Robert Marrow tries to understand why his wife left him to marry someone else by recreating the story in her words.
—
(Author’s Note: This is a story I tried to write in the voice of my ex-wife, now deceased, who left me and our son in 1983 to marry a man she fell in love with in Italy.)
As Sasha and I exited US Customs at JFK returning from our three week vacation in Italy, Robert was standing in the crowd at the gate waiting for us. It was July of 1983 and Sasha was almost eight years old. Robert and I had been married for eleven years. I knew that it was about to end but he didn’t. I was in love with Francesco.
Robert and I met in September of 1971 on Central Park West. He was walking Bogar, his Puli (a Hungarian sheep dog). I approached them from behind as he turned into West 67th Street. “Is that a Puli?” I didn’t know that those four words would change my life forever.
Robert invited me for tea at his apartment at 33 West 67th Street. From that moment until I left for Italy eleven years later we were together. When we met I lived on West 74th Street with my best friend, Dana, who I met at Carnegie Mellon, but I don’t think I ever slept in that apartment again. Robert and I were in love from, “Is that a Puli?” It was the kind of love that made him take photos of me sleeping with my long blonde hair flowing on the pillow. Robert was darkly handsome in a “film noir” way, but while physical attraction was most important to him, I loved his solidity, his stability. Robert had recently opened his own law office and I was an unemployed graphic designer who had just been released from psychiatric confinement at Payne Whitney.
I never fully explained to Robert the break-down which caused a friend to commit me. Perhaps I never fully understood it myself. The best way to describe it is severe depression brought on by the enormous gap between my opinion of myself as a brilliant artist and the reaction of the rest of the world, particularly my employers and co-workers, who saw me as disruptive and arrogant. However, I should acknowledge that my mother who burned my brother and me as punishment for rule infractions, and who chained us into our beds at night, may have created low self esteem that conflicted with my outward opinion of myself as beautiful, talented and wonderful. I think that my emotional neediness attracted Robert as much as my golden hair and long legs that went all the way down to the ground. Tall, emotionally wrecked blondes were his weakness.
Our love was intense. He had gentle hands that would stroke me for what seemed like hours before we would embrace and obliterate the separation between our bodies and ourselves. The true test had come on the morning after I stayed in Robert’s apartment for the first time, when we walked with Bogar to the point where Robert went one way, to his office, and I the other, to my apartment on 74th Street. Bogar never needed a leash, and when Robert and I separated he told Bogar to follow me, which he did — proof that the three of us would be together forever. Dogs know right from wrong and good from bad in a way people can never approach.
We were married in December of 1971 in the duplex apartment of Robert’s neighbor. There was a fire burning in the fireplace and a stairway from the upper floor down to the large living room where Robert and Judge Ernst Rosenberg, his friend, waited to seal our love in law. Guests had brought their own dishes which filled a large dining room table. I wore a white gown created for me by Koos Van Der Knocker, a white-hot Dutch designer who I met walking around on the West Side and who had become my friend. So, what went wrong?
Not long after we married Robert started finding fault with me. The first sign of his loss of respect, if he ever did respect me, was when I bought him a recording of highlights of classical masterpieces. I could see in his disappointment that he found me unacceptably unsophisticated; that I would buy less than complete works, a symphony or a selection of sonatas in their entirety. He acted as though I had bought a selection by Lawrence Welk into his cultured home. I was the hick from Pittsburgh and he was a sophisticate from the center of refinement, Bard College.
Robert seemed embarrassed by things I said to his friends and even my appearance lost its luster in his eyes. The safe and solid harbor I had found was crumbling with daily jolts to my insecurity. We shared a house with Robert’s brother, Victor, and his French wife, Helene (the “H” is silent), on Fire Island. I left a pair of panties in the bathroom sink and you would have thought that I had committed a felony.
All of this probably seems trivial, but the water torture of daily dripping disapproval was much more than my fragile ego could endure. I became irrational and that fed Robert’s disapproval, so a death cycle gripped our marriage.
While this deterioration was progressing we had a child, Alexander. I pretentiously insisted on calling him Sasha (demonstrating that we knew the Russian nickname for Alexander). Our son abandoned “Sasha” for “Alex” as soon as he was old enough to go to school and decide for himself what he wanted to be called. That was another of the things Robert found unacceptable about me; I was “affected”.
