After a bad fight with Carolyn, John checks into a hotel.
When Carolyn is clearing the table after a dinner party that John has organized for “her friends,” the couple gets into a big fight when Carolyn objects to that description, insisting that they are “our friends.”
The arguments include that John was lucky he didn’t introduce Carolyn to his mother, that “my mother would never have encouraged that,” and that Carolyn only spoke to her mother “to keep the peace.” Because, she added, “I think it’s painful to see how unhappy you make me.”
It’s an all-out destructive exchange, with her accusing him of not making space for her, while he accuses her of having “no identity other than her own victimhood.” It ends with John saying he’s going to check into the Stanhope Hotel because he’s tired of seeing through her eyes that he’s “failing in this marriage.”
She begs him not to go back, and he promises to come back.
If this was indeed the infamous check-in to Stanhope, two days before the plane crashed on the night of July 16, 1999, Love Story would have leapt almost two years into the future. Although the last few weeks have been turbulent, the couple has traveled, attended parties, and experienced at least some happiness as a couple during their nearly three years of marriage.
But, as Beller writes, stories about them being heartbroken or unhappy sold more newspapers, and so did Carolyn’s upset photos, and the cycle continued for the rest of their lives.
