“You used me, and you know it, which is why you’re crying silently now! And I know why you’re acting as if you’re my mother—you feel guilty about what you did because you knew it was wrong. Because you knew you chickened out and sold me out for a bank account and a historic mansion. A lie. That’s what it is. A lie. Your marriage, your whole life with that man is nothing but a lie!”
“Leo, stop.” Catherine choked on the words and could barely see straight as tears kept streaming down her face.
“Isn’t that what you did, Catherine? Answer the goddamn question!” he yelled, grabbing the bottle and throwing it against the wall. It shattered into pieces as he stood there, his wild eyes transfixed on her.
Catherine stood and, dazed, walked toward the door, her hands covering her face.
“Yeah, go back to your good husband,” Leo growled. “Abandon and betray me just as you did years ago. Leave me to my booze and whores! It ain’t pretty, but at least it’s honest, and that’s more than I can say about you.”
Catherine cried all the way back to Philadelphia, her slender body wracked with sobs. The rain came down hard so she drove at a snail’s pace, her fingers tight around the steering wheel, face wet with tears.
Never had Catherine Woods been so destroyed by someone’s words. The tone or the words he used weren’t what hurt her as she had had enough violent arguments with her father. No, what stung the most was that, in her heart, she knew Leo was right.
The Third Interlude
The years passed. Determined to forget Leo, Catherine continued her life and did not stray from her husband again. There were times she would find herself sobbing in her room, but those times became rare as she set her mind on moving on. Her feelings for Leo remained strong, but she couldn’t make her wrongs right and neither could she help Leo change his habits. So, she committed herself to her passionless marriage and developed a rich fantasy life instead, romance novels permeating her thoughts and dreams, flooding them with the rich and erotic feelings she’d never felt in her marriage.
One rainy day, she decided to try her hand at writing a novel of her own. Writing quickly became Catherine’s passion—she went to bed thinking about her characters and dreamed about them during the night, losing herself in this new, rich, fulfilling world.
Walter continued to work at Sun Oil well into his seventies, even though he could have retired at fifty. The boys at the office joked about the “three D’s of retirement: disease, divorce, and death.” None of those sounded appetizing to Walter.
He and Catherine remained friends; they still had little affection, but the sadness Catherine once felt over their relationship had faded long ago, she finally accepted her marriage as it was.
Catherine managed to find other fulfilling things to do. When she wasn’t writing, Catherine happily dug in the dirt as her cursory interest in roses bloomed into a lifelong love of gardening. She checked out dozens of books from the library and spent long hours browsing the plant nursery as she became a master gardener. She went for walks in the neighborhood, sharing long conversations with the local botanist about sandy loam compared with all-compost soil. A bigger flower garden, then a window box of herbs, followed the rosebushes. Soon, she was plotting a vegetable garden in the backyard, feeding Walter fresh ripe tomatoes and sweet peppers through the summer. In the fall, she made steaming plates of butternut squash and kale.
Though Catherine had earned her accounting degree in the forties, she never had the full college experience her children enjoyed. Her newfound love for reading and writing prompted her to go back to school for a master’s in English literature. The campus was magical—she loved wandering among the quaint buildings, reading mountains of novels and honing her craft as a wordsmith.
By her late seventies, she’d written three books of fiction. The last novel, The Song of the Lilies, a fictional account of her relationship with Leo, was her magnum opus. Unlike her real-life romance, though, the novel had a happy ending.
Although she hadn’t attracted much interest in her previous manuscripts, a major publisher snapped up The Song of the Lilies. “It’s exactly what we’ve been looking for,” they told her. “People want epic, sweeping romance. They’re sick of the trite things on TV. People want a love story for the ages, and this is it.”
The novel was published in 2004, and it became an immediate bestseller. At the ripe old age of seventy-nine, Catherine found success as a novelist, doing several magazine interviews and appearing on television, which boosted the sales even more.
