Lost in the Reflecting Pool

by Diane Pomerantz

  I reacted differently when Charles drew our secretary into our marital dysfunction, having her send me nasty notes about bills and finances, treating me as if I were a child. I had a Pier One charge account, which I had used only once, to buy a table I needed for my office. It cost $129. The next month, I found a note in my office mailbox from Geri, our secretary, attached to the Pier One bill. She wrote, Please sign the note I have written on the payment stub. On the payment stub, she had written, Please close this account immediately and allow no further purchases using this account number.

  I was enraged! But this time, I handled it well. I met with Geri and told her that she worked for me as well as for Charles and that she could not tell me what to do, and that from that point forward I wanted weekly updates on all of the financial transactions that went on in the office. Charles sat silently during the meeting. He never said a word.

  About that same time in my work with Dr. Putman, I got in touch with how I had withdrawn sexually from Charles. I was excited to share with him this recognition of my sexual withdrawal and my lack of receptivity.

  After one morning session when Charles was in his DC office, I called him. “Charles, I just finished my session with Dr. Putman. If you’re free for lunch, I can drive down. I want to tell you about my session.”

  “I’m free at noon for a couple of hours. That would be great. I’ll make reservations at Sushi Ya; I’ll see if I can get us the tatami room. I’m excited to hear all about it.”

  As we sat in our small, private space, sipping hot sake, I told him things I hadn’t shared before.

  “You know, for a long time I felt that you just weren’t really interested in me, and I withdrew. I don’t think that I’ve been very receptive to our having an intimate relationship. I think I’ve worried that you’d reject me. . . .” I looked closely into his eyes and saw softness.

  With that disclosure, with my vulnerability, came renewed sexual passion, and more genuine connection, than we’d known in years—a sexual passion that continued until my cancer. We had a fireplace in our bedroom, and that winter we made love often, with the flames flickering, the wood crackling in the background. I can understand why I thought things were getting better.

  In reality, though, Charles’s contempt and denigration were no longer subtle; his sadism was no longer disguised. Those traits were crystal clear to anyone wanting to see it—anyone but me. And, as I would find out later, everyone else did see it.

  I began to see that there were ways in which I had glamorized Charles’s idiosyncrasies for years; I had rationalized what looked and sounded weird and crazy. What I did not know, though, was the price I was to pay—that what looked like freedom was control and restriction, ultimately withdrawal, and perhaps even cancer. What in the past had looked like his being “offbeat,” I was still reluctant to see as his becoming unglued. Friends began to say, “You’ve been the glue that’s kept his craziness from emerging fully.” Whatever the difficulties were before, after I got cancer, I became the object of Charles’s demons and their wrath. Simultaneously, my illness made it a little more difficult for him just to leave, which, I was beginning to think, had been his intention the year before my diagnosis.

  Chapter Fifteen

  AFTER MY SURGERIES, A WEEK BEFORE I STARTED chemotherapy, I decided to cut my long, dark hair short. I was preparing for what was to come. Everyone thought it odd that I was doing this on purpose. I had always hated myself with short hair, but I was going to be bald. So much was out of my control. This was one choice I could make.

  I had been going to Edward for years and told him why I was cutting my hair. Edward’s mom had died of breast cancer eight months earlier, and it had been very hard for him. We had spoken many times over these last months about how much he missed her. He was shaken when I told him about my cancer.

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome,” he greeted me, as I walked in. Maisha washed my hair, and then I sat down in Edward’s chair.

  “So, we’re going to cut it all off, right?” he asked, looking directly at me. I noticed that all the eyes in the shop were on me.

  “Yes, very short,” I said. Nothing could penetrate my calm façade.

  Edward smiled, combed out my long hair, and then made the first cut. I saw at least ten inches of my hair spread across the white marble floor. There was silence, and then everyone in the room began to applaud. I took a breath, I smiled, and I felt tears on my cheeks.

