Le Divorce

by Diane Johnson

  “I am, I suppose,” Roxy ventured. “Innocente. Not that anyone is ever innocent, it’s a very unsophisticated term.” She was trying to be equable, but was unable to control a note of self-righteousness that was creeping into her voice. She broke off. Charles-Henri, who had sat stonily, pinched his lips.

  “I am no longer living at home,” he said.

  “Ah,” breathed Maître Doisneau, in a tone of relief to have found such a relatively painless breach of marital law. “As you know, madame, that is grounds for an action for cause. The point of an action for cause is that one partner needs to obtain monetary compensation from the other.”

  “But I don’t plan to bring an action,” said Roxy. “This is my husband’s idea.” Audible sigh of vexation from Charles-Henri. Maître Doisneau, failing to follow this turn, proposed another solution.

  “If Monsieur de Persand were to bring an action, he would have to identify some cause—violence, cruelty, adultery, or madness—which could apply to Madame.”

  “He couldn’t possibly say any of those things,” protested Roxy.

  “No, of course not,” agreed Charles-Henri. “No, no, the offense is totally mine.”

  “Monsieur de Persand wishes the divorce, and he has moved out of the house. That was badly advised. Excuse me, but you cannot be both the guilty one and the seeker of the divorce where the innocent party objects, though you could file a motion in which the other party does not oppose. Does not consent but does not oppose. Is that your position, Madame de Persand?”

  “I do not wish a divorce,” said Roxy. “I oppose divorce.”

  As Roxy said this, Charles-Henri could see her seizing with force on the sense and implications of staying married. A legal separation would be much better than divorce. That way she could retain at least the perks, the technically consolidated and secure position, of wife. Let Charles-Henri go his own way, she would continue to be Madame de Persand of the Place Maubert, pushing her children in their poussettes along to the Ecole Maternelle, buying her pain and légumes in the market on Saturdays. Her future love life didn’t matter. A woman with two kids—what could happen to her, in the romantic way, anyhow? The path of her reasoning showed in the purse of her lips, aging her, allying her with a procession of wronged females down through history who hang on to what they have. I wouldn’t have behaved this way, I don’t think, but perhaps you feel less reckless when you have kids, more in need of securing your nest, less trusting that life will provide.

  “The party who has given cause cannot also be the suing party. It must be the wronged person who asks for the divorce,” repeated Maître Doisneau. Here Roxy, suddenly attacked by hot tears, struggled to her feet and prepared to leave. The two men were instantly on their feet, like twin puppets.

  “Madame de Persand, where are you going?”

  “I must think about all this. I can’t say anything now.” She stumbled toward the door. Charles-Henri hung back as if it were now Maître Doisneau’s part to prevent her or go after her. But Doisneau shuffled the dossiers on his desk, staring down, trying not to catch the expression that passed between the two sundering and angry people who had once lain rapturously each in the bosom of the other.

  Scènes, événements, rencontres. The days pass as slowly as pregnancy, with little events, meetings, the wonderful sight for me of falling leaves, which I hadn’t seen since I was little, in Ohio.

  A small bedroom in Suzanne de Persand’s apartment on the Avenue Wagram. Little Jean-Claude, aged ten, son of Antoine, is staying with his grandmother while Antoine and Trudi vacation in Miami. He is doing his lessons of French orthography, geography, literature, mathematics, history, and English, all these books weighing, as they come out of his knapsack, five kilos. He writes in little notebooks ruled in squares. He keeps track of what he is to do in another notebook, of which each page is divided into: devoirs and leçons. Duties and lessons. One could tell him right now that all of life is going to be divided into duties and lessons. Besides these duties, Jean-Claude has household duties such as helping Maria the Portuguese girl fold the giant tablecloths and sheets, plus the Boy Scouts, football, catechism, and piano lessons.

  He is thinking that his joke on his parents rather backfired. He had told them he had picked up the phone and heard Lorraine (detestable babysitter) refer to them as pauvres cons. In a rage they had fired her, as he had foreseen, but now here he is at his grandparents’ house, overseen with more than desirable vigilance. Gennie and I come and take him out to kick leaves.

