CHAPTER 1: THE END Living With Someone Who Hates You Anne and I were divorced after five years of marriage, when she admitted to having an affair. I later learned it was with her piano teacher. After our divorce, and his, she married him. While giving her lessons on my old piano, he told me that the sounding board was cracked and the instrument needed to be rebuilt. I paid him $ 3,000 for the job. I didn’t suspect that there was another man until Anne’s behavior became peculiar; muffled telephone conversations, evasive answers about who was on the phone, hours away from home in the evenings and on weekends. When suspicions of infidelity overwhelmed my trust, I began asking pointed questions. Her denials were hollow and eventually led to an admission that she was in love with another man, but she didn’t tell me who it was. In fact, she said that I didn’t know him. Much later I learned that it was her piano teacher. Then I remembered the night that I came home and saw his cigarette butts crushed in a saucer on our kitchen table beside two used wine glasses. She hadn’t bothered to clean up the revealing mess. I wonder how many men have experienced living with a wife who has lost respect for them. You don’t know why you disgust her or when esteem became revulsion. You start to question things about yourself; do you chew with your mouth open, do you snore, do you wear ugly shoes, are you too fat, is it because you lost your hair? These are not basic qualities like kindness and generosity; but when your wife is treating you with contempt, then how you eat, what you wear and how you look become critical. She makes you feel repulsive. You become less of a man. You want to change to please her, but you can’t. Maybe it’s too late; or maybe you can’t change. I remember one humiliating lunch when our marriage was unraveling and I still thought there was something I could do to keep her. We were in a restaurant and I had no appetite so I ordered a salad. The lettuce leaves were larger than bite- sized and I wanted to eat with quiet dignity; not like a man born in the Bronx whose parents were children of Jewish immigrants, but like the men she dated in her Grosse Pointe Country Club past. I cut the salad into small pieces, carefully putting each one in my mouth individually and chewing quietly. It didn’t help. The separation agreement was written and converted to a divorce in less than a month; even faster than our courtship had become a marriage.

CHAPTER 2: THE BEGINNING Meeting Someone Who Needs You As Much As You Need Her The beginning was filled with wonderful days when we admired each other’s wit and good looks. We were anxious to be married. I had just lost my young son, Alex, to cancer and was living alone in a house that had once been our home. I called her a few days after the funeral. We were married three months later. Her reasons for marrying me after so brief a courtship were never clear. She said that she fell in love with me at the funeral—something about my dignity in that tragic moment touched her deeply. The wedding was performed by a judge who had been my law partner in his brownstone office. She said “I do” even before the question was finished, eliciting smiles from the few close friends who were our witnesses.

CHAPTER 3: THE MIDDLE Our Marriage Before the love affair with her piano teacher converted our marriage from a source of pride to an embarrassment for me, Anne and I were an ordinary suburban couple. Her friends became mine and mine became hers. We walked our dogs together each morning and evening from our house to a beach on the Long Island Sound owned by our homeowners association. We took vacations in winter to the warm islands in the Caribbean and in summer to Europe. We had friends to dinner and she became a favorite with my law partners. Our intimate life was normal except that her English cocker spaniel slept with us. He was protective and had to be banished from the bedroom when I wanted to touch her without being attacked The pride I felt in being her husband was magnified by an interesting change in my social status as soon as we were married. Our house, which had been my home for twenty years, is “the least expensive house in a most expensive neighborhood.” That’s how it was marketed when I bought it. I was nothing special to my neighbors until Anne arrived with her beauty, her elegance, her English cocker spaniel and her BMW (the only thing she kept from her prior marriage other than some jewelry). I sailed a 23’ sloop and soon became Commodore of our yacht club. Then I was elected president of the homeowners association. When we were divorced under circumstances that must have been known to many, I fell from that artificial grace.

CHAPTER 4: ANOTHER ENDING A Beginning Recently I was in Greenwich at a store where pianos are rebuilt, repaired and sold. I was looking for something to replace my old Hardman Peck baby grand now that I’m playing again. While talking with the owner I mentioned the name of the man who had rebuilt my piano years before, without mentioning the personal details. The store owner knew the man and his wife, Anne. He told me, “They visit the store a lot. Too bad about his Alzheimers. She has it rough. Good people.” I nodded.

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