That brought me up short. “Man,” I thought, “I don’t mind getting fired from a good job, but I can’t get fired from a job this tacky.” So I cleaned up my act, became prompt, innovative, a real dynamo. They came to love me. I started thinking,
Maybe there’s some future for me in the law
.
It was not such a leap. An actor seeks validation from his audience. An attorney gets his validation from judge and jury. (Many trial lawyers, I’ve concluded in the years since, are frustrated actors.) I took stock of my abilities. I had a good memory. I could write well. I could think on my feet. So I got a book from UCLA Law School that was supposed to help you prepare for the LSATs. On the night before the test I looked through it. Then I went out and got drunk. Maybe I wanted to sabotage myself, or perhaps I wanted to give myself an excuse if I failed. Anyway, they give that test early in the morning. I stumbled in, three sheets to the wind, barely able to pencil in a blurred succession of circles. Somehow I did well enough to be accepted by Loyola and Southwestern in Los Angeles and Hastings in San Francisco.
Gaby was threatened by the whole idea of my going into law. He refused even to consider the prospect of my moving, or our moving, to San Francisco, so Hastings was out of the question. His objections were just enough to undermine my confidence. I put off sending in my applications until it was too late for Loyola. Southwestern accepted me for the fall of 1973.
I grabbed onto law school like a drowning woman clings to flotsam. It was to become my salvation. Law school took more effort than undergraduate work. I had to study. I had to memorize. I actually had to attend classes. I found that I was well suited to analytical thinking. Briefing cases came easily to me. You take a case decision of fifty pages written in the densest legalese and have to figure out: What’s the issue? What’s the rule? What’s the conclusion? I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of taking something very complicated and reducing it to its essence.
I cannot say that the law loomed before me as some mystical, meaningful vocation. A sense of principle did not kick in until a few years down the line, when I realized my real calling lay in the D.A.‘s office. But from the start, studying law served as an absorbing and invigorating counterpoint to my life with Gaby.
The deeper I got into law, the more I withdrew from him. We continued living together—we were going on five years. But the screaming matches and the physical skirmishes ended. The reason was simple. I was no longer really there.
Sensing that I was distracted for long periods, Gaby’d ask me, “Where’s your mind? Where are you?”
I’d always had the ability to distance myself at will from reality. During our first year together, I recall, I had an unwholesome penchant for romance novels, real bodice-rippers like
Lust in the Weeds
. I read them voraciously. And I lived in a dream world.
But now, my emotional disengagement from Gaby took on a different quality. It was convenient, in a way. He liked me best when I was docile and submissive. I’d made that discovery the first year of our relationship, when I’d gotten a terrible cold. I was weak and exhausted and Gaby couldn’t have been sweeter to me. He was at my side almost constantly. He tended to my every need and even carried me to the bathroom. My dependence galvanized him into chivalry. Subconsciously, I dragged out my illness to extend that peaceful interlude as long as I could. The problem was, I couldn’t stay sick forever.
I remember so many nights I’d come home from a study session or the library and peek into the bedroom to see if he was there. If he wasn’t, I’d hop into bed as fast as I could in hopes that I’d be asleep before he got home.
As I look back on it all now, I realize that I was suffering from a true depression. I was unhappy with Gaby, but my perspective was so distorted that I couldn’t imagine being happy with anyone else. I repeated to myself all those bromides that I’m sure a lot of couples repeat to convince themselves that they should stay together rather than get out and look for something better. Like: “There’s no such thing as the perfect mate.” “You can’t find it all in one person.” “You always have to compromise.” What I didn’t understand at the time was that in order for compromise to work, both parties have to be essentially compatible. They shouldn’t be spending 90 percent of their time together brawling. There should be something in each that enhances the other. Still, whatever it was that Gaby and I had, I thought it was the best I deserved, the best I could hope to get from life.
Even now, I’m hard put to explain why I married him. I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of what I’ve done in my personal life has been impulsive, has seemed to run counter to the dictates of common sense. But in its own weird way, getting married made sense at the time. If we were having trouble, the thing to do was to bind ourselves closer to each other so we’d have to get along. Right?
