The Change

An old family friend used to be married to the grandson of a former president. Nice enough guy; the two of them came to family dinners often, and I think he had a thing for my mother. But his last name was, I think, a burden to him, and he never seemed able to get his feet underneath him. Lots of unemployment--lots of "consulting" work that didn't pay. Big laughter--barking laughter. The wife was married to him for 20ish years, until two years ago when he chose his 20-years-junior ghost writer instead. Like nobody saw that coming. Now he's married this other woman, and the two of them have avoided debtors and lawyers by moving to Europe, where they live with their two well-named infants in an apartment owned by her parents. I offer no judgment; I've made my own choices, and I've hurt people.

His former wife tells us last night that her alimony stopped the day the guy boarded the plane for the Alps. She has put her house in Iowa on the market--she can't afford the tiny mortgage--and if it ever sells she will have to move in with her mother in a tiny place on Long Island and live off what cash is left. She sat at the table to worry and rage out loud about it all last night, and her hands were shaking--not just from the rage, I think, but from some affliction--and she mused about making a living from her drawings: she wants me to show her how to sell on eBay. I can't imagine how those hands are going to pull off the delicate pen drawings she used to create. She exhales hopelessness. I'm vaguely surprised she hasn't done herself in.

20 years ago this woman created the most amazing art. She gave us some for Christmas gifts. She illustrated award-winning children's books. But she always dabbled at it--even when her husband was "consulting" and they really needed cash. She could've taken a job--she was offered jobs. She didn't want to work. She said so. Her husband would complain about it here, privately. He resented it.

I sat beside her. I asked about her kids--both of them fuck ups. No solutions there. I looked across the table at another friend whose husband left her for a younger woman a month after they'd adopted their only child--now 12 years ago. She, too: trained social worker who stopped working when her husband got a big banking job. Now she lives in a house she can't afford--the big, old family house. She's tried to build a landscape architecture business, but it couldn't sustain the life she and her husband bought into--the one she's still living. She refinances and sucks the equity out of the house every third year: pays credit card bills with other credit cards: dreads the day her daughter turns 18 and the alimony disappears and the whole scene falls apart. She has no plan. For 12 years she's had no plan. I watched her watching this other woman, and I knew what she was thinking. There it is: there's the cliff, right there.

I don't understand this whole scene--and I don't mean to say that I'm unsympathetic, because I swear I am. But if your partner screws you over, why on earth would you not work? Why would you sit and groan until you psych and age yourself out of the job market and have no means to sustain yourself? Why would you wait for the ex- to make it right financially or emotionally? I understand depression--I know people need to mourn. I swear, I'm supportive of these two. Maybe I'd lock up, too. Who knows? But last night I realized that I'm angry at them, too. Women as the vulnerable ones--women as the victims. Please. They have daughters.

Further in my growing sense that marriage is not a healthy proposition: that it induces unhealthy dependency, and that it's best avoided. Go live in sin; the footing is more equal there.