From This Moment On (53 page)

It was like the rest of the world existed around me, but I no longer existed within it. Living was over for me.
This is where I get off, off this living place. Do with me what you will, life,
I thought.
I have nothing left, and I give up.
Ashamed and humiliated, I really had given up. I was at my lowest, and I was shutting down—physically, mentally, emotionally.

Eventually, I became aware of a sharp
clip-clop
sound coming
toward me. A jangle of keys and spare change in a jacket pocket. Then Fred’s arms wrapped around me and his wordless sigh of sympathy against my cheek. When he arrived at his apartment house and did not see me waiting there, he went running around the block, frantically trying to find me.

We headed toward his place, with Fred holding me up. I remember feeling his heart still pounding from his running and panic to find me, as his ribs pressed up against me to support my weight. I could feel how alive and real he was, and his energy gave me a sense of comfort that perhaps some of that life might transfer to me and resuscitate me. Some human warmth and sincerity I could physically feel, a real, beating heart, capable of genuine compassion.

When Fred talks about it now, he simply says, “When I found you along the lake that day, you were totally broken.” He wrapped me in a blanket, since I was shivering, sat me on the office sofa in his apartment, and gave me a half glass of vodka. According to Fred, I didn’t speak for several hours. I just sat there, numb. He was extremely sensitive and understanding, waiting patiently for me to communicate when I was ready. We just sat there together in silence.

Now when I hear stories of spouses losing their partners to another love, to sickness, or just because they are no longer in love, I feel their pain, I understand them, especially when it’s someone who’s had a long-term marriage. I’m sensitive to the shock and fear of having to start over alone. When you’ve been married for so long, you don’t know how to be alone in life anymore. It can be nothing short of terrifying and depressing. Outside support is crucial to anyone going through this. I have to say that before this happened to me personally, I took it too lightly, thinking,
It’s only a divorce; it happens every day.
But the individual circumstances of divorce have huge effects on those involved, and they should not be minimized or generalized, nor should their potential complexity be underestimated.

In mid-April 2008, after the breakdown by the lake, I took Eja with me to our Ontario cottage. I said good-bye to Fred and wished him luck with the nasty divorce and custody battle he’d already been
dragged into by his wife. I did not know when Eja and I would see him again, and it felt like a final farewell.

I needed to be closer to those who would nurture me through the next several months. Thank God for them. They held me compassionately when I was shaking and felt like a baby bird that had fallen from its nest, lost, broken, and scared. I was pretty helpless at times. My family and friends also shouted at me when I needed to hear painful truths—particularly at the beginning, when I was still deluding myself that maybe this was all a big mix-up and somehow still fixable. I remember my sisters expressing great impatience with me, demanding I stop referring to Marie-Anne as “my friend” and calling my ex-husband “Love.”

“We’ve had enough of this! They are selfish, heartless people, that’s what they are, and that’s what you should be referring to them as.” I really was in a pathetic state, still seeing my husband and Marie-Anne as people who’d just made a mistake and would eventually see that they were wrong, then come to me apologizing with humility and compassion in their hearts. I was dreaming! My whole world had just come crashing down around me, and I could not face it all at once. I hadn’t made their identity switch in my mind yet. It wasn’t sinking in that what they used to be to me, they no longer were. In reality, my “friend” was now my backstabber, and my husband was now my backstabber’s new love interest. They were open about their intolerance of my grief and impatient for me to “get over it” already. I was mourning the loss of these relationships and the potential they held in my dreams for the future. But change wasn’t instant or final, like any death. It would take time.

Weeks later while at the cottage, a friend called to help cheer me up. I was still in a fragile state and started going on and on about how “maybe this isn’t what we all think it is. Maybe one of the reasons that Mutt constantly defends Marie-Anne is because she really is innocent. Maybe she didn’t see this coming.” My friend wasn’t having any of it, and he cut me right off.

“Eilleen!” he barked. “
Come on!
She is having an affair with your
husband of fourteen years. Your own friend! Someone who knew your marriage was going through a vulnerable time. She is a bitch! In fact, she’s a
cunt
! Say it, Eilleen: ‘She’s a cunt.’ That’s the word for her. Come on, say it out loud! I want to hear you say it!” he demanded.

It was hard saying it, even as angry as I was, but he really did help draw me out of my dark, insecure place. I still hadn’t crossed the threshold of identifying her as my deceiver, and I found it hard to bring myself to say such a thing out loud about her; it seemed childish and vulgar. But her behavior was vulgar, and my friend was helping me face that by pulling the realization out of me with this free-spirited conversation. I engaged in repeating after him. It
was
kind of cathartic. (Harsh, I know, but after all, it
is
only a word.) My emotions were so balled up inside me that it felt good to release some pressure.

I reflected on my mother a lot during this time. In the past, I’d often think about her during happy events, like when I wished she were in the audience when I received my first Grammy Award or here to greet my baby boy when he came into the world. It didn’t have to be something momentous, though; anything meaningful made me miss her, such as the time I first made molasses cookies using an old recipe she’d handwritten on the inside cover of one of my grandmother Eileen’s cookbooks. Now, hurting as much as I did, I felt very lonely without my mom and wished we could be sitting around the kitchen table talking the way we used to.

