The Divorce Papers: A Novel (34 page)

Narragansett Statutes

Title 33 of the Narragansett Code, Sections 801ff.
Dissolution of Marriage, Annulment, and Legal Separation

Sec. 811. Psychiatric or psychological evaluation of the child.
In proceedings on custody or visitation,
the court may order a psychiatric or psychological evaluation of the child if such an evaluation would, in the court’s opinion, assist its determination of the best interests of the child.

Dear Daddy:

I don’t understand why you don’t love mommy and me anymore. What did we do to make you mad at us? I know I sometimes don’t listen to you. I know mommy sometimes doesn’t listen. Is that the reason? It won’t happen again.

Mommy is sad. I’m sure you can see it. I think she still loves you. You should give her a second chance. She makes you laugh. Isn’t that a good thing?

I’ll be good if you will love us again. I promise. I won’t sulk and I won’t whine, ever. Cross my heart and hope to die. I love you Daddy.

Your loving daughter,
Jane

ps If you and Mommy get divorced, where will Mommy and me live? Will we live in the house in Marthas Vinyard? It has no toilet inside. That’s all right in the summer but not in January.

ps2 Where will Tito and Fido live? If they could talk, they’d say they’re very sad about the divorce.

ps3 What happens if Mommy dies? I can live with Poppa. He says I can live with him always and forever. But I want us all together, you, Mommy, and me. We are the 3 Musketeers. 1 for all and all for 1.

Harry

Dear Maggie,

I had brunch this morning with Harry. We’re back to the early days of dating (though not
our
early days, more like Gidget’s. He picks me up, he drops me off, he kisses me chastely on the cheek and leaves). It is almost too weird (that sounds as if regular weird were okay). Truth is, I don’t much feel like having sex with him, and I don’t know if I can take much more of this. We talk easily enough, sometimes even about Monkey, but there’s no heat. He doesn’t want to see me anymore (it’s oddly not personal, and I take it that way, oddly for me), but he wants to be a decent person and he can’t see a way out without being a dog. I shall have to break it off, another bye-Jacking. I’ve been breaking up with boys for over a decade, ever since Jack. What is the matter with men? Just once I’d like a boy to break up with me, to do the manly thing, face-to-face, and not in public. Jack said it was always easier if the girl did the breaking up, and I guess it’s a fraternity policy. It worked for him. He was such a master; he even cried when I told him I was breaking up with him for being so drunk and so mean. Ah, Jack, sexy, drunk, mean Jack—the platonic bad boyfriend, a bad boyfriend for the
Guinness Book of Bad Boyfriends,
high school division. Harry isn’t so much a bad boyfriend these days as a non-boyfriend. And it’s not his fault and it’s not mine. Maman’s advice was to marry American Jewish, and not fancy American Jewish (no
Mayflower
Sephardim, no Temple Emanu-El Jews, no displaced Czech match kings, no French Jews—which goes without saying), just your standard-issue, wild, funny, ambitious Russian Jew.

I’ll be up to see you in the Shaw the weekend of the 10th. Maman’s coming with me. She got us a room at the Williamstown Inn, so I won’t be camping on your couch. You’re not to think about us—it’s a working
weekend for you—except that we’ll be in the audience Saturday night, center row, center seats, cheering for you. And, of course, we’ll come backstage after.

Love,
Sophie

My Father

Maggie—

Terrible news. My father has prostate cancer. He says it’s not life-threatening and he’s not doing anything about it—just watching and waiting. (Waiting for what? Stage 4?) English medicine. I didn’t get to see him. He called. He got the diagnosis about a month ago. He was waiting for the right time to tell me and then realized there is no right time. (I tried to call you, but there was no answer and I couldn’t leave this message on a phone machine.)

I am so upset. I was all ready to blast him for horribleness to us all, and he gets a fatal disease. Just like him. How long do you have to wait before you can get angry at someone with cancer? Does it make a difference if it’s your father? I’m thinking 3 weeks.

