A Complicated Marriage (58 page)

Over the last decade I have often felt as if I were living in a kaleidoscope of art people. It seemed that every time I looked around, they had shifted from friend to acquaintance to a memory. Nothing mysterious—simply the drift of changing lives, old age, and death. I have come to accept it, just as I accept that, now and then, when I am with one of my “family,” I simply know that this will be the last time I will see him, or talk to her. As with Friedel Dzubas at a gathering after a small retrospective of his work. His voice soft, we huddled close on the couch to hear and be heard, his cold hand holding mine so tight, talking of Clem and
the painting he needed to finish. As with Jules Olitski at a party at the Willard Boepples, at war with cancer, eager to retravel the roads of our past, not with nostalgia, but with warmth. His voice was weak, but we laughed long and loud. And there were too many others who had slipped so far away over the years that there would be no last word or touch.

There was a different sort of good-bye when I went to my fiftieth reunion at Bennington. Rightfully, the place and I had outgrown each other. But the women of 1955, we would be sisters forever.

And there was my last afternoon with my dear friend, the painter Yvonne Thomas, sitting on her black art-deco chair in her loft, the sun playing in her hair, so beautiful in her mid-nineties, still weaving stories for me across the rumor mill of seventy years. That day, my questions led her the Hofmann School during the summer of 1938, “ . . . and of course Mercy was having a mad affair with Hans.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, he had quite an eye for all the girls.”

“Did Miz know?”

Yvonne shrugged in her French way. “How could she not? But things were different then, more comme il faut.” Ah, what a pretty way of saying
open marriage
. I felt again the force of the Hofmanns' harmony and the harmony between Clem and me, and how, if one cared enough to go the distance, an open marriage could be an open door to any togetherness one chose. I adored the urgency and gusto of Yvonne's repartee, as if the events had happened at a party last night, as if the people were not dead or past caring. And as the sun faded in her hair, I watched her devour her favorite coffee ice cream and chocolate cookies, so angry that she had outlived her time.

Like any self-respecting relationship archeologist, I believe that embedded in the moments of Clem's and my first year together—Jennifer's party, Delaney's bar, René Bouché's studio, Bank Street, East Hampton—were all the clues of what lay ahead for us. My life with Clem introduced me to love, honesty, and trust. My life with Clem brought me swift and total submersion into the art world—a world of men, a world not of my making or choice—and it taught me to swim. It brought me our beloved daughter. It brought me an open marriage that allowed me to
love Clem for a lifetime without resentment or anger. An open marriage that afforded me the chance to explore other worlds of my own that I might never have experienced otherwise. Clem loved me completely for who I was, not for what I did or might become. It was in his gaze that first night we met—not the love, not yet. But his wholehearted interest in me was there. His eyes into mine. I was caught, caught up.

I WANT TO THANK those who gave me the keys to unlock this book.

Francine du Plessix Gray for introducing me to Carolyn Heilbrun's astonishing book,
Writing a Woman's Life
, before I even knew I was ready to read it.

The friend who led me to the International Women Writers Guild and Susan Tiberghien's seminar on memoir before I knew the time had come for me to write one. And thanks to the IWWG summer workshops at Skidmore College. Writing in the company of hundreds of women, I formed lasting bonds with Eunice Scarfe, Lynne Barrett, Marsha McGregor, Kathleen O'Shea, Linda Durnbaugh, Mira Shapiro, Judith Searle, and Kay Raheja. By example, they never let me forget that writing is an inside job where there are no rules and all things are possible. Thanks as well to our writers' workshop in New York for inspiring me with their insights over the years: Veronica Picone, Anne Hollyday, Dar-lynne Devenny, Lenora Odeku, and Regina Kolbe.

And to the early readers of the book: Sarah and Clementine Morse, Stephanie Noland, Ruth Mayer Bacon, Jim and Annie Walsh, and Amy Mintzer—thank you all. Your responses made me feel that my long journey had been worth every minute of it. And thanks to the incomparable Trish Hoard who, when I fretted that the book might be too long, in effect, said, “It's your life story, it will be as long as it needs to be.”

My thanks to all the photographers who documented our lives and provided us with a treasured archive. I am grateful to them—and their estates—for granting me permission to reprint their work. (Photographs without credits are from our personal collection.) I also thank Robert S. Warshaw, trustee of the Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust, for allowing me to reproduce the letters Hans wrote to Clem in 1961.

I thank Jack Shoemaker at Counterpoint Press, a publisher who honors the books he chooses to print and the authors who write them. My gratitude to Kelly Winton, Laura Mazer, and Jodi Hammerwold for their help, and copy editor Annie Tucker for her thorough and thoughtful contributions.

Closer to home, a special thank you to my daughter Sarah Greenberg Morse for her emotional and practical guidance every step of the way. And I thank my invaluable assistant, Emily Hoenig.

At the Wylie Agency, my thanks to Jin Auh for her enthusiastic support of my project. And special thanks to her teammate Jacqueline Ko for being my infallible advisor through the process. I will always think of their belief in my book as a great gift.

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