The Divorce Papers: A Novel (31 page)

Re: Discretion

Dear Sophie—

I am so glad you’ve come to your senses. I had this sinking deja vu feeling of you at 16, furious at your parents for getting divorced. Who would be 16 again?

I’m having a wonderful time. Williamstown is Shangri-la, gorgeous and unreal, like a stage set. I could be superior to it all if it weren’t so fabulous and so easy to take. No visible suffering. Matt is working away in the library, when he’s not working out at the college’s gym, which is state-of-the-art. Boys and their equipment.

I’ve been cast in three plays, wonderful roles all. Julia, the cardinal’s mistress, in
The Duchess of Malfi
, Cecily in Stoppard’s
Travesties
, and, joy of joys, Hypatia in
Misalliance
. Rehearsing for three plays is exhausting and confusing. I’m having trouble learning my lines. Both Stoppard and Shaw are so witty and wordy, I can’t keep them straight. (Matt says I’m always like this learning lines, but I think he’s just being kind.) I die in
The Duchess
but no real lines.

The
Travesties
role is nothing to sneer at, but Hypatia is divine, Lizzie Bennet as Darcy; i.e., she’s got the wit and the money. At the end of the play, she asks her rich and doting father to give up his objections to her penniless suitor and let her marry him. “Papa,” she says cajolingly, wooing him with the confident charm of a beloved, indulged child, “buy the brute for me.” Sometimes, the line makes me want to cry—for myself, course. (And who else do we ever cry for?) My father wouldn’t buy me goldfish.

And speaking of papas, I had a John Diehl sighting. I was so surprised. We ran into him and Sally at MASS MoCA in North Adams. He didn’t look well (wrecked but still so handsome), but he was his old sweet self—funny, warm, interested in finding out
everything we were doing. They were taking a long weekend in the country. Sally is always very quiet with me, but not unfriendly. They’re off to England the end of the month, or at least your dad is. It wasn’t clear that Sally was going. She seemed worried about him; she kept her hand on his arm the whole time. (I’ve become a kind of voyeur, taking in people’s movements and gestures, thinking about the ways I can use them.) When was the last time you were in touch with him? You’ve got to see him, sweetie. He misses you. He was very sorry to hear about your divorce detail. “God,” he said, “that must be torture for her. She can’t stand divorcing parents.” He’s crazy about you, in his own peculiar, Diehlian, English way. Cut him some slack, please, Sophie. He didn’t mean to hurt you. He couldn’t help himself; he’s got those demons. I know I shouldn’t lecture you. After all, who am I to talk? I haven’t spoken to my father in ten years (not that he’s noticed). But let’s be fair, there’s a huge difference between our fathers. Your father isn’t drunk all the time; your father hasn’t scrounged off your mother for the last 20 years; your father paid for your education, your braces, your bikes, your prom dresses (and some of my mine too).

I’d love you to come up for a weekend; and we’ve got room for you (and guest). Please, think about it. I want you to see me in
Misalliance
, but I’ll settle for
Travesties. Duchess
isn’t worth the detour, not if you’re coming to see me. Of course, I want your mom to come to a performance. She’s seen everything I’ve ever been in since I made my debut in 5th grade, in
Iphigenia at Aulis
. My first death scene. Ah, progressive education. You know, I wouldn’t have gone to Bank Street—or Brearley or Harvard, for that matter—if it weren’t for your parents. When I was little, I thought they were paying for my education. My
Great Expectations
fantasy. I didn’t know about scholarships. The truth is, Sophie, my love, if it weren’t for your parents, I’d probably be a drunk like the old man, living off my mother in that wretched basement apartment, sleeping with skinheads, waiting for death. They saved my life. And gave me you.

Let me know how the big date goes tomorrow.

Love,
Maggie

Papa

Dear Mags,

What a hat trick. You must have wowed them. I don’t know
Misalliance
, but I take your word on Hypatia’s divinity. You seem to be developing a specialty in Stoppard. Of course, I’ll come see you. And Maman said she’d come, too.

I am planning to see my father before he goes off to England, but I’m dreading it. He’s been so critical of me lately, so unkind. I come away from our visits utterly demoralized. He’s interested in hearing about what you’re doing because he thinks it’s terrific you’re an actor. He’s not interested in what I do. I start telling him about a case and his eyes glaze over. He says lawyers are jackals. He’d have preferred if I had become a cop, and I really thought about it too, to please him. But I don’t like guns or blood and it’s too hard a life. I love working with cops, but most of them are alienated, secretive, withholding, distrustful. And their most important relationships are with other cops.