  I had been at Mrs. Pace’s the afternoon Roxy saw Maître Doisneau, had loitered in the Place des Victoires looking at clothes in the Kenzo window, had been slightly late to pick up Gennie. When we came in, Roxy was already home from the lawyer, raving with indignation. That Charles-Henri would expect her to compromise her (newly adopted) religious principles and the inclinations of her heart by divorcing him. That he seemed indifferent to her leaving France, and indifferent to the fate of poor Gennie and the unborn child, content to have them exposed to the dangers and cultural inferiority of America. That he could think of sacrificing the Frenchness of his children—the most priceless thing he could bequeath them—to indulge his crush on a Czechoslovakian slut. That he could turn on her this way, her having no warning or intimation, proving that she herself had no understanding of the human heart and was condemned to blunder to the end of her days, and would never write an enduring poem. “I never guessed, I never realized anything was even wrong. . . .” Etc.

  “Let him divorce me, I can’t stop him. But I’ll never divorce him,” she kept saying.

  The things the lawyer had explained were soon explained to her in more detail, by Tammy de Bretteville, about how she could stop him from divorcing her. Unless she agreed to his request for a divorce, or was guilty of something herself, she could stop him for at least six years, at the end of which he could bring an action on the grounds they weren’t living together. In this case, he would have to support Roxy and pay all costs.

  “Fine,” she said. “Fine, fine, six years, that’s fine.” She said she was prepared to wait until she stood at the doors of hell, to thwart Charles-Henri’s lurid, illicit, unforgivable erotic desires.

  One day I ran into l’oncle Edgar again, near Notre Dame. He looked imposing and dignified, in a navy blue suit with little ribbons in his lapel and a white handkerchief in the pocket, very like a diplomat. When I said, “Bonjour,” he said, “Say ‘bonjour, monsieur,’ not just ‘bonjour.’” Another puzzle.

  When I remarked on his being there again, he said, “On Wednesdays I often have lunch or a glass of sherry with the Abbé Montlaur.” It being hard to imagine the urbane and warriorlike Oncle Edgar consulting a priest, a puzzled expression must have crossed my face, for he went on to explain that Montlaur was an old friend, they had been boys together, reminding me that priests were boys once. This is rather obvious, I know, but in California I had never met any boys who were likely to become priests. I suppose pious boys are common in France, where there must be more priests per capita than in America. I had an image of the two lads, Montlaur and Edgar, saintly but mischievous, swimming in the Seine (where I have never seen anyone swim, it must be dangerous or dirty) and climbing trees, the one boy destined for God and the other for Indochina.

  “And how are you liking France?” he asked. “Your life here?”

  As he seemed to be asking seriously, I tried to think about the question and give a serious answer. I said there was something to be said for not understanding a lot that goes on. “It keeps you alert. So I have an alert feeling here whereas at home in California I sometimes feel bored.”

  “Do you sail in the Pacific Ocean? Are you interested in boats?”

  “No,” I said. “Are you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve done a bit of sailing.”

  “Near us, the ocean is full of oil rigs. You have to go farther south,” I explained, not wishing to seem disdainful of boats, which actually do seem very boring to me, tho
ugh perhaps they wouldn’t be if they were your own.

  “I’ll take you to lunch one day, Isabel. Say next Thursday. Are you taken that day?”

  I recognized these overtures, these attempts at conspiracy from members of the Persand family, occasions contrived behind Roxy’s back to discuss The Situation. I was uneasy in them, because they put me in the false position of speaking for Roxy; but I understood that they found it easier to talk to me than to Roxy directly. Since I can arrange my days to suit myself, I said I was not taken.

  I had recently seen Charlotte de Persand Saxe on the sly in the same way. She telephoned me one day and suggested we have the coffee we had mentioned having. I spent the afternoon at the Randolphs’, then went along to meet her in a cafe across from the Bon Marché. She fished for her cigarettes almost before sitting down, and plunged into the subject not of Charles-Henri and Roxy but of Giles Wheating, the Englishman I’d met. She was madly in love with him.

