By Susan Ager

To appreciate the rest of Kathy West's story, you have to know the end, at least the end so far.

A few months ago, she sold the big brown house and moved into a much smaller house with the man she loves, Alan Feldt.

West is nearly 60. She was married for 32 years to a man who drank too much and wasn't keen on listening or talking--but when he did talk, he said mean things. Feldt, professor of urban planning in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning, is 62. He was married for 39 years to an ailing woman who last year collapsed with a fatal heart attack.

Today, they live together, laughing and loving like teenagers, all because of that big brown house. And because of a man named Jim Martin.

Martin has been dead almost nine years. His death from AIDS was the first in Washtenaw County, Michigan. Nobody talks about him much anymore except Kathy West. She thinks about him every day. He rescued her. Without ever having expected salvation, she got it, from him.

WEST was Prof. Jim Martin's secretary at the University of Michigan Law School. She typed and edited his manuscripts, prepared class materials, proctored exams. His reputation was mixed. He was brilliant and prolific, but nitpicky and somewhat of an intellectual snob. "He would" she says, "call flowers by their Latin names."

But she liked him. He spoke with her as if she were his equal. He would drop by her desk or she by his to chat. Nothing intimate, just their views of the world, their philosophies of life, the news of the day.

Or he asked what music she practiced on her piano the night before. "Oh, some Mendelssohn, some Bach, some Schumann," she would say. "Well, what?" he would insist. "I don't know!" she would reply, exasperated. "I start at the first note. I don't read the titles."

He thrived on classical music and equipped his house with a stereo that pumped sound into every room and the yard. Eventually he bought the rental houses on either side of his own, inflicting his music on his tenants, who did not complain.

West dropped papers off at his home regularly but went in only twice: once when she and her husband were invited for dinner, and once for a lavish dinner party.

Lots of people knew Martin was gay, but he didn't talk about it. She told him about her long and difficult marriage, but he never spoke of his love for Don, his partner for 10 years.

Once, the professor asked his secretary why she didn't get out of her marriage. "Well," she remembers saying, "it's the money." He did not ask again. She suspected he liked her and wanted her to be happy. He brought her flowers all the time.

KATHY WEST had small ambitions. She took typing and shorthand in college, then dropped out to marry and have children.

Within 10 years she had five, raising them in an old rented farmhouse in the country. Her husband, who worked the line at Ford, drove their only car to work. She remembers "doing what I was supposed to, and with a pretty cheerful heart. Doing the work of the day, and there's nothing thrilling about raising children."

As her five approached college, West wanted a fund to fuel their dreams. Her husband spent much of his income on psychiatric care. He was manic depressive and increasingly dependent on alcohol.

She took a typing test, and, after pounding out 85 words a minute for five minutes with only three errors, was hired by the law school. She earned $5,400. At 38, it was her first job outside the home.

Her income gave her husband more to spend on booze. Each night he drank a glass of wine, then more. Then gin. Then almost a fifth of gin daily. Sometimes he passed out by 6:30 p.m.

Once, when her two youngest were 14 and 17, they pleaded with her to take them away and let Dad fend for himself. "I can't" she told them, her heart aching. "We couldn't even get a decent apartment for the three of us on what I make. I just can't." She resigned herself to the long haul.

Her salary jumped when she moved to the U-M president's office. But as her home life deteriorated, she made what seemed a crazy decision: to take a big pay cut and return to the law school.

One night before she returned in 1984, she caught a glimpse of Martin at a concert. Fear stabbed her. "Something's wrong with Professor Martin" she thought, then, just as quickly, "or maybe he's just getting old." His throat looked more wrinkled, his 40-year-old face more gaunt.

That summer, he suffered from inexplicable fevers. By December, he was hospitalized with an unusual form of pneumonia. Finally, in February, his condition was diagnosed: acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Fewer than 45 people in Michigan had the disease, and nearly everyone else feared it.

