Falling Apart in One Piece

by Stacy Morrison

  We inched our way out of the city, finally merging onto the highway where we could go a little faster, but the mood in the car was frozen and hushed. By the time we made it to Long Island, traffic had slowed down again, and Zack was starting to get antsy, complaining in his car seat. Halfway to Amagansett, we decided to try to take a shortcut that Paul had suggested, using the back roads, but a few minutes into the shortcut we were weaving in and out of residential neighborhoods, with their tidy green hedges and gravel driveways. We were lost.

  Chris was on edge. I was on edge. I willed myself to stay calm and keep the anxiety out of my voice. I asked Chris to read the directions again, but he threw them down in frustration because they made no sense. I asked him to call Paul, since I was driving, but Paul’s instructions didn’t help because we didn’t know where we were or how to get back to a main road. Zack had started to whimper a little, picking up on the tension in the car. I could feel hot tears begin to sting my eyes, because I was starting to panic about Chris’s being upset with me and upset with himself for being there.

  I was driving around in circles in an empty, manicured neighborhood, not another car in sight. Chris finally snapped at me, asking just what the hell I was doing. I pulled over without even thinking, put the car in park, and opened the door and got out and turned to him and screamed, “I don’t know!” Then I walked off, leaving the car door open, the bong-bong-bong alarm mingling with the sound of Zack starting to cry. I kept walking to the end of the block, pounding my fists on my head, trying to think of a solution as I gasped for air and tears streamed down my cheeks, but all I could feel was that I wanted to lie down in the middle of the street and have a car drive over me and end this misery. Not the misery of being lost, but the agony of being wrong, of being the problem, of trying so hard to be careful and diligent and think good things and wish me and Chris to a better place, but being unable to get us there by sheer force of will. When the strange politeness between us was stripped away—as it was now—we were left with just us, two people standing on opposite sides of a divide.

  Zack’s cries pulled me back toward the car. I wanted to comfort him; I wanted at least to be a good mother if I couldn’t be a good wife. But I was still hysterical. Chris started to get out of the passenger seat to get Zack, and I said, “No!” He sat back down, his hands up, as if I had a gun. I knew I was out of control, but I didn’t know how to calm down. I was back to being the young woman who had stormed out of the apartment when Chris and I had our fights more than a decade earlier. I could feel it all slipping through my fingers: my marriage, my foundation, my self-respect.

  Lifting Zack out of his car seat instantly centered me. I stood there and shushed him and hugged him, bouncing him slightly, saying “There, there” to him, and saying it to me. And I turned to Chris and said, my voice shaking from the effort of not crying, “I am trying, so, so hard. I am trying to make this all okay.”

  Chris said, “I am, too. I am trying, too.” Then, more quietly, “It shouldn’t be this hard.” We just looked at each other, our gazes empty and sad.

  There we were, all three of us, lost in a beautiful neighborhood, green lawns and perfectly trimmed hedges and sunlight all around. The place we were supposed to be, the life we were supposed to be living, was somewhere nearby, but Chris and I had absolutely no idea how to get there.

  Back in the car, we eventually came across a sandwich shop and got directions, and then we were on our way to our friend’s house. But we couldn’t shake the vision of what we’d seen in each other on that back road: that even when we were on our best behavior, our personalities sparked against each other in a way we couldn’t steer around.

  The weekend was a long and grinding struggle. Even though it was so adorable to see Zack with the three other babies—all playing together at the beach in big dishtubs we’d filled with ocean water—he was still a baby, who, of course, required a lot of work and attention. I felt that labor pulling hard on Chris, even though I was trying to do everything myself. Zack was charmed by the texture of the sand, but he kept eating fistfuls of it, despite our efforts to get him to stop. As Chris got more and more uptight about it, I finally hissed at him to just go away and let me take care of Zack. Later that night, when the sand worked its way through Zack’s system, he was miserable and inconsolable, with a flaming diaper rash added to the mix.

