A Good Day for Seppuku

by Kate Braverman

  “Why not?” Chloe asks. She glances at him, briefly, then continues moving clothing through the 120 square feet of her cedar closet.

  Spring-cleaning is inappropriate, he decides. Insulting and dismissive. Bernie wants a scotch and he wants her to lay down with him, in that order, now.

  “Their focus groups don’t like plaques. It reminds the consumer of death. Their lobbies are strictly ferns with central gravel fountains. They’re identical, like McDonald’s.” He closes his eyes.

  Bernie waits for Chloe to offer consolation. A drink and a quick tennis game, perhaps. It’s still early. They could have lunch, walk on the beach. Then he could tell her his joke. Westec Medical Division. WMD. See, there are weapons of mass destruction, after all. They’re just not in Baghdad. They’re in La Jolla.

  Bernie Roth is aware of an agitating interference in the room. He must remove his contacts. His vision is blurred and scratchy, as if his eyes are being clawed. “What are you doing?” he asks.

  “I’m packing, Bernie. I’m not getting my plaque, either. I intended to be gone before you got back.” Chloe resumes her closet activities.

  He sees now, the selected dresses and suits and skirts hanging in one area, an assembly of shoes and purses already on the bedroom floor below the French windows leading to the mahogany bedroom terrace. Her entire set of luggage is in the corner, garment bags, cosmetic cases and assorted carry-ons. The suitcases are nearly filled.

  “Where are you going?” Bernie sits up. Is this an unscheduled Book Club related journey? A prize-winning poet must be fetched at an airport and properly entertained? Is there a problem with the children? Maybe he needs a scotch and a cup of coffee.

  “I’m just going, Bernie. That’s the point. Not where.” Chloe pauses. “I’m leaving you. This. Us. La Jolla. I’m through.”

  “You’re leaving me? As in a separation? A divorce?” Bernie stares at her. “Now?”

  “Affirmative. Sorry about the scheduling. But it’s always something. The siege of festivities. Christmas. Birthdays. Valentine’s Day. Our anniversary. Departures tend to be awkward.” Chloe looks directly at him. “Can you give me an hour or so to wrap it up here?”

  “Wrap it up here? What is this? A movie set? You’re divorcing me and you want me to leave our bedroom now?” Bernie repeats.

  He examines the bedroom as if he’s never quite seen it before. Their bed has four oak posts supporting a yellow brocade canopy. The walls are an ochre intended to suggest aged stucco. Ochre, not yellow. A stone kiva fireplace is dead center across from the bed. Navajo rugs lay over glazed orange Spanish tiles. The ceiling is a sequence of Douglas fir beams somehow procured from a derelict church in New Mexico. Bernie assumes her decorator hires bandits. An elaborate copper and glass chandelier with a history involving Gold Rush opera theaters and saloons hangs suspended from the middle of the beams. Chloe insisted it was necessary, despite the earthquake hazard. It was essential for what did she call it? The hybrid Pueblo Revival style?

  “I have a list and this is confusing. Yes. Why don’t you make yourself a drink? I’ll join you downstairs in a bit, OK?” It’s not a question.

  “Isn’t this sudden? I’ve been preoccupied with the merger, but—” he begins.

  “Actually, it’s a coincidence. It doesn’t really have to do with you,” Chloe says, over her shoulder.

  She extracts a pair of fire-engine red high-heel shoes. She holds them in her hands, as if determining their possible flammability. Or is she weighing them? Is she taking a special flight? Are there baggage limitations? Is she going on safari?

  “We’ve been married twenty-four years. I must have some involvement.” Bernie entertains the notion that this is a ghastly practical joke, or the consequence of an anomalous miscommunication. A faulty computer transmitting a garbled fax designed for someone else entirely, perhaps.

  Chloe is within her fortress of closet, on her knees, nonchalantly evaluating pocketbooks and shoes with both hands. She does have a list, he notices that now, and a pen where she checks off and crosses out items. She’s also listening to music. Bob Dylan live, he decides. It’s her favorite, the Rolling Thunder tour. Or the other one she plays incessantly, Blood on the Tracks. They made a pact when Irving and Natalie went to college. She would not play Bob Dylan in his presence. In return, he would not subject her to John Coltrane or Monk. No Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker, either. Chloe deems his music agitating. In fact, his entire jazz collection is, by agreement, kept in his study, as if they were vials of pathogens. Or slides of children with pre-op facial deformities.