Well, no, actually.
Still, Gaby was a pragmatist. He needed a green card and he’d get one if he married me. Since we were obviously going to stay together, didn’t it make sense to do it in a way that would give him citizenship? I saw the logic of that, though Gaby knew how down I was on marriage in general. I agreed on one condition—that no one but the government would know about it. We’d run out to Las Vegas and get a piece of paper and keep our lips buttoned. He agreed. And that’s how we got married the first time. It was just a formality.
Gaby kept his end of the bargain. Our secret never leaked. I never told anyone, and no one ever knew—not even my brother, who was my closest confidant.
A year or so passed this way and Gaby started to talk about doing it properly. The idea of a wedding seemed to make him happy, so I gave in. On November 6, 1976, we were married again. My father’s father, a very devout Jew, came over from Israel, and for his benefit we had an Orthodox wedding in my parents’ home. I remember standing at the altar, nearly delirious with a 102-degree fever, telling myself, “This is not happening.” The rabbi’s words washed over me. I was barely conscious.
We spent our three-day honeymoon in—where else?—Las Vegas. On our first night, we went out to dinner at a swanky restaurant. It dawned upon me that we were alone. Really alone. There were no distractions. No backgammon cronies. No games to jump into as soon as dinner was over. We gave the waiter our order, and when he walked away I looked across the table at Gaby. I experienced a moment of absolute emptiness, realizing that I had nothing to say to him.
My God
, I thought.
What have I done?
This man, whom I had publicly vowed to cherish, etc., till death do us part… this man felt no closer to me than the waiter who’d just taken our order.
I wandered through casinos on Gaby’s arm. I laughed too loudly, played the part of the happy newlywed. When the strain became too much, I laid claim to a chaise longue by our hotel pool and drank piña coladas until I was stuporous.
I continued to be the dutiful camp follower. Whenever Gaby had an out-of-town tournament, I’d bring my law books and study while he played. One week before my final exams, he had a big tournament in Las Vegas. Again, I brought my books and spent all day alone in our hotel room studying before I went out at night and joined him for the tournament. You would hardly think that those conditions would have made for distinguished academic achievement. But I made the dean’s list that year. On the surface, everything seemed to be working out fine.
It’s just that our marriage was hollow at the core. I didn’t care if Gaby saw other women, as long as he left me alone. I got a clue to the depth of my own disengagement when a woman called the house one day asking for him. The tone of her voice made it clear that she was no business associate. I asked her if she wanted to leave her name, and she hung up. I had every right to be angry. Not only was he cheating on me, but he’d had the gall to give his girlfriend his home number. But I didn’t care. I truly did not care.
We had some good times left. After I took the bar exam, we treated ourselves to a trip to Europe. I’d been studying nonstop for two months and during that time we hadn’t even gone to see a movie together. Gaby wanted us to take a real vacation, as opposed to the usual backgammon jaunt. I’d been going to law school on a federally insured student loan and I had some of that money left over. We splurged on a week-long trip to Italy and France.
After those two months of sensory deprivation studying for the bar, I was exhausted and ready for a blowout. The sights and smells of southern Europe were intoxicating. I couldn’t do or see enough.
Gaby had a way of going up and talking to people. He could speak a little Italian, a little French. He regaled strangers with his backgammon exploits until they were eating out of his hand. Anyway, he struck up a conversation with the conductor of the sleeping car we took from France to Italy. He was a young guy with a sweet face and large warm brown eyes. When we arrived in Rome, the conductor took us home to have dinner with his mother. And he offered to act as our unofficial tour guide. On one outing he took us to a topless beach. I thought it was an absolute riot. I’ve never been the inhibited type. In fact, shortly after we got there, I shed my own bikini top. Gaby put his arm around my waist, and our Italian friend snapped the picture. I was happy and smiling in that shot.
When we returned from Europe, I withdrew into myself again. Gaby and I lived more or less separate lives. I got a job as an associate lawyer with the firm I’d been clerking for. And there I discovered the healing powers of work.
