Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Were there red flags? The subtle or not subtle warnings
Speaker 2: I should have seen before we married? The ones people
Speaker 2: ask me about now, wanting something, anything to prove that
Speaker 2: our fate could have been predicted, that the same thing
Speaker 2: couldn't happen to them. Maybe the shift and personality at Kenyon,
Speaker 2: Maybe the arrests and the breaking of girls' hearts, Maybe
Speaker 2: his tendency to direct and mind to follow. Maybe the
Speaker 2: untold tale of his father. But these felt like stories
Speaker 2: of a rebellious boy becoming a responsible man, the normal
Speaker 2: mysteries of a three dimensional human being. There is nothing
Speaker 2: I look back on now and say, how could I
Speaker 2: have missed that? Other couples I knew then and know
Speaker 2: now had many more flags, redder flags, and they stayed married.
Speaker 2: And doesn't it all look different? Wouldn't your own story
Speaker 2: look different if you knew how it was going to end?
Speaker 3: That's Bell Burden, attorney and author of the recent book Strangers,
Speaker 3: a memoir of a marriage. Bell's story is, on its surface,
Speaker 3: one of privilege. That's a word that gets a lot
Speaker 3: of play these days, privilege. But privilege does not protect
Speaker 3: us from pain. The pain of loneliness, the pain of
Speaker 3: a solitary childhood, the weight of expectations that do not
Speaker 3: come from our own deepest longings, but rather from a
Speaker 3: sense of the way it's supposed to be. It's also
Speaker 3: a book about following an intricate choreography set out for
Speaker 3: us at birth, and what happens when the dance steps
Speaker 3: completely change on us. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is
Speaker 3: family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the
Speaker 3: secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep
Speaker 3: from ourselves. Bell tell me about the landscape of your childhood,
Speaker 3: your early memories, where you lived, what it was like,
Speaker 3: the atmosphere surrounding you.
Speaker 2: My parents got divorced when I was two, and I
Speaker 2: can't remember a time before that. I always remember them
Speaker 2: being divorced, and I mostly lived at my mother's apartment,
Speaker 2: which was on East eighty fourth Street, and my father
Speaker 2: lived on East fifty second Street. Both of them lived
Speaker 2: all the way over by the East River, and I
Speaker 2: only got to see my father every other weekend. That
Speaker 2: was typical custody arrangement of the nineteen seventies. And at
Speaker 2: my mother's apartment, I lived with my brother, my mother,
Speaker 2: and always live in nanny working and my brother was
Speaker 2: often playing Atari video games, which had just been invented.
Speaker 2: And I remember in that house feeling lonely a lot,
Speaker 2: and I had the nannies that I had were not
Speaker 2: the nicest people. So I think of my childhood as
Speaker 2: a happy time but also a lonely time. When I
Speaker 2: saw my father and my stepmother every other weekend, I
Speaker 2: loved being with them, but it was sporadic. I went
Speaker 2: to school on the Upper East Side, a private girls
Speaker 2: school called Spence, and I started there in first grade
Speaker 2: and had some friends there, but it was socially a
Speaker 2: challenging place, especially in middle school, which tends to be
Speaker 2: difficult too. And I was very quiet, very not cool
Speaker 2: is what I would say, nerdy. And I also lived
Speaker 2: all the way east and the school was on Madison Avenue,
Speaker 2: so I did not feel very much in that social world,
Speaker 2: and I think in living all the way over there,
Speaker 2: it was very quiet and it didn't really feel like
Speaker 2: the swirl of New York because you had to walk
Speaker 2: several blocks even to get to a subway. But in
Speaker 2: seventh grade, girls in my class started to become very
Speaker 2: sophisticated started to go to Studio fifty four to really
Speaker 2: go out at night, and I was not like that.
Speaker 2: I couldn't really figure out how to be social in
Speaker 2: that way. I was home baking cookies, that was what
Speaker 2: I did, and I was reading. I just remember a
Speaker 2: lot of quiet. I remember the first book I really like,
Speaker 2: long book that I really got so absorbed in was
Speaker 2: Harriet the Spy and I remember reading it on the
Speaker 2: floor of my bedroom and I just consumed the whole thing,
Speaker 2: I think in one sitting, and I really felt like
Speaker 2: I knew her. I remember that feeling so clearly. And
Speaker 2: then Judy Bloom books, even Encyclopedia Brown, and I really
Speaker 2: escaped into books and they became very meaningful to me.
Speaker 4: And you did well in school.
Speaker 2: I did well in school, except that in every single class,
Speaker 2: every report card, the teacher said that I was bright
Speaker 2: and doing well, but that I needed to speak in class.
Speaker 2: I never spoke in class. And this continued through high school.
Speaker 2: I went to boarding school, and it is a school
Speaker 2: with oval tables, called the Harkness Method. Even math is
Speaker 2: taught around an oval table. And I really had a
Speaker 2: lot of trouble speaking. I would overthink and my face
Speaker 2: would turn bright red, and it became so important what
Speaker 2: I was going to say because I hadn't said anything
Speaker 2: and so long, and then it became too hard to
Speaker 2: actually say it. So that really defined my academic life.
Speaker 2: But I was very conscientious. I did my homework on
Speaker 2: Friday afternoons for the weekend. I worked very hard in
Speaker 2: high school. And in high school is really where I
Speaker 2: started writing, and was nurchured by a couple of extraordinary
Speaker 2: teachers who could see that writing was maybe a path,
Speaker 2: not out of shyness, but just a way to access
Speaker 2: me and for me to express myself since I wasn't
Speaker 2: very comfortable doing it verbally.
Speaker 3: And in boarding school were there a lot of social
Speaker 3: rules and more rays the same way that there were
Speaker 3: expense even if they were different, or what was the
Speaker 3: social aspect of being in high school?
Speaker 2: The social aspect was actually incredible for me because it's
Speaker 2: a big boarding school, Exeter in New Hampshire, and I
Speaker 2: found my people there. It was a place that rewarded academics.
Speaker 2: It didn't feel like there was a real social hierarchy.
Speaker 2: I was put into a very small dorm and a
Speaker 2: group of us became very very close friends. It took
Speaker 2: a while the first two months I was very homesick
Speaker 2: and I was too afraid to go to the dining hall,
Speaker 2: so I lived on David's cookies, which were the popular
Speaker 2: cookies in New York that my stepmother used to send me.
Speaker 2: And then I started making friends in the dorm and
Speaker 2: we were different ages. Two were older, one in my class,
Speaker 2: and two were younger, and they became like sisters for
Speaker 2: me because we grew up together, living together in this
Speaker 2: very intimate way when you're not living at home and
Speaker 2: academically it was. It was really wonderful for me. So
Speaker 2: I did not feel the social pressure there or the
Speaker 2: social failure there. I felt very much understood and like
Speaker 2: I was in the right place.
Speaker 4: That's such a gift when that happens. Yes, I wonder too.
Speaker 3: You write about the burden family trade of temper, yes,
Speaker 3: and how you did not exhibit that trait but you
Speaker 3: were surrounded by it. So was it also just kind
Speaker 3: of good to be on your own, kind of developing
Speaker 3: that whole, like the whole in Loco parentis aspect of
Speaker 3: boarding school.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was. I think volatile is not is too
Speaker 2: strong of a word. But my father definitely had moods
Speaker 2: and emotions and would have temper tantrums that were more
Speaker 2: like a child's temper tantrum of getting his way, and
Speaker 2: my brother was similar, had bad moods and tempers. And
Speaker 2: I think that I was born very quiet, but I
Speaker 2: think that I became quieter in that and very watchful,
Speaker 2: more observant. And my mom, at that point before I
Speaker 2: went to boarding school, had gotten divorced for the second time,
Speaker 2: and I loved my stepfather and that was a really
Speaker 2: hard loss to have that marriage end, and she started
Speaker 2: dating again, which is exactly what she should do, but
Speaker 2: that was hard for me. In the couple years before
Speaker 2: I left that there were new relationships and relationships ending,
Speaker 2: and so again I wouldn't characterize it as volatile, but
Speaker 2: it was changeable and unpredictable, and I think going away
Speaker 2: at that point was the best thing for me. It
Speaker 2: was a calmer and more predictable atmosphere for me.
Speaker 3: Bell grows up in New York in a family that,
Speaker 3: from the outside, has a sparkly public presence. Her mother's
Speaker 3: life sometimes appears in the society pages, and her stepfather
Speaker 3: moves through the world as a public figure, But inside
Speaker 3: the apartment, Bell doesn't feel like she's living in a fishbowl.
Speaker 3: This is long before the Internet, before the constant gaze
Speaker 3: of social media. Whatever attention exists in the wider world
Speaker 3: barely registers in her childhood. The family's public reputation is
Speaker 3: simply not something she's aware of. What she is aware
Speaker 3: of is her own inner life, especially her love of writing.
