Kramer vs. Kramer (17 page)

He slept about three hours that night, Billy snored, the air conditioner rattled. At eleven the next morning, Billy discovered he, too, could cannonball into the pool, provided Ted caught him before he went under. After a half-hour of this, Ted was so exhausted his hands were trembling. Several skirmishes took place over toys between Billy and other children. He lost his toy boat to another child and Ted intervened with sandbox diplomacy, unable to watch while his child cried so bitterly over the loss.

“If it’s yours, stand up for it!” he shouted at him.

“You have no right to yell at me,” Billy protested in tears.

After negotiating magazine deals in New York he had come to Florida to negotiate toy boats and was not doing it very successfully. Sandy, who had been observing, asked Holly to take Billy to the nearby swings.

“I got you ten minutes.”

“Thanks, Sandy.”

“I don’t like what I see. I was talking to Ralph—and I think you need a little time away. The kid, too. Sometimes parents and kids need a little time away from each other.”

“You’re very uptight,” Ralph said.

“Here’s what we’ll do and don’t say no. We’ll all go to Disneyworld and we’ll take Billy. You can do what you like. Stay here, go to Miami, check into a hotel. He’ll be fine with us. It’ll be good.”

“I’m not sure. Let me think about it.”

Involuntary erections settled the decision. In his nylon bathing suit, with Billy moving around in his lap, Ted was getting involuntary erections. They were uncomfortable and embarrassing, and when Billy sought out Ted’s lap again and Ted got another one, he had an overwhelming desire for freedom from involuntary erections. Let Billy sit on Mickey Mouse’s lap for a while.

When Ted informed Billy he would be going on to Disneyworld with the rest of the family, while Ted would be taking a few days by himself, the child looked betrayed.

“It was supposed to be our time together.”

“We have a lot of time together.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“To Disneyworld? Actual Disneyworld?”

A stacked deck. He could not resist actual Disneyworld. The family settled into a rented station wagon for the drive north, Dora attempting to sweeten the pot with a large bag of brown and red licorice for Billy. “Don’t worry. He’ll be okay,” Dora shouted. “Eat your candy.” Billy waved a forlorn goodbye from the window, the first time father and son had ever been separated.

They would be at Disneyworld for three days. Ted could meet them when they returned or he could stay away for the rest of the week, since Sandy was staying on. He could also be away for the following week, but that would mean Billy would be in the exclusive care of Ted’s parents, and he had a reluctance about leaving him that long in candyland. Harold was not exactly Dr. Lee Salk. In one of the poolside toy arguments, when Ted was groping for a solution, Harold called over, “Tell him to punch in the belly. That gets ’em. You gotta teach that kid to punch in the belly.” But he was free. He could barely remember how long it had been since he had this much freedom. He could have a
voluntary
erection, sleep until 10
A.M.
He could have a liaison with the Widow Gratz, a youngish woman, perhaps not even fifty, he judged—the best-looking local lady at the pool, a still-trim figure, appealing, if one overlooked the plastic hair piled up on her head. He had caught himself eyeing the Widow Gratz, but of course if word of such a peccadillo ever reached his parents, they would be lighting candles for him—“You did what?” Still, he was free to even have such thoughts.

He chose not to spend any more time in the Fort Lauderdale–Miami area. In New York he had seen a series of ads for a new resort hotel on the west coast of Florida, The Shells, patterned after the Club Mediterranee, one price for all facilities. The place looked attractive and it was in Sarasota, a short flight away. The Widow Gratz he would just have to leave to Mr. Schlosser. He phoned the hotel and made a reservation through Sunday morning. The next flight was early evening, and he left Fort Lauderdale traveling much lighter than when he came.

The Shells was a modern facility at the beach, a strip of attached rooms, motel style, overlooking the water, with a screened-in dining terrace and bar, and a swimming pool. He was led to the dining area, where dinner was being served buffet-style and it was immediately apparent that The Shells was fresh-paint new and two-thirds empty. The people scattered about the room seemed to be from a convention of airline pilots, so uniformly clean-cut they all were. He took a seat at a table of eight, five healthy-looking men and three healthy-looking women, and managed to feel simultaneously swarthy and green.