  Our friends did their best to ignore the tension simmering between Chris and me, even when he had to disappear from the beach or the evening dinners to take walks by himself to clear his head. I just said, “Yeah, we’re having a hard time,” trying to keep my lower lip from trembling as I spoke, and my girlfriends nodded in commiseration, lending me the luxury of pretending that what Chris and I were going through was just part of the normal ups and downs of married life with a new baby. I couldn’t tell them anything more than that. And I certainly couldn’t have told them how, exactly, we had found ourselves here.

  Since the night it all started to end, and the day, three years later, that we were pronounced divorced, I have unearthed and sampled and tried on and been offered at least 316 reasons why Chris and I didn’t make it. Many of the reasons would be familiar to anyone, divorced or not. They’re like Muzak you hear on the elevator: you didn’t even know you knew the tune until you catch yourself humming along. Here’s a sampling:

  Reason #12: Because he is a total idiot, just like all the other guys my girlfriends know who simply can’t deal with grown-up life.

  Reason #13: Because I married the wrong person. It was all a terrible mistake.

  Reason #14: Because women just want to catch a man and change him and keep him from becoming his true, coolest self, so he has to bust out and be free.

  Reason #15: Because he/she is not capable of having a relationship.

  Then there’s Reason #16 (my go-to favorite, especially in the middle of the night): Because I am essentially unlovable.

  Or Reason #101: Because he/she is and always has been a loser/jerk and I was an idiot ever to fall for him/her in the first place.

  Or Reason #102, the useful converse of #101: Because he/she is a liar/fraud/con (wo)man who did this just to hurt me.

  The list is, of course, endless, and it can be customized to suit your particular situation.

  When I was still under the impression that I was happily married, I encountered a memorable case of someone who had framed her life in terms of Reason #102. I’d met this woman at a work event, and I spoke to her at some length. She was wearing a ring with a remarkable rose-colored oval diamond on her right hand. “Wow,” I said, “that’s a beautiful ring.” Without hesitating for a second, the woman presented the ring to me for my examination; the stone must have been at least 2 carats.

  “Yeah, can you believe it?” she said. “Can you believe a man would love me enough to give me a ring like this and then leave me?”

  I was startled by her instant revelation (and it’s pretty hard to startle me with that stuff, since I have so few boundaries myself) and by the intensity of her rancor. Wow, I thought, all that must have happened pretty recently for her to be so raw and be wearing the ring still.

  “Oh,” I demurred, “I’m so sorry to hear that. Was it recent?”

  She snorted. “Five years ago we married, and he left a year later. Can you believe it? Men are just unbelievable.”

  He was four years gone and she was still bleeding like this, in public. She put that ring on every day and thought miserable thoughts about what she believed she’d been promised. It was impossible not to see that she was in love with her loss, in the same way she’d probably once been in love with her husband. By the time I walked away from her, her unhappiness and anger had settled on me like a fine dust blown in through the windows during a storm, and it took me a few days to shake it off. Months later, the woman and her ring came up in conversation with some friends, each of whom had been told the same story in the same manner by her at one time or another. It made my soul ache to think of someone being s
tuck in her life like that, forever tied to a single moment.

  I desperately wanted not to turn out like her, not to hold on to the shell of what something had been as if the mere fact of it (and the artifacts of it, like that ring) somehow meant more than the feelings and the memories themselves. I wanted to dare to imagine myself whole again.

  The first part of being whole was for me to get a new full-time job. I felt brutally exposed by my life’s circumstances, like a turtle walking around in a hailstorm without a shell, dealing with my unstable marriage, freelance work, a house Chris and I could barely afford, and a baby. Plus, I was still reeling from having been fired from the job at Marie Claire, a job I’d really loved.

  Marie Claire was owned by the same company that owned Redbook, which was a good news/bad news kind of thing: on the one hand, the company knew my talents and my leadership ability very well; on the other hand, the editor in chief of Marie Claire was going to be my main character witness as I tried to land the job at the helm of Redbook, and she would be free to elaborate on all my faults.