Speaker 3: When she arrives at college Harvard, she as just a freshman,
Speaker 3: gets accepted into a competitive writing work shop. For a moment,
Speaker 3: it feels like the beginning of something, something true, and
Speaker 3: something she can lay claim to. But then, during a
Speaker 3: class critique, a fellow student named Greg mesodically dismantles her
Speaker 3: story submission in front of everyone. The teacher says nothing.
Speaker 3: The room stays quiet, and in that silence, something closes
Speaker 3: inside her. The possibility that writing might be her path
Speaker 3: suddenly feels out of reach, as if a door she
Speaker 3: had just opened has been slammed shut.
Speaker 2: It was really painful because I think in high school
Speaker 2: we can form an identity, and being a writer became
Speaker 2: a really important part of who I thought I was
Speaker 2: and who I thought I was going to be. And
Speaker 2: I arrived at college so hopeful about it and excited
Speaker 2: to get into that class, and he did tear it apart.
Speaker 2: I remember not so much him having concrete criticisms of
Speaker 2: the piece, which was a short story, but really raising
Speaker 2: it to the level of my writing as a whole,
Speaker 2: my talent. And I had to check with a friend
Speaker 2: to make sure who was in the class with me,
Speaker 2: to make sure that I was not, you know, making
Speaker 2: this more dramatic or fabricating it in any way, and
Speaker 2: that friend said, indeed happened. What I think about now
Speaker 2: is the fact that he probably thought about it for
Speaker 2: maybe two minutes after the class. You know, that was
Speaker 2: just something that he did. He was four years older,
Speaker 2: and maybe because he was male, and because he spoke
Speaker 2: with such authority and confidence that I took it as
Speaker 2: the truth rather than one person's opinion. And the fact
Speaker 2: that he said it really wasn't the problem. The fact
Speaker 2: that I believed it and changed the course of my
Speaker 2: life because of it is really the problem. And I
Speaker 2: have daughters that are that age now college age, and
Speaker 2: it would horrify me if they changed what they believed
Speaker 2: was their passion and talent because of what one person said.
Speaker 2: So I think it's an important story for people to hear.
Speaker 2: I think what's interesting is that other people I know
Speaker 2: have a similar story, but in different fields, maybe a
Speaker 2: boss saying something. But yes, I stopped writing. I got
Speaker 2: through the class. I think I wrote a couple more pieces,
Speaker 2: but my heart was not in it anymore. And it
Speaker 2: was one semester and after that I completely stopped writing,
Speaker 2: and I decided I was going to be a lawyer instead,
Speaker 2: and I didn't write again other than legal writing for
Speaker 2: thirty years. I am a person who likes steps. I
Speaker 2: like constructions. I like to follow instructions. And it looked
Speaker 2: like a path where if I just kept working hard
Speaker 2: and putting one foot in front of the other, that
Speaker 2: I would get to the finish line of finishing law school,
Speaker 2: taking the bar, and get a job. And the creative
Speaker 2: life is much much harder. And I got knocked down
Speaker 2: once and that was enough for me. I could not
Speaker 2: see the path beyond that, and the law was a
Speaker 2: much more clear, secure route to take.
Speaker 3: What truly interests Belle is criminal defense. One summer, she
Speaker 3: works at the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, and the
Speaker 3: experience standing beside people whose futures are uncertain is meaningful
Speaker 3: to her. But when it's time to begin her career.
Speaker 3: The offer she receives is from Davis Polk, one of
Speaker 3: New York's most prestigious corporate law firms. It's the kind
Speaker 3: of opportunity few people refuse, and so Belle steps into
Speaker 3: a very different world from the one she had imagined.
Speaker 2: I loved being in a courtroom. I loved sitting second
Speaker 2: seat in a trial. I loved the investigat aspect of it.
Speaker 2: I like the writing aspect of it. I liked the
Speaker 2: public interest aspect of it, providing a lawyer to those
Speaker 2: who can't afford one. But I think this is another
Speaker 2: example of life presenting a fork in the road and
Speaker 2: choosing one that was actually not consistent with who I
Speaker 2: am and what I like to do. Not passive this,
Speaker 2: I actively chose to go in this direction. But I
Speaker 2: am someone who enjoys achievement and documented accomplishment. This is
Speaker 2: true now, and they just arrive earlier now. But in
Speaker 2: law schools, the firms come to campus courting, you meet
Speaker 2: with them for interviews, and then you collect these offers,
Speaker 2: and it is something to boast about, to feel accomplished about.
Speaker 2: And I fell into that and got a number of
Speaker 2: offers to be a summer associate, chose Davis Polk and
Speaker 2: then went back full time, thinking this is a great
Speaker 2: thing to do, to really like a finishing school, to
Speaker 2: really be tested in this very competitive environment, and to
Speaker 2: see how I did again, you know, just one step
Speaker 2: after the other to land at being a good lawyer
Speaker 2: and being an accomplished person. And I think the criminal
Speaker 2: defense path would have been a much braver choice because
Speaker 2: it's not as go from A to B to C
Speaker 2: to keep achieving. It just would have been like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is what I'm interested in. This is my passion,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to try and do a good job
Speaker 2: at it.
Speaker 3: And I love that phrase documented accomplishments. I think the
Speaker 3: way that our culture and society and world sort of
Speaker 3: operates in that sort of box checking kind of way. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 3: we'll be right back. In ninety six, Bell's father dies
Speaker 3: suddenly at the age of fifty four. The loss is
Speaker 3: shocking and destabilizing. She's in the middle of law school,
Speaker 3: preparing to return to Davis Polk after working there as
Speaker 3: a summer associate. His death is a rupture in the
Speaker 3: midst of a carefully plotted future. In the days that follow,
Speaker 3: new details emerge, details that complicate the story the family
Speaker 3: thought they knew. The autopsy reveals that he had been
Speaker 3: taking diet pills, and financial records show he died deeply
Speaker 3: in debt. Bell and those closest to him begin to
Speaker 3: realize that the version of his life they had held onto,
Speaker 3: the clean, polished narrative, was never quite the whole truth.
Speaker 3: For years, they had wanted his story to feel pristine.
Speaker 3: Now they are left to sit with a far messier reality.
Speaker 2: I think both of those were things that we have
Speaker 2: carried as a family and not revealed to the world.
Speaker 2: And the first, my father grew up in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 2: His mother was an actress and his father was a
Speaker 2: photographer and a film producer, and his mother was always
Speaker 2: very concerned about weight, I would say, not even appearance generally,
Speaker 2: but weight in particular. And both my father and my
Speaker 2: aunt were a little heavy as children and teenagers, and
Speaker 2: there were doctors in Beverly Hills at that point they
Speaker 2: would hand out diet pills, which is really speed to anyone,
Speaker 2: very easily, and so my grandmother gave my father and
Speaker 2: my aunt diet pills, starting, you know, in teenage years,
Speaker 2: and so my father used them periodically through college in
Speaker 2: his thirties. I don't know exactly when it stopped, but
Speaker 2: he stopped doing it because it was so bad for
Speaker 2: his health, and in particular his heart. He had documented
Speaker 2: heart issue which was a leaky valve that we think
Speaker 2: maybe he got from having scarlet fever as a child,
Speaker 2: and he knew he would have to have the valve
Speaker 2: replaced at some point. People do it much more easily now,
Speaker 2: but it was major surgery and he was very afraid
Speaker 2: of it. Did not want to convalesce and have a
Speaker 2: scar and all those things. So we kept putting it off,
Speaker 2: and he would go to the cardiologist every six months
Speaker 2: to get a check up, and he had been cleared
Speaker 2: just a few months before he died, saying that he
Speaker 2: could wait to have the surgery. He died very suddenly
Speaker 2: on a January morning. My stepmother went out to walk
Speaker 2: the dogs and came home and his alarm was going off,
Speaker 2: and she found him dead in their bed. And we thought,
Speaker 2: after talking to his cardiologists, that he was in this
Speaker 2: very rare two percent that die from sudden arrhythmic death
Speaker 2: with this valve issue, and we thought, how unlucky he
Speaker 2: is to have that happen, how horrible, and we discuss afterwards,
Speaker 2: actually not in the autopsy, but his secretary confessed that
Speaker 2: she had been making him appointments with a diet doctor
Speaker 2: and that he had been taking diet pills, I think
Speaker 2: for a year, and he had kept it from my stepmother, Susan,
Speaker 2: and from me and my brother, almost like this rebellious
Speaker 2: thing that I think Keith thought he was getting away with.
Speaker 2: He and Susan had a really wonderful, close, intimate marriage,
Speaker 2: so to her it felt just so devastating that he
Speaker 2: hadn't told her this and that he was taking this
Speaker 2: risk with his life. And we don't think it killed him,
Speaker 2: but it certainly did not help his heart issue. And
Speaker 2: we have carried this secret for the last thirty years.
