The Men in My Life

by Patricia Bosworth

  I’d heard that therapy could cure every anxiety, but Dr. Aviva’s manner was so unpleasant and chiding that I could barely speak. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but I do remember that in our very first session she pronounced me “a baby . . . You are still homesick for your parents,” and then she added grimly (after I’d tried to describe my husband), “The language of courtship is very different from the language of marriage . . . You still want romance.”

  Sometimes she’d bark, “Stop entertaining me and tell me what is bothering you.” I had a tendency to make light of what I was going through in my marriage, telling funny stories about the aviary or my cooking sprees instead of zeroing in on the ways Jason mistreated me.

  She wanted to know why I had married Jason. After much probing I managed to tell her he’d started out as a fantasy figure drawn from movies and novels about Bohemia. “When I first saw him he wore a beret and spoke a few words of French,” I told her.

  “The cliché dream of the artist!”

  “Yes, yes, I know that!” I cried. I’d been swept away by this idiotic fantasy. Hungry for experience, I’d plunged into the dingy chaos of Alger Court without thinking. I existed for my emotions. I didn’t consider anything else.

  Dr. Aviva would stare at me incredulously as I babbled at her and I’d stare back. I was juggling so many roles in order to survive—wife, student, daughter, sister. Part of me was still a little girl struggling to become a woman. I was a wage earner and proud of that. These roles were preparing me for my future, which I prayed would include my dreams of acting and writing.

  Once Dr. Aviva broke in to ask, “Who do you love more than anybody?” and I immediately answered, “My brother.” And then I burst into tears. Because until recently Bart had been the one person I could talk to freely, the one person I trusted implicitly, felt at ease with, could be myself with (whatever that was). I had few secrets from him, which was a relief, although I never told him of Jason’s abuse. But since Deerfield, Bart and I had no longer been as close, and this upset me terribly. I didn’t know what to do about it. I behaved the same way with him as I always had, telling him everything, usually in our private language (which he didn’t want to speak anymore). But my brother seemed bored with me now; he didn’t want to share as much. We no longer went to the movies or explored the city. He had Tobias.

  But I did not mention this to Dr. Aviva.

  AUGUST CAME, HUMID and muggy; we’d bought a fan, but it didn’t do much good in our tiny room. Late at night, confined in our space and unable to sleep, Jason would turn mean. He’d slap me when he’d discover that I’d forgotten to iron his khakis. He’d slap me harder when I’d refuse to get him a beer. I didn’t fight back; I lay on our bed, naked and trembling, feeling totally helpless and caught in a trap.

  Nobody talked about domestic violence; even therapists seemed to minimize or virtually ignore the subject. When I attempted to tell Dr. Aviva about Jason’s treatment of me, she interrupted to say she’d be away for the rest of August. I burst into tears and begged her to stay in contact. I seemed so upset that after a moment she agreed and scrawled down her address and phone number in Ripton, Vermont.

  “But only if it’s an emergency. I ordinarily don’t do this.” Then she rose and ushered me out the door. She had two patients waiting to see her.

  I returned home wondering how much longer I could endure my life with Jason. My husband wasn’t just flying into rages with me but with his brother too. They had been fighting ever since they were small.

  FAITH AND I were invariably in the kitchen when a fight erupted between them. It was always over something petty—Jason wanted to watch Mister Peepers, Wally wanted to watch What’s My Line?

  They would begin by hurling insults at each other: “Nebbish!” “Spastic!” “Cow turd!”

  There would be a cry and I would hear Jason yelping in pain. A lamp would go crashing to the floor.

  Faith and I would stop what we were doing, run into the living room, and find our two husbands rolling around on the floor pummeling each other viciously, sometimes drawing blood; little puffs of dust would rise from the soiled old Persian rug.

  Faith would bellow at the top of her lungs, “Stop it, you guys—or I’m gonna tell Grandma!”

  But there would be no need for that, because by now Grandma was rolling herself into the living room in her wheelchair, and she’d glide around the fighting men, poking at them sharply with her cane.

