Folie a Deux, Episode 06

"Of course Olivia tried to talk to me," Bob says. "Friends and family all tried, but I suppose I needed to sit with the anger and its consequences before I could...well, not let it go, but begin to use it for other things. It took a while."

"Thanksgiving was a disaster," Olivia says. "Mom has always made that meal. I called her and she tried to talk me through it, but Christ, it was awful. What I didn't burn, I undercooked. It was, um, a learning experience."

"Olivia had things pretty hard there for a while, and losing the house didn't make it any easier," Bob informs us. "The house was worth a lot and the equity value we had was worth way more than what we still owed. I knew Emily was going to be awarded 50% of it, and I couldn't afford to live there anyway on just my salary. So I went ahead and put it on the market, just to rip the band-aid off. Might as well get it over with."

Olivia again. "But that meant that in addition to losing my family unit and basically losing my mother and my brother -- and kind of losing my dad for a while -- I was also losing the only home I ever knew. We moved to half a duplex about a mile and a half away so I could still go to the same school, but it was a different neighborhood, and not as nice a one. The new place was pretty small and not in the best shape. It felt like everything was just flying to pieces around me."

"How did you react to that?" the interviewer asks.

"I focused on the only things I could control: school, athletics, activities. My grades held steady. They were my life raft."

"And you blamed your mother and brother for the chaos in your life?"

"More and more every day. I think I would have anyway, but being around dad added to it. Rage can be infectious too. I never got to the anger level he had, but it certainly got to the point where I didn't want anything to do with mom and Mike. That was the big reason I never even congratulated them on their first pregnancy, not even when the baby was born. I still regret that."

"So it was just the two of us," Emily says, holding Mike's hand and leaning lightly against him. "I suppose we ought to have expected that."

"Olivia always got caught in the middle," Mike nods. "It was never by design, but she always wound up getting yanked in two different directions. But then I guess a lot of children of divorce do, even more normal divorces."

"It made me sad," Emily says, gazing at Mike's hand as she squeezes it. "All I could do was hope that she would come around eventually. I wanted our baby to know their aunt."

"And how did the pregnancy go?" the interviewer asked.

"Very smoothly," Emily says with a smile. "There were no complications. On August 23rd I gave birth to Robert Shane Larsen, a healthy, happy baby boy."

We are shown a picture of Emily reclining in a hospital bed, looking exhausted but elated and holding a tiny bundle of a human being on her chest. Mike is leaning in, staring in adoration at the new person he helped create.

"You named him after your ex-husband," the interviewer observes as we return to the couple in the studio.

Mike nods."We both wanted that. It wasn't like we ever expected there to be a relationship there, but..." He pauses and shakes his head. "It's a good name."

"You didn't expect Bob to want to see your child?" the interviewer asks.

Emily glances at Mike to see if he wants to answer the question. Only a brief moment passes before she says, "We knew how he felt. Besides, by then Mike and I had begun to make plans to leave the country."

We return to Bob. "By summer I was a wreck. I'd put on thirty pounds and I was on the edge of losing my job because of my drinking and general level of self-pity. Olivia was going to be leaving soon to go to school and I felt like I didn't have anything to live for." He pauses for a proud smile and adds, "And then my girl stepped up to the plate, same as she always does."

Olivia now. "My scholarship to BC had come through and I was getting ready to get the fuck out of there. Autumn couldn't come fast enough for me. I'd really done my best to pull dad out of his funk, but man, he was just stuck so hard. By like March I'd given up, just letting him drink himself stupid every night. I didn't feel like I could do any more to help. But then after school ended, I was like, fuck it we'll give it one more shot. If it doesn't take, he's on his own."

"What did you do?" the interviewer asks.

"It was the middle of June," Olivia recalls. "Just about a year to the day since it had all started between mom and Mike. I caught dad one day before he started drinking and I sat down with him. I told him I loved him. I told him that he wasn't to blame for what Mike and mom had done, but he was to blame for being the human mess he was now. I said he could either keep blaming them for his life spiraling down the shitter, or he could get up and show them what kind of man he really was inside. And I told him I wanted to be proud of him again." She shrugs. "I dunno, I didn't say anything very special."