Speaker 2: He died thirty years ago. A couple months ago, when
Speaker 2: I had started writing again, I wrote about this and
Speaker 2: then asked my brother and Susan's permission to be public
Speaker 2: about it, because I do think that it ate away
Speaker 2: at us in some way that I hope talking about
Speaker 2: it as I'm talking about it to you right now
Speaker 2: is healthier for our family. The second piece was he
Speaker 2: was in debt. My stepmother knew and my brother and
Speaker 2: I sort of knew because they would say, like, the
Speaker 2: bank owns the apartment. He had taken out a lot
Speaker 2: of loans to finance his radio company, and so we
Speaker 2: didn't really focus on it. We just thought everything would
Speaker 2: be okay. But when he died, we discovered that he
Speaker 2: was forty million dollars in debt, which we were lucky
Speaker 2: enough to sell his company. He died so young and
Speaker 2: died in such a way that we were left just
Speaker 2: reeling emotionally, reeling, financially reeling, and then also reeling from
Speaker 2: the fact that he was hurting himself in a way
Speaker 2: that we were completely unaware of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, And it strikes me too that the
Speaker 3: phrase going through my head is this wasn't.
Speaker 4: Supposed to happen, right exactly, yep.
Speaker 3: And it ties to the documented accomplishments in a way
Speaker 3: in which our whole culture is infected with this idea
Speaker 3: that if you just if you do these things and
Speaker 3: you do them in this order, that you will be
Speaker 3: protected and if you live in this way, then you know,
Speaker 3: you will live till you're, you know, ninety eight years old.
Speaker 4: And the affront in a way when that just is
Speaker 4: not the case.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was the first time that I just felt
Speaker 2: like life was completely unpredictable, and it really brought me
Speaker 2: to my knees, and my stepmother too, and my brother too.
Speaker 2: And I don't think any part of him thought that
Speaker 2: he was going to die. I think he thought he
Speaker 2: could take risk in all sorts of ways. He was
Speaker 2: someone that had done things in the right order and
Speaker 2: gone to good schools and worked for Bobby Kennedy and
Speaker 2: Ben was in city council in New York then started
Speaker 2: his own company. But he did like to take some risk.
Speaker 2: I think that excited him in some way, and I
Speaker 2: don't think he ever thought that it would be catastrophic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so how long after your father's death did you
Speaker 3: meet James.
Speaker 2: I met James in April of nineteen ninety eight, so
Speaker 2: it was two years in a couple months. But it
Speaker 2: still felt very fresh for me because we were still
Speaker 2: dealing with the financial aftermath and selling his company, and
Speaker 2: while I was working at Davis Polk these insane hours
Speaker 2: doing work that I really did not even understand. I
Speaker 2: did dwell at it because I was good at following instructions,
Speaker 2: but I really was not interested in finance or corporations
Speaker 2: or banks or securities. So I was doing that work,
Speaker 2: and then I would have to take these calls. I
Speaker 2: had an officemate, so I'd have to take these calls
Speaker 2: in the phone booth at Davis Polk to talk to
Speaker 2: lawyers and my brother and Susan trying to sort out
Speaker 2: my father's dad, his estate, all of those things. And
Speaker 2: it just felt very bleak and very difficult. I really
Speaker 2: hated all of that so much, and so when I
Speaker 2: met James, I was still suffering with that and with
Speaker 2: the loss of my father. We started working together. I
Speaker 2: was moved into his group, and I had a boyfriend
Speaker 2: at the time, and I did not find James to
Speaker 2: be someone I would be interested in because he was
Speaker 2: so familiar in a lot of ways. He was from
Speaker 2: an all boys school in New York, he had gone
Speaker 2: to boarding school. He kind of looked a bit like
Speaker 2: my father, same height and build and blonde hair. And
Speaker 2: I just let off, that's too familiar to me. And
Speaker 2: I was sort of stuck in this other relationship. But
Speaker 2: it soon developed into a very very intense romance.
Speaker 3: And I think it bears saying that the other relationship
Speaker 3: was with someone who was a much less safe option.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was unemployed. I did not know when he
Speaker 2: would ever be employed again. He was living in my
Speaker 2: apartment and not paying rent. I was not in love
Speaker 2: with him. It was one of those situations where I
Speaker 2: think another person would have gotten out of it or
Speaker 2: gotten them to move out. I was very bad at confrontation,
Speaker 2: very bad at hurting someone's feelings. So I just I
Speaker 2: felt very stuck.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the way in which I think.
Speaker 3: You know, so many of the crossroads in our lives
Speaker 3: happened right. So, you were still in your twenties when
Speaker 3: you met James. You were, you know, far too young
Speaker 3: to lose your dad. Your dad was far too young
Speaker 3: to die, and you're unraveling all of this very heavy
Speaker 3: duty family stuff and you're in the wrong relationship, and
Speaker 3: you know, along comes James, and when you begin your
Speaker 3: great romance you describe the part of him that you
Speaker 3: most selved for was that, on the one hand, he
Speaker 3: did have this kind of of very familiar and recognizable
Speaker 3: trajectory and also history, but he had a little bit
Speaker 3: of a bad boy history.
Speaker 2: Yes, I loved that. I loved that he was both
Speaker 2: stable and safe and also a little bit dangerous. He
Speaker 2: gotten a lot of trouble in high school. He'd been
Speaker 2: arrested a few times, and he had a tattoo. So
Speaker 2: he sorted this bad boy, cleaned up, you know who,
Speaker 2: ended up at a great law school and a great firm,
Speaker 2: And that was intoxicating to me.
Speaker 3: The relationship moves quickly, almost inevitably. Their romance has a
Speaker 3: kind of sweep to it, James stepping in, taking charge,
Speaker 3: making things feel secure and forward moving. But even in
Speaker 3: those early days, there is one part of his life
Speaker 3: that remains out of reach, a sort of third rail
Speaker 3: with him not to be touched. James tells Bell the
Speaker 3: abridged version. His father suffered a breakdown at around age
Speaker 3: forty and stopped working, and his family's financial stability collapsed.
Speaker 3: They had once lived comfortably in New York, but suddenly
Speaker 3: they were scraping together tuition and giving up even small luxuries.
Speaker 3: And that's the whole story. Whenever Bell tries to understand more,
Speaker 3: wanting to know every part of the man she's falling
Speaker 3: in love with, James gently but firmly shuts down the
Speaker 3: subject is simply too painful. Bell begins to see how
Speaker 3: that history shapes him. His relentless work ethic, his drive
Speaker 3: to succeed, his urgency about providing it all traces back
Speaker 3: to those years of instability, but the deeper emotional terrain
Speaker 3: remains inaccessible to her. When she pushes, he withdraws, retreating
Speaker 3: into silence. Bell senses the tenderness there and learns not
Speaker 3: to press. Still, the relationship moves forward. One day, without
Speaker 3: ceremony or theatrics, James pulls a ring from his pocket,
Speaker 3: no box, no kneeling, and announces simply that they're getting married,
Speaker 3: that they're going to build a life and a family together.
Speaker 3: It's everything Bell has imagined. As they begin planning the wedding,
Speaker 3: another sort of financial family rule quietly comes into play.
Speaker 3: Years earlier, Bell's mother had required Belle and her brother
Speaker 3: to sign a written agreement promising that they would one
Speaker 3: day have prenuptial agreements. Now, as the wedding approaches, that
Speaker 3: promise becomes real and James, who deeply resents the idea,
Speaker 3: will only capitulate if one change is made to the agreement.
Speaker 2: In a normal pre nup, it says that you each
Speaker 2: keep what you came into the marriage with, and that
Speaker 2: anything earned during the marriage will be split fifty to fifty.
Speaker 2: What James wanted was to say that anything earned during
Speaker 2: the marriage would not be split fifty to fifty unless
Speaker 2: we affirmatively put it in joint name. And the way
Speaker 2: he explained it made sense to me. The way he
Speaker 2: explained it was that of course we would put things
Speaker 2: in joint name, we were going to be married and
Speaker 2: we were going to be a unit, but that we
Speaker 2: should decide on a case by case basis to do so.
Speaker 2: So I went back to my lawyer to request this change,
Speaker 2: and he told me very clearly not to do it.
Speaker 2: He knew that I wanted to stay home with kids
Speaker 2: for a period of time. He knew that James was
Speaker 2: a lawyer, was going to move into the investment world,
Speaker 2: and that it was a bad idea for someone who
Speaker 2: may not have an income for a long time. And
Speaker 2: I could hear him say that. I knew what he
Speaker 2: was saying. But James was the man I was in
Speaker 2: love with, he was the man I was going to marry.
Speaker 2: He was the man I had now placed all my
Speaker 2: trust in, and I thought, I'm going to trust him
Speaker 2: with this. I'm going to make the change. So I
Speaker 2: insisted on the change. It was made, and we signed
Speaker 2: the pre up five days before we got married.
Speaker 3: And did you tell your mother or your brother that
Speaker 3: you had made a change?
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't tell them, I didn't ask their advice.
Speaker 2: I didn't tell my stepmother, who I'm very close to.
Speaker 2: And I think that was a sign that I really
Speaker 2: knew that it was not a good idea, and that
Speaker 2: I didn't want them to tell me that it was
Speaker 2: a bad idea. I didn't want them to stop me.
Speaker 2: And this is the problem with prenups. Sometimes I generally
Speaker 2: think they're a good idea, but they are often signed
Speaker 2: days or weeks before a wedding, and at that point,
Speaker 2: you just don't want anything to derail the wedding. You
Speaker 2: don't want to have to, you know, send back gifts
Speaker 2: and cancel anything, and you just are kind of really
Speaker 2: focused on that day happening. So I think that was
Speaker 2: a factor too. But I think the fact that I
Speaker 2: didn't tell anyone in my family about the significant change
Speaker 2: shows that I was I knew it was problematic, and
Speaker 2: I was a shame that I had read to it.
Speaker 3: What do you think would have happened if you had
Speaker 3: said no to James.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I actually don't know, I've never been
Speaker 2: asked that question. I don't know if he would have
Speaker 2: really stuck to it and either not signed it or
Speaker 2: not gone through with the wedding. It's interesting to think about.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So on your honeymoon, you have one fight, and you
Speaker 3: have very few fights, and you have one fight in
Speaker 3: Bali and it's actually over money. And James has a
Speaker 3: real pet peeve that you do not examine carefully a
Speaker 3: check after a meal before you sign the receipt.
Speaker 2: Yes, he got very upset because I think I handed
Speaker 2: over my credit card and didn't open the envelope that
Speaker 2: you get when you get a bill. And that's what
Speaker 2: we did in my family. You just you trusted the restaurant,
Speaker 2: you gave a big tip, always generous, always picking up checks.
Speaker 2: That's just what we did. And it made him very upset,
Speaker 2: very nervous. I was his wife at that point, and
Speaker 2: I think he really worried that I would be a
Speaker 2: big spender like my father, and he wanted to be
Speaker 2: clear that we were not going to do the things
Speaker 2: that way in our marriage. And part of me was
Speaker 2: really upset and didn't like being scolded in that way.
Speaker 2: But another part of me thought, Okay, this man is
Speaker 2: going to make sure that I don't end up in
Speaker 2: financial ruin. It felt caretaking in some way that this
Speaker 2: man my father was dead. This man was going to
Speaker 2: watch out for me and keep me safe.
Speaker 3: It makes sense, and as does your being really angry
Speaker 3: at being chided?
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it was both.
Speaker 3: Once Bell and James settle back in New York, the
Speaker 3: next chapter begins to take shape. They want a home,
Speaker 3: they want a family. James finds an apartment he loves
Speaker 3: in Tribecca, slightly further out than Bell imagines living, though
Speaker 3: still close to the subway and to friends and family
Speaker 3: near by. It isn't exactly the place she would have chosen,
Speaker 3: but she can see the life and future. It might
Speaker 3: hold space for children, room to grow. The price tag
Speaker 3: on the apartment happens to match the exact amount sitting
Speaker 3: in one of Bell's trusts, money left to her by
Speaker 3: her mother's stepfather. She makes a formal request to the
Speaker 3: trustees to withdraw the funds, and when the purchase goes through,
Speaker 3: she places both her name and James's on the deed.
Speaker 3: To Belle, this all feels pretty natural. This is what
Speaker 3: marriage means, right, sharing everything, It also feels like a
Speaker 3: kind of offering a contribution to the life they are
Speaker 3: building together in the next few years. That life indeed
Speaker 3: builds after a difficult pregnancy. Therefore, son Finn is born,
Speaker 3: then comes easy. Then Carrie Belle stays home with the children,
Speaker 3: something she had always imagined doing, while James throws himself
Speaker 3: into work and rises quickly at his investment firm. Their
Speaker 3: lives settle into a familiar pattern, following classic and outdated
Speaker 3: gender lines. He works constantly, she manages the world of
Speaker 3: the home. James is direct about the division, declaring plainly,
Speaker 3: I don't do bed, bath or homework, leaving the daily
Speaker 3: rhythms of parenting to Belle. She does have help, but
Speaker 3: even so, the house is full and busy, and she
Speaker 3: is deeply immersed in motherhood. For Belle, this is more
Speaker 3: than routine. It's an act of correction. She is determined
Speaker 3: to give her children something she feels was missing from
Speaker 3: her own childhood. Her mother, who grew up as the
Speaker 3: daughter of Babe Paley, one of the most famous and
Speaker 3: glamorous women of her era, saw her own mother only once.
Speaker 4: Alione.
Speaker 3: In Bell's family, generations of distance had quietly shaped what
Speaker 3: motherhood looked like. Now Bell is doing it differently, pouring
Speaker 3: herself into her children as her marriage moves forward on
Speaker 3: the unspoken bargain.
Speaker 4: She and James have made.
Speaker 2: This unspoken bargain between us, which started pretty quickly because
Speaker 2: he really was such a hard worker, so devoted to
Speaker 2: doing a good job, first at a fund of funds
Speaker 2: and then later at a hedge fund. And I did
Speaker 2: want to stay home at kids to cure something that
Speaker 2: I felt in my childhood and my mother felt in
Speaker 2: her childhood even more so, to just be present all
Speaker 2: the time. And I think what happened in our family
Speaker 2: was that his work became so much the family enterprise.
Speaker 2: It was like everything was in service to it. It
Speaker 2: always came first, beyond anything, beyond any birthday party, parent
Speaker 2: teacher conference, any math tests, illness anything, his work, his
Speaker 2: getting enough sleep, his being able to work on weekends,
Speaker 2: all of that. And I admired it. I admired how
Speaker 2: hard working he was. But I think that in that
Speaker 2: I think it's not so much about staying home with kids.
Speaker 2: I think it's when one person's career and ambitions and
Speaker 2: dreams take over, it becomes easier for the other person
Speaker 2: in this case me to lose sight of their own
Speaker 2: ambitions and their own dreams and becomes harder to find
Speaker 2: it again. It just gets overwhelmed.
Speaker 3: I think, you know you right at one point that
Speaker 3: you had date night, you'd go out to dinner.
Speaker 2: I think about those dinners a lot, because I really
Speaker 2: loved those dinners, and I always felt like we had
Speaker 2: a really good time together. Who talked about his work,
Speaker 2: but we also talked about kids, we talked about friends,
Speaker 2: we talked about politics, we talked about our plans. It
Speaker 2: felt intimate. It felt like he knew me and I
Speaker 2: knew him. He was very quiet and mild mannered. It
Speaker 2: never felt like a big ego that we were. It
Speaker 2: was just all about him. But I do think work wise,
Speaker 2: there was not a lot of room for both of
Speaker 2: us to have that. I had an opportunity to go
Speaker 2: back to work at one point for a job that
Speaker 2: I think I would have been good at. It would
Speaker 2: have been a good fit. It was at a foundation,
Speaker 2: and I'd done a lot of nonprofit work and still
Speaker 2: had my law license, and at that point where we're
Speaker 2: just so in deep with the division of responsibility that
Speaker 2: I was nervous about it. But he was definitive about
Speaker 2: it that I should not go back to work. I
Speaker 2: take responsibility for that. I think it was my responsibility
Speaker 2: to say this is important to me, I want to
Speaker 2: do it. But I do wish that he had been
Speaker 2: able to say, it's your turn to have the focus
Speaker 2: and to follow what you would like to do with
Speaker 2: your life, and I will do whatever I can to
Speaker 2: support you. I do wish that well.
Speaker 3: It begs the same question that I asked you before
Speaker 3: of what do you think would have happened if you
Speaker 3: had said no about the prenup? What would have happened
Speaker 3: if you had said, you know what. I understand you're
Speaker 3: concerned about this, but I'm doing it. What would have
Speaker 3: happened there? Do you have the same feeling?
Speaker 2: It does give me the same feeling, and it makes
Speaker 2: me feel a little bit sad about myself that I
Speaker 2: didn't have the gumption to fight for that. It's confusing
Speaker 2: when your partner is he never yelled, he was never mean,
Speaker 2: he was never demeaning to me, he was always kind,
Speaker 2: So it's harder to decipher, I think, in that when
Speaker 2: you're being overly deferential, if that makes sense, Like I
Speaker 2: wasn't fighting against anything clear, it felt like the tide
Speaker 2: that we were in. But I do think that if
Speaker 2: I had put down my foot in both those circumstances,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the reaction would have been. I
Speaker 2: don't know if he could have adjusted to that version
Speaker 2: of me.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean what you're describing in part is that it's
Speaker 3: a way of being controlling that is, in the right
Speaker 3: circumstances and with the right person, very very powerful.
Speaker 2: It is. It's very it's very powerful and maybe more
Speaker 2: powerful because it's quiet.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, it wouldn't have worked for you if he had,
Speaker 3: you know, been a kind of rage aholic about things
Speaker 3: that would have that wouldn't have worked for you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you would have recognized that, and it would have been
Speaker 3: you would have run for the hills.