  Only then would they stop. Sweating and petrified, they would clamber to their feet and apologize: “Oh, jeez, Grandma, you know, just kiddin’ ’n’ horsin’ around.” And they would chuckle and try to kiss her.

  Grandma would wave her cane at them and go gliding down the hall to her bedroom.

  Afterward I’d help Jason back to our room, and I’d bathe his scratched bloody face and make sure his precious nose hadn’t been broken.

  I didn’t cook supper for the rest of the family those nights. They had to fend for themselves. We’d sneak out for a hamburger, and then crawl into bed and cuddle and Jason would hold me tight, vowing eternal love.

  “I’m so crazy about you, baby,” he’d murmur. “Promise you’ll never leave me. Never, never?”

  Even though I felt trapped and totally alone, I’d promise.

  JASON AND I fought too, over my continued refusal to ask my father to support us. “I can’t understand why you don’t,” Jason would say. He would point to one of the tabloids that featured a photograph of Daddy, and under it a caption about the million-dollar settlement he hoped to get for Rita Hayworth.

  We had our ugliest fight going into New York on the train. We kept bickering (“No, I won’t ask my father”; “Oh yes you will—”) . . . By the time we reached Grand Central and climbed into a cab, I began to insist that he earn some money. Then he started slapping me.

  And in between whups he let loose with a crazy monologue: “You don’t listen!” (Whup!) “You never listen!” (Whup! Whup!) “Why don’t you listen? Because you are spoiled rotten.” (Whup! Whup! Whup!) “Why should I work just because everybody else works? Did Picasso have a job?” (Whup!) “I will never be a shitty white-collar worker. Painters are supposed to paint. You’ll ruin me if you keep pestering me to get a job!” (Whup!) “You are driving me nuts.” (Whup!) And then he began shaking me. “If you didn’t have enough confidence in me, why did you marry me?”

  Throughout I was screaming at the cabdriver to stop the cab, but Jason ordered him to drive on. I kept sobbing and pleading with the driver to let me out. He refused. “He’s the boss, lady,” he told me, nodding at my husband.

  It was a nightmare. Then I remembered what Diane Arbus had told me. It’s your life. You don’t have to be a victim, you know. We had just ground to a stop at Vanderbilt Avenue and Forty-Third Street when I decided I’d had enough. I found myself vaulting out of the cab and diving into traffic. I breathed in exhaust fumes and sewer stink coming up from the grates. I crazily thought, I could compose a dance, as I moved in and out of the lines of trucks and buses. In the background I could hear Jason screaming, “Come back, you little bitch!” which made me run even faster. I ran and ran until my heart constricted and I was panting and streaming perspiration. I ran until I came to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and I bought a ticket to Ripton, Vermont. It was the boldest action I’d ever taken. When I sank back on the seat of the bus and it rumbled out onto Ninth Avenue I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I had done something for myself.

  Chapter Seven

  EXHAUSTED, I SLEPT all the way to Ripton. I had Dr. Aviva’s address. When the bus let me off, I walked from the stop down a dirt road. Her cottage was nearby and surprisingly modest, white shingles with green shutters. I’d imagined she lived in a bigger place, a farm or an estate. I knocked on the door. She opened it and stared at me in annoyance and surprise. She seemed a bit breathless as she pulled a kimono about her ample bosom. Did I see a male figure hovering behind her?

  “What are you doin
g here, Patti?” she demanded.

  “I need to talk to you,” I began urgently. “It’s my husband—he’s been hitting me . . . and I . . . You said if it was an emergency . . .”

  She interrupted. “I am on vacation now. I’ll speak to you about this in September.”

  “I’m sorry, but please help me. I just didn’t know what to do . . .”

  She shut the door in my face.

  I stood in the dusty road, sun beating down on my back. Now what? I was in the wilds of Vermont. I didn’t know a soul. I began to sob. Then I started to walk. I walked and walked, past farms and stretches of cropland until I came to a crossroads with high old poplar trees and an inn. There were cars and trucks parked outside and men running in and out carrying lights and cameras. The next thing I knew, I was in the lobby of the inn—a comfortable, rustic place with low leather chairs and potted plants. In front of me was a reception desk and a rather attractive middle-aged man, bearded, wearing what looked like a safari jacket and corduroy pants. He was conferring with the receptionist. He had a foreign accent. As soon as he saw me, he regarded me with interest and concern. I guess I looked pretty forlorn; my face was streaked with tears and I was disheveled.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Nooo!” I wailed.