Bob now. "I was in a deep, dark place. I didn't see a light. And then the person I loved most in the world told me she knew I was better than that. She told me that I was worth being proud of. It was what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it. I dumped the booze, went back to the gym, and turned things around."

"Just like that?" the interviewer asks.

"I'm not saying it wasn't hard, but I was more dependent on alcohol than addicted. It was a coping mechanism. Olivia pulled me back before I became an alcoholic." He smiles. "Whenever I get too down on myself, I remember that I must have done something right with her, because she turned out great."

Back to Emily and Mike. Emily says, "I minored in French when I was in college, and Bob minored in Spanish. From a very early age, we raised our children to speak both those languages. Olivia excelled in Spanish."

"And I loved French," Mike finishes her thought. "I'd always been involved in things like French clubs and stuff, so when I got to college I knew French was going to be my minor, like Emily. After Robbie came, we started talking about leaving the US. Dad hadn't told the cops about us, but we were one slip-up away from being exposed by somebody who wouldn't pull their punches."

"During the French Revolution," Emily says, "most incest laws were abolished. All incest laws were formally abolished in 1810. Incest between consenting adults has been legal in France for more than two centuries."

"So we started to look for opportunities there," Mike says. "In my sophomore year I found out about a program the French government runs: excellent foreign students in certain specialties are sometimes invited to finish their schooling in France in return for signing a contract to work for the government for a certain number of years after graduation...and it just so happened that hydrology was of the areas where they needed people. I was rocking a 4.0 at a good school, so I applied."

Emily says, "And I reached out to an old friend. Jack Yates was one of my first students when I took my teaching position at the University of Minnesota. He was wonderful and he would have succeeded without my help, but I took him under my wing and mentored him. I even introduced him to the man he eventually married. He had moved to Paris and was teaching at Centre de Dance du Marais. Of course he didn't owe me a thing, but he very generously gave me a glowing recommendation for an upcoming opening at his school. I applied and sent video of various things I'd done."

"Long story short, we both got what we were after," Mike tells us. "I'd start school at Universite Paris Saclay in the fall of my junior year, and Emily would start teaching dance at Marais at the same time."

We go back to Olivia, who says, "I had cut mom and Mike out of my life. I'd started by understanding them, but eventually I'd worked my way around to blaming them for everything that had gone wrong. I'd convinced myself that, regardless of what had been done to them, they chose to fall in love, that they each made the choice to develop feelings for someone they absolutely should not have developed feelings for. I knew I was smarter than that." She grins sheepishly. "And then I developed feelings for someone I absolutely should not have developed feelings for."

"Who was that?" the interviewer asks.

"On my second day of classes at Boston College, I walked into my English Lit class, took one look at the professor, and fell head-over-heels in love. And that happens all the time in college, students getting crushes on professors, and it's no big deal. Except she took one look at me and fell just as hard."

"She? So you discovered you were gay?"

"No, that's the thing. I'm not gay. I've kissed a few girls when I was drunk at parties, but that was always because there were meathead guys cheering us on. I had never, ever had sexual feelings about a girl or woman until I saw her-- and then I had nothing but sexual feelings for her. I've never felt attracted to another woman before or since, but when love hits you, it doesn't ask your opinion."

A brief black screen announces in white letters, The professor in question has obtained a legal injunction to prohibit the makers of this documentary from using her name or image.

Back to Olivia. "So yeah, there were three reasons for me not to get into this. First, she was a woman, and not only was I not gay, neither was she. Second, she was my professor at the time, teaching classes I would be in. And third, she was married to an assistant dean and had three kids. The oldest was 15. So we had every single reason not to fall in love, and none of those reasons mattered at all to me or to her. We made love for the first time in her classroom a few days later, and it was just frenzied. She was my first grown-up, adult love, and what I felt made me feel completely out of control. It was the same for her. It was terrifying and thrilling all at once."

"So just what your mother and brother must have felt."

