Page 1
Chapter 1 - Hotel Chateau
Before dawn on a Sunday, Sonya stepped out of the hotel bathroom and said to Michael, “Charles Ashe and I are having an affair. It’s quite serious. We are in love. I will file for divorce when we return to New York. Charles and I are going to get married after this trip.”
The Ashes of Cleveland and the Clarkes of Croton-on-Hudson had never met before the July 1984 Transatlantic-Worldwide European Capitals Tour assembled in Kennedy airport. Therefore, it is not surprising that, on the twelfth morning of the tour, Michael Clarke did not comprehend Sonya Clarke’s announcement.
Still in bed, half asleep, the gold and black bed cover pulled over his ears, her words whirled around Michael’s head. Her statement was still beyond his sleepy comprehension as she continued. “I’m going for a walk. You can eat breakfast alone, can’t you? We can discuss this after you have eaten.”
Sonya stepped across the room and turned the gilt, lion head doorknob, then stopped and stared down at her hand. “I don’t like this room. The furniture, the doorknob, everything, it’s all fake Rococo. We must talk somewhere else.” A previous eight-year marriage to a wealthy industrialist had spoiled Sonya for anything but the best in furniture, houses, and clothes.
The door closed and the large room, Room 302, Hotel Château, Paris, France, echoed with her footsteps moving down the hall.
Since the advent of no fault divorce, marriage has ceased to mean a permanent commitment. The majority of marriages end long before death. Nevertheless, most people enter marriage believing “till death do us part” will be their experience. Yet when one spouse irrevocably decrees that they are ending the marriage, both suffer horribly and there is nothing that can be done about it. You can take no action to cause someone to fall in love with you forever. The best behaved spouses are as equally likely to be divorced and as the worst behaved. However, everyone’s suffering takes its own course. Nothing in Michael’s previous experience had prepared him to deal with the suffering he was about to endure.