A Good Divorce (8 page)

On the way to work, I'd drive by the house to see what time Jude left in the morning, see if she was taking the kids to school, count the heads in the kitchen nook, see what kind of choice the kids had made. I'd call at odd times during the day and hang up if Jude answered. I was desperate for a scintilla of evidence to prove that they missed me as much as I missed them.

At night, I'd wait until dark and park several houses away, trying to find out if she'd gone out and left the kids alone or invited a strange man to the house. I wrote down the license numbers of cars parked near the house so that I could track them down later through the State Patrol. I slouched in the seat to make my car look unoccupied.

One night after I'd worked late someone in a black VW bug parked in front just as I turned onto the street, walked up the stairs in a hurry, and disappeared into the house before I could get a good look. A light went off in the kitchen and then someone pulled the drapes in the living room. Finally, there was a fly in the trap.

I took the keys from the ignition, got out of the car and closed the door quietly. There was no alley so I figured the best way to approach was from the Sweets' house next door. The Sweets' children had grown up and moved out but Mrs. Sweet still baked cookies and strudel that she shared with us. Every Saturday, Mr. Sweet mowed and edged his lawn, swept the walks and stretched the hose down to the street to wash his car. They loved our kids and sometimes took them to church. We'd stopped organized religion when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.

I took the Sweets' walkway, which was leafless and clean as washed stones. It rose five or six steps, then ramped parallel to the slope, where there was another set of steps, then a switchback, and finally I was at the top. The grass was damp and slippery under my wingtips as I moved across the lawn toward the flower beds and fence that divided our lots. My shoes sunk into the softness of the peaty soil in the planter strip. Mr. Sweet used to always lean over the fence while I was working on one of the kid's bicycles and volunteer lawn and garden tips. He was a strong advocate of steer manure and turned truckloads of the putrid stuff into his beds every year. That's why his roses exploded and ours looked like stillborn boutonnieres.

I tip-toed along the fence, checking the Sweets' windows for any sign of movement. Their bedroom faced our house and they had a good view into our backyard from the window where their corpulent Siamese cat used to sit. When I stepped onto the lower cross board and lifted my leg over the fence, the pickets stabbed me in the butt. I didn't want to rip my suit but I couldn't touch ground on the other side and tried to estimate the distance. In Quincy, Patty Petty's dad had caught me and Strawberry Nelson in the same position the night we tried to spy on her. When he flipped on the floodlight, he had us sighted between the barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun.

I finally leapt as high as I could, trying to create enough arc to clear the pickets. Magpie barked from the back bedroom upstairs and I flattened myself against the side of the house. No lights came on. I was at the back wall of the house, just under the kitchen sink, and with my left hand I could feel the outdoor faucet. I reached for the windowsill and, with one foot on the pipe, pulled myself up to look into the kitchen. The stove light illuminated spilled Cheerios and dirty aluminum trays on the counter. I could hear Jude laughing. Maybe she and her caller were having a drink in the dining room to loosen things up. Jude kept a bottle of Stolichnaya in the freezer, something she said her grandma used to do, so she could drink it straight up in a martini glass without ice. The alcohol kept it from freezing, one more of Jude's little secrets that she could now share with the male universe.

I tried to guess who was making her laugh. I would have said Charlie Johnson, except he'd never be caught in a VW. Or maybe she'd followed up on the volleyball player. He'd drive a bug; he loved to cram himself into things that were too tight. More likely it was one of her ACLU friends, who all drove old VWs and Datsuns as a matter of principle.

This was perverse. Jude and I were finished. What was the point of catching her balling some guy? It would disintegrate whatever residue of affection remained between us. Graphic evidence was unforgettable. But if I caught her, I could end this sickening, lingering fascination. Maybe I could make a case for having the kids if their mother was neglecting them in favor of a parade of tomcats sneaking into the house. You were who you slept with.

