Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

MR. JAYWALKER: What was your reaction to all this?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I was overwhelmed. Who wouldn't be? I was in heav en. And yet

MR. JAYWALKER: And yet?

MS. TANNENBAUM: And yet I kept waiting for the clock to strike midnight. I kept waiting to wake up and find out it was over. Every time Barry would open his mouth, I'd hold my breath, figuring he was about to ask me to take my things and leave.

MR. JAYWALKER: Did he ever ask you to leave?

MS. TANNENBAUM: No. He asked me to marry him.

They were married six months later, in a small civil ceremony in Scarsdale, where Barry had a home, or, as Samara put it, a mansion straight out of Gone with the Wind. She'd signed a bunch of papers beforehand, which Barry's lawyers and accountants had put in front of her, in cluding a prenuptial agreement that, as it was explained to her, would leave her out on the street were she ever to file for divorce. She couldn't have cared less. She'd been out on the street for eighteen years, one way or another, and had had her fill of it. And the thought of her ever divorcing Barry seemed about as likely as her walking on the moon.

Outside of storybooks, of course, nothing lasts forever, all things come to an end, and it's rare indeed that the prince and princess ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. It was certainly no accident that Barry had left a trail of three failed marriages in his wake prior to meeting Samara, no small thing that he was forty-four years older than she, and not to be overlooked that they came from backgrounds so divergent that they might as well have been from different planets altogether. The two-week hon eymoon in Paris was interrupted hourly by mergers and ac quisitions, by IPOs and CFOs, by board meetings and boards of inquiry. A month into the marriage, Samara woke up to the reality that for Barry, business came first, second and third. There was a good reason why he'd risen through the ranks of the wealthiest bachelors in America to the top spot, an honor relinquished now only on something of a mere technicality, at least to Barry's way of thinking. And that reason was his single-minded, almost pathological dedication to maintaining his financial empire. It was as though, on the heels of his third divorce, Barry had flown out to Las Vegas to re-up, to find himself a replacement wife. He'd found her, taken a brief sabbatical, just long enough to consolidate her (what Samara had described as courting) and marry her. Once that had been checked off the agenda, it was back to business as usual.

With Barry's attention turned from the lines of his wife's bottom to the bottom line, the marriage never had a chance. Samara found herself alone in a city so alien to her that she was literally afraid to go out. She had no friends; there were no clubs for gold diggers, no meetings of Former Trailer Trash Anonymous, no chapter of Prairie Creek, Indiana, junior-high-school dropouts. She begged Barry to find her a job, any kind of job. But he refused, insisting that no wife of his would ever embarrass him by working. A family was out of the question: Barry already had five children and twelve grandchildren from his previous marriages, and though his alimony and support payments cost him only a negligible fraction of his wealth, he was pretty much es tranged from all his progeny, and infuriated by the idea of paying them anything or potentially increasing their num bers. Even lovemaking became an extremely rare event.

MR. JAYWALKER: Tell us about that.

MS. TANNENBAUM: At first I thought Barry's being so gentle in bed was all about tenderness. Soon I realized that wasn't it at all. He was a hypochondriac, one of those people who are convinced they're dying but are afraid to go the doctor because they might find out that they're right. Or that they're wrong and are just flat-out crazy. He'd had a heart attack some years back and was afraid that exerting himself during sex with someone much younger than him might give him an other one and kill him. And he'd read somewhere on his computer-that's where he got all his medical ad vice from-that there'd been this experiment that showed that producing sperm takes a lot out of mice, and they live shorter lives as a result. Barry figured the same had to be true with humans. So he tried not to come-you know, to ejaculate-because he was afraid that every time he did, it meant there went an other month off his life span.

With no friends, no social life, no sex life, no job and no hope of raising a family, it didn't take long for Samara to become resentful of Barry and rebel against him. Her rebellion took the form of overcoming her fears and ven turing outside. But not during the day, to shop or sightsee or pamper herself, as Barry encouraged her to. Instead, she waited for cover of darkness, and sought out clubs that opened late and stayed open later. She'd worked the night owl shift in Las Vegas, after all, and the sight of the sun coming up as she emerged from some smoke-filled sub terranean lounge was nothing new to her. And as far as gaining entree to some of the city's more trendy spots, that proved no problem at all. Barry had already provided Samara with identification asserting that she was twentytwo, not so much to get her into places or served drinks as to protect himself from charges of cradle robbing. And on the rare occasion when Samara's fake ID or good looks alone failed to get her through the door, her last name more than sufficed.

But Manhattan proved to be no Vegas, where what hap pened there stayed there. It wasn't long before the tabloids picked up on Samara's late-night outings, and word got back to Barry. At first he put up with it, figuring she would get it out of her system. But soon the rumors got uglier, linking Samara to men, and backing up words with photos.

MR. JAYWALKER: Were the rumors true?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Do you mean, was I seeing other men?

MR. JAYWALKER: Yes.

MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, I was.

MR. JAYWALKER: And were you sleeping with them?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Some of them.

MR. JAYWALKER: How did that come about?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I allowed it to. I was bored, I had no life. It was like Barry had turned this switch on in me, showed me what lovemaking was, and what intimacy was about. And then he'd tried to turn the switch off, just like that. I was eighteen, nineteen by then, I guess. I'd had sex, but I'd never made love before. I wanted more of it.

MR. JAYWALKER: What was Barry's reaction?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I'm sure he was embar rassed, horrified, whatever. I guess the word I'm looking for is humiliated. It was very important for Barry to be in control of absolutely everything. And here I was, six months into our marriage, running around like a tramp. I'm sure it was very hard on him, to suddenly feel out of control, like a victim.

MR. JAYWALKER: You used the word tramp. Were you taking money from these men, or gifts, as you'd done back in Las Vegas?

MS. TANNENBAUM: No, it was nothing like that. Barry gave me all the money I needed. I didn't want his money, I wanted a life.

It didn't take too long for things to come to a head. Within months, Samara's photo had made the front page of every tabloid, many times over, as often as not with a generous helping of leg or cleavage, as she dodged the cameras on the arm of some minor celebrity. It didn't help matters that the men were uniformly young and good-looking. Barry cornered her one afternoon, literally cornered her, in the living room of his Scarsdale man sion, grabbing her by the arms and demanding an end to her behavior.

MR. JAYWALKER: And?

MS. TANNENBAUM: And I threatened to call the police.

MR. JAYWALKER: Did you agree to his de mands?

MS. TANNENBAUM: No, not unless he'd let me get a job or get pregnant. And he wouldn't. So I told him I was moving out, that I had friends with money who'd take care of me. In order to stop me from doing that and humiliating him even more, he agreed to get me my own place in the city. All he asked was that I be more discreet about what I did and who I did it with, and that I continue to act like his wife in public, when he needed me to. Appearance was very important to Barry.