Divorcing

by Susan Taubes

  —Joshua, is that you?

  —And here I play a drunken peasant. I helped direct it too. Can we mount them and hang them up?

  —Mummy where are you going to put my bowl?

  —Oh Mummy you must buy me some yarn...

  —Children, take off your coats, you’ve just arrived...

  —I’m going to see my room.

  —Me too.

  —And then let’s talk...

  —Did you know Cherie had a colt and we named it “Especially-me”?...and did I write you about the bears? Yes! They really come right up to the fence.

  —Say, the apartment looks nice!

  —So let’s talk, Mom. Any good movies in town?

  My ears hum. Enlarged to a mere outline, I’m barely in the room reading Jonathan his father’s postcard.

  Here for a visit from their Adirondacks country childhood; they’ve found the TV and their doodads, discovered the goodies in the fridge and poke around my desk. The word “home” still rings strange. They unpack their toilet kits and I give them each a towel...

  Cornflakes under the sofa, footprints on the wall, the doorknobs sticky with jam...Why is Jonathan’s shoe on my desk? Toby rushes down the corridor to look at herself in the hall mirror, got up in my fur hat and textured tights.

  —Gross! she shrieks. Oh gross!

  —On you it looks good. Now will you please sweep up—

  —I will. I will, she sings, rushing off. —Anyway it wasn’t me.

  —Jonathan, put away...He can’t; Joshua tied him up in his sleeping bag, he is happy regressing. —Oh Joshua, you beast! Joshua come here! Doesn’t hear; glued to the idiot tube in his room, shades drawn, crouches hypnotized at the foot of the unmade bed surrounded by comics, candy wrappers, half-eaten cupcakes and empty Coke bottles. Looks up absently.

  —So what are the plans? Can we go to Palisades Park?

  —Children I want you to settle down.

  —But Mummy, we’re on vacation!

  A small delegation from another world, they sit on my bed while I drink my coffee. They count the cigarets I smoke; tell me my hair is too red; want to know how much money I have in the bank; they ask why I don’t get married again. —Don’t you think Bill is handsome? Do you see him when we’re not here? I haven’t the heart to tell him his hero is queer.

  —Mummy is there anyone you like?

  —Don’t you get lonesome living all by yourself? Jonathan asks.

  Toby says, When I marry I’m going to live in a big house in the country with animals and have lots of children and I won’t send them to boarding school.

  —So what are plans for the summer?...But Mom, aren’t we going to Europe with you?...But why?

  —Because it’s Daddy’s turn this summer...

  —Have you planned things for us to do for the month we’re in New York? Toby asks.

  —Mom, I wish I could go to Europe with you, Joshua sighs. We’ve had such nice times together...Remember Greece? And the boatride from Dubrovnik to Venice?...The first time I was on a boat and you tied me to some post on a dog-leash—oh, I remember that so well! Was I only two? Wasn’t Yugoslavia cool, and remember the house of the Turk on that long bus trip we took...Yes, Mostar—remember when he showed us his grandmother’s underpants, big enough for an elephant, to show us what women used to be like in the good old days? Oh it was gross and we had to pay for the rosewater; and you wouldn’t let me dive off the bridge when the local boys were doing it for money...And remember in Ibiza in that farmhouse the night the bottle of butane gas burst into flames; Toby and Jonathan were asleep upstairs and I was so scared I started screaming; you said we had to get it outside the house because it could explode and you told me to go outside and wait and I saw you come out carrying that thing all in flames I was so scared it was going to explode before you threw it down the cliffs and afterward when I asked you whether you weren’t scared and if it could have killed you, you just said, “It didn’t explode so why talk about it? Now go to bed”...Yes you did, in exactly that tone. God!...and then in the Barcelona flood, oh I’ll never forget that—the water streaming and crashing down and you were pulling me in the dark, remember it happened while we were in the movie the water was up to our waist—

  —Don’t exaggerate.

