The Divorce Papers: A Novel
Read The Divorce Papers: A Novel Online
Authors: Susan Rieger
Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Humorous, #Literary
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Susan Rieger
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN
and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to HarperCollins Publishers and Carcanet Press Limited for permission to reprint the poem “Telemachus’ Detachment” from
Meadowlands
by Louise Glück.
Copyright © 1996 by Louise Glück. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers and Carcanet Press Limited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rieger, Susan, 1946–
The divorce papers : a novel / Susan Rieger. —First edition.
pages cm
1. Divorce—Fiction. 2. Domestic relations—Fiction.
3. Women lawyers—Fiction. 4. Divorce settlements—Fiction.
5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3618.I39235D58 2014
813′.6—dc23
2013027552
ISBN 978-0-8041-3744-7
eBook ISBN 978-0-8041-3745-4
Jacket design by Anna Kochman
Jacket photography Fredrik Broden
v3.1
For Maggie Pouncey,
no writer could ask for a better reader,
no mother a better daughter
How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history … may stand forth as simple fact. There is throughout no statement of past things wherein memory may err, for all the records chosen are exactly contemporary, given from the standpoints and within the range of knowledge of those who made them.
—B
RAM
S
TOKER
,
Dracula
1897
From the desk of Sophie Diehl
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
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
| CHAMBERS OF JUDGE ANNE HOWARD | 185 CHURCH STREET NEW SALEM, NA 06555 (393) 875-5511 |
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,
