Authors: Catherine Crier
While the trio appeared to avoid major confrontation for the remainder of the journey, returning home proved no easy task. “Came home to tension and messes left by Felix for me to clean up,” Susan’s entry of July 9 began. “The man seems to thrive on it. Have resolved to go through with divorce. Can’t stand lifestyle with him. Too depressing.
F. oozes depression out of every pore. Adam’s comment: ‘Dad is depressed. He’s always been depressed.’ Little by little, it eats away at us all.”
On July 12, Susan recorded the details of her meeting with a divorce attorney, Dan Ryan, whom she described as “a self styled ‘tough Irishman.’” She had been without legal representation since May 1, 2001, when she fired her divorce lawyer because she was dissatisfied with his representation. At the meeting, Ryan informed Susan that she would have to go through a custody evaluation if she intended to fight for the kids.
In addition to meeting with Ryan, Susan also met with a therapist named Heidi Leslie on that July day. “I had lots to talk about by the time I got inside…. The therapist was kept very busy ahhhing, yesssssing, andmmmmming, by the virtually incessant stream of descriptive prose, which issued from me as if the plug had been pulled…. Why is it that at the oddest moments, the phrase ‘butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,’ just seems to pop into my head? Well, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. How is it that human beings become so inhuman?”
Moving on, Susan wrote, “Last night, Felix was in fine fettle. How did he put it? ‘Someone should do you a favor and just kill you.’ And Leslie [the therapist] wanted to know if I was afraid; if I believed I was in danger.”
One week later, on July 18, Susan informed Felix of her intention to take the children to live out of state. “F. went crazy…. Yelled at G. and E. that if they chose to live with me, they were not his sons. Threatened he wouldn’t support me, and then that he wouldn’t support them.” Susan explained that she wanted to get away from the congestion in the Bay Area and purchase or rent a ski house in Wyoming or Idaho “in order to live a more relaxed peaceful lifestyle, ski, hike, and just enjoy the outdoors.”
Later on, she discussed the issue of physical custody of the children. She was sure Felix would insist on joint custody whether the boys wanted to live with him or not. It would be his way of preventing her from moving the boys out of state.
“F. yelled I had brainwashed the boys, and that if we left, we would get no support from him.” She described how Felix tried to divide the boys, first attacking Eli, telling his middle son that he didn’t care what he
thought, was more interested in Gabriel’s feelings, and was not convinced that Gabe was really all that enthused about moving to Montana.
Susan pointed out that Felix had allowed his first wife to take their daughter, Jennifer, to live in Illinois when she was sixteen. “He said that was different because I’m crazy and Sharon wasn’t. The boys then pointed out that F. had told them that Sharon was crazy many times….
“F. finally blew his stack and threw things at me and Gabe (a bowl of maccaroni [sic] and cheese, spoons, cups), then walked over and kicked the big screen T.V. which cost $5,000 after overturning an antique mission oak chair valued at over $2,500….
“Adam came home and suggested F. go out for a drink. Said it was time for our marriage to end as some marriages do…. Asked me if he could visit me in Wyoming or Idaho. I said of course. F. accused Adam of making fun of him and stormed off. Sounded very paranoid himself after having accused Eli of being delusional and paranoid earlier.
“Adam said he was worried about me and Gabe, felt we were not safe with F. while he was so angry.”
The incidents on July 18 set off a chain reaction in Susan as she began researching life in Wyoming and Montana and becoming increasingly serious about leaving the marriage and the state. On July 31 she wrote that it was “as if I had been hypnotized into seeing in F. my ideal man. Now that I have awakened from the hypnotic state, which lasted most of our twenty eight year relationship, have stripped off the suave, urbane image of a gentleman pasted onto Felix, can see him as the crude, weak, mean spirited little bastard that he is…obsessed with power and control and proving his potency.”
As the fall approached, Susan’s diary entries reflected a growing debate between Susan and Felix about her plan to take Eli and Gabe out of state. They argued repeatedly over schools for the boys and the practical aspects of Susan raising Eli and Gabe in Montana. During this time, Susan often wrote about Felix’s verbal and physical abuse, saying that he “seems to still have a lot of angry feelings about my moving him out of the bedroom. Said he felt like slugging me in the face. Called me a criminal and a swine for the umpteenth time.
“My criminality, according to F., lies in my having turned him out of my room and brainwashed the children against him…. He lost control of himself again and struck me in the face with a roll of papers. I suggested he get some help. Chased me out of his room. Then kicked the T.V. screen, much to Eli’s dismay who was watching it.”
On September 1, Susan informed Felix that she was leaving California on September 7, and revoked “any powers of attorney” she had given him. “If you get a court order, as you have threatened to do, forbidding me from taking Eli and Gabe out of California, I will not take them with me,” she wrote in a letter.
Still she persisted with the idea that they would accompany her, outlining a plan for Eli to enroll in a public school in Bozeman until the spring term. “The move would benefit Gabriel, as well,” Susan insisted. He failed several of his eighth grade classes at Orinda Intermediate and was beginning to “hate” school. “A change of scene will do him good,” Susan noted.
“I don’t want the children to lose you…,” Susan noted at the end of the letter. “I do want the children to have a father as a resource: a reasonable, mature, unselfish father who is primarily concerned with his children’s best interests rather than with using his children as leverage.
“You have stated that you will obtain a court order restricting me from removing the children from California. You have also threatened to kill me, to stop working to support the family, and to kill yourself. I don’t take any one of these threats more seriously than the other, and intend to proceed with planning as if you will come to your senses.”