He learned that The Shells had become a spa for local Delta and Eastern employees and the people at his table who looked like pilots were pilots. Arriving on a Tuesday, he was out of the flight pattern—there seemed to be several ongoing relationships at the table. The discotheque opened at 10:30
P.M.
He did not know if he could stay awake that long. He had a drink at the bar and noted another demographic pocket among the guests, New Yorkers, about a dozen people, shorter, stouter, tenser than the air wing, who were clustered together for warmth. He did not want to go through any New York talk. When only a few people showed up at the discotheque, mostly couples, he went back to his room, expecting to sleep until noon. His internal mechanism, tuned to five years of Billy, woke him at 7:15.

Ted ate breakfast in an empty dining room and then walked down to the beach, spectacular in the morning light. Disneyworld was babysitting for Billy. No one was pulling at Ted’s hand. No one was making demands. He had no responsibility other than to himself. He raced into the water and swam for a while, peacefully alone. When he came out, he stood on the shore and feeling his surge of freedom, released a Johnny Weissmuller a-a-h-a-a-h-a-h! terrifying a flock of small birds in the trees behind, who had never seen a jungle movie and who took off in the direction of Miami.

During his stay, he never mentioned Billy. A few times, when the talk was personal, he said he was divorced. He did not wish anyone to know more than that—no complicated discussions, no explanations, no Billy. This worked externally. But Billy was still on his mind. He wanted to call on several occasions, see if he was all right, talk to him. He resisted, though. He had left a number. They could reach him in an emergency.

Several of the pilots organized volleyball games on the beach and Ted, of Fire Island, had instant respectability. He was “Ted, boy,” to Bill and Rod and Don; “Ted, honey,” to Mary Jo and Betty Anne and Dorrie Lee in the coed games. The days became a blur. He swam, played volleyball, swam, played volleyball, ate, swam. The nights evolved to Dorrie Lee, a cute young woman of twenty-four from Jacksonville, who had never been north of Washington, and worked Atlanta-Miami as a stewardess. They would make love in his room and then she would go back to her room to sleep because she was sharing with Betty Anne and did not want to get a reputation. He was to have difficulty later recalling anything specific they discussed. It was all the most immediate, casual talk, how nice the day, how much fun the volleyball, how good the dinner. They discussed their professions very little. He did not tell her about Billy. On Saturday morning, when she checked out to return to work, she thanked him for helping to make it a wonderful vacation, and he thanked her for the same. They exchanged numbers and would call if they were in either of their respective cities, concluding a near-perfect limited commitment vacation relationship, semitropical and semiromantic.

On Sunday, he returned to Fort Lauderdale. He got out of a cab outside the complex and walked toward the pool. Sandy saw him first and waved. Billy emerged from behind a beach chair and came running. He ran full speed in his choppy, unformed gait, yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!” on the long walkway from the pool, and then he jumped into his father’s arms. As the boy chattered away about shaking hands with Mickey Mouse, and Ted carried him back toward the others, he knew that for all his need to get away, to be alone, to get him out of his arms—above all else, he had missed him very much.

H
E WAS IN A CLASS
of thirty-two children, no longer the only Billy in his immediate universe, which Billy R. would have to learn, as well as the two Samanthas. Ted walked with the boy to school on the first day, the entrance to the building crowded with children hugging, jumping, hitting. Parents were outsiders with their “Now, now, that’s enough,”s which were largely ignored. Billy was cautious, and Ted led him up the steps of the building to Kindergarten in Room 101—he seemed to remember a Room 101 in his life somewhere. Ted stayed a few minutes and then left—“Mrs. Willewska will pick you up. See you later, big boy.” Billy was in the system. Regardless of Ted’s feelings about separation and the passing of time, he had a sense of accomplishment—he got Billy here. He looked just like the other children. You couldn’t tell a difference.

Thelma gave Ted low grades on his fall social life. “You’re withdrawing. You’re not going out again.”

“I have six phone numbers, a girl I can see if I’m ever in Atlanta-Miami, and I have my eye on one of the mothers from Billy’s class, who looks like Audrey Hepburn in
Roman Holiday
and doesn’t wear a wedding ring.”

“So long as you stay in circulation. It’s good for—”

“What, Thelma?”

“I don’t know. My mother always used to say it. I guess it’s good for the circulation.”