"Ooooh, irony," Olivia laughs. "Yes, exactly that, not that I was even thinking of them at the time. Anyway, she occupied my thoughts and every second I could manage to spend with her. For six months there was nothing but her -- though she did insist I keep up with my grades and lacrosse, which meant that at least one of us was thinking a little."

"And it was a serious relationship? Not just sex?"

"Yeah, it was very serious. We talked about a future. We talked about her leaving her husband. We talked about me being a 'cool stepmom' to her kids. It's nuts how seriously both parties in a love affair can take pillow talk."

"What happened?"

"For six months we were each other's everything. And then her husband walked in on us in a...very compromising numerical position, shall we say. And that was that."

"She didn't leave her husband for you?"

Olivia laughs again. "When confronted by stark reality, silly dreams evaporate pretty quickly. No, what we both thought was the truest of true love was a mutual infatuation, nothing more. Turns out she wanted what she had with her husband and family. Not that it mattered in the end. They divorced and she moved to another state and another professorship. I cried for two weeks straight."

"And then?"

"And then I climbed down off my high horse and called mom."

Mike looking happy and Emily looking delighted. Emily says, "I had my daughter back. She came over on her first night back in town for the summer and we had dinner. She met her nephew and heard all about our plans to move to France."

Cut to Olivia, who enthuses, "I LOVE ROBBIE!"

"What was it like, spending time with them like that after so long apart?" the interviewer asks.

"It was a little weird at first. The oddest thing was how mom had become a sweet, obedient little wifey to Mike. I had grown up with her being not submissive to dad at all, but with Mike she was a different person, kinda 1950s almost. At first I was like, what the fuck? But mom was happier than I've ever seen -- well, I was gonna say happier than I've ever seen her, but I think she was happier than I've ever seen anyone."

"What do you think caused that change?"

"Well who knows, right? But I think she probably was always like that, or always wanted to be like that, but dad is more of a 'meet in the middle' kind of guy. She couldn't be the way she wanted to be with him. With Mike -- OK look, thinking about my brother this way is weird and it's making me throw up in my mouth a little, but he's the kind of guy a woman can rely on to take the lead." She pauses and adds, "Don't tell him I said that. Tell him I said he's a colossal goofball."

We hear the interviewer stifle a chuckle, then ask, "So her personality completely changed?"

"Oh no. She's still a ferocious woman. She just gets to be a ferocious woman who's submissive in her relationship, just like Mike gets to be a sweetheart -- and I mean it, do not tell him I said that -- who's dominant in his relationship. They're perfect for each other, they really are. I'm happy for them." She pauses, then adds enthusiastically, " And them moving to France gave me an excuse to visit freakin' France! And someplace to crash for free when I'm there."

Back to Emily and Mike. Mike tells us, "So my bratty little sister was back in our lives. Only she wasn't the little brat I knew from a year and a half before. She was...kinda awesome, actually. She was someone I wanted to spend a lot more time with and get to know better."

"After that, she did spend a lot of time with us during the summer." Emily says happily. "She almost forced Mike and I to go out on frequent date nights so she could babysit Robbie."

"She spoiled our son," Mike laughs.

"Only a little," Emily replies with a grin.

"Rotten. Robbie adores her. And...yeah, she's one of my favorite people in the world now. I wouldn't have called that one when I was in high school."

To Bob now. "I'd dug myself a deep hole at work, so I had to bust hump to get out of it. It was worth it though -- I like what I do, and it's a worthwhile job that I wanted to keep. And...well, things developed."

We now meet someone new: a black woman in her mid-30s. She is lovely in a quiet, unassuming sort of way, and the way her eyes dance when she smiles gives an impression of keen intelligence married to a friendly demeanor. She wears a bright yellow dress that looks very good against her dark skin.

Below her face appear the words Ayisha Clarke-Larsen.

She tells us, "I met Bob about three or four years before his divorce. We worked on different floors of the same building, and we saw each other once or twice a week in the hall or at the coffee shop. He was such a sweet guy, and I looked forward to the times we'd run into each other. We always spent a few minutes talking, or sometimes we'd eat lunch together. I was interested right from the first."

"Did he encourage that interest?" the interviewer asks.