I like to think that having a real career awakened some semblance of self-esteem and an independent identity that gave me the strength to confront the truth. Perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe it was just the growing-up process, which would have happened regardless of whether I’d found a profession. Whatever the reason, I grew stronger. More confident. I liked myself a little better. And I realized then that my days with Gaby were numbered.
I agonized about leaving him. I knew I should just pick up and go, but I was hamstrung by guilt. Just as my career was taking off, his fortunes were taking a downturn. The backgammon mania was subsiding. It became clear that gambling would not provide him with an identity—or even a living—very much longer. All he’d ever been was a backgammon pro. A teacher at best; a hustler at worst. His entire image of himself was built around being pretty and having a fast, flashy lifestyle. His looks were going. His money was going. He was depressed. We spent long nights discussing his childhood, his past, and his uncertain future. I knew that if I was ever going to find it in my heart to leave him, I was going to have to get him back on his feet. But I’d suffered from bouts of depression myself. And trying to deal with Gaby’s problems left me feeling overwhelmed.
Gaby needed professional help. I begged him to see a psychiatrist, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Then I remembered something from my days in Greenwich Village. The managers of the leather shop I’d worked for had been Scientologists. They’d talk to me now and then about their beliefs. The church gave them very specific suggestions for learning to be assertive and confident. A lot of that teaching struck me as pure common sense, but it seemed to provide them with a source of strength.
As it happened, one of Gaby’s star pupils was into Scientology in a big way. His name was Bruce Roman and he was one of the few genuinely good guys I met on the backgammon circuit. Bruce was a tall man whose athletic build and curly blond hair contrasted strikingly with Gaby’s dark good looks. When they went out together, women would stop dead in their tracks and stare.
Bruce was passionate about backgammon. He just couldn’t get enough. He initially gravitated toward Gaby in order to learn the game, but over time the teaching relationship grew into a close friendship. When Gaby refused therapy, I turned to Bruce for help. He’d already noticed the change in Gaby, though he didn’t realize the extent of his distress. At my urging, Bruce suggested to Gaby that he might look into Scientology.
At first, Gaby was reluctant. His attitude was basically “What can they tell me that I don’t already know?” I knew that he didn’t like the idea of being treated like someone’s crazy aunt. So I offered to go check it out with him. That idea appealed. He agreed to enroll in a few courses and we went together to sign up for the first class.
At first Gaby was gung-ho. We’d go a few nights a week, although we ended up taking different classes. For me the experience was interesting, though not earthshaking. Scientology, as I saw it, was really kind of a ragbag of truisms from the world’s great religions. But Gaby’s spirits seemed to be improving. After only three or four weeks, however, I heard that he was close to getting thrown out. Apparently, he’d been hitting on the women in his classes and they didn’t appreciate it. They complained to the supervisors, and Gaby was put on notice that he’d have to clean up his act or get out.
That did it for me. I realized right then and there that I couldn’t waste my life if he wasn’t going to get serious about his.
It was around that time that I met the man who would become my second husband.
I’d gone down to the church’s administrative offices to sign up for a new set of courses. A pleasant young man was assigned to help me. His name was Gordon Clark.
“What’s your job?” he asked me.
I told him I was a lawyer. I wanted courses that would stress interpersonal relations. I was looking for something that would help me to size people up and evaluate them from an attorney’s point of view.
Gordon cracked a joke or two about lawyers, something I’d gotten used to during the year since I’d passed the bar. The conversation wound its way around to ourselves. I learned that Gordon was an officer in the church. He lived right in church housing and worked twelve- to fourteen-hour days. He lived, breathed, and ate Scientology. He also seemed very upbeat, not just about Scientology, but about life in general. I responded to his energy and enthusiasm and to what I took at the time to be spirituality. I came away from our first meeting feeling lighter than I had in years. It was just the way a person should feel, I told myself. Happier, lighter, focused upon the betterment of the self instead of on an unending quest for big scores and fast times.