To The Manor Born

My ex-husband has become hearty - almost an exact replica of his father. My jaw dropped at the sight of him holding forth in the kitchen of a friend, wine glass in hand, one arm draped over his latest wife, looking all the world like the wildly successful businessman his father had become. His voice drowned out other conversation, his laughter positively thundered though I sensed a false undertone in his expansive smile, he seemed to be in a spotlight of his own design. Gone was the rail-thin, long haired, defiant boy from the 60's, gone the determined, slightly unsure of himself young man from the 70's, gone the independent, older but wiser ad exec of the 80's. This was a stranger - extravagantly well fed, expensively dressed, perfectly groomed. His slim and tailored wife stood by his side, bejeweled and smiling, a poster girl for the junior league with perfect posture, proper shoes and understated makeup. Together, they gave off an aura of wealth, arrogance, dismissiveness, and self appointed royalty. I didn't recognize either of the people they had become and I wasn't comfortable around them.

Some marriages will swallow you whole without the slightest warning. I had married a family and a lifestyle as well as a man and we were a poor fit. I knew this early on, somehow sensing almost from the beginning that I would never quite measure up to the expectations of wealth but believing that geography would keep me safe, trusting that a family kept apart by distance would not be that great a threat. We were young and in love and committed to a path in natural opposition to his family - we rejected their status, their values, their social standing, and their money. We wanted to be ordinary and make a difference in a quiet way. After several years of marriage, we came south, believing that we could maintain our independence and identities within the family. But integrity is no match for power and once back in the south, the seduction took hardly any effort.

It was hard to reconcile the man standing before me - the essence of success and power and condescension - with the boy I had once known and loved for his gentleness and rebel ways and determination never to sell out. The boy who had loved me and kittens, the boy who protested the war and hawked an underground paper on Cambridge street corners, the boy who had loved wearing torn bluejeans and beads and fighting for lost, liberal causes. The boy who had fought his raising for so long had lost the battle. And so I watched him, orating in an overly loud voice, smiling too broadly, reveling in his sense of self and being the center of attention and I grieved for the boy he had been and the man he had become. And I wondered which, if either, was real.