William Wharton - Ever After

Dad had his beard long, with his hair pulled back in a little pigtail tied with a ribbon. He didn’t have all that much hair so it looked a little strange. Mom was beautiful and graceful in her ‘butterfly dress’ made for her by a rich Arab lady, mother to one of the kids in her kindergarten. The woman designed dresses for Christian Dior. What a crazy mixture our lives were.

It was a great wedding. The people in the village kept showing up with string beans. It was late string-bean season. We accepted them all, even though we had to bury some of them down by the old water-wheel.

Danny and I spent our wedding night up at the hotel in Montigny next to the church.

We went back to California and I was miserable. I worked cleaning houses, then as a secretary for a refrigeration company. Finally I got a real job, working for Korean Airlines. Through all this, I talked to Mom and Dad. They wanted me to continue in school. They’re great believers in education. But I needed to earn enough to help Danny through school. His parents, with all their money, weren’t contributing much, if anything at all.

Mom came and found a terrific apartment for us near the miracle mile in Los Angeles. It wasn’t too far from where I worked, or from UCLA. It was also near the LA County Museum, where I spent any time I could get. I loved art. I liked things old-fashioned and traditional.

Then I got pregnant. The apartment was a great place for a couple, but with a baby we’d need more space, and, with Dad’s help, we found a nice little house in Venice, near the beach.

Mom came to help with the birth of Wills. We wanted a natural childbirth and I did all the lessons and exercises, but in the end, they had to do a Caesarean.

Dad also wrote about me in his book called Dad . He called me Marty and described finding the little house in Venice where Danny and I lived while I was pregnant. We lived there about four years.

Mom or Dad would visit sometimes, and we’d bicycle along the path right on the beach. It was idyllic.

It was during this time I began falling out of love with Danny. It wasn’t anything he was doing; it was more what he wasn’t. I kept asking myself what was wrong with me. I had so many friends who were having real trouble with their husbands: drinking, womanizing, drugs, and all. Danny worked hard every day and, except for smoking, didn’t do much of anything wrong. He found a good job as a salesman for a steel company, and he was wonderful with Wills. It would make me jealous sometimes watching them play together. I think, in a way, Danny never grew up. Maybe neither of us did.

The big trouble was Danny bored me. We couldn’t maintain a decent conversation. I came from a family where there was conversation all the time, maybe even a bit too much, at least for me. Sometimes I couldn’t keep up with my own family. They’d go on about things so fast.

But with Danny, life was only long evenings when he’d read the papers, watch TV, or go over his bills and orders from work, then go to sleep. He seemed to love playing with that little calculator of his, making up for the fact he couldn’t pass Algebra II, I think.

I got so desperate, I remember calling Dad long distance. I asked him, Just what was love anyway? I wanted to know if I loved Danny. He told me to hang up and he’d call me back later. In about half an hour he called.

‘Kate, I’ve thought about it. I’m no expert, ask your mother. But as far as I can see, love is a combination of admiration, respect, and passion. If you have one of those going, that’s about par for the course. If you have two, you aren’t quite world class but you’re close. If you have all three, then you don’t need to die; you’re already in heaven.’

At the time, it didn’t seem to help. But I continued thinking about what Dad said for the whole of the next month. That’s when I decided I definitely had a zero. I don’t really know what Danny thought, but don’t believe it was any different for him. He just wouldn’t admit it.

I wanted to move out of Venice. Wills was starting to grow up and we were in the middle of a big drug scene. The clinic where people would stand outside in the morning to get their ‘meth’ was only a block from our house.

Dad came up with the idea we might enjoy living in Idylwild. This is a place in the Los Angeles mountains above Palm Springs, more than a mile high. It’s well located for Danny’s ‘territory.’

We all drove up there, and I loved it right away. We lucked out and found just the kind of house I always wanted. Dad had made money writing Birdy and lent us some so we could buy the place.

Danny and I were getting along better. Wills loved it up there. There were rocks to climb, the smell of pines, snow in the winter, and beautiful, clear, star-filled nights. Blue jays and raccoons, pine cones and acorns were everywhere. Wills adored his little nursery school and I sometimes worked there. Danny didn’t have any more driving to do than he did in Venice. His territory was huge. Idylwild was in the middle of it. The only trouble was the long drive up through the hills. But he was terrific about it.

Then, Danny was offered a chance to work for Honeywell Bull. Dad had helped Danny write his application and résumé, and we were happy because it was much more money, with better prospects, than selling steel. The trouble was we had to move to Phoenix, Arizona, where Danny was put into a training program.

It meant selling the house of my dreams. In a certain way, that was when the dream really ended. We sold the Idylwild house for a profit, paid back Dad, and bought a place in Phoenix. It was a new house, sitting in a bare space surrounded by other houses just like it, without even a lawn. I couldn’t get accustomed to living in an oasis surrounded by desert. I’d never lived like that. I couldn’t believe it was me living in this house, with Danny off to work most of the time.

I did everything I could to make it a real home but I hated to look out the windows. Everything was so barren. I’d been spoiled by Idylwild, and even by Venice, but especially by living with my parents in Europe most of my childhood. At least there was always something interesting to see. Here there was nothing. It was so hot. Practically no one walked in the streets.

Wills started school, and I announced to Danny I wanted a divorce. There were no other men in my life but I knew there would be soon and I just wanted out. Danny was broken up about the whole thing and we were up night after night, talking it all over. God, it was hell. Looking back, I can see I must have seemed a real bitch to him. Maybe I was.

Dad and Mom couldn’t understand at all. Dad sat down with me for a quiet talk the way he did when things seemed to be getting out of hand. Most of the time he kept out of my private life, wanting me to work things out for myself, but once in a while he couldn’t hold himself back. It was the same when I started smoking. Then, again, when I first started having sex. It was the same with drugs. He’d explain his ideas and it was hard to argue with him.

On the smoking thing, he talked very quietly to me in my bedroom, first asking if I smoked. There was no lying about it. I smelled of cigarettes all the time, I was getting up to a pack a day, and the teachers had told Mom I was spending time between classes in the smoking area. He was quiet.

‘Listen, Kate. I know it’s your life, but in a certain way your life is ours, too. We’ve spent a hell of a lot of time and effort getting you this far along, clearing up diaper rashes, pumping your stomach out when you drank Chlorodane, getting you through fevers when the doctor thought you had polio, keeping you from being run over, nursing you through chicken-pox, measles, mumps; the whole thing. We fed you vitamins, made sure you had all the shots to keep you from getting the worst diseases. You know you never had any other milk to drink except your mother’s milk or goat’s milk until you were four years old. I pulled milk from the teats of our goats every morning and evening.