Catherine Crier - Final Analysis

“Taxi driver does not seem to know where restaurant is. Drops us off on street corner in Montparnasse…. Eli launches into diatribe about how stupid I am. Don’t know where I’m going. Don’t do anything right. Certainly not knowledgeable like Dad…. Mean while, I am trying to consult map but having considerable difficulty as am being bombarded by Eli in an all too familiar way about my numerous inadequacies.”

Susan described in some detail the foods she and Eli enjoyed during their two-hour meal, and the “delicious bottle of wine” the two “polished off.” Despite these indulgences, the meal did little to quell the rising fury between them.

“We stagger into a cab, stagger home, and Eli promptly gets on the phone and dutifully tells dad he’s coming home,” Susan recorded. “I don’t get it…. Asks dad to get him on flight ASAP…. Have uncomfortable feeling that Felix is somehow behind all this…. It is strange to hear Elisay now that the thought of my returning home is intolerable because nothing has changed. ‘Be nice to Dad,’ he says, ‘you have to be nice to Dad.’ He says that I have spent Dad’s money today and now I must be nice to him. He doesn’t seem to understand that it is also my money. ‘Dad’s worked for that money, you don’t work,’ Eli says. ‘Dad works every day of his life.’ Whatever I’ve done is completely unacknowledged…. Now, feel like failure.”

On May 27, Susan dropped Eli at the airport and stayed in Paris to complete her holiday. The goodbye was hard on both mother and son, as the expectations for the trip crumbled before their eyes. “Hugged him goodbye, and hurried away to hide my tears…. Eli in obvious guilt conflict…. Seems to feel he is betraying dad with me…. What has Felix done to him?…If it’s like what he did with me, Eli has a tremendous amount of suffering ahead of him…. Felix has all of the children brainwashed into believing that they have to stay with him.

“Eli has always had panic attacks when away from home…. Re-minds me of me when I was too anxious to leave my room as a teenager. Couldn’t imagine living without Felix…. Felix has a way of instilling these feelings—it’s part of his controlling persona…. None of us will have any peace of mind as long as Felix is living with us.”

Once Eli left, things improved for Susan, who wrote enthusiastically about her Parisian museum romp on May 28. Susan’s entries remained upbeat and positive for the remainder of the vacation. “Tomorrow, leave for home, which am not looking forward to at all,” she wrote on her final night in Paris. “Must still find resolution. Cannot live with crazy, immoral, morally sick man. Also, destructive, sadistic, cruel, twisted, profligate, disturbed, criminal. Need I continue?”

Susan arrived back at the house in Orinda on June 3. By June 7, she had had enough. “How can I describe how horrible it is? No, Felix doesn’t hit me anymore. Nor does Eli. So far, no more violent scenes. But I detest every minute in his presence. All day long, all I do is clean up after Felix, the children, the dogs, and the bird….

“I hate being in this country. I hate the smug, indifferent faces of Americans. They have turned something off inside. Maybe it is their humanity. They pretend to care about the poor, about children, about the environment, about violence, when inside they are indifferent. They are obedient. They are good Germans….

“I don’t see how I can stay here until Gabe graduates. Friday, he is having a Toga Party to celebrate his graduation from eighth grade. Gabriel is flunking math. He is not allowed to participate in his graduation ceremony. He has invited an unknown number of children to his party…. It is going to be another mess to handle.”

On June 13, after detailing an entry about a “very strange dream” involving Felix and the boys, Susan wrote the letter she would send to Felix’s first wife, Sharon Mann, if she had the courage:

I am so sorry for any pain I ever caused you. But really, you should be grateful to me for having spared you the last twenty years with this monster. I wish he would let me go as readily as he let you. I want to thank you for having warned me…. How I wish that I had listened to you….

All these years, I have heard from him how terrible you were, how crazy, bitchy…. I know you must have been a very good mother to have offset Felix’s deadly parenting…. I hope that life has compensated you in some way for what you must have suffered living with such a malevolent person.

In mid-June 2001, Susan signed a Power of Attorney granting Felix permission to refinance the Miner Road house. She was departing in two days for Thailand with Gabriel and was determined to pursue a divorce upon her return on July 6.

Before her departure, Susan penned a letter to Felix: “I have resolved to proceed with the divorce despite your objections that you don’t want a divorce. [The children] have reported to me the belief that they cannot survive without you because you make all of the money…. Should you persist in claiming custody of the children, I will not deplete our financial resources in fruitlessly contesting your claim….”

According to the diary, Susan’s trip was filled with confusion over accommodations and confrontations with Gabriel. While her trip to Paris was salvaged once Eli flew back home, the Thailand vacation offered no such relief.

Asked Felix to book reservations at Club Med… on Phuket…. After hour long drive to Club Med, informed by management no record of reservation. Club Med full of overweight Americans hanging out in packs at the bar and doing calisthenics together in the pool. Finally offered single room with one bed. Declined. Offered two rooms next to each other. Declined. Reservation was for adjoining rooms. Argued with concierge who had adjoining rooms available but refused to give them to me at same price. Departed Club Med in a huff and returned to Bangkok….

June 24, 2001…. So here we are at the Kiahuna and having a horrible time. Gabe is convinced I am a misanthrope. He makes one remark after another about how I hate everybody. Why is it so difficult to explain that I don’t hate everybody? I’m selective.

On June 26, 2001, Eli arrived in Hawaii, where Susan and Gabe eventually ended up after their situation in Thailand continued to sour. Upon Eli’s arrival, he claimed that he “came on a mission to save our vacation.” Much to everyone’s surprise, he actually did help quite a bit. Susan recalled that they “had a lovely day…. The only thing to mar it was to discover that I was over my limit on my credit card, and to hear from Felix. He said he needed certain documents to obtain the loan, which as far as I knew had already been approved…. When I objected to his bothering me when I’m on vacation, he sounded amused. Felix has so much fun disturbing others. How disturbed he must be.”

While the trio appeared to avoid major confrontation for the remainder of the journey, returning home proved no easy task. “Came home to tension and messes left by Felix for me to clean up,” Susan’s entry of July 9 began. “The man seems to thrive on it. Have resolved to go through with divorce. Can’t stand lifestyle with him. Too depressing. F. oozes depression out of every pore. Adam’s comment: ‘Dad is depressed. He’s always been depressed.’ Little by little, it eats away at us all.”

On July 12, Susan recorded the details of her meeting with a divorce attorney, Dan Ryan, whom she described as “a self styled ‘tough Irishman.’” She had been without legal representation since May 1, 2001, when she fired her divorce lawyer because she was dissatisfied with his representation. At the meeting, Ryan informed Susan that she would have to go through a custody evaluation if she intended to fight for the kids.