Roses and Rage: One Woman's Journey to Find Herself

By Libby Spiro

Libby Spiro walks out on Yermie, her emotionally abusive husband of nearly 40 years, and finds peace in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Yermie reappears in the throes of an illness that will compel Libby to return. Can she find it in her heart to care for him, until his dying day, and grant him forgiveness? Roses and Rage is the tale of an old-fashioned marriage that hits modernity head-on, of a women’s quest to find herself, and of the courage and commitment that woman discovers along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626753501

Book preview

—Anonymous

PROLOGUE:

The Last Straw

I was more surprised than anyone by my decision.

Why was this fight different from any other fight that we have ever had? Who knows? But it was the one that did it. It really was the last straw. I decided: that’s it.

My husband Yermie, his uncle Neesem and Aunt Sima, and I were driving through the pristine Austrian countryside on a beautiful fall day in September. The leaves were a mosaic of beautiful earthy colors, and the snowcapped mountains all around us lent us a feeling of peacefulness and contentment. We were listening to a CD of Mozart’s piano concertos. What could be more appropriate than listening to Austria’s homegrown composer in the place of his origin?

We had just spent about an hour hiking in a spectacular canyon where autumn was showing off its beautiful hues and where rivers rushed and waterfalls roared. The sun shone through the thinly veined leaves overhead, leaving us to bask in a magnificent natural cathedral, with light pouring in through this stained glass window in shades of orange, gold, yellow, rust, and red. We stood in awe of nature’s art display.

But, back in the car, Yermie suggested that we go see the ice caves, which were not far away. Good idea, I thought, until I consulted my travel bible, the green Michelin guidebook, and read that the caves closed at three o’clock in the afternoon, and it was a little after two o’clock.

So I said, Yermie, we have to return to the chalet to get gloves, scarves, and warm jackets. We can’t possibly get there on time. I remembered those caves being mighty chilly when we had visited years before.

Yes, we can, he replied sternly.

It’s impossible, I insisted. We’d have to park the car, and walk up the long path to the ticket office. And the folks in the back seat, Neesem and Sima, moved slowly. Why don’t we go to Wolfgang Lake instead, have coffee there, and save the caves for tomorrow?

In my resolve, I’d forgotten Rule Number One: in order to maintain a peaceful marriage, I must never ever disagree with my husband, especially within earshot of friends and family. That is what a smart woman should know.

Too late.

We were driving through a small, sleepy village at that exact time, dotted with some brown and white shingled homes along the way, every one of them with quaint wooden shutters and flower boxes on all the windowsills, all filled with multicolored flowers. Every home looked as it were from a poster advertising a visit to Austria and her countryside, everything so pretty and serene.

And then the volcano erupted. Mount Yermie Spiro, my darling husband, slammed on the brakes, got out of the car, slammed the door, and without further ado, stormed away on foot. At that moment, there was something that I would have liked to slam.

But then, I was completely stunned. And yet I shouldn’t have been. I’d seen this movie many times. It had been showing in different places with different faces but it was the same movie. In fact, I had seen this movie in Seville many years before, with the same four people that were here now. He’d gotten mad at me, walked away, and left us in a restaurant. And why? I still remember. He had ordered seafood paella and it came with less seafood than Yermie would have liked. He complained to us that he would need a search warrant to find the shrimp. Then he proceeded to call the poor waiter over to our table, berating him in a rude and ugly manner

"This isn’t paella di frutti di mare, it’s paella coo-coo-ree-coo," he said in an accusing manner.

And with that, he began flapping his arms up and down like a chicken in order to illustrate his point. Although he was funny, he was causing a disturbance as well as embarrassing the elderly waiter.

I said, Yermie, enough, you are embarrassing all of us.

Nothing more was said. Yermie was gone. Right smack in the middle of the meal. Neesem had to pay for our meals as I had no money.

• • •

I saw it in Portugal, where the friends that accompanied us did, in fact, drive away, leaving him behind after he had had one of his little tantrums, slammed the door, and walked off. We all worried about how he would return to the hotel. But he did, several hours later and not a word was mentioned by anyone. I simply cannot remember all the reasons why he stormed off when he did. But he loved to do it whenever we had an audience. He never behaved like that when I was alone with him. I wonder why?