When my mother died, I didn’t have anyone close to me in the same way, to really share my music with, and I was feeling similarly stranded again. Any time a marriage splinters, it’s painful and tragic. It’s even more complicated when the two people involved are not just romantic partners but also business partners and collaborators. I didn’t lose just
my husband, I lost my songwriting partner and record producer. I was at loose ends professionally. I’ve always had a sound sense of myself artistically but had relied on Mutt for commercial direction on the musical front. Once a song is written, it can go off in an infinite number of directions in the way of arrangement, style, feel, and overall sound. It takes a producer with a vision to home in on the direction that best serves the song and then shape the record accordingly. Mutt is a master at this. I enjoyed the involvement of my artistic direction in the process, but Mutt’s domain was clearly the production side of the music, and I hadn’t developed any confidence in being more involved once I’d written and recorded my vocals. He was the captain of the space shuttle, which is kind of what his studio looks like with its vast collection of gear: sound effects units, instruments, knobs, buttons, switches, riders, and screens, a wall-to-wall flashing, blinking music cockpit. It’s a fantastic, creative atmosphere, as any legendary producer’s workplace should be, the perfect pad for a music genius. This is where Mutt thrives. My place was more in the background when it came to making the record, the quieter voice that piped up to give my two cents and make final touches. I had definite opinions, and they were respected, but there wasn’t time or room for me to experiment and develop any producer skills once we were in the middle of a record. Mutt certainly didn’t need my help, or anyone’s for that matter, when it came to music production. It’s a learning experience just watching him work, and I think I probably learned more by doing that than by actually being involved.

In the wake of this major upheaval, I began to seriously reevaluate everything in my life. My confusion was so great, I didn’t know where to begin, as you can see from this letter I wrote to myself in an effort to get focused:

Do I work again? Sing again? Run away and hide? Hibernate in motherhood and lock the rest of the world out, how do I share my son with his father now, do I split myself in every direction
in the hope to find balance, try harder to forgive and forget, or just forget and move on?
What?
“What the fuck do I do now?” I cried out loud. Sometimes I think it’s best just to sit and let life come to me, for that bus to speed by and run me over. Why be proactive at all? Why bother trying to see it coming and jump out of the way? Why bother planning, thinking, helping, hurting, loving? Just be and let life behold me instead of beholding life. I’d say I’m a little disorientated … wouldn’t you? Major understatement!

About the only thing I was sure of was that I could never trust other people again outside of a close-knit circle of family and friends. Honestly, my faith in human nature had really been damaged—permanently, I thought. I had always been emotionally self-protective anyway, wondering what was next, expecting life would have more shit to throw at me when I least expected it. I figured it was best to accept it was coming at all times. That way I could forget about it. But after this happened, my guard was up, and I was really ready to protect myself. Nobody was going to get too close; that way, I would never hurt this badly again.

I am grateful to Dr. Deepak Chopra for enlightening me, showing me that to disengage emotionally was no way to live. I first met Deepak in Zurich at a convention where he was to give a lecture at the end of 2007. I asked if it was possible for us to meet in private during his stay, as it was just over a two-hour drive from where I lived on Lake Geneva. My request to meet with him was primarily to discuss the distance forming between my husband and me, in my effort to try to understand what I could do. His advice and recommended reading material, although right on target in regard to saving a marriage, came too late to save mine. But I left Deepak with a few books filled with advice and guidance under my arm and a heart full of hope.

The next time I would see Deepak was about two years later, one afternoon in Geneva, prior to a Red Cross charity ball we were both
attending that evening. This time we were meeting so I could get his thoughts on what to do about the knives in my heart and back, explaining that I was exhausted from anger, sleeplessness, confusion, disappointment, and sadness, and that I would settle for a feeling of indifference, as I figured that at least this would give me some peace. He explained, “You might deflect some of the inevitable pain of life, but you will also miss out on its abundant pleasures.”

“I know, you’re right. I don’t want to go through life disconnected; I just want relief.” He assured me that I would reach that point, comparing my pain to a fruit that’s about to ripen and fall to the ground, freeing me. He said that the fruit had to become full and heavy before it could be released from the tree, before it could be enjoyed and appreciated. I admit I was impatient, as his advice seemed so vague, with no deadline to look forward to.
Like, when can I expect this fruit to fall, for crying out loud?
was my thinking. “Can’t you be more specific?” I wanted to ask, but I was too ashamed to reveal my lack of composure and what I knew was spiritual immaturity talking. I was so tired of waiting around for answers. So many questions were still out there, and I just wanted someone to explain something definitive for a change, to look into my future and let me see clearly that everything was going to be okay.

But there was no crystal ball, and Deepak was not a fortuneteller, but he was right. I’m glad I took his advice and didn’t harden my heart. Because of Deepak’s very wise words, I left myself open to the inevitability of logic, that eventually the fruit would ripen and when it did, I would have my juicy taste of what possible good might come out of all my pain. If I had not had faith in the wise keepsake shared with me that day, I might have shut myself off from the love of my life.

Although I had known Frederic for about nine years, I had never really
known
him; I mean, he was my close friend’s husband. I thought he was a wonderful, considerate person, and anyone could see that he was an attentive husband and father, but we were friends by association only. It was he and Mutt who were friends, the two
of them often meeting alone over dinners to discuss politics, sports, current events, and life in general. I always believed it’s one thing to be close to your friend, but another to be closer to your friend’s husband. The men had their bond, and Marie-Anne and I had ours. That is at least what I believed, of course. Fred was always the one to take the kids on Saturday mornings for bike rides or to the carnival passing through town. He loved being with the kids, and I admired his energy and dedication to his daughter. He would take Johanna on father-daughter vacations to give Marie-Anne time to herself, and his bond with my own son from the very beginning was also very touching. The two of them were always the best of friends, and both Mutt and I were happy that Eja had another male figure in his life, as the Thiébauds were the only friends we had in the country. We all spent time together, but the kids gravitated toward Fred. He and I shared much of our family lives together, but in our appropriate places as the spouses of our friends.