by Susan Rieger
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
MEMORANDUM
Attorney Work Product
From: Sophie Diehl
To: David Greaves
RE: Ms. Maria Meiklejohn: Settlement Offer Approved
Date: May 24, 1999
Attachments:
Ms. Meiklejohn waltzed into my office today, all smiles and complaisance, nothing like her recent correspondence. She approved the letter and settlement offer I drafted for Kahn, the bottom-line offer, and the bill. They made her practically giddy with pleasure—she positively hooted several times as she read over the papers—and she was surprised the bill was so low. “I thought I’d used up the retainer. Are you sure you’re not undercharging me?” She liked the request for reimbursement alimony and thought the time I spent on the memo well worth it. She said her husband was going to go berserk when he read the offer. “I’m feeling like Napoleon at Trafalgar. I’m not going to win, but I’ll do serious damage to the other side.” (My mother once said something very much to the same effect, though tailored more to my parents’ particularly apt nationalities. I thought it was a French/British thing; apparently not. Do all divorcing women feel like Napoleon, grandiose and fatalistic? What do all divorcing men feel like?) She smiled at me. “It’s better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees, no?” I asked if she was worried about her husband’s response. “Oh, I’m ready for him,” she said. “There’s really nothing he can do to me. Jane is the only thing that really matters, and if he challenges me on custody, I’ll sic my father on him. Just let me know if you need more money.” And then she was gone. She must have upped her meds.
The offer will go out tomorrow.
P.S. I shouldn’t have been disrespectful about lawyers in my letter to Ms. Meiklejohn. I’ll do my best to see it doesn’t happen again.
P.P.S. You must agree that having to behave oneself all the time is a downside of civil practice. Don’t you find it at least a bit constricting? Don’t you ever want to say what you’re really thinking?
IV. NEGOTIATIONS
BRUCE MEIKLEJOHN
50 SAINT CLOUD
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
May 25, 1999
David Greaves
Traynor, Hand, Wyzanski
222 Church Street
New Salem, NA 06555
Dear David:
Maria showed me the settlement offer. That little Sophie Diehl is dynamite. I’d like her to work for me. Just kidding. Where did she go to law school?
The bill was a surprise. You charge me that much for a tenth of the time. You don’t have to eat the bill. I’ll pay. It’s worth it. I’d give anything to be in the room when Durkheim reads that letter.
I’d like to take you and Ms. Diehl to lunch at the Plimouth Club. What do you say to next Thursday, June 3?
Thanks for coming to the New York meeting. I know you don’t like being window dressing (not for three days), but having you there was very useful. For the first time since negotiations started, they looked worried. As they should. I’m going to take them over, one way or the other. You made them see that. How many shares will I have to sell to pay that bill? Just kidding.
Let me know about the 3rd.
Sincerely,
Harry Redux
* * *
From: Sophie Diehl
To: Maggie Pfeiffer
Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 23:28:54
Subject: Harry Redux 5/26/99 11:28 PM
Dear Maggie:
Harry showed up tonight around 9, drunk as a skunk. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone that drunk since high school. He couldn’t stand up and was sloppily affectionate. (Memories of Jack.) At least he didn’t puke all over everything. In high school the boys always puked everywhere, on the car seat, on themselves, on you. Did they drink to puke? Anyway, Harry kept on saying how sorry he was. God, I hate drunks. I put him in the shower, made him drink a quart of water, then put him to bed. He’s there now. He hasn’t shaved in days, and he’s got huge, dark shadows under his eyes, like Nehru. He looks awful and yet he’s still so beautiful. I don’t know what he’s been up to—other than his cups in Jack Daniel’s. I couldn’t get a coherent word out of him, except, of course, “Sorry.” Do I sleep on the couch, or do I get into bed with him?
I don’t know what I’m doing.
Love,
Sophie
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
MEMORANDUM
Attorney Work Product
From: David Greaves
To: Sophie Diehl
RE: Bruce Meiklejohn’s Letter on MMM’s Settlement Offer
Date: May 27, 1999
Attachments: Bruce Meiklejohn’s Letter of May 25, 1999
Bruce Meiklejohn has invited you and me to lunch at the Plimouth Club on June 3. Can you make it? I think you’d enjoy yourself. Let me know. We can go somewhere else. Porter’s would work for you, wouldn’t it? He was very impressed with your work on the settlement offer. He said he wanted you to work for him. I’ve attached his letter.
That quote from Ms. Meiklejohn about dying on your feet. Where’s that from? Hemingway? No Frenchman said that, nor any Englishman. Men think they’re Sherman marching on Atlanta or Grant taking Richmond. Again, divorce as war, but a civil war, and victory is not in doubt.
P.S. I’m sorry I roped you into this divorce. But, come clean, aren’t you having a little fun with it? Truce?
