leaving home but also (and primarily) because Susan’s wedding day was Father’s
century day; he was born 2 August 1852.
Apparently no one associated the date with Father, and I mentioned it to no one
because a wedding day belongs to the couple getting married and no one should bring
up any subject, say or do anything, that might subtract from the joyfulness of the
occasion. So I had kept quiet.
But I was constantly aware of the date. It had been twelve years and two months
since Father had gone to war… and I had missed him every one of those four
thousand, four hundred, and forty-one days – and most especially during the years
after Brian turned me in for a newer model.
Please understand me; I am not condemning Brian. I had stopped being fertile around
the beginning of World War Two, whereas. Marian was still decidedly fertile – and
children are the purpose of a Howard-sponsored marriage. Marian was willing and able
to bear him more children but she wanted that marriage licence. That’s
understandable.
Neither of them tried to get rid of me. Brian assumed that I would stay, until I
made it clear that I would not. Marian begged me to stay, and cried when I left.
But Dallas is not Boondock, and the unnatural practice of monogamy is as rooted in
the American culture of the twentieth century as group marriage is rooted in the
quasi anarchistic, unstructured culture of Tertius in the third millennium of the
diaspora. At the time I decided not to stay with Brian and Marian I had no Boondock
experience to guide me; I simply knew in my gut that, if I stayed, Marian and I
would be locked, willy-nilly, in a struggle for dominance, a struggle that neither
of us wanted, and that Brian would be buffeted by our troubles and made unhappy
thereby.
But that does not mean that I was happy about leaving. A divorce, any divorce no
matter how necessary, is an amputation. For a long time I felt like an animal that
has gnawed off its own leg in order to escape from a trap.
By my own time line all this happened more than eighty years ago. Am I still
resentful?
Yes, I am. Not at Brian – at Marian. Brian was a man with no malice in him; I am
sure in my heart that he did not intend to mistreat me. At worst, one may say that
it was not too bright of him to impregnate his sons widow. But how many men are
truly wise in their handling of women? In all history you can count them on the
fingers of one thumb.
Marian – She is another matter. She rewarded my hospitality by demanding that my
husband divorce me. My father had taught me never to expect that imaginary emotion,
gratitude. But am I not entitled to expect decent treatment from a guest under my
roof?
Gratitude: an imaginary emotion that rewards an imaginary behaviour, altruism. Both
imaginaries are false faces for selfishness, which is a real and honest emotion.
Long ago Mr Clemens demonstrated in his essay `What is Man?’ that every one of us
act at all rimes in his own interest. Once you understand this, it offers a way to
negotiate with an antagonist in order to find means to cooperate with him for mutual
benefit. But if you are convinced of your own altruism and you try to shame him out
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of his horrid selfishness, you will get nowhere.
So, in dealing with Marian, where did I go wrong?
Did I lapse into the error of altruism?
I think I did. I should have said, `Listen, bitchie! Behave yourself and you can
live here as long as you like. But forget this idea of trying to crowd me out of my
own home, or you and your nameless babe will land out there in the snow. If I don’t
tear, out your partition instead.’ And to Brian: ‘Don’t try it, buster! Or I’ll find
a shyster who will make you wish that you had never laid eyes on that chippie. We’ll