A Good Divorce

by John E. Keegan

  Lill’s first diplomatic foray had met resistance. Jude told her they’d work through it with the kids and made an appointment with a family counselor for the four of them. She was convinced that it was still fallout from the divorce and the kids were bound to act up regardless of the sex of her new partner. I found myself pulling for a coup d’etat. The next time the kids ran to me, I wasn’t going to let them go back. I’d hold them hostage until Jude and Lill cleaned up their act. A State Patrol car appeared in the rearview mirror with the blue light flashing. I was sure something had happened to one of the kids and they’d come to find me, but it whizzed past.

  “You know,” Warren said out of the blur of tire tread and wind, “that Lill is a charmer. You think lesbians ever cheat on each other?”

  “Never thought much about it.”

  “What do you think Jude would do if some stud seduced Lill?”

  “Is this a knock-knock joke?”

  “She’d flip out.”

  “At least that.”

  Crossing Snoqualmie Pass, the car sputtered even though the fuel gauge showed half full. We made it as far as the turnoff to the Hyak ski area when we lost all power and had to work our way onto the shoulder. The driver behind us honked, then gunned his engine and passed us with his middle finger pressed against the passenger window. So much for the good karma I’d earned in the traffic jam. I pounded the top of the steering wheel with my palms. Dammit. If it hadn’t been for the separation, we would have traded the Plymouth in by now for something with a warranty. I put on my right turn blinker and both of us slid out the passenger side. I took a business card out of my wallet, found a dull golf pencil in the glove compartment, and wrote a note to leave on the dashboard. “Best offer accepted.”

  With our bags slung over our shoulders, we started hoofing it back to the general store at the summit. The gravel crunched underfoot. Each car let out a windy guffaw as its headlights blew by me. Forget it. I wouldn’t stop for you either. This was the kind of situation where I would have called Warren, except that he was with me. The AAA membership was in Jude’s name.

  “Let’s call Dad,” Warren said.

  I grimaced. “He’s still a hundred miles away.” The prospect of explaining to Dad how I had let the car run down like this was simply too daunting. “I’d rather hitchhike home and call a towing company in the morning.”

  Warren shrugged. “C’est la vie. But let’s get a drink first.”

  Next to the general store there was a bar and truck café. Me and Bobby McGee was playing on the jukebox. In my jeans, a pair of broken-down loafers, and a Gatorade stain down the throat of my shirt, I’d hardly be mistaken for a member of the Washington State Bar. I was more believable as the guy who’d just been released from the Walla Walla penitentiary with twenty bucks in his pocket.

  After a few drinks, Warren befriended the barmaid and she found us a ride back to Seattle with a lanky fellow in Levi’s with holes in the knees and a crumpled button-down cotton shirt. I suddenly felt overdressed again as we followed him to the parking lot. The back of his jeans drooped like an empty mailbag as his feet shuffled along the asphalt. A cigarette dangled from two fingers in his right hand. His Chevy station wagon leaned right. Through the dusty windows, I could see a set of drums in the back amidst a clutter of sleeping bags, rolls of toilet paper, cans of pop, and sundry articles of clothing. The flap on the carton of Pennzoil where I sat was ripped open and there were three cans missing.

  “Shove that shit into the back,” he said.

  “Needs a ring job, huh?” Warren said.

  “This fucker needs a heart transplant,” he said, as he pumped the gas pedal in bursts and puffed a cigarette that seemed glued to the only thick part on him, his lower lip. The starter labored against the flywheel, which turned so slowly that I could count the revolutions. “Come on you cocksucker,” he said. House plants, Jude used to say, picked up on the conversation in the room. If you wanted to say one was dying, she made you go outside the room. If the same were true for cars, we weren’t leaving the parking lot. But then it backfired, shuddered, and started humming. Carney, our driver, smiled through the smoke bush that had grown out of his cigarette.

  The car chattered once we were in the passing lane, where he drove exclusively. Warren tapped me on the shoulder and we exchanged glances. I was sure the steering mechanism was going to snap and wished that I’d changed my will. Everything still went to Jude; I wanted it to go to the kids, with Warren as trustee. The mustiness in the air was the same as the mold from the orange someone had left in my glove compartment one winter when the latch got stuck. Wind whistled through the bullet hole in the window by my ear.

  “Car came with it,” Carney said.

  “Kind of unusual.”

  “Yeah, you’d expect it to be on the driver’s side. Want one?” He extended his pack to me with unfiltered Camels sticking out like stairsteps.

  “No thanks.”

  Warren, who didn’t smoke, took one and gave me a dirty look, which I knew meant that he thought I was standing in judgment on our driver.

  “I appreciate the lift,” I said. “Our car died coming out of the pass.”

  The lighter on the dash popped and he put the flare against the tip of his cigarette. The glow made his lower lip look like a piece of salmon sushi. Then he extended the lighter over his shoulder and into the backseat for Warren. Carney took a long drag, held it a few moments, then blew it into the ceiling upholstery.

  “You from out of state?” he said, as if that might explain the cultural gulf between us.

  “We’re Seattle. Where you from?”

