Ayn Rand and the World She Made - Anne C. Heller [214]
Without providing a truthful explanation, Patrecia asked her husband for a separation in December 1965. Branden’s cousin Allan Blumenthal, acting as Branden’s proxy, passed the word that they should keep their separation secret until the Brandens announced theirs, which they finally did a few weeks later. “We don’t want people to think the two events are related,” Blumenthal told the Scotts. “You know how gossip and rumors start.”
The news of the Brandens’ impending divorce sent shock waves through the concentric circles of Rand’s New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Toronto, and Chicago organizations. Insiders couldn’t believe that Objectivism’s “ideal couple,” as Al Ramrus described the pair, was divided, and dividing. No, there was no one else involved, the Brandens told their family, friends, admirers, and students. “We’re just incompatible,” they said. “We’re just not able to be happy together.” Soon other Rand-centered marriages began to sever, as Roarks and Dominiques took a second look at the Brandens and each other.
In late 1966, almost three years after Branden and Patrecia began sleeping together, the harrowed psychotherapist finally told his estranged wife that he was about to begin a sexual affair with the beautiful young woman. Although he lied about the timing, he was evidently seeking relief from lies; he later wrote that he could barely tolerate the strain of carrying on his double life. Once separated and living apart, he and Barbara fell into a pattern of joining together as allies only when under duress. She urged him to tell Rand—if not about Patrecia, then at least about the impossibility on his part of reigniting a twelve-year-old flame. But when he begged for time, she agreed.
The stakes were high. He was working on his first book in his field, to be published as The Psychology of Self-Esteem. With it, he hoped to make an independent reputation. Rand had introduced him to editors at an NAL affiliate, World Publishing, and they had offered him a contract for the book, sight unseen. She had praised the almost-completed book as a work of genius and had promised to describe it as such in a signed introduction. But the manuscript was running late. “Just wait until [Ayn] writes the introduction,” he implored Barbara during one of their discussions.
On behalf of NBI, he had also assumed a surprisingly large new financial obligation. In summer 1967, a few months after his partial confession to Barbara, he signed a lease on eight thousand square feet of office space one floor below the lobby of the Empire State Building, still the tallest example of engineering prowess in the world. The lease ran for fifteen years, and over that period of time it was likely to cost NBI at least a quarter of a million dollars. Given that the combined income of NBI and its offshoots now exceeded four hundred thousand dollars a year, the lease was affordable on paper, and it struck the business manager of NBI as a good price for the space. But the organization was experiencing its annual summer cash-flow shortfall. Each year, before the arrival of revenues from autumn lecture fees, NBI typically borrowed small amounts from the independent account of The Objectivist to pay for advertising and promotion of fall courses. Although the finances of the magazine, owned by Rand and Branden jointly, and of NBI, owned by Branden alone, were kept strictly separate, Rand didn’t object to these annual interest-bearing loans, which were always paid back in the fall. This year, however, in order to finance a year’s rent in advance, plus furniture