The Parable of the Trophy Wife

1 year ago

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Woman Up Editor

This is a true story.

Once upon a time, in the last century, there was a great, nearly stately institution that served the public nobly, at times even heroically. Though not as glamorous as Hollywood or royal as Versailles, the city in which the institution did business possessed elements of each.

In a time akin to Camelot, when these near movie stars mingled with presidents, one particularly handsome and charming figure captured hearts and minds with his dash and verve. He was a man's man, of course, and the women he serially married were beautiful and clever.

His oldest son and heir to the family crest reached adulthood, earned his own acclaim in the profession, married a fellow star and had a golden daughter. But the child's grandfather, by then an eminence gris, had meantime taken a new wife and soon added another son.

In the nearly royal establishment, she, the new wife, was a king's consort. Standing on his shoulders, she believed the long shadow was her own. She made mistakes that embarrassed the institution; she became boldly bad-mannered, insulting his older children and demeaning the company's community of supporters. She was not particularly in touch with those the institution sought to serve, or with anyone more impressed by feats than fêtes.

After many years, the executive retired but this last wife, by then a bit senior herself, missed the notice his fame had always brought with it. Those in the profession emitted a collective gasp when the old man's wife garnered a plum assignment in the enterprise.

Her contribution to the institution in the days of her youthful courtship with the boss had been slapdash and amateurish, and the years away had not improved her work. Valued clients of the company called it insufferable, self-absorbed, narcissistic and petty. Worse, they complained that the lofty institution itself, by giving this position to this particular woman at this particular moment, conveyed arrogance, shamelessness, and elitism to "people starving, living in tents, desperate for work.''

Elsewhere, the golden granddaughter had blossomed, thrived and planned to marry. Between the bride's mother and her father's stepmother there was "existing tension." But the eldest son's tender half-brother and father were nevertheless beloved, so a letter was sent: Please share our happiness when your son and brother escorts his daughter to the altar.

The wife told the old man, by now close to ninety, that the matter was his to account for. She had other things on her mind. By sheerest coincidence, soon thereafter, their own son was to wed. Blaming a scheduling mistake, the aging former executive's wife picked for their son's nuptials the very day of the grandchild's wedding. Her grandfather would thus be absent when his firstborn's daughter married. As if to validate the division between the two branches of the family, the bride's step-grandmother shrugged from her plum platform at the institution her husband had once ruled. "Happily," she wrote, "we did not have a single overlapping guest."

With little sign of regret, she added, "That I am responsible for the big mix-up is clear, but it is not deliberate."

Thus, with one callow stroke, did the wife cause further injury to the great man's family and squander the legacy of his long and successful career. Imagine what she could do if she tried.

Filed Under: Woman Up

Tagged: Ben Bradlee, BenBradlee, sally quinn, SallyQuinn, washington post, WashingtonPost

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