Speaker 4: This is something very different.
Speaker 2: Different, and it felt like I was I had improved
Speaker 2: on my childhood so much because there was no yelling
Speaker 2: and there was no volatility in that way. But it
Speaker 2: was its own. It had its own problems that are
Speaker 2: still hard to like sort through, especially having loved him
Speaker 2: so much and felt in love with him to kind
Speaker 2: of track and figure out how I became a bit
Speaker 2: smaller in the marriage.
Speaker 3: When Belle is in her forties. Another step in the
Speaker 3: life she and James have built together comes into view.
Speaker 3: A country house. It's what families in their world tend
Speaker 3: to do, leave the city on weekends, spend summers somewhere quieter.
Speaker 3: After looking at properties online, James visits one on Martha's
Speaker 3: Vineyard and calls Belle while at the property to say
Speaker 3: he's fallen in love with it and suggests they pull
Speaker 3: the trigger. Belle hasn't seen it, but she trusts him
Speaker 3: and they decide to buy it once again. The purchase
Speaker 3: is made possible through a trust Belle inherited from her family.
Speaker 3: She withdraws the funds, the deal closes, and, just as
Speaker 3: she had with the Tribeca apartment, she places both of
Speaker 3: their names on the deed. The vineyard house becomes part
Speaker 3: of the fabric of their family life, another shared investment
Speaker 3: in the future they believe they're cultivating together. The house
Speaker 3: is part of a community vineyard Haven and a small
Speaker 3: local clubs there. A sweet, seeming conceted place becomes central
Speaker 3: to their family social life.
Speaker 2: So it is a private tennis oriented club. I do
Speaker 2: not play tennis, but it's on this beautiful piece of
Speaker 2: land on Vineyard Sound and people have been going there
Speaker 2: for more than one hundred years. Families have had multiple generations.
Speaker 2: It's very simple in terms of the there's an inn
Speaker 2: and a little candy store, and it is very very married.
Speaker 2: I would say I know of only a few people
Speaker 2: who've been divorced. It is unlike any place I'd ever
Speaker 2: been before because my family did not join private clubs,
Speaker 2: and it was both unappealing to me because of that,
Speaker 2: but also I knew I was going to probably stay
Speaker 2: on the vineyard with my small children at that point,
Speaker 2: and it provided a day camp. It provided a community
Speaker 2: for us. I wouldn't have known anyone otherwise. So we
Speaker 2: applied to join and it's a three year process, and
Speaker 2: for the first couple of summers I really knew no one.
Speaker 2: It was a very hard community to break into. A
Speaker 2: lot of traditions, a lot of social life that it's
Speaker 2: just hard for people to know about you or you
Speaker 2: to know about them. But then eventually we started being included,
Speaker 2: mostly meeting people through the kids, and it really became
Speaker 2: a wonderful community for us for a long time, with
Speaker 2: the kids having lots of friends, us going to cocktail
Speaker 2: parties and dinner parties, really kind people. A lot of
Speaker 2: women who like me, were highly educated, professional degrees and
Speaker 2: had decided to stay home, so I felt very connected
Speaker 2: to them. Sort of those heavenly days of having kids
Speaker 2: over for art class on the lawn and then getting
Speaker 2: pizzas and pouring white wine for the women, and sunsets
Speaker 2: in July and all of that.
Speaker 3: It was really wonderful for a long time. During these years,
Speaker 3: life is well, lovely. The family spends time at the
Speaker 3: vineyard house, and James begins commuting there by seaplane. From
Speaker 3: the outside, everything appears smooth and lush and successful. Nothing
Speaker 3: to see here, and yet inside the marriage the balance
Speaker 3: quietly shifts. James increasingly takes control of their finances, asking
Speaker 3: Belle to account for nearly every purchase. Eventually she opens
Speaker 3: a second credit card, just for small things. She knows
Speaker 3: that he might question. It's not meant to be a
Speaker 3: secret exactly, but it becomes one.
Speaker 2: He was very stringent. He was very stringent about vacations expenses.
Speaker 2: We've lived in this apartment for twenty three years. I
Speaker 2: wanted to do some updating renovations. He was very very
Speaker 2: stressed out about that as an example, and I think
Speaker 2: I've thought a lot about this, about why I handed
Speaker 2: so much over to him. And he did the meetings
Speaker 2: with the financial advisors, he reviewed the tax returns. He
Speaker 2: really had a handle on our whole budget and all
Speaker 2: of our assets. Knew where everything sat. And I don't
Speaker 2: think it was a question, definitely no question of anything illegal.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like he was refusing to show me things.
Speaker 2: I just got very, very comfortable with him handling it.
Speaker 2: It felt like this is how he was going to
Speaker 2: take care of our family. There was something that felt
Speaker 2: just wonderful about that. But I also think some peers
Speaker 2: are the same way about this that it felt like
Speaker 2: I was helping him feel good about himself, like I
Speaker 2: was helping his self esteem having married into this family
Speaker 2: with money. It felt like an equalizing in a way,
Speaker 2: like I trust you with this, You're going to be
Speaker 2: in charge of this. And it's maybe the male ego
Speaker 2: in some way that I was pumping up in that.
Speaker 2: And then I think the more you touch with it,
Speaker 2: the more you convince yourself you can't understand it. And
Speaker 2: I'd been in meetings with bankers or lawyers who would
Speaker 2: only speak to him. It was like I was some accessory,
Speaker 2: and they would use unnecessarily complicated acronyms and talked over me.
Speaker 2: And I think you convince yourself that it's too hard.
Speaker 2: But I'm a former corporate lawyer. I know did securities
Speaker 2: deals and with prospectuses and drafted really complicated debt covenants.
Speaker 2: I could understand it. I think anyone can understand it.
Speaker 2: But it's I think easy to convince yourself you can't.
Speaker 2: So I lost touch with our big picture and I
Speaker 2: signed our tax returns because he gave me the page
Speaker 2: to sign, and I didn't read all the pages that
Speaker 2: came before it, again not hiding anything. I could have
Speaker 2: looked through it. I could have seen what his bonuses were,
Speaker 2: but I did not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so interesting because he did not want you
Speaker 3: to not because he was hiding anything from you, but
Speaker 3: because that would have been, in a way a blow.
Speaker 3: That's how I'm reading it, you know, a blow to
Speaker 3: the ego of dicycle.
Speaker 2: I'm a blow to the ego.
Speaker 4: You do you, I'll do me. Everything will be fine.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. It felt like it would be a statement
Speaker 2: of lack of trust, or not even trust, but like
Speaker 2: lack of admiration, like of course you can handle this.
Speaker 2: I don't need to question things.
Speaker 3: By twenty fifteen, James's career is accelerating. He helps lead
Speaker 3: the sale of the investment firm where he's worked for years,
Speaker 3: then moves to a hedge fund and quickly rises through
Speaker 3: the ranks.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 3: From that unreliable bird's eye view, everything looks like success
Speaker 3: upon success, but something in the atmosphere around him begins
Speaker 3: to change. He spends more time with colleagues, wealthy, competitive
Speaker 3: men who travel together, play tennis, take guy's trips, and
Speaker 3: move easily within a world of money and power. Bell
Speaker 3: senses this shift, a sheen of entitlement that begins to
Speaker 3: surround that world. But still lives go on, and theirs
Speaker 3: is no exception to the rule. The kids are growing up,
Speaker 3: and the train of their family continues to chug forward
Speaker 3: along familiar tracks. Some years pass. In twenty nineteen, the
Speaker 3: couple meets with their lawyer to review their wills and
Speaker 3: estate plans. At the bottom of the agenda sits one
Speaker 3: unresolved issue, extinguishing the pre nup they had signed years earlier.
Speaker 3: But when they get to this item, James suggests they
Speaker 3: table the conversation, saying he has to get back to
Speaker 3: the office, Bell lets it go the way she has
Speaker 3: so often deferred to the urgency of his work. Then,
Speaker 3: in March of twenty twenty, the world begins to shut
Speaker 3: down as the pandemic spreads. Bell and her family retreat
Speaker 3: to their house on the vineyard, assuming the lockdown will
Speaker 3: be brief. At first, the days feel strangely peaceful, cooking together,
Speaker 3: long dinners, fires in the fireplace. But one evening the
Speaker 3: phone rings. Bell picks up. It's a man she's never met,
Speaker 3: and he tells her that James is having an affair
Speaker 3: with his wife. The accusation seems impossible, does not compute.
Speaker 3: When Bell confronts James, she expects some explanation that will
Speaker 3: make the call disappear. Instead, he admits it, says there
Speaker 3: was an affair, but it was short and meaningless. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: in the city, the other couple is having the same confrontation,
Speaker 3: a parallel reckoning unfolding in another home. The night stretches
Speaker 3: on in shock and confusion. James sleeps in the guest room.
Speaker 3: When morning comes, everything will be different. James will ask for,
Speaker 3: well demand a divorce.
Speaker 2: His whole affect had changed. It just had gone so cold,
Speaker 2: almost icy.
