Mr. and Mrs. Voldemort retire

Originally published July 18, 2009

See? You can’t judge people by their looks.

I know that, and yet I still haven’t gotten the hang of it.

I still think Mr. Voldemort looks sweet, and tender, and that he would be the kind of husband every woman dreams of.

And Mrs. Voldemort -- well, that’s not the greatest picture of her. She was beautiful and funny and incredibly witty, from what I’ve heard. She was tall, with huge boobs (everyone mentions this,)

 and could light up a room with her one-liners and zingers.

She lived in New York City, by herself, in an apartment in the village, in 1960. Not many women did that. She was a reporter and a fashion writer, and was apparently good at it.

He was, of course, an actor. And very good at it. Charmed the pants off everyone around him. Literally.

And yet here we are, fifty years later.

Together, they’ve created messes that spawn three generations, and that include prison, fraud, stays in mental hospitals, arson, stints with the mafia, identity theft, more prison, child neglect, three marriages, at least five children and maybe seven or eight, and the spending of LOTS of money. 

A game show prize of $50,000, spent in a flash. Alcoholism, and drug abuse, and murmurs of spousal abuse. An episode of America’s Most Wanted. A flight to the Bahamas, where there’s no extradition. A cross-country road trip designed to steal money in five states. Theft in a Paris apartment. Children in foster care in England.

A house burnt down in the Adirondacks. Another in California.

Theft from family members. Rediscovered children.

Polaroids of naked women in the shower. Stepchildren.

Attempted murder. More time in jail. Abandoned children. Children given up for adoption. Mistresses. Moves cross-country, in a fit of pique.

They separated in 1980. Fought bitterly until they finally divorced in 1994. Remarried ten years later.

And now, retirement comes for Mr. and Mrs. Voldemort.

It’s not pretty. But who thought this would have a happy ending? Voldemort does not go quietly, and the missus even less so.

There has been a car accident, and a broken pelvis, maybe, or maybe not. Allegations of guilt, and of blame, and of “He’s mean to me,” or “She’s awful.”

In theory, they’re growing tomatoes and working on plays and fixing up a house. In reality, you couldn’t pay me enough to spend a month under the same roof with them, although it would certainly give me enough fodder for my novel.

But the bad guy has to go out in a bad way, right? It almost wouldn’t be fair to see them live out their lives in peace and prosperity on a little farm.

But man, it’s still hard to watch. Easier to read the summation at the end of a fairy tale than to watch them get old, alone and unmourned.

What was it Captain Hook said to Peter, the good-looking boy who never grew up? “You’ll die alone and unloved, just like me.”

Perhaps the fictional Voldemort had the easier way out.