  “Eugene. Home of the duck fucks.” Obviously not a University of Oregon alum.

  “I noticed your drums,” Warren said. “You do gigs up here?” He had to yell to be heard over the collision of the car against the night air.

  I thought Carney said, “Wherever.” He didn’t elaborate and Warren didn’t follow up. The thought occurred to me that this guy could be Derek in twenty years.

  I studied the controls on the dashboard. Although they weren’t lit, the heater controls were on Off. “You mind putting the heater on for a bit?”

  “Busted. Have to use a blanket.” He tipped his head toward the back end of the station wagon. Getting a blanket seemed like a lot of trouble and would only widen the gulf between us. He didn’t seem to mind the chill but, of course, he kept a string of cigarettes going.

  Warren pulled a quilt out of the back and wrapped it around himself. “Can’t beat home cooking,” he yelled into my ear.

  Carney drummed out tunes that were apparently playing in his head, slapping and tapping his knee, the dash, the wheel, anything within reach. His neck undulated like a snake charmer to the rhythms he created. He leaned his head back and yelled at Warren.

  “So what’s waitin’ for you back home, cowboy?”

  “My woman, who else?”

  The driver shook his head. “Sounds like you’re pussy-whipped.” I hadn’t heard that expression since college and wondered if it was sexist or ardently feminist.

  “Ther’re worse fates,” Warren said.

  “Worse what?”

  “Fates,” I yelled.

  Carney gave me a quizzical look.

  “Worse ways to die.”

  He laughed, then punched the lighter and reached for the pack in his shirt pocket all in one celebratory swing of his arm. “Women play games with your head.” Carney tapped his pack against the steering wheel until he could get his lips around the tip of another cigarette. Warren turned him down this time. The lighter popped and he took a long philosophical drag. We were going to learn how the man on the street was handling women’s lib. He blew a piece of tobacco off his tongue. “I had one like that once. Bitch,” he muttered, and I momentarily wondered if I had a moral obligation to straighten him out. Jude had taught me to speak out, but this guy was a ride, not my brother. “She was into all that equal pay and fucking on top shit. She had one problem th
ough.”

  Warren leaned over the seat to hear him better. “What was that?”

  “Couldn’t keep her cunt in her pants.”

  I chuckled along with Carney and Warren.

  “She cuckolded you?” I said.

  “She what?”

  “Cuckold,” I said, as he leaned his head my way. “It’s related to the cuckoo bird. They lay their eggs in someone else’s nest.”

  “I like that,” Carney said. “Cuck-old. Rhymes with fuck-old?”

  “You got it.”

  “You a professor or something?”

  I didn’t want to break the illusion. We were just starting to communicate. On the other hand, here was a chance to convert a skeptic. “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Fuck me! No way!” He took his eyes off the road and looked me up and down like he’d just noticed there was someone in the cockpit with him.

  “No shit. Official member of the bar.”

  “You probably got a pretty wife with long tan legs and a couple of kids in private school.”

  “Used to,” Warren piped in.

  “God bless you, man. What happened?”

  I told him an abridged version of my story, leaving out any mention of the lesbian twist. Carney nodded his head knowingly as I spoke. Every time I gave Jude a compliment, Warren qualified it.

  “That Jude’s some pistol,” is all he said when I finished. Then he seemed to drift into his own reverie for a while. I could feel the car pulling to the right, but Carney kept both hands on the left side of the steering wheel to keep us moving in a straight line. “I stopped once for this woman,” he said. “She had a chest that was flatter than her tire.” He fumbled for his Camels again and punched the lighter. “But she had the face of an angel. Made me smile just looking at her. When I was done with her tire, guess what she said?”

  “No idea.”

  “You helped me, I feel like I should let you sleep with me.”

  “No shit, she said that?” Warren asked. His elbows were locked over the frontseat and he’d pulled the quilt up around his neck.

  Carney lit up again and his skinny chest swelled as he sucked down that first drag. “So what would you do with that, counselor?”

  “That’s remarkable. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “‘Ma’am, that won’t be necessary,’ I told her. Can you believe that? Must’ve been my good upbringing.” He laughed mid-drag and started coughing.

  “What did she say?” Warren asked.

  “She gave me a big watermelon. I cut it open and we sat right there on the shoulder each having a slice. Spittin’ seeds between our legs and our hands drippin’ with watermelon juice like a couple of farm kids. All the time she’s looking at me with that angel smile. I could’ve shot my wad.” Warren was tight against the front seat like we were riding a toboggan together. “The truck drivers in India say they have to have sex to release the engine heat that fills their bodies. I should have told her that.”

  Carney was shocked when he dropped us at the Alhambra and Warren told him I lived in the basement. We traded business cards. He fished his out of the glove box and turned the domelight on, the only thing electrical besides the lighter that worked. There was a blue snare drum in the center of the card with yellow atoms in orbit around it. Carney Browner and the Lasers. With a pen from the visor, he scratched out the phone number on the card and wrote a new one.

  “Call me if you get in trouble,” he said.

