A Complicated Marriage (50 page)

By the end of April, Sarah had sublet her pretty condo on Christopher Street and I helped her move out. The things she wanted to keep went into storage until the winds of fortune changed. She would live at my office temporarily, until I could empty and sublet it. The wheels of coops move more slowly. When I returned home that day, my L.A. friend Beverly called to tell me she had gone to see my play
Wedding
before it closed. She told me how funny it was and how much the audience had enjoyed it. I had forgotten all about the three-week production. I felt as it I were living in a movie that had been edited out of context.

The phone rang again. It was Jennifer Gordon, to say she was going into the hospital the next day for a double mastectomy. I told her I would be there. She was in her eighties, the cancer well advanced, the prognosis poor. This from the beautiful hostess of the party where I had met Clem, a friend of almost forty years. A stubborn thorn of a woman. Of course I would be there.

What I chose not to attend was a talk Clem had been invited to give at Yale. Sarah went. I knew the drill all too well. The talk, the Q & A, the smug academic audience, the cheap shots, the clever self-aggrandizing questions, all aimed at taking the old man down a few pegs. Jargon called it “deconstruction.” Yet another phrase to give academics a platform from which to produce very, very fat books that hammered the same nails over and over. All that they might be granted tenure and, if they were very, very lucky, a brief mention in the footnote of art history.

Clem, as usual, would not rise to the bait, answering each question in his earnest, straight-arrow way. During the evening he might say:
Bear down, look hard at art, not the theory; develop your own taste; dare to have an aesthetic judgment
. He might talk about art manufactured to shock, to be “new,” and use the word
decadence
, a word he was using more often of late. He might say:
Art can transport us; it can startle us
and stir our minds; it can please our eyes
. He would surely say, “That's the fun of it.”

Art academics were only one of the targets for my newly unleashed anger. They popped up like ducks in an arcade. How easy it was to let the embezzlement set up house in my brain. I stewed about the loss of human values and spiritual beliefs, the deification of greed, chaos, genocide, the epidemic of chewing gum and dog shit on the sidewalks . . . The spiral drained me of all perspective. The only antidotes that provided me respite were Al-Anon's “one day at a time” (or in my case, one minute at a time), “take the next right step,” and my mantra, the Serenity Prayer. All to the good, but too often by the end of the day my thoughts would succumb to the wreckage of my future.

One evening at a crowded meeting, I looked up and saw a well-known director across the room. We had never met, but she had a play of mine that a mutual friend had given her. Uninterested, I looked away. I realized I had no sense of who I was anymore. I had redefined myself as an angry, stupid old woman who had ruined her family.

Since his hospitalization in February, Clem had been managing well. His schedule was much as it had been before, and Yale had been an easy jaunt for him. But a trip to Paris was coming up in June.
Cahiers d'Art
was sponsoring a three-day symposium at the Pompidou in his honor. There was no way of knowing if he would be up to it. Clem was no help; in his usual noncommittal way he would shrug and say, “Why not?” even as I, in my fretful way and with thoughts of Japan still raw in my mind, checked the logistics of Medicare abroad and portable oxygen. But I really hoped we could go; this was Paris, and it had been thirty-four years since we had been there together. Clem finally made his decision when, in the eleventh hour, the arduous schedule of panels and talks went head to head with his inertia, and inertia won out. Clem's appearance would have to be via tape.
Cahiers d'Art
sent an interviewer and cameras while Clem sat comfortably in the living room, talking for hours about what he loved best.

Days passed, taken up mostly with VIP business. We divided into teams and interviewed lawyers and PIs. The legalese confounded me: contingencies, half-contingencies, no contingency; governance, attachments,
Rico, depositions . . . The lawyer's fees averaged $350 an hour plus $200 for an assistant, the PI's, $200 an hour and $100 for an assistant. Even though we squeezed out a few partial contingencies, the numbers were way beyond our means. We hired them anyway. That done, we spent hours trying to sort out the money trail. So much unraveling, so much that couldn't be unraveled. Whose money went where; had my office been bought with Cecil's money, had Michael's SUV been bought with mine? Kafka-esque. Powers's records were not available to us, though we had finally been able to get statements from the DA's office concerning losses—vital information for the accountants of those of us who were in hock to the IRS. One lawyer told us we were lucky to get them. Lucky! Many a day I wanted to cry, scream, or both.

