Page 417 - WhyAsInY

no sMoKe, But fire
The facts and the performance were beyond our ken. I think that our conversation after they left consisted of expressions of amazement, but it did not consist of revisiting circumstances and events to gain a clue, to add some meaning. We had missed any signs. All that we were left with was the lesson that you never know what goes on behind someone else’s door, unless, of course, they share their most private thoughts with you. I don’t believe that it even entered my mind that, years later, we would find ourselves in similar circumstances. Although we could identify with them, I believe that there was nothing threatening that I took away from their divorce.
I’m not so sure, however, that I was not threatened, at least on a subconscious level, by the announcement in late 1982 that Michael and Susan would be splitting up. Phyllis and I were close to Michael and Susan. Again, neither of us had any inkling that their separation would occur, at least as far as I knew, but I know that I did have a strong reac- tion. After their announcement, Susan and I had lunch in New York City, and she explained the breakup to me from her point of view. To her, it had been a long time in coming. To Michael, the split was a total surprise. I recall expressing my anger to Susan during that lunch; I told her that I thought that she had not been forthright with her spouse, that Michael should have been told about her feelings much sooner, and that perhaps they then might have worked things out. (In retrospect, I think that she had somehow unnerved me by tapping into feelings that I didn’t know that I had.)
Apparently, the final straw in their relationship occurred when Susan was marooned on the Hutchinson River Parkway after a minor accident. When she telephoned Michael for help, he would not answer the phone: It was “Shabbat,” and to Michael, who had become increas- ingly observant, that was that. Unfortunately for him, Susan shared the sentiment; for her, that was that as well. Although I thought that what Michael had done (or, more properly, had not done) was absurd, my sympathy was with him.
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