A Good Divorce (11 page)

The every-other-weekend-dad thing wasn't working. We had no time to settle in. I was trying to entertain them instead of father them. Anything serious that happened after getting them on Friday night had to be finished by Sunday afternoon when I dropped them at Jude's. I couldn't leave any rough edges that would pique Jude's disapproval.

For an after-dinner treat, Derek and I roasted marshmallows over the oven element. Because I didn't have graham crackers to make s'mores the way you're supposed to, we squeezed the marsh-mallows and Hershey squares between saltines.

I washed the dishes while Derek went into the living room to do his arithmetic. He'd asked if he could have
Mork and Mindy
on low in the background to keep him company and I let him. As I studied the soup and spaghetti stains on the wall over the sink, I replayed my conversation with him and realized that what satisfied the guys in the men's group wasn't solid enough yet for an eight-year-old.

When I'd called Mom and Dad to tell them about the separation, Mom said it would break the kids' hearts. Dad said he didn't want to tell me what to do and then told me about the friend from high school he'd played baseball with, whose oldest had hanged himself with an extension cord from the banister after their divorce.

Derek had put the burner on too high and the macaroni and cheese had stuck to the inside of the saucepan like crustaceans. I had to scrape it with a table knife to reach metal. For some reason, it made me think of Jude's fantasy of us living in a commune so we could share cooking and child care with other adults. One night we'd actually gone to a planning meeting with friends of hers from the ACLU. The woman of one of the volunteer attorneys nursed her six-month-old while we talked. When her little girl tired and dropped off, her mother just left her breast hanging out. The executive director rolled a couple of joints and passed them around. Everyone else in the room was convinced of the merits of the enterprise. It felt like they wanted to get me stoned so I'd relent. The director's voice strained as he held onto his hit.

“There comes a time when you have to stop bullshitting yourself,” he said.

What a joke. These people didn't have two thousand dollars between them for a down payment. I was their capitalist. The lotus-eaters wanted to parade around in the nude at our little commune in the Elysian Fields and live off my dime. The grass made me anxious and I pictured these two bearded guys hitting on Jude. Share and share alike. I could see them stoned in the garden while I ferried back and forth to the office. At the firm, I was considered liberal because I'd questioned Ford's pardon of Nixon. This group made me feel like J. Edgar Hoover.

Jude could be funny when she got high. She did a parody that night of the executive director arguing in favor of mandatory school uniforms, turning him into Dr. Strangelove. Even the pompous executive director laughed. But her levity turned to vinegar on the way home.

“For once,” she said, “consider the possibility that you don't have all the answers.”

“I didn't say I had all the answers, I just don't see how a commune is going to solve our problems. I'll have to be away even more. Or doesn't that matter?”

“You had your mind made up before we set foot in that house.”

“Not true.”

“I could see it in your body language. You didn't uncross your arms the whole night. You practically stabbed my boss with your glares.”

“Come on, the guy's a little arrogant, Jude.”

“He's brilliant.”

“Like tinsel.”

“You're jealous.”

“I just can't picture myself eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner with him, that's all. Okay, I thought his wife was nice. A little mousy, but nice.”

“I thought you liked mousy women.”

“Jesus, Jude.”

“I noticed you enjoyed the young mom.”

“I wasn't supposed to notice her bare breasts? She practically invited us to take turns on her.”

“Your fantasy.”

“Oh, come on, isn't that what communes are all about?”

“I'm interested in a shared-living arrangement. You're the one that keeps calling it a commune. I want someone to help with the kids.”

“Isn't that what I'm for?”

“I mean someone who's available.”

“I think the kids are an excuse.”

“For what?”

“I don't know.”

And I still didn't. My memory had become manic-depressive. I tended to romanticize the good moments and embitter the bad ones. The only accuracy was probably in the emotional punch they still carried. Despite our best intentions, our discussions had often deteriorated into spit and scratch free-for-alls. But the fights made it easier to justify the fact that I was in the Alhambra trying to carve scraps of burnt macaroni into the dishwater and Jude was somewhere else. I decided to let the pan soak and joined Derek in the living room.