  A week later, October 30, 1998, Allyson got a sitter for her kids and drove down to Maryland to take me to my first chemotherapy session. I was hoping I’d be up for trick-or-treating with my kids the next evening. I wasn’t. Within a few hours after I got home following my first treatment, I fell asleep and slept for the next forty-eight hours straight. Charles didn’t take the kids out, but at least I had made sure that friends would be ready to chaperone them, if necessary, so they did get to trick-or-treat.

  Then it was late November. In the air were hints of the coming, biting cold of winter. The sky was that teal blue-gray of fighter planes. Since I had already cut my hair very short, I didn’t have to deal with long clumps of it falling out in the shower. When the little bit of stubble on my head started itching, I asked Charles if he would help me shave my head, but he refused. So I did it myself, first using an electric razor, and then, when that wasn’t working so well, a straight razor. I then waited for the wig I had ordered. I wore hats and scarves. I wore a bandanna around my head, much as I had in the 1970s, only then it was with long hair flowing beneath it. It didn’t look quite the same this time. The children and I laughed as they teased me about how weird I looked. Elli, though, was really bothered by my appearance—I could just tell. Being a preadolescent girl watching her mother’s physical appearance change so dramatically was very hard for her—harder still because there was no second parent for either Elli or Sam to lean on. Charles helped with the necessary tasks, but he gave no emotional support to the kids.

  That Thanksgiving marked the first time in many years that I was not making dinner. Instead, we were going to spend the day with Allyson and Harry and their girls in New Jersey. It’s funny now, because in my journal I wrote about what a nice and relaxing day it was, a day that felt perfect. A year later, once scourging fires were openly ravaging my marriage—the same fires that I now know I held in my chest, that were the cancer itself—and then when I was in the depths of anxious depression, Harry noted what he remembered most from that Thanksgiving dinner. It was what Charles said, or didn’t say, as we all gave thanks at the beginning of our holiday meal. The table was lushly set, the smells of turkey and whipped sweet potatoes wafting through the air. After giving a blessing as we all held hands, I suggested that we go around the table and each say something personal for which we were grateful. Allyson, Harry, and all the children, giggling, said something.

  “I’m grateful my mom’s wig will be here soon.” Elli laughed and got up and hugged me.

  “I’m grateful that we’re all together for Thanksgiving,” Sammy said. “I love it here, especially Uncle Harry’s pool table.” Then he added softly, “I just want my mom to be okay.”

  When it was my turn, I spoke of my gratefulness for Charles, Elli, Sammy, my dad, and my devoted friends. I spoke of the preciousness of everything I had in my life.

  Then it was Charles’s turn. He dropped my hand and said, “I have nothing to say, and I have absolutely nothing to be thankful for.”

  Funny thing was, I didn’t remember any of this at all until Harry pointed it out a year later. What had astounded Harry, more than anything else, was that our children were sitting there and Charles could not even acknowledge his thankfulness for them.

  Charles had promised to go with me to my chemotherapy appointment, at the beginning of December. When he hadn’t arrived at the house to pick me up, I called the office. Geri, our secretary, answered.

  “Di. I’m on my way over. I’ll take you.” She hung up before I could respond and was at the front door wit
hin fifteen minutes.

  “Where’s Charles?” I asked, already knowing what she was going to say.

  “He scheduled patients for the whole day. I’ll take you.” She was clearly upset. “I can’t stand watching how he treats you. It’s just not right.”

  “Listen, Geri, I really can go by myself. I feel fine until a few hours afterward, and then I just want to sleep.”

  “You shouldn’t have to go by yourself,” she insisted, so she took me for my third chemotherapy treatment and we laughed and drank chocolate milk shakes and then laughed some more.

  Several weeks later, she gave notice, saying she had taken a new job. Charles called and pronounced, “I think she had a hard time dealing with you having cancer,” never thinking that it had anything to do with how he was treating me.