W
hile Susan made much of Felix’s determination to thwart her move with the two boys, it appears he did nothing to stop her when she actually departed. On Friday, September 7, the three set off for Montana without incident in Susan’s Volvo wagon, which was packed with personal belongings and pieces of furniture “important to the boys.”
Several days later, she sent Felix an update.
“We all miss our home in California,” she wrote in a letter dated September 13. “Montana will take some getting used to. It gets very cold
here in the winter. Main Street in Bozeman is like stepping back in time…. The good news: the drug scene is very small here; the kids are focussing [sic] on their home work; both are eligible for their driver’s licenses…. Best regards.”
After nearly a month of living in a cabin outside of Bozeman, Susan wrote this entry in her diary: “I feel incredibly sad about Adam, who is gone in more ways than one. He has started school at UCLA. Just before we left, he threatened to kill me, provoked by Felix to a great extent. But I am still stunned by it. Not even Eli ever threatened to kill me. Adam hates me.”
T
hough Adam and Susan remained at odds, by late November 2001, it was clear that the change of venue did nothing to help Eli. Once again, he was involved with drugs. By month’s end, the teen was on his way back to Orinda. “After talking to us both, he [Eli] got into his car and drove to California,” Susan wrote in a letter to Felix on November 26. “On the way, he received a speeding ticket for going over 90 mph. This is the second speeding ticket he has gotten in the two months since I purchased his car….
“His decision to leave was based on the restrictions I placed on his truancy and marijuana usage…limiting his access to money: I purchased a safe to keep my wallet in, and refused to provide him with his usual allowance while he was binging on marijuana and until the stolen money was paid back.”
Susan demanded the keys to Eli’s car until he got clean. “Eli decided, against my wishes, to drop out of school and return to California.”
Once home, Eli was continuing with his “out of control drug binging.” Susan noted that her son had a car accident during the Thanksgiving holiday.
“I suggest that his car not be returned to him until he has completed a drug treatment program and either enrolls in school or gets a job,” she advised Felix in the letter. “I also do not believe that he should have access to large sums of cash on weekends for the time being.”
Susan, too, would return to the East Bay by month’s end, and she alerted Felix of her plan. Pointing to their “difficulty agreeing on
disciplinary measures” Susan instructed Felix to find a home “elsewhere.” “Eli…is living unsupervised in the cottage in Orinda…which he uses as a ‘party pad’…a gathering place for teenagers to drink and drug,” she wrote. “It seems to me that you attempt to garner sympathy with the children by reversing my decisions. For example, when Adam ran up a $2,000 phone bill in June, and then followed with a $250 phone bill for his cell phone in September, disciplining him was left to me. When he ran up a $540 phone bill for his cell phone for the past month, I finally said enough and confiscated his cell phone OVER YOUR OBJECTIONS.
“You demanded repeatedly that I return it to him. You felt I was being too hard on the boy, which made you very popular with Adam and made me look very bitchy…. When Adam stole $100 out of my wallet…then lied and said Eli or Gabe took it, adding that I was ‘paranoid,’ a term for me he got from you, you supported Adam. You did ask me to tell my side of the story as if I were one of the kids as you have been used to doing….
“You are going to have to set selfish concerns aside and do what is best for the boys.”
On November 27, Gabriel was on a flight for San Francisco and Susan followed by car the next day. Susan was returning to Orinda and to Felix, the man she held responsible for her lifelong misery. Diary entries revealed that the fighting between the couple escalated once she returned to California, and by the end of 2001, Felix had moved out of the house and into a one bedroom apartment.
Nevertheless, the two continued to squabble over money and the payments he owed her. “Meetings with you tend to end badly with threats from you,” she wrote on February 18, 2002. “Your attorney has my phone number. We can communicate through attorneys…. With respect to financial support: your continued support of this family is not contingent upon my persuading the children to see you, my talking to you, or being ‘nice’ to you, or the children’s being ‘nice’ to you.
“You are responsible for supporting the children through college.…I am reducing expenses as much as possible. I have let my cleaning lady go. The boys and I are taking care of the home together. I cannot af
ford to give Adam an allowance of $100 per week, which I have been doing while he is at college. Adam has gotten a job, as you know. You are legally and ethically responsible for this payment…. Should you continue to shirk your responsibilities, I intend to take legal action against you.”
The scenario was familiar. Felix’s first wife, Sharon Mann, had written similar letters during their divorce, especially in regard to his supposed inability to pay tuition for their son, Andrew, then a freshman at Tufts University. It is interesting that, like his first divorce, Felix’s marriage to Susan was ending after exactly twenty years of marriage, the very year his eldest child, Adam, was a freshman at UCLA.
On February 26, Susan typed what appeared to be a suicide note to her sons that seemed more an introductory lesson in how to invest in real estate—counseling them to consult an attorney before taking any major steps and urging them not to have any rental properties in low-income areas:
Dear Boys
I want to leave you with an explanation for my actions so that you do not make the mistake of blaming yourselves for what has happened.
In the letter, Susan reiterated the abuse she suffered as a child and the abuse she suffered by their father when she was a girl:
I married your father believing that I was in love with him. From time to time, it seemed as if I had forgotten something, and I would begin to remember what he had done, as well as the horror of my childhood that I had put away….
After years of being blamed for every mishap in our lives, after threats to take you away from me and have me confined to a mental hospital, I attempted suicide last year believing that perhaps your dad could do what he threatened to do….
Susan reassured her sons that she loved and admired them, noting their many talents and attributes:
The series of misfortunes that have dogged our lives just leaves me tired…. It is through no fault of yours that I have decided to give up. I just need to rest.
In wanting to leave her children with some guidance after her death, Susan outlined some advice they could follow: