Kramer vs. Kramer (6 page)

“I take my bags, which are packed, and two thousand dollars from our joint savings account, and I leave.”

“You leave? What about Billy? Do we wake him? Are his bags packed?”

For the first time in this, she faltered.

“No … I … don’t want Billy. I’m not taking Billy. He’ll be better off without me.”

“Christ, Joanna! Joanna!”

She could not say another word. She walked into the bedroom, picked up her suitcase and her racquet bag, walked to the front door, opened it and left. Ted stood there, watching. He was bewildered. He seriously thought she would be back in an hour.

H
E FELL ASLEEP NEAR
five in the morning realizing there would be no key in the door or phone call with an apology—I’ll be right there, I love you. At seven-fifteen he heard voices in the house. Joanna? No. Batman and Robin. Billy’s Batman and Robin alarm clock went off with the recorded voices of the dynamic duo: “Jumping Jehosophat, Batman, we’re needed again.” “Right, Robin. We have to wake our friends.” For what? To begin where? She had left this with him and now he had to tell Billy. Tell him what?

“Where’s Mommy?” He could not avoid it even thirty seconds into the day.

“Well, last night Mommy and Daddy had an argument …” Was this even true, he wondered. Had they argued? “And Mommy decided she wants to go away for a little while to be really angry. You know, how sometimes you get angry and you slam your door and you don’t want anybody to come in?”

“I was angry when Mommy wouldn’t let me have a cookie.”

“Right.”

“And I slammed the door and I didn’t let her come in.”

“Right, just like that. Mommy is angry at Daddy and she wants some time to be private.”

“Oh.”

“So I’m going to take you to school today.”

“Oh. When will Mommy be back?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Will she pick me up at school?”

They were now but a minute into the day and it was already complicated.

“I will or Thelma will.”

He helped Billy get dressed, made breakfast and walked him to nursery school, where the Pussycats were having a circus day and Billy would be fully protected from his parents’ world and happy, as any designated lion tamer would be. Ted was uncertain whether to sit by the phone, go to work, call the police, kick tires, get an afternoon sitter for Billy. My wife has left me. It was unreal.

He always had difficulty with white lies. He never called in sick at work to sneak a three-day weekend. He believed if you lied, you were bad, and you should be good, and even now, knowing he could never show up for work that day, he did not want to lie. But you don’t call your office in the same tone of voice as if you were announcing the flu and say, “I won’t be in today. My wife just walked out on me.” He called his secretary and said, “Tell Jim I’m not feeling well,” which was true. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “I don’t know for sure,” also true to some extent. He just could not lie to his secretary and claim he was sick, and yet he could, in part, lie to himself as he had in convincing himself that his marriage had been healthy enough.

He called his neighbor, Thelma, and asked her to pick up Billy at school and keep him with her daughter, Kim. She said this was fine—what was happening? He would explain later. Billy was to stay there for dinner. He now had until seven that night to wait for Joanna to come home so they could forgive each other.

What you were supposed to do, it seemed to him, was call a buddy. Hey, help. Something shitty happened. You won’t believe this … He did not know whom to call. He was suddenly aware of how isolated he had become in marriage. He had no friends. He had dinner party friendships. He did not have a buddy. There was dentist Charlie, who did not seem to be listening the last time they talked and who was more interested in revealing to him with sly pride how he was making it in his dentist chair: Marv, the
Newsweek
salesman, was not a friend. He saw Dan at football games. The deepest conversations they ever had were on the strengths and weaknesses of interior linemen for the football Giants. He and Larry had drifted since Fire Island days. Larry was still cruising in his girlmobile. He bought a new car and by choice selected a station wagon for the transporting of women across resort lines. Ted’s brother, Ralph, was never a buddy. Ralph was in Chicago and called for an evening when he came to New York. They did not ask each other for anything all year and consulted briefly on an anniversary gift for their parents so there would not be duplication, the big brother who made a lot of money in the liquor business and wasn’t there. Once he had buddies in the old neighborhood, and then in college—he had met Larry and Dan then, and over his bachelor years, people from various jobs who were friends for a while, but they were gone. He had moved into an enclave of similarly married couples, and there was not another man he regularly talked to.

