Kramer vs. Kramer

by Avery Corman

  What you were supposed to do, it seemed to him, was call a buddy. Hey, help. Something shitty happened. You won’t believe this … He did not know whom to call. He was suddenly aware of how isolated he had become in marriage. He had no friends. He had dinner party friendships. He did not have a buddy. There was dentist Charlie, who did not seem to be listening the last time they talked and who was more interested in revealing to him with sly pride how he was making it in his dentist chair: Marv, the Newsweek salesman, was not a friend. He saw Dan at football games. The deepest conversations they ever had were on the strengths and weaknesses of interior linemen for the football Giants. He and Larry had drifted since Fire Island days. Larry was still cruising in his girlmobile. He bought a new car and by choice selected a station wagon for the transporting of women across resort lines. Ted’s brother, Ralph, was never a buddy. Ralph was in Chicago and called for an evening when he came to New York. They did not ask each other for anything all year and consulted briefly on an anniversary gift for their parents so there would not be duplication, the big brother who made a lot of money in the liquor business and wasn’t there. Once he had buddies in the old neighborhood, and then in college—he had met Larry and Dan then, and over his bachelor years, people from various jobs who were friends for a while, but they were gone. He had moved into an enclave of similarly married couples, and there was not another man he regularly talked to.

  Needing to tell somebody, he called Larry. He reached him at the real estate office where Larry worked.

  “Ted, baby, how are you?”

  “Not so good. Joanna just walked out on me. Just left. Walked out on me and our little boy.”

  “Why, man?”

  “I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She just split?”

  “It was very sudden.”

  “Is there a fella?”

  “I don’t think so. Feminists will applaud her.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “She left you with the kid! What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What can I do for you? Want me to come over?”

  “I’ll let you know. Thanks, Larry.”

  It was not very satisfactory, but he had unburdened himself a little, and in emotional and physical exhaustion he passed out for a few hours only to awake with a jolt; as with a vile headache a person tries to sleep away and it returns the moment he opens his eyes, he opened his eyes and his wife had still left him with the child.

  If he could only get to Friday and then to the weekend, maybe she would be back or call perhaps. After Thelma brought Billy back, he put him to sleep with extra care, reading him several stories. Joanna’s name did not come up.

  He made the same arrangement for Thelma to take care of Billy on Friday, and owing her an explanation by now, said that he and Joanna had had a “falling out,” his discreet usage. Joanna was “taking a few days by herself.”

  “I understand,” Thelma said.

  He called the office and repeated his not-feeling-well line and wrote down his phone calls—nothing from Joanna. He waited for the mail, there were only bills. He waited by the phone and when it rang he jumped to hear that Teleprompter wanted to sell him cable television he already had, and Larry wanted to sell him what he did not need.

  “How you doing, Ted, baby?”

  “So-so.”

  “I told this chick the story. She went nuts with compassion. Why don’t you get a sitter for the kid tonight—”

  “No, I’ve got to stick around.”

  “—then I’ll bring her by, we’ll have some drinks, and then you give me a wink and I’ll leave like in the old days.”

  “I don’t think so, Larry, but thanks.”

  “She loves to save people. She’s like The Screwing Nun.”

  “I’ll call you, Larry.”

  In one day, Ted was already gossip on the singles’ grapevine.

  At night, Ted and Billy followed the adventures of Babar the Elephant to New York, to Washington, to another planet. Was Joanna in any of these places? And weary from Babar’s travels, Ted turned out the light. A half-hour later, when Ted thought Billy had already gone to sleep, he called out from his room.

  “Daddy, when is my mommy coming back?”

  Why were children always so damn direct, he wondered.

  “I don’t know, Billy. We’ll figure something out.”

  “What, Daddy?”

  “We’ll see. Go to sleep. Tomorrow is Saturday. We’ll go on the bike to the zoo and have fun. Think about that—”

  “Can I have pizza?”

  “You can have pizza.”

  “Good.”

  The boy fell asleep content. They went to the zoo and Billy had an outstanding day, conning the pizza out of his father by eleven in the morning. He got a pony cart ride, a carrousel ride, they went to a local playground, he climbed, made a friend. Then Ted took Billy out for Chinese food for dinner. Ted was treading water. He was going to have to deal with this, make some decisions. He could play this out for only another day perhaps and then it was Monday, he had a job to be at—unless he took some vacation days to gain more time. Joanna could come back, call.

  At eight in the morning on Sunday, the mailman came with a special delivery letter. It was for Billy with no return address. The postmark was Denver, Colorado.

  “This is from your mommy to you.”

  “Read it to me, Daddy.”

  The letter was written by hand. Ted read it slowly so that Billy could absorb it, and so that he could.

  My dear, sweet Billy: Mommy has gone away. Sometimes in the world, daddys go away and the mommys bring up their little boys. But sometimes a mommy can go away, too, and you have your daddy to bring you up. I have gone away because I must find some interesting things to do for myself in the world. Everybody has to and so do I. Being your mommy was one thing and there are other things and this is what I have to do. I did not get a chance to tell you this and that is why I am writing to you now, so you can know this from me. Of course, I will always be your mommy and I will send you toys and birthday cards. I just won’t be your mommy in the house. But I will be your mommy of the heart. And I will blow you kisses that will come to you when you are sleeping. Now I must go and be the person I have to be. Listen to your daddy. He will be like your wise Teddy. Love, Mommy.

