The Divorce Papers

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by Susan Rieger


  7. If the total cost of the legal services performed by the Attorneys shall be less than the amount of the initial retainer paid by the Client, the balance shall be refunded to the Client.

  8. The Court may award counsel fees to one party and order the other party to pay the amount awarded. Alternatively, the parties, to avoid a contested trial, may agree by settlement contract to provide that one of the parties will contribute an agreed amount toward the other party’s legal expenses.

  a. No representation is made in this Agreement that any contribution by the other party will be obtained toward the Client’s legal expenses.

  b. In the event a contribution is obtained from the other party for the benefit of the Client, the amount in question shall be credited against the Attorneys’ final bill to the client.

  9. This Agreement represents the full and complete agreement between the Attorneys and the Client as to the terms of the Attorneys’ representation of the Client in the matter described. There are no exceptions.

  THIS IS A LEGALLY BINDING CONTRACT. IF THE CLIENT DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE CONTRACT, THE CLIENT IS URGED TO SEEK INDEPENDENT COUNSEL.

  We, the Client and the Attorneys, have read the above Fee Agreement and understand and accept its terms. Both have signed it as their free act and deed, and the Client acknowledges receipt of a copy of the Agreement.

  Signed this 17th day of March, 1999.

  Traynor, Hand, Wyzanski

  By:

  Client Maria M. Durkheim Attorney Anne Sophie Diehl

  1 TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI

  2 222 CHURCH STREET

  3 NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555

  4 (393) 876-5678

  5

  6

  7

  8 Intake Interview

  9

  10 Interview Subject: Maria Meiklejohn Durkheim

  11 Interviewer: Anne Sophie Diehl

  12 Date: March 17, 1999

  13 RE: Legal Separation and Divorce

  14

  15 Transcription by: Hannah Smith

  16 Date: March 18, 1999

  17-32

  33 Q. Good morning. I’m Sophie Diehl. David Greaves, your

  34 father’s lawyer, asked me to meet with you this morning. I am

  35 an associate with the firm.

  36 A. Hello, I’m Maria—Mia—Durkheim, née Meiklejohn.

  37 Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.

  38 Q. Not at all. I would like to tape this interview, if that’s all

  39 right with you, to have an accurate record.

  40 A. That’s fine.

  41 Q. How can I help you?

  42 A. On February 15th—here are the papers—my husband,

  43 Daniel Durkheim, Dr. Daniel Durkheim, had his lawyers,

  44 the scumbag firm of Kahn & Boyle, serve me with a summons

  45 for divorce, I think that’s what it’s called, while I was having

  46 lunch at Golightly’s on Cromwell. I can’t believe that’s

  47 standard practice, no? The University Club perhaps, maybe

  48 the Plimouth or the New Salem Cricket Club, but Golightly’s?

  49 Your grandmother’s restaurant. That cozy bastion of linen

  50 tablecloths, padded booths, hotel silver plate. I was with

  51 a colleague, not even a friend, when this damp, cringing

  52 person sidled up to me and asked if I was Maria Meiklejohn

  53 Durkheim. I said I was. He handed me the summons, then

  54 backed away. I thought at first, stupidly, it was the wine

  55 list. When I saw what it was, I almost fell into my Niçoise.

  56 I thought I’d black out. Pulling myself together, I realized

  57 my colleague was staring at me. Other people too. I sat up

  58 straight, called the waiter over, and ordered a bottle of Pouilly-

  59 Fuissé. “I feel like celebrating,” I told my colleague. “My

  60 treat.” It was an extreme test of my savoir faire. Even now it

  61 makes me catch my breath. Can you believe it?

  62 Q. I can. I’m a criminal lawyer. Bad behavior doesn’t

  63 surprise me. But I’ve never heard of anyone else being served

  64 at a restaurant.

