“Beauty”
My first wife Kingsley and I had met as undergraduates at St. Louis University in 1966. When we began dating in 1968, Kingsley dazzled me with her cheeriness and enthusiasm. As we walked down the sidewalk, she’d look at the sky and see shapes in the clouds. If we passed flowers blooming on a lawn, she’d rush over and smell them. She gushed with enthusiasm over her favorite poets and writers. She proclaimed her love for me, for nature, for life.
“Beauty and her Beast”
Yet her exuberance made me slightly uneasy. I certainly didn’t have feelings like she did. I liked art but didn’t gush about it. While Faulkner struck me as a pretty good writer, he left Kingsley enraptured. We both volunteered for a program in the St. Louis inner city that tried to prepare high school boys from the ghetto for college. Kingsley was enthusiastic and intense while I was skeptical about how effective we could be.
Shortly after meeting Kingsley, I passed her on my way into the college library. She didn’t respond to my greeting and held up a sign that said, “Silent protest against the Vietnam War.” Although the draft loomed in my future, I had, at that time, still not given the war much thought. I really hoped it would vanish before I graduated. Only later, after I had read Kingsley’s book on the history of Vietnam, did I begin to clarify my own thoughts about the conflict in Vietnam and ultimately refused to be inducted.
Compared with Kingsley’s intense feelings, mine seemed mild, lacking an energetic charge. My enthusiasm for our relationship never reached her pitch of intensity, and I felt confused about what love meant. Judging by my parents, aunts, uncles—all the married adults I knew—contentment and practicality marked a relationship, not ecstasy.
After graduation we were both accepted by New York graduate schools but in different cities. In New York City, I went to graduate school at Fordham where I got free tuition and minimal living expenses. Kingsley won a fellowship to Cornell in Ithaca, New York, more than two hundred miles away.
When I received my draft notice during my second semester, I requested a delay until classes ended. Then, having decided to refuse induction, I moved to Houston to contend with my draft board. After winning a temporary deferment, I still had to remain in Houston till my status was resolved. After I got hired as a hospital orderly, I wrote Kingsley that we should break up unless she was willing to move to Houston. She came, and a few months later, we married.
“Depression”
Finally, courts ruled in my favor, and I began looking for a better job. Meanwhile, married life seemed to be progressing well enough, and I had no complaints. But when I suggested to Kingsley we wait three or four years before having kids and have some fun first, she replied that she never wanted kids. That surprised me since she had talked very positively about having kids back in college. I assumed she was temporarily in a bad mood, but as years passed, her bad mood never went away.
It turned out there were two sides to Kingsley. There was a bright, shiny side full of optimism and energy. This is what I saw when we began dating. But there was also a dark and dismal side, full of pessimism and lethargy. She called this “depression.” After a while I began to realize that someone with moods like hers probably wouldn’t make a very good mother. Maybe she was right not to want kids.
“Depression” (details)
“You’re not normal,” she told me. “Normal people get depressed.”
“It’s all in your head,” I told her. “Everything seems fine to me.”
Boy, did she pitch a fit when I said that.
I began to become aware that a strange beast haunted Kingsley, one I could neither see nor understand. My own inner beast occasionally roared with rage or lust, but that seemed normal for most guys I knew. As long as I kept the monster caged, I had no problem. But Kingsley’s beast was different. For months her depression lay dormant, and she would seem contented. When it returned, she’d lie in bed for days, reading the same mystery novel over and over. I’d try to talk to her, but she didn’t want my company. Whatever I said seemed wrong. “Go away and let me alone,” she would say. So whenever she was depressed, I let her alone. Eventually her beast departed, and I decided that was just the way she was.
Gradually I came to understand that years earlier when we were dating, my presence would make Kingsley’s inner turmoil vanish. Her depressions were linked to her negative self-concept—she felt unattractive and undesirable. But when I arrived for a date, she felt wanted and loved. Since we didn’t live together, I wasn’t around most of the time, so when I showed up, I was like the sun rising at dawn. But once we married, I was around all the time, and my presence was expected, not an occasion for joy. Kingsley’s emotions did not churn along on a plateau of general contentment like mine, but constantly soared to peaks and descended into dark fissures. She craved the ecstasy, but to experience that high, she had to descend into the depths first. Once we married, my presence was not a wonderful change. I was always there and no longer stimulated ecstasy.
Kingsley wanted someone who understood her feelings without explanation. For me, this was impossible. I think she refused to explain because explanation would make clear the irrational basis of her depression. Since she had always succeeded academically, her self-concept was grounded in her exceptional intelligence. But she always doubted her talents and abilities. When in school, her feelings of self-worth had to be reinforced by high grades, and she felt terrible if she ever got a B. But once out of school, no reassuring grades were forthcoming. And to admit that her mind was impaired by depression was to undercut her confidence in her intelligence.
Yet despite her periodic spells of melancholy, I felt she was improving. In 1973, she determined to lose weight and began jogging regularly and eating a balanced diet. Then in 1976 she decided to get a library degree. To do that, she had to live in Austin for a year while attending University of Texas, and while there, she had an affair with another student. Being found attractive by someone new made her spirits soar. Of course, I was angry and told her she had to make up her mind, him or me. When she didn’t leave, I thought the problem was solved.
In 1978 we went to London for a vacation, and it was a good trip. (Later I did a painting of Kingsley based on a photo I took in Windsor Garden.) We visited museums, went to the theater, toured castles and churches. And that’s the meaning of love, isn’t it— doing things together, having a good time together? And love is the meaning of life, right? But what is the meaning of “depression”?
“Windsor Garden”
ME: What is this depression you say you have?
KINGSLEY: You don’t know?
ME: Well, I’ve seen you when you’re depressed, but …
KINGSLEY: Everyone gets depressed.
ME: Not everyone. I’ve never been depressed. So can you explain it to me?
KINGSLEY: If you don’t know, you’re hopeless.
About six months after our trip to London, she said she was going to see a psychologist. I thought that maybe counseling was a good idea. She could talk to somebody about her moods. But two months later, she told me she wanted a divorce. We had never discussed divorce.
“Why a divorce?” I asked.
“We don’t FEEL the same way,” she said.
“But our feelings have never been the same.”
“Also,” said Kingsley, “we don’t agree about chores or money.”
“Wait a minute. We discussed money just last week, and we agreed.”
“I agreed with you rationally,” she said, “but not emotionally.”
It seemed as if two brains lodged in Kingsley’s head—a rational brain and an emotional brain. And the two never communicated.
Back in the seventies, I don’t know if there were any drugs for manic-depression, bi-polar disorder, whatever you call it. Even if there were, I don’t think Kingsley would have taken any drugs because she denied having any psychological problems. As she saw it, her depression was caused by the city, by her job, and by me. So she moved to a new city, got a new job, and dumped me.
Why didn’t the hero rescue Beauty from the Beast? Because Beauty was the Beast.
“Her Beast”
(I couldn’t see it, but I could imagine it.)
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