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Peter. The cracks, however, did not take long to start appearing.
    Minnie’s parents’ snobbery and East Coast prejudices seemed to have oozed into her personality in the last three years by osmosis. Whereas before she had been quite happy to have friends over for an impromptu kitchen supper in the evenings, she now insisted on full silver-service dinners every time they entertained, which Duke found pretentious and unnecessary. Worse, she began to show signs of embarrassment at his own social behavior, reprimanding him in public for excessive drinking, and even on one occasion correcting his grammar in front of the whole crew on-set.
    “It’s ‘I should have,’ darling, not ‘I should of,’” she’d piped up brightly, overhearing him rehearsing some lines.
    Duke was furious.
    “Yeah? Well, maybe you should have stayed at home and minded your own fuckin’ business, Min,” he snapped.
    The worst of it was that Minnie herself couldn’t perceive any of the changes Duke accused her of. In her own mind, she was the same as she had always been, and she still loved her husband desperately.
    “Of course I’m on your side, darling,” she’d protest tearfully. “I love you so much, Duke. You must know that.”
    But increasingly, he wasn’t sure if he did know it. With her love and approval, he truly believed he could be a good man, a good husband and father. Without it, there was nothing to stop him from going back to his old ways.
    He began an affair with one of his costars. It spluttered on for a few months, after which, miserable and guilty, he came home one night and confessed to a distraught Minnie.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I didn’t know what to do. I feel like I’m not good enough for you anymore.”
    “Oh, Duke, that’s nonsense! How can you say that?” she cried.
    Even in her despair, she seemed to be dismissing him.
    “Well why won’t you sleep with me then? For Christ’s sake, Minnie, it’s been months and every time I come near you you push me away! You make me feel like some sort of fucking disease.”
    “I’ve told you!” she shouted at him. “It’s because of the baby. I’m just scared, Duke, I want our baby so much, I don’t want anything to go wrong.”
    “And nothing will,” he said, pulling her to him and holding on to her tightly. What the hell was he doing, cheating on her? God knew he loved her, so much it scared the wits out of him.
    That night they had made love, but it was a disaster. Duke, desperate for her love and forgiveness, had tried everything he knew to please her. But she was so terrified of losing the baby, she remained rigid with tension throughout, suffering his attentions as a mother must tolerate the needy suckling of her child. The woman who had once filled him with such confidence and made him feel like such a strong, powerful man now made him feel useless, rejected, and alone.
    Things went from bad to worse. The baby was born, and instantly little Peter became the center of his mother’s world, leaving Duke feeling even more excluded. He began another affair, then another, each time hoping to shock Minnie into realizing that he needed her.
    She loved him, and was deeply hurt by his infidelities. But as the affairs became more and more frequent, she eventually stopped believing that she had any power to stop them. Duke was rapidly becoming a huge star, with some of the world’s most beautiful women throwing themselves at his feet. Obviously, Minnie thought, he no longer loved her. She learned to take comfort and joy in her children instead of her marriage, and she cloaked herself defensively in the stoic, reserved conservatism of her upbringing. Slowly but surely, she and Duke grew ever further and more irreparably apart.
    And yet, to the surprise of all who knew them, they never did divorce. In fact, they never even discussed the possibility. Some said it was Duke’s almost superstitiously strong Catholicism that held the marriage together.