  TED ALLOWED FOR AN instant the pain it must have caused her to write it, measured by the pain it caused him to read it. Billy took the letter to hold in his hands. Then he put it in his drawer where he kept his special coins and birthday cards.

  “Mommy went away?”

  “Yes, Billy.”

  “Forever, Daddy?”

  Goddamn you, fucking Joanna! Goddamn you!

  “It looks that way, Billy.”

  “She’s going to send me toys?”

  “Yes, she’s going to send you toys.”

  “I like toys.”

  It was official. She was gone to both of them.

  ON MONDAY WHEN HE took Billy to school, he drew the teacher aside and said, “Mrs. Kramer and I have terminated our relationship.” Billy was in his care and she should be alert to him in case he might be feeling upset. The teacher said she was very sad to hear it and assured him Billy would be cared for—he could be the cookie boy that morning.

  Ted would have much preferred this day to be the cookie boy rather than the bread-and-butter man. He had his job to protect, especially now. Billy was wholly dependent on him now. If it were true, as he surmised, that his business stock had gone up when he first became a family man, did his stock go down now that he was a cuckold? No, a cuckold was someone cheated on. He was not that. What was he?

  “You poor bastard” was what he was in his advertising manager’s view. “Just walked out?” Jim O’Conn
or asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “She catch you screwing?”

  “No.”

  “Was she?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re up a tree, Ted.”

  “Well, what I’d like to do is take a week of my vacation now. Use my time to get organized.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “Of course, I don’t intend any of this to affect my performance here.”

  “Ted, to tell you the truth, you’re doing fine. Better than the company. We may have to do another pay cut.”

  Ted’s face tightened. Did his stock go down that fast?

  “But considering your situation, we’ll leave you out of it. See that? By not getting a cut, you just got a raise.”

  “If only I could go to the bank on it.”

  “So what are you going to do with the kid?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you going to keep him?”

  “He’s my boy.”

  “Doesn’t he have grandparents? This is going to be rough.”

  The thought of doing anything except keeping Billy had not occurred to Ted. But O’Connor was a smart man. He was raising a question. Ted wondered if O’Connor knew something he did not.

  “I thought I’d make the best of it.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  Was it what he wanted? He decided to follow O’Connor’s question down the line. What about keeping Billy? There could be other options here—a way to force Joanna to take Billy. He would have to find her first. And even if he found her, why would she change her mind? She hated her life, she said. She was suffocating. Ted could not conceive that she would suddenly accept all the supposed pressure she was walking out on just because he tracked her down in a Holiday Inn with a tennis pro—he was beginning to allow himself little scenarios about her. No, I’m going to have to forget Joanna. You sure came up with a unique little Bicentennial celebration, lady.

  What about other options? He would not send a four-year-old to boarding school. The grandparents? It seemed to Ted his own parents had exhausted themselves being grandparents to Ralph’s two children over the years. Ted was peeved at how little interest they had in Billy on their occasional visits to New York. His father would go into the bedroom to watch reruns of The Lucy Show while in Ted’s mind Billy was doing something spectacular like smiling. His mother was always holding forth about how wonderful Ralph was when he was a baby or how wonderful Ralph’s children were when they were babies. If his parents could not stay interested in Billy for a weekend in New York he did not think they would have much of an attention span through the Florida rainy season. His in-laws were the opposite in abundance. They were pathologically nervous. “Don’t let him stand there, he’ll fall out the window.” “Mother, we have guards on the windows.” “He’s running a temperature.” “No, Harriet, the day is running a temperature. It’s ninety degrees!” He could turn Billy over to them and hope the boy would survive. Billy would certainly not fall out of any windows with them. Would they even care about Billy? Were they even Ted’s in-laws any longer? None of it made sense to him. None of them could have Billy. He was his child. He belonged to him, that peanut face. Ted would do the best he could. It was what he wanted.

  He met Billy at school and brought him home. Thelma called and offered to take him. The children played well together. It was no imposition. She wanted to know if he had heard from Joanna. He owed people an explanation, he thought, so he told Thelma that Joanna was not coming back. She was giving up Billy. Thelma gasped. He could hear it over the phone, a palpable gasp.

  “Good Lord!”

  “It’s not the end of the world,” he said, giving himself a pep talk. “It’s a beginning.”

  “Good Lord!”

  “Thelma, we sound like we’re in a soap opera. These things happen,” he said, although he could not think of it happening to anyone he had ever known.

  The phone was busy the rest of the day. He had fallen into a pat explanation: Joanna apparently had to get out of what she viewed as an impossible situation. She would not seek outside help, and that was the way it was. People were offering child care, meals, anything they could do to help. Bring her back, he thought, just bring her back.

