Blue Eyes

by Leslie Armstrong

part 1

New York, late 1960s

What is it about men with piercing blue eyes? McQueen, Newman, Sinatra? They don't look at you. They bore through your pupils, stripping aside whatever resistance they confront until they penetrate your soul and fire your lust. When we were newly married, Randy and I went to a smart New York dinner party attended by three other smart young couples, each a bit older than we. And there was a pair of those eyes, embedded in the handsome face of a mid-height, barrel-chested industrial designer — think household products, not automobile parts — named Michael Lax. He designed high-end enamel-coated cast-iron pots and pans and enamelled steel tea kettles for Copco, a New York based kitchenware company.

His tea kettle was already in the permanent collection at New York's Museum of Modern Art. His name was boldly impressed on the underside of every pot and pan he designed, of which I had several. It never occurred to me that there was a person behind these elegant objects.

When we were introduced, my breath hitched for just a moment. Because of the pots? Or because of the piercing blue eyes?

In addition to those eyes, Michael had a shock of curly black hair streaked with silver, a sexy, scratchy voice, and a stunning wife, Rosemary, also with blue eyes. But her eyes were lighter and didn't pierce. Rosemary was willowy and lithe. Her stick-straight ash-blonde hair and bangs framed a huge watermelon smile that opened over a mouthful of straight white teeth.

They were the perfect couple, he wily and urbane; she, fresh and innocent as if just off the farm. We were all close to perfect couples, reaching for or at the height of our respective careers, Randy in computer software systems, I in architecture, the others in product, textile, and graphic design, playwriting, and songwriting.

The food was superb, the booze plentiful, the conversation dazzling. It was one of those unforgettable evenings when it felt very good to be young and in New York.

* * *

Years went by and, one by one, each of those perfect couples divorced, Randy and I as well. In the years before we divorced, we became friends with Michael and Rosemary and their two daughters and had dinner often at each other's houses.

I liked and admired Rosemary but was wary of Michael. So often he seemed to be scanning the room for someone more interesting to impress or seduce than whomever he was talking to. Over time, I learned that Michael was not just a distinguished product designer, but also a chronic drinker and philanderer. No wonder, with those eyes.

Shortly after my divorce, I spent an evening and well into the early morning encouraging Rosemary to leave Michael. Their daughters were close to grown. They would survive, and she deserved better than constant betrayal. They separated soon after.

Rosemary and the girls stayed in their brownstone uptown in Carnegie Hill. Michael floated around town for a while. Then we heard he was to move into the gilded cupola on the top of the building on 22nd Street and Fifth Avenue where my partners, Russell and Kirsten Childs, and I had our architectural offices.

The neighborhood, originally known as the Ladies' Mile because New York's fashionable department stores were once concentrated in that area, was then shabby and derelict, which is why we could afford to rent space there. 170 Fifth, built in 1897 in the Beaux-Arts style of so many buildings in the Ladies' Mile, is said to have been the first tall building in New York to have a steel skeleton holding up its classically fenestrated façade and may have been New York's first skyscraper.

Although topped by a gilded cupola, by the time we took space there, the cramped and seedy lobby was distinguished only by its glitzy pendant light fixtures fabricated by our landlady's husband, Edward Meshekoff. Mrs. Meshekoff, a true harridan, would sit on a high stool at the end of the narrow lobby and snarl at her tenants as we entered and departed the building.

Small architecture and design firms like ours occupied many of its thirteen floors, and we became friends with several of our fellow tenants. We were all young, eager, and had much to learn and share. When Michael moved into the cupola, Kirsten or I would meet him in the elevator. He would leer lewdly at us and toss off provocative remarks as we got off on our floor. Despite his good looks and piercing eyes, his reputation and treatment of Rosemary had offended me. I thought him an arrogant bastard.

* * *

A year or so after he moved in, I went to the fiftieth birthday party of the owner of Copco and the aforementioned line of cast iron cookware designed by Michael Lax. Of course, Michael was there. He sauntered over to me, bore his blue eyes into mine, and began his routine.

At first, I was having none of it. But by then I had been divorced twice and was on my own with two children and longing for someone to take me to dinner who could afford to pay the check. Michael kept the pressure on over the next few weeks with enough variation that, ultimately, I caved. The attention and the piercing blue eyes did me in.