“Let's do something outside,” I said.

Magpie had wedged herself against Derek and fallen asleep. “It's almost over,” he said.
Mork and Mindy
was on Jude's approved list because the characters' sexes were indeterminate.
Laverne and Shirley, Maude
, and
The Bionic Woman
were also okay. Shows with traditional families like
The Waltons
were suspect.

“I thought you were doing arithmetic.”

He rushed to open the book that was turned pages-down on the floor. Magpie lifted her head to see if what was going on involved her. “It's almost done.”

“The show or the math?”

“Both.”

A single spotlight lit the green park bench in the center of the courtyard, and four gravel pathways extended like spokes from the bench to the corners of the garden. Even with the windows closed, we could hear TV commercials and clattering dishes. A lady with gray hair in a bun was watering the flowers on her windowsill with an aluminum saucepan. I still felt like a newcomer here even though people I didn't know called me by name when we met at the mail boxes. I didn't consider this place permanent enough that I had to formally introduce myself. It was my idea of a good commune.

“Let's get a popsicle or something, Dad.”

“You have any money?”

“Come on, you can spare twenty-five cents.”

“I think they're thirty-five.”

“Cheep, cheep,” he cackled.

We laughed and I dribbled a stream of pebbles onto his shoe.

“How much money do lawyers make, Dad?”

“Wait a minute, how did we get onto that?”

He picked up a handful of the gravel from the path and rained it onto my tennis shoe. “I just want to know. I was thinking of being one.”

“So you could buy your kid a popsicle without worrying about the price?”

“I'm not sure I'll have kids.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don't have to, do I?”

“No, of course you don't have to. I just thought …”

“Then I probably won't.”

I studied the back of his head as he formed his initials with pebbles, a perfect “
D S
” on Magpie's ribcage. Derek's naturally curly hair had gradually lost its reddishness and was turning a pleasing bronze more like his mother's. Until told how much Derek disliked it, my dad used to call him “carrot top” and “radish head.” Derek would come to blows if someone did that now. The changes inside his head were harder to figure out. He was starting to hold onto secrets.

As he stood, so did the dog and Derek's initials slid back into the path. Magpie shook herself off and Derek rubbed her hard around the ears. “Let's go, girl! Maybe Dad'll buy you a bone.”

We left a note for Justine in case she came back while we were at the store. Derek dictated and I wrote:

Dear Rustin' Justin'

Dad just settled a big case and decided to take me to Jaws II, then to Shakey's for pizza, and maybe horseback riding. If we're not back in time for the Johnny Carson Show, don't worry
.

Your dearest brother Derek

Without Derek's permission, I added:

PS. Translation: we're at Safeway to get a popsicle
.

We ran into Lill Epstein near the dairy case. She lit up at the sight of us. “Haven't seen you at the Deluxe lately,” she said.

I looked at Derek to see if he'd caught it. He politely said hello and then suddenly developed a keen interest in the buttermilk. “We're shopping for popsicles in the middle of winter. How's that for crazy?” I didn't want to talk to her in front of Derek, but the tingle was coming back.

“Look at me.” She swished open her trench coat, revealing cutoffs. “I'm dressed for the beach.”

We checked out, untied Magpie from the bike stand, and walked home, Derek licking his root beer popsicle and me with a dreamsicle. The apartment buildings faced on the sidewalk and I could smell freshly cooked asparagus, then sauerkraut. Instead of the generous lawns from the old neighborhood, there were narrow planter strips and ivy climbing vertically up brick faces. Winter had stripped the trees of their leaves and dried the branches brittle. The parking lane in the street was piebald with different shades of crankcase oil. Derek's and my closest moments together had happened in silence, playing catch in the backyard or walking the dog, when the only communication came from the slap of the hardball or the jingle of the leash. Jude never understood my silences.

“I didn't know you knew Lill,” Derek said.

