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While Simon was recovering from his bereavement, he met Actress Marsha Mason at an audition for The Good Doctor. The mutual attraction was immediate. He married her 2½ weeks after they met, "And that was with one postponement," he adds. Simon encountered little resistance to the abrupt romance from Joan's mother Helen Bairn or daughters Ellen, then 16, and Nancy, then 10. Nancy explains: "We responded to Marsha right away. She was warm and funny, and we needed to become a family again."
Simon bared his rage and guilt at Joan's death and recounted his quick marriage to Mason in Chapter Two (1977). That put him back on stride, and every stage work since—from the musical They 're Playing Our Song (1979) to the trilogy—has clicked. Meanwhile, the new marriage thrived for about eight years, then ended in divorce in 1982. Although Simon wrote five films for her to star in (notably 1977's The Goodbye Girl), part of the problem was career conflict. There were other tensions, about which they are enigmatic. "Marsha was starting to find new ways to express herself in her life and her work," Simon says. Mason remains attentive and admiring. Says she: "Neil is totally honest. He doesn't edit much, which can be a problem for someone living with him, but I'd rather have that than someone who doesn't communicate at all. We've come to a relationship that is very comfortable for all of us, and I have all their pictures on my wall."
Simon hopes to marry again. "An opening night is a lot less fun if you are there with a date, a friend, instead of someone you are deeply involved with," he says. He has had two such relationships recently with women who have young children, and says he has a potential wife in mind, although he does not discuss the matter further. Daughter Nancy, 23, believes being unmarried has made Simon more conscious of his age. Certainly he has gone through a moody period of late, one that has made him willing to talk about his worries and insecurity in conversation and not just through his work—a pursuit that was always his "refuge" but is now satisfying him less. He says, "I wasn't feeling happy during Broadway Bound. Eugene and Stanley are shown when life is just beginning. I can't get back to that place. I would never think of giving up my career, but it's just not the same as when I began to achieve what I wanted." He concedes that his "gloom" has been triggered in part by health problems (emergency prostate surgery in November, a pending adrenal operation sometime during the next few weeks). He talks of taking a protracted sabbatical, although friends note that his temperament is mercurial and predict that such impulses will pass. His most reliable comforts, he says, are his children. Nancy, an aspiring director, staged a production last summer of Biloxi Blues in Fish Creek, Wis., which Simon came to see. Ellen, 29, a choreographer and aspiring screenwriter, lives in Toronto with her husband and Simon's only grandchild, Andrew, who turns six this week. When she completed her first script last fall, she sent it to her father—and to Mason—for comment.