The same movie was playing in Prague where he threw a bottle into the River Charles in front of good friends, walked away, and pouted for an hour while we waited around for him to cool off. Yes, I was embarrassed then.

But I had just seen a similar movie in Bavaria starring that same actor, only two weeks before this lovely day in Austria.

We had spent a week in Bavaria, Germany in a timeshare, just the two of us, and only after that did we go to Austria after joining up with our family as prearranged in Munich. In Bavaria, we had met this very nice couple, Diane and Sam, at our hotel. We invited them to join us in our rental car to visit the nearby sights. We all arrived to a lovely town that my guidebook recommended visiting. Driving in city traffic turned Yermie very tense. Was it my fault that there was very heavy traffic in the town center? It didn’t matter: evidently, I was to blame.

At that time, we drove around town a bit and eventually parked. The four of us got out of the car to explore the sights and what did my beloved do?

He turned on me and said, Is this the dump that you insisted on seeing and made me drive here?

I was the one who walked away that time, before the tears began to tumble down my cheeks. I was embarrassed in front of this couple. I took a walk, dried my tears, and went alone to view some buildings that my book listed as architecturally interesting.

When I returned to the parking lot a half hour later, I found the three of them standing where I had left them. Diane and Sam were sheepish; Yermie acted as if this was a normal course of events, nothing to be concerned about. But I could tell he had been afraid to leave, not knowing how we would all meet up. I had taken the initiative, challenged his authority, by being the one to walk off. I knew that when I went walking. I felt utterly justified in giving him a dose of his own medicine, and though Yermie and I made peace for the sake of appearances, down deep I was still stewing.

Anyhow, we all felt like ice cream, coffee, and cake. We found a lovely café on the main strasse. Later, I went walking around town with my new friend while Yermie talked to her husband. Although this couple was very nice and had given us their card to call them when we returned to Israel, I had no desire to see them again anytime soon, having been mortified in front of them.

The incidents I just mentioned were only a few that I had endured through the course of thirty-nine years of married bliss. They crashed through my memory at that moment as I sat in the car my husband had abandoned. These are a special kind of embarrassment—incidents that involved other friends around us, usually while traveling abroad. But what about the countless other times he would put me down, or go off on a rage attack in my everyday life at home?

I had just told myself, enough, I’ve had enough. I don’t want to do this anymore.

• • •

So why didn’t I get into the driver’s seat here in Austria, watching Yermie’s back as he sulked away, and just leave him stranded? We were about fifteen to twenty-five minutes away from Saint Johann, where our charming chalet awaited. Perhaps I didn’t leave because I didn’t know how to drive a gearshift.

Yes, I never learned how to drive a standard drive. Why is that? My husband could answer that. It was the year nineteen sixty-six. We had only been married half a year and were holidaying in a kibbutz guest house right on the Israel/Lebanon border. It was a very restful and peaceful vacation in beautiful surroundings. Yermie decided to teach me how to drive a gearshift though I had a great fear of driving in Israel. Never mind, I thought. I would try and please him. That first and last lesson was a disaster, nearly resulting in divorce. He instructed me and insulted me at the same time. At one point, he started hollering in Hebrew all sorts of commands, which were going over my head and confusing me.

Then I was hearing, Brakes, brakes, put on the brakes, stupid!

I suppose I must have put on the brakes because the next thing I remember was me walking into the forest by the side of the road, humiliated, mortified, and sobbing uncontrollably.

I heard Yermie yelling, Libby, come back, you are walking into Lebanon!

There was no way I was going to return to him. I ignored his warning. Being the fourth wife of a Sheik had to be better than being the first wife of Yermie. But then he came after me, hugging me, and telling me he was sorry. He didn’t mean what he said. He loved me and didn’t want me to cross over the border into Lebanon is what he kept on saying.

Of course, I returned. He suggested that I take driving lessons when we returned to Tel Aviv. I didn’t though, being quite content not to drive. Seven years later, Yermie did buy a car with an automatic transmission when I reluctantly had to take the wheel again.