  65 A. I got served at a restaurant. Ha. I suppose I should return

  66 service on a squash court. The Cricket Club. I wouldn’t

  67 mind smashing him—or those scumbag lawyers. What do

  68 I do now? It’s been at least a month. I didn’t say anything

  69 to my husband for several days, then I wrote him an acid

  70 note, threatening to have him served during a speech he was

  71 planning to give at the annual Pediatric Oncology conference

  72 in Boston. I have a copy. Would you like it?

  73 Q. Yes, I would. Did you actually carry out the threat?

  74 [Note to Hannah: I’m placing the letter in the file.]

  75 A. Oh, no. It’s been my experience that there’s no need to

  76 carry through on a well-crafted threat with upper-middleclass

  77 types. The purpose is to wrong-foot them, raise their

  78 blood pressure, gin up their anxiety level. I kept imagining

  79 him looking up all the time as he was reading his paper, to see

  80 if a sheriff’s deputy was closing in on him. I thought I had a

  81 good chance of ruining the conference for him. I think I may

  82 have. Of course, he never said anything. Nor did I.

  83 Q. Is it only on the upper-middle classes that threats alone

  84 work?

  85 A. I can’t say for everyone, but with the rich, you have to

  86 carry through or they don’t take you seriously. My father

  87 would tell you that.

  88 Q. Other than the threats, have you done anything?

  89 A. What do you mean by “done”?

  90 Q. Have you responded more formally?

  91 A. No. That’s why I came in today. I’m guessing I need to

  92 make some sort of response. What should I do now?

  93 Q. Ah. The usual next step is to retain a lawyer to represent

  94 you. You may wish to consult more than one, to determine

  95 who will provide you with the services you need for a fee you

  96 judge reasonable.

  97 A. When it comes to lawyers, I trust my father, and he says

  98 Traynor, Hand is the best there is. Consider yourself retained.

  99 Tell me what your fee is. I’ll pay it.

  100 Q. Oh, I am not the lawyer you want to retain. David asked

  101 me to fill in this morning for Fiona McGregor, who’s on

  102 holiday. We have terrific divorce lawyers in the firm. Besides

  103 Ms. McGregor, there’s Felix Landau, who is in court today,

  104 and David, too, because he can do anything. I’ve never done

  105 a divorce.

  106 A. Somehow, I find that reassuring. It’s my first divorce too.

  107 Q. But I’m a criminal lawyer.

  108 A. Just what I need for Ray Kahn.

  109 Q. Don’t worry about him. 90% blowhard. Let’s look at

  110 these Divorce Work Sheet: Summary Biographies. We can go

  111 over them together, and I’ll explain Narragansett divorce law

  112 as best I can. But why don’t we start by my asking you some

  113 questions about you, your husband, your marriage, and your

  114 daughter, yes?

  115 A. Shoot.

  116 Q. How old are you? How old is your husband? How long

  117 have you been married?

  118 A. I’m 41. Daniel is 52. We’ve been married for 16 years,

  119 since 1982. But we lived together for 2 years before that.

  120 Daniel was married when I met him, to Helen Fincher. They

&nb
sp; 121 were married in 1974, separated in 1980—there was a bit of an

  122 overlap, I’m afraid, with Helen and me, tacky, I know—and

  123 divorced in 1982, a New York record, I believe. She has so

  124 much family money, it wasn’t an issue, and then she couldn’t

  125 stand him. I didn’t understand that; I thought he was the most

  126 wonderful person I’d ever met. Our opinions are probably

  127 more aligned now.

  128 Q. Were there any children from your husband’s first marriage?

  129 A. Sorry, yes, a son, Thomas Maxwell Durkheim. Tom.

  130 He’s 22 now. He was born in 1976. An Amherst grad.

  131 Lovely boy, much easier, kinder, sweeter than his father, or

  132 his mother for that matter. Bad asthma, bad lungs since he

  133 was a baby. Premature. He’s working now on Wall Street, at

  134 Fincher & Morgan, his grandfather’s firm. Daniel paid no

  135 alimony to Helen, only child support, $15,000/year, until

  136 Tom was 18. It stayed the same throughout. Then he paid for

  137 college. Theoretically. Mather pays 50% of college tuition for

  138 its employees, which with Amherst, I think its tuition was

  139 $24,000; he only had to pay $12,000, plus room and board,

  140 another $8,000. Not much for a man making $300,000 plus

  141 a year. [Pause] I’m sounding bitter—and common. I’ll pull

  142 myself together.

