1960
We were glad to be at home again after having been away for such a long time. The patients found out soon that I was back in my office, and I became soon very busy again. One of the first things we did was, of course, to go to New Haven and see the children. Everything seemed to be fine there, and it was a great pleasure to be with Nancy again. It was the same as before, we went to visit them frequently and they came once in a while to see us in Brooklyn. Winter passed, there came spring, and everything was fine. When we called Johanna, she seemed to be happy. In reality, she was unhappy, as we found out later. But she kept it to herself and did not let us know what troubled her. We should have found out ourselves when we visited them, but could not see it. Martin had never shown affection towards Johanna in our presence, so there seemed to be everything as before. When spring came, he became very busy with an old sail boat. Before already, when winter had started, he had brought the mast of a sail boat into the house, and had put it on the floor, an enormous mast, about 15 feet long if not more. It was lying there on the floor, dividing the living room into two halves, and one had to step over it, to go to the other side of the room. That was rudeness, disregard of others. The mast was so long that it not only divided the living room, but also a part of the bedroom, going there through the door. A few times when we came, he was not in the house, but working near the shore on that boat, painting it, and Nancy was there, running about. We stayed there for a while with him. That must have gone on every weekend that way, and Johanna was alone at home. But she did not tell us anything that he was not the same anymore.
If I said that Martin was not on good speaking terms with his parents, that did not remain so. After the wedding, he had resumed contact with his parents. They must have worked on him, whenever he came. He knew about their feelings towards Johanna and us. They must have proceeded slowly, and gradually won control over him. These are assumptions only. It must have been that. It was 4 years that they were married, and that was the time that his parents needed to destroy his love, which was there in the beginning. And Johanna probably also lost interest and feeling of love. It was mutual, that cooling-off and disillusionment. In the end, they even went on a trip to San Francisco. They had never gone that far before. They came back, both saying that they had a wonderful time. Shortly afterwards, I gave them as a gift a check of $ 500.-. It was on a Sunday, and he asked me, why I gave them that much. I don’t remember what I answered; probably that they will need it. One or two days later, he went to visit his parents. He got advice from them. When he came back, he told Johanna that he wants to talk to her. She said that she knew what he wanted to tell her, and that she wanted to talk to him too.
Very early next morning, she called me up. I was stunned. But I told her: “Our house is open to you. I am coming to pick you and Nancy up. Start packing, don’t leave anything that belongs to you behind. I will be there in two hours.” I went, we put everything in the car and we left for Brooklyn. She was happy, free finally. A terrible burden gone. She was young and pretty and had reason to expect happiness in the future.
Johanna wanted to get a divorce as soon as possible and I took her to my lawyer, who had much experience in these matters. It would have been just that the expenses for the lawyer would have been shared by both of them. But Johanna did not want to ask Martin, and so she had to pay for that herself. They had a common savings account in a bank with about $ 2.000, but Martin did not have the decency to give her her part or to return the $500 to me, which I had given them a few days before as a gift at a time, when he already knew that they will break up in a few days. Johanna and Nancy stayed with us, and Nancy went to the Kindergarten in The Ethical Culture School in Brooklyn, was picked up and brought back by bus and that was really good for her. In the beginning, she often asked when she will go back home, and she also asked about her father, and we told her
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Bronia and Genia Drutt, who came for the weekends. But it worked out allright, and in general it was a pleasant summer. We had a little motorboat and could go out into the Great South Bay fishing. And for Nancy there was a little girl her age and that was all she needed. I was there all day, taking it easy, and only when three o’clock came around, I had to get into the car and drive to Brooklyn to my office, where I arrived an hour later. At about 8 o’clock I stepped into the car and drove out to Massapequa for a little dinner and relaxation. Not unpleasant were the weekends, when all the guests congregated, also in the houses of the neighbors, with constant coming and going. Johanna had sometimes friends as guests, like Marianne Oesterreicher, and sometimes Francis came too. That was in 1962.
1962
I may have mentioned already that Johanna had used her great talent for art professionally for a number of years. She had worked as an artist for a big publishing company John Wiley & Sons, where she made book jackets for great many of the publications of that company, in the course of a few years a few hundreds of them. Later she worked as a free-lance artist and made book jackets for many other publishing houses.
To show what kind of work she did I am bringing here some of the jackets which Johanna still has and had let me have for insertion in this biography. On some of the jackets her name was printed, like in the book ‘Elementary Statistics’ – it was at that time still Johanna Waine – and on other jackets only the letters JW were printed.
For one of the book jackets, the one about Africa, she received
an award, in an art exhibition.