Speaker 4: Had you ever seen him like that before?
Speaker 2: Never? Never, And he was fully dressed, he had carrying
Speaker 2: the bag, and he said, I thought I was happy,
Speaker 2: but I'm not, and I'm leaving right now. And he
Speaker 2: got in his jeep, got on a ferry and.
Speaker 4: Left the island. He also told you that he was
Speaker 4: leaving everything.
Speaker 2: Yes, he said, you can have the house and the apartment,
Speaker 2: you can have custody of the kids. I don't want it.
Speaker 2: I don't want any of it.
Speaker 3: It's just unfathomable. But you know, in a way he
Speaker 3: was so confronted. This affair was obviously as affairs are
Speaker 3: a secret that he probably intended to keep a secret,
Speaker 3: and then it all blew up and then he was trapped.
Speaker 2: Yes he was, and not just trapped in terms of
Speaker 2: me knowing, but trapped in terms of COVID, which I
Speaker 2: see as a intensifire and accelerator, because we were in
Speaker 2: this house together with no ability to leave, although he
Speaker 2: did leave, and yes, I think he was unmasked in
Speaker 2: some way and he didn't know what to do with that.
Speaker 3: He doesn't take good bye to the kids, and he
Speaker 3: leaves you in a state of complete shock and also
Speaker 3: having to contend with what in the world you're going
Speaker 3: to say to your children.
Speaker 2: Yes, what I'm going to say to them, And also
Speaker 2: just being so decimated emotionally that I was literally on
Speaker 2: the bathroom floor or in bed, unable to move, with
Speaker 2: two girls twelve and fifteen, one who actually was aware
Speaker 2: of what was happening she read a text on my iPad,
Speaker 2: and one who is unaware and deciding on the advice
Speaker 2: of the therapist not to tell them. So doing this
Speaker 2: kind of dance with my older daughter where she's pretending
Speaker 2: she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed
Speaker 2: me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything,
Speaker 2: and me, you know, appearing like swollen face and like
Speaker 2: just disheveled and pretending like everything was fine. And I
Speaker 2: regret that because I think she obviously knew, And my
Speaker 2: younger daughter ended up being upset that I hadn't told
Speaker 2: her for all that time and that she was unaware
Speaker 2: of this huge thing that had happened in our family.
Speaker 3: And to just add that your son was riding out
Speaker 3: the pandemic with some boarding school friends of his in
Speaker 3: the Hamptons, so he was there not knowing he was
Speaker 3: with a family yep, and not knowing what was going
Speaker 3: on for a period of time. So it's then late
Speaker 3: April and you insist that he return and tell the kids.
Speaker 2: I said, it's time, we have to tell them, And
Speaker 2: at first he said he didn't want to and that
Speaker 2: I should tell them alone. And initially I agreed with
Speaker 2: him because he was in the middle of New York
Speaker 2: City having an affair and it was the height of
Speaker 2: COVID April twenty twenty at that point. But then his
Speaker 2: boss called me and said he really needs to be there,
Speaker 2: and so I relented and he came up. He said
Speaker 2: he had only ninety minutes to be there. His boss
Speaker 2: had lent him a seaplane and pilot. And it was
Speaker 2: then that we had the conversation with the girls, and
Speaker 2: we facetimed our son to tell him. And it's a
Speaker 2: horrible conversation for any family. I don't think anyone ever
Speaker 2: forgets it.
Speaker 4: So there are two things about that.
Speaker 3: One is that in the middle of this horrible family moment,
Speaker 3: he turns to you and says, I'm hungry.
Speaker 4: Can you make me a sandwich?
Speaker 2: Yes, he does.
Speaker 3: We have just told them, and you don't just make
Speaker 3: him a sandwich like you go into the kitchen, You're like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to make him the best fucking sandwich he's
Speaker 3: ever had in his whole.
Speaker 2: Life, exactly. And I think there was a part of
Speaker 2: me that wanted to say, make your own sandwich. You've
Speaker 2: lived here for twenty years. But I wanted to model.
Speaker 2: I had that you know, mom track in my brain,
Speaker 2: like I want to model for my daughter. The older
Speaker 2: one was still in the room that I'm going to
Speaker 2: be kind and we're going to be friendly with each other.
Speaker 2: So yes, I went in and I tried to make
Speaker 2: the best sandwich I possibly could so that he would leave,
Speaker 2: and thank God, how can I leave this woman who
Speaker 2: makes such great sandwiches. Of course, the sandwich also represented
Speaker 2: you know, everything at like the home that we had
Speaker 2: built together, the wharves, the family. But he, I think,
Speaker 2: just ate the sandwich and didn't think about it at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then the other thing that is very notable about
Speaker 3: that day is that he excuses himself from the room
Speaker 3: and he goes down to the basement or wherever you
Speaker 3: keep your records and files, and he's searching for the prenup.
Speaker 3: The thing about that that I found really striking was
Speaker 3: that in the interim from that horrible night in March
Speaker 3: and his leaving the next morning, I had actually already
Speaker 3: gone down there and had done exactly that in this
Speaker 3: very careful, methodical way, so that it wouldn't be clear
Speaker 3: that files had ever even been looked at I did.
Speaker 2: I did that a couple of weeks after he left
Speaker 2: the first time, and I used a box cutter. I
Speaker 2: opened up every box, even the ones deep in the basement.
Speaker 2: I took out every piece of paper looking for the prenup,
Speaker 2: because we had not been able to find it in
Speaker 2: our emails, on any files in New York. And I
Speaker 2: was starting to have this real hope that didn't exist,
Speaker 2: that we had never returned it to our lawyers. Maybe
Speaker 2: we'd never signed it, maybe it had been lost in
Speaker 2: a move. And I started to have that hope, and
Speaker 2: I thought, God, if it is in one of those boxes,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get rid of it, which is hard
Speaker 2: to admit as a member of the bar. But I
Speaker 2: never found it. But if I had, I would I
Speaker 2: think I would have burned it.
Speaker 4: What were you most afraid of?
Speaker 2: I knew at that point I had not received any
Speaker 2: discovery yet, he had not filed for divorce, but I
Speaker 2: knew that I had put both our names on our deeds,
Speaker 2: which were my primary assets, so he would be entitled
Speaker 2: to half. And he worked at a hedge fund at
Speaker 2: that point. He had worked at another fund and sold
Speaker 2: that fund, and I you know, when you're not entirely
Speaker 2: conscious of things, but your brain knows that he had
Speaker 2: probably accumulated some wealth. I didn't know how much, and
Speaker 2: there was a very very limited chance that he had
Speaker 2: put my name on any of those accounts. He was
Speaker 2: also sending me balance sheets at that point, which seemed
Speaker 2: to emphasize my family's wealth, even though it wasn't my money,
Speaker 2: and so I had a sense that he was creating
Speaker 2: a story where he would keep all of his assets,
Speaker 2: and I started to really worry about that.
Speaker 3: Will be back in a moment with more family secrets.
Speaker 3: In the weeks that follow, Bell remains on Martha's vineyard
Speaker 3: as the pandemic settles in. The world is quiet, and
Speaker 3: in some ways that quiet protects her. There are no
Speaker 3: big gatherings, no crowded dinners, just long daily walks that
Speaker 3: become a kind of lifeline as she moves through the
Speaker 3: shockwave of what's happened. But even in isolation, news travels.
Speaker 3: The Vineyard is a small community, and Bell begins to
Speaker 3: feel a subtle shift that often follows a divorce. Friends
Speaker 3: circling the wagons, stories forming before she even has time
Speaker 3: to process her own. Slowly, she realizes that others are
Speaker 3: beginning to write the narrative of her life, and if
Speaker 3: the story is going to be told truthfully, she will
Speaker 3: have to tell it herself.
Speaker 2: It felt like I went overnight from being a part
Speaker 2: of something to being something different, being something that people
Speaker 2: were not sure how to deal with. And I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if I were encountering someone in my position, I
Speaker 2: would have been any different. I always want to make
Speaker 2: clear there was incredible kindness, people really going out of
Speaker 2: their way to move towards me, to embrace me. But
Speaker 2: there were some less kind moments and some commentary about
Speaker 2: who should remain a member of the club, that kind
Speaker 2: of thing, and it was really painful. I think I'd
Speaker 2: had these sort of pillars of how the structure of
Speaker 2: my life. My husband, then my financial security, then his
Speaker 2: family stopped speaking to me, and then I encountered the
Speaker 2: community as they came back for the summer, and then
Speaker 2: also felt very unsure of my place there suddenly, And
Speaker 2: you know, I don't want to sound too sorry for myself.
Speaker 2: There are definitely a lot worse things that people go
Speaker 2: through in life, but it was a really strange and
Speaker 2: destabilizing time. But while that was happening, while these kind
Speaker 2: of pillars were crumbling, this part of myself that I
Speaker 2: did not know existed came out, which was first appeared
Speaker 2: when he said to me a week in that we
Speaker 2: should tell people that the divorce is mutual, that it's amicable.