While writing this story and remembering another incident that involved gearshift, I recall vividly another chance I had to drive a gearshift car. It was in 1990 when I was traveling in Italy with my seventy-year-old cousin, Jean. I absolutely love her; she was a funny and adventurous traveling companion back then. We were on a furniture-buying trip for me, she posing as the client, and me posing as the interior decorator. The only rental cars available were ones with manual transmissions. We decided to rent one because Jean knew how to drive a stick shift. If only her sense of direction were so astute. In the romantic town of Verona, my dear cousin proceeded to drive the wrong way down a one-way street, and all the Italians coming toward her were honking at her with a vengeance. She thought it was a hoot with all the hooting coming her way and she laughed her head off. Me, I didn’t think it was a laughing matter the way those cars were heading for us. I could visualize very soon another double suicide in this lovely town. I didn’t think that Romeo and Juliet had a monopoly on that.

I yelled, Jean, pull over and let me drive! And she did. I didn’t know how to drive standard gears, but soon discovered that I could make great progress in second gear, and that is exactly what I did. I second-geared it through Northern Italy for eight days and even made it all the way up to Bellagio. The road was about as wide as my car and the cliffs below the road were steep, sheer, and scary.

My memories of other places and gearshift cars are now pushed aside as I return to this sweet little Austrian village, sitting in a car parked on a very narrow road with lovely flower-decked houses on both sides of our car, with my husband walking off in the distance.

But the real reason I didn’t get behind the wheel and drive away was that I just couldn’t abandon him. He knew I wouldn’t and I knew I couldn’t. So I opened the car door and got out and began relying on my vocal chords.

I shouted at him, Get back in the car, you son of a bitch! What the hell do you think you are doing? I used every obscenity I knew. This barrage lasted until I went hoarse.

It was between two and four o’clock in the afternoon, the shlof shtunda—the hour to nap in Germany and Austria. Shutters and windows were opened on both sides of the car on this very narrow road as if we were in a tunnel, hemmed in by those lovely homes. Curious faces peered down on our car. Obviously, this was something those Austrians didn’t see on a daily basis. Perhaps they didn’t shout. Truthfully, I didn’t really care. Aunt Sima and Uncle Neesem were sitting in the back seat not saying a word. I wasn’t even embarrassed in front of them. After all, they were his relatives, not mine.

Sima! Look at all these people staring at us. What do you think? Have they never heard anyone shout before? I said.

They have never heard you shout before, Libby, she said. They don’t look happy to have been woken up.

Although those people were not saying anything, I could feel that they were not very pleased with me. So I got back in the car before they started pelting me with eggs or something.

Up to now, Neesem had not said a word. I turned around and asked him, So, Neesem, what do you think about your maniacal nephew?

He answered my question, trying to be kind. Oh, Libby, in another minute he will return and he’ll be sorry. Everything is going to be fine. Don’t worry.

As far as I am concerned, he doesn’t have to return. You or Sima can take the car and drive us back to the chalet. He can stay here forever.

And at that exact moment, I had my epiphany. I decided that I not only had had enough, I was going to leave him. That’s exactly what I decided I would do: leave him. I knew in my heart I meant it. And not only would I leave him, I would go and live somewhere new, in a new city, in a new country, and begin a new life. All this raced through my head, causing me a great deal of anxiety.

Sima, give me a cigarette please, I said.

But you don’t smoke, Libby, she answered.

I do now.

It had been twenty-five years since I stopped smoking. But the occasion called for a cigarette. Sima handed me one and I lit it. I inhaled deeply. I was smoking in the car, which Yermie allowed no one to do. That was the death sentence. But I was defiant. Even though the cigarette didn’t do much other than make me feel dizzy, I was asserting my independence.

Several minutes later, Yermie sauntered back to the car. Perhaps he thought that he had punished me enough. He got in, started the engine, and drove us back to our chalet. Not a word was spoken by anyone. He didn’t even ask me why I was smoking and smoking in the car.

We entered the chalet and went up to our rooms after agreeing to meet for dinner at seven o’clock. Everyone except me. I didn’t want to be in a room with him, so I lingered in the lobby and arranged with the front desk receptionist to have a massage in the spa. He told me that if I didn’t mind a male masseur, I could have a massage immediately. What did I care? Man, woman? I just needed to unwind.