Soon after Alexander was born I began feeling totally inadequate. This was reinforced by Robert who told me that I was inadequate. His favorite expression for me was, “You have your head up your ass.” By this time we were isolated in our home in Rye, New York, a suburb not unlike Scarsdale, Greenwich and Larchmont. There were a few young families that accepted us in their group, but I had no real friends except Dana, and she was now living in Brooklyn with a husband who had his own problems. In self defense I became passive aggressive with Robert so that he would know that I despised him as much as he seemed to disrespect me. That sent him out of the house each night after Sasha (still Sasha to me) was asleep, to drink in bars frequented by locals much too young for Robert, or by Viet Nam Vet derelicts.
By then I was in full fledged Freudian psychoanalysis with a woman who supported my view that Robert was destroying me, but inconsistently suggested that we attend marriage counseling conducted by a woman she recommended. By then Robert was in as much pain as I was, and readily agreed despite the fact that we couldn’t afford my analysis together with marriage counseling.
The counseling sessions were interesting. I insisted that Robert had lost all love, regard and respect for me, if he ever had liked anything about me but my looks – and Robert insisted that he loved me and always had loved me. We never spoke of how I felt about Robert and it didn’t seem to matter. To him and the marriage counselor all that was important was discussing how he felt about me. The marriage counselor took his side, but that was because she didn’t seem to hear my pain. Robert would claim he loved me, I would say he didn’t and the marriage counselor would say that I didn’t hear what Robert was saying. I heard what he was saying but it wasn’t true – he was saying it to impress the marriage counselor as though she was a judge or a jury and he had to win this case.
Nevertheless, the sessions were useful because the marriage counselor was on First Avenue and 60th Street, near some very good restaurants where Robert and I would repair for dinner afterward. Listening to Robert say he loved me was bolstering, and I tried to believe it, so romantic dinners and long drives home had a soothing effect on both of us.
*****
With the help of marriage counseling our marriage evolved into a peaceful shell. Sasha born in 1975 was turning into a quietly brilliant child who at the age of three could sing the Star Spangled Banner from beginning to end without knowing the words (“bombs fursting in air…”). He learned that from watching TV in the early mornings when stations signed off the air with the national anthem. Sasha wasn’t the little athlete that Robert envisioned in a son (when asked if he wanted to play catch, his answer was usually, “Do you?”) but he could read and write before starting school and was a whiz with computers from the first Tandy Radio Shack run with cassette tapes that we bought for $500 the Christmas of 1978 or 1979. My focus was entirely on Sasha — Robert became just someone who came to dinner regularly.
Life at home was becoming dull to the point of barely bearable for me. My art which had been so important a part of my life was a thing of the past. Living in Westchester and caring for a child, and Robert and the house, made graphic design in the City impossible. I had to get out of that house, taking even for menial jobs like working as a sales clerk at Edith in Underwear in Rye, a local precursor of Victoria’s Secret, so we hired full time, live-in nannies. My salary covered theirs, barely, but at least I was out-of-the-house.
While singular incidents made life slightly amusing, it was still dull, dull, dull for someone like me to live in suburbia. One of our nannies was Flavia, an “au pair” from Italy, who was working in the US to learn English well enough to support her career in diplomacy when she returned to Italy. Flavia was young, beautiful, sophisticated, cultured, well educated and very smart. We became good friends during the two or three months that she lived with us, and she invited us to visit her in Rome. It was too tantalizing an idea to let pass, and since Robert couldn’t or wouldn’t get away from his law practice, I persuaded him to send Sasha and me to live with Flavia for three weeks in June of 1983. It was from that trip that I was returning when this memoir began.
*****
I should say more about my marriage to Robert as it was in 1983 before describing what happened when Sasha and I went to Italy. Two major issues in most marriages, I hear, are sex and money. Both can lead to the spouses becoming judgmental. One major problem with being judged regularly by anyone is that you start to judge yourself by the imagined standards of the other, for example, “…what would he think about the way I am doing this?” Once I started judging myself by what I imagined to be Robert’s standards, I became lost as a person. Not fun…
But let’s start with sex, which was not really part of the “judgmental problem.” It was just boring for me, and frankly, a bit repulsive. Robert was an attentive but routine lover. He seemed to appreciate my beauty, not an unusual occurrence among men, and we had sex pretty regularly. I don’t know how much to believe frequency statistics reported on this subject, but we were normal. The bad thing was that I didn’t really want to touch him. The good thing was that he really wanted to touch me. So, our intercourse would usually, or always, begin with Robert stroking my back or my feet or my legs and then kissing various parts of me while I closed my eyes and used fantasies to try to enjoy it. The stroking and kissing was gentle and stimulating, so with a little imagination I could become aroused and even reach a climax sometimes. We had been together doing the same thing since December 1971, so by the 1980s the routine had become routine. So, I lay back and tried to enjoy being touched and then entered for as long as it took Robert to climax. Maybe this doesn’t sound so bad, and maybe it’s not unusual in relationships that last more than a few years, but I am romantic and this was not satisfying my need for romance. I had a few brief sexual encounters with other men, to see if I was missing anything, and to prove that I was attractive, but these were not serious and never threatened our marriage.
