by Linda Wolfe
Sometime in October Douglas was officially informed that he was suspected of having padded his expense accounts. He was called to a meeting by Richard Thorngren, the comptroller of Tufts, and Steven Manos, a vice president of the university, shown his questionable vouchers, and asked to justify them. Had he attended the out-of-town meetings he said he had? What kind of work had Benedict and Bisram performed?
He stayed calm at first. He began leafing methodically through his appointment calendar. But, of course, there were no entries for the trips, and after a while he admitted that some of his vouchers were “problems and false.” Still, he insisted that some of the others being questioned were valid. And he particularly maintained that the vouchers for money paid to Benedict and Bisram were on the up and up.
Thorngren contemplated Douglas and then, informing him that he was going to launch a full-scale investigation, demanded to speak with Robin Benedict and Savi Bisram. Douglas grew agitated and confused. The vouchers for the women’s work were valid, he repeated. But if they weren’t, he added brightly, and if it turned out he owed the university money, why, he’d pay it right back. It was as if he believed that all he needed to do was make restitution, and apologize, and the matter would be forgiven and forgotten.
That same month, Nancy Douglas, too, demanded an accounting from Bill. This was unusual for her. For years he had been absenting himself from the household in the middle of the night, but always she had chosen to accept his explanation that he kept his extraordinary hours because his experiments were so delicate, so important, that they required round-the-clock attention.
I thought when I first heard how trusting she’d always been that Nancy must be an extremely naive woman. But on reflection I recalled that I had known many women, and even some men as well, who ignored even the most telling evidence of sexual disloyalty, who appeared almost to prefer to look the other way so as to deny their spouse’s infidelities. To accomplish this, they generally convinced themselves that the spouse was unusually worthwhile—a talent, a prodigy, a fantastic father, a magnificent mother, a superb provider. I was to learn that Nancy took the tack that Bill was a genius—an eccentric one, perhaps, but nevertheless a genius. There are many marriages in which there is a star and a supporting cast. The Douglases’ marriage seems to have been one of them.
In such marriages, the star is not just coddled but excused. In this case, no matter what Nancy found out about her husband—that he was having an affair with another woman, that he was in love with that woman—she would lay the blame for his actions, not on him, but on someone or something else. At fault were the pressures of academic life, Bill’s demanding supervisors at Tufts, or even, poor woman, herself. She was Bill’s fan, and never—at least in the public eye—did she waver from that role.
But although she may not have blamed Bill for it, by October 1982 Nancy Douglas had at last become unable to hide from herself the probability that he was seeing another woman. Characteristically, she believed that if she hadn’t taken a night job, he might not have been unfaithful. But no matter whose fault it was, she felt she needed to know what was going on, and she confronted Bill with her fears.
What happened next was typical of their marriage—and, I suppose, of many marriages. Bill, apologizing profusely, told her about his girlfriend and asked Nancy if she wanted a divorce. She said no, not if they could patch things up. Bill said they could and promised her that from now on he’d stop seeing Robin and try to spend more time at home. And although he assured her that none of it was her fault, Nancy promised Bill that from now on she would no longer work nights.
She kept her end of the bargain, but Bill didn’t keep his, He went on seeing Robin. And one night, in a burst of misery, Nancy penned a kind of diary entry to herself, pouring out her problems on paper. “Why is this happening? Why won’t he just come home?” she wrote. “I think he’s on drugs, too. Oh, God. Please help me. Please, please help me. I can’t take any more.”
While Nancy was bemoaning her fate, the Tufts investigation was deepening. But Douglas kept stalling the examiners about bringing in Robin and Savi. And, curiously, though he now knew for certain that his expenses were being scrutinized, in November he submitted a bill for $3,597 for graphic work performed by Robin.
What possessed him to go on with the deceit once he had been warned he was being watched? Perhaps cocaine had scrambled his brain. The drug produces euphoria, a sense of invulnerability, and the conviction that the mores of the rest of the world need not govern one’s own behavior. No doubt, too, the fact that his career was now in jeopardy because of Robin may have strengthened his resolve to hold on to her; if he couldn’t have her, then what had it all been for? However, there was no way to see Robin without paying for the privilege. And so he paid, and continued to pay.
But he had always felt subjugated by his passion for her, and a change began to come over him. He became resentful. He didn’t let on to Robin that it angered him to keep having to fork over money to her. He gave her whatever she asked. But increasingly he would spitefully, passive-aggressively, get even with her by going behind her back.
One night in November, she’d been irritable throughout the latest costly hour they’d spent together, and nothing he’d done or said had helped to alleviate her mood. They had argued the whole time. Yet, at the end of the hour, she had demanded her usual fee. It made him furious and later, after he’d left her, he decided to get even with her by breaking into her apartment and stealing from her. “What upset me,” he would eventually explain, was that “I ended up paying for the hour, but it really bothered me because I didn’t feel that that was right.”
