My mom was about 26, and her father, Robert, was in his 50s, when this photo of the two of them with their spouses, her first and his 12th(?), was taken at Las Vegas’ now-demolished Stardust in 1965. They were estranged for most of Mom’s childhood, partly at her stepfather’s insistence. But they got back in touch sometime before one . . .
I used to wonder why my mom stayed with my father for so long when they were so ferociously ill-matched, but she always said it was better to have an overbearing father than no father at all, and when I look at this photo, of her own dad, Robert, holding her as a baby, I think I understand the marriage . . .
In this, the final installment of the Love Triangle Letters, my beloved Texan grandmother drafts a note to the other woman’s husband. It’s exceedingly polite, which she wasn’t always. “Regardless of what Christine has done I blame her no more than the man. I am a great believer in the ‘Single Standard,’” she begins. She urges him to take Christine . . .
Last week I posted the letter my grandfather sent to my grandmother, Martha, after she found out he was cheating and left him. This week’s installment is a letter from Christine, the other woman, pictured next to my grandfather second from left above, who also had a kid and a spouse. According to my mom, Robert married her two or three . . .
My grandmother kept letters documenting the fallout from my grandfather’s affair (with the woman who became his next wife). In this missive (below), he urges my grandmother to leave her parents’ place and come back to him. The language becomes increasingly unhinged and self-pitying; I suspect he was getting progressively shitfaced as he wrote. Some notable passages (typos reproduced from . . .