I was sure that a good massage would help me relax. Wrong. I could’ve been given the best four-handed Ayurvedic massage available in the entire world and it wouldn’t have helped me in the least. My masseur was doing his job properly, but I was, in spite of his efforts, one big bundle of nerves, all knotted up tight. I was shaking inside. With every stroke he applied to my back, I was thinking about where I wanted to live, more strokes and more thoughts about where to relocate. I had been living in Israel for forty years and considered it home, but now things were going to change.

But where to go? I am Canadian, but knew I couldn’t relocate there—I don’t do cold anymore. I love music, the theater, and art, so I thought that New York or London might be good choices. I’d lived in London once, I knew what it had to offer, but both cities were too big for me at this stage of my life.

Meanwhile, the masseur had asked me to turn over and was doing my other side while my mind raced on.

There was Provence, France, which was pretty but dull, and there was Tuscany, famous from Frances Mayes’ popular book Under the Tuscan Sun. I had been in Cortona and it, too, was a lovely town, but also dull. How about Florida, I mused, where all those widows and divorcees lived? The weather is warm; they must have some culture there with so many people. Plus they speak my language. We had been there to take our granddaughter to Disneyworld a few years back.

Okay, so a decision had been made. Florida. I would move to Florida.

My masseur did more pummeling and I did more pondering. He did some pampering and I was being pensive. Nothing helped. My thoughts forged ahead, a jumble. Anger throbbed in every muscle in my body.

I got off the massage table and paid the guy. I still felt lousy. Not only was I all uptight, I now had a miserable migraine to boot.

If a massage didn’t relieve my stress, maybe a stiff drink would.

I went to the bar to celebrate my decision. Me, drinking alone, in a bar. Brave girl. I hoisted myself up on to the barstool and ordered a Campari.

Drinking is something I don’t do a lot of, except for the occasional cocktail or glass of wine with a dinner. But drinking alone in a bar, being a barfly—never. I wanted desperately to calm down. If someone had offered me a snort of cocaine or some grass (neither of which I had ever had), I might have tried it. I was that desperate.

One Campari down the hatch had no effect, so I ordered another. When it arrived, I picked it up and stirred it around in its glass. The bright ruby-red color of the liquid mesmerized me. I swallowed it and tasted the bittersweet flavor while my heart told me that I had just made a life-changing decision. I toasted myself, Good luck, Libby, to a new life.

I decided I would return to our room and rest. I mean, how long could I hang out in a bar?

Yermie was on the bed either asleep or feigning sleep. I picked up a book I had been reading, a novel by Isabel Allende. As I stared at the cover, the writer’s name became magnified and loomed up at me in large letters: ALLENDE, ALLENDE, ALLENDE. What was it trying to tell me? Then I remembered a little town in Mexico we had visited about five years earlier called San Miguel de Allende. It was four hundred kilometers north of Mexico City, in the central mountains of Mexico, six thousand feet above sea level with a mild climate year-round.

Yermie and I had heard of it on one of our trips to Mexico, a beautiful artists’ colony and a colonial city. So we made our way there and found that it was a quiet town with a charming tree-lined central square, or jardin, where Mexican families meandered, and which faced a large church with an ornate Neo-gothic pink stone facade, the Parroquia. The town had a pace all its own, slow and comforting. It also had a lot of gringos. North Americans had settled down in San Miguel: artists, writers, and retirees. It even had two colleges where courses in art and other subjects were taught in English.

Although San Miguel de Allende was a place that caught our fancy, and that we had enjoyed, it certainly wasn’t a town we planned to revisit. The whole world was out there waiting for my husband and me to discover it. In fact, I was surprised that I had even remembered the name of this pretty little place. Florida was pushed aside and replaced very quickly with San Miguel de Allende. That was where I was going to go and that was final.

Thank goodness Sima was there so I could talk to her. Yet Yermie had even been nasty to her. Sima, I said, why do you let him say those things to you and put you down? Why don’t you answer him?

She told me, I paid good money to come to Austria; I am going to enjoy every minute of it, no matter what.

And, with Sima’s words, it came to me that that was what I had been doing— taking the path of least resistance, not rocking the boat. I had convinced myself that this was the way it would always be: Yermie exploding, me agonizing and, in my way, sharing responsibility for his wild behavior. His tirades on trips were only the tip of the iceberg. I could tell Sima about the abuse she didn’t know about—the shoving and the beatings and rage—that Yermie had steeped on me. But I would only be convincing myself. I knew my husband loved me, but whether through upbringing (controlling one’s wife was the old way) or just because he had gotten away with it for so long, he would never come around to my way of thinking: that we could be more loving, that we could share more on our future simply by being better to each other.

