The Divorce Papers: A Novel

DANIEL, MARIA & JANE DURKHEIM

Dear Poppa,

I wish you were here. Mommy and Daddy are very cranky. Is 1999 going to be a good year? What’s a millennium? And what’s Montezuma’s revenge? Daddy has it. Mommy says I have an iron stomach.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Jane

MARIA DURKHEIM
404 ST. CLOUD STREET
NEW SALEM, NA 06556

February 1, 1999

Dr. Stephanie Roth

211 Central Park West

New York, NY 10024

Dear Stephanie:

I need your help. Life is falling apart here. I’m sure you’ve heard our news. Daniel has asked for a divorce. It’s so wrong, for him, for me, for Tom, most of all for Jane. Our marriage has its problems, God knows, but there’s life in it yet, and I cannot bear the thought of putting our daughter through a divorce. You’ve been a close friend of Daniel’s since medical school; he listens to you and trusts your judgment. Would you ask him to slow down, talk things through, maybe give marital counseling a shot? We’ve been together 18 years; he shouldn’t throw it all away.

I’d be grateful for anything you could do. Thanks.

Yours,

Stephanie Roth,
M.D., P.C.

THE BERESFORD

211 Central Park West

New York, NY 10024

February 6, 1999

Maria Durkheim

404 St. Cloud Street

New Salem, NA 06556

Dear Mia:

I am truly sorry you’re taking the divorce so hard but I can’t help you. Daniel’s decision wasn’t made on the spur of the minute. He has been unhappy in the marriage for years, and you have been too, if you could be honest with yourself. He is, of course, sad about the affect of the divorce on Jane, but he is confident she will be much better off in the long run. It’s not good for a child to grow up in a home where the parents don’t love each other and can’t get along. I believe in my heart he has made the right decision, for everyone’s happiness, including yours.

You should think about the future and all its myriad possibilities. Don’t cling to the past. Put the bad times behind you and move on. Honestly, this is the best thing that could happen. You’ll see.

I wish you well in all your future endeavors.

Yours,

MARIA DURKHEIM
404 ST. CLOUD STREET
NEW SALEM, NA 06556

MARIA DURKHEIM
404 ST. CLOUD STREET
NEW SALEM, NA 06556

February 28, 1999

David Greaves

Traynor, Hand, Wyzanski

222 Church Street

New Salem, NA 06555

Dear David,

Thank you for hosting my retirement dinner. I love getting together with my former clerks (I was going to say “old” clerks, but Sophie hardly qualifies under that heading). You’re such a smart, interesting, decent bunch. And I was so pleased that Jared came up from D.C.

The upside of senior status is the lighter docket, and I’m ready for that; the downside will be the diminishing quality of my clerks. I have to face it (without complaining): I’ll no longer get the very best. I shall miss that. I loved working with you, the original who set the standard, and all your descendants down through Sophie, and I’ve taken pride and pleasure in my role as a Supreme Court feeder. At last count (and I do count), I’ve sent 10 on to clerk for the Court. Ruth will still take my calls, no doubt, but the others are likely to plow greener pastures. I don’t blame them. I’ve had a great run.

Sophie seems at sixes and sevens. She and I have lunch once a month. We take turns treating each other at Golightly’s. It was her idea. “I’m a tonic for you,” she said when she first called. “Clerks are worshipful, and if not worshipful, then calculatingly sycophantic. Lawyers, they’re toadies. Which explains, of course, why judges are tyrants, looking down, literally, on everyone in the room. You need a little roughing up now and again, a little humbling.” Does everything she thinks come out of her mouth?

I wonder what she’ll end up doing. I had her pegged as a professor, like her father, but when I said that once, she looked at me as though I were out of my mind: “Can you imagine anything worse than reading and writing all day, and then only being allowed out to lecture to a class of entitled, fledgling Gordon Gekkos who expect an A for showing up? Whose parents call when they don’t get one? I’d rather defend meth heads. Which I do.” I’m glad she’s under your wing while she tries to figure out what she wants. She’s so quick, so lively. Prickly too, of course. She told me she regularly goes down to your office at the end of the day, to “take off my shoes and take down my hair—metaphorically.” It was good work I did, making this connection—for you both. You missed out on a daughter, with those fine, handsome, brainy sons of yours, and now a grandson. And she missed out on—well, you’ll figure that out, if you haven’t already.

The oysters were wonderful, especially with the Champagne. Why eat anything else, as Isak Dinesen believed. A splendid feast in all respects. My best to Mary.

Fondly,