As for our professionals, it was all to no avail. The PI interviewed Joanne, Powers's assistant, and the man Powers lived with in Virginia and pursued contacts at Chase, but anyone who might have known something wasn't talking. As for the lawyer, he served no purpose I could see, except for making a condescending appearance now and again and providing a small room for our meetings and a copier as needed by me, the secretary of the group. In all, we learned what we already knew. The DA had told us that the only apparent assets were a few low-end properties that were heavily entailed and of little value.

By the beginning of June, my office was rented for enough to cover the small mortgage and maintenance, plus $200 to add to our home stash. Thanks to Jim and Ann Walsh, and Steve Achimore from Syracuse, who gathered a truck and two other guys—all painters, all good friends—the move was more of a party than a wake. In blistering heat, we sweated and laughed and drank beer and emptied that space that I had treasured so briefly. This time the wonderful oak furniture was sold, and after the painters took a few things they liked, we trucked the rest a few blocks north to 275. By the end of the day we were all sprawled out in my new crammed bedroom/office, the AC at full throttle, drinking, eating Chinese food, Clem front and center. Before they left, I remembered a bunch of T-shirts in my closet that had accumulated over the years from Tony Caro's annual artists' workshop, Triangle. I gave them to the guys so they could smell as sweet as they were on their trip home.

On that day that I had dreaded, I was happy for the first time in two months. I had learned a new lesson: I could accept help when it was offered, and, who knew, soon I might even be able to ask for help. My mother had lived in isolation with her secrets, never daring to open up to “outsiders” about anything, much less when in need. A bit late in the day, I began to shed my own misguided thinking. It was a day of shedding. No wonder I felt so good. I was all in one place for the first time in decades. I was down to basics, ready to take on whatever lay ahead. No more one foot out the door. No more just-in-case escape hatches. I had wanted to come home. Well, now I was. As for Sarah, she was floating. She had just completed her MBA, was bunking with friends, and was taking odd jobs until she found something better. Hard times, but I had faith that she would regain her ground in her own good time.

And then, a step back. The following week Clem had a particularly rough breathing night and I had to call 911. Against all my pleas, the ambulance took him to Roosevelt Hospital. A new ER, a new doctor, a superior staff, and a new wing that was spacious and bright. Once the crisis eased, Clem was angry at being there. I was drained after a long, placating day with him. Early the next morning, a nurse called to say he was checking himself out. I stifled my anger and picked him up. In the taxi, we returned home in silence. On my lap was a portable nebulizer, a loaner from the concerned young doctor to help Clem get through the nights to come. The upside was, we weren't in Paris.

At home Clem was closed off. As always, he opened the mail, read, seemed calm, but there was a fire inside him. Willfulness, anger, stubbornness—whatever it was, it was new. The day was hot, his office windows open to gusty wind that rattled papers, everything in its path. He drank more than usual. Lit up a cigarette, and another, and another. This was not the Clem who had come home from Lenox Hill a few months before grateful to be alive. He was at war. Unfortunately, it wasn't the sort of defiance that would help him fight his disease. This defiance was saying,
Take me, damn it. Get it over with
. I prepared the nebulizer for him. At first he was reluctant, but then he rather liked it. I told him to think of it as sucking on a cigarette. Eventually he fell asleep.

What a grim day. I felt abandoned. He had given up, walled himself
up behind booze and cigarettes. What would the night bring? Would I have to call 911 again? Or would I not make that call?
He wants to go, let him go
. And on the heels of anger came the guilt.

Waiting for sleep, I was six years old, hearing my father steal away in the night. How fearful I must have been of what would happen to me. After all, I must have done something, though I didn't know what. And I must have clung to my mother, who, distraught with anger and grief, was not a good port in a storm. Oh, how that house must have shaken on its foundations that night. And soon my recurring nightmares began: a rhythmic circle of animals marching slowly in unison, faster and faster until they collided in a deafening chaos that awakened me, screaming unstoppable screams. My Freudian Sy said it was sexual; I called it a cry for a life jacket in a sinking house. So went my dark scenarios as I waited for Clem's call in the night: “Jenny!”

