Black Eye: Escaping a Marriage, Writing a Life

Standards of Performance

Saturday,April 19, 1986, 2:45 A.M. As I was preparing for bed, Stu barged in—unable to sleep, he said—to demand conversation.We talked for about an hour and a half.“Do you think you’ll ever be able to be loving toward me?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I said,“but certainly not unless you deal with your alcohol problem.” Ultimately, he said he could give up drinking for one month.“Will that be enough?” “No,” I said. “Not unless you’ve had at least one meeting with Santoro .” He refused, and I said,“Then I will see a lawyer next week.” “A lawyer’s not necessary,” he told me.“I’ll give you an article on arbitrators that I clipped out of the Wall Street Journal.They’re cheaper.” I backpedaled.“Helen and I are going to see Santoro next Friday, and I’ll withhold judgment on your solution—giving up drinking for a month— until then.” n Saturday, early afternoon Stu is in a rage about my “demanding” behavior.This morning, he scaled down his “offer.” “I’ll cut back to two beers per day for ten days,” he said. He is hostile, sniping, throwing barbs. He insisted on clearing “our” possessions out of the bedroom (which he now calls “your room”) and took away a photo of one of our old cats, which has been on my desk for years. That pushed a button: I reminded him that “coexistence” on his 123 Standards of Performance n terms is absolutely out of the question for me, and we were off again, on a round-and-round hate spat. n Saturday evening Hideous day. Stu is intent on proving he does not need to drink.“I want you to ask Santoro how long I have to go without alcohol in order to satisfy him that I’m not physiologically addicted. Two months? Six months? I hope not that long.” He is hostile and abusive, eager to press his point that my “sexual inadequacy ” is the root cause of his drinking problem. This evening, he suggested that we talk.“The next thing we have to deal with,” he announced, “after I prove I don’t have a drinking problem, is your profound difficulties with sex and anger. I think you should enter a new round of intensive psychoanalysis , preferably with a woman, several hours a week.” “Why?” I asked. “Because I’m not going to be able to wait if you go only once a week.” (This from someone who is outraged that I asked him to see Santoro once.) He had other messages too: “I doubt we’ll ever sleep in the same bed again.” And,“Let’s coexist until August 3.” “Why August 3?” I asked. “I remember that as the date David was conceived,” he said and described a passionate all-night orgy eleven and two-thirds years ago that was, according to him,“the last time we had good sex—maybe the only time.” Then he said, “But that’s three-and-a-half months away. I don’t know if I’ll stay here that long.” And often, when I opened my mouth to respond, he interrupted me or looked at his watch and complained, “You’re using some of my precious time.” This is all using too much of my precious time, and I plan to end it, soon. I will miss the lake, the promise (rarely fulfilled) of intimacy, the cats. But I will not miss Stu. Standards of Performance 124 n The summer after eleventh grade, Uncle Al got me a job at a family resort in the Catskills. The owner, who must have owed Al a favor, hired me and another girl to run the “day camp.” I think we were supposed to play croquet with the kids so the mothers could sit on folding aluminum lawn chairs and gossip and do their nails in peace. My day-camp duties lasted less than a week, the amount of time it took Rusty, the waiter in the children’s dining room, to calculate that he’d never pull together his college tuition if he spent the summer with us. We’re not talking Grossinger’s. This was a shabby, lowermiddle -class resort. As soon as I showed up, I learned the pecking order for tips: waiter-in-the-main-dining-room, busboy-in...