  NOT long after that, I turned fifty. I had to convince Charles that we should go out for dinner. I made a reservation at a local restaurant; my father stayed with the children. By this time, Charles never allowed for the cost of a babysitter. What was really striking, though, was that when we arrived at the restaurant and were shown to our table, there were no flowers, not even a $3.98 bouquet from the grocery store. It was my fiftieth birthday; I was going through chemotherapy for cancer, an aggressive malignancy that was in part related to the high doses of hormones I took in order for us to have a family; Charles was not present at all; and, strikingly, there were no flowers.

  I didn’t mention it, but our conversation over dinner was stilted. Afterward, we walked to the car; the snow was just starting to fall.

  “Charles, we used to talk so easily to each other, about everything. You don’t talk to me at all anymore. I miss being close to you,” I said, watching my breath fill the air as my words floated in the cold darkness of the car.

  “I can’t talk to you. You’re too preoccupied with your illness; you don’t have time to listen to me,” he snapped.

  I didn’t think that was true at all, at least not in the way he meant it. “Maybe you’re right, I really don’t want it to be that way. I do want you to be able to talk to me, even now—especially now.”

  We drove to a local bookstore with a café and sat in the car before we went in, while snow fell quietly on the windshield.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you,” Charles said. “For the past year, I’ve been bartering with this woman Haley in DC for acupuncture. She gives me acupuncture, and I provide her medication.”

  There was a long pause. I listened silently, feeling strangely hollow inside, with only the sensation of the soft leather of the seat on my back. I vaguely recalled that he had brought up this woman two years earlier, saying that he didn’t think it would be ethical to barter these services, so he wasn’t going to do it.

  “I’ve been really upset about Haley. She was in a terrible car accident. She’s in the hospital in very serious condition. I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”

  At the time, I transformed into a silent and supportive psychotherapist. But later, during that sleepless night, the thoughts that kept running through my mind, over and over, were: I haven’t said I don’t believe him, but I think I don’t believe him. I’m not even sure what I don’t believe him about. I want to believe him, but I don’t believe him. . . . And it’s very significant that there were no flowers at dinner!

  I did not sleep at all. The next morning, Sunday, at breakfast, after the children had left the table and were off watching television in the other room, I said calmly to Charles that it surprised me that he had been getting acupuncture for a year and hadn’t told me.

  Like a toxic explosion, he spewed venom: “I knew you would disapprove, you phony actress! You surprised me last night, listening as if you weren’t passing judgment. I should have known!” he shouted, as he slammed down the frying pan he was washing.

  The reality was, I was not feeling disapproval, not in the way he thought—disapproval of him professionally—although I certainly should have been. In fact, I wasn’t feeling anything. I was numb, knowing only that he had a secret life, one that likely involved much more than just the acupuncture, and that it was a life that I was not a part of.

  Charles stormed off, saying he was going to the office. I ran after him in an attempt to tell him what I had been trying to say, but he wouldn’t listen; he got in the car and drove off. I called him throughout the day, but I got no response. Deep within me, I knew that the final judgment was being written.

  It was becoming harder and harder to keep those blinders in place while moving through my treatment in a balanced way. I was still seeing some patients, still actively involved in every aspect of the children’s lives. I could not allow myself to see what was becoming so clear; I could not avoid seeing it, either.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I MADE UP A GAME TO HELP THE KIDS DEAL WITH MY ILLNESS. The kids, especially Sam, liked to play it most evenings before bed and it became part of our nighttime ritual. It was a tossing-target game called Chemo-Shark. We would toss shark Beanie Babies at a large piece of poster board on which I had drawn circles with huge numbers written in each circle. We pretended that we were killing the cancer cells that were invading Mommy’s body. We would hold the sharks in our mouths and laugh as we racked up enormous scores destroying the bodily terrorists.

  “Daddy, will you play tonight?” Sam would always ask.

  And every night when Charles was there, his response was the same: “Not tonight, guys. I have some work I have to get done. You go ahead and play.”

  “Daddy, it’s important that you play. The more cancer cells we kill, the quicker Momma gets better. Come on, play with us.”

  “No, you guys play. I have work to do.”

