Kramer vs. Kramer

by Avery Corman

  “But I knew she wasn’t just another California crazy. We get a lot of them.”

  “I guess they come for the raisins.”

  Ted was not going to make it easy. He did not consider the man his friend in any way.

  Willis, who had put on his raincoat, began to shudder from the cold, and now that Ted realized Willis was not attempting to impress with his ruggedness, he considered it senseless to continue this on the sidewalk. He suggested they adjourn to a nearby coffee shop, where Willis gulped down a hot chocolate, having lost the duel of the blood.

  “Can you handle bluntness, Mr. Kramer?”

  “Oh, please. And call me Ted, if you’re being blunt.”

  “I think she had a really lousy marriage with you. It got screwed up in her head, the marriage and the baby. I think Joanna over­reacted and she realizes it now. She made too big a break.”

  “The lady wanted to be free. That was her decision.”

  “You know, the night she first told me about the boy, she cried for three hours. It was like a dam bursting—the revelation of this child she had been hiding from me, and from herself.”

  “He’s difficult to hide.”

  “Look, Joanna’s had a chance to be on her own. And now she’s discovered something. That she made a mistake. She overreacted. Would you want to live with a mistake if it could be rectified?”

  “Maybe this one can’t be. Ron, you obviously don’t know shit about New York weather, and maybe you don’t know shit about Joanna. She’s had it easy—”

  “You call what she’s lived through easy?”

  “Listen, all she has to do is say ‘Sorry,’ and she’s got somebody like you ready to back her up. Tell me, are you going to marry her?”

  “What’s it to you? Are you her father?”

  That much was clear. He did not care for Ted either.

  “We’ve been together for six months.”

  “How sweet.” Ted felt like putting him back out on the sidewalk in his raincoat.

  “I decided to come East, set up our New York office and be with Joanna to help her do this.”

  “And you’re supposed to talk me into it?”

  “I thought I could help. It sounds like you two don’t have any communication any longer. Ted, you’d have visitation rights. And consider this—Joanna would be a wonderful mother because of what she’s done. She really chooses this now.”

  “I’m not convinced.”

  “Maybe you’re uninformed. If she goes to court, you’re going to lose.”

  “I don’t think so. My lawyer doesn’t think so.”

  “That’s his job. You think you can go into court and prove someone who looks like Joanna is unfit?”

  “Maybe I’ll prove that I’m fit.”

  “Ted, it’s time consuming, it’s expensive, it’s a strain on everybody, and it’s very unpleasant. I don’t want Joanna to go through an experience like that if she doesn’t have to. And I don’t give a damn about you, but just as a human being, I don’t see why you should have to go through with it either.”

  Ted believed him on this. He was persuaded this was why Willis had interceded, along with, of course, trying to win out of court.

  “Ron, everything you say about everything may be true. But you haven’t convinced me on one very important point. Why should I give up somebody I care so much about? You’d have to be his father to know what I mean. I’m his father. If he were my runaway bunny, I would find him.”

  JOANNA LEFT A MESSAGE with Ted’s secretary. “May I see Billy, Saturday at eleven, return at five?” Ted called back and left a message with her switchboard, “Okay for eleven.” On Saturday, she buzzed and he sent Billy down. At five, she buzzed and she sent Billy up. They never met. The child passed between them.

  Billy seemed happy with the day. Joanna’s parents had come into town, and they went with Joanna and Billy to the zoo. Ted felt he could live with this situation, however impersonal. Billy could stay with him as he had been and Joanna could still see her son. On Monday morning after he left Billy at school, a man walked up to him on the street.

  “Mr. Kramer, I have been instructed to give you this.” He slapped a subpoena into his hand. Joanna Kramer was taking Ted Kramer to court to gain custody of the child.

  SEVENTEEN

  IN THE CASE OF Kramer v. Kramer, Joanna asked the court in her petition to overlook her original decision to leave the child in the custody of the father. She said the decision had been made “under the mental anguish of an onerous marriage.”