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
MEMORANDUM
Attorney Work Product
From: Sophie Diehl
To: David Greaves
RE: Bruce Meiklejohn’s Invitation
Date: May 27, 1999
Attachments:
I’d like to have lunch with Bruce Meiklejohn—at Porter’s, not at the Plimouth Club, but we’ll have to change the date. I’ve got an evidentiary hearing on the 3rd. How about next Tuesday, the 8th? I promise to behave myself, but of course I can’t work for him. I’d be disowned. If you think I’m cranky now, just put me in the library with the Uniform Commercial Code. The only thing I remember from my course on commercial transactions (viz., the only thing I had to remember, according to my professor) was that the bank never loses.
The quote about dying on one’s feet is attributed to La Pasionaria, during the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway wasn’t a bad guess (he may even have used it in For Whom the Bell Tolls), though you clearly didn’t grow up under the tutelage of a Marxist father. (See supra, on being disowned.) That was my father’s favorite war. (Mine is WWI, the most heartbreaking slaughter.) He even wrote a book on England’s tacit support of Franco and the Nationalists (Papa’s interpretation), The Sixth Column.
I was planning to take off tomorrow for the Memorial Day weekend. I hope that’s okay. I’m going to Wellfleet, to my mother’s and Jake’s. My sibs are all coming. Is there anything else I need to do before I go? I’m up on all my other cases.
My parents’ divorce was a guerrilla war. The collateral damage was extensive and the pacification program unsuccessful.
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
May 27, 1999
Bruce Meiklejohn
50 Saint Cloud Street
New Salem, NA 06555
Dear Bruce:
I am glad you approve of the legal work the firm is doing for your daughter. Sophie Diehl is first-rate, smart as they come. She graduated from Yale, where she spent most of her time working on capital cases with Stephen Bright and his Southern Center for Human Rights. She then clerked for Anne Howard on the 13th Circuit. She’s not for you; she doesn’t know a tort from a b
reach of contract. That being said, she and I would like very much to have lunch, though she can’t make the 3rd. She’s got a very busy criminal calendar. Could you do the 8th? And would you be our guest at Porter’s? Sophie has a weakness for their double lamb chops.
Yours,
David Greaves
I did it again
* * *
From: Sophie Diehl
To: Maggie Pfeiffer
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 19:18:03
Subject: I did it again 5/27/99 7:18 PM
Dear Maggie—
You were right. Again. DG showed me a letter from the Big Client that made it clear he was in New York on firm business, advising on a takeover. If he saw my mother (and he still may have), she wasn’t the object of the trip. Just a fringe benefit.
I don’t know what to say about last night. I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around it. Harry slept for about six hours. When he woke up at about 4 a.m., he hadn’t a clue how or why he came over. He was very apologetic (replaying the earlier part of the evening) about barging in. I don’t think the original apologies had to do with his turning up; I don’t know what they had to do with. Thank God, I slept on the sofa. As he got dressed to leave, I told him that he’d shown up about 9:30, completely slammered, sentimental, and apologetic. (I intended “completely” to modify all three adjectives.) He was embarrassed, but not as embarrassed as he might have been, or should have been. “I’m a wreck,” he said, smiling wanly and shrugging. Papa would have done the same thing. The gorge rose in my American throat. I wanted to say something mean like “I’m not charmed,” but I held my tongue. (Am I showing progress?) He apologized once more and left.
I’m off to Wellfleet for the weekend. The sibs are all coming. Perhaps I’ll ask my mother point-blank if she’s messing around with my boss. What’s the worst she can do? Perhaps I won’t ask her.
I feel better, though I’m not sure why. Because Harry showed up? Because I wasn’t charmed? I often wish I could be like my father and Harry, self-dramatizing and self-forgiving. Buttoned-up is what you said I was, no? You were right. But those drama queens need sane people like me. No wonder my mother married Jake after all those years with Papa. I don’t know how he does it, but he never behaves badly. Jake says it’s because he was overanalyzed.
What time tomorrow are you leaving for Williamstown? How will you celebrate your anniversary?
Love to you and Matt,
Sophie
P.S. I’m so happy you and Matt like the print. My divorce client told me that paper was the proper gift for the first anniversary, so I thought, what better than an Ed Ruscha. But there’s paper and then there’s paper. “In my mother’s family,” my client told me, “the standard gift was engraved monogrammed note cards. Cream vellum, charcoal or navy lettering. I got seven sets on our first anniversary, from various great-aunts, two in the name of Mrs. Daniel E. Durkheim, one spelled ‘Durkhiem.’ ” What was it like to open that seventh box? Do you laugh, or do you cry? No returns possible, or regifting.