Her place at this time was on Commonwealth Avenue, the apartment to which she moved after Dwyer forced her to vacate her Marlborough Street pad. At the time of the move, Robin had asked Douglas to assist her, and he’d rented the U-Haul and done the driving and unloading. Another bit of help she’d asked of him was that he go to a locksmith’s and get several sets of keys made for her. He’d done that, too. But without her permission or knowledge, he’d had an extra set made for himself.
On the night in question, he returned to the building after his quarrelsome hour with Robin and, parking his car outside, lurked there, studying her comings and goings. He saw her go in with a john, come out a while later, get into her car, drive off, and return with a new man. Every half hour or hour she’d leave, drive away, and return in some twelve to twenty minutes. Her routine would, he realized, give him just enough time to stage a robbery.
He’d done it before. He’d staged a break-in at her old apartment. There, he’d crept around to the back of the building, broken a pane in the rear door to gain entry, and then stolen Robin’s telephones and an answering machine he’d bought her as a present, careful to scatter her other possessions around so that it would look like a regular robbery.
This time, on Commonwealth Avenue, it was going to be a lot easier. He wouldn’t have to risk arousing the neighbors by breaking any glass. He had the keys, so he’d just let himself in. And this time he’d steal cash, not just electronic equipment. She loved money, and its loss would really annoy her, he thought. And besides, if he took money, the robbery would truly seem authentic.
He waited until she left on one of her forays back to Good Time Charlie’s. Then, stealthily, he let himself into her apartment and stole $300 as well as the new answering machine he’d given her to replace the old one. But while he took cash and the phone machine, he also made off with something no bona fide robber would have. He pocketed her little red address book, with the names and phone numbers of most of her clients.
Robin, returning from Good Time Charlie’s, a client nuzzling her neck, arrived home to chaos. Always edgy and prone to hysteria, she flew into a tantrum, began to sob and rage, told Douglas for weeks afterward how violated she’d felt by the weirdo who’d ripped her off. He agreed that the robber was a “freak.” He agreed so heartily that although J.R. suspected the robber might have been the pro
fessor himself, Robin said she didn’t think so.
Perhaps she didn’t want to know. By now, she had a veritable passion for money, and Douglas was her most reliable source. He had given her so much money, so many gifts, and now he was promising to help her buy the one thing she desired above all others—a house of her own. She’d wanted one ever since she’d been a little girl in Methuen, sharing a bedroom with her sister, squeezing into the tiny dining alcove with her parents, her sister, and her three brothers. J.R., who was still her constant companion, thought she should cut the professor loose, but she ignored his advice and went on seeing him.
In the next few weeks, Bill learned things about Robin he hadn’t known, or at least fully accepted, before. Armed with her address book, he learned about all her numerous clients, and listening to the messages on her phone machine, in particular an affectionate one she’d left for J.R., he at last realized that she had a pimp.
The discovery enraged him. He had acquiesced to all her demands, albeit while going behind her back to get even. He had been willing to satisfy his passion under any terms. Terms were par for her profession. But that there was another man in her life, a man to whom she gave herself freely, changed the whole picture. Previously, he’d refused even to consider that there might be such a man. But now he could no longer deny this truth to himself, and anger began to boil up in him.
Robin’s behavior didn’t help the situation. Early in December, she took $25,000, which she had obtained from Douglas, and placed a down payment on a two-story wooden house on a shabby but respectable lower-middle-class street in Malden, Massachusetts. A local bank had given her a mortgage for another $25,000 and overnight she was a property owner, a woman of substance. She owed that new definition of herself to Douglas. But when, a few days later, he asked her where the house was, she said, “I don’t want you to know where it is.” She knew all about the Tufts investigation by then, knew that the source of his largesse might soon dry up, and the knowledge made her cavalier. “I don’t want you to have my home phone number,” she said to end the conversation.
With the house an accomplished fact, by the end of the month Robin seemed, at least temporarily, to have decided to take J.R.’s advice and extricate herself from the professor’s attentions. On New Year’s Eve, he begged her for a date, even a short date, but she told him she was busy. That evening he telephoned her at the apartment in Natick, where she and J.R. were still living, imploring her at least to talk with him on that most romantic of all nights. Robin listened to him for a while, but then she cut him off. “I’ve got to go,” she snapped. “We’re leaving in a few minutes.” She slammed the phone down hard.
This time her rejection suited Douglas. He’d told her he was speaking to her from Boston, but in fact he had called her from across the street from the apartment. Now, from her words when she hung up on him, he realized that he might, at long last, be able to lay eyes on the man she was living with. Was the man black or white? Short or tall? Slight? Powerful? He wanted desperately to know and, getting into his car, waited for her and whomever she’d meant by “we” to emerge. She’d said they would be leaving in a few minutes. Excited, he sat tensely behind the wheel.
But no one came out of her building. He waited and waited. It was a cold night, but he was wearing a fleece-lined coat, so he just sat still and waited some more. He sat in the darkened car for an hour. And then another hour. But although he remained in the car for much of the night, Robin never emerged.
At last, deeply frustrated, he decided she must have seen him sitting there.
