Charlie Johnson was across the table from her. He’d already doffed his suitcoat and was serving shortbread cookies to the kids. What a fixer this guy was. I wanted to warn them not to touch the cookies. You’ll choke on the strings he’s tied to them. He was easily six feet four and had huge feet, which were housed in a pair of white bucks that I hadn’t seen since Pat Boone. Jude had read me a magazine article once that said male shoe size corresponded with the length of a man’s organ.
“Hi, Justine,” I said, looking past Charlie.
She looked uncharacteristically self-conscious and I blamed it on the presence of Charlie. Then I realized it was probably her dress.
Jude had also dolled up, in a peasant dress with a laced cummerbund that showed off her figure and a bra that she must have also taken out of storage. “Cy, why don’t you get a chair from the dining room?”
“I’ll get it for you, Dad.” Derek ran into the dining room and returned with a chair that he pushed into the back of my knees. I smelled a rat. They’d already talked it over and Derek was feeling sorry for me.
Jude smiled as I sat down next to her, and I wished again that I’d lobbied the kids when I had them alone, realizing now that they’d probably interpreted my silence as lack of interest. Did I really think that Charlie was going to let the kids decide this? He’d probably choreographed this whole meeting.
“We might as well get started,” Charlie said. His eyes fluttered like he’d caught a stray crumb. He reminded me of someone about to do a card trick; no matter which card you picked he’d make it come out his way. Justine had scooted away from Charlie and she was tapping the insides of her shoes together. I’d taught her to take care of herself in Hearts by holding the Queen of Spades, the Dirty Dora, instead of passing it. That way you always knew where trouble was. “I’d like to give everyone an overview of why we’re here,” he said.
Cyrus, I said to myself, this house is still half yours and so are the kids. You can either sit here on your hands and let this man fancy you out of everything or you can stand up and let the kids know you care. I still wasn’t sure why I’d gone into law. There was nothing to suggest that I’d be any good at it. Although I pulled decent grades in school, I was a social bumbler with ears larger than normal that I covered with long hair, an act which some people had confused with rebellion. In my third year of law school, I still blushed when the professor called on me. And, as Jude could verify, I could be cowed in an ordinary kitchen argument. “If you don’t mind, Charlie, this is family business.”
Derek, who seemed fascinated by the tall counselor in suspenders, jerked his head around in surprise. Justine grinned.
“I just wanted to make sure the kids understood the significance of what we’re doing,” Charlie said.
“You’d be insulting their intelligence.”
“Cyrus,” Jude said. “He was just trying to help.”
“I think we can handle this without an outsider.”
Charlie shot me a dirty look and leaned back into the couch.
If I’d picked up my saucer just then, the cup would have tapped out a tune, I was shaking so much. “I’d like to say something to the kids; then, Jude, you can too.” Derek sat cross-legged on the floor like I was going to make up a bedtime story. Justine had finished her shortbread cookies and put her gum back in her mouth. “The hardest thing about the divorce”—I licked my lips and scratched my forehead to distract myself from the precipice I was on the edge of—“the hardest thing is to do this without hurting you two.” Instead of looking at the kids, I fixed on Charlie’s shoes. “When you get divorced, you have to divide things up, which is easy enough with the furniture. Like your mom might take this couch and maybe I’d take the recliner she never used.” Derek chuckled and looked at Jude. “But how do you divide up you?” Derek tried to lighten things up by running a finger from his chin to his belt like an imaginary surgeon’s knife. “You need to help us.”
“You mean we have to either go with Mom or you?” Justine said.
“Well, that’s about it,” I said. “We can still work something out for weekends and vacations.”
“What about Christmas?” Derek said. “There’s only one Christmas.”
“You can celebrate twice,” Jude said.
“I have a friend,” Justine said, “who lives with her mom and her older brother lives with her dad.”
“Yeah, who wants me?” Derek said.
“Derek,” Justine said, “just listen.” She was starting to get serious the way she did when Derek wanted Burger King and she wanted pizza.
