Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage (24 page)

“Hi,” I said. “I didn’t know you were here. The troopers just told me.”

But Jim was so tense he barely greeted me. I suspected that he was feeling nervous not only about the visit but also about shouldering the burden of being the event planner as well.

“My mom and dad and the others are going to meet us at the restaurant,” he said.

“Where are Morag and Kari? Did they get in OK?”

“Yes,” said Jim. “They’ve already left for the restaurant. We have to hurry to get there.” He was pacing, like an animal in a cage.

“It’s only a couple of minutes away,” I said, trying to calm him down.

“We have to leave right now,” he said, his tone impatient. “Are you ready?”

“This very second?” I asked. “No.”

“Well, why not?”

“Because I didn’t even know you were here till the troopers told me. I’m changing the baby and getting her ready.”

“Well, really you have to hurry. We need to go.” His voice revealed his strain.

As I rushed back in with Jacqueline to pick up the diaper bag along with my purse, he walked over to the car where the troopers were waiting.

When I got out, I saw that Jim and Lori Kennedy were now outside as well, talking to the troopers.

“I didn’t know you were here,” Lori said, greeting me.

“Yes, I got here two or three hours ago,” I said.

“Jim asked us to stop by the Bay House to say hello to Kari and the others,” said Lori. “So we did. When the troopers left with them for the restaurant, we came over. We knew we’d find Jim here, but we didn’t know you were here. I don’t understand why Jim didn’t tell us you were here, or tell you that we were.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know either.

“He told us no one was here,” she added. “And he asked us to stop across the street.” She sounded apologetic.

This was all too strange.

Suddenly I realized that in my hurry to get out, I’d forgotten Jacqueline’s bottle. “I have to go get something,” I told Lori. “I’ll be right back.”

Jim, who’d been waiting at the car for me to join him, was furious. “We can’t keep them waiting. It’s disrespectful,” he called over to me peevishly. He was almost shouting.

“Well, you go ahead then,” I snapped back. “I’ll just stay home with the baby.”

This was one of the first times we’d truly shouted at each other, and it was shocking to both of us that we did so in front of the troopers, who tried very hard to act as if we weren’t there—or they weren’t.

It takes a lot to get me angry. And now I was angry.

Though Jim’s behavior would get even more bizarre before Morag and her family left, for the moment he seemed stunned at his own mixture of anger and obliviousness, and he promptly went into damage-repair mode.

He started to follow me as I walked toward the house. “Can I get the bottle for you? Or help you with something?”

“No, I’ll get the bottle myself.”

“Look,” he said, “it’s just that I don’t want to keep them waiting.”

“What’s the big deal?” I asked. “We’re not that late, and the restaurant is two minutes away.” I wasn’t quite ready to forgive and forget.

He knew it would look really awkward if I didn’t show up, so he continued to pursue me into the house while trying to placate me. “The visit is awkward, and so I want everything to be as smooth as possible.”

In the interest of having the evening go as well as it could, I calmed myself down. I got the bottle, and then we headed to the restaurant.

When we arrived, everyone else, including Jim’s family, was already there. I was most curious about Kari, and looked for her immediately. She pretty much looked as she did in her photographs—an attractive woman in her mid- to late forties with a pleasant smile. She was seated, but later when she stood up, I could see that she was relatively tall for a woman—maybe five-seven or five-eight. Certainly she was much taller than I was! When we were introduced, she greeted me pleasantly, though since we weren’t seated near each other, there was no opportunity to make even small talk. Everyone looked settled; Jim, however, whose need to micromanage is always a clue to how uncomfortable he’s feeling, felt the urge to determine where each of the sixteen of us—seventeen if you counted Jacqueline—should sit. After several minutes of chair legs scraping, guests moving, and already-sipped water glasses being passed along to their next place setting, the dinner got under way, with Jim and me seated on either side of his mother and therefore not being in a position to talk to each other. Jim had also seated Kari and Morag next to each other and near Jimmy and Lori, all of them too far away for me to chat with any of them. Amid the clatter of the silverware and the pleasantries of the waiters, we made our way, via small talk, through a carefully pleasant dinner. I was disappointed not to get much of an opportunity to talk to either Morag or Kari, who both seemed quiet and reserved. What I did see was that Kari was most at ease around Jim, and he, in turn, was very solicitous toward her. I also noticed that Kari was wearing—on the fourth finger of her right hand—what seemed to be her engagement ring and wedding band.