I keep telling myself Papa’s disappointment with me is a proxy for his disappointment with himself. He will never be, he thinks, in the ranks of his idols, E. P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Christopher Hill. When he won the Wolfson History Prize, the fact Hobsbawm had won it meant nothing to him; he called it a “prize for popularizers.”

I want things to be the way they used to be, when I was Best Girl and you were Best Girl’s Best Girl. He used to be so great, mostly. Reading me all of Laura Ingalls Wilder and
Anne of Green Gables
. Teaching me to sail the
Swallow
(which Luc and I took out last weekend) and to play cricket. Taking me to jazz concerts and insisting I listen to his old Coltrane recordings. And then we all got divorced. He became distant,
irascible. He thought we all sided with Maman—which we did, of course, because she was the one who paid attention to us. I thought when he married Sally he’d warm toward us, toward me—she’s a very nice woman, kind, thoughtful, a good mother to her own kids—but I think she’s afraid of him, or afraid of criticizing or correcting him. And then Jake has been so terrific to all of us.

Jake always says a child only needs one good parent to come out all right—so long as the good parent, besides doing the good things, protects the children from the bad parent. During that terrible summer they were separating, Papa said I wasn’t worth talking to, I’d become so stupid. Maman overheard him. She said if he ever said anything like that again to one of the children, she’d hire someone to break both his legs. (In case anyone asks WWFWD, ha!) He laughed, but he knew she meant it. She of course knew people who did that for a living, as I do. I met my first with her at the West End. I was maybe 14. He didn’t look like a gangster; he looked like a dentist. He used a tire iron, Maman said. I’ve got to run. I have an evidentiary hearing in criminal court and then home to shave my legs for my big night.

Love,
Sophie

The Morning After

Dearest Mags,

Where to begin? The beginning, I guess. (Maman always says that the virtues of chronological storytelling cannot be overstated.) Harry showed up at 8 sharp, clutching tulips. He remembered they were my second-favorite flowers. He offered them apologetically, saying he had really wanted to bring peonies but couldn’t find any. It was so awkward; I felt 14 and clammy. The reservation he’d made at Printemps wasn’t until 9, so I decided we should get drunk. I made us martinis, without vermouth. And we smoked. It’s good we were in easy walking distance. We each had at least three. I just looked at the gin bottle. It’s half gone.

We talked about our work. He’s running the Cabaret at Mather this summer and is doing three different evenings of three one-act plays. He calls it Three by Three. He was doing a couple of Ives, including
The Universal Language
, and a couple of Alan Bennett’s
Talking Heads
. I told him about my divorce case and its catastrophic effect on my personality. He said, “I guess my saga with Tessa didn’t help.” That opened the door to a very serious conversation. He said Tessa had been discharged from Austen Riggs and was back in Manhattan. He hired a lawyer, who drew up a separation agreement. Tessa has it; he thinks she’ll balk at signing. She doesn’t like the idea of not being attached to someone. The lawyer says that if she refuses to sign, he can sue for divorce on grounds of desertion. He hates the thought but said he’ll do it if that’s the only way of extricating himself. I think it’s really over. She was impossible to deal with, refusing to admit she had tried to kill herself and acting as though he’d engineered everything to get her back. The night he drove her back to the city, she took off all her clothes while he was in the bathroom and asked if he wanted to fuck. He was surprised to realize he didn’t. “I never thought I would turn her down,” he said.

I didn’t sleep with him. If I liked him less, I might have. But you know me, when I really like someone, sex can make me think I’m in love. I’m not taking that chance with him, not now. And anyway, we were so drunk at the end of the evening, neither of us could muster any enthusiasm, let alone libido. He walked me home, kissed me on the nose, and said he’d call me. I stumbled into bed and fell asleep in seconds, only to wake up three hours later, my mouth caked, my throat parched, my head pounding. I’m a lousy drinker, like all the women in my family. BUT Harry’s not the only man in my life making a comeback. My father called last night. He wants to see me. He reminded me it’s been eight months since we saw each other. I’m amazed he was keeping track. He invited me down the weekend after next but said if that wasn’t good for me, he’d come up. He made me very nervous. They say that suicides often get in touch with everyone, to say goodbye before they act. I’m going to call Sally and find out what’s up. He’s not the kind to take drugs. A shooter or a jumper is my guess. I’ll kill him if he does it.

Love,
Sophie

P.S. I may be hungover and half heartbroken, but I remembered to call the florist and ordered two dozen yellow roses for Fiona. Let’s see what that does.