  “It is not at all true, what you hear,” she confided, smoking madly. “Englishmen are as—considerate—as Frenchmen.”

  I have the impression that French people will tell an American things they wouldn’t tell each other. Among themselves, a certain set of conventions obtains, a certain competitive mistrust, real-life reticences from which we are exempted by our cheerful barbarousness. On the other hand, there are French things—certain instances of misbehavior, certain sins and breaches, things about sex or money—they wouldn’t tell us, but talk about readily among themselves, preferring us to have a better opinion of the French than if we knew. Sometimes these are things that wouldn’t bother us at all. For instance, once on a Sunday at Suzanne’s house near Chartres the plumbing backed up, and a French lunch guest was allowed to see and advise on this disaster, whereas Roxy and I were forbidden to come near it.

  “I’ve never heard anything—against—about Englishmen,” I said to Charlotte.

  “You often hear they are rather—selfish—in bed, but it isn’t true.”

  “Well, perhaps some are,” I said, thinking it was unlikely you could generalize.

  “They are better than French men, in a certain way,” she went on, her voice lowered confidentially, and though I longed to say “really? how?” it seemed too prying, even for an American. Janet Hollingsworth would have asked straight out.

  “The ones that are interested in women at all,” she added.

  It is an interesting subject, French men, English men. Actually, from the reputation of Charles Boyer and so on, I had thought there were perhaps unusual things that Frenchmen knew, had expected something unusual and extra, perhaps to do with “The French they are a funny race,” as Chester’s rhyme went. My actual researches had led me to think, however, that there is a Franco-American norm, or a universal Western norm, to lovemaking. I know nothing of the Orient, or Pacific Islands, though I once read an interesting article about how Samoan men are not up to standard. The article revealed that the female orgasm is unknown in Samoa, that supposed paradise of sexual liberation, and Margaret Mead had not noticed this or she had not thought it important.

  Why was I thinking about Samoan men while talking to Charlotte? She was saying something important. “I think Roxeanne ought to divorce Charles-Henri for cause,” she confided, coming, perhaps, to the real reason for our visit. “If she doesn’t, she’ll end up with nothing. The laws here are very severe. I am not the only one to say so. I have been looking into it. She ought to accuse him of adultery and make him pay what he should.”

  I understood that Charlotte was telling me, perhaps from the whole Persand family, what I should go tell Roxy—that they recognized that Roxy had been wronged; that they would not oppose generous financial arrangments for her and the children. I thought it was nice of Charlotte to tip me off like this, and to feel that way. I wondered what oncle Edgar’s take on it all would turn out to be.

  “What does your mother think?” I wondered to Charlotte. I had noticed that Suzanne was helpful and sympathetic to Roxy, but also loyal to her son, and chose her words when talking to Roxy about arrangements.

  “Well, of course she still thinks Roxeanne should just be patient and it will all be finished with. Mother expects Charles-Henri to come to his senses.”

  13

  The important thing in the divorce is what follows.

  —Hervé Bazin, Madame Ex

  I DUTIFULLY RELAYED all this to Roxy. When she had got over the shock of her first legal consultation, she had begun to see that she should at least discuss divorce with a lawyer of her own. We set about finding one who understood French law but would be sympathetic to Americans. After much consultation among the American community, the choice fell upon Maître Bertram, a French-American with the California firm of Biggs, Rigby, Denby, Fox, with offices tucked into a beautiful hôtel particulier in the eighth Arrondissement. Roxy went to consult him. Maître Bertram listened to her gravely. She could not really explain what had gone wrong.

  “The reason I ask is that you have a choice, whether to accuse your husband of adultery or cruelty, or whether you wish an amicable divorce. No-fault, I believe they call it in the States. I do not judge. It is not my part, obviously.”

  “I know I don’t want acrimony or anger,” Roxy said, feeling her anger swell, the emotion bringing tears that pressed against her eyelids. “I don’t even want a divorce. I want to prevent divorce.”

  “Who wishes to divorce?”

  “The divorce is his idea, he wants to remarry,” Roxy said.