  143 Q. Did Thomas live with his mother? Or with you and your

  144 husband?

  145 A. He grew up in New York City and lived with his mother.

  146 When we lived there—we moved to New Salem in ’91,

  147 when Daniel was appointed Chair of the Pediatric Oncology

  148 Department here at Mather Med—we saw a lot of him. We

  149 saw less of him after we moved. He was 14. Daniel is a bit

  150 rough on him. Tom wants his dad’s good opinion, but also

  151 thinks Daniel can be a prick. Can I say something like that?

  152 You don’t mind, do you? You must have heard worse. I don’t

  153 think they’ve seen each other since Christmas. I don’t know

  154 what Daniel has said to Tom about our separation. I asked

  155 him last week how Tom was taking it. “Taking it?” he asked.

  156 “You’re not his mother. What difference should it make to

  157 him?” Eighteen years, since he was three, and his father

  158 thinks it means nothing. [Pause] I don’t know what Tom

  159 is thinking. I’ve spoken to him twice now. He doesn’t give

  160 anything away. He doesn’t want to talk about himself, only

  161 asks how Jane and I are doing. He’s stoical and doesn’t expect

  162 too much of his parents. Helen’s got a leg up on Daniel. She’s

  163 already married to her third husband.

  164 Q. Can you give me some financial history of the marriage?

  165 A. When we met in 1980, I was working as an assistant

  166 editor at Femina magazine. Do you remember Femina? It

  167 believed in good clothes, good haircuts, and good books. I was

  168 making $28,000, which wasn’t bad for that kind of job. Daniel

  169 had finished school; he has an M.D./Ph.D. from Columbia

  170 but was only making $23,000, as a resident, working 90 hours

  171 a week at Presbyterian Hospital. All of his salary, after taxes,

  172 went for child support. But at least he had no med school

  173 debt. M.D./Ph.D.’s are fully funded. Our rent was $325;

  174 we had a Columbia apartment, on baja Claremont. It was a

  175 serious comedown for him. When he was married to Helen,

  176 they lived off Central Park West on West 69th. But he was

  177 never home, and I didn’t mind it. My father might have given

  178 us some money, but his money always comes with strings;

  179 I didn’t think it was worth it. Except, he did give us each

  180 $10,000 a year as a gift once we married. And then after Jane,

  181 our daughter, was born, he gave her $10,000 a year too.

  182 Q. Tell me about Jane.

  183 A. She’s perfect. She’s 10 years old, almost 11. She goes to the

  184 Peabody School, where I went and everyone in my family went,

  185 back to the egg. My mother was a trustee and her mother and

  186 her grandmother were trustees. We are old, old New Salem.

  187 My mother was a Mather and Granny was a Peabody. I don’t

  188 she was a Maria. We are all Marias, from mother to daughter,

  189 back to my Great Great Great Gran, whose mother’s first

  190 name was Humility. The family was, is, horribly ingrown. Up

  191 through my mother’s generation, you couldn’t marry outside

  192 the magic circle. My father didn’t really belong; his family

  193 were latecomers, upstart 19th-century immigrant Scottish

  194 merchants, but they’d gone to the right schools and weren’t

  195 Catholics. My mother’s full name was Maria Maple Mather

  196 Meiklejohn. Her family nickname was 4M. My full name is

  197 Maria Mather Meiklejohn. [Pause] Durkheim. I need to ditch

  198 that. In school, I was called 3M or Scotch, for Scotch Tape.