And don’t tell me this anger is just a mask for my terror at the thought he is dying. It’s typical of him. He’s untouchable. I don’t think any of us ever got to tell him what a wretch of a father he was. He had that English way of making it impermissible. (Not that Maman took personal criticism well. When we’d start in, she’d say, “I’m not interested in that. Talk to me about something interesting.”) The
closest was Francoise, who refused to kiss him for years. (I’m not sure she’s started up again.) It started when she was about 13, after he began to notice her. In the beginning, he’d ask her why, laughing as though it was a secret they were sharing. “Just don’t feel like it,” she’d say, or “Not in the mood.” As time wore on, he made a joke of it, sort of, leaning down to kiss her, then drawing back, saying, “Ah, I forgot, no kisses.” But she would just look at him, unsmiling. God, she had perseverance. So admirable. If grudge holding were a sport, she’d have medaled in it. Reminds me of the joke about Irish Alzheimer’s. Maybe she
is
Cummings’s daughter.

I don’t want him to die, Mags. Tomorrow I have to call Sally to find out the real story. Of course, I called Maman straightaway. It made her sad, I could tell. She doesn’t want him to die either, not yet; she wants him to apologize to her first. And she wants him to live for our sakes.

Maybe I’ll write him a letter.

I’m being awful. I know you love him too. I told him I’d tell you. He said that was okay. I know he’d like to hear from you. Now I’m going on Yahoo to look up prostate cancer.

Love,
Sophie

POLICE BLOTTER

New Salem Police report that the first day of summer has brought its usual round of hooliganism and mayhem.

VANDALISM TO SAINT CLOUD LAWN, GARDEN. 404 Saint Cloud Street: At 4 p.m., Sunday, June 20, police were called to the residence of Dr. Daniel E. Durkheim, in response to reported acts of vandalism to the house and grounds. Sometime in the early morning on Sunday, an individual in a Hummer or other large 4×4 vehicle with super-sized, all-terrain tires drove across the lawn and gardens of the property, tearing up the sod and driving over the beds. A large copper beech was deeply gouged, and a 40-foot hedgerow was badly damaged. The copper beech may have to come down, a great loss to Saint Cloud Street. Dating back to the beginning of the 19th century, it is one of 20 copper beeches that stand over 50 feet tall and line the street. The house on the property was also subject to vandalism; graffiti was sprayed across the front walls and windows, with the words: “$AVE US FROM DOCTOR$.” Damages are likely to exceed $20,000. Several other properties on nearby streets were vandalized (see items 3 and 7 below), but the damage to those properties was far less extensive, involving mostly broken windows and demolished mailboxes, the likely victims of mailbox baseball. The police have concluded that different parties were involved in the other reported incidents. ■

June 22, 1999

Dear Papa,

I’ve been wretched—and afraid—since you called. I called Maman straightaway. She said Jake knows all the plumbers at P&S and Sloan-Kettering and would be happy to talk doctors with you. We’re all very conventional. We think you should do something. You said you were going to watch it, but nobody trusts you; you’re a horrible patient. And you have no use for doctors. Will you get it checked regularly? “Regularly” for prostate cancer (according to Yahoo) is every year. You’re more likely to follow the Russian plan, five years. That won’t do, Papa. You’re not allowed to die. I am not ready for it, even if you are. When I think that you had three children by the time you were my age, I am embarrassed on my own behalf; I am so monumentally immature. Maggie says I’m not attentive enough to have goldfish. Which I got from you and which is why I worry so much now that you won’t try to live longer. You’re just 55; the earlier you
get prostate cancer, the deadlier the disease (Yahoo again). (I know, I know, generally speaking; you may be the statistical anomaly that skews all the data.) (It’s so annoying having to qualify every sentence I write you to make sure I’ve not carelessly, sourcelessly generalized.) Luc said you weren’t going to die; he said I was drama-queening it up. That’s one way of dealing with it, taking the completely optimistic position. He’s got his exams in two weeks; he can’t be derailed by grief.

This letter is going nowhere. How do you write to your father when he’s just been diagnosed with cancer? You must know. The English have protocols for every occasion. Speaking of which, have you told the Ancient Ps? Isn’t there a rule against predeceasing your parents in peacetime? I can’t imagine the disease that would take down Gran.

