I hope my missive will find you in good health, in a festive mood, and of sound mind, for I wish you to fully appreciate the excellent news I have for you. I wish you to relish every word of this wonderful letter.

You will be delighted to learn that my marriage with Lauren, your daughter’s daughter, is coming to an end. You will be proud of her, too. A professional granddaughter, Lauren has fully assimilated your values and worldviews, including your view of me, and perhaps everyone else not of your considerable means, as a freeloader. In this spirit, yesterday she kicked me out of her apartment in London. Both of you can rejoice because there will be no freeloading on my part any longer.

You will be even more delighted to learn that I will not attempt to take a single penny from Lauren, that is, from you. Subject, of course, to her not attempting to take anything from my own meager resources. I would like you to know, contrary to your fears from the very first moment you learned about me, that I do not wish your money or anything else you may posses. After all, I do not hail from East European gangsters without a pedigree.

I hope the good news will cheer you up early this year of years. I hope your wealth will grow and grow. And I hope that you will be forever free from freeloaders of every kind.

Addendum I (January 24, 2000)

The first of several drafts of this letter was written early in the morning of Wednesday, January 5. Actually, I was so angry with Lauren that I could not sleep for the best part of that night. Every now and then I would get up and scribble something or other I did not want to forget. I almost sent the letter the same day, but I ultimately decided to give it a bit more time. The letter did not have the right feel, either. It was too petulant for my taste. There was too much hurt and too little humor in it. However, it took only five days for my decision to mature and for the letter to take its final shape.

The previous day, on January 4, Lauren and I went to a meeting with Gabrielle Rifkind, our intrepid marriage counselor. This was the first meeting after the holidays. Some three weeks had passed since our last session in 1999. When Lauren started piling up her complaints accumulated during the intervening period, complaints that she would not share with me in the meanwhile, I could not stand it any longer. As I responded to her many accusations, my anger kept welling up. Returning to the “unhelpful” tack I took at one of the counseling meetings several months earlier, I insisted that most of Lauren’s troubles would remain if I left her, whereas most of my problems would simply vanish. The more I said, the more convinced in this proposition I became. Lauren just cried and cried, saying less and less. Even poor Gabrielle was taken aback by my stubborn resistance to any of her helpful suggestions.

When we got out, Lauren and I kept quiet. We did not even look at each other, let alone touch. We were at the brink once again, but the brink was harder, colder, sharper. A free taxi trundled our way, and Lauren hailed it. “Do you want me to drop you off at Paddington,” she offered dryly. “No, thanks,” I said coldly. I did not even stop to help her into the cab. I walked from Swiss Cottage to Paddington in the shortest time possible. I was angry, really angry, but I felt good, too. The end was in sight. Walking itself felt invigorating.

On Wednesday morning I sent to Lauren via courier the tickets for Istria and the car rental forms. They were to be with her by Thursday noon. In an electronic-mail message sent the same morning, I told her about the tickets and other documents, and I let her know I was not going. That day and the next, she repeatedly pleaded with me to come with her and the children, but I repeatedly refused her entreaties. I was not sure whether or not she would actually go, but on Friday morning I found an electronic-mail message saying that she ultimately decided to spend this period in Ljubljana, rather than Istria. We were originally supposed to just pass through the Slovene capital in a car rented at the airport for the five days dedicated to the purchase of our home away from home. Only when I was sure about her departure, which remained in a limbo until the very last moment, I decided to return to London for the weekend. My plan was to leave there on Tuesday afternoon, only a few hours before her return. However, she woke me up on Sunday morning and started berating me for being in London. She expected me to stay in Reading. After I refused to listen to her any longer, she ordered me out. And I left in haste.

Before Lauren left for Ljubljana, the agreement was for us to meet at Gabrielle’s on Monday, January 17. However, this meeting quickly became quite pointless. What would we discuss with our counselor? Details of our separation and/or divorce? I wrote to Gabrielle the same day I wrote to Lauren’s grandfather. This time I copied Lauren, though. The meeting was off. All future meetings were off, too.

Lauren and the children returned from Slovenia on Tuesday, January 11. They came late in the day. She did not call that evening or the next morning. I assumed she had received my letter to Gabrielle by the middle of the next day, when she sent me her first electronic-mail message. It concerned the difficulties our friend, Dragoslav Kožul, was facing because of the failure of our Istrian gambit, but she also added a few words about our own situation. I responded immediately. I began by thanking her for her calm tone. After dealing briefly with Dragoslav’s predicament, I responded to her thoughts about us. Namely, I urged her to think not only about my behavior at this juncture, but to think about the Annenberg curse, its effect on her, and its possible future effect on our children. As I wrote, my anger kept rising once again. No matter how hard I tried to keep calm, it was difficult to control my temper. The Annenberg curse, indeed.