After dinner, Jim’s sister Caroline spoke to me privately. “Did you notice the rings?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “They look like a wedding ring and an engagement ring.”

“What the hell is that all about?” she wondered aloud.

I just shook my head and shrugged.

“Those are the rings she wore when she was married to Jim!”

Lori Kennedy, who as the wife of a jeweler was attuned to such matters, later told me she remembered those rings as well.

The next day we got up and were sitting at the breakfast table when we received a phone call from the Bay House. Because of Jim’s comments, which seemed to be about what kind of time an unnamed “she” had had that morning, I suspected he was talking to Kari about Morag. As the conversation drew to a close, he said, “OK, sweetheart, see you later.” I stared at him but didn’t say anything. He glanced at me quickly, registering my look, and then looked away. Ronnie, who had overheard Jim’s conversation with Kari, gave Jim a look of disapproval. I saw her take him aside and talk to him earnestly and intensely. I’m sure she was reprimanding him, though I didn’t hear the conversation and neither of them mentioned it to me. It made me more certain than ever that something was happening between Kari and Jim.

Later in the morning, Jim muttered something about “meetings” and went off with several of the troopers. During his absence, I overheard two of the remaining troopers talking about a helicopter ride that seemed to be in the works. There was a helipad near the Ocean House, but that wasn’t the context. It was something about a helicopter ride in New York.

When Jim returned several hours later and didn’t say anything about his “meetings,” I figured he had a new secret. “So how was the helicopter ride?” I asked him, with something of an edge.

“I wasn’t on any helicopter ride,” he said.

“Well, if you weren’t on one today, you have one planned.”

He blew up at me. “I don’t have to tell you where the fuck I’m going or what I’m doing!”

I was furious, but before I could respond, his sister Caroline heard the shouting and came into the kitchen, where we were. “What do you mean you don’t have to tell her?” she said indignantly. “Dina’s your wife!”

“This is none of your business!” he said, and stormed out.

I began to cry, and Caroline put her arms around me and patted me, before following Jim. I heard their voices, although I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

A few minutes later, Jim came into the family room where I was sitting with Jacqueline and asked if I would go for a walk with him so we could talk.

“I’ll watch Jacqueline,” said Caroline, now walking in.

We went out the back door and over the dunes and headed toward the water. It was a private beach, and except for the occasional walker, there was no one around.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am sorry. It’s just that I’ve been nervous and on edge about their visit.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s Kari’s first time here since she left, and I didn’t know what to expect.”

“That’s not a reason to treat me this way. I don’t get it.”

I wondered if Caroline had mentioned to Jim that I’d noticed that Kari was still wearing her wedding and engagement rings. And had Ronnie mentioned to Caroline overhearing Jim call Kari “sweetheart”? I didn’t know. But I did know that I had made Jim aware—repeatedly—that his efforts to keep me in the dark about his relationships and plans with Morag and Kari were hurtful.

There was something really odd going on here.

Of course, it’s obvious now that Jim wasn’t having an affair with Kari, but still I believe that there was an intensity to their relationship that neither time nor distance seemed to affect, and that it too constituted a kind of unfaithfulness, which, after all, is as much about the heart as about the body.

But I’ve come to understand Kari’s visit east in a different light. Looking back, I can see that whenever any situation arose that presented Jim with the hint of conflict—conflict between two people (me and Kari), or between two lifestyles (being gay and being straight), or with the reality that he would have to disappoint someone—instead of trying to reconcile or integrate, or resolve, he kept the two elements as far apart as possible. It could be anything from keeping us on opposite coasts to keeping us at opposite ends of the table. But I think that his efforts to position us were a reflection of his struggle to evade any and all experience of conflict internally, in his own mind. When a conflict threatened to overwhelm him or immobilize him, he was perfectly capable of suddenly rendering himself blind to one part of the conflict or the other.

