IN SEARCH OF FAME

Wife No. 1

The critic asked me if I would say something about Bob. My first reaction was no. It has been years since we parted company—years since we saw each other last. But I do know things about Bob. The critic insisted, hoping I might shed some light on Robert's disappearance and his past. (I almost forgot that he had turned his identity into that of Robert A. Michael.)

Robert had always been called Bob. But on his applications to graduate schools, of course he used Robert as his first name. Since he had no middle name, where the graduate application forms asked for one he simply put the letter A. His initials, quite by accident and without forethought, came to be RAM. These initials would hold ever-greater meaning for Robert as his career unfolded. Robert applied to graduate schools that were all located on the East Coast and protected by ivy. Once enrolled in graduate school, he thought Bob gave away his Midwest origins, and he began to use his given name Robert, the name everyone now knows him by.

I didn't know what an architect was. There were none in my family and none among my family's friends and acquaintances. When Robert said on one of our first dates that he wanted to become an architect, I registered no feeling at all. I had no knowledge of what his profession would mean to our lives. None whatsoever. As it turns out, Robert didn't have much of an idea either.

Robert and I were sweethearts. The classic Eisenhower era kind where it didn't make much difference what you wished for because everyone was wishing for the same thing, a spouse, a house, a car, and kids. I wished for Bob senior year in high school, and I followed him to college. Well before we were married, he became wedded to his studies. He wanted to be an architect. We dated. We made plans. We talked about marriage. Bob was going to go off to graduate school to continue his architectural studies. But what about me, Bob? There was no reason for him to take me with him to Harvard and its Graduate School of Design, the GSD. Unless, unless I got pregnant. Slam bang thank you, ma'am. I wore no diaphragm that one night and I knew. Yes, I knew. Remember that this was before the pill. The marriage was a hurried affair, just like the night I got pregnant. Nobody had planned this except me.

When Bob was in his teens, he expressed an interest in becoming an artist and began taking classes at the Art Institute. His parents decided that this was a big mistake, especially as his instructors kept encouraging him to do more with his obvious talent for drawing. It was Bob's father who encouraged him to use his artistic talent to become an architect, "a profession," he said, presuming that this "profession" could assure him a living income, frightened that Bob's talent would turn him into a starving artist. To seal the deal, Robert's father gave Robert the book The Fountainhead as a birthday present. The Fountainhead had been on the best-seller list getting mixed reviews, but Robert's father, even though he had not read the book himself, understood that it portrayed the architect in heroic fashion, just like the artists Robert most admired.

Mother was surprised when I announced the July wedding. It was already April. Father suspected something but didn't say anything. For Dad it was one fewer daughter to deal with, as he would announce inappropriately at the rehearsal dinner. Luckily I had two sisters who were married prior to me. The routine was down pat; Mom took over from there. Robert didn't care. His sight was focused on graduate school. He accepted that marriage was going to be an inconvenient interlude in his quest for fame. This was the first time I saw him get depressed. It seemed that this big move to graduate school with a wife in tow was something he hadn't bargained for.

"Let's get it over with and start our life," Robert declared. By now I was calling him Robert at his insistence. He thought first I had to get a job. "You've got a degree in library science, and Boston is full of libraries. No problem."

Nobody in my family did the math, counting the foreshortened period between marriage and the birth of Robert Jr. Free love was late coming to the Midwest, but it got there fortunately just in time for me, a nice middle-class white girl, to be forgiven for having developed an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. I thought Bob and I were in love; the classic "boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love" kind of love, just as we were taught. It was pretty uncomplicated, except for Bob's quest for fame. That I believed would be a passing fancy once we had a family.

It wasn't our brains that attracted us to each other. Bob had hung out with an artsy crowd as an undergraduate before applying to graduate school. My best friends would be called nerds today. Opposites attract; maybe that was it. We had read some of the same books, including that damned book by Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead. He knew that I was not the Dominique Wyland that Rand created to be Howard Roark's lover and mistress. Bob loved that book, and I hated it. Bob imagined that he could emulate Howard Roark once he had his graduate degree.

Some people don't really get to know each other until after they are married. We developed our sexuality at the cusp of the sexual revolution. I was a little bit ahead of Bob in that regard, reading Simone de Beauvoir, Friedan, Steinman, and the whole feminist chorus. Men didn't have anything close to those dynamic publicists as references except Hugh Hefner, who warped men's expectations regarding the female body.

Opposites attract? But for how long? Eventually it gets old. It got old for us as careers, work, school, finances, kids, and Bob's ego and ambition all collided inside our marriage. Kids change everything, you know. And to have a kid just wiped out like Robert Jr. was ... that kind of thing just changes your life. Bang. Life isn't the same anymore. And it never can be. There is the guilt. There is just too much of that to go around to be evenly distributed. It changed Bob's life. Mine too, of course. I guess I should say Robert now, because Robert Jr. was a product of Robert Sr. There was never a question of what a male son would be named. It was Robert's way of laying claim to this child conceived out of wedlock. Wedlock. What a strange word.

Robert was really astraight arrow. He felt very guilty that I got pregnant. I never told him that it was a plot on my part. And there...