She was my favorite friend. There is no one else on earth I wish more to talk to about what happened with Trixie. Trixie and her unenviable marriage that broke her spirit might even be an awful welcome tale to her. She's one of several of my friends who are serial monogamists but into their third marriage or long term relationship. Trixie stayed in rather than have the stigma of divorce. These others never have the stigma of affairs because their affairs lead to marriages and long term relationships.
But the dirt on her basement stairs was the end of a conversation and a friendship. It was the point where the thought that my friend was actually mentally ill and that her marriage had broken because it was the both of them.
Then I thought they had been on best behavior during my visits, which I'd cherished. The thought that she was Hysterical, Obsessive-Compulsive, and had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, set into my Knowing like a heads-up penny in just poured cement. That notion set and I can't seem to back up into my previous notion that what was happening was all her husband's fault.
Time honored wisdom is that one never makes a commentary on someone else's marriage. You stay out. It's none of your business. That no one really understands what makes people attract. That marriage is a mystery. That people must "settle." That all couples argue.
Oh, and one other mythology: that there's something wrong with you if you aren't coupled at any cost.
I was eager to like husband number one. Number one turned out to be a wife beater whose surprise attacks grew more frequent and vicious the closer she got to college graduation.
Hadn't she learned from her mistakes and waited a long time before remarrying? Hadn't she lived with husband number two first? Hadn't they planned their children? Wasn't he supportive of her career, willing to transfer wherever she was sent as she climbed the corporate ladder? Wasn't he always sweet to me when I visited, making me welcome, calling me an honorary auntie?
And now he was doing no shows when it was his weekend to have the children? And dragging her into financial ruin? And he'd been cheating?
I started to have dreams about them. In one she was crying in desperation and I woke deeply worried, not knowing what I could say or do, feeling her pain in my chest. In another he convinced me that I believed her marketing, her PR. That she was a bull-shitter. I believed him.
She told me he called her "crazy."
Oh, the old "crazy woman" defense men use, I thought.
She said he was crazy.
But then I remembered the time I sent her a photocopy and she was a bit indignant that it had dusted off, that the copy wasn't pristine. It seemed she was affronted.
The time we were out shopping and she assured me that it wasn't that she couldn't afford a pair of distressed jeans, she just saw no point in clothing that didn't look new.
The way she pointed when I finished a fast food soda and set the empty drink cup with plastic cap and straw down into the immaculate SUV cup holder and she said "Get that out of here!" She meant open the window and throw it out as we sped down the road. I did it.
When her sister moved in, she said she'd have to move out because she kept spilling things.
Her sister said, "She always has to have her way."
Her brother liked him.
The nanny quit.
I called on a Wednesday night and the children were screaming in the background. She said it was a bad time.
I called on a Saturday. As if I should have known, she said, a hairdresser was on the way over and would be there all afternoon, cutting everyone's hair. It sounded like luxury. "I'll call next Saturday," I offered.
"No. We get our hair done every Saturday!"
I imagined the hair trimmed a sixteenth of an inch each week, no split ends, to never grow out of a style.
Her heels, reheeled every week.
I was calling with a three hour time difference to consider. Did she think I was a psychic who knew when to call and when not to?
She said she didn't want to email because she had too much of that at work. A letter, she said, was too much to read.
Then I called once more. She answered her land line. She was hysterical. She started screaming at the children. To me she said, "They got dirt on the basement steps and I just scrubbed them."
C 2021
Notes: The same perfectionism that was a characteristic of her relationship with her secretary and clients had served her well for the first twenty years of her career. I always thought that after she had children her sexist bosses no longer saw her as career driven while they had wives who were stay at home mothers. I had also felt that her husband was unwilling to be a stay at home dad but I also knew she had pushed him to make more money. She had decided that her next husband would have to make more money than she and that she would only "deal" with people who had earned Master's Degrees. I see this as rigidity and snobbery. A person who is out of control inside sometimes tries to micromanage their environment and relationships.
Extra Note: March 30th. A sign that someone has NPD is that they think the world revolves around them and others should have an intuitive understanding of their needs and wants and serve to fulfill them.