Perhaps she had, for the next day she telephoned and told him in no uncertain words how little she thought of him. He was a pest and a nag, she said. He was stupid. He made her so angry that she didn’t want to hear from him at all, at least not until she got over her anger.
Her repudiation was like a hammer blow to him. How could he live without speaking to her? Still, he knew she was right. He had been a pest and a nag. He would mend his ways, and then surely she would speak with him again. Sitting down with a sheaf of paper in front of him, he began to write to her. He wrote her an abject, sorrowful letter. “You know I am sad that it happened but I have only myself to blame,” he scrawled. “I will change my ways! I will work hard on trying to act like an adult when I interact with you and not some lovestruck teenager. I must learn to think through a situation clearly before acting and not be a pest or a nag. During the time we are apart I will work hard on these problem areas to correct the defects.”
He told her he admired her for her smile, and how he loved squeezing her hand, and how grateful he was for “You being You You You You You.”
And he told her about a touching childhood longing: “Dear, when I was a teenager growing up I used to dream about designing a machine that would reverse time and let you relive time and places that you have already had. I guess all kids have thoughts like that. Today I wish I was clever enough to make one of those instruments for two reasons. For one reason, to go back in time and change the stupid things I did, and do it right.… The second reason is to act the appropriate way when I am with you, so that I could be someone you are proud of, someone that you respect, someone that you care to be with.”
Twilight of the Affair
That January the New England air was crystal clear and the Douglas children got out their sleds and skates. Pammy had become a first-rate figure skater, and Bill could see, in her spirited pirouettes on the ice, a reflection of the best side of himself, a reaping of grace from the years in which he had shuttled her back and forth to her skating lessons. But it gave him no pleasure. Nor did his sons’ accomplishments on the computer he’d gotten for them. The children were so much more adjusted than he had been as a teenager. They had friends, made sleepover dates. Billy was even a halfback on the high school football team. All of this should have comforted him. But he was still being investigated by Tufts. His career was crumbling. And Robin, for whom he’d risked that career, was still refusing to see or speak with him. He began to grow depressed.
Robin, for her part, had moved with J.R. to the new house and was fixing it up, making it truly the house of her dreams. She shopped for fabric, interviewed carpenters, selected appliances. And because she’d been having so much trouble with the police in Boston, she and J.R. agreed she should give up the city for a time and get some work in the suburbs. She took a job as a masseuse in a health club in Saugus, some ten miles from Malden, and devoted herself, when she wasn’t working, to the renovations. For a brief while she was happy. For a brief while she may even have imagined herself to be once again the girl with great expectations she’d been in the early days of her love affair with Costic.
The neighbors on Cliff Street, all whites, felt disconcerted when they first saw J.R. I talked to several people who insisted that they had nothing against black people moving onto the street but that J.R. had worried them. He wasn’t your ordinary black man, they said. He dressed outrageously. He wore purple pants and a black fur jacket. And while everyone else on the street had American cars or, at the most exotic, Japanese makes, J.R. drove a red Audi. They didn’t want me to think they were prejudiced, they said, but J.R. would have made anybody nervous.
Interestingly, however, they soon accepted J.R.’s presence on their block. Or so they said. One neighbor told me that the presence of the Hispanic-looking but conservatively dressed Robin at J.R.’s side was the reassuring factor. Another said that what assuaged the neighborhood was the way the new people launched into making substantial improvements to their property. They gutted the kitchen and purchased new equipment. They ripped out walls; they even installed a skylight. Said this neighbor, “We began to accept them, because it looked as if they were going to turn out to be as house-proud and middle class as everyone else on the street.”
But if the neighbors were reassured, Robin and J.R. weren’t altogether content at their new address. Despite Robin’s refusal to give it to Douglas, he’d ferreted it out, and now sometimes t
hey’d see his Toyota—a twin to hers—parked just across the street. And he kept on writing to her at her post office number and leaving messages for her at her answering service and, once she began working at the health club, trying to make appointments with her there.
One day in early January, hoping to throw him off her scent, she called him and left a message that she was no longer working at the club.
Douglas was desperate to find out if it was true. Shortly after getting her message, he drove to a motel in the vicinity of the Danish Health Club. Behind the motel was a forested, snowy hill from which the club was visible. Taking a pair of binoculars, he climbed up among the trees and, hidden, waited to see if Robin’s car would turn up at the club. When it did, he knew she was lying to him and his spirits plunged even lower.
But the worst was still to come. On January 11, he was once again called to a meeting at Tufts on the matter of his expenses. This time he was informed that the auditors now knew for certain that he had been stealing from his grants. He was asked for his resignation. He had no choice but to give it.
The following day he turned up at his laboratory to collect his research and personal possessions. But he was denied entry. And the chairman of Anatomy and Cellular Biology, a woman who had sought him out six years earlier because she had the highest respect for his research and believed he would round out the department, came and escorted him off the premises. He stood at the elevator saying goodbye to her, and even as he did so locksmiths arrived and changed the locks on his office and laboratory.