  —Listen I was only seven, it was up to my waist and then I stepped into some kind of hole and the water came up to my chin and I said, “Look, Mummy, look!” and you looked at me perfectly calm like everything was normal and said, “Joshua, stop screaming, this is a flood.” God! I couldn’t believe it. My own mother...Well you know you were not an easy mother...you have to remember that I was just a little boy and you were this big tall silent woman in black with angry eyes and hair like a witch—Mom, you were scary!

  —Anyway, Joshua, you were always a good traveler. Remember the time we missed our train connection on our way to Rome from Brindisi?

  —Oh yes, the great chess game! We got off at this place in the middle of nowhere at midnight and played chess till three in the morning and I won!

  —Who is that? Is that you? Voices call from the living room. The box of old photographs spilled on the floor.

  —Mummy come here you have to tell us; we don’t know most of these people. Tell them about Omama and Grandfather Moses...

  —My ancestor. Cool. Joshua fascinated by the picture of Reb Smuel of Nyitra. —He has a face just like Lenin.

  —No other resemblance I’m afraid.

  —And he was a very great rabbi?

  Tell them what a creep; petty provincial reactionary...

  —Look Mom you have to think of the times he lived in, you can’t judge him by our standards...So he was for the ancien régime...

  My tolerant American children.

  —I mean when you study history you realize...Take Stalin for example...

  —C’mon Mummy show us all the pictures. What happened to the ten children? Tell them the sins of the fathers; the sons whose teeth turned on edge. —I guess our grandpa is the only one who made it...

  —Uncle Joske isn’t a failure. Look, he did his thing. A professional soccer player, that’s not a bum. Now he’s over eighty and still working as a doorman for a swank hotel. I bet he is happier than Grandpa because he isn’t so lonely...

  —What’s a concentration camp? Were they your cousins? Did they really do that to people? But why? Why did they want to...The look of incomprehension and horror on Jonathan’s face like my father’s.

  —What about the three daughters? Did he ruin their lives too?...You mean they couldn’t marry anyone they liked...Oh gross! I’m glad I don’t have to live in those times...Oh here you are!...Mummy and Daddy gazing at each other tenderly.

  —Yes, just after we were married.

  —Was that the style?

  —Did you and Daddy ever take a vacation together? Tell them about the summer in Maine—the one time Ezra came with me, only because a French Hegelian was there, hitching to the post office twice a day hoping for a letter from a colleague when he wasn’t talking en-soi and pour-soi with that Paris pothead...the one time he came to walk with me on the beach at night, doing me a big favor, it was full moon, I begged him, dragged him, and he stood behind the tide-line, wouldn’t take off his shoes and after a moment’s profound meditation said, Nature is silent. And turned back...

  —Not even before you started fighting? Toby asks. But how come?

  —You know Daddy; he liked to be in cities with libraries and bookstores and cafés, to sit around and talk.

  —God! Joshua exclaims, why did you marry him then—I mean you’re just so completely different. How can you marry someone with whom you have nothing in common!...Why can’t you explain to me then what you had in common...

  Those were strange times, my bunnies, when your father preached dialectical theology and we both lived it. —Som
eday I’ll tell you...

  —I hate parents who say that...and what about all those mysterious trips you took with Daddy, Joshua pounds on, you know what I mean, before I was born...Is this a trial, what’s eating him? Listening, his eyes narrowed as I tell him, no mystery, son, your father taught at different universities and so...

  —Why did you like traveling so much? Did you really like being in Jerusalem? It sounds gross. Just when you should be making something of yourself, when you were about to become an actress—how could you go to a gross place like Jerusalem?

  —Oh peace, Joshua...You won’t till I explain how I could be so stupid...But everything was so different when I was growing up—no, I don’t mean like old-fashioned. It was the war. We were just stunned. The things that had happened and that after they happened everything could just go on as before...it made one’s personal future somehow irrelevant. I don’t know how to explain.