Speaker 2: And I knew instantly when he said it that I
Speaker 2: was not going to comply with that storyline because it
Speaker 2: felt like lying about it or covering it up was
Speaker 2: going to make this unsurvivable for me. The only way
Speaker 2: through it was going to be me being truthful about it.
Speaker 2: I was emotionally bleeding, and I could not handle a
Speaker 2: conversation with someone without being open about that. So it
Speaker 2: was like I had this crumbling and at the same time,
Speaker 2: I'm this kind of like emergence of a very different
Speaker 2: side of me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, that's so striking.
Speaker 3: And then that also ties into your beginning after thirty
Speaker 3: years to write again, and you have this burning desire
Speaker 3: to start setting words on the page to return to
Speaker 3: that first love of yours. And also maybe Bell, like
Speaker 3: what you're describing, that the same impulse or instinct to say,
Speaker 3: he left me. Here's the truth, right, or here's my story.
Speaker 3: Nobody else is going to tell the story that is
Speaker 3: not my story, and so you begin doing that.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think it was a month after he left.
Speaker 2: I had to file something in court for one of
Speaker 2: my legal cases, and I think I was a mess
Speaker 2: edit at first, but putting words to a page then
Speaker 2: that brought me back to life a little bit, and
Speaker 2: I started writing it. It was for myself alone. I
Speaker 2: wanted to write down exactly what happened. It felt like
Speaker 2: there were all these whispers and narratives out there that
Speaker 2: were not mine, that were twisted in some way, that
Speaker 2: were not the truth. And I wanted to write the
Speaker 2: truth of it. And then when I wrote it down,
Speaker 2: something happened where I really started getting interested in the
Speaker 2: art of it again and in building suspense. When does
Speaker 2: the phone call come in? When? How do you end it?
Speaker 2: How do I keep it? How do I stay a
Speaker 2: reliable narrator, not being too angry, not being too building
Speaker 2: of a case against him. So all those things I
Speaker 2: started getting interested in that.
Speaker 3: At a point during her writing, Bell looks up the
Speaker 3: submission guidelines for Modern Love, the New York Times column
Speaker 3: devoted to personal essays about the complexities of love and relationships,
Speaker 3: and decided to see if she can compress her story
Speaker 3: into that format. She signs up for a memoir writing class,
Speaker 3: just observing at first saying very little. She's afraid that
Speaker 3: sharing her work will create another experience like the one
Speaker 3: she had her freshman year of college. But she summons
Speaker 3: her courage and in the next session she reads her
Speaker 3: piece aloud. It's emotional, but the room feels safe and supportive.
Speaker 3: It is safe and supportive. When the class ends, Bell
Speaker 3: sends the essay to Modern Love, not expecting much. The
Speaker 3: column receives thousands of submissions, and almost none are chosen,
Speaker 3: but somehow hers rises out of the pile. The essay
Speaker 3: will be published, and almost immediately it will go viral,
Speaker 3: resonating with readers who recognize something in her story. For
Speaker 3: the first time. Bell will feel like she's telling her
Speaker 3: own version of events, reclaiming the narrative that others had
Speaker 3: begun shaping around her. But before this can happen, before
Speaker 3: she can truly find exuom her voice. Another story is unfolding.
Speaker 3: James is now officially filing for divorce and asks the
Speaker 3: court to enforce the prenup. When Bell confronts him, stunned
Speaker 3: by the suddenness of it all, his response is cool,
Speaker 3: almost bureaucratic. He insists he didn't leave her. He simply
Speaker 3: changed residences. Another attempt. Belle realizes to rewrite what has happened, a.
Speaker 2: Total rewrite, and that happened a number of different times
Speaker 2: where he just changed it into something that served him really,
Speaker 2: that was, you know, everything is fine, This is fine,
Speaker 2: this is normal, kids are fine. I didn't actually leave you.
Speaker 2: I just changed locations, change residences, and you know, the
Speaker 2: implication is, why are you so upset? Why are you
Speaker 2: so confused? Why are you making this into something bad?
Speaker 2: As like a hysterical woman, kind of that trope.
Speaker 3: And he also continues to want no custody. He gets
Speaker 3: an apartment that the kids would never be able to
Speaker 3: stay in, and he's like, well, the kids are never
Speaker 3: going to stay here.
Speaker 4: I don't want custody. I don't want vacations.
Speaker 3: And he's in a world where people are saying to him, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're old enough, it's okay, you know, you can just
Speaker 3: have dinner with them once a week.
Speaker 2: It was stunning to me because as a kid of divorce,
Speaker 2: I really wanted fifty to fifty, even though that would
Speaker 2: be have its own pain, and so delivered a fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty agreement to him, and it came back like
Speaker 2: the heaviest black line, where with all of the time
Speaker 2: taken out dinner on Thursday nights, which ended pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: And our youngest was twelve, which is not a baby,
Speaker 2: but she really wanted a room there and that was
Speaker 2: really painful for her that she could not have a
Speaker 2: bedroom there. And I really tried to convince him of
Speaker 2: what is to be gained by living with kids. You know,
Speaker 2: you learn so much about them when they're making a
Speaker 2: smoothie in the kitchen or taking a shower in your
Speaker 2: bathroom or whatever it is waiting up for them at curfew,
Speaker 2: and he just didn't want to do it. He really
Speaker 2: felt that that part of his life was over. That
Speaker 2: they were fully formed human beings, is what he said.
Speaker 3: The other thing that you then learn during this, because
Speaker 3: you're going to go to trial after being someone who
Speaker 3: just was so constitutionally unable to fight back in your marriage,
Speaker 3: in your life. You had not inherited the burden fiery temper.
Speaker 3: This was not your nature. You fight back, and there's
Speaker 3: going to be a trial. And so there's discovery, and
Speaker 3: you then see what James's You had some sense, but
Speaker 3: you then really see what his earnings have been and
Speaker 3: the wealth that he's accumulated over the course of these decades.
Speaker 3: And you're write, he had not hidden it. I had
Speaker 3: chosen not to look. I had chosen not to know.
Speaker 2: It was a real blame to me, like called discovery,
Speaker 2: and it was really a discovery for me because I
Speaker 2: had not kept track, I had not checked, I had
Speaker 2: not read the text returns, and there it was staring
Speaker 2: me in the face that he had accumulated all these
Speaker 2: assets and I would have no part of them under
Speaker 2: our prenup.
Speaker 3: And that he was going to enforce the prenup or
Speaker 3: requesting that the prenup be enforced, in the sense that
Speaker 3: he was going to insist on the fifty percent of
Speaker 3: both properties that you had purchased.
Speaker 4: And and you.
Speaker 3: Know, and what's interesting there too, is that there was
Speaker 3: no earthly reason for this financially, no reason whatsoever for
Speaker 3: him to be asking for fifty percent of your residences.
Speaker 2: No, it would I always think about that. It would
Speaker 2: have been very easy for him really to let me
Speaker 2: keep those and give me financial security, but that was
Speaker 2: not something that he could tolerate. So we went up
Speaker 2: to the wire with me being deeply, deeply afraid that
Speaker 2: I would lose both homes because I didn't have enough
Speaker 2: money to buy them out, so I would have had
Speaker 2: to sell them. And now as I talk about this,
Speaker 2: I'm fully conscious of how privileged I am, and even
Speaker 2: in those circumstances, in much better shape than most women
Speaker 2: going through divorce. But at that time I couldn't see that.
Speaker 2: I just felt such fear because I was trying to
Speaker 2: keep my kids live stable. I was trying to make
Speaker 2: sure that I could be able to support them, I
Speaker 2: was trying to get through COVID, I was trying to
Speaker 2: keep the structures of our life together in some way,
Speaker 2: and it felt really just awful also to lose the
Speaker 2: things that my father and my grandfather had given to me.
Speaker 3: Just an hour before the trial is set to be
Speaker 3: James makes an offer to settle, but the terms are absolute.
Speaker 3: If Belle questions anything, if she pushes back at all,
Speaker 3: The deal disappears and the trial moves forward, where Bell
Speaker 3: knows she could lose everything. The negotiation happens almost entirely
Speaker 3: by email, outside the usual protections of the courtroom. Once again,
Speaker 3: the dynamic of control is unmistakable. James can appear generous,
Speaker 3: but only if he remains firmly in charge of the outcome.
Speaker 3: As long as he's in control, then he can be magnanimous.
Speaker 3: As he says, Bell understands the stakes immediately. Instead of
Speaker 3: fighting every detail, she focuses on what matters most, keeping
Speaker 3: the apartment, the house, and securing support for their children.
Speaker 3: In that moment, survival means narrowing the fight to what
Speaker 3: will allow her life and her children's lives to continue.