Please, please do something, for me.

Sophie

TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI

222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678

MEMORANDUM

Attorney Work Product

I am assuming you read yesterday’s police blotter in the
Courier
. Vandalism at the Durkheim manse. It’s sad, actually (and funny, of course, too—and please don’t give me a lecture; divorce lawyer humor is much more tasteful than criminal lawyer humor). They have a great copper beech that may need to be taken down. The hedge and lawn were torn up, and someone spray-painted anti-doctor graffiti on the house. I just got off the phone with Ms. Meiklejohn. Dr. Durkheim accused her of being behind it. She laughed at him and told him not to make himself ridiculous; “You know damn well that Consigliere Kahn arranged it,” she said, “to make you out the victim. It’s a barefaced Tawana Brawley maneuver.” I don’t think she believes that for one minute, but of course that’s not her point.

I told her that as the owner of the house, she couldn’t be charged with vandalism. I also told her that if she talks to the police, she should tell the truth or not say anything at all. She laughed when I said that. “You think I may have done it, don’t you.” I said, no, I didn’t, but that I thought she was capable of doing it. “Right you are,” she said. We agreed to talk again if the police wanted to interview her.

Vandalism

Dear Sophie—

I hope I have the right email address for you. I finally got myself a Durkheim-less email address. It took ages. Some authoritarian techie said I couldn’t do it without a court-ordered name change. I tried, successively, reason, charm, pathos, insults, and threats, but he didn’t budge. (He had the soul of an immigration officer.) I should have known he wouldn’t respond to threats. No one threatens more than a disgruntled faculty member. His boss finally made the change. And so, eccomi. I had to change my name officially. It made me feel like an imposter, an American ship sailing under Liberian registry.

I didn’t want to bother you on the phone again, but I thought you’d want to know about my follow-up conversation with my asshole husband, the eminent oncologist. He accused me for a second time of orchestrating the vandalism. I couldn’t believe it. I told him that if I’d wanted to wreck the house, I wouldn’t have yielded that pleasure to a third party but would have rented an earth mover and driven the mother through the plate glass window in the library and then taken it for a spin through all the downstairs rooms. Anyway, the asshole called the police and said they should interview me. What was he thinking? Everyone on the force not only knows my father, they live on land he owns. (Do you want to talk patrimony? Here’s the embarrassing bottom line: my father owns 10% + of the real estate in Tyler County—not including churches and church property or Mather U holdings, but including the land beneath Police Headquarters and two miles of shoreline. My father’s approach to land is English; he retains ownership of the land and lets his leaseholders put up the buildings, subject to his approval. His taste is retro conventional. He loves Mather’s Gothic and the colonial churches on the green.) The chief got on the phone and assured him that they
would do a complete and thorough investigation; he then asked to speak to me. He was very nice. He said he wanted to speak with both Daniel and me, separately given our domestic rift, to find out if we knew of anyone who might have had a grudge against us or otherwise might have reason to vandalize our property. I said I’d be happy to speak to him or another officer, either at home or at headquarters, but I’d like my lawyer to attend, “given our domestic rift.” He couldn’t have been more agreeable and said I should speak with my lawyer and then call back to schedule a time. He said he’d also schedule a meeting with Daniel and his lawyer, if he wished. I told him Kahn was Daniel’s lawyer. (I don’t know what you know about the mob scene in this part of the world, but Kahn represents Vinnie “the Cod” Massaccio, the capo of eastern Narragansett, in his “business interests,” some of which, I believe, are legal. My father’s done business with Vinnie—which doesn’t prove anything.) “Really,” he responded. “And who’s yours?” When I told him, he laughed. “Sophie Diehl is a pistol,” he said. “I’ll look forward to meeting with the two of you.”

Is there a time you can make it? (See? I was right to hire a criminal lawyer to defend me against Daniel.) I’m flexible these next few days. The only thing I have to do is study for the LSAT. I’m taking a prep course and relearning algebra.

Best,
Mia