A Good Divorce (16 page)

“Maybe you can tell me what you said to Lill.”

“About what?” Jude surprised me. This was the kind of confrontation I thought she relished.

“You know about what. About me and her.”

“I was just surprised that Lill was seeing you, that's all.”

“What's so surprising?”

“You don't seem like her type.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Lill is sensitive and earthy.”

“And what am I?”

“Cyrus, this is ridiculous.”

“If you can't tell, I'm upset. If you want a divorce so bad, why do you care who I see?”

“Lill's my friend. I just wanted to give her a word to the wise about your relationship skills.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don't want to talk about this, Cyrus. If you want to know, Derek hit a clothesline pole with his bike and had to have three stitches. He's fine and I've got to go.”

“Let me talk to him?”

“He's in bed.”

“Tell him I'll call in the morning. And don't lean on Lill. Please.”

“Lill has a mind of her own. Goodnight.”

I felt like we'd just boxed a round and I needed to jog to cool down. My heart was still racing. It didn't square. Something else was up.

Leo Pescara, the contractor who wanted to set me up with Sophia Loren, called again, this time with a case that was four weeks from trial and red hot. He'd fired the attorney who represented him in the Monticello case, the woman who I thought had put on a heroic case, considering the evidence. Despite my recommendation, he refused to consider a continuance. He said I wouldn't have any trouble; he'd watched me work. Leo Pescara was Napoleon, probably someone who'd been mocked on the playground. He had a long lip and short arms. This time, he'd gotten into a shouting match with the owner's architect over the design of a glass dome in an office building overlooking Elliott Bay. The owner was livid when the city pulled the building permit, blamed Pescara, and sued to recover everything they'd already paid him. It was another playground fight and Leo wasn't going to let anyone push him around.

“You know where the jugular is,” Leo said. “A woman lawyer doesn't know her asshole from a blowhole.”

It dawned on me that Leo hadn't fired his prior attorney; she'd fired him. As Leo raged, I wondered if he would have hired me if I told him my wife had just flattened me in a single phone call.

I was eating a frozen lasagna dinner out of the aluminum tray and reading a story in
U.S. News
about Hurricane Frederic in the kitchen of the Alhambra when the doorbuzzer rang. The story said the World Meteorological Organization had voted to no longer give only women's names to hurricanes and I wondered how something as macho as a hurricane could have ever been classified as strictly women's business anyway. Then the buzzer jangled like it was stuck.

“I hear you, I hear you!” I ran to the squawk box and pushed the speaker button. “Who is it?”

Several voices crowded into the intercom from the other end. “Dad, it's us! It's us!” They must have been attacked in the Broadway District or someone was chasing them.

I took the stairs two at a time, carrying my fork, my napkin still tucked into my belt. I pictured bloody faces with gravel ground into their skin. When I opened the door, they burst in like a storm, dumping their wet bags and sacks in the hallway. It was pouring outside.

“What's the matter?”

Magpie's shake sent water oscillating like a sprinkler. Justine wrapped her arms around me and Derek wormed his way between us, both of them mumbling incoherently. Hands grabbed at my mid-section as I balanced myself in the middle of the baggage. The door was still open and a sheet of water that overflowed the rain gutter blurred the view to the street. A passing car sprayed water wings from his tires.

“We ran away,” Derek said.

The rain, tears, and runny nose merged on Justine's face. “Do you know about Mom and Lill?” I suddenly felt chilled. There'd been an accident. “Dad, I'm not going to live there.”

“Whoa, what are you talking about?”

“Lill,” Derek said, “it's Lill!”

“She's moved in with Mom,” Justine said. “They told us they're lovers.”

The air in the hallway was suddenly very thin and I started to sweat. I didn't even know what words to use. I called on my best lawyer skills, the ones you used when your witness has just gone south and you had to pretend you knew it was coming. If I'd just let out what was in me, I would have embarrassed myself and frightened the kids. A tangle of limbs and body positions raced through my mind as I tried to separate Jude's, mine, and Lill's. I didn't even know exactly what women did together. Why didn't one of them warn me?