“She lives around here.” If he'd asked, I could have told him the color of her apartment buzzer and mimicked the sound of her breath when she was hot. But he didn't so we just continued walking in silence, my son who'd sworn off children at the age of eight and his father who'd sworn off women but couldn't keep his lips from parching when he saw the leader of the Sunday night women's group in a trench coat. Warren had said I was going to have hot flashes now and then, but I wanted to be more cerebral and less glandular than Warren's model.

Justine was on the couch watching
Three's Company
, with her Afghan wrapped around her shoulders, when we got back. Magpie tried to get her attention for a pet, and returned to me unrewarded.

That's when I remembered I'd forgotten the dog bone.

8.

Every time the kids went back to Jude's I went into a funk and worked late, emerging from the building with my briefcase in the dark, trudging up Capitol Hill toward the Alhambra. I'd started walking to save gas money and avoid the hassle of finding a parking place when I came home. I'd pass groups of kids cruising the sidewalk in torn jeans eating pizza by the slice, couples holding hands, ordinary people in street clothes, and I felt pissed at them because they didn't have to work like me. We'd look each other up and down as we passed and I knew that if anyone grumbled “lawyer” I'd take a swing.

At home, I'd punch the power button on the portable TV and flip channels, watching anything that had a canned laugh track while I ate a Swanson He-Man dinner. I thought of what I hadn't done with the kids when they were with me, like have that talk with Justine to find out if any of her friends were sexually active. I didn't know if Jude had given her the “this is my body, keep your hands off lecture or the “open marriage” version.

At the office, everyone seemed to have their outings to the Shrine Circus or the magic show at the Moore Theater on the same weekends I didn't have any kids. They'd ask me to join them and then catch themselves.
Oh, that's right, they're not with you
. I could have hung out with the single men in the office but most of them were younger and never-marrieds whose idea of a good time was happy hour at the Top of the Hilton. Occasionally I joined them, eating a dinner's worth of chicken wings, chips, and dips, coming home buzzed enough to do something productive like call Mom and Dad or write a letter.

I wondered some days how I could have the kids for extended periods and still meet the firm's quota of billable hours, which required that I work a night or two each week and some Saturdays. I'd dragged the kids to the office more than once and let them play with the Dictaphone while I drafted a brief or edited an agreement, but that was hardly the stuff that kids' dreams are made of.

But now I had another reason to keep up the pace at work: the negotiations with Jude had deteriorated. Her attorney had introduced the concept of “professional goodwill” to the mix. This was a theory that treated my ability to practice law as another asset of the marital community. In other words, Jude owned half of me. I called Charlie to complain.

“If a garbage truck hit me,” I said, “the goodwill would be as worthless as toe jam.”

“And if that happens, you can also stop paying child support,” he said calmly. “But as long as you're alive and kicking, she wants half.”

“What did she do to earn it?”

“It isn't just for her, it's the kids.”

“Bull. If she wants my goodwill, she can buy it.”

“We're offering to take it in installments,” he said.

“You mean I'd be indentured to her.”

“I didn't make up the rules, Cy. You married her, you fathered her kids.”

I fiddled with a paper clip. “You'd look at this differently if you were married.” There was one more approach I hadn't tried. It required me to grovel, but that was better than paying through the nose and feeling resentful of Jude for the rest of my life. “Charlie, someday you could be on the other side of this one. Jude and I are probably history, but you and I will be doing business in this town for a long time. Consider it a personal favor. What goes around comes around. What do you say, good buddy?” The fakery shamed me.

There was a long silence. “You know if I don't fight for everything Jude has coming I'm not doing my job.”

“Spare me the sanctimony. Jude's not going to starve. She's got the house and I'm paying support. If she wants more, tell her to go out and get a paying job like everyone else.” In the denouement of our marriage, when we'd argued about her volunteer jobs, she'd asked me to pay her for the value of her work as a dietician, food buyer, cook, dishwasher, laundress, seamstress, gardener, and chauffeur using the hourly rates from a Chase Manhattan schedule that ran in
Ms
.