“I didn’t think you and Derek would want to split up,” Jude said.
“Maybe we need a divorce too,” Derek said.
The adults laughed politely and shifted in their seats. Even Charlie loosened up at the prospect of another divorce.
“Who gets the house?” Justine asked.
I looked directly at Charlie, “That hasn’t been decided yet.” I didn’t want the Alhambra to be the deciding factor.
“What about Magpie?” Derek asked.
“Don’t be stupid,” Justine said. “Mom and Dad don’t want the dog. She stays with us.”
“I have to add one legal point,” Charlie said, scooting to the edge of the couch, letting his long arms hang over the coffee table. “The decision by the kids on custody is not binding on the court.”
“Just a minute,” I said.
“I’m not saying it’s input the court won’t seriously consider,” Charlie said. He was scowling at me.
“I’ll support the kids’ decision,” Jude said. “Right, Charlie?”
Justine stood up and slapped her skirt down where a fold had caught. “Derek and I need our own meeting. This is family business.” I was reassured to hear her borrow one of my lines. While the bond between Jude and me had crumbled, the kids’ bond with each other had strengthened. Publicly they still fought, but when worse came to worst, they were inseparable. Derek nodded his head and the two of them hurried up the stairs, already arguing with each other. Left in the living room, the rest of us twitched in place, trying to think of something neutral to say.
“The jury’s out,” Charlie said. “Are there any more of those shortbreads?”
“Sure, the package is in the kitchen,” Jude said. “I’ve also got more coffee.”
Charlie followed Jude. I knew he didn’t want another shortbread; he wanted to corner Jude in the kitchen and get their signals straight. I guessed that if the kids decided to go with Jude, Charlie would call it a wrap and leave her with the whole package—kids, house, and all the fringe benefits. If the vote went haywire, he’d take it to court. I hoped the kids dropped the Dirty Dora on him.
“What happened to the cookies?” I said, when they returned from the kitchen.
Charlie and Jude looked at each other and said “Oh” at the same time.
The fact that Jude seemed comfortable with this high-powered divorce lawyer shouldn’t have been surprising. Unlike me, she came from a family of considerable public achievement. Her grandfather was a lawyer in Great Falls, Montana who was elected prosecuting attorney five times. Her dad was an investment banker who started work at six a.m. in their den so he could talk to people on the East Coast. He once chaired the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and I’d seen his picture on the wall with the past presidents of the Washington Athletic Club. Although Jude chafed at her family’s wealth, she’d been carrying her own Visa card since she was in grade school. Her mother always chided her that she didn’t have the drive of her older brother and needed to be realistic about college. “Keep your weight in check,” her mother had warned her. “You won’t win a man just because you have breasts.” Jude always had something to prove.
Our fathers had one thing in common, though: they delegated child-rearing to the mothers. As manager of the Thriftway in Quincy, my dad had to open the doors and give cash to the checkers in the morning and count the take at night. When he took afternoons off, it was to golf for a quarte
r-a-hole with the owner. In the fall, they’d take a deer hunting trip. Once, they put their names in the draw and won goat hunting permits for the Blue Mountains. When Dad won a trip to Disneyland for the family through a wholesale grocery drawing, he cashed it in and bought a new Winchester rifle with a scope and leather carrying case.
Derek came downstairs with a list of questions in Justine’s handwriting, some directed to Jude and some to me. We had to whisper our answers into his ear as he went back and forth across the room. Their questions covered the same areas that troubled me. Who would do the cooking? Would we always live at the Alhambra? Would I ever get married again? I didn’t know if they considered remarriage a positive or a negative but I answered honestly. “I doubt it.”
I’d never heard of kids going with their dad as long as their mother was alive and not incarcerated, but it felt good to be fighting for them. I wasn’t going to be one of those fathers who goes out for a cigarette and never returns. They’d have a father whether I had a marriage or not. As I watched Jude whispering her answers to Derek, I was struck by the thought that she might be a better mother with me out of the way. Justine used to worry because she was developing slowly compared to her girl cousins. For her twelfth birthday, Jude bought her a bra with size C cups she’d have to grow into and made sure she opened it in front of her cousins. The fact that Justine was upstairs directing this investigation was due in no small measure to her mom.
