Local Observation / Lights Camera Divorce

By Christina Oxenberg

In the days when I sold my first husband’s paintings we made quite the cute team. It fooled us.

I easily parlayed his colorful renditions into cash with my multifarious connections.

While I have no inheritance I come equipped with the ability to contact anyone. Once. Then I gotta have something to say, something to sell.

I soon figured the husband was not permitted near while I was making a sale as he would inevitably wreck it. He talked too much. Except for when we were alone as then he was mute and this would grate.

Years accumulated and I got slicker with the negotiations. A friend, a Hollywood producer, was making a movie about a painter. The ‘painter’ would be played by Brad Pitt, then still an unknown.

I chained hubby in his studio and gave him instructions laden with bribes and threats. Hubby loathed orders but I was the boss, because I made the sales. Sparks flew but the work got done.

The producer flew hubby and I to the shoot, a warehouse in Portland, Oregon. I prattled with Pitt one evening outside his trailer and I remember thinking he was reserved. Plus he was pretty, like a girl. He barely left a stain of a memory. Thankfully I’m not in the movie trade as I have zero instincts for future mega-stardom.

The producer suggested hubby and I play background roles. With my 19th century upbringing I was horrified and refused. Not the first wrong decision of my life.

Hubby and I earned a comfy income and this encouraged us to ignore the stifling tensions. Marriages collapse for a multitude of reasons. In our case, in retrospect, the fractures were obvious from the start.

Shy of a decade I bolted. Divorce, in a word, was the happiest day of my life. I hope the same for others.