Love Story Gone Awry

• Posted on 18th April 2019
• in divorce & remarriage, entertainment books, Love Story
• by Ben

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This sad love story can only be presented because the next chapter in the narrative is a happy one. After several tumultuous years the divergence once again became a convergence and lasting happiness resulted.

The following story is somewhat of an excerpt from book three of my memoirs, Waiting for Elizabeth where you will also find the joyful details of our reconnection.

Sometime in 1995 Elizabeth asked me to sleep on the futon. I think it was shortly after she went to the bank to get some cash from her own checking account – in which she thought she had a balance of around $1,500 – and found it empty: zero balance. The NYS Tax folks had put a lien on the account and taken every last nickel. This was the beginning of the end.

I had more or less forgotten about the state tax bill as I was in negotiations with the IRS about an “offer in compromise”. This arrangement allows people with unpaid taxes to negotiate a settled amount that is less than what is owed. The category we were in is called “doubt as to collectibility” and it means what it says; that the taxpayer will never be able to fully pay the tax bill. There was a lot of paperwork and phone calls involved but let me tell you that the IRS gets a bad rap. The NY State tax people won’t negotiate anything. They want their money and – as we learned the hard way – will come after you like a pack of hungry badgers. Compared to them, the IRS is Mother Teresa.

The only good part of this experience except the settlement itself was the IRS lady who helped me with the paperwork. She was acting as though she was my personal tax advisor. “No, honey, don’t put that in there. It’s a red flag.” She was always saying things like that as we worked our way through the incredibly complex and ambiguous forms. I’ve forgotten her name but she was an Angel.

So anyhow in 1995 I made a deal with the IRS for the unpaid taxes from ‘90 through ‘94. The total amount I had to pay was about 20% of my total liability. I made the final payment in June of ’98.

Regardless of the successful resolution of the IRS bill things were getting steadily worse in our marriage and, at the time I was utterly bumfuzzled by that. (“bumfuzzled” is an actual word. I looked it up.) So I slept on the futon and worried. Things were not getting better. They were getting worse.

Elizabeth was talking separation. She wanted me to move out of the penthouse. This was serious. I was in a state of total mystification about this chasm that was widening between us. I made a few half-hearted inquiries about possible crash pads but I did not want to move out. I did not want to separate. This was my woman and the center of my life and I simply could not get that this was actually happening. Yet it was.

At some point when I realized that the parting might be inevitable I told her that I was not leaving our apartment. If I was going to lose my beloved wife I was not going to lose my beloved penthouse, too. Elizabeth started looking for a place where she could go. After a short time she found one, her friend Alice’s pieds-à-terre in the Murray Hill neighborhood.

EH moved out of our home on Saturday 13 July July 1996. That was the low point of my life.

It took a couple of years for me to dig my way out of that trough of sadness and depression. My newly acquired Shrink, Dr. Herb Robbins, was a huge help in the regaining of my sense of self-worth. Thank you, Herb.

As I mentioned at the top of this essay, Waiting for Elizabeth contains the blissful details of our reconnection.