  —I guess I’m different, he says. My personal ambitions are more important to me than anything that happens in the world...If the whole human race is destroyed, then of course...he concedes. But did you want to get married and have children? Oh I’m just curious. I can’t wait till I’m old enough...Can I have a girl when I’m seventeen? Sixteen? Did I tell you, I kissed a girl already. Please don’t go yet. I never have a chance to talk to you, you’re always busy with Toby and Jonathan. Tell me, when you went out with Daddy before you were married...Did you go dancing and to the movies?...You didn’t!...What did you talk about?...Tell him. Nihilism. The sanctification of life. The death of God...

  —You liked the way he talked, he says understandingly. That’s one thing about Daddy, he is intelligent. No one can beat him in philosophy.

  The gaiety of table setting with Jonathan’s puppets helping, Toby’s prettily folded napkins. —Thanks for remembering the ketchup, Mom. And the gooky juice we like. As Joshua brings it in with some fancy juggling. Nice children. Why suddenly this awful feeling when everyone is seated. Of just this. Just us. Always at family meals. With Ezra too, only then the burden of the awfulness wasn’t all on me.

  —How is the roast?

  —Very tasty.

  —Mom, let’s talk about something. Let’s have a conversation.

  —Well?

  —I’m thinking.

  Jonathan says, Daddy writes he has a room for you. So why can’t you come and stay with us?

  —Because she doesn’t want to and little children should mind their own business, Joshua tells him, disgustingly condescending; then crisply, changing his tone for the debating society: Tell me, Mom, what are your opinions on the war in Vietnam; are you for escalation or...

  —Let’s not talk about depressing subjects like war, Toby protests.

  —Why not? It’s a major national issue.

  —Because you’re going to quarrel and I don’t want to get killed in an atomic explosion and words I don’t understand give me a headache.

  —Don’t get upset, baby; we’ll talk about...

  —That’s right, humor her! Let’s all humor her.

  —Leave me alone, she screams.

  —Joshua, I said enough! Too late, the ketchup is flying.

  —It’s all right, Mom, I have her under control.

  —Joshua, you beast!

  —That’s right, she spills ketchup all over the place, he says mopping it righteously, she scratches me on the face and I’m a beast. Look!

  —I’m glad you’re bleeding, Toby bawls.

  —Toby, leave the room.

  —Why don’t you tell him to leave the room...

  —And Jonathan is the good boy, the good boy, Joshua lays it on, viciously patting him on the head.

  —Can’t you make him shut up! Toby cries.

  —Yes! Why can’t you? Joshua taunts. C’mon Mom let’s have a showdown. Springing gaily on the table, does his karate chops. An authority crisis! he announces. And look at her: imperturbable; inscrutable.

  —Get off the table and you, Jonathan, don’t giggle when your brother behaves like a—

  —A clown! Now watch me do...He’s off on another tangent, imitating Chaplin.

  —Enough! Next year you go into summer theater and that’s all. That’s all!

  —All this screaming has really given me a headache, Toby complains. Just tell me where the aspirin is. Jonathan, his face in the bowl, still in stitches. His turn to go mad.

  —You should really meet Elizabeth, Toby chatters on, drying the dishes. You’d like her, Mummy.

  —Elizabeth?

  —You know, Elizabeth, Daddy’s new wife; I don’t know if she is really his wife but she lives with him and it’s like they’re married, anyway you’d like her because she is very sensible; she is a teacher and drives a Porsche—you should see it. Oh it’s really beautiful, white outside with red leather seats, and she plays tennis and goes horseback riding with us and she tells Daddy what to do. She really makes him behave. Like suppose we’re doing something and Daddy rushes in with a catastrophe, she just raises her index finger like this and says, “Moment!” and that stops him...You know it really stops him. He doesn’t shout and curse when she is there. It’s only when she isn’t there that he starts carrying on, calling us bad names...

  —No Toby, he wasn’t like that when I married him...