At the root of my foreboding was that I knew these were early days. I might not have settled into the illness drill, but it was becoming clear that the only thing I could count on was that every day would be different. In comparison, the embezzlement seemed like a breeze. It happened once—slam bam, the deed was done. The rest was mopping up the mess. This would be recurring shocks as I lived in wariness, waiting one minute at a time for the next tremor.

Not even a month passed after Clem's return from Roosevelt when we were back at Lenox Hill. That morning he had been very weak, unable to eat. I knew that if I was to get him there in a cab, we would have to go immediately. This time he stayed for six days as they dosed him with antibiotics, prednisone, oxygen, a nebulizer, a nicotine patch, and Haldol to keep him sedated. As before, the days were calm, but at night, after I left, the calls would come. “Where am I? Why am I here?” The nurses called it “sundowning.”

I could imagine the panic when the safety net of the hospital's daytime routine fell away and, abetted by disorienting drugs, one went into freefall. I thought of Friedel that long-ago summer in East Hampton, calling us in the night as he waited for kidney stones to pass, so sure he was in a prison camp and would not live to see the dawn. Finally I took Clem
home with Dr. Kutnick's prognosis as a souvenir: “Each episode will be more severe and last longer.” I didn't need to hear that.

Clem, thin and ashen, sat on the bed. “I don't know what to do with myself.” This was yet another Clem. I trusted his mood would be as transitory as the deep purple blotches on his arms from the IVs and prednisone. But I would have preferred my insouciant Clem, who, instead of saying, “You,” when I asked him what he wanted, would have said, “A drink.”

I had barely settled Clem when Merrill Lynch called. The IRS had imposed a lien for unpaid taxes on the money market account I had always kept separate from Powers to cover immediate expenses. I called Chemical Bank. No surprise—the gate had closed there, too. The accountant had said it would be only a matter of time; nonetheless, it felt like a knife in the back. I hadn't been on the lookout; my thoughts had been elsewhere. Such an outrage, first a victim of Powers, now of the IRS. And always a one-two punch: What happened to us happened to Sarah. But it could have been worse. Early on I had removed about $3,000 from Merrill and stashed it in our new “bank,” a pale gray envelope behind the A–L volume of the OED on Clem's bookshelf. From now on I would be paying bills with money orders and I would cash any incoming checks at a storefront on Amsterdam Avenue. It would be hard to remember that the liens would be lifted when the facts were documented by the court. Mostly, I felt that I had been raped twice.

That evening, after lamb chops and a hit of
Sein feld
with Clem, I knew it was time to get down to the business of financial wherewithal. I thanked God for Social Security, Medicare, and AARP. My own insurance premiums were high, but they covered Clem's medications. I made a list of our essential expenses, and another, woefully short list of our anticipated income from royalties and reprint fees. There would be no more lecture fees. To our “bank” I added five gold coins that my grandmother had given me over the years and my mother's diamond bracelet, rarely worn in recent years. The last time I had hocked it, I had been twenty-four. I and the times might have changed, but the Century Pawnshop was there. I wondered if it would still support us for a month or two.
So much for my treasure trove—what about my real asset, me? I would get a job. Surely someone would hire me. Another list. From audacious to hallucinatory, it ranged from Alex Liberman, head of publications at Condé Nast, to Nan Ahern Talese, the much-heralded editor with whom I had gone to grammar school.

Alex and I had shared art-world space for decades. Knowing how much he enjoyed the flirting game, I had never taken personally the twinkle in his eye and his warm hands. But now I thought, what the hell, the worst he could do was turn off the twinkle and freeze me out. As for Nan, the possibility that she would remember me after fifty years was indeed hallucinatory. Although both married to writers, we had moved in separate orbits, as we had even as children. She had been the class “star,” I one of the “others.” Of course I remembered her—the sixth grader whose sled the boys would pull up the hill, with her on it. “I hate her,” I had written in my diary at the time, even as I adored her.