I’d never understood, though, where Jude had developed her combativeness, growing up in a home with more than enough of everything to go around. I’d made the mistake when we married of paying too much attention to her parentage, assuming that the fruit didn’t fall that far from the tree. I thought her parents’ polished walnut table with leaves to seat ten would someday be ours and when the grandkids came over on holidays we’d set up the game table in the TV room. I pictured Jude patting me on the shoulder to hand me the carving knife and two-pronged fork the way her mother used to do. Jude’d ask me to say grace and I’d add something personal about each of the offspring. While she was doing the dishes, I’d put the table pads into the closet, walk the dog, and smoke a rum-soaked Crook. We’d have a big Liverpool rummy game afterwards and between games I’d find a bag of stale candy kisses and put a bowl at each end of the table like her father used to do.
If her father were alive, he’d blame me for the fact that our kids were upstairs deciding where they’d live. He’d remind me of what I’d said to him in their den when I pulled him aside and asked for Jude’s hand. I’d done it that way because that’s what I thought he’d probably done and I wanted him to know that I honored those same values. I told him I’d protect Jude and raise kids he’d be proud of.
But Jude didn’t need my protection. We didn’t have Sunday afternoon roast beef and mashed potato dinners. Every other Sunday was her day off from the kids and dinner was something frozen we ate off aluminum trays. The kids preferred the TV and cassette tapes to conversation. Jude’s father would have asked me who was the head of this family anyway, and chased the divorce lawyer out of our living room.
We heard the kids whispering on their way down the stairs. They walked straight over to the coffee table. There was a sobriety about them that made me think that neither Jude or I had passed their rigorous standards and they’d decided to live on their own. Derek stood behind Justine with his lips sealed the way I was sure she’d directed him. This was an announcement the oldest child had to make.
“We’ve made our decision,” she said.
Everyone put down their cups. Charlie tucked in his shirt. Derek poked his sister, telling her to say it, and she brushed his hand away. Her face was grim. She was going to wait until she had everyone’s attention. Her feet were together and she stood as prim and straight as the night she came out from behind the curtain in the Seward School gym and announced the name of the Christmas program, “Peace on Earth.”
I could tell by the way she began, complimenting me in words that sounded like a Hallmark Father’s Day card, how this was going to come out. Judges did the same thing at the end of a trial. Such praise meant one thing.
“We’re going to live with Mom,” she said.
The instant she said it a pestilence raced through me, weakening my limbs, muting my hearing. I’d never lost one this big. All my hopes of doing it better than my dad were obliterated. I’d been rejected. They apparently saw something safe in Jude they didn’t see in me.
Derek started to cry and I wondered if this was really his choice or if Justine had leaned on him. There was so much unfinished business between us. I’d never taken him horseback riding or taught him how to handle a rifle. He always said he wanted to be a pitcher and begged me to teach him the knuckleball and I put him off, saying to wait until his arm matured. I knelt down and he rushed into my arms and squeezed me around the neck, smearing the side of my face with his tears. Through the blur, I watched Justine. She was trying to stand tall the way Jude had worked with her. I couldn’t tell if she was still talking or not. I wanted her to let go and come to me. It’s not your fault, Justine. I shouldn’t have let you do this.
Out of respect, I suppose, Charlie picked up the dishes and disappeared into the kitchen. This was the end of the line, time for a transfer. Jude gave me a crestfallen look as she put her arm around Justine. She’d lost the guy who used to tickle her under the sheets and read Robert Frost to make her sleepy. But she had her kids.
4.
