Kirsten Mickelwait - The Ghost Marriage: A Memoir

The Ghost Marriage

Copyright 2021, Kirsten Mickelwait

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Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-030-7

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-031-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020923322

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For my parents, Kenneth and Helen Mickelwait, who taught me to use my words
And for my children

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

I t was a fine day for a funeral. The January sky was clear, and the pale winter sun warmed our heads as we stood around the tiny grave. Who gets cremated and buried, anyway?

The family gathered under the awning facing the priest. I should have joined them there because, technically, I was familymy nearly adult daughter and son were the children of the deceased. But so much had happened between their dad and me, I stood instead off to the side by the small group of friends who had come to St. Helena for the funeral.

Into your hands, O Lord, we humbly entrust our brother Stephen, the priest said. In this life you embraced him with your tender love; deliver him now from every evil and bid him enter eternal rest.

Bronte wept quietly. Amory stood ashen-faced and fought back tears. He had been their fatherof course they still loved him. But my eyes were dry.

The old order has passed away, the priest said. Welcome him, then, into paradise, where there will be no sorrow, no weeping or pain, but the fullness of peace and joy with your Son and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.

The old order has passed away, I thought. Has it? How can I know for sure? Steve Beckwith and I had shared twenty-six years together. First there was the bliss of courtship, then the contentment of marriage and the love of parenthood. Then anger, spite, unforgivable damage. He had spent the last five years trying to destroy me. What I didnt yet know was that our relationship wasnt over. He still had things to say.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the priest intoned.

Everyone crossed themselves.

Amen.

I didnt kill him. But he would have told you different.

I t was the fall of 1985 and I had just spent a year in Rome, working illegally as a tour guide and chasing la dolce vita. Id managed, barely, to afford a crumbling apartment on the top floor of a quattrocento palazzo in the historic center. Id had a decent boyfriendsomeone with a real job, not one of those sweet-smelling lotharios who strutted the piazzas looking for female tourists to seduce. In my spare time I explored every wrinkle of the Eternal City, its heroic statues, its ancient stones. But after a year of living this fantasy, I finally understood that Id never have a real life there. Rome, as it turned out, was for Romans. I was thirty and I wanted an adults life. I needed to go home and start a legitimate career. And, after a lifetime of ambivalence about marriage and children, I realized that I genuinely wanted both. It was time to grow up.

I returned to California and my future loomed like an ominous cloud. After the year abroad I was starting from scratch, so I temporarily moved back into my parents mid-century Eichler house in Palo Alto and hung my clothes in the closet of my childhood room. Then I spent my days looking for work and apartments in San Francisco and occasionally cooking an Italian meal for my mom and dad. On the heels of a year in Caput Mundi, this felt a bit humbling.

My parents had been incredibly patient with my wanderlust. They themselves had married late for their generation and didnt have children until they were thirty-five. In the days before my flight to Italy, theyd remained diplomatically silent about my finances, my professional future, and the mystery of whether theyd ever see me again. But now my father seemed to have reached the end of his tolerance. You know, by the time your mother and I were your age, we were married, he blurted out one day. You need to think about settling down before its too late.

Your age? Too late? What had happened to my liberal parents, the original what color is your parachute thinkers? Suddenly I was living on the set of Father Knows Best. My twenties had been a festival of career building, international travel, and short-term relationships. It had been a decade defined by unfettered freedom and perpetual fun. Clearly, the party was over.

Helen and Ken Mickelwait had modeled a perfect marriage for me and my younger sister, Ingrid. Their relationship was built on shared interestshiking in the high Sierras, folk dancing, intellectual pursuitsas well as mutual trust, respect, and affection. Looking back, I see what cool people they really were. There were always book clubs and discussion groups, dinner parties with ethnic foods, outreach-based church activities, dancing lessons. When my sister and I were well into elementary school, my mom earned her teaching credential and became the director of a nursery school, and Dad was fine with the fact that she no longer had dinner on the table by five oclock. They seemed to adore each other and to understand what a good marriage required: patience, tolerance, flexibility, and communication.

They made it look so easy, Id always assumed that Id have a marriage like the one they had. But I was also dazzled by glamour and passion, and a year in Italy did nothing to disabuse me of wanting them. I decided that when I married, Id have the comfort and stability of my parents marriage, plus the dramatic sizzle of big romance.

Within a few months, I found a beautiful little second-floor flat in the outer Richmond district of San Francisco. I set myself up as a freelance publicist and marketing writer and was making ends meet, barely. By August, it had been eight months since Id returned from Rome and, aside from a book club and an occasional meal out with female friends, my social life was dead. That wasnt all badsince Id left for Europe, the AIDS epidemic had hit the city hard. Suddenly life felt serious.

Later that month, I attended a friends wedding at the Pavilion of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. The big white Victorian greenhouse looked like spun sugar, and the technicolor flora of orchids, lilies, and tuberous begonias was the perfect backdrop for Joyce and her handsome new husband, a former acting student, to say their vows.

I admired all the beautiful specimensboth floral and humanand piled my plate with canaps. The crowd was largely peopled with those Id worked with at the American Conservatory Theater before Id left for Europe: actors, acting students, and theater staff. Amanda, with whom Id worked in the marketing and development office, sidled up to me, her plate equally loaded with food. Across the room shed spotted Richarda budding actor who had wooed her and then unceremoniously dumped her for someone elseand was strategically placing herself out of his line of sight.