Her children fared well too. Catherine’s favorite son Leo became a tenured art history professor at Brandeis University after marrying the philosophy PhD student he’d fallen in love with at Temple. They had two children after waiting for a few years.
Both Catherine’s daughters made a name for themselves. Lily won acclaim for her romantic poetry and classical sonnets and married a fellow poet a few years later. Sarah became an environmental engineer. Branding herself as a sustainability expert, she was an important contributor to the early green movement. Along with her husband, a structural engineer, Sarah helped Catherine build a sustainable greenhouse in the backyard for her vegetables and flowers. Catherine was very proud of all her kids.
In the winter of 2005, at eighty-six, Walter began to feel pain in his upper abdomen, a dull ache that wrapped all the way around to his lower back. When Catherine noticed his skin looked slightly jaundiced, she suggested he go see his doctor, and he obliged after putting it off for a few days.
The test results came back three days later, and the doctor called and suggested that both Mr. and Mrs. Murray come down to his office. They sat in silence, waiting for the doctor to appear, and when he did, his expression was grave. “I’m afraid it’s not good news,” he began.
Walter was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer. The MRI and laparoscopy showed that the disease had spread to his liver, stomach, and spleen.
“What about surgery?” Catherine asked.
The doctor shook his head. “I’m afraid Stage IV in your case is inoperable. I’ll be honest with you; there’s not much hope at this stage.”
Shocked, neither Catherine nor Walter said a word.
“There usually aren’t any symptoms in the early stages,” the doctor continued. “To make matters worse, the pancreas is hidden behind other organs, making it hard to detect.”
Stunned, Catherine and Walter walked out of the office, blinking in the cold noonday sun. A few days earlier, Walter had been feeling some stomach pain; now, he’d been given a death sentence. “Could be weeks,” the doctor had said. “Could be months. The important thing is to realize the time is limited.”
Walter, who was usually imperturbable, responded emotionally; his diagnosis settled over him like a dark cloud. Two of the “three D’s of retirement” were right after all—they’d just gotten the order wrong. First disease, then death.
Walter stopped golfing and wouldn’t accept visits from his friends. Catherine fluttered about, trying to make him comfortable, but his health deteriorated so quickly there wasn’t much she could do.
By spring of 2006, Walter was bedridden and wouldn’t eat more than a few bites of the food Catherine brought him. They had a hospital bed delivered to the house to make it easier for the hospice nurse to bathe him. His skin hung off his bones, and eyes took on a haunted look while Catherine did her best to take care of him.
One night, as Catherine worked on the latest draft of an article she was writing for a women’s magazine, she heard him call for her. Catherine dropped what she was doing and hurried to his side. These days, she didn’t move as fast as she used to, but for an eighty-year-old woman, she was still spry.
“Are you all right?” she asked. He saw her framed in the doorway, the light from the hallway pouring in behind her.
“Please,” he said, his voice faint. “Pull up a chair.”
He reached out for her hand. She couldn’t remember the last time their hands had touched
, his skin like old paper, parched and dry.
“Catherine, I’m grateful for how you’ve helped me through this, and I need to… I don’t have much time,” he said.
“Shhhh,” she whispered. “Don’t think like that.”
“We both know it’s true.” His cough sounded like the death rattle the hospice nurse had warned Catherine about and she squeezed his hand tighter.
“I’m here,” she assured him. “I won’t leave you.”
“I have something I need to tell you.”
This had all the markings of a deathbed confession. Yet, Walter had never seemed a deep man, so the notion surprised her. Had he committed some financial indiscretion he wanted to get off his chest? Something to do with the grandchildren’s trust, perhaps?
“It’s not about money,” he said.
“What is it then?”
He sighed. “I’ve always loved you, Catherine. You were the woman for me. I knew that from the first moment I met you. It was only later that I realized… well… that you weren’t really my type.”
Catherine couldn’t help being insulted by this strange confession. What did he mean she wasn’t his type?
