The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [273]
The advent of Astrid caused an upheaval in Buffett’s other relationships. The unusual triangle clashed with Leila’s religious tenets and her sense of public propriety—although of course she had little contact with and no influence on her son. Peter, on the other hand, knew his father was reaching out for companionship. He had been raised to take the remarkable in stride, and thought little of it. Howie was bewildered. To Susie Jr., it meant the classic stepmother problem: a barrier between her and her father and the problem of accepting that anyone besides her mother could be good enough for him. To Gladys Kaiser, Warren’s chief protector, who guarded the office door, answered his phone, and handled his—and now Big Susie’s—money, Astrid’s arrival meant an additional level of stress, which she resented.3
Susie herself was shocked. This wasn’t what she had had in mind when she stressed to her husband that they both had needs. In her mind, Warren’s dependence on her was absolute; how could he need a relationship with anyone else? But it might have been predicted. Warren had searched his whole life for the perfect Daisy Mae, and whatever he wanted, Astrid did: buy the Pepsi, do the laundry, take care of the house, give him head rubs, cook the meals, answer the telephone, and provide all the companionship he needed. Astrid never told him what to do and asked for nothing in return except to be with him. The previous Daisy Mae, Big Susie, had fled Omaha partly to escape this endless well of neediness. As she adjusted to the shock, she came to accept the relationship, which did make her new life easier. Susie, however, was possessive by nature. No matter how she divided her own attention, she did not really want Warren to divide his. And thus it was Susie’s expectations—not Warren’s—that would come to define all of their roles.
The pieces of Buffett’s life began to come back together into some sort of coherent whole. But he had been shocked into realizing the truth of Susie’s insistence that sitting in a room making money was no way to spend a life; he began to see what he had missed. While he was friendly enough with his kids, he hadn’t really gotten to know them. The reality behind the jokes (“Who is that? That’s your son”4) meant that he would spend the next few decades trying to repair these relationships. Much of the damage could not be undone. At age forty-seven, he was just beginning to take stock of his losses.5
Warren, who placed a high value on honesty, was perfectly open about living with Astrid. Everybody knew (except Doc Thompson). Both Susie and Astrid, however, remained closemouthed about the situation, saying merely that they liked each other. Warren made only one public statement: “If you knew the people involved, you’d see that it suited all of us quite well.” That was true, at least if compared to the alternatives. In this sense and others, the situation bore a resemblance to the life of Warren’s idol, Ben Graham.
In the mid-1960s, Graham had proposed a novel arrangement to his wife, Estey, in which he would live half the year with his deceased son Newton’s former girlfriend, Marie Louise Amingues, or Malou—ML, as she was called by the family—and half with Estey. Marriage was a concept that Graham had always honored more in the breach than in reality, but Estey had her limits, and had reached them. Ever since she said no, the Grahams had been separated but they never divorced. Ben and ML were in La Jolla and spent part of the year in Aixen-Provence. Estey lived in Beverly Hills. Ben felt perfectly friendly toward Estey, and ML was content to live without marriage.6
Graham had succeeded in maintaining both relationships in name only, however, and Buffett was not trying to emulate him. Buffett did not want two wives; for him it was a real strain to explain the relationships.