Vision of a Happy Life: A Memoir

The 1980s was an era filled with glamour as Hollywood took over the White House. It was a period of fluffy hairdos, red outfits à la Nancy Reagan, outsized wealth, and popular TV soap operas that subsidized the idea of affluence. As John Stewart and I stood on the edge of the Pacific Ocean that September day in 1980, two beach bums stood at our side giving witness to our wedding. After the ceremony, John invited ten people we did not know to our celebratory dinner, sun worshipers who had gathered on the sand to watch us take our vows. John wanted a party—he liked parties and his business, Stewart’s Market would pay the bill. It was the beginning of my understanding about John’s need to be surrounded by admirers and that the store was the center point of our existence. While on Maui, I bought an expensive ring, putting it on John’s American Express card. I wanted to look like a woman of wealth, but I wasn’t. Three days before our wedding, I had signed a prenuptial agreement that prevented me from owning any of John’s property or business interests. I signed because I held a vision of life where I would be home with my young sons and financially secure. But when I arrived at John’s home after the honeymoon, I found my step-daughter had fired the housekeeper, my two young sons were subdued after a week in her care, and the personal belongings of my husband’s late wife filled the master bedroom. One week later, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I had an edict from my new husband that I was to touch nothing in the house—no cleaning closets so I could move in. It was the beginning of a tumultuous decade, as I found my way among a deceptive family filled with the pretense only a founding dynasty could have in a small agricultural community fifty miles north of Los Angeles. While my children and I enjoyed the benefits of living in a seemingly wealthy household, I came to realize my life was no different than the soap operas of Dynasty or Dallas that gratuitously filled the national passion for greed, guile, and deception. If one’s life can be a duplication of a decade, then I was the perfect example.