I was determined to follow through with my new plans but I didn’t dare tell my husband or anyone about it while we were still abroad. Who knew what erratic driving habits he would develop? The tension was thick. What was happening now between us had never happened before. After all major fights and arguments, Yermie and I usually became lovey-dovey the following day, and he became kissey-kissey-huggy-huggy and pure sweetness. All the dirt would be swept under the carpet—or should I say under the covers—where it would remain until the next time. He’d make it better by bringing me lots of yellow roses, my favorite. They became symbolic of a truce in our ongoing skirmish, our marriage. We rarely remained angry at each other for more than a day, and after that, life continued as before. It was our routine.

But not this time. I knew that if I did not keep my distance and remain hostile, I wouldn’t be able to execute my plan and free myself from this vicious circle. It would be the same movie over and over again. I knew the players’ lines and I didn’t want to hear them anymore.

Sima and her husband were very fond of Yermie. Neesem was my husband’s uncle, but he was only five years older than Yermie. They were like brothers. And I was very friendly with both of them. They supplied an essential balance. Had those two not been with us, I would have taken my passport and my return ticket right then and gone back to Israel alone, ahead of schedule. And Yermie would have followed me, for sure.

Yes, what happened here in Austria would change the course of our lives. I knew it would never be the same for Yermie and me ever again.

Chapter 1:

Home and Hostility

We arrived back to Israel just in time for our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary. And without any forethought, Yermie asked, How do you want to celebrate our anniversary? Do you want to go to Carmel Forest Spa?

No, I replied.

But it’s your favorite place in all of Israel, he proclaimed. You’re always so happy when we go there!

And I, without any qualms, replied, We have nothing to celebrate.

Life wasn’t so simple after deciding that I was going to leave. My decision, though I believed in it, caused me great anxiety. I became depressed. Yermie left me alone, probably figuring it would pass, and we would resume as we had been.

I went to see my good friend Eve, a clinical psychologist. I went not only to visit, but because I thought I might find comfort with her. I’d known her for years and had confided in her often. The first thing I said to her upon entering her home was, I’m leaving him. After which I proceeded to lower myself onto her kitchen floor, sobbing my heart out.

Eve calmed me down and, after listening to my story, begged me not to leave Yermie. Go away for three months, Libby. Think things over. Have no contact with him, and see how you like it, living without your husband. Then decide, she advised. You should also see a psychiatrist who can prescribe something to help your depression. She gave me the name of a trusted colleague.

The doctor she recommended heard me out and prescribed an antidepressant— half a pill a day to start. I thought of them as happy pills, and was waiting for them to make me happy. He wanted me to remain in Israel for a month to monitor the effects of the medication and advised me not to leave in a conclusive way, but to do as my friend Eve suggested: go for three months to see how I still felt at the end of that time.

I now had to tell Yermie that I would soon be leaving for the little town of San Miguel for a three-month period of rest and relaxation. I presented it as a fait accompli, a done deal, and made it clear I did not feel it necessary to get his approval or to even tell him what prompted this decision. All I told him was that I was depressed. There was no sense in telling him what caused all these feelings; he would certainly pass the blame on to me, as was usually the case.

This is all about that Austrian fiasco, isn’t it? he charged.

No, Yermie, I replied. It’s more than that.

You were all trying to control me, he said.

Come on, I thought. Give me a break. My husband never, ever did or said anything wrong, in his own humble opinion. Granted, in all those years of marriage, I too, knew how to rock the boat. Perhaps if I had a different personality, things might have been different.

Yermie now knew I was partaking of an extended respite and there was not much he could do about it. He knew, deep in his heart that this was serious stuff, having finally pushed my button too far. There was no way he could dissuade me and he knew that, too.

