Exeter graveyard
In late October, 1964, my brother and I were surprised by an unannounced visit to the prep school we attended, Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. It turned out not to be a very pleasant surprise. At my father’s behest we strolled out to a cozy little cemetery—my father’s cluelessness knew no bounds—where my brother and I sat on a low tree stump to hear whatever news they had for us. My father, dressed as always in a conservative, bespoke suit, took a seat next to our mom on an ancient marble monument, and in a rare loss for words, looked to her for help. She shook her head. He was on his own. Finally he said, “I’ve met a most lovely woman in New York, whom I know you’ll both like as soon as you meet her. Her name is Cynthia Palmer.” He was patting mom’s leg unconsciously and I think he went on for a while before finally getting up the nerve to say it. “Your mother and I…have decided to get a divorce.”
Stunned silence from us. Maybe my brother fell back on the stump. “I love your mother very much,” he continued, “and we’ll still be very good friends. You’ll no doubt have—”
“Why?” I blurted. “What happened?”
We were so blindsided—they’d hidden the real state of their marriage so well, we’d never even heard a cross word—that this was the only question I could muster. My mother, who was a sweet, kind pushover to the males in her life, sighed and said that sometimes these things happen. This was a time before divorce became commonplace; a time when travelers wore formal attire on airplanes.
Then the kicker: My father looked at his watch, rose, and announced that he had to be back in New York that evening to catch an overnight flight.
“Where are you going?” I asked, wondering why he was leaving us so unceremoniously. A gust of wind sent leaves cartwheeling through the graveyard.
“I’m meeting Cynthia. We’re going on a safari. To Africa.” I looked from him to my mom, saw her expression of obvious pain, and lost it. For the first time in my life I spoke my mind to my father.
“You are without a doubt the most selfish man in the world.” Then I stalked off into the depths of the graveyard, where I sat down on a two-hundred-year-old marker and quietly seethed. My mom came and found me eventually, and we hugged.
“You just made me proud.” Then she smiled. “And I agree with what you said.”
That day was the defining moment in my relationship with my father from then on. I vowed to be nothing like him. I never truly loved or trusted him again, and we warred on and off until the last days of his life.
Our mom stayed on for a few days to give us moral support and talk about the future (“Think of it. You’ll have two houses to live in from now on!”), then returned to Los Angeles and, at the request of my father’s attorney, flew to Juarez to get a divorce while he was away on his precious safari.
What we didn’t learn until many years later was the real reason they showed up at Exeter that day. His new love Cynthia had fed the news of the impending divorce to a New York gossip columnist. My mom, who was strikingly beautiful and a well-known actress in noir films, got a tip from the columnist, called my father in New York and demanded that he meet her at Exeter to break the news to us—before the item ran in the papers and one of our classmates did the honors.
He would have blithely gotten on a plane to Africa, oblivious to the damage left in his wake. Like rolling a grenade down the stairs into a crowded basement, closing the door and walking away.