The part that was dragging me down was the money part, which resulted in being judged a failure. Our arguments would start when we didn’t have enough money for something, or when Robert would complain about the bills for my psychoanalysis which were about 10% of his earnings and resulted in yearly audits of our income tax returns because the deductions “rang a bell” at the IRS. When he would complain about not having enough money, I would complain that he was not earning enough at his law firm, which he had joined in 1977. Robert would complain that I wasn’t earning enough money, considering the cost of analysis, marriage counseling and the live-in maid or nanny which should have freed me to pursue a job in graphic design. I tried working for a few of the small design and advertising firms in Westchester, but I didn’t get along with the owners. Working in New York City was not practical because of the commuting cost and time away from home and Sasha. So I would call Robert stupid and he would call me lazy. This description makes the fights seem trivial, but they hurt me badly. I was once so angry that I told Robert I had become pregnant and had an abortion because having another child with him was such a horrible thought. It wasn’t true, but it was the best way I could think of to tell him how much I hated him. He was shocked by my announcement but said that having another child in this troubled marriage didn’t seem like a great idea anyway. So the episode ended.
Perhaps this gives you some idea of how I felt about being married to Robert when Sasha and I embarked for Italy at the beginning of June, 1983.
*****
Robert – please stop writing this story in my name. You could never explain why I left Sasha with you, why I moved to Rome and why I married that man-child. Find the poems I wrote which express my feelings better than you can, how I felt about Francesco, about Anne, my good friend Anne to whom I introduced you at Sasha’s death bed and who married you three months later; Anne, to whom I never spoke again; and about you.
*****
Francesco’s Poem: Goodbye
Good-bye will be
so easy to say.
It took me so long
to learn how to say
good-bye:
to pain,
to solitude,
to punishment I don’t deserve.
Good-bye will be
a pleasure more profound
than anyone can know.
Good-bye:
to a life’s worth
of pain,
of solitude,
of punishment I didn’t deserve.
Good-bye will give me
a joy
I’ve never known.
(How could I have?)
Having always lived with
pain, with
solitude,
and punishment I never deserved.
I will leap for joy
and dance on the tears that fall
on the floor, at my feet,
that you cry.
Where were your tears?
when I drenched the pillow
with mine?
Although I tried so hard
to be quiet,
still,
I disturbed you.
And you let me know it:
“I have to get up in the morning!”
Well – so do I.
I have to get up in the morning –
a new morning:
free from you,
free from pain,
free from solitude
and free from punishment I don’t deserve.
*****
Anne’s Poem: Goodbye
You wanted to know why
I
stopped:
writing,
calling;
speaking
to you.
Are you quite sure that
You
do?
You’d written me that
you
were tired:
of working,
being alone,
economizing in ways that
you
found distasteful.
You
were looking for a way to
“put your feet up.”
You found it:
two days
before my child’s death,
as he wheezed out the last
of his short life,
in the next room,
I made you tea.
Could it be
that
you
fell so madly
in love with a man,
so exhausted,
so numbed,
so crazed
by the agony that
I
know only too well?
Could it be
that this great love
blinded you
to the fact that
this man,
so wounded,
so crumbling,
so devastated
by our son’s death
could only be
simply prey?
Easy, wasn’t it
for someone like
you:
who could celebrate a child’s death
with the ringing of wedding bells?
Were you
so worried that this man,
so easy then, might not be so easy
later?
Three months
was all that
you
allowed
before
you
danced
on my son’s grave.
*****
Robert’s Poem: Goodbye
Reeling and bloodied
after so many
blows;
panting for breath
in the airless
space,
I called your name.
Pardon
the intrusion.