He petted her arm with his withered hand. “I know you don’t understand. When we met working Wallace’s campaign, I thought you were the most intelligent, beautiful woman I’d ever met. But it wasn’t until we were married that I understood. It didn’t matter how intelligent and beautiful you were, it was just not right. And that’s why I spent all this time away playing golf.”
She had trouble following his logic. What was that supposed to mean? Was it the morphine they’d put him on? Yet, her gut told her Walter was lucid. Then, it hit her. Shock. How could she have been so blind?
“I’m not sure I understand,” she stammered. Surely, this couldn’t be true. “Are you telling me you’re…?”
“Gay,” Walter said. “Yes, I am.”
The room swayed, and Walter tightened his grip on her hand. Even though he was lying in the hospital bed, Catherine felt as if she were the one who needed steadying.
“I’ve been living a homosexual life for most of our marriage,” he said.
“I still wasn’t sure when we married. I thought it was a passing sickness, something that would go away. Then, once we were married, I realized I couldn’t hide from myself any longer. But I didn’t act on it until much later. I tried to be faithful to you; I really did.”
Catherine was too stunned to speak or cry, listening through a fog as he continued. She’d been right about his affair in 1968, but it wasn’t with a woman.
“I considered telling you when we went to counseling,” he explained. “But I didn’t want to break your heart or shock our children. So, I decided to keep this part of my life a secret, no matter the cost.”
Catherine sat there silently, the truth slowly sinking in, and then told him she needed to take a short walk before they talked more. He did not object.
So many things made sense to her now. For years, she had chalked up their lack of intimacy to some fundamental incompatibility, believing that silly therapist who told her it was common for couples to have nothing in common as they grow older. Yet never, not once in her entire forty-two years of marriage, had she suspected this.
The farther she walked, the angrier she became. If only she had known the truth, perhaps she would have had the courage to follow her heart. But she was too old to allow anger into her life. But as Catherine turned back toward the mansion that had been her home for so many years, she slowed her pace and her breathing. Her husband was dying; there was no time for a grudge.
That night, she crept into Walter’s bedroom and held his hand again.
“I’m sorry to tell you this now,” he said, “I didn’t think I ever would. But after everything you’ve done for me, and my end so near, I didn’t want to leave holding on to a lie. I know I hurt you, and I’m sorry. I was a terrible husband, but I tried. I swear I tried.” In years with him, Catherine had never seen Walter emotional; not once had she ever seen him shed a tear. But at that moment, as she saw tears fall from his dying eyes, she also wept, cradling him in her arms.
“No,” she said, “You couldn’t help it. And you still were a good husband and a loving father. I understand.”
She knew her words were not entirely true, yet she hadn’t the heart to chastise the dying man who, after all, had done so much for her. But she didn’t know why she cried more—because she was losing him or because she realized her entire married life was based on a lie. Two lies, to be exact.
Catherine could imagine what Walter felt like hiding for so many years. But she could relate, much of her life stayed secret as well—from Walter and the kids, and she prayed that he could die in peace now after this great weight had been lifted.
Two weeks after his confession, Walter died in his sleep, leaving his wife with the security of a home, money, and a large loving family, just as she had always wanted. Her children wept at his funeral, but Catherine, this time, did not shed a tear.
She would never tell anyone the truth about Walter’s past as she had sworn to him, but knowing so much of their life was based on lies was something she couldn’t accept, a fact that became more glaring by Walter’s confession.
*
The moment Catherine walked out of his apartment in 1978, Leo felt as if his entire future had evaporated. He picked up every bottle he could find and threw them at the door with a vengeance, smashing his fists into the bathroom mirror moments later, the broken glass shattering like the pieces of his heart.
“Don’t come back!” he yelled as Catherine’s car engine spurted to life outside. “I don’t ever want to see you again!” Then, he collapsed into a pile of jagged glass, his skin cut and bleeding.
