A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [34]
By then, Diane was afraid to leave—she feared for her life. It was obvious to me that she felt under siege, fragile, defenseless. She still functioned at a high level in her law practice, but outside work, her self-esteem lay in shambles. Bill had redefined who she was and made her feel as if she were the ugliest, most unworthy person in the world. She could not envision her life beyond surviving her immediate despair, and she had to fight the scourge of depression—the sleepless nights, the loss of appetite, the draining of all life’s pleasures—each day.
Her personal trauma was not evident at the Halloween party. She glided around the room, talked easily with guests, and laughed at my lame jokes. In retrospect, she was a supreme example of the way people lock their secrets away so deeply, buried beneath layers of shame. Diane had been married for six mostly miserable years, and Debbie—one of the few people in whom she confided—had just about prevailed on her to leave Bill once and for all, even helping to arrange another place for her to live. Now Debbie was arranging a new love life.
In addition to seeing a beautiful, capable woman, I sensed there was something deep underneath: a tender heart, a beautiful soul. Our courtship became a slow journey of sharing and of gradually gaining trust. Maybe falling in love is always like that. But instead of falling for perfection, for an idealized version of what romance should be, I was learning to look past flaws, real and perceived, past the deep apprehensions that Diane brought to the relationship. At some level, Diane was reassured that I wanted to spend time with her. It contradicted all of the negativity and self-doubt that her husband had filled her with. I thought she was remarkable and said so. Slowly, she began to believe me. It is also true that I was learning to love in a more mature way, not with all the sweet-sounding harps and addled sighs and sentimental valentines, but in the slow, intimate, unconditional way that lasts. Each of us made the other better.
Bill did not go quietly. Diane continued to believe that he was going to try to kill her. Though he did not know where she lived, he knew where she worked, and he stalked her there. Every receptionist on every floor in her building had his photograph and would call security when he showed up. She felt safe in her office and with me, but hardly anywhere else.
I was eager for her sake and the sake of our future together for her to make the divorce final once and for all. Ironically, on a weekend getaway to San Francisco, it was Diane who asked if we should take our relationship to the proverbial “next level.” I told her candidly that it was hard to know where it could go until her marriage was resolved.
Diane finally hired a lawyer to draw up divorce papers, but she did not want the Los Angeles County sheriff to serve them formally because she feared that Bill would be even more provoked to seek retribution. So she kept the papers in her purse and hoped to find the right time to deliver them herself. Her hand was forced when some joint financial matter came up. She reluctantly called him at his office at the Los Angeles Times, where he was an advertising rep, and spoke to his assistant, who didn’t even know that he had separated from his wife.
The assistant said that Bill was in the hospital, having a medical procedure. Perfect, she ruefully thought. Assuming that he’d be in no position to hurt her, Diane decided this would be the time to give him the divorce papers. At the hospital, however, a doctor said that he had operated on Bill to remove hemorrhoids but had then discovered that Bill had advanced leukemia. He had six to nine months to live. When Diane saw Bill, he asked her to come home and take care of him. She could not do that, she told him—nor could she bring herself to serve him with the divorce