  “After making restorations to my physical and emotional well-being,” she stated, “accomplishing this through a change of locale, I returned to New York City, where I now reside and am employed. At the time that I conceded custody of my child to the father, I was not in a stable period of my life. I erred in conceding custody. To err is human. To be of sound mind, of good health, of economic self-sufficiency and for a mother to be deprived by a mistake of daily contact with her son is inhuman. My son is only five years of age and needs the special care, the nurturing only a mother can provide. As the boy’s natural mother, drawn back to my child by deep and profound feelings, I ask that I be granted custody. I ask that the warmth and good spirit the child has already shown in our recent times together continue to flourish, with neither mother nor child deprived of the closeness and naturalness of their love.”

  “REAL DIRECT,” SHAUNESSY SAID. “They’re going right at it—motherhood.”

  Ted Kramer spent three hours in John Shaunessy’s office, the lawyer working for his fee, taking his client through a course in custody proceedings. The first step would be to answer the petition and argue that custody should not be disturbed. In Shaunessy’s view this was unlikely to be successful, since the judge had already allowed the papers to be served. A hearing, he believed, was inevitable.

  The custody hearing, as Shaunessy described it, would be similar to a trial, an adversary proceeding conducted before a judge. Each side would be permitted to call witnesses, with direct examination by counsel and cross-examination by opposing counsel. After hearing closing arguments, the judge would reserve decision, and in a few days or a few weeks, a judgment would be made as to who would be awarded the child.

  As they went over details of the marriage and discussed possible witnesses, Ted lost his grasp of it. That he was actually sitting in a lawyer’s office mapping strategy for keeping his son seemed monstrous. The words grew distant. He was not concentrating.

  “Ted?”

  “There’s no way to hide, is there?” as he came back.

  “Not if you want him. Some people just default.”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’ve got the ball. She’s got to take it away from you.”

  Shaunessy knew Joanna’s lawyer, whose name was Paul Gressen. He regarded him as very able. The judge, a man named Herman B. Atkins, he considered “A pretty humane guy.” The hearing would cost Ted $5000, win or lose—and a similar amount, perhaps, if Joanna should win and he had to pay her court costs. What was the price of a child, he wondered. Ted would find the money. He knew that. Paradoxically, the person with the price tag on his head, with his imprecise knowledge of what anything cost, would not have been able to distinguish between the cost of his new winter jacket and the cost of keeping him.

  The winning or losing of William Kramer would be determined by the court under the traditional legal principle of “the best interests of the child.” “What we’ve got to do, Ted, is show that the best interests of the child is you.” They explored Ted’s fitness as a parent, with qualities he would not have listed for himself as redeeming—that he was not an alcoholic, drug addict, homosexual or ex-convict, that he was employed, which he certainly had considered, and that he was not guilty of “gross moral turpitude.”

  He was not even guilty of casual sex, he realized. Vivian, his most recent person, had been unavailable to him the few times he called of late. He wondered if this was because of her apprehensions over
his difficulties or because of his remoteness as a result of them. But he could not stop to examine it any further, a matter which seemed so insignificant now.

  From his layman’s position, Ted presumed the fact that Joanna left was a compelling point against her, but Shaunessy explained Haskins v. Haskins, an important decision with a mother giving away custody and then wanting the child back. The judge established a precedence for awarding the child to the mother, ruling in the case that “Motherhood is not so easily abdicated.”

  Shaunessy’s sense was that Joanna might be vulnerable on the issue of her history, that her comings and goings might hold some weight emotionally, but the main argument as he saw it was to be Ted Kramer. Ted was a responsible, dedicated, loving father, and the best interests of the child would not be served by having him taken from his father’s care.

  “Plus I think we take a run at her mental stability. Did she ever talk to the walls?”

  “Joanna?”

  “Ted, this is a dirty game we’re in. They’ll use anything they can against you. So think dirty. Good for us if we can show she was a little off her keester for running out, even if she wasn’t certifiable.”