  “Wait until he appreciates the financial implications,” predicted Maître Bertram. “I have found that people often change their minds. In the case of a divorce, however, it would be necessary for you to accuse him if you expect to receive a settlement, that is the law. You have to prove fault with his admitting it, or with his lack of contest. You were married in the traditional regime, community property, so in any case, there will arise the matter of distribution of the property.”

  “Oh, we don’t have anything,” Roxy assured him. “The apartment, some pots and pans.”

  “The usual way is to sell assets that cannot be divided. You expect your husband to contest the divorce? Do you plan to sue to retain your name?”

  “My maiden name?”

  “Your married name, Persand, Madame de Persand. Ordinarily you would have to take again your nom de jeune fille. That would be obligatory.”

  “But my children . . . ?”

  “Persand, of course.”

  “I must have the same name as my children,” said Roxy passionately. Maître Bertram was charmed by her beauty, her womanly despair, her fierce resolution on behalf of her children. He imagined the cad Charles-Henri, some kind of madman.

  Families, family loyalties. My brother Roger—my natural brother—is a partner (at such a young age!) in Barney, Gehegan, Bryer and Walker, a San Francisco law firm specializing in real estate and taxes. He’s married to Jane, a Jungian therapist, and they have a child, Fritz, who in spite of the law that governs the children of psychologists is a nice little kid, about six.

  Besides his practice, and obsessive jogging, Roger is active in gun control issues, ever since a lone gunman entered his building at 101 California in San Francisco and gunned down fourteen lawyers and clients only two floors below his. What surprised him, he said, was that when people heard about the massacre, they at first were appalled, but then very quickly, seeking as one does cosmic explanations for tragedy on this scale, explained it to themselves by saying, with the radiance of sudden comprehension, “Ah, but they were lawyers.”

  “In the same tone as they would say, ‘After all, they were only dogs,’ ” Roger said. He had never thought of himself as a member of an undesirable social category, and he was shocked. “I knew they hated lawyers, but I didn’t know how much,” he said, a note of self-pity in his voice. I would have thought that besides gun control, it might be appropriate to work, through the bar association or something, to improve the public perception, and maybe even th
e actual ethics, of lawyers. But that has not occurred to him.

  Every few months, Jane and Roger fly down to spend the weekend in Santa Barbara with Margeeve and Chester. Jane and Roger usually stay in the Miramar Hotel nearby, and Fritz stays with his grandparents. Imagine a palm-lined street of adobe houses with rust-colored tile roofs, and the sound of the ocean behind the street noises, and seagulls, and their raucous cries, a smell in the air of flowers and salt and tortilla-frying oil. Santa Barbara is more beautiful than Miami, Ohio, and more dignified than its smoggy neighbor Los Angeles. It likes to think of itself as embodying discretion and old money, in Spanish-style houses, some very beautiful, behind thick adobe walls and fanciful wrought-ironwork. There is, also, a large population of Mexicans who speak no English and are rarely seen on Santa Barbara.

  When our father and Roger and I moved to Santa Barbara, at the time of his marriage to Margeeve, whom he had met on a Sierra Club hiking trip (much as Roxy would later meet Charles-Henri), I thought it was paradise, the epitome of human privilege and attainment. The tropical charm of the lightly swaying palms, the historical resonance of the Mexican-style architecture (overtones of grandeur and connectedness to human history, reassuringly affirming that there had been a past), culture (an art museum, a preservation committee, a civic symphony, and only two hours on the freeway to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, where plays are performed and visiting opera companies visit). Even the oil platforms offshore had, at night, a certain allure, like distant sin islands. I loved the damp, salty wind. The conventionality of Santa Barbara was reassuring to my midwestern heart. At the same time, I was drawn to the dark maids and gardeners lingering at bus stops, and the boys and drugs in high school. I even loved the orthodontia, so relatively rare in Ohio, so obligatory in California. Paradoxically, where I was wild(ish), my new stepsister, Roxy, having lived her whole life in Santa Barbara, was a perfect midwestern girl, sensible and studious, grounded and sound.