  199 Daniel used to say my family went back to the Mayflower and

  200 his to the ark. I never imagined I’d be back in New Salem. I

  201 thought I had escaped. I was working on becoming—rather

  202 successfully, I thought—a New York Jewish intellectual. Here,

  203 I’m seen as part of the cotillion crowd.

  204 Q. Are you working?

  205 A. I’m a writing tutor at Mather. I decided to get my Ph.D.

  206 in American studies when we moved here. The only publisher

  207 in town is the Mather Press, and I wasn’t interested in

  208 publishing foreign-language translations, which is what they

  209 mostly do. Their big project now is a complete translation by

  210 a French/American couple of Remembrance of Things Past.

  211 Did you know no one has ever finished translating all seven

  212 volumes? They all die mid-series; it’s like a curse. Have you

  213 read Proust?

  214 Q. No. My mother is French, and if I ever read it in English,

  215 instead of French, which would do me in, she would be very

  216 disapproving. So I don’t read it at all. You?

  217 A. I’ve read the third book, The Guermantes Way. Bill

  218 Pritchard, Tom’s English professor at Amherst, said to start

  219 there, then go backward. But I couldn’t.

  220 Q. Are you making progress with your Ph.D.?

  221 A. I finished my course work in 1996. For my thesis, I’m

  222 working mostly on Jacob Riis but also on other late 19th-/

  223 early 20th-century American journalists, photojournalists,

  224 muckrakers. This divorce thing has thrown me off. I can’t see

  225 making much progress this year. Some days, getting out of

  226 bed is a serious challenge. I do manage to do my job, but it’s

  227 a struggle, and it’s only four afternoons/evenings a week, 16

  228 hours altogether.

  229 Q. Do you make a living wage as a writing tutor?

  230 A. Oh, no. I make $14,000, which is a scant $1,000 more

  231 than Jane’s tuition. Last year Daniel made $370,000, 25 times

  232 as much as I. These are things I think of when I think about

  233 divorce. My lack of resources. I don’t worry about it exactly—


  234 my father won’t let Jane and me starve—but I would hate

  235 having to ask him or Daniel for money. Too humiliating to

  236 have to keep going back to the trough.

  237 Q. You said your husband was in oncology?

  238 A. He’s chair of the Department of Pediatric Oncology,

  239 which is one of Mather Medical School’s great departments,

  240 and Dowling Professor. He’s a big star, both as a clinician and

  241 a researcher, and he’s very ambitious. He won the Freeman

  242 Prize, and was nominated for the Lasker. I’d guess he’s

  243 gunning for a MacArthur and, in his late-night fantasies, a

  244 Nobel. His specialty is brain tumors. He’s the best there is,

  245 even though most of his patients don’t make it. They just

  246 make it longer than other docs’ patients. It’s given him a Jesus

  247 complex. He’s so used to being admired, starting with his

  248 parents, that he expects it from everyone, even Jane and me.

  249 Mather recruited him very heavily; so did Harvard, Stanford,

  250 and Yale. He’s been generously funded by NIH for the last

  251 13 years, and his current grant has 4 years to run. When

  252 he left Columbia, he brought his grants and lab with him,

  253 including four researchers. I was wretched about the decision.

  254 Who with any sense would live in New Salem when they

  255 could live in New York? I had close friends, a nice social life,

  256 a good job. I didn’t want to be a chair’s wife. I didn’t want to

  257 be unemployed, I didn’t want to come back to New Salem. In

  258 ’88, I’d left Femina and gone to work for Monk’s House as a

  259 nonfiction editor, and I loved it. I wanted him to turn it down,

  260 but he said the offer was one he couldn’t refuse and I thought

  261 he’d never forgive me if I didn’t go along. As it turns out, he

  262 didn’t forgive me anyway. Though he’s not said so outright,

  263 he’s not happy at Mather. Too much management and not as

  264 great a variety of cases as in New York. So my unhappiness, of

  265 course, is intolerable, a reproach.

 

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