Needing to tell somebody, he called Larry. He reached him at the real estate office where Larry worked.

“Ted, baby, how are you?”

“Not so good. Joanna just walked out on me. Just left. Walked out on me and our little boy.”

“Why, man?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“She just split?”

“It was very sudden.”

“Is there a fella?”

“I don’t think so. Feminists will applaud her.”

“What?”

“That’s what she said.”

“She left you with the kid! What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What can I do for you? Want me to come over?”

“I’ll let you know. Thanks, Larry.”

It was not very satisfactory, but he had unburdened himself a little, and in emotional and physical exhaustion he passed out for a few hours only to awake with a jolt; as with a vile headache a person tries to sleep away and it returns the moment he opens his eyes, he opened his eyes and his wife had still left him with the child.

If he could only get to Friday and then to the weekend, maybe she would be back or call perhaps. After Thelma brought Billy back, he put him to sleep with extra care, reading him several stories. Joanna’s name did not come up.

He made the same arrangement for Thelma to take care of Billy on Friday, and owing her an explanation by now, said that he and Joanna had had a “falling out,” his discreet usage. Joanna was “taking a few days by herself.”

“I understand,” Thelma said.

He called the office and repeated his not-feeling-well line and wrote down his phone calls—nothing from Joanna. He waited for the mail, there were only bills. He waited by the phone and when it rang he jumped to hear that Teleprompter wanted to sell him cable television he already had, and Larry wanted to sell him what he did not need.

“How you doing, Ted, baby?”

“So-so.”

“I told this chick the story. She went nuts with compassion. Why don’t you get a sitter for the kid tonight—”

“No, I’ve got to stick around.”

“—then I’ll bring her by, we’ll have some drinks, and then you give me a wink and I’ll leave like in the old days.”

“I don’t think so, Larry, but thanks.”

“She loves to save people. She’s like The Screwing Nun.”

“I’ll call you, Larry.”

In one day, Ted was already gossip on the singles’ grapevine.

At night, Ted and Billy followed the adventures of Babar the Elephant to New York, to Washington, to another planet. Was Joanna in any of these places? And weary from Babar’s travels, Ted turned out the light. A half-hour later, when Ted thought Billy had already gone to sleep, he called out from his room.

“Daddy, when is my mommy coming back?”

Why were children always so damn direct, he wondered.

“I don’t know, Billy. We’ll figure something out.”

“What, Daddy?”

“We’ll see. Go to sleep. Tomorrow is Saturday. We’ll go on the bike to the zoo and have fun. Think about that—”

“Can I have pizza?”

“You can have pizza.”

“Good.”

The boy fell asleep content. They went to the zoo and Billy had an outstanding day, conning the pizza out of his father by eleven in the morning. He got a pony cart ride, a carrousel ride, they went to a local playground, he climbed, made a friend. Then Ted took Billy out for Chinese food for dinner. Ted was treading water. He was going to have to deal with this, make some decisions. He could play this out for only another day perhaps and then it was Monday, he had a job to be at—unless he took some vacation days to gain more time. Joanna could come back, call.

At eight in the morning on Sunday, the mailman came with a special delivery letter. It was for Billy with no return address. The postmark was Denver, Colorado.

“This is from your mommy to you.”

“Read it to me, Daddy.”

The letter was written by hand. Ted read it slowly so that Billy could absorb it, and so that he could.

My dear, sweet Billy: Mommy has gone away. Sometimes in the world, daddys go away and the mommys bring up their little boys. But sometimes a mommy can go away, too, and you have your daddy to bring you up. I have gone away because I must find some interesting things to do for myself in the world. Everybody has to and so do I. Being your mommy was one thing and there are other things and this is what I have to do. I did not get a chance to tell you this and that is why I am writing to you now, so you can know this from me. Of course, I will always be your mommy and I will send you toys and birthday cards. I just won’t be your mommy in the house. But I will be your mommy of the heart. And I will blow you kisses that will come to you when you are sleeping. Now I must go and be the person I have to be. Listen to your daddy. He will be like your wise Teddy. Love, Mommy.

