MORTALITY
by
Robert Plutchik (copyright 1994 All Rights Reserved)
It is difficult to know what brought about the
tragedy. I do know that Ed Reardon's father had died about a
year before Ed's separation. I also know Ed had received a major
promotion around that time. From helping produce half-hour shows
on cable TV he was suddenly given the opportunity to become an
assistant producer on a major network. And they gave him a
special assistant of his own.
Marnie was petite, cheerful, energetic and buxom. She
was always deferential to Ed, called him, "Sir", and held the
door open for him. In all ways she was the opposite of his wife
who was tall, slow-moving, flat-cheated and depressed. He told
me that he took a look in the mirror one morning, saw his
graying hairs, the wrinkles on his forehead and eyes. His life
had to change.
That day, he invited Marnie to have lunch with him at
a fancy French restaurant. He flirted with her, smiled a lot,
put his hand on her thigh, got all the right signals back. That
night, Ed couldn't sleep and was preoccupied with images of a
naked Marnie in his arms. He was more than twice her age but
that only made his fantasies more delicious. He particularly
liked the thought of caressing her breasts.
At work, he became preoccupied with needing Marnie
present at all meetings, all lunches. He began to stay late so
he could have dinner with her. Then one day he asked her to go
to a hotel with him and she agreed.
Ed later told me that he had not had much experience
with women before he got married, so his affair with Marnie made
him feel like an astronaut exploring the moon. She exposed him
to things that his wife had never heard of, and even if she had
would not do them. Ed discovered that his body was like a
musical instrument, and Marnie was playing sonatas on it.
By now, of course, she called him Ed, and he opened
doors for her. He was excited all the time, and felt proud of
his conquest of this young, delicious woman. We all noticed it,
of course, and the people around the office talked about it
during coffee breaks, and when bored with their jobs.
It didn't take too long before Mary, his wife, began
to notice some of the changes. Ed seemed more cheerful than he
had been for a long time, but what surprised her most was his
sudden renewed interest in sex. Although they slept in the same
bed they had not had sex in years. To Mary's surprise, Ed came
home one evening and began to make broad hints about getting
into bed with her, about getting into her, about fooling around.
It made her nervous.
Inside himself, Ed felt powerful. He felt young again,
vigorous, able to do the things he had only dreamed about as an
adolescent. He made love to Marnie one afternoon then discovered
he still felt horny several hours later. That's when he
approached Mary. The thought of having two women in one day was
unbearably attractive, but he couldn't get Mary to open her legs
to him. He became angry and cursed her, called her a "frigid
bitch," brought up smoldering resentments of past frustrations
and failures, told her he hated her. And when she retaliated in
kind, he stormed into his room, quickly packed a few things and
walked out the door.
Mary didn't cry or feel lost, she felt betrayed.
Marriage was marriage and for keeps. Her own parents had a
loveless, abusive marriage, but they never separated. Ed's
leaving embarrassed her, made her feel ashamed in front of her
family, friends, neighbors.
The shame ate at her, made her grind her teeth. She
would wake from sleep with clenched jaws. She brooded, tried to
think of things that would hurt Ed, humiliate him, tear him down
from his illusionary heights.
Then she heard about Marnie, this young slut in his
office who had seduced him and taken him from her. For Marnie
she had murderous fantasies. She imagined smashing Marnie's head
with a baseball bat. She visualized sticking a long breadknife
into her breast. She thought of running her over with a car.
Each fantasy provided an anguished kind of pleasure.
One grim rainy afternoon, she wrapped herself in a
black raincoat and went to Ed's office building in the late
afternoon. She stood in a doorway across from the entrance to
his building and waited. Around six o'clock Ed came out of the
building with Marnie holding his arm. They were both smiling and
chatting animatedly. They turned up Sixth Avenue and Mary
followed. They walked a few blocks and turned east. Near Third
Avenue they went into a small hotel, got a key at the desk and
went up in the elevator.
Mary's heart turned bitter. All the hate of her lost
childhood burst into her throat. She wanted to scream, throw
up, hide, rip her clothes off her body. She wanted to cry but
couldn't. A band of muscle, held her throat like a vise.
She walked to the desk, mumbled something about seeing
Mr. Reardon, and what room was he in? The desk clerk told her,
and in a trance, Mary walked to the elevator, got in and went to
the sixth floor. She walked to Ed's room and began pounding on
his door. Her hatred drove her as she screamed at Ed behind the
door. She knew Marnie was there and cursed her, called her a
whore, a slut, a cheap tramp. She screamed that Ed was garbage,
shit, useless, not a man, and that if he would open the door she
would cut off his balls.
Of course, Ed called the desk and in a few minutes a
security guard came up and dragged Mary away. By now she was
incoherent, foaming at the mouth, her eyes bloodshot. In the
lobby, she broke away from the guard's grip and ran into the
rain. Outside, it was dark., still pouring. The streets were
slippery with the prism-like mixtures of oil, grease and water.
Mary ran into the street. A large black Cadillac, rushing to
make a light, couldn't stop in time and crashed into Mary
dragging her thirty feel along the ground before it could stop.
By then, Mary was broken and crushed. She died at the hospital a
few hours later.
Ed didn't hear about it until the next day and to
everyone's surprise he became very depressed. He went to Mary's
funeral where he hugged his grown kids and wept openly. Most of
his relatives shunned him. When he got back to his hotel he
drank himself into oblivion.
When Ed went back to work, his relation to Marnie
changed. He was formal with her during working hours, he stopped
taking her to lunch, and he did not invite her back to his hotel
room. Marnie seemed to take it all calmly. She quietly looked
around the office to see who else could advance her career. Then
she just went for him and was soon transferred.
Without Marnie, Ed seemed to wilt. He became morose,
irritable, unpredictable. His decisions were bad. His projects
failed. At lunch he would have three martinis. When he got to
his hotel room at night, he would often finish half a bottle of
Canadian Club.
At first, his boss spoke to him kindly, gave him
advice, suggested he see a shrink. When Ed responded only by
drinking more, his boss warned him. Then finally, four months
after Mary's death, he was fired.
I didn't keep up with Ed after that and for a long
time I heard nothing about him. Then one day, as I was walking
to my train in Grand Central Station, I saw Ed. His clothes were
torn, dirty and baggy. His hair was stiffly gray and scraggly.
He held a small paper bag in his hand, his wordly possessions in
a shopping bag at his feet. His eyes looked into mine, then we
both turned away.
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