Earlier this month real life made its usual appearance. Sudden and nasty.
Kovacs, a kommilitone from university, announced he was divorcing his wife Penny. These days, with every second nuptials falling flat, his split shouldn’t be stupendous news. Nevertheless it is.
The motivation behind the Kovacs sundering is rending. It is the obverse of a particular coin discussed within a rarefied sphere and under fine conditions.
Five years ago in Paris (Is that not a magical phrase or what?) I dined with the only future grandmother I ought have lusted after. Of course when I should have desired her she had yet to become a parent. Or wife of her first of two husbands. Through what would have been my nights of wrestling with impure thoughts, she charmed deadbeats in Losers Lounge.
We were university classmates who knew a lot of the same people. Our circles overlapped, so we socialized heavily. In time facile attraction deepened into meaning. Let’s call her Kewpie.
By the way, a nickname her second spouse detested. It reminded that weakling too much of the woman who thrived before he swooped in and tried mashing her under his thumb. He despised her oldest, closest friends. She bloomed with us.
Over our dinner old flames erupted. We examined her roster of discarded hearts. Or as our gang calls them, “The Old Boyfriends Club.” Years on there are several men who remain so faithful to her memory, or the memories she planted in them, they’ve been known to deceive their current wives or significant others, sneak off to wherever she alights on East Coast visits, and swan before her like it’s 1979 again.
There’s keeping what passed for passion alive, then there’s brainwashing.
When it came to a reach around, I had nothing to give. My old flames were doused by acrimony. Thoroughly. But Kewpie persisted. She doubted all my serious affairs could’ve ended under bile.
Oh, yes. They did. I’ve been consistent.
Kewpie tried a different angle. She wondered if there was at least one lover whose history I’d wish to rewind, redo or resume. Sure. I didn’t have to dredge deep. Until my forties one particular kicked opportunity frequently wandered into my everyday.
Rousse.
Back then only a few days accrued before Rousse preoccupied me once more. Reflecting, my idylls never forwarded on how our future might’ve developed but replayed our history. The good snatches, never the bad. Try as I did, I couldn’t imagine us as a solid, established couple. Those were fantasies too far.
Nonetheless it was red meat for Kewpie. In her best Lifetime weepy movie synopsis, she queried whether I’d consider finding and spooling the thread leading back to Rousse. She probably saw it as righting a mistake. Despite all sorts of digressions and commercials, the saga finally ends correctly. That is happily.
Like I said, a Lifetime movie.
Since we’ve entrusted each other with our most precious selves, I had no compunction against marking up Kewpie’s pretty picture.
I disabused her of ever expecting me to “right” my intimate past. Rousse and I, we’d had our chance. We didn’t take it. Either my flaws or her oversight derailed us from creating bliss. And once the opportunity evaporates, a single question remains: “What was that?”
Crushing Kewpie’s suggestion I heaped on pitiless perspective. Or this male’s view.
She saw such sweet re-jiggering as romantic. I preferred the hard line. Many years have passed and events occurred since Rousse went her way. We’ve entered and led entirely separate lives.
I certainly don’t want to know about Rousse’s time independent of me. I’d regret learning she pursued and achieved fullness without my accompanying her.
Moreover, Rousse and I have gotten old apart. Together we could’ve grown older. The first condition delivers rinds whose fruit has been devoured elsewhere by others. The second would’ve enlivened and enriched us both.
The Kovacs’ plight revived aspects of that Parisian dinner shared with Kewpie. Though at hurtful angles.
Kovacs is two years my junior. We grew up in nearby suburban New York towns. Had we not sought higher education out west, we never would’ve met. He cracked engineering books. I majored in Humanities. Kovacs must’ve been born under the Even Keel sign because he is one of the least disputatious men I’ve ever known. Almost as much as my father had been.
Of the images I carry regarding Kovacs he’s drunk in both. Not that he has problems with liquor. It’s just that those pictures suit his happy-go-lucky sensibilities.
The first Polaroid comes during his freshman year. Then, Animal House-style hijinks raged throughout American campuses. He’d attended a toga party. (Watch the movie.) Completely over-served, trussed in a school-issued white sheet, a box worn as hat, my fellow New Yorker couldn’t complete those finals steps back to his dorm room bed. He conked out in the lounge, asleep under one of the couches.
Second, at his wedding to Penny. Theirs was a Western ring exchange. Jumped the broom and everything. Too bad they held it within city limits. Otherwise guests could’ve added some celebratory gunfire to our a hoopin’ ‘n’ a hollerin’.
On their departure the groom was too blasted to drive. Or walk. His bride demonstrated her mettle when she hitched up her wedding gown, revealing a pair of bridal-white cowgirl boots, and after dragging Kovacs by his collar flung him in their pickup truck cab. While he lolled on the passenger side, Penny paraded around to the steering wheel graciously thanking all who attended.
Either rushing to start their honeymoon or from pique, Penny peeled out of the lot. As I remember no cans clattered off the bumper and no soap scrawl on the rear window announced their “Just Married” status.
That would’ve been the second time we assembled for their wedding. Sickness scratched an earlier date. Cancer struck Penny late in their engagement. Remission took longer than calculated. The delay scrubbed the original wedding date.
Thing was Kovacs was among the first among us who took the matrimonial plunge. Our careers had just begun. Graduations spewed us around the country. Besides the long hauls, we lacked the free time and free cash necessary for travel and lodging. Kovacs’ and Penny’s late postponement and rescheduling crimped some of us professionally and financially.