A curious story emerged soon after Lauren’s return. Namely, she told Dragoslav that her family gave her an ultimatum some time ago, perhaps a couple of years back, threatening to cross her off the family will if she did not divorce me. In the first version of the story, she told Dragoslav that I knew about her decision to stay with me and forego her rightful share of the family wealth, but in the second version she told him that she did not tell me about any of this because she did not want me to be even more intransigent about her family. When I sent Lauren an electronic-mail message to ask her about all this, she refused to answer, claiming that this was her personal affair.

Gabrielle wrote to me in response to my letter and copied Lauren, too, as I had done when I wrote to Gabrielle. Her letter reached me via electronic mail just as I was leaving my office on Friday, January 14. I read it several times, and I considered it seriously, but she did not manage to make me change my mind about counseling. Simply put, her arguments failed to impress me. Besides, I did not want any more counseling, period. This was what I was prepared to maintain no matter what.

I started thinking about returning to my family only after Giuseppe Mastruzzo called me on Saturday and Sunday, January 15 and 16. The fact that he did not even attempt to discuss his request—well, his demand—totally disarmed me. My attempts to get closer to Lauren ultimately resulted in our visit to Gabrielle on January 17. Although I was adamantly against this meeting the previous week, I ended up by accepting Lauren’s pleas to join her at Gabrielle’s for the last meeting. This was the only decent way to end this relationship, she argued. Try as I might, I could not find a fault with this argument. Besides, Giuseppe’s voice prodded me toward reunion with Lauren and the children. In the end, I went there mainly because of Giuseppe.

And so we met at the same place where we parted two weeks earlier. To my annoyance, both Lauren and Gabrielle tried to persuade me that we should continue our counseling, but I resisted the pressure. My argument was not very complicated: no matter how useful some of the meetings had been, Lauren had ultimately refused to talk to me at any other time. It was time, I argued, for the two of us to face each other. It was time for the two of us to learn how to talk with each other. And it was time for Lauren to shed the counseling crutch.

If I had any other incentive but Giuseppe’s request to go to one more bout of marriage counseling, then it was the story about Lauren being cut off her will on account of her refusal to get rid of me. I did bring up this issue in the meeting, but I learned little. Lauren did not want to say much about it. However, after the meeting it transpired that it was her grandfather who had made the ultimatum. Lauren swears that his action had nothing to do with anything he or his wife had every heard about me from her. She claimed that she would never even dream of bringing up our troubles with them for fear of complications of all kinds. According to Lauren, her grandfather took a strong dislike of me when he noticed that I was rough with Dorian. In fact, there was a single event he had observed around the pool at Sunnylands on the basis of which he decided I was a bully he did not want in his family. God only knows what he saw, but he could not have seen anything funny. Whenever I visited Sunnylands, I behaved like a damned robot.

After Gabrielle’s, we walked toward Paddington. The atmosphere was somewhat tense at the beginning, but it gradually loosened. I invited Lauren to Raoul’s Café, where we would normally go after our sessions, and she ultimately agreed. At first she said she wanted to go home, but she changed her mind just in time. Over food and wine, things quickly improved. I told her she was beautiful, and I rubbed her nose a bit. When we came out, we started kissing. We were in love again…

The next few days we called each other sparingly. On the one hand, too many problems were still unresolved, many of which were difficult to imagine ever being resolved; on the other, neither of us wanted to spoil the fragile truce. At the same time, I was aware that my letter to her grandfather would finally arrive in Palm Springs any day now. I felt it would be silly to tell Lauren about the letter so late in the game, but I also felt a bit awkward about my silence. I expected the shit to hit the fan much earlier, and I was not prepared for such a long wait. The longer it lasted, the more awkward it became.

On top of everything, Lauren was wonderful yesterday, when she brought the children to Reading. We even made love on the sly. We also agreed to spend some time together this weekend. She would come to Reading, and we would squirrel ourselves away in a hotel. This would give us some neutral and uninterrupted time to deal with so many accumulated problems. For the first time after a long while we both felt quite optimistic about the future. More important, we both fell real love for each other—a miracle under the circumstances.

And then the Annenbergs called her about my letter, which had traveled for two full weeks. They called this evening, which would be mid-morning for them. She called me immediately afterwards. “Why did you send that letter?” she asked rhetorically in a tired voice. Although she said she was in panic, she sounded quite composed. I just called her again, and she still sounded quite good. I called her to apologize for my part in her misery. “You are screwed,” I laughed, testing my luck. “You have a rotten family and a rotten husband.” I really felt sorry for her. And she really sounded good. Poor woman. So many years of struggle and so little help from any quarter. Although I am grinning as I am writing this, I do feel rotten. I really owe Lauren much more than I have ever given her. It is time to do something entirely different. Something that would surprise even me!

Addendum II (February 1, 2000)

Apparently, my letter came to Palm Springs at least a year too late. Walter Annenberg was far from being of sound mind. In fact, he did not even recognize my name. He is already well on his way to join his good old friend and erstwhile boss, Ronald Reagan.