The following day, he asked me to do him a favor: to tell all friends and family that I was going to Mexico to be with a friend of mine. He created a story that would help him save face. The story was this: A woman named Nancy, whom we befriended on our world cruise, was presently undergoing chemo treatment for breast cancer. This friend, who was alone in Mexico (a flair my husband added), had asked me to be with her during this difficult time. Much of his story was true: we had met a woman on a world cruise named Nancy, and it’s true that Nancy was a friend who had developed breast cancer since that cruise and had undergone treatment. But, to my knowledge, she was well and was certainly not living in Mexico. But the fiction made sense. It is also true that I just so happened to have spent the past twenty years working in the oncology department of a Tel Aviv hospital, which qualified me to offer not only tea and sympathy, but a little expertise that was needed to console someone going through this ordeal. The tall tale my husband concocted sounded quite feasible. No one would doubt it.

So we began telling this tale. And this was told to everyone—neighbors, acquaintances, good friends, and close family, including my children and grandchildren.

Truth be told, I felt extremely uncomfortable about this lie, especially when I told it to my dear ones. The reaction of most people was to comment on how very magnanimous I was, how generous, how noble, how selfless, how benevolent . . . and I was beginning to feel like a martyr. Not entirely appropriate, when the truth was very different: I was just trying to save myself from drowning in an unsuccessful marriage. But I wanted to make it easier for Yermie to face people, so I went along.

Meanwhile, those little happy pills I was taking, the antidepressants, weren’t doing me much good. The doctor increased my dosage to one whole pill a day and it still didn’t seem to be doing its job. I still suffered from anxiety and tearfulness. It was as if a hand was gripping my gut all the way up to my throat. There was no way I would be able to leave feeling like that, or so I thought. Regardless, I went ahead and made plane reservations, though my decision had unnerved me completely.

Yermie said that he would come to San Miguel at the end of January and celebrate his birthday with me there, and that we would return to Israel together. Of course, I agreed. But really we weren’t conversing much and our social life was nil. I kept on making excuses. I didn’t want to play bridge with our good friends, or go to dinners and movies. I realized that I didn’t want to play charades.

Yet our marriage was not all rotten. In fact, during all those years, there were many good times. I called it a stock market marriage. We had all the ups and downs, crashes and lulls as I suppose a lot of marriages do. But I just was not putting up with the crashes anymore. I no longer was willing to invest. The risks were too great. But still, I wondered how I would pull this off, as my gut just wouldn’t be still for a minute. I tried hard to act normal, but beneath it all, I was uneasy and agitated.

I never took tranquilizers. I was usually calm and functioned well on my own. And now I had no concentration except for playing the piano, which brought me a great deal of solace. One can cry so nicely when playing a Chopin Nocturne.

I had yet another appointment with the psychiatrist who wanted to see how I was doing. I continued to complain to him about that gripping hand and about the happy pill that was not making me very happy.

So the doctor prescribed yet another half pill, totaling one-and-a-half pills a day. Happiness, here I come, I thought.

About a week after the doctor’s appointment, I was in a supermarket with my daughter, Mira, and my ten-year-old granddaughter, Naomi. We were buying a few things for a birthday party we were making Naomi that day.

My daughter was cashing out with some things and my granddaughter and I were following with the birthday goodies. I began to place them on the checkout counter and then remembered that I had forgotten candles. I told Naomi to continue emptying my basket and to put the goods on the counter. I ran to get the candles.

I returned not two minutes later and saw that a man had pushed in front of my granddaughter, had shoved her things away and placed his goods on the checkout counter. My daughter was up ahead and was not aware of what was happening.

What the hell are you doing, Mister? I yelled at the man. Can’t you see that this little girl was standing next in line?

He ignored me and continued to place his things on the counter. The utter nerve of this idiot! I began to grab his things, throwing them in his basket, which I pushed away, and some of the things I was throwing at him, all the time yelling obscenities at him. I was pounding his head with his own loaf of bread. Good thing he hadn’t bought five pounds of potatoes. That too would have been coming down on his head.

I had gone completely berserk, out of control. To call me a raging maniac might be an apt description, I suppose. By this time, a small crowd had gathered around to watch the action. My daughter had me in her arms, and was holding me. The manager was sweet-talking me. And I, well, I had no idea what I was doing or what danger I was putting myself in by attacking that stranger. The manager of the store escorted us to my car to make sure my victim did not come after me.

The next day I told Eve about the supermarket incident. I was terribly upset and didn’t recognize my own behavior. How could I have acted like that?