  “She never talked to the walls, John.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  IN THINKING OF PEOPLE who might stand up for him, he wondered if his housekeeper could be a witness. She knew Billy better than anyone and had observed father and son at home, but he hesitated in asking her. The woman was so unsophisticated, putting her on the stand seemed to be exploiting her, as he suggested to Shaunessy.

  “Come on, Ted. Get into the game. You put your pet parakeet up there if he can say something in your behalf.”

  “She’s just a very innocent lady.”

  “Sign her up. We’ll coach her.”

  But Etta Willewska was confused by the nature of the proceedings.

  “Mrs. Kramer wants to take Billy away?”

  “Well, she has the right to try.”

  “He loves you so much.”

  Come on, Ted, get yourself into the game.

  “Mrs. Willewska, would you be willing to say that in court?”

  “To speak in front of people?”

  “Yes. To tell them how we live here.”

  He asked the lawyer about Billy. Does he go into court? Is he a witness? For which side?

  “No, Ted. The judge might want to talk to him in chambers, but I doubt it. The boy is non sut juris. Too young to testify. He’s incompetent.”

  “Just so he doesn’t know it,” he said, relieved.

  Ted had chosen not to inform Billy that his parents were about to go into court to fight over him. And he said nothing at work. He was caught in a cycle on his job—if he became too preoccupied with the hearing, he could risk losing his job, and if he lost his job, he could risk losing the hearing.

  On the return date of the petition, he went down to the courthouse, finding the time between sales calls. Shaunessy told Ted his appearance was unnecessary, that normally the lawyers argue these motions without their clients present, but Ted did not want any of this to happen without his knowledge, and he met his lawyer outside a room in the matrimonial part of the courthouse. Joanna was absent from the proceedings, leaving her lawyer to attempt a quick maneuver before the judge. The lawyer moved that Joanna’s petition be complied with on the force of her statement, that custody be given to her with no hearing required. The judge, a small, bald man in his sixties, swatted it away with the same ease that he dismissed Shaunessy’s plea that no hearing be required, and that custody should not be disturbed.

  Paul Gressen was a suave man in his late forties, wearing a smartly shaped suit with a matching silk handkerchief and tie. He had a soft voice and an ironic smile, which he used tactically. John Shaunessy was not to be outlawyered in pose or tailoring. He was a tall, imposing figure with his gray hair and his own courtroom uniform, a three-piece blue suit with a white carnation in his lapel. But in the end, the lawyers’ poses and their legal maneuvering did not alter what Shaunessy had predicted earlier would be the result—a hearing. The judge expressed his interest in expediting the matter, due to “the young age of the child.” He then set a date for the hearing to be held in three weeks.

  Shaunessy stepped out into the corridor with Ted and apologized for not leaving with him, but he had other clients’ business to conduct here. They would talk in the morning. Ted, alone, headed for the lobby and walked down the steps of the courthouse, to be hereafter considered by the court as “the respondent” in the action brought by “the petitioner.”

  THE JUDGE APPOINTED A psychologist to investigate the respective homes and personalities of the parties in the dispute. The psychologist came to Ted’s apartment on a weekday night, a chubby lady in her forties who never smiled. Dr. Alvarez walked through the house, opened cupboards, the refrigerator, bedroom closets, the bathroom medicine chest. She asked if Billy could play in his room for a few minutes, and she took out a clipboard and pen to interview Ted. She wanted to know how he spent his day, how his time with Billy was distributed, what activities they shared together, what he did when he was alone, did anyone else stay in the house with him. He mentioned Etta, but the intent of the question was purely sexual, which he learned when she followed up by asking directly:

  “Mr. Kramer, do you have sex here with anyone?”

  When I can, lady. Did you have anything in mind?

  “Doctor, I attempt to conduct my social life discreetly. At the moment, I am not seeing anyone in particular.”

  “Does that distress you?”

  “Not unduly.”

  “What does?”

  “Distress me?”