  —Can people change that much? Mummy, when you marry somebody can’t you know what they’re going to be like? Because when I get married I want to be absolutely sure. Did you think when you married Daddy that you might ever get divorced?...So...she ponders, even when you think you’re absolutely sure...But you changed too!...except if you hadn’t married Daddy I wouldn’t have been born and I wouldn’t like that, so I’m glad you did...

  Jonathan in the bathtub. —I hate the way the boys at school tease me...the things they tell me...It’s so disgusting I have to whisper it in your ear...

  —I thought you knew, Jonathan. Why disgusting? Our bodies are made for it.

  —You mean it’s true! Did you do that with Daddy?

  —Of course; how do you think you were born?

  —How disgusting. I’ll never do it. (Wrapped in a towel, a desert saint at nine.) Do you still do that with men?

  —Of course.

  —How often? he asks.

  —That’s none of your business.

  —There is something else. The boys said there is something even worse than fucking. But I can’t tell you. Do you know what?

  —No. Worse than fucking?...then whisper it...

  —It’s when boys do it to each other. Is that true?...I think it’s disgusting. I won’t get married when I grow up. I’ll be a priest...

  • •

  —But Mummy, you’re not leaving us all alone!

  —I told you I was going out for dinner with a friend.

  —Why can’t we go too?

  —Why can’t you tell us who? What’s the big secret?

  —She has a date and it’s none of your business, Joshua tells them. My advocate. —You’re going like that? he asks. How come you’re not dressed up?

  —Really! You behave like the worst parents...Tell them I’m just meeting an old friend at a deli...Now they’re really indignant.

  —That’s all! Leaving us alone just to...Big schmear!...next time I’ll put on my mother’s fur coat and tell them...

  —Just go, Mom, and leave everything to me, Joshua with an evil gleam in his eyes.

  —Mummy, you can’t! He’ll torment us! Toby cries, but she is already screaming with delight as she leaps aside, casting hopeful looks at her tormentor.

  —Well, why don’t you go! Giggling, they push me out the door.

  •

  Variety at least, one would think—or the married woman would suppose, like the settled person supposes the traveler has variety at least—but it’s the sense of repetition that saddens,
even when it’s very pleasant she has the old feeling, here I go again; it seemed all right for many years, it seemed the very essence of herself to feel here I go again getting laid, the limbs twining, the fingers running up and down tracing ear, shoulder, haunch, the womb beginning to rise; pulled along with it, the spirit remains an observer on a dizzying ride. To feel here I go again being laid like every woman since Eve and enjoying it was how it should feel in marriage, all right if it’s not going anywhere, it’s a reaffirmation, a repeat, the old lay. And now it’s again like this; except it’s not carried into sleep and through the next day, giving the daily chores and cares, all the varied offices of this strange coexistence of two, its impertinent validity. The ease with which she leaves the scene because she isn’t chained to this room by marriage or love feels so odd. Riding up Broadway in a taxi, a free woman, if this moment she is less lonely than she had been with Ezra, does she miss the heavy old misery? Even when it has a kind of perfection like with X—it was in his country, she made the voyage, successfully transplanted and transformed into a creature of his planet, the phantom image of her alienated self persisting through the act and for days after...And that won’t do either.

  • •

  —Why aren’t you in bed, Joshua? It’s three in the morning.

  —Mom, I’m so sad. Stay with me a little. Do you think life has any meaning?

  —You behave like a clown all day and at three a.m. you ask me if life has any meaning.

  —What do you expect? Fourteen, he says. C’est l’âge bête. I know I’m horrible and give you a hard time but I can’t help it.

  —You’re not even trying.

  —I know. Don’t you think I know. I don’t even try to improve myself. Oh I feel sick. I keep thinking that I’m going to die. One day I simply won’t exist. Nobody will remember me. So why bother?

  —We all have to die, I say, savagely cheerful. Disgusting how he wallows like his father.

  —God! you’re a real comfort.

  —If you thought about death seriously for one minute...

  —Why don’t you believe I’m serious? You think I’m shallow, don’t you? Maybe you don’t care. But I hate to have to die. If we have to die—life is stupid.