Now hindsight labels those concerns minor. Taking extra days too soon, busting the budget for another roundtrip airfare, hotel, car rental, bar tab, became trifles, not hurdles. What was important and remains so today is witnessing our friend’s ultimate moment and basking in his happiness. Didn’t we all hope the same for ourselves?
Moreover, Penny represented an upgrade from Kovacs’ previous girlfriend. Laura. The one with whom he shacked, who subordinated her career when his rapid promotions whipsawed them from Phoenix to Columbus to Baltimore.
On the surface that Laura could sacrifice as she did ought have had her marching down the aisle with Kovacs. Sure, she gave plenty of herself. Yet she extracted twice what she donated.
The “good” Laura was vivacious, funny, sharp and flirty. Men sensed the last trait. She never pushed overt sexuality. Some chicks have it and it merely happens. She wasn’t intentionally trying to get rises out of his pals. Had she, then she would’ve been a tease. One resembling a shorter Mä dchen Amick. Except Laura’s eyes were wilder and shone brighter.
The “bad” Laura channeled Alison Arngrim playing Nellie Oleson at her bipolar worst. Seemingly under a full lunar spell, the interesting Laura fell prey to a feral creature prowling her core. She turned vicious, abusive, though never a pointed terror. Never when Kovacs’ former kommilitones were around. Still, we all knew it was a tiny step before …
Only Kovacs knows how Penny rescued him. Or exorcised Laura. Neither ever shared that secret.
We knew beyond our understanding Laura somehow lent him inexplicable happiness. Yet who wasn’t relieved when dormant and steady Penny replaced Laura and her spontaneous detonations? Even Kovacs, loath to speak ill of anyone, gently admitted Laura sometimes tasked him.
Really? You don’t say.
No less steely and opinionated, Penny, when necessary, imposed through guile. She caressed instead of lashed. She coaxed people into becoming willing accomplices, not coerced accessories. A reboot to all those 1950s sitcom moms who vacuumed in pearls and heels, managed to have freshly baked cookies cooling for ravenous elementary schoolers, yet could daytrade the Kovacs family finances ever higher. Who among us didn’t believe she and Kovacs complemented another?
Maybe that’s why we basked so at their wedding. An illusive perfect match had been truly joined. And we saw it!
None of us foresaw what came in early August. One minute the Kovacs were life’s one sure thing. The next she gave him an unimaginable, uninhibited confession. At the end cruel logic and generous undeserved compassion won out. From him. Then they were the Kovacs no more.
Given the hour of Kovacs’ email, our friends along the West Coast, Marshall Islands and Australia should’ve been stunned first. Those of us in the UK and the Eastern Time Zone ought have gotten jolted the next day.
As usual during late nights/early mornings I was restless. Probably some measure curious, too. The Net is a great source for surfing across dumb fascinating stuff. Nonsense digested, I opened my mailbox. Figured I’d delete spam which had sifted through my filter.
An innocuous enough subject line from Kovacs. During football season he’s a heavy, contrary and precise correspondent. Outside of gridiron months he rarely comments.
Engineer as Kovacs is, his first graph provided a textbook example of a lede which hooked. The body of his message informed plainly and gripped throughout. At his conclusion I, along every other recipient, was floored.
Perhaps we outsiders who credited the Kovacs marriage as “perfect” applied too much pressure. “Looking good” would’ve sufficed.
Despite all Kovacs himself had provided, materially, emotionally, especially the emotional component, Penny remained unfulfilled. Unknown to her husband, she retained intense, no, adulterous, feelings for her lover before him.
Thanks to a social web site, they rediscovered another. Catching up quickly ramped up to reconnecting bodies and souls.
Naturally both had endured wonderful marriages beside quite supportive spouses. While neither had ever taken sidesteps outside their partnerships, each realized the person whose ring he or she wore was ultimately wrong.
If Kovacs had been a bastard like me, well, my response towards his dilemma might’ve ran along “What did you expect!?” lines. But he’s not.
Nearly 25 years of unconditional loving. It must’ve been hell for Penny to be mired in so much care, comfort and affection. I wouldn’t know.
Strangers reading Kovacs’ update might be put off by its tenor. Somewhere between equanimity and serenity. His friends, after sharp initial shocks, thought about introducing our own blood and thunder.
Kovacs refrained. He was magnanimous. I think his magnanimity misplaced. He doesn’t want this divorce. More so after telling us Penny still loved him and suffered from the hurt she’s inflicting. Shouldn’t he have felt some primal urge which demanded pain be meted, welts raised, and soul skewered?
There’s a word which popped into my mind. That word is “selfish.” I applied it to Penny.
I wonder if the other guy’s wife is taking this as big as Kovacs. I hope not. Hopefully she went Laura Mau-Mauing to the -nth.
After separate decades neither Penny nor her lover can no longer remain apart. Rather than becoming the low, rutting, grunting, blood-lusting beast I would’ve had such utter inconsideration splattered me, Kovacs is granting Penny her “freedom.”
Woody Allen epitomized this kind of horrible situation best: “The heart knows what it wants.” Pithy when stamped on strangers, a scorching miscarriage upon any good friend.
Seeing clearly again Kovacs is right to let Penny seek her stunning happiness. If he insisted otherwise, both now aware she loved another man, it would only corrode them.
Eventually all they’d be left with is resentment.
Kovacs wished them well. He’s not a flip guy. He genuinely meant it. I read that and wished someone not so dear had written that sentiment so I could admire the guts. He ended by demanding we not hate Penny.
How many of us lack the strength to follow his lead?
Kovacs is a decent man. One undeserving of this injury. His is the reverse of romance.