  Your being here, this hearing, Joanna, her lawyer, the judge, being judged on the most fundamental part of what I am.

  “I don’t know how to answer that. The normal things that distress people. The cost of living, my child being ill …”

  “Very well. I’d like to talk to the child, if I may. Privately.”

  In the doorway of Billy’s room, he had a metropolis in progress, toy cars being driven by superheroes, his leather belt as a highway, blocks stacked into buildings, all of which prevented the door from being closed. Ted was able to listen from the living room.

  “What do you have here, Billy?” she asked.

  “Detroit.”

  “Have you ever been to Detroit?”

  “No, but I’ve been to Brooklyn.”

  Ted was curious if she was writing all this down.

  She asked him what his favorite games, activities, people were. For people he mentioned Kim, Thelma, Mrs. Willewska, Daddy, and Batman.

  “What about your mommy?”

  “Oh, sure. My mommy.”

  “Do you like to be with your mommy?”

  Ted began to get uncomfortable. He wanted to break in and tell her she was leading the witness.

  “Oh, sure.”

  “What do you like best about her?”

  “Lunch in a restaurant.”

  “And what do you like best about your daddy?”

  “Playing.”

  “Tell me, does your daddy ever hit you?”

  “Lots of times.”

  This brought Ted right outside the door.

  “When does he hit you?”

  “When I’m bad.”

  Billy, what are you doing?

  “He hits me on the Planet Kritanium when I steal the buried treasure from the famous peanut butter factory.”

  “In real life, when does he hit you?”

  “My daddy doesn’t hit me, silly. Why would my daddy hit me?”

  The interview ended right there. Dr. Alvarez said goodbye, took a last look at the environment, and the night concluded for Ted and William Kramer with the flying of Fred Flintstone in Batman’s plane into Detroit.

  ON A MONDAY, THE day before the hearing, Ted went in to see the advertising manager at work and said he needed a few days off, they could take it from his vacation time, but his ex-wife wa
s contesting the custody of his child. He had held off telling anyone in the office in order to eliminate gossip or doubts about him, and now he would have his job through the hearing. He went through his work day, making sales rounds, diffidently now, his ability to be attentive breaking down by the hour. At 5 P.M., he went home to his son, who still did not have any sense that the following morning at nine-thirty, Kramer v. Kramer was on the court calendar.

  ON THE FACADE OF the courthouse it said, “The True Administration of Justice is the Firmest Pillar of Good Government.” Good government? All I want is my boy.

  Ted Kramer entered the courtroom for the hearing. When he looked around, he was very moved, seeing the people there, his people who had come to help. Thelma, Charlie—God, Charlie, what is it costing you to be here?—Thelma and Charlie sitting next to each other, joined for this moment by Ted’s need, Etta, wearing an Easter bonnet of a kind, Larry’s wife, Ellen, who thought that because she was a teacher her presence might be useful, Sandy, his sister-in-law, who had flown in from Chicago, and Jim O’Connor with a haircut and a new shirt and tie, all here out of love to help him keep his son.

  Joanna entered, looking beautiful in a wool knit dress, accompanied by Ron Willis and her lawyer. She and the lawyer took places at the table facing the judge’s chair. Ted began to move forward to join his attorney at their table when the door opened and in came Joanna’s parents. They looked away from him in what appeared to be deep embarrassment. His former in-laws were here apparently to testify against him. They took seats to the back, on the other side of the family.

  The room was stately, a high ceiling, oak benches and mahogany furniture in good condition, “In God We Trust” on the wall facing the courtroom, an American flag to the side. The judge arrived in his robes, the guard announced, “All rise!” the stenographer took his place in front near the witness chair and they were ready to begin. Ted took a long, probing breath, searching for air.

  JOANNA AS THE PETITIONER had the right to the first round, and her lawyer placed her on the stand immediately as a witness in her own behalf. They would not be bothered building a case with secondary characters. Motherhood, the mother, was their main argument, and her persona was placed in evidence.