Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Memoir) (2010) by Rhoda Janzen Page A
Authors: Rhoda Janzen
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what he meant, and he'd be off on one of his furious discursive tirades, angrily citing Durkheim, Nietzsche, Foucault, Gramsci, Hegel. As a humanities grad student, of course I'd read many of the big names in the Western canon, but Nick had read theory and philosophy I'd come across only in footnotes. You'd think that a man tortured by a relentless onslaught of ideas would seek refuge in academia, which has historically functioned as a safe haven for freethinking mavericks. Strangely, Nick voiced nothing but contempt for the ivory tower, perhaps because he himself had never struggled to connect with people, as so many academics have. He thought that in general scholars were mediocre thinkers with limited social skills and a profound need for external validation. (I know I am!)
At that point we had been married five years. Nick's mood instabilities had been difficult but manageable, with no lasting consequences. But this shift was different. Cycling into a manic period, Nick began to sidestep his seminars, despite exceptional feedback on his academic work. He didn't go to school. He went shopping.
Chicago, dear reader, is a luscious place if you have a distinct sense of style (just as Los Angeles is the perfect place if you want to copy someone else's style). Nick, distinct to his toes, encountered no obstacles whatsoever between his style and my credit cards. I had been raised on the notion that when a man cleaves unto a wife, he shall become one with her credit. It had never occurred to me to construct a marriage any other way.
One day Nick came home with a pair of Yohji Yamamoto gloves that had cost $385. This was in 1996, mind you. Granted, these gloves were wondrously conceived: over an interior pebbled leather glove, a leather mitt unzipped and folded back into a gauntlet of sorts. It was just the kind of witty sartorial gesture that a dandified socialite might affect, very Oscar Wilde, if Oscar Wilde would have ditched the lily and firmed up the tummy and got full-sleeve tatts designed by the famed Los Angeles artist Bob Roberts. Nick wasn't a dandified socialite, though. He was a grad student. We were supposed to be living on the ten bucks an hour I was making as a receptionist at the law firm.
"They're great gloves," I remember saying slowly. "But Nick, they cost three hundred eighty-five dollars . That's more than half a month's rent."
"You don't get it, babe," said Nick. "I will be wearing these gloves for the rest of my life. They are a bargain at three hundred eighty-five dollars!"
That was just the beginning. Soon I longed for the days when he had merely been spending $385 on a pair of gloves. As Nick's mood spiraled down into the blackest depression, he began drinking heavily, destroying furniture, fouling our compatibility with cruelties he couldn't take back. Like many women, I can take a hearty string of expletives, but Nick really knew how to go for the jugular. He had a knack for it. I didn't mind the broken fans, the amputated chairs, the shattered glass, the holes in the wall. I minded the hurtful things he said to me.
Perhaps because I am a writer, or perhaps because I mean what I say, I attributed the same intentionality of expression to Nick. I thought that at some level he must have meant the terrible things he said. He reserved the right to retract or dismiss things he had said previously, and that was hard for me. He thought I was a small-minded literalist to put so much weight on the spoken word-typical of a German background, he teased. Whenever I was coldly logical, verbally precise, or mindlessly conformist, he'd do his impression of a Nazi, squaring his shoulders, extending his right hand in stiff salute.
I have no way of knowing if I am an oversensitive princess. Maybe I am. Maybe I should have had the wisdom and the self-esteem to shrug and say, "Sticks and stones, mister!" But since I'm now revealing deeply personal things, I might as well confess the kinds of comments that hurt me
At that point we had been married five years. Nick's mood instabilities had been difficult but manageable, with no lasting consequences. But this shift was different. Cycling into a manic period, Nick began to sidestep his seminars, despite exceptional feedback on his academic work. He didn't go to school. He went shopping.
Chicago, dear reader, is a luscious place if you have a distinct sense of style (just as Los Angeles is the perfect place if you want to copy someone else's style). Nick, distinct to his toes, encountered no obstacles whatsoever between his style and my credit cards. I had been raised on the notion that when a man cleaves unto a wife, he shall become one with her credit. It had never occurred to me to construct a marriage any other way.
One day Nick came home with a pair of Yohji Yamamoto gloves that had cost $385. This was in 1996, mind you. Granted, these gloves were wondrously conceived: over an interior pebbled leather glove, a leather mitt unzipped and folded back into a gauntlet of sorts. It was just the kind of witty sartorial gesture that a dandified socialite might affect, very Oscar Wilde, if Oscar Wilde would have ditched the lily and firmed up the tummy and got full-sleeve tatts designed by the famed Los Angeles artist Bob Roberts. Nick wasn't a dandified socialite, though. He was a grad student. We were supposed to be living on the ten bucks an hour I was making as a receptionist at the law firm.
"They're great gloves," I remember saying slowly. "But Nick, they cost three hundred eighty-five dollars . That's more than half a month's rent."
"You don't get it, babe," said Nick. "I will be wearing these gloves for the rest of my life. They are a bargain at three hundred eighty-five dollars!"
That was just the beginning. Soon I longed for the days when he had merely been spending $385 on a pair of gloves. As Nick's mood spiraled down into the blackest depression, he began drinking heavily, destroying furniture, fouling our compatibility with cruelties he couldn't take back. Like many women, I can take a hearty string of expletives, but Nick really knew how to go for the jugular. He had a knack for it. I didn't mind the broken fans, the amputated chairs, the shattered glass, the holes in the wall. I minded the hurtful things he said to me.
Perhaps because I am a writer, or perhaps because I mean what I say, I attributed the same intentionality of expression to Nick. I thought that at some level he must have meant the terrible things he said. He reserved the right to retract or dismiss things he had said previously, and that was hard for me. He thought I was a small-minded literalist to put so much weight on the spoken word-typical of a German background, he teased. Whenever I was coldly logical, verbally precise, or mindlessly conformist, he'd do his impression of a Nazi, squaring his shoulders, extending his right hand in stiff salute.
I have no way of knowing if I am an oversensitive princess. Maybe I am. Maybe I should have had the wisdom and the self-esteem to shrug and say, "Sticks and stones, mister!" But since I'm now revealing deeply personal things, I might as well confess the kinds of comments that hurt me
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