I lowered myself to the patio. My arms were shaking and there were grooves where the edges of the brick windowsill had dug into my skin. I brushed the grit off the front of me, wondering if I'd have to take the suit to the dry cleaners. Avoiding the rake, wagon, and planter boxes on the patio, I crept along the back of the house. The bottom of the dining room curtain had caught against one of Jude's cactus plants on the sill and left a triangular opening through which I could see two people at the table. They were engaged in an animated discussion, the kind that good first impressions are made of. The only light was the glow from the kitchen so I couldn't make out their faces.

When I reached the street, I tried the door to the VW and it was open. The hedge across the top of the retaining wall hid me from the house. The driver's seat was in a forward position and I had to work to get my knees under the steering column. I could smell the plastic straw in the seat protector and a faint orange blossom perfume. Behind the laminated holder attached to the visor there were some papers that I slid out, looking for the registration. Instead, I found an envelope with phone numbers and dollar calculations on the back. It was addressed to Lillian Epstein.

5.

I went to the Deluxe Bar & Grill for dinner and took a table near the back that had enough light to write by. One of the Group Health therapists had suggested I start keeping a journal to get in touch with myself. I couldn't stand to be home alone anyway. It didn't matter whether I talked to anyone. The clatter of dishes and scraping chairs were company enough. Monday night football played on the TV over the mirror behind the bar.

Jude and I had met once in a noisy tavern like this in Wallace, Idaho when a friend and I were driving home from a spring break ski trip in Kalispell. My friend's girlfriend and Jude had taken the train and we'd agreed to meet at the biggest tavern that had the word silver in the title. In its glory days, Wallace had some of the most productive mines in the west and the most notorious whorehouses. When we walked into the Silver Bucket in our ski parkas, the girls were sitting there in skirts. “You sure look good with color in your face,” Jude had said. I don't think she ever blinked that night as we drank pitchers of Pabst Blue Ribbon and she stroked the hair on my arms. On the way back to Quincy, my friend drove while Jude and I necked in the backseat. We were a little tipsy and massaged each other's ears with hand lotion in lieu of other pleasures.

A waitress with dark rings around her eyes, hollowed from lack of sleep, brought my open-face Deluxe steak sandwich. It was medium rare, with juice dripping into the toast, surrounded by thick, hand-made fries. She plunked a bottle of ketchup and A-l sauce on the table and left. Jude would have gone ballistic; she said I should cut down on red meat and the fries were poison. I wasn't all that hungry and turned the plate the long way to make room for my journal. All I could see was the grease.

I couldn't stop thinking of the kids, how when I came home from school at their age my mom was there. I didn't even own a house key because the door was always unlocked. There was always stuff in the refrigerator to make snacks with. Mom would often have something baked cooling on the breadboard. She'd ask how school went and, if I was going over to someone's house, what time I'd be home. She always knew where I was.

I tried chewing the matching squares of steak and toast that I'd cut, but the meat was gristly and made my jaw tired so I spit it onto my fork and put it back on the plate. I wrote down things I could do to make up for the black hole I'd created in the kids' lives. More live theater instead of movies, after-dinner conversation, chamber music concerts at Kane Hall instead of the moronic jabber of their rock radio stations. I'd get Justine into girls' soccer. It wasn't too early to have a sex talk with Derek. When I'd filled two pages, I read it over and titled it “The Impossible Dream.” How was I going to remake their lives on two weekends a month?

“Writing the great American novel?” someone said.

I looked up and flipped the cover of the tablet closed. It was Lill Epstein. The last thing I wanted was to have my journal entries the subject of next week's women's group. “How are you?”

She nodded at my plate. “Starving for some red meat.” I would have expected that she lived off of roots and earth worms. From what Jude had told me, I would have guessed that the only meat in her diet was male testicle.

“Care to join me?” I said, to be polite, while my thumb pushed the chewed remnant of gristle under the fries.