  Bernie stares at her back for an arrested moment, in which time simultaneously elongates and compresses. Then he pushes himself up from the embroidered damask pillows with their intimidating wavy rims of thick silk ribbons requiring handling so specialized he fears them, stands unsteadily, and walks downstairs to the kitchen. He pours scotch into a water glass.

  Outside is a tiled courtyard with a marble statue of what he assumes is a woman rendered in an abstract manner embedded in the center of a round shallow pool with a fountain. Flowers that resemble lotuses but aren’t drift slowly across the surface like small abandoned boats. He realizes the petals form a further layer of mosaic. So this is how his wife makes stone breathe. Then he reads the Sunday New York Times front page twice. The script is glutinous, indecipherable. He pours another scotch and dials Sam Goldberg’s private emergency cell line.

  “The WMD negotiations? You’re still there?” Sam doesn’t wait for a response.

  “I’m at lunch with a client, Bernie. Can I get back to you?” “Chloe says she’s divorcing me,” Bernie begins.

  “I’m representing her, yes.” Sam sounds equitable, even expansive.

  “You’re my best friend,” Bernie reminds him.

  “I love you both. She came to me first. I’ll call you back.” The phone goes still in his hand, which feels suddenly numb. He remembers that his hospital is now simply part of 250 small medical facilities owned by a corporation based in Baltimore. He is merely one of 12,500 doctors they choose to employ.

  Bernie climbs the wooden stairs to their bedroom. Chloe is placing shoes in an enormous cardboard box. “Imelda Marcos had fewer shoes,” he notes. He’s wondered about her shoe accumulation, the pumps and stilettos and platforms, how odd for a woman who habitually wears sandals or is barefoot.

  “Won’t you need a porter or two?”

  “My job is over. The chauffeuring. The scheduling. Tennis lessons and matches. Music classes. Not to mention the soccer practices and interminable play-offs. The surfboard transportation logistics. Piano recitals. Ballet productions. The play dates,” Chloe pauses. She reaches for something in a drawer on the far side of the closet. She withdraws a package of cigarettes. She lights one and faces him.

  “Listen. It begins in pre-school. These kids don’t play. They have auditions. If they pass, if they get a call back, a sort of nanny-chaperoned courtship ensues. It’s loathsome.” She expels smoke. “Later, it’s worse.”

  He hasn’t seen her with a cigarette since Ion and Gnat first went to nursery school. The fumes are infiltrating the room, further irritating his contacts. Bob Dylan is whining off-key and out of time, contaminating the air, now on an auditory level. It should be labeled a posthumous rather than live performance, he decides. He shuts off the switch.

  “I didn’t know you still smoked,” Bernie said. “Or that you hated the children’s activities.”

  “Soccer did me in. Soccer, for Christ’s sake. How does soccer figure? When did that make your short list? How many professional soccer stars has La Jolla produced? It’s just crap.” Chloe is vehement.

  “We accepted division of labor as a viable vestigial tradition. But you could have refused,” Bernie counters.

  “You can’t say no to soccer. It’s the new measure of motherhood. It’s the fucking gold standard. I sat in parking lots between chauffeuring, feeling like Shiva with her arms amputated.” Chloe finishes her cig
arette. She uses a yellow shoe with a red flower at the toe for an ashtray.

  “Let’s have a drink downstairs,” Bernie suggests. His voice is reasonable. He is able to produce this effect by pretending he is someone else entirely, a concierge or a waiter. “I’m finishing the Laphroaig.”

  Chloe consults her watch. It’s the Piaget he gave her when their son entered college. His wife shrugs, the kimono sleeves drifting briefly from her sides like twin cranes skimming an inlet, hunting.

  “One drink,” she assents.

  They sit in the kitchen. He considers the Westec buy-out. For two decades, he entered the hospital each morning and paused in a gesture of respect near walls engraved with the names of doctors who had achieved their 20, 25 and 30 year status. Next year, he would have had his own 20-year service plaque installed. Chloe has already arranged the catering. He would be permanently mounted beside Milstein and Kim, McKenzie, Fuentes and Weintraub. They were there when Northern San Diego Children’s Clinic was built, the landscaping just put in, the first Bougainvillea and Hibiscus bushes growing against still dusty cinder blocks. Chloe planted pink and white Camellias the next year. Then Wisteria and Roses.

