's a sweet companion. She's very loving, especially with me, and very kind- there are people who can be loving, but not kind, but she's loving and kind. She does everything she can to help me along with my day. She's a good woman. She's got standards. She's got traditions. She's got dignity. She's got china...
When we come in from a tour, we both need time and space apart, so I'll pack up my little suitcase and head out here to the farm, and she'll pack her suitcase and head for New York City. It's necessary, I think, for marriage partners to have some free time apart from each other. I've found it to be true in my own marriage, and it's straight from Scripture; Paul exhorted us to spend time apart so that our coming together is stronger. June and I don't let it go many days, though. Usually we're ready to be back together after just two or three.
She likes to go to New York and shop. She loves wheeling and dealing and haggling with her favorite jewelers in the diamond district and coming home with all these bargains, all this money saved- she saves me so much money, sometimes, that I just don't know where to spend it.
I don't mind, really I don't. She's earned her black belt. It's her right and her prerogative. She puts as much time into the family business as I do, and I'm only too happy to share the whole thing with her.
She and I have become so very close , so intimate. I think it might be because of all her prayer. I never see her praying, though, or at least not when it's obvious. Sometimes I'll catch sight of her on a plane, say, moving her lips with her eyes closed, and I think that's what she's probably doing.
So yes, we're so close. Whenever I face a professional decision I always put it to her and get her opinion, because I know she'll be both objective and honest with me, and she's always the first to know about everything in my life. She's never judgmental. She lets me keep my small measure of dignity and prestige in both our relationship with each other and our relationship with the world. She's become everything that a wife should be, in my mind. We sleep together, we play together, we travel together, we work together, and we've both found our particular place where we totally belong, in every avenue of endeavor.
~ excerpts from Cash, the autobiography