Some faculty members retreated from Martin. "I think he felt very alone," she says. He told her how every two weeks he called his devoutly Catholic mother who, horrified by his homosexuality and his disease, urged him to pray and confess his sins.

West listened. Her life was not much, but at least she had a future.

That fall, after he quit teaching, West hardly saw him. Visiting him just once in the hospital, she could tell nothing would save him. He died at home on Dec. 12, 1985. A colleague called West to tell her.

The next morning, as she proctored a final exam, she wrote Martin's mother a note of condolence. Twenty days later, Martin's partner, Don, died of AIDS, too.

WITH HER trademark precision and reliability, West helped plan her boss's memorial service. She would emcee it herself. She would play Bach on the piano as mourners filed in.

Two nights before, she dropped by the home of a young couple Martin had named as executors of his estate. She was ready to dash home when they told her the news that would change her life: Martin had left her not one house, but two. His own big brown house and a rental house next door.

More shocked than she had ever been, she blurted out, "There goes my marriage." It was as if a sea parted, or a skyful of dark clouds broke, but for only an instant.

For months, numb, she did nothing. She couldn't take Martin's house, or the other one. She didn't deserve them.

"That same year," she recalls, her eyes filling with tears, "my mother died, my sister died, my father-in-law died and my boss died, and then I found out I inherited those houses, and that was the hardest thing to take. I went to work every day, and I did my job, but all my nerve endings were totally disrupted. Nothing seemed real. I believe it was probably the hardest time I ever had in my life.

"I guess," she says, "when you're married to an alcoholic for so long, and you stick it out, you come to think you're not worth very much. Yet here was a man who thought I was worth everything he had."

By September, West relaxed. She moved into Martin's big brown house--with her husband. His last chance lasted 11 months. Although he quit drinking for a time, he didn't quit acting like an alcoholic: nasty and controlling. He let her commit to playing the organ at church each Sunday but would disappear with the car when she needed to drive to practice.

And this is a little thing, but it took on huge meaning: when her therapist asked what she most wanted in life, West said, "I want to learn jazz piano."

For days after-ward she thought about it and kept bumping up against her husband: he frowned on her taking up new things and complained when she didn't play each note perfectly. Loose, imprecise and free, jazz would have her stumbling around the keyboard for months or years, ducking her husband's anger.

In a blinding moment of clarity, she told herself, "You know, this is going to go on for the rest of your life."

EVERY MORNING since she filed for divorce, Kathy West has awakened with a silent prayer, "Thank you, Jim." At 52, after 32 years of marriage, she started doing more than the work of the day. She loved his house's shiny oak floors, its nooks and crannies, the views from its 56 windows, the stained glass in the addition Jim designed.

A year later, she summoned her courage. She enrolled in a jazz-theory class at Washtenaw Community College, then joined a jazz combo for senior citizens, knowing no one would care if she played with zest but imprecision.

Months later, when Alan Feldt joined the combo, she felt peeved that he expected to play keyboard, too. He hadn't played piano since high school but needed distraction from his sick wife, and a vessel for his energy. He found jazz and, after his wife died, Kathy West. Now, neither is looking for marriage or money. Only companionship for as many years as they have left.

In August, she moved into Feldt's house. She put Jim's house up for sale, sold it the first day and more than doubled the nest egg from the earlier sale of the rental house. She still works at the Law School, now earning less than $25,000. But she has more faith in every aspect of her future. Next year, Feldt might teach in Australia, and she'll go on leave with him.

"In Professor Martin's death" she says, "he gave me a life I never dreamed I would have. I can see so many more adventures ahead."

On many evenings, West settles onto the pink cushion of her piano bench, three feet away from Feldt hunched over his electric keyboard. She announces a page number, they find the same song and they play it, loudly, so loudly the neighbors can hear. Rocking on their haunches, improvising as they go, they follow each other's leads as if they've been partners for years.

Jazz was not Jim Martin's favorite. But he loved music, and he wanted Kathy West to be happy, and here she is.

This article is reprinted with permission of Susan Ager, who published it in the Detroit Free Press, where her column appears three times a week.