“If anyone at school finds out, I'll die,” Justine said. “I don't want to be queer, Dad.”

“Let's talk about it downstairs.” I reached out to pat her on the shoulder, but by the time my hand got there, she'd bent over to pick up her athletic bag. Pools of water beaded on the rose tile in the entry hall in a complex pattern of lakes and canals. Derek was sullen but not crying. I put the fork in my pocket. “Does your mom know where you are?”

“We just left,” Derek said.

I'd never felt them cling to me this way; they always ran to Jude when they were scared. “We can call her later,” I said.

“Don't call her, Dad!” Justine said. “She'll make us come home.”

“I don't want her calling the police. She'll be worried.”

“She doesn't give a damn,” Justine said, pushing my door open so hard that it banged against the stereo. “Sorry.”

“Change into some dry clothes.” I wondered if I sounded like someone had knocked the wind out of me.

I listened to them talking as they headed down the hallway, each one offering the other first choice on beds. This was a change of approach. Apparently they were staying for the night or at least until we figured this thing out. I squatted to pet Magpie and the prongs of the fork jabbed me in the groin. I set it on the footlocker coffee table. Magpie's pant looked like a smile, and I petted her wet forehead skin back over the crown of her head. A crescent of white showed just below the eyelids each time I stroked her.

There was so much I didn't know about what was going on at the old house. I wondered if this had started before Jude and I separated. All those Sunday night women's groups, maybe it was just Jude and Lill. I didn't know if the phlegm in my throat was jealousy of Jude for taking Lill away from me or bitterness at Lill for seducing Jude out of our marriage. I couldn't really believe they were lesbian. Jude was striking out at me and Lill was just playing house with her best friend. They'd read too many books on sexual politics. Men read
Hustler
and turned into predators; women read
Ms
. and turned gay.

While the kids were changing, I turned off the TV and tidied up the living room. Derek emerged in a pair of maroon cotton pajamas with a faded Captain Marvel insignia across the chest and plopped onto the floor next to Magpie. A band of bare leg showed above his wool socks. “What do you think's happening, Derek?”

He squirmed and petted the dog under her collar. “She's been acting different. She does whatever Lill wants and she's bossier than a cow with us.”

“She's always been bossy,” Justine chimed in.

“I know that,” he said, bending his toes back, crushing his knees against his chest.

“I don't care about her bossiness.” Justine had put her pink terry cloth robe over her sweats and sat dead center on the couch in her fuzzy slippers. “I just don't like the way they're hugging and putting their hands all over each other.”

“They even kiss.” Derek made a spit-it-out face.

“What did they say exactly?”

“We had a big meeting,” Derek said. “We had to all sit down in a circle and hold hands. I thought she was going to say we had to get rid of Magpie.”

The crying seemed to have strengthened Justine. “She said they loved each other like a husband and wife. I know what a lesbian is, Dad. I know what they do.” She shuddered. “Does this mean I'll be a dyke?”

“Where'd you hear that word?”

“Da-ad,” she moaned.

“No,” I said, very unsure of myself. “It doesn't mean that at all. There's no one else in our family who is.” As I said that, Jude's Aunt Harriet flashed across my mind. She'd never married and always took those mysterious car vacations around the country with old friends. In her slides, the friends were always women. I wanted to tell Justine she'd be “normal” but realized that would disparage Jude. It wasn't that I felt any great charity towards Jude, especially just then, but it was a matter of some pride that one of the few vows we'd managed to keep was to refrain from bashing each other in front of the kids.

“If she's lesbian”—Justine looked at Derek as if she wasn't sure she should be saying this in front of him—“how could you and Mom have kids?”

She was getting ahead of me. I'd never paid much attention to homosexuality and passed over articles on the subject the same way I skipped the “Food” section of the newspaper. I wasn't necessarily against it; I just didn't think it was something I had to know. “When your mom and I were together, we were just like any other man and woman.”