T
ED ALLOWED FOR AN
instant the pain it must have caused her to write it, measured by the pain it caused him to read it. Billy took the letter to hold in his hands. Then he put it in his drawer where he kept his special coins and birthday cards.

“Mommy went away?”

“Yes, Billy.”

“Forever, Daddy?”

Goddamn you, fucking Joanna! Goddamn you!

“It looks that way, Billy.”

“She’s going to send me toys?”

“Yes, she’s going to send you toys.”

“I like toys.”

It was official. She was gone to both of them.

O
N MONDAY WHEN HE
took Billy to school, he drew the teacher aside and said, “Mrs. Kramer and I have terminated our relationship.” Billy was in his care and she should be alert to him in case he might be feeling upset. The teacher said she was very sad to hear it and assured him Billy would be cared for—he could be the cookie boy that morning.

Ted would have much preferred this day to be the cookie boy rather than the bread-and-butter man. He had his job to protect, especially now. Billy was wholly dependent on him now. If it were true, as he surmised, that his business stock had gone up when he first became a family man, did his stock go down now that he was a cuckold? No, a cuckold was someone cheated on. He was not that. What was he?

“You poor bastard” was what he was in his advertising manager’s view. “Just walked out?” Jim O’Connor asked.

“That’s right.”

“She catch you screwing?”

“No.”

“Was
she
?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re up a tree, Ted.”

“Well, what I’d like to do is take a week of my vacation now. Use my time to get organized.”

“Be my guest.”

“Of course, I don’t intend any of this to affect my performance here.”

“Ted, to tell you the truth, you’re doing fine. Better than the company. We may have to do another pay cut.”

Ted’s face tightened. Did his stock go down that fast?

“But considering your situation, we’ll leave you out of it. See that? By not getting a cut, you just got a raise.”

“If only I could go to the bank on it.”

“So what are you going to do with the kid?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to keep him?”

“He’s my boy.”

“Doesn’t he have grandparents? This is going to be rough.”

The thought of doing anything except keeping Billy had not occurred to Ted. But O’Connor was a smart man. He was raising a question. Ted wondered if O’Connor knew something he did not.

“I thought I’d make the best of it.”

“If that’s what you want.”

Was it what he wanted? He decided to follow O’Connor’s question down the line. What about keeping Billy? There could be other options here—a way to force Joanna to take Billy. He would have to find her first. And even if he found her, why would she change her mind? She hated her life, she said. She was suffocating. Ted could not conceive that she would suddenly accept all the supposed pressure she was walking out on just because he tracked her down in a Holiday Inn with a tennis pro—he was beginning to allow himself little scenarios about her. No, I’m going to have to forget Joanna. You sure came up with a unique little Bicentennial celebration, lady.

What about other options? He would not send a four-year-old to boarding school. The grandparents? It seemed to Ted his own parents had exhausted themselves being grandparents to Ralph’s two children over the years. Ted was peeved at how little interest they had in Billy on their occasional visits to New York. His father would go into the bedroom to watch reruns of
The Lucy Show
while in Ted’s mind Billy was doing something spectacular like smiling. His mother was always holding forth about how wonderful Ralph was when he was a baby or how wonderful Ralph’s children were when they were babies. If his parents could not stay interested in Billy for a weekend in New York he did not think they would have much of an attention span through the Florida rainy season. His in-laws were the opposite in abundance. They were pathologically nervous. “Don’t let him stand there, he’ll fall out the window.” “Mother, we have guards on the windows.” “He’s running a temperature.” “No, Harriet, the day is running a temperature. It’s ninety degrees!” He could turn Billy over to them and hope the boy would survive. Billy would certainly not fall out of any windows with them. Would they even care about Billy? Were they even Ted’s in-laws any longer? None of it made sense to him. None of them could have Billy. He was his child. He belonged to him, that peanut face. Ted would do the best he could. It was what he wanted.