The Divorce Papers: A Novel (24 page)

Dissed by Fiona

Dear Maggie,

I just had a very unsettling conversation with Fiona. Well, not exactly a conversation; I was too dumbfounded to say anything. She’s being honored by the University of Narragansett Law School on June 5, at its annual alumni dinner. The dean (who clerked for Judge Howard) invited all the partners and associates at Traynor, Hand, and the firm purchased four tables. We all regarded it as a command performance. She poked her head into my office (a first!) and said, “Look, I don’t expect you want to attend the dinner on the 5th. I told the dean it was unlikely you could make it.” Poof. She was gone.

David and Proctor were awful, not consulting her on the divorce case, reprimanding her the way they did, but instead of going after them, she seems to have decided it’s my fault. Or maybe she can’t uninvite them?

WWFWD? I’m working on that.

xoxoxo,
Sophie

Harry

Dear Mags—

I don’t know where to begin. I finally saw Harry today. He called last night, after three weeks of silence (not counting that single phone message). He said he couldn’t talk then—he was too tired—but asked me to meet him tomorrow (today now) at Golightly’s at noon. He sounded awful. I got a dreaded sense of deja vu. “Shit,” I thought, “he’s going to break up with me there, in public, in front of everyone.” What next for Golightly’s? Someone getting fired?

Harry’s married; he’s separated—not legally but “geographically, physically, and emotionally,” was the way he put it—but nonetheless married. Her name is Tessa Gregg; she’s an actress/waitress in New York. They were married in 1994 and separated in July 1997, at her instigation. She decided she didn’t want to go to New Salem with him and didn’t want to commute. It was a precipitous break. Two days after she told him she wasn’t moving with him, she moved out—and moved in with someone else, an actor/bartender named Sly Slammer (or Spanner or Scanner—I didn’t catch the name and didn’t think I needed to). Harry was devastated. He went off to the drama school and proceeded then to sleep with every actress in the first- and second-year programs except you. The famous fuck-cure.

Harry and Tessa met in 1992 at an acting class in the city. After a few months of dating, she got pregnant. She had an abortion. They kept going out. After two years she told him she wanted to get married or break up. He was crazy about her. They got married. He had felt terrible about the abortion, but I don’t think that’s why he married her. I think he married her because she was beautiful, unreliable, careless, and sexually imaginative. (This is my summary of a much longer narrative.) He said he married her because she made him feel more alive than he’d ever felt. My heart sank. His description reminded me of Monkey in
Portnoy’s Complaint
. We bill payers don’t stand a chance against those girls.

About a year ago Tessa called him to say that she was going to speak with a lawyer about getting a divorce. Harry said okay. He didn’t hear from her—or about her—again until midnight on the 18th, when you were all striking the set. He got a call from a resident at New York Hospital telling him that his wife had attempted suicide and was in the intensive care unit. She had taken 60 Tylenol with a pint of gin, apparently a lethal combo. Your liver shuts down. It was touch and go for three days, but she pulled through. For the last three weeks he’s been mostly in New York. He’s been trying to sort out Tessa’s affairs and get her settled. She took the pills because she and Sly broke up and she felt lost; he left her for a model. (Apparently, no one has ever walked out on Tessa before; she’s the bolter.) She has no money, no health insurance, no job. Her parents flew in from Minnesota, but they are straight out of Lake Wobegon and didn’t have a clue about their daughter or her life. They’ve been helping out with money, thank God, but leaning on Harry to make all the arrangements. (They are grateful for his help; they knew that Tessa and Harry had separated for now.) Harry got her into Austen Riggs. She says she wants to go to California. She said it wasn’t a serious attempt, only a “gesture.” Sly never called or showed up.

Harry apologized for not getting in touch with me sooner, but said he was too distracted by everything and wasn’t ready to talk about Tessa. I asked him if he was over her. He said he didn’t know how he felt about her, but he knew he needed to get away from her permanently. He asked me to find him a divorce lawyer. “Not Fiona,” he said, smiling wanly, the only smile I got from him at lunch.

I wanted to ask how he felt about me, about us, but it didn’t seem the moment. I told him I was sorry for all his unhappiness and said I’d find him a lawyer, cheaper than someone in my firm. He said he’d call me in a week or two. He had to clear his head. WWFWD? She used to say: If you can’t do what makes you feel good, do what makes you feel least bad.

I told Harry not to call me. I said I’d get him the name of a lawyer and email it to him. I told him his life was too messy at the moment and I didn’t want to get involved, or more involved. “I didn’t know you had a wife,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t help myself. He was too tired to answer.

And then I left. I decided the best, or least bad, thing to do was break it off, right then. I didn’t want to sit around waiting for him to call. I didn’t want to hope and then have my hopes smashed. I didn’t want to be around during the next fuck-cure.

I’m unhappy right now, but I couldn’t sit home and wait for him to call. I’m no Griselda.

Did I do the right thing? I have a terrible track record with men. Could he be bad boyfriend No. 6?

Love,
Sophie

Dear Sophie,

I feel so badly for you. I had no idea Harry was married; I don’t think anyone at the drama school did—or does. He had a reputation as a rake, a heartbreaker, a swordsman, but I always thought that was a cover. He wasn’t completely honest with you, with anyone, but the story he told you says he’s a good guy. He feels he has an obligation to his wife—and she is still his wife, which can mean that Harry’s good husband material but maybe lousy boyfriend material.

Sometimes men make loving them so hard.

I’m sorry too that Fiona’s giving you grief. If things with Harry were better, you could put up with her and her nonsense. But you know that. Why don’t you come to dinner tonight?