When Leo realized this was the end—that she wouldn’t be coming back—he continued down his path of self-destruction. Without Catherine as his tether, there was nothing to keep him from spiraling into the darkness, and fast.
In the summer of 1984, at the age of fifty nine, Leo overdosed on heroin. Miraculously, he survived.
Isaac, his friend and employer at the head shop urged him to get help. “I can’t do anything for you, man. I don’t want you to die on my watch. I love you like a brother, but you’re destroying your life.”
For once, Leo listened, his brush with death being the final straw. He knew it was time he dug himself out of the pit he’d created, the one he’d wallowed in for so many years, but he also realized he couldn’t do it alone.
On July 19, 1984—Catherine’s fifty-ninth birthday—he checked himself in to the Zebulon Rehabilitation Center in Pikesville, Maryland. At Pikesville, he began the slow and painful process of breaking free from old patterns, learning to manage his moods and appreciate sobriety. He peeled back years and years of self-loathing and examined all the ways he’d self-soothed in destructive ways.
Leo had never imagined himself as someone with a self-esteem problem, but he finally understood how he’d been mired in dangerous self-judgments since he was a child, from his mother’s abandonment to his father’s apathy. It was something that created a void in him, a void he’d filled with drugs, alcohol, and easy women when Catherine wasn’t around. And that’s what caused him to lose her in the end.
Leo graduated from the program sober and went to daily meetings in the beginning, when the temptation to drink and use was still strong. His initial attempts to stay sober failed, as he would bump into the wrong person at the wrong time, but, patiently, he checked back in to rehab and started the process again. And slowly, the old addictions loosened their hold as he found a renewed enthusiasm for life. Finally, after countless years of blocked creativity, he threw himself back into his art with dedication, desire, and maturity.
Using the name Leo Ellis—a testament to his new lease on life—he began creating pieces with stunning prolificacy as if the floodgates inside him had opened, and all that pent-up creativity burst out of him unfettered after being locked in for so
many years. It took years to build a list of contacts and to start getting a steady flow of projects again, but with his clear mind and passionate heart, the new Leo could not be stopped. Over the next twenty years, he created some of the most celebrated, controversial, and critically acclaimed sculptures in North America.
In 1986, he met Elizabeth Carter, a thirty-one-year-old art student thirty years his junior. In many ways, she reminded Leo of his Parisian girlfriend Nicole—artistic, young, and achingly talented. Making art was their shared passion, and they delighted in it.
A true modern woman, Elizabeth proposed to him. “Why don’t we get married?” she said one day, as they sat on the floor of Leo’s studio.
“I’ve never been married,” Leo said.
“Me, neither. Why not?”
They married quickly and moved to Philadelphia, Elizabeth’s hometown, but Leo did not intend to look up Catherine. Instead, he was happy his name had changed; he didn’t want to draw her attention again.
Leo’s marriage to Elizabeth ended in 1992, cordial split. She wanted children, and her childbearing years were fast ending, and he encouraged her to find someone to fulfill that dream.
“You’re too young to settle down with an old coot like me,” he told her.
“Thank you,” she said. “I still care about you. You’re going to accomplish great things, Leo. I hope you know that.” Then, she kissed him on the cheek, packed a bag of her things, and left.
He was content to stay in Philadelphia, but never attempted to reach Catherine, even after his marriage ended. Leo managed to avoid his old habits of drugs and alcohol this time, though, focusing on his work instead.
If he were going to accomplish great things, he had better get started. So, since then, he devoted himself to his art alone; endowed with renewed clarity, his work took on epic dimensions as he continued to work with metal and plaster, but also made giant sculptures from granite, bronze, limestone, and concrete. A year later the Whitney in New York and LACMA in Los Angeles commissioned his work for the first time. Eventually, he did a special exhibit using nothing but paper and packing tape for the Tate Modern in London. His installations, often reflections on depression and addiction, were the talk of the town all over the art world.
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