A Lesson Too Late for the Learning

Once upon a time, in a place called northern California, I was in a long-term life partnership (a romance, if you must) with a woman whose family made me feel like Woody Allen in the family dinner scene from Annie Hall. They were all golden, and seemingly fond of each other. (I eventually surmised that Elder Son’s wife and Elder Sister loathed each other, but what a good job they did of pretending otherwise!) Coming, as I did, from a family in which the dominant member, Mom, never squandered an opportunity to make clear how much she loathed Dad, I found being around the golden family discombobulating, though they were all kind and generous and welcoming both to me and my little girl, to whom Girlfriend was an attentive and generous de facto stepmom every weekend for almost 10 years.

I rewarded the golden family by being obnoxious around them, even more snide than usual. The only time any of them objected was after I wrote a waspish little poem about boorish Younger Brother’s marriage ceremony. As far as I knew, none of the family had any interest in my work, and I had no reason to believe that any of them would ever see my poem, but Elder Brother did, and drove down from Marin to ask, in very different, unimpeachably civil words, how I could be such a jerk.

Remarkably, after Girlfriend and I split up, he and I got to be friends. We played a great deal of racquetball, at which he was pretty good, and I, predictably, both enthusiastic and awful. (We must have played a couple of hundred games. I won exactly one.) He very generously took me and the future second Mrs. Mendelsohn (she prefers the legal spelling) to dinner.

A couple of decades passed, and Mrs. Mendelsohn and I, who lived on the outskirts of London, were going to go on a cruise that we would board in San Francisco. I contacted Elder Brother and told him how much I’d enjoy seeing him. He was shockingly cold in his declination.

In 2024, I looked at the actuarial tables, realized I might not have long left, and went on a succession of cruises. (You can’t take it with you, and Mrs. Mendelsohn preferred our having glorious times together to my saving the money so I could leave it to her.) We flew once more to San Francisco. Once again I told Elder Brother how much I’d enjoy seeing him there. His declination was even colder than before.

A few months passed. I wrote him to confess that I was hurt and confused by our estrangement. He explained that, 25 years after the fact, the wounds my behavior had inflicted on them still hadn’t healed, and he’d been pressured to end our friendship.

I was flabbergasted and dismayed. I asked for an explanation, as who, having been told that he’s hurt someone so deeply, would not? All I could get out of him was that the apologies I owed had been too long in coming, and inadequate.

The family’s matriarch had died in around 2003. The only way she could have seen the waspish poem, by which she may well have been hurt, is if Elder Brother had shown it to her. I couldn’t bear Younger Brother (who I’m pretty sure didn’t begin to “get” me, and probably was no fonder of me than I was of him), but couldn’t for the life of me remember having done anything to irrevocably wound anyone else in the family. Could he be referring to Girlfriend, who’d moved on to another life partner — someone much more up her alley, a rugged outdoorsman — not very long after our separation, and with whom I’d maintained a cordial email relationship?

I wrote to her. No response.

Maybe, though she hadn’t said so in 24 years, my apology had been inadequate. By virtue of my having composed and recorded this within six months of our dissolution, I don’t see how it could be deemed too long in coming.