  My marriage officially ended with a wimper when Charlie Johnson sent me the findings, conclusions of law, and the decree for my review and approval. I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with Jude getting custody of the kids and me being relegated to visitation two weekends a month, but Justine was showing no signs of depression and seemed to be over her incident. Derek and his mom were still duking it out but I had become convinced from talking to the Group Health professionals that he was waging a valiant fight for Jude and me to stay together. Our little Man of La Mancha. What wasn’t happening said more than anything. They weren’t running to me to save them from the turmoil at the house Lill had described. They were sticking with the decision to live with their mother that they’d announced last fall in the living room.

  While I held my pen poised over the signature block, a thin voice in me waged a half-hearted battle to stay my hand. But a louder, more commanding voice said it’s over, it can’t be fixed, move on. Whoever it was I wanted, I knew it couldn’t be Jude. End this state of ambivalence. Sorry, Derek. I waived notice of presentation, returned the papers to Jude’s attorney by messenger, and he entered them ex parte the same day.

  A page came over the speaker for me while we were discussing new partner admissions in the large conference room, and I excused myself to take the call in my office. I hated those meetings anyway. The unspoken premise was always money. The more partners, the thinner the wedge each of us took from the pie. Someone always brought up the associate/partner ratio. The higher the better. Just when an associate became profitable, we made him (there had only been one her) a partner and cut him in on the profit. It was enough to make me a socialist. Maybe I was still just in mourning over the divorce.

  Mr. Washington, the principal of Seward Elementary, was on the line, and had Derek in his office.

  When I arrived, Derek was slumped in a chair next to the principal’s desk. At least he didn’t look hurt. Mr. Washington quickly ushered me by the elbow to the hallway and the hydraulic closer on the door exhaled behind us. The big clock over the door said 2:10 p.m.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He spoke in hushed tones. “We found him on school property smoking marijuana.”

  “Shit!”

  “There were two of them but the other kid ran. Derek won’t say who it was. The janitor found them under a tarp that covers the rider-mower.”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t just cigarettes?”

  “It wasn’t cigarettes,” he scolded.

  “I believe you, I’m just stupefied.”

  “I have to ask you, sir, do you have reason to believe your son is the supplier?”

  I blanched. “Supplier?”

  “Where could he have gotten it?” I started to answer and he held his hand up to caution me. “I’m not naive, I know some people think it should be legalized. I just need to know what’s going on here.”

  “Mr. Washington, I can assure you he didn’t get this at my house, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “I’ve been principal here for eight years and I’m rather proud of my record.” Then he clenched his fist and pounded his index finger like a tack hammer into the cork bulletin board next to us. “I’ve never … had a single … case … of drugs … in my school.” He was an imposing advocate. His voice dredged only double bass notes. He looked up and down the corridor, then leaned into me. “What is your family situation these days?”

  His question twisted me like a sponge, squeezing beads of perspiration to the surface. My suitcoat suddenly felt too heavy. Mr. Washington was the personification of all my self-doubts. “We’re divorced, you knew that?”

  “I gathered from the dual addresses. What else is going on?”

  “What did Derek say?”

  “He’s being evasive. That’s why I’m asking you. His blowing a weed under the tarp is a symptom of something else. I think he wanted to get caught.”

  “They’re living with their mom,” I said. “I get them a couple of weekends a month and we split holidays. Everyone’s still adjusting.”

  He scratched his spine against the door frame and shook his head as I talked. “Sounds like something’s out of torque.”

  “Believe me, everything’s fine.”

  He pointed toward his office. “With all due respect, sir, you may want to reconsider that statement. If my son were the fourth-grader getting high, I’d say things couldn’t get much worse. Something bad’s going down here and I suggest we check it out.”

  He was right. Mr. Washington was an al
ly, someone who could help me get to the bottom of this. I should be welcoming some professional energy. “You’re right, Mr. Washington. Tell me what I can do and let’s get on with it.”

  Mr. Washington agreed to not involve the police in return for my commitment to cooperate in letting the school district’s counselors make an informal investigation, spend some time with Derek, interview me and his mother. Frankly, I was a bit surprised at his interest. Everyone said the Seattle public schools were going into the toilet. White flight. The best students were heading for the suburbs and transferring to private schools while the teachers who remained were punching the clock, cooing for the public once a year at parents’ night, and dogging it the rest of the time. Like a samurai warrior, Mr. Washington had leapt front and center to fight anyone who would threaten his chalk and blackboard empire.

  I was furious at Derek and told him so when I got him to the car. “I don’t get it, Derek. You’re smart, you get along with people. This kind of crap is dead-end.”

  Derek kept looking out the window. I didn’t know where to take him so I pulled over in front of Don’s Grocery and let the engine idle. “How many times have you done this?”

  He mumbled something.

  “What?”

  “A couple,” he shouted into the dashboard. That’s the same thing he’d told Mr. Washington.

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “A friend.”

  “Where’d he get it?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Whoever this kid is, he’s no friend of yours and I’m going to call everyone in your class until I find him.”

  Derek bunched his fists into his eye sockets and leaned into the passenger door, his forehead resting on the window sill. “Don’t call.”