  Bernie realizes the kitchen floor is actually a composition of hand-painted tiles, purple and blue Irises and Violets. The stems and leaves are a raised green enamel suggesting channels and veins. So this is how she prepares their meals, barefoot, standing on a version of cool garden. He finds cheese and fruit in the refrigerator and bagels in the cabinet. A china platter with ornate silver handles he vividly recalls packing in plastic wrap and hauling in a special crate on a plane sits between them. Where were they returning from? Portugal? Prague? Chloe averts her eyes.

  “I love California Lent. It comes the spring you’re fifteen and lasts the rest of your life.” She looks tired.

  “Just gain a few pounds and let’s stay married.” Bernie spreads cream cheese on a bagel. It’s stale. Chloe smokes another cigarette.

  “I’m leaving a few pounds early. I’m one of the last original wives. Do you realize that?” Chloe asks. “ I’m forty-six. Let’s just skip menopause and the obligatory trophy wife syndrome. We did our jobs. Now the task is finished.”

  “We had a deal. We agreed to be post-modern,” Bernie points out. “No empires with historically disastrous ends. No mistresses with unnecessary dangerous complications. No tax fraud. No start-ups or IPOs. Just us, with plausible defendable borders.”

  “We did that. You built the clinic. I did this.” Chloe indicates the formal dining room with her fingers, and by extension, he surmises, the entire house and grounds, courtyards, swimming pool and tennis court, gazebos and rose gardens.

  “You saw it as a job?” Bernie is amazed.

  “It was a performance art piece. Remember when Book Club discovered one man shows? Spalding Gray. Laurie Anderson. We went with the Weintraubs on opening night, remember?”

  Bernie Roth thinks for a moment. Then he says, “No.”

  “It was the hospital benefit that year. A bit arty for you. We went backstage.

  “Elaine had Laurie Anderson’s entire tour profile. We realized we were earning more than she was. We had our own multi-million dollar performance art pieces. We just had smaller venues and a limited audience. Elaine Weintraub, the original wife. Before the current version. The ex-TV late night weather girl? The anorexic redhead with the room temperature IQ? Jesus. Elaine Weintraub was my best friend. You don’t even remember her.” Chloe finishes her scotch.

  “Our marriage was an art piece, a performance?” Bernie is incredulous.

  “The four piece choreography. The lessons. Sports and tutors. Surfing and swim meets. The theme birthday party extravaganzas. Christ. Not to mention the gardeners I bailed out of jail. The maids with alcoholic boyfriends. Their secret abortions. The relentless complications. The emergency loans. It was 24/7 for 20 years. And I’m not getting a plaque either.” Chloe stares at the table. Bernie pours more scotch.

  Outside is sunlight that surprises him with its nuances, its fluid avenues of yellows that are not solid at all, but tentative and in curious transition. Streaks like gold threads waver across the surface of the fountain, a filigree embossing the koi. Bernie thinks of brass bells and abruptly senses a clash in the air. So this is the sound of a day being sliced in half.

  “I walk through this house and it’s like being trapped in a postcard.” Chloe indicates the living room table, a square of inlaid mahogany completely covered with framed photographs. She picks them up, one by one. “Agra. Bali. Rome. Luxor. Maui. Everyone holding hands and smiling. It’s a laminated version of reality.”

  “But this was our life,” Bernie realizes. He stands near her. “You wanted Thanksgiving in a Beirut back alley? Easter in a Turkish tenement? That wasn’t our experience. What’s encased in glass is, in point of fact, the truth.”

  “Really?” Chloe sounds bitter and combative. She is still wearing the kimono with the extravagant sleeves that seem to suggest intention. She has put on pink lipstick and diamond earrings. She has brushed her hair. Perhaps she sprayed her wrists with perfume. Then her skin would be a distillation of all things floral and vanilla. “This isn’t truth,” Chloe said. “It’s an advertisement for consumption.”