He approached Samantha G’s mother one morning and asked if she would have time for a cup of coffee. They went to a nearby coffee shop where they began by talking about children and then she informed him she was divorced, but she was seeing someone, maybe their housekeepers could get the children together. So his Audrey Hepburn had made a coffee date to get a cookie date for her daughter. He understood. The children needed their social lives, too.

He joined the parents’ association at school to be a concerned parent and signed up for the communications committee, which meant he asked his company’s art department to run off a handbill for Open School Week. At a class meeting, Ted Kramer sat on a tiny chair under an oak-tag rendering of “Our friends, the seasons.” Billy’s teacher was a Mrs. Pierce, a young woman in a dress from India. She touched off fantasies in Ted relating to his own Mrs. Garrett on up to Mrs. Bienstock, and he wanted to take Mrs. Pierce and feel her up in the clothing closet to the smell of steam from the radiator and wet galoshes.

R
UMORS BEGAN TO CIRCULATE
through Ted’s company. The directors were said to be dissatisfied with profits in the American magazine industry. The chairman was said to have told someone they might discontinue publication within the month. Ted was furious. He could be out of a job again. It was deeply upsetting to him how little influence he had over such a central concern as his own livelihood. He had been working hard and successfully and now he could be on the street in that desperate situation all over again.

Jim O’Connor placed a call to the board chairman in Caracas. The following morning a cable arrived for use internally and outside the company stating that there were no plans whatsoever to discontinue publication. However, advertisers became aware of the rumors and were cautious. Several canceled their schedules. Assured by management of a resolve to continue, Ted and O’Connor attempted to restore advertisers’ confidence. By sheer will, Ted was going to save the company and his job. While O’Connor was calling on his contacts, Ted began making as many sales calls as possible, he wrote copy for a new sales presentation, he pushed a market research study to be completed, he wrote a sales presentation from the survey, he even conceived of a men’s fashion show outdoors on Madison Avenue to demonstrate that they were still in business. For three weeks, he worked days and nights and gradually, some of the negative talk was overcome and new orders began to come in. Ted had helped to avert a crisis. The company was still functioning and he would have a job for a while. What he did not have was a clear way out of money-survival problems. He could still conceivably be out of work again and he had built his bank balance up to only $1200. In an article in
The New York Times
it was estimated that it now cost $85,000 to bring up one child in New York City through the age of eighteen. And they did not even count in the cost of a housekeeper.

H
IS FRIEND, LARRY, MEANWHILE,
was prospering. He and Ellen bought a house on Fire Island. “How do you get to that, Larry?”

“Well, a hot streak at the office. And we got two incomes, don’t forget.”

Two incomes, the magic number. He had begun to see someone with her own income, a designer at an art studio. Vivian Fraser was an attractive woman of thirty-one, poised, sophisticated, maybe $20,000 a year, he figured. She probably would have been dismayed to know that for all the care she took with her appearance, at least one man thought that what she looked like was—solvent.

He also entered her without her knowledge in the What Kind of Mommy Might She Be Sweepstakes. It was intriguing to him to think an outside force could bring both emotional stability and fiscal responsibility into the house. But anyone he brought into the house would eventually arrive in his bedroom, and anything from juice to a bad dream could bring the house detective into the room with his people, and Ted could never be certain his people could get along with Billy’s people and he did not even know how to avoid these considerations.

After Billy and Vivian had met briefly one evening, Ted asked Billy, “Did you like Vivian?” realizing this was meaningless, since what he really wanted to hear was “Oh, yes, a fine woman. I feel I can relate to her on a one-to-one basis, and as you know, a commercial artist can always augment our income, in addition to her emotional presence.”

“Uh-huh,” the boy said.

L
ARRY AND ELLEN INVITED
Ted and Billy to come out to Fire Island to see the new house and spend a weekend. Another couple was also invited with their ten-year-old daughter. The children played on the beach, the grownups drank champagne. Ted was relaxed, except for wishfulness. He would have loved such a luxury, a beach house—and the car for the getaway weekends, and the warm-weather vacations in the winter, and the other luxuries they would never have … $85,000 to age eighteen—with no one other than himself paying child support. If a Good Fairy out of one of Billy’s nursery tales appeared on the deck of the beach house in a hooded sweat shirt and said, “What may I grant thee?” he would have said, “To get six months ahead.”