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Would their affection take the turn theyd described in a song they wrote together in 1953?
I used to think how pure it is, / This friendship weve made.
/ But now Im not so sure it is.
/ Somethings changed and Im afraid.
As I cleared the decks, he was the last man standing.
(Well, the last but one.)
Hal and I were now just colleagues; my weekday captains paradise with Boston Jack had run its course.
I even managed to put a full stop to the madness with Marshall, or at least a semicolon.
Ive found someone Im very involved with, I said.
Oh, and I suppose you dont care that I now have cancer of the lip?
I didnt, in fact.
But if Marshall was too blitzed to notice my engagement, Steve wasnt.
For him, no one I got involved with was ever good enough.
Actually, he wasnt any of those things.
The only thing wrong with Paul wasnt something wrong with him; it was something wrong with me.
I could hear the party-game music winding down, and all I wanted was a good-enough chair.
People get married for worse reasons.
But also for better ones.
Seventy thousand acres gives you room to think, and sheep provide the right chewing-it-over mood.
What can I say?
Id always loved him.
He either had to love me back or finally let me go.
You know how to do that.
I didnt expect him to.
I was sure I had scared him off for good.
Meanwhile, I rehearsed my show about the second-rate princess who is desperate for a husband.
But when I got to New York for the NBC taping, Steve called and said, Lets talk.
I didnt talk much; he did.
He never used the M-word and neither did I.
But thats what it was intended to be: a marriage, at least of the trial variety.
We gave ourselves a year, to start when I got back from London again, afterMattressopened.
I know what you are saying:Mary, dont!
Had I not just freed myself from this sort of thing with my first husband?
I was a patsy in that marriage.
Here I would be what?
The follier half of a folie a deux?
And what would Steve be?
Even if I loved him, and I did, what was in it for him?
So I clamped my ears shut to thehurricane bellsringing everywhere and decided I would give it a go.
But the omens along the way were immediately unfavorable.
First omen: Paul Heller.
Even I knew enough not to write that off as jealousy.
Second omen: London, whereMattressopened to 17 count em, 17 horrifying reviews.
And maybe, too, the Brits didnt appreciate our humor.
as if Id asked him to eat the leg of a piano.
His plan was that I should haul myself to Manhattan.
So thats what I did.
I cabbed home from the airport, fixed my hair, and met up with Steve.
But I didnt give up, either.
and Id say, Sure, even if I wasnt.
I dont know what the hell he thought I was doing there.
Which begs the question:Didwe love each other?
Can one beg an answer?
He wasnt in love with me, certainly, and I wasnt really physically attracted to him.
I just loved him, thoroughly enough for nothing else to matter.
Do you not believe in that?
Have you never seenCarousel?
So we would get into the same bed, side by side, frozen with fear.
We just lay there.
We didnt discuss anything; we didnt do anything.
If we touched, it was en passant.
The whole thing was wildly uncomfortable.
I guess eventually we went to sleep.
It was so humiliating.
I cant believe either of us put ourselves through that.
And yet it kept happening.
Was there anything satisfying about the arrangement?
It was too fraught with what I assume was revulsion on his part, if not on mine.
We just kept reoccupying this strange purgatory.
All the guilt of sinning with none of the pleasure.
We have to set things up ahead of time, make specific plans.
/ Nina hid her extra hair.
/ Kimmy hid herself and forgot just where.
That was pretty accurate.
But the new line didnt help.
Instead of calling to make specific plans to spend the night together, he stopped inviting me entirely.
I would call him instead, and thats when he began to be resentful.
What I wanted wasnt his concern nor, apparently, that of his shrink.
But if I was a pawn, I wasnt just Steves.
Marshall, my work husband, was in full undermining mode.
Sometime that fall he decided to disabuse me of whatever illusions I still harbored about Steves heterosexual potential.
Guess who was at the gayest of gay parties I went to last night?
he said one day while we were working.
His motive was transparent: to punish me for not choosing him.
But he wasnt lying about Steve.
To prove it to myself I pulled a little trick.
On nights I wasnt staying over, Id call him after going to the theater or dinner together.
The service always picked up.
I didnt confront him.
I just said, Steve, this isnt working, is it?
And he said, No, its not.
Im not sure he would have known how to call it off himself.
He was probably looking for a kind way to unhook the fish.
Thats me all over: The fish did it for him.
Excerpted fromSHY: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers,by Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green.
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Copyright 2022 by Mary Rodgers Guettel Family LLC.
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