Love,
Maggie

Divorce Announcement

Dear Maggie:

I probably should have accepted your dinner invitation, but misery didn’t want company tonight and I had the evening’s meal already carefully planned (representing the 5 basic food groups: fat, salt, sugar, alcohol, tobacco): frozen chocolate chip cookie dough, prefab margaritas, and a pack of Marlboros. I ate standing up, listening to
All Things Considered
. It was a very slow news day (nothing on Clinton or Monica), and at the top of the hour, they featured an interview with a Florida newspaper editor whose title was Editor of New Initiatives. He had introduced a new feature, Pet Obituaries. They weren’t real obits; pet owners wrote them themselves and paid to have them published in a special section of the classifieds. The editor had written the first one, to introduce the concept. It went something like this:

The margaritas were very stimulating, and I got to thinking about other possible New Initiatives. My best idea, brilliant really, is for separation and divorce announcements, to go on the society pages, alongside (as a
bracing, cautionary note) the engagement and wedding announcements. A separation announcement would be a real public service, for the couple and the larger community. It would not only formally give notice that the marriage was ending (getting the news out there once and for all and avoiding the endless retelling of your pathetic story), it would operate as a combo stealth dating service and real estate classified section. And there could be pictures—wedding photos torn in half. People love this kind of thing. (Did you know that the issue of the
New Salem Courier
that publishes the annual property assessments of private residences in the city is the biggest seller every year?)

I’ve drafted an example, to introduce the concept. What do you think? Has it a future? They used to say a lady’s name only appeared in the newspaper when she was hatched, matched, and dispatched. This would add a fourth: detached. Don’t you think it’s a winning idea? I spent a lot of time (fonts, margins) making it look just like the wedding announcements. I’m planning to write Harry’s next.

Love,
Sophie

MARIA MEIKLEJOHN, DANIEL DURKHEIM TO SPLIT AFTER 17 YEARS; HIS REMARRIAGE TO PARK AVENUE DERMATOLOGIST TO FOLLOW

Ms. Maria Mather Meiklejohn Durk-heim, 41, and Dr. Daniel E. Durkheim, 52, both of New Salami, NA, announced today that they are unable to reconcile their unhappy differences and have decided to separate pursuant to divorce. They have been married 17 years. Ms. Meiklejohn, who has resumed her maiden name, has retained the firm of Traynor, Hand, Wyzanski to represent her in the divorce. Dr. Durkheim has retained Ray Kahn of Kahn & Boyle as his attorney.

The couple currently reside at 404 St. Cloud Street, New Salami, with their daughter, Jane, age 11, a fifth-grade student at the Peabody School. Dr. Durkheim has a son, Thomas Maxwell Durkheim, 22, from an earlier marriage.

Ms. Meiklejohn is the daughter of Bruce Meiklejohn, Chairman of Octopus Enterprises and President Emeritus of the Plimouth Club, and the late Maria Maple Mather Meiklejohn, who was a trustee of the Peabody School. Ms. Meiklejohn is a descendant of Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather, the founder of Mather University. Male members of her family have attended Mather in every generation since its founding. She is also a descendant of Isaiah Maple, who came over on the
Dolphin
, in 1631; he and his fellow emigrants spent eight years starving in Boston before seeking out sunnier climes and founding the New Salami colony. The Maples founded the first press in Narragansett in 1725, and the family has continued in the publishing business down to the present day. Ms. Meiklejohn’s cousin, Peter Maple, is Executive Editor of the
Courier
. Dr. Durk-heim is the son of the late Leah and Herbert Durkheim, who owned a printing business, Durk & Co., in Queens, New York. The family’s original name was Durkheimer. It was cropped when Dr. Durkheim’s grandfather arrived in 1892 at Ellis Island. He is no relation to Emile Durkheim, the eminent late 19th–early 20th-century sociologist.

Ms. Meiklejohn, a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Chicago, is a Ph.D. student in American studies at Mather University and a writing tutor at Mather College. She is planning to start at Mather Law in the fall of 2001, the first woman in the Mather family to attend the university. Dr. Durkheim is Chief of Pediatric Oncology and Dowling Professor of Pediatrics at Mather Medical School, where he directs the Children’s Cancer Center. He graduated from Columbia summa cum laude and went on to do a joint M.D./Ph.D. there at Columbia’s College of Physicians & Surgeons.
Last year he was awarded the
Freeman Priz
e for Pediatric Research. He was also shortlisted for the Lasker.

Under the terms of their agreement, Dr. Durkheim will retain the St. Cloud Street residence. Ms. Meiklejohn has physical custody of their daughter; the couple share legal custody. Dr. Durkheim will get the Audi and the family dog, Fido, Ms. Mather the Saab and the cat, Tito. Some items of personal property have not yet been distributed, notably a Cindy Sherman photograph and a Jenny Holzer electric sign.

The financial terms of the settlement include alimony and child support to be paid by Dr. Durkheim to Ms. Meiklejohn for a limited period of years and an equitable distribution of their savings accounts, investments, and pension plans. Ms. Meiklejohn, with her father, retains ownership of the Mather Estate on Martha’s Vineyard.

Dr. Durkheim was previously married to Helen Maxwell Fincher of New York; they divorced in 1982. Their son, Thomas, a graduate of Amherst College, is currently employed at Fincher & Co., in New York. Upon the entry of the final decree in the divorce, Dr. Durkheim is expected to marry Dr. Stephanie Roth, 47, a New York dermatologist specializing in Botox. ■