We got off to a bad start when he passed out the first time we got into the same bed together. I got up, dressed and took a taxi home, thinking I was well out of it. But again, he persisted — without apology — and again, I caved. And before I knew it, we had fallen into a comfortable routine that beat staying home every night and knitting.

Michael and I went to dinners, to openings, to parties, to Europe. Our first trip together was to southern Ireland. The next was to London and the English Midlands to visit factories like Spode and Wedgwood where he was trying out designs for dinnerware for the Japanese company, Mikasa. Another was to the tiny town of Spiegelau in the Black Forest, where he was blowing glass to develop a line of vases and glassware, also for Mikasa. From there, we drove across the Iron Curtain to Prague where the only decent food was in restaurants open exclusively to the Soviet citizenry.

We kept company with the international brotherhood and sisterhood of graphic and product design: Alan Fletcher in London, Mark Held in Paris, Ingo Maurer in Milan, Lella and Massimo Vignelli in New York; heady stuff for an architect in her mid-thirties! And we drank, he far more than I. But I did my best to keep up and largely succeeded. I was proud of my hollow leg.

Yes, Michael was indeed an arrogant bastard. But he was stylish, fun, reliable in bed — after the first fiasco — and he made me laugh. I liked both his daughters, and they liked me. He wasn't so great with my kids, but he knew they were part of the package.

I was embarrassed when Rosemary learned that five years after she took my advice and threw Michael out, I had taken up with him. But Rosemary was fine with it. She had since married a lovely guy, also an architect, and moved with him to Berkeley. Surprisingly, Michael mourned her departure and his loss, which I found to be both ironic and touching.

Michael claimed to love being with me, but not enough to commit to a permanent arrangement, whereas I was looking not just for a playmate but for some kind of family structure for myself and my two children. Given Michael's grief for Rosemary and his need to consider himself a free spirit, we were always on the precipice of a lasting relationship but never made the leap.

In addition, his drinking was getting out of hand. One night, when we were arguing, he struck me. I have no tolerance for physical violence or abuse. That said, he was bigger than I, and I was frightened for us both. A friend turned me on to the National Council on Alcoholism where I learned about alcoholism as a disease, about enabling, codependency and the twelve-step program.

I went to counselling sessions for friends and relatives of alcoholics. I learned to use and accept the term “drunk,” an adjective that my hard-drinking parents shunned. I knew that if I were going to go on with Michael, he would have to quit. I also suspected that the person who makes an alcoholic face his addiction, the harm he is doing to others, and what he must do to stop drinking, generally gets the shaft.

* * *

Later in the year, Michael won a coveted Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome to pursue his interest in sculpture. He took a flat for his mother, my son, age six, and me at the bottom of the Gianicolo for a month. Our daughters were all in camp. My hope had been to work on The Little House, my book about residential design and construction, for which I had a contract with Macmillan.

However, on day three, I contracted a bad case of dysentery and had strength only to look after Michael's mother and my son between trips to the bathroom. Michael departed early each morning to sculpt, throw pots, and guzzle cognac in his studio uphill at the Academy. He would return sometimes in the middle of the day, sometimes at the end, in varying degrees of inebriation.

Tentatively, I introduced the notion that he might be an alcoholic. He would have none of it. Then, fortunately, my lawyer mother showed up in Rome with a stash of antibiotics which enabled me to kick the dysentery. We were all to go to the Amalfi Coast together.

My mother was a formidable presence and a committed drinker herself but it never crossed my mind that she might also be an alcoholic. Michael, like most people, greatly admired her, sought her approval, and so tempered his intake to be in keeping with hers. I clung to the hope that her influence would be permanent, and I gladly gave up trying to confront him about his drinking.

The Amalfi Coast and Positano were all they were cracked up to be. Our group of four stayed at a modest hotel right on Positano's stony beach while my mother luxuriated in her customary splendor further up the hill at Le Siranuse. Every afternoon, we bought my son a little box of Lego, which kept him busy in our hotel room while we grown-ups went out for drinks and dinner. Michael still put away more than my mother, but he carried it well.

* * *

On our return to New York from Rome, my partner, Russell, I, Ana Marton, a talented architect and artist who worked for us, and a host of much-revered outside architectural consultants and engineers worked on the text, illustrations, and technical drawings for The Little House.

During this period, Michael was often gone overnight to somewhere with someone other than me. No explanation. I would suppress my jealousy and pain by working through the night. I had always counted on work to protect me and give me succour when those I loved could not. The Little House was to be published by Macmillan the following spring.

Proceed to part 2...