  I think I knew my boss was going to fire me before she knew it. After all, it was my job, as “Number Two” (as the position of executive editor is often described) to her “Number One,” to know her inside and out, to know which ideas would please her and which wouldn’t, and to constantly react to whatever shifts she made in the magazine’s voice and content, so that the articles and story ideas produced by the team of editors I managed would be on target. She and I had shared ideas about what made Marie Claire special—it was a freewheeling, truth-telling fashion magazine with a social conscience and a love of surprises—but we came to that mission from very different thought processes and leadership styles. Our first year together, she wrote me a note at the holidays that said, “I just love the way you think!” Unfortunately, over time that became less and less true, and what had made us good and dynamic partners was now making her pull back: she disagreed with my editing decisions and started chafing at the suggestions I made. She wanted someone who thought more like she did. After two years at the magazine, when I was seven months pregnant with Zack, I was riding home on the subway with the managing editor, Kim, my partner in crime in managing the staff and running the magazine. I looked at Kim and said, “I think she’s going to fire me.” At first she said, “Nooooo.” But I started to explain why I thought that my boss was talking herself out of her enthusiasm for working with me. Then we looked at each other, and we both knew it was true.

  Nine months later, I was fired.

  So, yes, the Redbook job would help stabilize my life and my sense of security in my career, but that’s not why I wanted it. I wanted it because, even on my darkest days, I am always up for the next challenge. And I wanted it especially because I saw very clearly in my head what the magazine could be. I wanted to make Redbook reflect the rich, optimistic ways that women are facing the complexities of twenty-first-century womanhood, creating and finding our own rewards in our too-many-choices-and-not-enough-changes world. I wanted the magazine to help women focus less on her to-do list, and instead help her focus on her to-be list. I knew how busy I was since my son’s birth, but that in no way meant that I’d stopped having dreams for myself. I knew I couldn’t “have it all,” but I also knew there was still so much out there for me—as well as a nation of women who were looking for the same kinds of answers, ideas, and support as I was. There is comfort to be had in other women’s experiences with the hard choices women face every day, and I wanted to make a magazine that shared that.

  Being in the running for the job of editor in chief is a job in itself, and the process takes months. In April I had handed in a twenty-eight-page proposal that detailed my vision for Redbook. Then I had worked with a friend who was an art director to create some sample covers, calling in photographers’ portfolios and spending hours looking for just the right images that captured the vibrant, fulfilled mood and spirit I wanted to show on the cover. Now I had to make it through the series of interviews that led to the president of Hearst Magazines, the famously tough Cathie Black, and convince her that I had what it takes to lead a “legacy” brand (Redbook was 102 years old at the time), despite the fact that most of my experience was in magazine launches with circulations that were dwarfed by Redbook’s audience of ten million women. It was a lot of work and a lot of pressure to add to a life filled with a full-time freelance job and a young son, and I had to rely on Chris to make it possible for me to do all those tasks, the way I always had in the past.

  Chris and I kept eating dinner together every night. We kept sleeping in the same bed, and daily we discussed all the logistics that come into play when managing two jobs, one son, one full-time nanny, and one house. I was partly lulled into thinking that maybe we were going to ride out the emotional storm. But at the same time, I could also feel something silent in Chris, something that was waiting, pulling for me to get the job in a way that felt different than in the past. I imagined that he was doing some kind of math in his head, figuring out that if I got the job I’d probably make enough money to be able to carry the house on my own. Then he would be able to up and go; then he could be free. I didn’t want to make it that easy for him. Despite how hard it was for us right now, I didn’t want the marriage to end. I thought the job would make it possible for us to stay together. Chris could stop working and spend all his time on his own dreams. Then we would be okay. Then we would be happy.

  Finally I was called in for my first interview with Cathie Black. I had met her once a few years before, when I had come in to pitch an idea for a new magazine at the same time I was launching the design magazine in California. That previous experience didn’t make this interview any less intimidating. Cathie’s incredibly smart, instinctual, and very direct; she always gets right to the heart of the issue at hand. Adding to the intimidation factor, she has great taste and style. I spent a good two days shopping for just the right interview outfit, spending more money on a new pair of shoes—nude lizard-skin stilettos—than I usually spend on an entire outfit. I justified the purchase by figuring that the shoes were classics and were an investment in my future, whether I got the job or not. (Yes, I still have the shoes, and yes, I still wear them.) I bought a new bag that looked far more expensive than it was, though it wasn’t cheap. I found the perfect pair of white pants and a bright fuschia jacket—to me, the color of optimism and confidence. Done.