  For a moment, Bernie thinks she is alluding to tuberculosis. TB is rebounding globally. Half of Europe tests positive. Studies suggest nearly forty percent of New York City college students have indications of exposure. Malaria is also making a spectacular comeback. Polio is a possibility, too. Its crossover potential is seriously underrated. A major influenza epidemic is inevitable, actually statistically overdue. Of course, small pox could be the defining epidemic of the millennium. Then he realizes his wife is not talking about infections. He holds a silver framed photograph selected at random. “You don’t appear to be suffering in Tahiti,” Bernie observes.

  “I didn’t suffer. I just wasn’t engaged. It was like filling stamps in a geography game. More accumulation. Just like the grotesque children’s activities.” Chloe seems to be considering another drink.

  “Grotesque?” Bernie repeats.

  “Piano. Cello. Guitar. Ballet. Gymnastics. Basketball. Karate. Theater arts. Choral group. Ceramics. Mime. What kid has that plethora of aptitudes?” Chloe demands.

  He is apparently meant to say something. “I have no idea,” he admits.

  “They don’t have affinities or longings. Every stray spasm of temporary enthusiasm gets an immediate new uniform. They lack affection and discipline. Activities are another form of consumption. Now a video. Now a violin. Now Chinese. Now a chainsaw.” Chloe sighs.

  Bernie considers the possibility that he may pass out. He barely slept at the negotiations, which were not mediations, but rather the inordinately slow unraveling of a fait accompli. His hotel room was curiously uncomfortable, the sheets and towels abrasively starched, the walls a deliberately muted blue reminiscent of an interminable depression. The sense of transience in carpet and upholstery stains disturbed him. There were lingering odors he couldn’t identify. Perhaps it was perfume, insect repellant, spilled wine, suntan lotion and something intangible that leaked from a stranger writing a postcard. He had insomnia for the first time since he was an intern and nightmares about his father.

  “What are you going to tell Ion and Gnat?” Bernie tries.

  “I’ve taken care of that.” Chloe almost smiles. There is strain around her mouth. It’s as close to a sneer as she can permit herself. Her genetic code doesn’t allow her to further distort her face.

  “You’ve talked to them?” Bernie is tentative and afraid. He needs to establish coordinates. He must assemble reliable data.

  “Ion and Gnat. How chic we thought their nicknames were. How millennial. Naturally, I’ve spoken with them.” Chloe stares at him. “Natalie used to tell me what a great mother I was. I had my standard line. I’d say—”

  “I’m compensated. I’ve got my CEO salary, yearly incentive bonuses, stock options and pension pla
n,” Bernie supplies. “Of course, I remember.”

  “I wasn’t kidding,” Chloe states.

  After a moment, in which he feels dazed and incoherent, and thinks oddly and wildly of hummingbirds and lizards, and how patterns on reptiles resemble certain common skin disorders, he asks, “What did the children say?”

  “They’re a monolith of narcissism and indifference. They want assurances there’s no hostility and the finances are secure. If separation doesn’t intrude on their scant psychological resources, it’s fine. They require known quantities. If it arrives from two locations, that’s irrelevant. Just so we don’t necessitate their engagement.”

  “Is that it?” Bernie senses there is considerably more. His best skill has always been diagnostic.

  “Not quite. They both have messages for you.” Chloe pauses. She takes a breath. “And this is the last act of translation I’m going to engage in. After this, you’ll have to gather and distill your own information.”

  “Shoot.” Bernie is dizzy. He doesn’t want to flinch.

  “Ion quit the tennis team.” Chloe actually laughs.

  “He won the Desert Classic as a sophomore. He’s ranked number three in California, for Christ’s sake. He has a full scholarship.” Bernie realizes he is yelling.

  “He knows we can afford it, without his playing. He hates tennis. Thinks it’s decadent, imperialistic and retrograde. He quit last year. I’ve been paying his tuition. Quietly. Part of my job. The choreography, mediation and scheduling aspect.”

  “What about his major?” Bernie insists.

  “He hasn’t been pre-med since freshman mid-terms.” Chloe avoids his eyes.

  “What is his major, precisely?” Bernie is more alert. He understands rage is a form of fuel.

  “Urban Design. It’s like modern history but with community projects.”

  “Community projects?” Bernie puts his glass down. “Like Houses for Habitats?” He has a vague recognition of this organization. Perhaps he’s seen it listed on intern resumes.