  Without another word he took me in his arms. Within minutes I had told him everything—my escape from my brutish husband, the trip to Vermont to consult my doctor, her rejection.

  “You poor kid.”

  “And to top it off, I have no more money,” I choked out.

  There was a long silence, and then the man gently cupped my face in his hands and studied me with great intensity. He had large brown tired eyes. I guessed he must be in his fifties—old enough to be my father.

  “It will be okay . . . It will be okay,” he said. “I will see to that.”

  I stared at him. Who was this man with the gentle voice and an accent I couldn’t place?

  He put his hands on my shoulders.

  “Have you ever heard of Robert Frost?”

  “Of course I have. He’s a great poet.”

  “Well, I happen to be making a documentary about this great poet. Today, this afternoon, we are filming him at his farm. I will take you with me. You will forget your troubles, and then we will come back to the inn for dinner and we can decide what you should do. Now how does that sound?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “By the way, my name is Bela Kornitzer. I have made many documentaries on President Truman and Roosevelt.”

  “I’m . . . Patricia Bosworth.” (I just couldn’t say Patricia Bean.)

  We shook hands.

  THE SUN WAS flooding the lush green meadow outside Frost’s farm. While Bela set up the cameras and recording devices, he had me sit next to Frost and keep him company. The great poet had soft white hair and a ruddy, heavily lined face. He was then seventy-eight years old and had won four Pulitzers for poetry that defined rural life in America.

  At first he seemed crotchety with me beside him, a total stranger. But he warmed up when I told him I was from San Francisco too. He’d been born in the Bay Area in 1874, and he remembered the sound of the foghorns and the great fire of 1906, which had destroyed most of the city.

  Then Bela turned the cameras on and began the interview. He asked Frost questions about his inspirations—“Shakespeare, myths, and Bible stories,” he said. He’d had twenty years of rejection before any of his poems were published, twenty years of writing about stone walls and brown earth and blue butterflies, and nobody cared. He’d been a farmer and a teacher; he’d raised five children. He’d bought his first farm for a thousand dollars. Then he recited a poem, “Fire and Ice.”

  After the filming was finished, we shook hands, and then he said to me, “You should take life seriously, girl.” It was over too soon.

  That evening Bela invited me for supper at the inn; the dining room was half empty. He ordered for us, mulligatawny stew—an Indian dish, he said. He asked for a bottle of red wine and then lit a cigarette and gave it to me, and then he began talking to me very softly about luck and chance and how it was an accident that we’d met but we would now be good friends. He said he’d remember this evening for the rest of his life, and I said I would too. Take a good look at this room, I reminded myself, the paneled walls, the ivy plants, the middle-aged waitress who took our order and wore a hairnet. There was slow, soft music coming from the bar, just bits and pieces: “Night and day, you are the one . . .”

  I told him who my father was, and it turned out they’d met in London in 1946 when Daddy was on a mission for President Truman. “I was trying to make a documentary about Albert Einstein,” Bela said. And then he switched the subject to his own life in Budapest. He’d begun as a journalist, he told me. When the Communists took over Hungary, they’d charged him with seditious writing. In 1947 he sought exile in the United States. With fellow Hungarian Joseph Pulitzer’s support, Bela was able to write his books and film his documentaries.

  Bela did not want to hear about my husband, but I told him our story anyway and he shook his head. “Your marriage will be over soon,” he predicted, “and then it will be as if it had never happened.”

  Near the end of the evening he took my hand and read my palm. “You will be married three times and you will live to be very old.” (He pointed to my lifeline.)

  “Will I be happy?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea. You will be restless, impatient . . . You will have many lovers.” He laughed. “I will not be one of them.”

  At the door of my hotel room, he kissed my hand very formally and then he gave me his card. “We will always be in touch,” he said, and then he guided me into the room, patted my shoulder, and disappeared down the hall.