As I sped north up I–5, the wind rushing through the windows drowned out the Bob Dylan tape I’d turned to high volume. I changed lanes without signaling, passed randomly on the left and the right. Drivers blinked their lights at me. If someone boxed me in, I honked and gave them the finger as I passed. Between sixty and sixty-five, the Plymouth shimmied like it was going to throw a wheel. Over seventy, it smoothed out and the ashtray in the dash stopped vibrating. I stuck my head out the window like a dog, trying to open my eyes as far as I could, challenging the wind to rip them out. The air whipped across my face like a high-speed shoe rag taking tears with it. “God dammit!” I yelled in the general direction of Canada. My words probably didn’t make it to the rearview mirror.
Past Marysville, traffic was scarce and I could drive any lane I wanted or straddle two of them. When I let go of the wheel, I could pound it with the palms of my hands or slap one hand on the outside of my door and the other one on the seat. “Damn, damn, damn!”
When I was six, Dad had taken my older brother Carl and me tobogganing at Mission Ridge. I remembered how the rain against the windshield had turned to applesauce when we exited the main highway and headed into the mountains. The petroleum smell from the grease Dad had wiped on his logging boots filled the inside of the car. We followed the tracks of another car that had climbed the same hill earlier, bouncing so hard in and out of ruts that I had to sit on the edge of my seat and grip my elbows over the front seat between Dad and Carl. When I told Dad I didn’t think we’d make it, he cursed and whacked his hand against the dashboard so hard it made the radio stutter. Carl was ten and slapped the dash with him.
The snow kept falling, the windows fogged up, and we couldn’t see the tracks of the other car anymore. The snow tires spun and the rear end fishtailed each time we came out of a turn. Dad started laughing and Carl copied him even though I knew he was as scared as I was. The engine raced and the tires whined like a wounded animal as we crept closer to the top of the rise. When we neared the summit, the car gained momentum as we flattened out and then plunged down again into a blizzard. Dad whooped and hollered and his eyes got bigger as he leaned into the wheel and let the car hurtle forward blindly. Carl pumped his shoulders up and down in rhythm as if to help us go faster.
The next thing I remembered was tumbling against the insides of the car like a tennis shoe in the clothes dryer. There were breaking glass and screams. Suddenly, the car stopped rolling and there was a pure, otherworldly silence. When I opened my eyes, I thought the dust from the seat c
ushions hovering in the air was the smoke of the afterlife.
I remembered Dad feeding Carl’s limp body out the crumpled window opening. There was some shuffling outside, then both of them disappeared and I was alone. Dad had taken Carl and forgotten me. Maybe he thought I was dead. The only sound was the slow gurgle of gasoline like juice escaping from a thermos bottle. It seemed like hours before a state patrol officer arrived and pulled me out. I had to have my arm in a cast that Dad never got around to signing. Nor did he ever apologize for the wreck or explain why he took Carl out and never came back for me.
As I whistled past the sign to Mount Vernon, I decided I was hungry and found a place to make a U-turn in the median. I realized the highways were utterly unsafe if people could act like me, but I welcomed someone pulling me over just for the chance to bitch at them. Now I was sorry I hadn’t yelled back at the house. Jude was right; I stored things up. That’s probably what Dad had done that day. Mom probably made him take us out so we could use the toboggan they’d given us for Christmas.
In a mall near Bellingham, I bought rum-soaked cigars, a family-size bag of Doritos, squeeze cheese, and a jar of jalapeños that I could spread out on the newspaper in the passenger seat to make nachos. The liquor store had six-packs of airline cocktails and I picked out a pack of margaritas and another one of manhattans. I went back to the Deli for a bag of ice, scooped some off the top, and scattered it across the parking lot. One at a time, I separated the miniature cans from their plastic halter and buried them in the ice on the floor next to me. Then I was back on the road again.
My fear of arrest returned and I held the speedometer to five or six miles over the fifty-five-mile-per-hour limit as I sipped a drink and licked cheese off my fingers. I imagined that the jalapeños were neutralizing the alcohol as I plucked them whole from the stem and flicked the stems and empty cans out the window to destroy the evidence.
A Good Divorce Page 5