Roxanne Pulitzer: an Inspiration For Us All

Roxanne Pulitzer may not be the role model you would choose for your daughter, but you might find some inspiration in her rehabilitation.

Ten years ago, recall, she was sued for divorce in Palm Beach by Herbert (Peter) Pulitzer, heir to the newspaper fortune. The accusations ran the gamut from embarrassing to sordid--drugs, extramarital affairs, voodoo rituals, lesbianism and a menage a trois among the Pulitzers and her best friend, Jackie Kimberly, who married into the Kleenex clan. Pulitzer, 41, denies the affairs, the voodoo and the lesbianism. (“I think there is a huge difference between menage a trois and lesbianism,” she says.)

Pulitzer ended up with a Porsche, her jewelry and $2,000 a month for two years. She was roundly criticized by the judge for “gross moral misconduct.” Physical custody of her then-5-year-old twin boys went to their father, and she has been in and out of court ever since, pressing for more visitation. Last month, she won the right to have the boys, now 15, half of every vacation and to see them several times a week.

Her ex-husband eventually left Palm Beach, but she stayed on, taking a studio apartment, and earning $20,000 or so a year teaching aerobics to the very people she once socialized with, including, for a while, her ex-husband and his friends. (She thought about trying to exercise him to death with jumping jacks.)

Pulitzer doesn’t have to teach aerobics any more, though. She has become a cottage industry of sorts, selling pieces of herself--first in a memoir about her marriage and divorce, and then in an autobiographical novel called “Twins,” about divorce and custody.

What’s more, she is in demand as a lecturer--at $2,000 to $4,000 a pop--on how divorced parents should handle custody issues. (“I’m very much a believer in joint custody and making the transition from one parent to the other as pleasant as possible. Don’t be angry or sobbing. It’s hard enough for children. You can’t do that to them.”)

Last week, she came to town to promote her third book, “Facade,” a thin, sex-filled murder mystery about the lives of four rich and/or grasping Palm Beach women. None is particularly admirable: one is a former prostitute who never quite sheds her past; one is a trust-fund junkie who runs over a boy and leaves him for dead; one is a chillingly ambitious journalist who steals the manuscript of her roommate’s novel; and one is an artist who has a long affair with a filthy rich married man.

All the friends are treacherous--a reflection, Pulitzer admits, of her own unfortunate experiences with women friends, especially after the divorce, when she was dumped by everyone she knew.

Pulitzer doesn’t expect ever to repeat the success she had with her first book, “The Prize Pulitzer.” (That book, she says, has sold 223,000 hardcovers and 2 million paperbacks, and every time the TV movie is shown, sales go up.) Still, her publishers must have some kind of faith in her marquee value: Two weeks ago--which may depress talented, aspiring novelists everywhere--she signed a contract for yet another novel. She is undecided on the subject.

She seems very thin in her white T-shirt, faded Levis and alligator belt (except for those ample breasts, the size of which were chosen, we learned during the divorce proceedings, by Peter himself). She has piercing blue eyes, a slightly snaggled front tooth and the bouncy energy and innocent demeanor of a teen-ager. She fidgets during the entire interview, pulling her hair into a ponytail elastic and then taking it out again over and over, eating a jar of macadamia nuts as we talk.

She is so uncomfortable with the idea of calling herself a novelist--and frankly, after reading “Facade,” I can understand why--that when we spoke, I can barely get her to talk about the book at all. (Sample dialogue: “How are you?” “Better than anyone you’ve ever had.” Sample wisdom: “Money will not give one a code of values if you have evaded the knowledge of what to value.”)

Instead, Pulitzer wants to talk about what made her famous in the first place--her divorce, her battle for custody, falling from riches into poverty, clawing her way back into solvency, being named the “other woman” in the recent made-for-tabloid Palm Beach divorce of her fiance, Jean de la Moussaye, a rather anemic-looking 31-year-old French race car driver.

With Pulitzer’s help and support, de la Moussaye was awarded physical custody of his two children. (“At times,” wrote the judge in his final decree, “the trial seemed to be a reprise of Ms. Pulitzer’s own divorce trial. She displayed candor and restraint in response to hostile and embarrassing questions.”)

She and de la Moussaye intend to marry, but she worries about their compatibility. She says she has a strong work ethic but that her fiance, who receives about $9,000 a month from his parents, has none. “We do have a problem there,” she says, sighing.

In fact, Pulitzer has not had great luck with men in the last decade. For four years after her divorce, she lived with a headhunter who cleaned out their house while she was on a ski trip with her kids. She has sued him for the return of her belongings, including diaries of her children’s lives that she kept for almost a decade.

“I know!” she says, when my eyebrows rise in response to this story. “I’m telling you, I was an ax murderer in another life!”

I like it, I like it a lot: Reincarnated ax murderer marries dissolute French race car driver and together, despite vicious accusations by their former spouses, they raise four unremarkable, well-adjusted children.

It could happen--maybe. In a Roxanne Pulitzer novel.