Joy, Paris Carousal in 1990, WC 22×30, Eva Margueriette, NWS

A New Life Begins
What society calls a mental health crisis is in fact a spiritual one. –Marianne Williamson.

IN OCTOBER OF 1985 Terry posed for his portrait at my art class. He was living with my parents. For two years, he rode his bike to a part time job at a sandwich shop in Pasadena and attended AA meetings. Old time members reported he was doing well and everyone liked him. Happily painting since the birth of Joy three years earlier, I launched my second one man show in November, but nothing sold. Depressed, I vowed to never paint again.
April 1, 1986, three months after Terry’s almost successful suicide attempt, I opened my first art studio in a tiny loft thirteen miles west of our home in the upscale town of San Marino. A month later, Terry met Julie, ten years older at Bob’s Big Boy near my mother’s house. They were married in July at the Methodist Church where he attended nursery school. I saw Terry in the neo natal ward when their daughter was born premature, but focused on keeping my fledging business afloat, I passed the torch to his new wife.
I exhibited at art fairs, maintained a booth at the popular Pasadena Showcase for thirty grueling days and nights, continued weekly Leads meetings, painting portrait commissions and teaching four students in my weekly watercolor and four in an evening portrait class. Sick with chronic fatigue syndrome those first nine months, I slept all day on Sundays and climbing the studio stairs, I took a nap in an office chair before working on my commissions. Looking back, I am grateful that I didn’t give up.
Keeping contact with Terry, Melissa reported her brother jumped out of the car onto the freeway offramp when Julie was driving, he tried to electrocute himself with a hairdryer in the bathtub, and he and Julie were both taking illegal drugs. I didn’t ask for the details.

In 1988, I moved my studio next door to a much larger space with street visibility on Huntington Drive. Father Don Lynch, my priest friend blessed the studio with Holy Water at a gala opening for fifty people. With space for more students, securing additional portrait commissions and renting the back room to a man for office space, I risked earning enough money to pay the $1800 a month rent.
In the same year, Julie committed Terry to a psyche hospital in Pomona, divorced him, married a rock band drummer and had twins. Observing a mother and son–both with gray hair his hospital Christmas Party, I saw our future.
His doctor at Pomona hospital said Terry rejected the vocational training program because he wasn’t interested in working at a car wash. Again, he seemed cured when he graduated from the program and transferred to a board and care.
Melissa wanted to marry a drug addict. We counseled her against it, but she eloped to Las Vegas and soon had a baby boy named B.J. When her husband went to prison, she moved back home.

In 1989, at the age of forty-five, I traveled to a foreign the country for the first time. I always dreamed of going to Provence in the south of France where my mentor, Cezanne lived and painted. One of my students had gone on a gastronomical tour of Provence and wanted to return. I recently inherited $5000 from Midge Mother, my father’s mother in New Orleans enabling me to accompany her to France for a month. Joy was six and I didn’t want to leave her for so long and she was able to come because we found a babysitter for three weeks in the small village where we painted.
We stayed the first week in Paris at Hotel Vendome for $125 a night. In Lauris, a small hill town in the Luberon Valley south of Avignon, we shared a beautiful room overlooking Mt Saint Victoire, Cezanne painted a hundred times, for the same price it included nightly dinners under the stars.
Transformed by the landscape, the light, and long dinners, I fell in love with the people and their food. The adventure taught me to take risks and follow my bliss.
In in the spring of 1990, my new collectors Ann and Andre Chaves opened their home in Bradbury Estates, a gated community of horse pastures, for a private preview of my new work inspired by Paris and Provence. The Chaves’s neighbors, enthusiastic about my work bought both small water lily paintings inspired by our one-day visit to Giverny, an hour from Paris, and wanted more. At the reception, Joy and I decided to return to France and paint in Monet’s Garden every day. A week later, I hosted a public exhibit at my new studio and between both shows sold almost everything.
The year Terry turned 25, I didn’t see him much, but he called often and came home for visits. Because my Provence exhibit was successful, I begged Stuart to come with us to Normandy, France but he refused. Maybe he felt insecure about going to a foreign country for the first time or believed he would spoil our trip.
In August, 1990, Joy and I went to France alone. We stayed one week in Paris at the same hotel, sailing boats in Tuileries Gardens and riding the merry go round. Another week painting every day in Monet’s Garden and a third in Honfleur Harbor. I continued working on Monet Garden themes in my studio the rest of the year.

