Elizabeth Abbott - Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman

I GREW up knowing about mistresses because my great-grandfather Stephen Adelbert Griggs, an affluent Detroit brewer and municipal politician, maintained what my mother scornfully referred to as a love nest occupied by a series of fancy women. Great-grandmother Minnie Langley had to tolerate this, but she exacted a price: for every diamond Stephen bought his latest mistress, he had to buy one for her. This was how his love nest hatched a glittering nest egg of rings, earrings, brooches and uncut gems, which Minnie bequeathed to her female descendants.

Great-grandfather Stephen walked a well-trodden path. I realized this as I matured and met real mistresses and their lovers. The first, whom I encountered during the summer after my freshman year in university, was a young woman who shared her sometimes exciting but mostly wretched experiences with me. Katerina was an exotic, sloe-eyed East German who fled to West Berlin two weeks before her high school graduation, forfeiting her diploma in exchange for freedom. Kati was a governessactually, an exalted babysitterfor the same family that employed me during summer vacation at their resort hotel in Quebecs Eastern Townships. Despite (perhaps because of) my parents objections, she and I developed a curious sort of intimacy. What they frowned on as fast and cheap, I admired as sophisticatedKatis lean, tanned and flat-chested body proudly exposed by her signature strapless tops; the hennaed rope of hair that swung nearly to her knees; the guttural, heavy accent that transformed me into Elisabess, or Bess for short.

That first summer, Kati was not yet a mistress. In fact, she longed to be a wife and was actually engaged to marry Charles, an RCMP officer who came calling in a long, white Cadillac convertible. But after Charles abruptly called off their wedding, Katis never very stable life fell precipitously apart. Not long after that, I returned to Montreal for my second year of university.

A few months later, Kati resurfaced in my life when she phoned and practically begged me to bring her a bag of groceries. She had money, she explained, but was temporarily bedridden and could not go out shopping. Kati had become the kept woman of a married lawyer who grudgingly supported her in a cramped room sublet from the unfriendly tenant of a shabby apartment. Unexpectedly, she had become pregnant.

I bought Kati the food she requested. My modest gift, it turned out, was all that she had for post-abortion sustenance. She had endured an illegal abortion alone, the abortionist having prudently banned anyone but his clients from his premises. I tried to ease her through the bout of severe depression that followed; shortly thereafter we resumed our very different lives.

Over the years, I saw Kati less and less. The last time was on a lake in Quebecs Laurentian Mountains. She was perched on the bow of a powerboat, her stunning mane loose and whipped by the wind. I called out and waved, and the man at the helm of her boat slowed down and steered over to my smaller craft. Kati seemed startled to see me, and she immediately put her forefinger to her lips as if to forestall my embarrassing her in front of her glamorous companions. I understood, greeted her briefly, then smiled goodbye. I never saw her again, but I heard that she had married and then divorced. For a long time afterward, when anybody spoke about mistresses, an image of Kati came into my mind.

I was living in Haiti when I met Ghislaine Jeudi, the mistress of a man who had returned there after decades in the United States. In New York City, Jerome Constant had made a fortune in the numbers racket. In Port-au-Prince, he reinvented himself as a respectable businessman. Constant had closets full of white linen suits and a locked chest full of gold jewelry, but his finest acquisition, the one that made him happiest, was Ghislaine, his light-skinned, blondish, swaggering and middle-aged mistress. Ghislaine was certainly attractive, and in hungry Haiti her portly girth seemed provocative and sexy. She was also a recent convert to evangelical Christianity, and spouted scriptural aphorisms on every occasion except, of course, when challenged about the morality of her position as the mistress of a married man.

The fact was, Jerome Constant had no intention of divorcing his wife, no matter what reprisals his mistress threatened. Ghislaines tenure was secure only as long as his love for her lasted. Knowing this, she made sure that his investment in her compensated for her insecurity. Besides providing clothes, jewelry and overseas trips, Constant built her a house, contributed heavily to one for her adult daughter and provided bountiful spending money. Though he complained about how much she cost him, the truth was that he adored Ghislaine and was immensely proud of her.

One of her principal attractions was her much-talked-about sexual history. In the early 1960s, Ghislaine had been one of the first of Haitis privileged mulatto women to ally herself with one of dictator Papa Doc Duvaliers Tonton Macoutes, armed thugs who constituted the civilian militia Duvalier had created to protect himself against his own army and other potential enemies. Ghislaine felt no shame, and never apologized for consorting with the savage men who persecuted other mulattos (and anyone else they suspected of opposing their leader-for-life). But no matter how contemptuously others referred to Ghislaine, Constant admired her for her bravado, her notoriety, her beauty and her steadfast (though admittedly far from disinterested) loyalty to him. Even when his health deteriorated and he was robbed of his sexual potency, his union with Ghislaine was too precious to contemplate ending. Her senses flow with my senses was how he explained the bond with his mistress.