Party for Fiona

Sophie—

Where were you Saturday night? We missed you at the party for Fiona that Seamus FitzGerald threw. It was an important event for her, to be honored as one of the year’s outstanding alumni of Narragansett Law School. Every other lawyer in the firm was there. And everyone noticed your absence. I don’t think of you as being vindictive or mean-spirited. Were you ill? Was it some other occasion, a wedding?

David

Re: Party for Fiona

Dear David,

Fiona made it clear that she didn’t want me there. I didn’t tell you. (It’s the new Sophie.) I was sucking it up. I took counsel with Joe. He said he’d tell Proctor’s secretary, who was handling the tables, that I couldn’t make it. And I wrote to Seamus, sending my regrets. After all the fuss, I couldn’t go around telling everyone in the firm I’d been dissed. Instead, I get to look rude, churlish, and mean-spirited. But I’m taking it on the chin.

Sophie

P.S. I’m taking a new tack with Fiona. Killing with kindness.

Lunch in the Enemy Camp

Dear Mags,

I had a lunch today that blew my socks off. Implosively, not explosively. I shouldn’t be writing this to you (lawyer-client confidentiality blah blah blah), but I need to tell someone. The aftershocks persist. Bruce Meiklejohn, CEO of Octopus Enterprises, Corporate Raider Extraordinaire, and father of my divorce client, Mia Meiklejohn, took DG and me to lunch at Porter’s. He originally invited us to the Plimouth, but I held true to my French Jewish English Marxist 14th Amendment American heritage and refused to go there. Actually DG did the refusing. But that is a sidebar. Everyone has always said Meiklejohn is an anti-Semitic troglodyte. Not true. Or, at least, not the whole truth. He’s a great charmer and very astute. While we were eating (I had the double lamp chops), the husband of my client, Meiklejohn’s son-in-law, Daniel E. Durkheim, M.D., came into the dining room. From everything I’d heard about him, I thought he would be a rude, arrogant son of a bitch, thin-lipped and too well dressed. George Sanders in
All About Eve
. But he wasn’t. He was hamish, like Elliott Gould in
MASH
. A really nice-looking, rumpled, comfortable Jewish man who is 15 pounds overweight and fine about it and fine about your extra 15 pounds too. (You know, my father always reminded me of Donald Sutherland. Also
MASH
. Not a comfortable Jewish man. Not comfortable at all. And not comforting.) Bruce Meiklejohn, who, my sources (impeccable) tell me, hates his son-in-law, got up from the table, went over to Dr. Durkheim, shook his hand, and patted him on the back in the friendliest way. He then brought him over to our table and introduced him to DG and me, identifying us, not exactly apologetically, more regretfully, as his lawyers and also his daughter’s. “You’re John Diehl’s daughter, aren’t you,” Dr. D said as we shook hands. “I took his course on England at war at
Columbia. He was a great teacher. I’m very happy to meet you.” He had a good voice, low and gravelly. I felt suddenly very stupid; I’d committed the great sin of lawyers. I had demonized the other side. I should have known Ms. Meiklejohn wouldn’t have married a complete loser. It made me sad. I’ll bet, in their day, they were an adorable couple.

After Durkheim went back to his table, DG asked Meiklejohn what that was all about. Meiklejohn reached into his pocket and took out a letter he had received the day before from his granddaughter, Jane, the Durkheims’ 11-year-old. In the letter, she asked him to tell her dad not to go through with the divorce. It was a heartbreaker. As I read, my eyes welled with tears. Meiklejohn thought I was crying for Jane. He squeezed my arm gently. I almost lost it. There I was, back in that wretched summer of my parents’ divorce. (As you said, we cry for ourselves.) It was so awful for all of us but worst for Francoise, who was only 11. She stopped washing her hair. I never told you this. I was too ashamed. We all forgot about her. After a few weeks, I finally noticed and asked her what was going on. She said she wasn’t going to wash it until Maman said something. She went three months. My mother wept when she found out. Of course, Papa didn’t notice; how could he? He spent the summer in Amagansett, and the fall too. Did you know he was sent to boarding school on his 7th birthday? How could they do that? Granny used to say how much Remy reminded her of Papa when he was small, so exuberant, so affectionate, so naughty. We thought she was bonkers.

I just reread this email. I’ve been casting my very own family movie. Raul Julia would have been perfect for Jake; second choice, Harvey Keitel. It’s the way they’re both sexy. (Did I really say that? Oy.) For Maman, I’m thinking Anouk Aimee; 15 years ago, she’d have been perfect. Those great bones. Is she still alive? Do you remember
A Man and a Woman
? Wasn’t that that the best cry ever? After
Beaches
, and
Two for the Road
, of course. I’m off to bed. Miss you.

xoxoxoxox.

Sophie