"No!" Ayisha laughs. "I tried to hide it. I knew he was married, and neither of us are the kind to want an affair. When his troubles began I basically didn't see him for eight months. I thought he was ducking me. And then one day I ran into him at a grocery store and we got to talking. He told me he was single now and I asked him out then and there."

We now see Bob and Ayisha together in the studio like Mike and Emily. The chemistry between them is immediately obvious, even without taking into account the fact that Ayisha is enormously pregnant. The yellow of her dress compliments both Bob's blue eyes and his green shirt, and one gets the sense that Ayisha is the sort of person who thinks about things like that.

Bob says, "People had been pressing me to get back out there, and I'd had a few dates since I pulled myself back together, but Ayisha wasn't like any of them. I knew there was something there right away. We've never looked back."

Ayisha holds up her left hand, where a ring glitters on her third finger. "We were married a year later."

"How are things going?" the interviewer asks.

Ayisha looks down at her gravid belly and says with a smile, "Great."

"I never expected to be a father again," Bob says, "Certainly not at my age. But I can't wait. We're talking about having one more, too."

"How do you feel about Emily and Mike now?" the interviewer asks.

Bob pauses and considers his words, finally saying, "Getting to where I am now took a lot of effort, a lot of struggle. For me, for my situation, part of getting over what they did was that I had to kill them, in here." He taps his chest. "I don't hate them anymore. I'm not giving them that kind of energy because they don't deserve it. But I haven't forgiven them. Ayisha keeps telling me I should, but...I'm not there."

Ayisha speaks up to explain, "I've never met them. What they did is...incomprehensible to me. It's so foreign that I can't understand it. But like they say, forgiveness isn't about the person who wronged you, it's about you. It's about letting the pain go and moving on with your life. And...I don't think I'm telling you to forgive, because that's a decision only you can make. I think I'm just saying you'll be happier if you do, and I want you to be happy. All the time."

Bob smiles as he gazes at his wife. "I know, babe."

Olivia now, who enthuses, "Ayisha is just the best, she's so smart and funny, and they're so good together. I've never seen my dad this happy. And in a few weeks I'm gonna have a little sister!"

"How did your college career go after the end of your affair?" the interviewer asks.

"Great. I mean, you know, ups and downs, but overall it's been an amazing experience."

"Any more love affairs?"

Olivia laughs. "No. There have been a few guys, some kind of serious, some not, but I'm not ready for a commitment. There's a whole lot of men I've got to burn through before I settle down."

"So what's next for Olivia?"

"I'm graduating in a few weeks with a bachelor's in psychology. I have my master's program lined up in LA. I visit France three or four times a year to see mom, Mike, Robbie, and Claire."

We now see a video clip of Emily and Mike sitting on a blanket in the Bois de Vincennes in Paris on a fine summer day. Emily is laying out a picnic lunch while three-year-old, brunet Robbie, looking much like his namesake grandfather except for the wild hair he inherited from his mother, runs excitedly in a circle with a bubble wand in his hand, leaving iridescent globes in his wake. Mike holds up an adorable blonde infant girl who looks to be about a year old and pretends to nibble her bootie-clad toes, much to her evident delight.

In a voiceover, Emily tells us, "Claire Suzanne was born in Paris on May 7th. She's a very happy little girl, and the sweetest little thing in the whole world. I admit I might be biased in my assessment."

We see the couple in the studio now, and Mike tells us, "We got here in a weird way, but we're a family. We're happy in our own unique fashion."

"Thus giving the lie to Tolstoy," Emily interjects with a smile.

"What's life like in France?" the interviewer asks. "Do you live openly?"

"France is lovely," Emily says, "as are the French. As far as living openly...we do not live in hiding."

"Yeah," Mike says with a nod. "Incest is legal here so nobody's going to come after us for what we are, but, like, it's still taboo."

"The French are far more cosmopolitan about matters of the heart than Americans are," Emily puts in, "but is certainly true that incestuous relationships are not fully accepted by society."

"We've been really careful with who we've told," Mike tells us. "And I think it being legal here does help people to accept us, or at least not condemn us. We've lost a couple friends over it, but we have a group of people we can be honest with. That's worth the challenges that come with it."