  While Billy played at Thelma’s house, Ted went through the boy’s clothes, his toys, his medicines, trying to familiarize himself with his needs. Joanna always took care of these details.

  The next day, a brief note came to Ted, again without a forwarding address, this time with a Lake Tahoe, Nevada, postmark.

  “Dear Ted: There is a certain amount of legal shit. I’m having a lawyer send papers regarding our pending divorce. Also am sending you documents you need for legal custody of Billy. Joanna.”

  He thought it to be the ugliest note he had ever seen in his life.

  SIX

  BEFORE HE CALLED HIS parents or hers or anyone else, he called Mr. Gonzales, who was suddenly the most important person in the world to reach. Mr. Gonzales was his customer’s representative at American Express. The $2000 Joanna had taken from their joint savings account was the exact amount her parents had given them when they were married. Ted assumed she thought of it as her money. They both had American Express cards, but Ted was listed as the policy holder. All her statements came to him. She could have been out there, flying to different cities, signing for gin-and-tonics at swimming pools, taking gigolos up to her room—and the bill would come to him. Now, that was a cuckold, he decided, modern style. He called Mr. Gonzales and had their cards voided with a new card number issued for him.

  MRS. COLBY ADVERTISED IN The New York Times and the Yellow Pages, “Household help for discriminating people.” As an advertising man, Ted placed a value on the word “discriminating” as meaning “we charge more.” At least Mrs. Colby did not also advertise window washers and floor scrapers as part of her personnel, as some of the others did. He wanted an agency in the business of supplying reliable people who did this kind of thing for a living. He was not certain at first just what kind of thing this was. He found himself involved in calibrations he never conceived of—do you go for someone stronger on cleaning than cooking, stronger on child care than cleaning? The advice of friends was, You’ll never get anyone good at everything, which collided with his fantasy of a Mary Poppins straightening out his life. He had rejected the idea of Billy’s being in a day-care center. The day-care centers in the city were a scandal—reduced funds, poor facilities—he would have trouble on his income getting him in anyway, and he did want to keep Billy’s routine on some normal pattern. He went to see Mrs. Colby in her Madison Avenue office. On the walls were letters of recommendation of people from U. N. delegates to borough presidents of Brooklyn. Her office was tearoom Victorian, and behind a desk sat Mrs. Colby, a crisp woman in her sixties with a British accent.

  “So, Mr. Kramer, was it a sleep-in or by-day you were wanting?”

  “By-day, I would think.”

  Ted had determined a sleep-in housekeeper would cost a minimum of $125 a week, which was beyond his budget. A college student might keep an eye on Billy and do light housekeeping for her room and meals, but this might not be a stable enough influence. Ted wanted a substitute mommy. What was within his means and more sensible would be a nine-to-six woman in the $90-$100-a-week category—and who spoke good English. Thelma, his neighbor, had advised Ted on this. “The person is going to be around Billy a lot,” she said. “You don’t want him growing up with a foreign accent.” Ted was amused by this at first and then he was not. The idea was for Billy not to feel too different.

  “Someone who speaks good English, Mrs. Colby.”

  “Oh, good English. Well, now you’re talking closer to a hundred-­five a week than ninety to a hundred.”

  “Just for a good accent?”

  “For a good person, Mr. Kramer. We don’t cotton to flotsam and jetsam around here.”

  “All right, closer to a hundred-five.” Ted realized
something had just been negotiated and he had lost.

  “Now I’ve got to know something about your personal situation. It’s yourself and your little four-year-old boy, you said, and you’re in advertising?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Mrs. Kramer?”

  “Flew the coop, Mrs. Colby.” A brand new way of putting it.

  “Ah, yes. We’ve been getting more of that lately.”

  “You have?”

  “That’s right.”

  You would know, wouldn’t you, lady, he thought. You’ve got the goddamn pulse of the city in this little office.

  “We’re still mostly your mothers-without-husbands, of course. On your fathers-without-wives, you’ve got your normal deceased, your strokes, your highway fatalities, your freak accidents—slipping and falling on your flights of stairs and in your bathrooms, your drownings kind of thing—”

  He seemed to detect her eyes twinkling as she did her run-through.

  “—your heart attacks, your—”

  “I get the idea.”

  “But we’ve had a few … ‘flying the coop,’ as you put it. One in particular came across my desk recently, a woman of thirty-eight, two children—girls, ten and seven,—didn’t leave a note or anything. Just took out her husband’s dress shirts and eliminated her wastes all over them.”

  “Mrs. Colby—”

  “Ended up institutionalized, so I wouldn’t put that as a flying the coop exactly. More of a mental defective.”

  “Could we discuss housekeepers, please?”

  “I have three marvelous people in mind. In the hundred-fifteen-a-week range.”

  “You said closer to a hundred-five.”

  “Let me check my cards. Ah, yes, a hundred-ten.”

  “Have you ever thought of selling advertising space, Mrs. Colby?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Let me see the people and then we’ll discuss the price. After nine at night in my house. And I’d like this settled soon.”

  “Very good, Mr. Kramer. I’ll call you later in the day.”