I know just
how ‘busy’ you can be.
How well I do.
I bored you, it seems.
with my anguish;
with my unsolicited
call.
I used the telephone,
(an instrument I loathe);
but you were there
and
I here.
Pardon the intrusion;
but,
I simply needed to know
if it could have been so,
that, after so much pain
and so much love,
(that you rejected but,
there it was)
you could have,
for whatever reason,
turned the knife
so quietly
in my absent back.
Just a few words was all it took:
to the ‘right’ person
in the ‘right’ place,
to break my heart
again and again.
How can it bring you pleasure?
What other reason
can I construe?
“I knew
she would leave me one day…”
It’s true.
I did just that.
But,
did you ever
wonder
why?
*****
Robert, of course these poems were written two years after you married Anne, and three years before she left you and you divorced. These poems were written while you were still married and don’t reflect the friendship that blossomed between us again long-distance from Rome to New York (and not much the other way) in the years between your divorce in 1993 and my death in 2006. I was in New York a few months before I died, suffering the effects of years of chemotherapy and radiation, and I wanted to see you one last time. You refused me this last request. I don’t know why. Perhaps you wanted to remember me as beautiful. Perhaps you were, “too busy.” Pardon the intrusion. I know just how ‘busy’ you can be. How well I do.
Written by Robert
for Gretchen
except for the poems
which were written by
Gretchen, herself.
—
Photo: Ally Aubry / flickr / creative commons
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Bob,
I’ve really enjoyed all of the pieces you’ve written for GMP so far–this one especially.
Please, keep writing.
It’s an extraordinary piece of writing, regardless of how anyone chooses to interpret it. Well done, Bob.
Bob, wonderful article and a joy to read. I loved getting Gretchen’s perspective through her poetry. I hope you’ll write more.
From the outside looking in something can look “easy” but it is usually far from it. Nothing about this was “easy” to the people involved in this complex relationship. These people were in pain and people in pain can do things that might not make sense to those looking on. I hope that when you start to work with people you will be able to see the innumerable shades of gray within relationships. There is rarely ever a quick fix and to say there is puts blame and shame on the very people who will come to you to seek… Read more »
correction: Gretchen’s insecurities were not the only thing that made her attractive to me, and I should not have said or implied that. She was artistically talented, intelligent, well read and great fun to be with. This is not the place to detail her many attributes, but just to correct my misstatement.
I don’t think Dina’s comments were hateful, but they were naive if she thinks that relationships are wrong if they start with sex. “How excited a person makes you,” is the first thing you feel when falling in love; and falling in love is the first thing that happens when people decide to be together exclusively. What still puzzles me is why I fell in love with someone whose needs could not be met, and who told me at the start that she had been recently discharged from a mental hospital. Her insecurities were what attracted me, after he beauty,… Read more »
Mr. Marrow … you ability and depth to see yourself through Gretchen’s eyes is formidable. Please write more. You talent for writing surpassing your courage to share. Best, Debbie
Dina: No one asked for you to solve Bob’s life. No one asked for your analysis or advice. I’d suggest you forget about psychology and “go into plastics” … but you’re probably too young to understand this, or much else.
Well, that was hateful.
Becca …. Time for you to learn the difference between hateful and honest. A 73 year old man who is clearly aware of his faults, who has lost a young son to cancer, along with many other losses, all while being a successful lawyer in NYC is not looking for “i told ya so’s”. Can he turn back time? Can you? Dina’s comments were self-serving, immature and shallow. My bet is she missed the point of the article. And so did you.
I actually don’t know whether to laugh or cry reading this. As a budding psychologist the problem in the marriage is easy. First of all, they started wrong. They started with sex…you can’t get to know the other person if all you judge them by is how excited they make you. Obviously they both made mistakes. Robert by telling his wife that she was “lazy” or not making money, and his wife by putting her own emotional insecurities on him. Problems could have been easily avoidable if both people accepted their faults and honestly tried to work on them. Alas,… Read more »
My previous comment was directed to Dina Strange. It didn’t appear as a direct reply to her post. Sorry for the confusion.
Bob, that took a lot courage. Truly appreciative I read this. Thank you for sharing yours & Gretchen’s story. Wow!
Wow. Mr. Marrow, this is so candid and honest, and very heavy. I can’t help but draw some parallels to Joyce’s Ulysses. Nonetheless, my heart goes out to you. Thank you for such a great article/story.