The Good Life?

Their pursuit of a picture-perfect marriage nearly cost Susan and Mark Wheeler everything—including each other

Paul Kortepeter

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Susan Wheeler, an artist, can tell you all about marital bliss, beginning with a couple known as Edmond and Victoria Rose Boxwood.

They begin the morning with a picnic breakfast in a country meadow. Then they bike into town and spend the afternoon browsing through quaint shops and buying flowers from sidewalk florists. Later, they enjoy dinner by candlelight at a romantic French bistro and complete the day with a stroll along the river and a kiss in the warm glow of the setting sun.

Nothing could be more romantic. The trouble is, the couple with this picture-perfect marriage are rabbits, not people. Susan's paintings of the Boxwoods and other charming animals have captured the imaginations of hundreds of thousands of greeting-card buyers. Her art also appears on journals, gift packaging, nursery bedding, stationery, balloons and other products. The world she creates, known as Holly Pond Hill, is an elegant, cheerful place where rabbits host tea parties and mice waltz in starlit ballrooms.

It's a world born out of Susan's dreams. And it's the same dreamlike place that, several years ago, became Susan's refuge from the turmoil of her real-life marriage. How could a creative, artistic woman who was so in love with romance get stuck in a marriage teetering on the brink of divorce?

Dream or Nightmare?

Susan first met Mark Wheeler when she was fresh out of high school, and theirs was a classic love-at-first-sight story. Their courtship and early years of marriage went smoothly, in keeping with Susan's dream of what romance should be.

"When Mark and I first met, we were head-over-heels in love," she says from her home in Fredericksburg, Texas. "My mother warned us that if we didn't stop holding hands once in a while we would cripple our fingers."

Mark joins the conversation. "Susan and I met on a blind double date. Even though she was the other guy's date, we ended up having a great conversation; no small feat at a loud Aerosmith concert."

Mark, a college freshman, felt so comfortable with Susan that friendship and a sense of closeness came easily. They later became engaged, and when Mark completed his undergraduate degree in 1980 they got married.

He immediately returned to school to earn his M.B.A., so money was tight. But the Wheelers were happy just being together.

"I never guessed, at the time, that money would become a big issue for us later on," Mark says. "When I was in college, we didn't expect to live high on the hog. 'Roughing it' was fun because we assumed it wouldn't last very long."

Their money-related problems began when Mark entered the world of investment banking. After years of study, he was ready to reap the rewards. He expected his work to provide a luxurious lifestyle for his family.

Susan, too, was eager to put their days of student poverty behind them. She had grown up in a middle-income family and assumed that once Mark got established in his career, their standard of living would be comparable to her parents'. She dreamed of living in a nice home with every room decorated with lace, fresh-cut flowers and antique furniture. It's not surprising that the rabbit homes she paints for Holly Pond Hill match that description.

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Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 1997, Fall

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