Bound to fail August 3, 1985
Maybe I’ve given Mary Ann too much credit in assuming that
she had led her life through rational choice.
Certainly, the emotional investment she’s made in her
marriage as well as the other people’s manipulating her played a huge role in
her fleeing west.
Until 81, relationships didn’t mean much to her – none serious
enough to lead to heart break, deadbeat fellows for a quick lay, even once a
race horse jockey, whose small body she claimed reminded her of a child.
Then, everything changed on her 30th birthday, as if with a
bolt she became aware of the ticking biological clock, and she began to struggle
for purpose – not rational so much as cravings for something she’d not yet had.
Johnny showed up in her life at that moment, a fantasy at
first, a quirk like the jockey perhaps, an imprisoned man seeking to seduce her
long distance through extremely romantic letters – as if he could read her
better than she could read herself.
Mary Ann until then was the classic liberal, full of
sympathy for causes as long as she didn’t need to get too deeply involved. Slightly
aloof, thinking herself better than those who she came to help.
But Johnny reached out and touched her in a way she hadn’t
expected, wrenching something in her heart at a moment of extreme
vulnerability.
Always a romantic, Mary Ann believed in exotic,
heart-throbbing love, and here, an inmate fell in love with her after reading
some of her poetry.
What could be more romantic than that?
Overcoming the huge obstacles that separated them seemed
insignificant when views through the rosy lens of romance. So, what if he was a
junkie? A convicted thief? A man who had strung along vulnerable women, leaving
them behind like a trail of broken dolls?
The root cause of these issues has yet to be resolved, glossed
over in the headlong plunge into marriage and parenthood.
Early on, when she told people about this true love, nearly
everybody abandoned Mary Ann, her friends, her family, even some of her co-workers.
Until that point, Mary Ann had run with the fast crowd,
superficial jetsetters, partygoers, who when seeing her changing mocked her for
this odd love affair.
Even her family drew back from her, assuming this was just
another fad they desperately hoped she would get over before she got hurt. They
assumed she was motivated by lust and hoped the cell doors would prevent any
real damage.
But the more her friends and family disapproved, the more stubborn
Mary Ann became, making her even more determined to “save” Johnny, and make her
the one and only man in her life, her lover, her needy child.
Perhaps she felt a betrayed when he returned to using junk
while still in jail.
She was vulnerable and when her jet set friends introduced
her to Danny, another even more powerful romantic hero, she was seduced. He
brought her flowers and dolls, and even encouraged her to start writing poetry
again.
She was torn in two – not all at once, but bit by bit, and
not between two equal loves, but between self-destructive or creative love.
She sells herself on the idea that her love for Johnny was
all about potential for growth, two of them overcoming hard times together,
building an unbreakable bond.
Unfortunately, this was not so.
Johnny was always something bred out of guilt and self-loathing,
someone Mary Ann needed to make up for the fast and pointless life she had led
up until meeting him. She went with him because she saw him as a mission, not
as real love.
Danny, on the other hand, just had too much going for him.
He didn’t need her in the same way Johnny did. He was arrogant, self-assured
and defiant, fully believing if he could turn up his charm to a high enough
temperature, he would win her away from Johnny.
He just didn’t understand. The more Johnny needed her, the
more likely Mary Ann was to choose him over Danny, and did, although later, secretly,
she regretted the choice, and this also worked against Danny – because the more
she regretted, the more she clung to Tommy, forcing marriage, forcing them to
become parents, and now, forcing a move to the west to escape any possible
temptation.
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