In 1991, advised to double my prices resulted in an incredibly successful Monewt Garden exhibition in the spring of 1991. It set the stage for asking, “What’s next? We decided on Northern Italy. That summer Joy and I, traveling with a woman friend, rented a car in Milan and I drove to Lucca, Florence, Venice, Assisi, The Republic of San Marino, Pompei and Sorrento and Capri in the Amalfi Coast, ending at Lake Como and flying out of Milan a month later.
In January Terry’s ups and downs seemed synchronized with mine.
The year, I visited Terry at the Claremont Hospital for his birthday, Melissa had another child, I had a successful exhibit of my recent Italian paintings at my studio and another preview at the Chaves’s house.
That summer Joy and I were invited to a wedding in the Republic of San Marino, I taught a watercolor workshop in Lucca, Italy the week before and after the wedding, we returned to Venice for three days. Joy and I entered a side door at Saint Mark’s Cathedral hoping to attend mass and the amazed to join in the singing of Kumbya.
In March of 1993, because I had a business in the city, I decided I to transfer Joy from Duarte to San Marino Schools. A former student, Margie Brown would be her fifth-grade teacher but when I called Mary Meye, the principal, she said there was no room for transfers. “I’ll just move here!” I said.
I checked rentals in The San Marino Tribune and Saturday morning, I went hunting for a back house, something for about $400 a month. I only wanted a local address. I found a pool houses with ivy growing through the walls in the kitchen for $800 a month and a run-down tract house on a busy street, no bigger than ours in Duarte for $1800 a month. Ready to give up, I saw a sign. Carol Kazanjian, Realtor. Her three boys were my students and Peter, her oldest, my assistant. She offered to show me unlisted rental on Monday.
The next day leaving All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Joy and I visited a friend who taught her to play Elise on the piano. I asked Joy, “If we moved, what kind of house would you like?”
“I want a house with a swimming pool,” she said. “And a baby grand piano!”
That’s a lot, I thought but since she cured herself of warts at the age of four by envisioning her hand without them, I often encouraged her to dream big and expect miracles.
Carol met me at the house built in 1928, on an acre of property surrounded by fruit and avocado trees. Entering through the side gate, I gasped at the swimming pool in the backyard. Inside, I was surprised to discover a kitchen three times as big as the one I painted in for twenty years, a polished wood dining room table for eight, something I always wanted, a queen bed in one bedroom, twins in the other and a baby grand piano on the living room.
“This must be the house,”1 said. “I’ll take it!” I couldn’t really afford it, but I hoped to earn more money. I had a “secret” bank account with $20,000 saved from my last two successful shows. I would use it to help pay the $2000 a month rent–until it ran out.
I arrived that night to an empty house. Stuart told me earlier the police found illegal drugs in the Melissa’s apartment, arrested her husband and their three young children were taken away by Children’s Services. He told her she could move back home. He didn’t ask me what I wanted. In the dark living room, I stared at the stain on my white upholstered chair from diaper changes when Melissa lived with us before.
I didn’t plan to leave Stuart. My goal was to have an address to get our nine-year-old daughter into the better school with more opportunities.
But I moved into our new rented house on El Molino Avenue in San Marino on April 1, 1993. I wrote Stuart a letter thanking him for all our years together and hoped he understood why I felt called to cease the moment and start a new life, but he didn’t understand. He was angry. I found out he sought sympathy from a priest at All Saints who told him, “What do you expect when you ignore her all the time.” Joy stayed with Stuart for ten more weeks and finished fourth grade at Royal Oaks School in Duarte.
We traveled to southern Italy the summer before but inspired by a trip to Mendocino on the northern California coast in the fall of 1992, I painted a series of seascapes in pastel for the first time. The spring exhibition of 1993 was also a success. A new Chinese collector bought a seascape depicting light shining on the water. She gave to the Dali Lama because his name meant, Oceans of Wisdom.

That summer of 1993, Joy and I spent a magical month in a quaint English country cottage an hour and a quarter south of London. I chose East Sussex because of its proximity to Rudyard Kipling’s house. I made copies of his poem, If and taped on my wall since in high school.
Students came part of the time to paint the idealistic countryside. Joy and I traipsed through sheep pastures and cornfields, climbing over fences, accessing public footpaths, joined a community scavenger hunt to benefit the local “surgery,” and shared a celebration dinner in the local pub. Joy participated a paper lantern making event at a church enabling her to parade through the village that night with the English children carrying their fire lit lanterns.
Returning home, I enrolled Joy in San Marino Parks and Recreation summer softball camp, and Freewheelers, a group of kids who rode her bikes all over town and at the end of the day, she rode to my studio. That September she began fifth grade at Valentine School.
When, I visited Terry at a group home in Claremont, he seemed stable and happy. He asked why I left his Dad? I don’t remember what I said but I knew he understood. I appreciated Stuart keeping in touch with him, bringing him home for short visits, taking him to lunch and golf. I saw him at family gatherings and holidays.
My annual one-woman exhibit the following year, “Mediterranean Memories,” at Bistro 45 in Pasadena was well attended but failed to make a profit. That summer. Joy and I went to Catalonia Spain, north of Barcelona for two weeks and the Republic of San Marino where Joy and a school friend worked in Giovanni Rigi’s restaurant for a week.
My next Exhibition at Bistro 45 in Pasadena, Friends and Special Times did not make a profit. In November 1995, my mother died. January of 1996 is when Stuart dropped Terry off at the San Marino house on his 31st birthday. In February, I bought the Mercedes at a live auction for $12,000 benefitting the Boy Scouts.
Four months later, Terry invited me for Mother’s Day brunch.
Separated for three years, Stuart and I finally got a legal divorce in March, 1996. My annual exhibition did not make a profit and in September 1996, after ten years, I had to close my beloved studio and began teaching in my rented house.