Walking along the beach now, Jim wanted to reassure me about his relationship with Kari. “I don’t know what you think, but there’s nothing going on between us,” he said. Then he proceeded to tell me about his visits to Vancouver over the years to see Morag.

“In the beginning, I wasn’t even allowed in the house. I would pick up Morag at the door to take her to the park or some other public place,” he said. His eyes were watery. He continued, “When I went there for Christmas once, I spent the day alone in a hotel room. They didn’t even invite me for dinner. It was painful.”

I felt sorry for him. I even began to shed tears. We’d been walking side by side, but suddenly he stopped walking, grabbed both my arms tightly, and turned me toward him until we were face-to-face, our bodies touching. He pulled me closer and hugged me. “You have a husband who loves you.” He said it emphatically, trying to erase my doubts. He had a catch in his voice and tears in his eyes as well.

Although I was still upset, I felt better that we’d had a heart-to-heart of sorts. Jim then went on to tell me about the planned helicopter ride over Manhattan. He also told me about a planned trip to Philadelphia and asked if I wanted to go. He said a friend with an office in Philadelphia had called and suggested Jim visit.

I’d already overheard the troopers talking about the trip and was glad that Jim was now telling me about it, so I agreed to go.

Jim’s sister Caroline was so upset at Jim’s behavior both toward me and Kari that she decided to leave. She had planned to stay with us for the week but simply packed up and left. She and my brother-in-law rented a place for them and their two children farther south on the shore for the rest of the week. I was worried that this might take away one of the reasons for Morag to visit us at the Ocean House, but she did come over the next morning. She was a pretty and very quiet little girl who didn’t say much. There were some gifts for her, and she opened them appreciatively, taking the paper off very carefully and folding it neatly into squares. “She’s her mother’s daughter,” said Jim, looking on.

After an hour or so, Kari appeared at the kitchen door to fetch Morag, but didn’t come in.

The following day, Jacqueline and I went along when Jim took Morag to Manhattan for the scheduled helicopter ride. He had somehow gotten another ticket to
Beauty and the Beast
so I could join them.

Only three passengers plus the pilot could ride in the helicopter at a time. Jim said, “If you want to go, you can go. I’ll stay behind.”

“No,” I said. “You go ahead.” I didn’t want to prevent him from enjoying the experience with Morag. Jacqueline and I waited with the troopers and Morag and Kari’s family while Jim, Morag, and Kari toured Manhattan. Following the ride, we went to Broadway for the performance. Jim didn’t appear very comfortable with the arrangement, and neither did Kari, but after our recent argument he had been careful to invite me along. We brought Jacqueline into the theater, but she was cranky, so Jim spent most of the time outside with her.

The next trip was to Philadelphia, with a stop at Betsy Ross’s house. As we were walking into the house, I tried to hold Jim’s hand, as we often did, but he brushed it away. “Don’t hold my hand now in front of them,” he said. He didn’t want any display of affection in front of Kari. That was something else I never forgot. Dinner was cordial but awkward. Kari was remote, Jim was ill at ease, and I was more and more suspicious of their relationship.

We ended the week with a trip to Washington, D.C. This trip had also been planned well in advance, though I learned of it only after our argument. In Washington, we stopped at a few historic places and even had lunch in the Senate Dining Room. This was a big deal. Private citizens were seldom allowed in there. Admission was by special invitation from a senator. In our case, we were guests of Bob Torricelli, who by now had resumed diplomatic relations with Jim, despite the contest between them two years earlier.

We stayed overnight, and the next morning Jim had meetings scheduled in his Washington office. He had arranged for Morag, Kari, and the entourage to visit the White House. He asked if I wanted to go with them, and I said no. I knew they were uncomfortable with me around, and I decided to go with Jim to his office instead.

The entire time she was there, Kari and I never exchanged more than a few sentences. Partly, it was because we traveled separately, with Jim and me in the car driven by one trooper, and Kari, Morag, and their family in the second car driven by another trooper. When we were out of the car, Kari seemed uneasy, and reluctant to talk. During the whole visit I think the only personal interchange we had was when she asked me if Jim ever changed Jacqueline’s diaper. I said on occasion he did. “Oh,” she said, “he never changed Morag’s.” After that the conversation seemed to run out of steam.