Worth More Dead

wanted to see all the receipts. His allowance was $200 a month; hers was $150 and out of it she had to pay the children’s expenses. During her work hours, Carolyn was responsible for huge sums of money belonging to strangers, but her own husband didn’t think she was capable of figuring out her grocery budget.
    It was a relief for her when Bob went away on business trips. Only then could Carolyn feel comfortable in her own home. Bob wasn’t there to dart looks of disapproval at her. She could laugh as loud as she wanted, wear casual clothes, and let the kids mess up the house a little.
    “She told me that she dreaded going home after work,” Denise Jannusch recalled. “She didn’t want to have to deal with Bob.” Carolyn had dreams. She thought about being a writer; she had even written several short stories that were quite good, but somehow she couldn’t write with Bob around.
    Oddly, while it appeared that Bob was the one involved with other women, he was very jealous of Carolyn and constantly suspected her of cheating on him. For more than a decade of their rigidly controlled marriage, she had never looked at another man. Then in 1997, she met a man who was exceptionally kind to her and made her feel like an intelligent and valuable person. She’d spent time with him, a man who really liked her. Starved for love, she was an accident or, rather, an affair, waiting to happen. When she began having lunch with the other man, they could have become very deeply involved. Whether she physically consummated her friendship with him no one knows, but it made her realize that in her mid-thirties her life shouldn’t be about bending to Bob’s will. The other man had given her a glimpse of what life could be like without the suffocating black cloud that hovered over her constantly. She wanted that feeling again, but she didn’t want to have to sneak around; that was against her conscience. She hoped to find love before it was too late, but Carolyn wasn’t the sort of person who could commit to an extramarital affair, so she broke it off.
    The timing was on schedule. Women who are unhappily married reach thirty-seven to thirty-nine and see forty looming. It’s a milestone in aging that makes a lot of people feel as if the door to youth is shutting. All of the euphemisms about “forty is the new thirty” seem hollow when most models and movie stars are only twenty years old, and movies and ads are clearly aimed at the young.
    None of the counseling Carolyn and Bob tried had helped their marriage. Instead, she realized, their counseling sessions just gave Bob a chance to point out what was wrong with her. Carolyn bought a book called Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship by a therapist, Mira Kirshenbaum. She read and reread it. When she showed it to Denise Jannusch, her friend noticed that Carolyn had underlined many sections of the book. She said it was helping her gain the courage to leave Bob. (She was not alone; one online bookseller had 143 positive reviews of Kirshenbaum’s books from women who were apparently facing similar dilemmas.)
    By 1998, Carolyn had finally made up her mind to divorce Bob, raise her children on her own, and hope to have a chance at happiness. She had thought of it for a very long time; now she was determined.
    “She called herself a ‘wimp,’ ” Denise Jannusch recalled. “She always used to say, ‘I’m just so wimpy; I can’t do it.’ But then she built herself up and began to think that maybe she could.”
    Carolyn longed for freedom. And so did Bob. She sensed that and often wondered why he stayed. He resisted any conversation that might conceivably lead to a discussion of their problems. To her, the answer seemed plain. If he was as miserable as she was, why didn’t he just face up to a mutual decision to split up? Money, probably. They had a nice house, and he didn’t want to risk losing his share of the equity. Moreover, they had invested almost all their savings—$90,000—in some acreage near their home.
    Most of all there were the children. Carolyn believed Bob loved their children, even if he no longer loved her. And one thing she was adamant about; she would ask for custody of their children.
    They couldn’t go on the way they had been. Carolyn cautiously began to hope that she could convince Bob that they should divorce. If they couldn’t get it together after twelve