“Dad,” she used her club president's voice, “we have to swear that none of us will ever tell about this.” She sounded as if we'd just buried Jude in the basement. “I mean it. This will ruin us if any of our friends find out.”

I turned on the TV and went to check the refrigerator. The milk was seven days overdue and fell out of the spout in lumps when I poured it into the sink. I told them I'd go to the store and buy the makings for hot chocolate and toasted white bread with butter lathered all the way to the edges. It's what Mom used to fix us when I came home from a pheasant hunting trip in the rain with Dad. That was back when I thought Dad was weird because he picked wax out of his ears in public with the end of his matches.

I walked south on Broadway past the Taco Time as the rain peppered my umbrella and the gutters washed candy wrappers, cigarette butts, and plastic eating utensils into the drains. I felt responsible for this turn of events. There was something Jude wanted that I never gave her. All those times she'd discouraged us from having sex I thought it was me; maybe it was my maleness. Jude was tired of blunt. She wanted chamois strokes and soft cheeks.

She'd told me about her Uncle Edgar, the way he used to coax her up on his lap while he was sitting in the big chair next to the smoke stand when she was little and move her back and forth in his lap. Sometimes, he'd tuck her in at night and slide his hand under the sheets, and she had to cross her legs and squeeze as hard as she could to keep his dirty fingers out. Now I couldn't remember what I'd ever said to her when she told me these stories. She'd never repeated them and I was afraid to bring them up because of how they obviously upset her.

The Broadway District was supposed to be safe for gays. I looked at the women going by, trying to see who was and who wasn't. How could you tell? I always thought lesbians had hair on their upper lip and butch haircuts. The girl walking ahead of me had jeans that were frayed at the cuffs, where they dragged on the wet sidewalk, and there were patches on the buttocks. Her ponytail was tied with a rubber band and swished back and forth as she walked. She looked like she was trying to be noticed. I watched the eyes of the guys coming in the opposite direction, searching her up and down as they passed. Some of them glanced back to get a look at her from behind. I'd done the same thing when a good-looking girl passed me, a last chance before she disappeared forever from your life. This one had a decent figure and a nice sway.

When she stopped at the flower stand, I slowed down and sidled over to the cans of carnations resting on a bench. I picked up a bunch and put it to my nose, at the same time looking directly at her face.

She was a man.

When the kids were in bed, I called Jude.

“Why didn't you call me sooner? I thought they'd been kidnapped.” Jude had her way of putting things. Somehow she was going to make this my fault. Before dialing her, I'd decided to be amicable, but I could already feel my blood vessels contracting.

“Why didn't you tell me about it, Jude?”

“I thought the kids should know first.”

“I was devastated. I had no idea.”

“I'm sorry. One of us should have said something. Lill feels terrible too.” I had the feeling they'd dissected Lill's and my relationship and probably had a good laugh over it.

“Can I ask how long this has been going on?”

“Lill's been staying with us the last two weeks. She's given up her apartment.”

“I mean, how long have you known …”

“I don't want to go into all that now. I'm worried about the kids.”

“Me too.”

“I need your support.” Her voice was earnest, but not imperative. “Bring them home, Cyrus.”

“They're in bed, Jude.”

“Don't undermine us.”

“Hold on. They've only been here”—I looked at my watch—“two hours and twenty minutes. I didn't steal them. They fled, Jude. They're scared.”

“You're projecting.”

I could feel her paddle down my throat, churning my insides. “You're out of touch.”

“We talked. Everything was fine.”

“Like everything was fine with us?”

“I never said it was fine,” she said. “You thought it was fine.”

“Have you considered postponing this until the kids are at least out of high school?”

“This isn't a trial, Cyrus. We can't just postpone it.”

“This is painful. Justine thinks she's inherited it. Can you think for a minute how this might feel to a high school kid who's trying to get a grip on who she is?”