Speaker 2: Like I was just threading the needle, trying to stay
Speaker 2: very very calm to get to that point and conceding
Speaker 2: on things that I knew would not be critical for me,
Speaker 2: and not giving in on things that I knew were
Speaker 2: essential for me. So I had to be just very
Speaker 2: mature and very very focused, and we did. We literally
Speaker 2: signed the agreement forty five minutes before we were supposed
Speaker 2: to appear in front of the judge for this trial
Speaker 2: that would not have gone well for me.
Speaker 4: Do you think that was James's endgame all along?
Speaker 2: It's hard to know. I don't know if something changed
Speaker 2: for him, if someone convinced him to not do this,
Speaker 2: But if it was a negotiating tactic, it worked because
Speaker 2: it completely brought me to my knees and put me
Speaker 2: in a position where I could have no hope of
Speaker 2: any leverage or any hope of any settlement from him
Speaker 2: in terms of his assets.
Speaker 3: In July of twenty twenty two, the divorce is finalized.
Speaker 3: Of course, before this moment, Bell had already written the
Speaker 3: essay that would change everything, her Modern Love Piece for
Speaker 3: The New York Times. At the time she first submitted it,
Speaker 3: the editors asked for something that felt impossible. She would
Speaker 3: need to share the essay with James, to fact check
Speaker 3: it with him before publication during the divorce. That request
Speaker 3: felt unthinkable. The idea of asking James for permission, of
Speaker 3: handing him any control over her writing meant the piece
Speaker 3: had to be shelved. But then the divorce proceedings are over.
Speaker 3: It's done, the legal battle is behind her, the marriage
Speaker 3: officially finished, and for the first time, Bell feels she
Speaker 3: can step forward on her own terms. She shows James
Speaker 3: the essay not out of obligation, but because the story
Speaker 3: is hers to tell.
Speaker 2: I show it to him because I could not let
Speaker 2: it go. I just was like, I let it go
Speaker 2: for two months. I thought I cannot show it to him.
Speaker 2: He will really refuse and that Times won't publish it,
Speaker 2: and then why would I take that risk? But I
Speaker 2: just could not let it go. I really wanted to
Speaker 2: see this in the paper, and so I sent it
Speaker 2: to him. I said, I started writing again. I really
Speaker 2: want to publish this. I was very careful with my words.
Speaker 2: And he didn't answer for a while for about ten days,
Speaker 2: and he first said that he was scared to read it,
Speaker 2: and then he said that he read it. It was good,
Speaker 2: hard to read. I'm supportive, and I took a screenshot
Speaker 2: and send it to the Times editor and it was
Speaker 2: published two weeks later.
Speaker 3: There's this beautiful moment where you imagine your maternal grandmother
Speaker 3: or Babe with you during this time energetically or just
Speaker 3: in your memory with you, and you imagine Babe saying
Speaker 3: to you, be brave, claim it, say it, break this up.
Speaker 3: And that's such a powerful, powerful thing because yes, you
Speaker 3: do come from tremendous privilege, and you know, as a
Speaker 3: society somehow that becomes like, well then everything is okay,
Speaker 3: and life doesn't work that way at all, and the
Speaker 3: breaking the cycle a combination of things of maternal absence,
Speaker 3: of women contending with infidelity again and again and again,
Speaker 3: you know, for generations, and feeling almost like it's just
Speaker 3: part of their cross to bear, or the way it
Speaker 3: is to be with a man you love. And this
Speaker 3: was on you, It was thrust upon you, but it
Speaker 3: was on you that you were going to be the
Speaker 3: one to be brave and claim it and say it
Speaker 3: and break the cycle.
Speaker 2: It was strange to me that she was so present
Speaker 2: for me, my grandmother during starting in the first days
Speaker 2: after James left, really like she was speaking to me
Speaker 2: as I slept in somewhat and I wrestled even in
Speaker 2: the first couple of months about I thought I had
Speaker 2: changed my family trajectory by marrying someone so steady and calm,
Speaker 2: compared to my mother and grandmother, who married very public figures,
Speaker 2: very dynamic, charming people who were unfaithful in a serial way.
Speaker 2: And they had been taught and had taught for their
Speaker 2: daughters that we are meant to stay quiet about it,
Speaker 2: to be graceful, to keep private things private, but also
Speaker 2: really to protect the man in the story, to protect
Speaker 2: his belief in his own importance, to make sure their
Speaker 2: reputations weren't tarnished. And I grew up with that in
Speaker 2: my bones, you know, I grew up with that being
Speaker 2: how you interacted with men like that. And so here
Speaker 2: I was having repeated this family legacy in a spectacular way.
Speaker 2: But somehow, as surprise to me and everyone around me,
Speaker 2: I was not going to do that. And as I
Speaker 2: said clear from the very beginning, I was not going
Speaker 2: to do that, and then clear when I really could
Speaker 2: not let go of publishing Modern Love and then eventually
Speaker 2: to write this longer book, that I was going to
Speaker 2: do this differently for myself because I think these things
Speaker 2: live in you and keeping them secret really is corrosive,
Speaker 2: but also to hopefully, and I can't promise it'll work,
Speaker 2: but hopefully change that pattern for my kids.
Speaker 3: When Bell's memoir Strangers is published in January, something extraordinary happens.
Speaker 3: The book doesn't simply arrive in the world, It explodes
Speaker 3: into it almost overnight. It lands at number one on
Speaker 3: the New York Times Bestseller list, a rare debut that
Speaker 3: few books ever achieve For someone who has long thought
Speaker 3: of herself as private, careful, confrontational, the moment feels both
Speaker 3: surreal and deeply validating, because what the world is responding
Speaker 3: to is the voice Bell fought so hard to claim.
Speaker 3: After years of silence, control, and others shaping the narrative
Speaker 3: of her life, she has finally written the story in
Speaker 3: her own words, and now that voice, once tentative, once hidden,
Speaker 3: is reaching readers everywhere, opening the question of what comes
Speaker 3: next and who Belle might become in the year still ahead.
Speaker 2: It feels like a strange combination of things because I
Speaker 2: am being challenged to be a public person, to speak
Speaker 2: at events, to have conversations like this, to really use
Speaker 2: my voice and articulate myself and put myself on the
Speaker 2: page in a very raw and open way. And so
Speaker 2: now when I meet people, they know a lot about me,
Speaker 2: and this is hard. I didn't event last night where
Speaker 2: my face was just right read the entire time. So
Speaker 2: it feels like this very strange position to have put
Speaker 2: myself in by choice. But at the same time, as
Speaker 2: uncomfortable as that is, it is this incredible thing for
Speaker 2: me as a quiet person to have this connection with
Speaker 2: humanity all over the world, but then up close too
Speaker 2: in person. That feels incredible. And also I just felt
Speaker 2: driven on a clear mission that this will help people.
Speaker 2: And I don't mean in a self help way. I
Speaker 2: mean in a way where I felt so alone and
Speaker 2: so filled of a shame when this happened that I
Speaker 2: longed for a text like this. I longed for company
Speaker 2: in it, to feel less alone in it. I don't
Speaker 2: think my book's going to save anybody, but I think
Speaker 2: I longed for this connection, and that my hope is
Speaker 2: that the book will make other women feel less alone
Speaker 2: in this and other types of loss and things that
Speaker 2: happen that you don't expect in life. So it has
Speaker 2: felt like this tide of support, which also feels really wonderful.
Speaker 2: And as far as ten years, I'm hoping in six
Speaker 2: months or least that some of this will die down.
Speaker 2: I feel very lucky for it. It's wonderful, but that
Speaker 2: it will die down and that I can get back
Speaker 2: to writing, because if ten years from now, I am
Speaker 2: a writer and that's my life, in addition to hopefully
Speaker 2: still being a lawyer. That to me is the most
Speaker 2: like exciting thing. It's so hard, as you know, but
Speaker 2: that that could be my life, and that my life
Speaker 2: is expanding as I fifty six. Now, if I'm sixty
Speaker 2: six and I'm writing, I just think that would be
Speaker 2: the greatest thing.
Speaker 3: Here's Belle reading one last passage from her room remarkable
Speaker 3: memoir Strangers.
Speaker 2: I don't know how long he stayed with the woman
Speaker 2: with the alliterative name, or she is still in his life.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he cheated throughout our marriage, or
Speaker 2: if she was his first and only affair. I don't
Speaker 2: know if he made the decision to leave suddenly after
Speaker 2: being caught, or if he carefully planned his exit for years.
Speaker 2: I don't know what role the pandemic played. I don't
Speaker 2: know how much of it was about money. I don't
Speaker 2: know how much of that was about me. I don't
Speaker 2: know why he left. I don't think I ever will.
Speaker 2: I still think maybe there will be a final act
Speaker 2: in the play, an end to the story when I'm
Speaker 2: given my answer. But the years go by without one.
Speaker 2: There is only silence.
Speaker 3: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zaccur is
Speaker 3: the story editor and Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 4: Is the executive producer.
Speaker 3: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
Speaker 3: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
Speaker 3: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
Speaker 3: eight secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at Danny Rider. And if you'd
Speaker 3: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.