  “It’s important, Daddy!” Sammy pleaded, and then got angry with him. “You don’t even want to save Mommy!”

  “Come on, Sammy, let’s play.” Elli would say, rolling her eyes as Charles walked into the other room.

  It was hard to know he couldn’t be there for me, but it was even harder watching him not be there for Elli and Sam. I had said to Charles over and over that I thought we could use my illness as an opportunity to reconnect, to find the great joy we had known early in our relationship, to grow together. Charles always replied, “We’ll work on our relationship when you’re finished with your treatment.” That was the end of it.

  Although all the doctors with whom I had consulted had strongly recommended that I have a stem cell transplant, Charles adamantly did not want me to. It would mean I would be out of work for a significant amount of time and therefore not bringing in income. At the time, I wasn’t consciously aware that my own heart-wrenching indecision about the transplant was based on how much Charles did not want me to do it. I would decide one thing and immediately think of the myriad reasons why that was not a good choice. I worried about the risks of the procedure itself, from which I could die; I worried about the children and being away from them and the impact it would have on them.

  IN January, in the midst of chemotherapy, I got the flu. I awoke one morning so sick I couldn’t get out of bed. I ached all over. My exhaustion was painful.

  “I have patients until nine tonight, so I’ll grab something for dinner in Washington before I come home,” Charles called out, as he walked from the bedroom at 6:30 a.m. He never asked if I might need additional help with the kids that day. I heard his words, but they hardly penetrated the thunderous fever within my head. I could hardly open my eyes; I knew only that I couldn’t get of bed and certainly couldn’t get the children off to school. I reached for the phone and called a family who lived nearby to see if they could pick up Elli and Sam and take them to school.

  “Sure,” Daniel said, responding to my call, and then, “Listen, Diane, I’m going to be working at home today, so please call me if you need anything at all. I really want you to call if you need anything!”

  How does he know? I wondered. And I believed him; it was such a little thing, yet there was such genuine compassion in his word
s—something I never heard from Charles—that I hung up the phone and could not control my tears.

  Later that morning, my dad drove me to the hospital and I was admitted. I was there for a week. I spent almost the entire time sobbing and agonizing about whether to go through with the stem cell transplant. I had to decide by my fourth chemotherapy cycle, which was fast approaching.

  Charles visited a few times. One day when he brought lunch, I said, “There’s a healing workshop next Monday for women dealing with life-threatening illnesses. It’s open to family members, too. If I’m out of here, would you like to go with me?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll have to see what’s on my schedule.” He didn’t look up from the salad he was eating. A pale-yellow bit of bean sprout was stuck on the corner of his upper lip. The sound of the crunching vegetables was particularly irritating at that moment.

  “It would be nice to feel as if you cared at all about what happens to me—”

  Though I spoke the words calmly, he got up before I could complete my sentence and said, “Listen, I have to get back to the office.” He smacked the top of his Tupperware container closed and started to walk over to the windowsill, where he had put his jacket.

  “Charles, please don’t leave just yet. I really wasn’t trying to start an argument. I want things to be better between us.” He looked at me and sat down stiffly on the wooden ladder-back chair, adjusting the purple-and-pink floral cushion as he sat down. We talked about some inconsequential things for another, perfunctory ten minutes; then he left.

  MY indecision about the stem cell transplant continued to be painful. Charles was clear about what he wanted me to do, as were friends who called from all over the country. Even my first husband, Bram, who now lived in Texas, tried to help me through the indecision. I spoke with people who had gone through it themselves, with people who said it wasn’t so bad, but also with one woman who almost died from the procedure and then had a recurrence nine months later. I spoke with experts. I listened to a Bernie Siegel guided-imagery tape almost continuously. His voice was soothing; his words were gentle. But in each exercise he would speak of finding one’s path and said that one would just know, when one came to the juncture, what the right path would be. As I listened to these words, I would begin to sob again, because I didn’t know, didn’t have a clue about the path that was right for me. I was trapped in a mire of indecision so thick that I felt unable to breathe.