Could I have been so stupid, so crass, and so impulsive? I pleaded to know.

Yes, Eve said. Call the doctor and tell him what happened.

The doctor called me in and he cut back that extra half pill, claiming that it was the most likely reason I had had such a violent reaction. I guess those pills were finally doing something: they were not only working overtime, but they were turning me into a manic killer! Never before have I attacked a stranger! Wasn’t my husband lucky that during that dangerous period he had not annoyed me?

So it was back to just one pill a day for me. I was beginning to feel a bit calmer but very anxious. The gripping hand was still there, but in spite of it, I was determined to leave.

A few days before my departure—or escape, as I thought of it—I was visiting with my daughter. I felt that I couldn’t leave with this big lie between us about me going to help out a friend through a difficult time.

So I said, I’m leaving your father.

Without missing a beat, Mira replied, That’s admirable, Mother. You should have done it twenty years ago. Those words gave me the courage I needed. My daughter endorsed my decision.

The big day came and Yermie insisted on driving me to the airport. I checked in, went through security, went through passport control, boarded the plane, took my seat, and fastened my seat belt. As soon as I buckled the belt, that gripping hand released its grip—just like that—and I felt a sense of relief after the six long weeks since Austria.

I knew at that moment that I was not coming back.

Chapter 2:

The Flight

Okay, I’d done it. I’d gotten away. Now what?

A long journey lay ahead of me but I was feeling great. A sense of well-being enveloped me.

Not that air travel had ever bothered me. Frankly, I couldn’t understand people who could not travel distances. Me, I board when they tell me to and disembark when they tell me to, never trying to get off before. I take books, crossword puzzles, and sleeping pills for long flights.

But as I sat on the plane during my getaway, I thought of a nickname my daughter had called me. She called me Libby Do-the-Right-Thing Spiro. I doubted it was meant as a compliment.

Of course, I always wanted to do the right thing: being considerate, being family-minded. Giving the right gifts, reciprocating, being polite, paying condolence visits, being kind. Isn’t that what everyone is supposed to do? Flying home to visit my widowed mother every year and sometimes more often to be with her during illnesses, although as far as I was concerned, no love was lost on her. I visited her yearly for the last four years of her life, when she did not even know who I was half the time. Perhaps they were the best visits I had with her: she didn’t remember that she didn’t like me. I was a dutiful daughter. That was the right thing to do. And on that flight to Mexico, I realized that Libby Do-the-Right-Thing Spiro was finally doing the right thing—for herself.

Another thought came to me as I sped across the sky: why didn’t I reinvent myself? Give myself a new life? I would be Libby Spiro from Canada, divorcee. (Okay, so I was stretching the truth a bit. But really, how far is divorce from separation?)

Or I could be Libby Spiro from Canada, the piano teacher. Well, I had been a student piano teacher when I was seventeen.

I liked it: Libby Spiro from Canada, the piano teacher, who has children: a daughter named Mira, and Guy, the son. Perhaps I’d make them younger, just out of college (which had happened fifteen years earlier). No grandchildren, I thought. That would age me. But my real-life grandchildren were delightful, only two and nine years old. How could I cancel them out? They brought me so much joy, much more than my own children have done since they turned seventeen. If I were to delete anything in my new life, the children would go and I would keep the grandkids. That’s exactly what is written on my fridge magnet: If I had known that my grandchildren were so much fun and such a pleasure, I would have had them first. And where were these grandchildren living? I would have to think more about that.

My flight finally arrived in Toronto, where I changed planes. We landed in Mexico City five hours later, after twenty hours of traveling. Luck was with me, and a woman who was also waiting at the carousal for the luggage befriended me. Her name was Margaret. When I said I was headed for San Miguel de Allende, she told me that she was also going there too.

I had to get from the airport to Terminal Norte for a bus direct to San Miguel; that’s what Yermie and I had done years before. But Margaret said, That’s not necessary. There’s a bus going to Querétaro right from this airport and then my husband will pick me up there, and we’ll drive to San Miguel. Why don’t you come with me?

Why not? I thought, not thinking twice about accepting.

On that three-and-a half-hour bus ride, I learned a lot about my new friend. Her husband was from England and he was an artist in San Miguel. She had breast cancer, and was candid in