She brightened, actually projecting some inner warmth. “I'd love to. We're practically neighbors, you know.” From Jude's Sunday night tales, I'd come to think of Lill as someone in a cloud of steam with fangs and a hook nose. The real Lill was nice-looking, not someone who'd have trouble getting a man. Her hair was the color of fresh rust and her green eyes had a melted quality. The gold cap on one of her incisors gave her a savvy look. We only knew each other from the times she'd come by to take Jude to a women's poetry reading and we'd sit nervously at the dining room table trying to talk about nothing while Jude brushed her teeth or changed. Jude told me that Lill had enlarged her breasts. She'd also told me that Lill and her husband had engaged in some
ménage à trois
before their divorce. The women's group was apparently a way for Lill to dry out sexually. “I live in the Buckley, just down the street from you,” she said, her tongue teasing against her upper lip.

Her energy had momentarily shocked me out of my depression but I had my guard up. This small talk was for a purpose. “I thought you had a house.”

“Sold it.”

I could see the wheels turning. Wouldn't Jude just love to hear how her ex is doing? There was this woe-is-me game that we'd ended up playing, each one of us trying to appear more financially impoverished but emotionally richer than the other. “Let me get you a chair,” I said, reaching for the empty one at the table next to us. Here I was practicing chivalry with one of Jude's fellow travelers.

She pulled a tight-fitting brown cowhide jacket off her shoulders. Apparently, animal rights wasn't one of her movements. Without a bra, it was no trick to see the shape of her breast implants through the denim shirt. She hung the jacket on her chair, brushed the hair over her shoulders, and sat down.

“This is a surprise,” I said.

“Me being here, or me sitting down with you?” Here came the questions.

“Come on, Lill, when's the last time we were even in the same room together?”

She threw her head back when she laughed and jiggled her hair. “I guess we weren't exactly Sonny and Cher.”

Not so fast, I thought. How could she be so facile? “What brings you here?”

“The clatter,” she smiled, “and the margaritas.”

“I didn't picture you as a festive drinker.”

“I like the salt,” she said, circling her tongue around the rim of her lips. “How did you picture me?”

I laughed half-heartedly, but better we talk about her than me. “The truth? I'd pictured you into something more husky. Jack Daniels on the rocks. Somebody who likes to kick ass.”

She challenged me with her gaze. “A ball buster.”

“Amen.”

The waitress put down a second place setting for her and asked for her order.

“Give me a Black Label on the rocks,” she said, and winked at me. “I didn't want to disappoint you.”

“You need a menu?” the waitress said.

“How about a baked potato with cheese and bacon.”

The waitress shrugged and left.

“I hope you don't mind the company,” Lill said.

“I guess we're all social animals, huh?”

“At least animals,” she said, throwing her hair back again. “I'm just kidding. I find it easy to slip into dogma.”

“To each his own.”

“It can get in the way,” she said, letting some wistfulness into her voice. “What's yours, Cyrus?”

“My what?”

“Your dogma,” she said.

“Wow. Couldn't we start off with my favorite music or read any good books lately?”

“I'm sorry. Seen any good movies?”

We both laughed.

When her drink came, I ordered a margarita, choosing to blame my last hangover on the manhattans. And then we each had another. This time we clinked our glasses, toasted to dogma, and laughed again. I told her things had been going just great, how the time alone had given me a chance to reflect. The way she watched my eyes, I don't think she was fooled by any of it. Neither one of us had mentioned the only thing that connected us.

“I had a shitty marriage,” she said. I glanced around to make sure nobody was listening but we had the privacy of noise. “I could have handled the fact that he didn't do a damned thing around the house. But he stopped talking to me.”

I was tempted to ask her whose idea it was to do the
ménage à trois
. “What do you mean?”

“He was inscrutable.” She made fists against her chest. “I never knew what he felt … or whether. About anything.”

“Don't you think he was frustrated by it too?”

“Hah!” She raised the bottom of her empty glass an inch off the table and gaveled it down. “He loved it.”

We had our last drink together at the Alhambra. It happened spontaneously as we were walking home. Lill said she'd considered taking a place there herself but had never seen the units so I invited her in for a look. I put on a Simon and Garfunkel tape. The only liquor I had was Scotch so we drank it straight over ice. She took off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the couch, facing me. She said she couldn't see my face in the lamplight so I reached around and turned it off, leaving just the afterglow from the kitchen light. She tilted her head and looked at me with those soft green eyes.