  It was a hot and steamy summer day when I made my way to Cathie’s office, splurging on a car service to take me on the long drive from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan so I wouldn’t turn into a sweaty mess on the subway. Eliot Kaplan, the man who had drafted me for Marie Claire just three years before, met me in the plush reception area of the Hearst Corporation headquarters. My heels sank into the thick carpet. When I was shown into Cathie’s office on the forty-second floor, I tried to ignore the sweeping views of Central Park from the windows. I sat down at the large round table, my heart racing with excitement. She and I had a long conversation about women, about marriage and motherhood and what women wanted from those institutions today, and about what they needed from the institution of Redbook itself. I nodded, feeling the metallic tang of dread in my throat. Was I misrepresenting myself? Would I not get the job if she knew the truth about what was happening between Chris and me? (But wait, I reminded myself, even you don’t know what’s really happening.)

  As we were wrapping up, Cathie said, “You may not think so, but this is a big step up for you.” I was surprised by her comment; I knew this was a big step up for me, even though I’d been running magazines for years, and I said so. I also told her I was absolutely sure that I was ready and that all my experience to date, even though it had been at smaller magazines, had prepared me for Redbook.

  As I stood up to shake her hand and leave the room, she thanked me for my time and complimented me on my handbag. I smiled to myself, thinking the bag had just paid for itself. As I walked down the street in the summer heat, grinning from ear to ear, I
called my dear friend Eric, who worked for Hearst, though his office was in another building. I asked him to meet me for coffee. Eric has been my best friend since we were in college, and has stood on the sidelines and rooted for me at every turn. He knew how long this particular dream had been in the making. In the coffee shop I picked at a sandwich, not yet able to eat because of the adrenaline rush, and he and I allowed ourselves to imagine for a few minutes that I might actually get the job.

  A week or so later, I got the call that told me it was down to me and just one other candidate. I was excited, but now I had to face the fact that this might actually happen, and all the things it might set in motion—or bring to a halt—in my marriage. That night I came home from my freelance job and sat in the corner of the living room I’d painted a dark plum six months earlier. I’d picked the color because it was dramatic and daring, a bold gesture that set off the collection of black-and-white photographs I’d hung from ceiling to floor. But sitting in the small purple chair in the corner I felt dwarfed by the darkness of it all. I told Chris I was afraid to take the job, that I didn’t want to disappear into an all-consuming job at the same time our marriage was under so much pressure. I begged him to let me choose our marriage over my work, to give me some hope that we were going to work things out, and I burst into tears. I cried not just for that day, but also for every other time I’d signed up for a new work challenge, because now I wondered if I’d been putting nails in the coffin of our marriage all these years. Maybe my work was the reason we were in such trouble, after all (Reason #159). I told him I couldn’t take the job, because I simply wouldn’t be able to do it without him, without his support, his love. Chris shook his head slowly, staring down at his hands, and said, “No. You don’t need me.” (He sounded so sure that I didn’t need him. Not true; but still, yet another reason.) “This is where you are going,” he went on, “this is what you have been working toward all this time, your whole life.” And I started to sob, face in my hands, because I could hear in his words that he was already letting go of me, and I couldn’t bear the sound of it; he was talking as if he were putting me and my luggage on a train and knew he’d be staying behind on the platform. Apparently I hadn’t changed anything with all my well-intentioned housekeeping and cooking, all my keep-my-head-down tactics. I could feel his eyes on me, I could feel him feeling bad for what I was feeling, and in that moment I suddenly got a very clear glimpse into what he was thinking: he’d gotten me to where I’d been headed all those years, even before I met him. And now he felt as if he had to leave me to have his turn.