  The next morning I caught the bus back to New York. I kept turning over Bela’s card in my hand as if it was a talisman: Bela Kornitzer, documentary filmmaker.

  WHEN I RETURNED to New York from Vermont I didn’t go back to Jason. Instead I camped out at Sarah Lawrence, sharing Marcia Haynes’s room. Bela and I stayed in touch; he’d leave messages at the Powers Agency for me. I’d call him back and report how I was doing. Whenever I got depressed, I would remember my afternoon with him and Robert Frost. Until I met Bela, I’d been so caught up in my unsettling life with Jason I’d forgotten how surprising and beautiful the world could be.

  Jason and I hadn’t even spoken, but I knew he felt terrible. Marcia had been in touch with him. Apparently he’d phoned her hysterically after I disappeared into the traffic on Vanderbilt Avenue. She assured him I was okay; that I’d consulted my doctor in Vermont and now I was staying on campus with her. I needed time to think, to take stock of what had been happening to us these past six months. Miraculously Jason accepted my decision and this was a relief. But would I ever be able to figure out what I wanted to do? My life seemed to be in total chaos. Guilt, resentment, exhaustion overwhelmed me.

  My parents felt I still needed outside help. Since I refused to continue with Dr. Aviva, Mama arranged to have me see an even more prestigious analyst named Sandor Rado, a round jolly man with a thick Austrian accent who happened to be one of Freud’s closest disciples. I suppose you could call me his patient—I saw him off and on for many years—but I never felt like one with him. It certainly wasn’t a formal analysis. Or maybe it was and he was so clever I didn’t notice. I did know I had a very difficult time trying to confront what was bothering me. I couldn’t move beyond certain ancient grievances (such as my mother’s controlling attitude toward me). There were other conflicts inside that I couldn’t resolve, let alone articulate (like whether or not I wanted to return to Jason).

  I did talk about Jason with Marcia, who was urging me to go back to him and give him another chance.

  Marcia and her boyfriend Gene Hill had been the only friends who’d ever gotten to know Jason. My husband tolerated few people, but he genuinely liked them. We’d often spend evenings together drinking in Gene’s Village apa
rtment on Bank Street. Gene kidded Jason about his arrogance but always encouraged his dreams of becoming a painter.

  I HAD STARTED to keep a journal. It was one of the first assignments from my new writing teacher, the poet Jane Cooper. I bought a loose-leaf lined notebook and filled it with tiny scribbles.

  An early entry from September 18, 1952:

  I am in Marcia’s room. She has prepared chicken soup for us on a hot plate and she is knitting Gene a sweater. She is so comforting, my friend—she is always there for me—she grounds me . . . I wish I could stay with her forever, if only so I could figure her out. She is very beautiful, but she is also dour and melancholy, and she does not express emotion in interpersonal conversations the way most of us do. Her gaze floats . . . takes me in all sorts of directions, except when she is speaking about Gene. She is totally obsessed with pleasing Gene and worried he doesn’t really love her. I have watched her turn inside-out for him . . . and I think this is not right . . . Have I made the same mistakes with Jason? Gene is as taciturn as Marcia, but he doesn’t appreciate Marcia’s extravagant devotion. He assumes she should be doing for him, serving him, polishing his shoes, sewing buttons on his shirts . . . mixing him martinis . . . Her life is not her own . . .

  Another entry, a couple of weeks later, was decorated with a sullen photograph of me as a model looking very apprehensive and captioned:

  Married eight months . . . Now separated from Jason, who I don’t want to go back to—yet. But do I ever want to go back? I feel very far away from him and Alger Court . . . far away and very sad.

  In the meantime I had returned to my classes with enthusiasm. I loved my writing assignments with Jane Cooper, and dance class offered me a real emotional release for all my pent-up feelings. I began choreographing pieces under Bessie’s guidance, among them a duet with my own reflection in the mirror. Bessie quickly recognized it as a rip-off of Gene Kelly’s memorable number in Cover Girl. She spoke to me bluntly: “You can begin by imitation, but unless you transform your work into something uniquely your own, forget it!”