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
MEMORANDUM
Attorney Work Product
From: David Greaves
To: Sophie Diehl
RE: Meiklejohn at Porter’s Next Week
Date: June 2, 1999
Attachments: Letter from Bruce Meiklejohn
Letter to Bruce Meiklejohn from Mia Meiklejohn
I received a very interesting letter this morning from Bruce Meiklejohn, with an enclosure, another very interesting letter, from his daughter to him.
Lunch is on with him on the 8th at 12:30 at Porter’s.
BRUCE MEIKLEJOHN
50 SAINT CLOUD
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
May 29, 1999
David Greaves
Traynor, Hand, Wyzanski
222 Church Street
New Salem, NA 06555
Dear David:
When I got your note about lunch, I called my daughter and asked her what was going on. I told her I’d invited her lawyers out to lunch at the Plimouth but they’d turned the tables on me and asked me to Porter’s. Mia said I was a dinosaur and hung up on me. Then she sent me the enclosed letter.
Is Mia right? She’s never said anything to me like that before. I wonder. Is this a new Mia? Or is she regularly like that with others?
I’ll go to Porter’s with you, of course, but please, I’d like you to be my guests. And the 8th is fine. Is Elisabeth Diehl Sophie Diehl’s mother? I like her books, especially Death Duties.
Mia’s really mad at me. I couldn’t bear it if she didn’t let me see Jane. I love that little girl more than anyone else in the world.
You’re not Jewish, are you? It’s fine, of course, if you are. I was just wondering.
Yours truly,
MARIA MATHER MEIKLEJOHN
404 ST. CLOUD STREET
NEW SALEM, NA 06556
May 29, 1999
Father—
Sophie Diehl kyboshed the Plimouth Club because she doesn’t eat at restricted clubs. She’s not only the daughter of an English Catholic Marxist, she’s the daughter of a French Jew. You may have heard of her mother; she’s the mystery writer Elisabeth Diehl. (You did your research; I did mine.)
It’s time you got over your knee-jerk anti-Semitism, if for no other reason than it makes you look stupid and benighted. Everyone marries Jews these days, not only Helen Fincher and I. And they’re everywhere. Your beloved law firm has Jews, including some of the senior partners. Daniel Durkheim may have behaved badly, but let me assure you, WASPs behave just as badly, often worse. And I don’t think he married me for my connections. I like to think I have—or had—other things going for me. And he was on the fast track to success, whomever he married. Then there’s the obvious. Your granddaughter is Jewish, or half-Jewish, which, I need not tell you, was Jewish enough for Hitler. I want you to keep one thing in mind. He’s her father, and he’ll always be in her life. If you don’t shape up, I’m not going to see you anymore.
Nor will Jane.
I’m going to outlive you, you know, and inherit mother’s house on the Vineyard, free and clear. And when I die, I’m going to leave it to the United Jewish Appeal.
And by the way, mother was called Maria; I’m,
As always,
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
MEMORANDUM
Attorney Work Product
From: Sophie Diehl
To: David Greaves
RE: Daniel Durkheim’s Response to the Offer
Date: June 2, 1999
Attachments: Letter from Mia Meiklejohn
It seems to have been a memorable Memorial Day weekend at the Meiklejohn/Durkheims. I also received a letter this morning, from Mia Meiklejohn. Dr. Durkheim hit the roof after he read the counteroffer. What happens next? Do I tell her to sit tight? Do we sit tight? I hate the way children get caught up in divorce.
Bruce Meiklejohn’s letter was moving in its perplexity. Mia’s to him was a doozer. She must have been working on it secretly for 15 years. It is the Mia I know. Wait till the UJA hears about the legacy.
I didn’t know Proctor Hand was Jewish.
MARIA MATHER MEIKLEJOHN
404 ST. CLOUD STREET
NEW SALEM, NA 06556
May 29, 1999
Anne Sophie Diehl
Traynor, Hand, Wyzanski
222 Church Street
New Salem, NA 06555
Dear Sophie:
Things took a bad turn last night. As I predicted, Daniel went berserk when he read the counteroffer. He came home last night at about 10 and roared into my bedroom, yelling his head off. “Where do you get off asking for my medical degree? And law school? I should pay for you to go to law school? This is highway robbery.”
(This is an expurgated version of the conversations. I left out the endearments. “Goddamned fucking cunt” was the most memorable, probably because it was repeated so often.) His face was red and sweat was pouring off him. I told him to get out of my room. “You won’t get away with this,” he said.
Just as he was turning to leave, I looked toward the doorway and saw Jane standing there sobbing. It was so awful. Danny reached out to comfort her, but she threw off his arm and ran to her room. I ran after her. I found her lying on her bed, crying so uncontrollably she couldn’t catch her breath. I don’t know how much she heard. She couldn’t talk. She cried for at least half an hour. It was so heartbreaking. After she finally calmed down, I made her some hot chocolate and then sat holding her in her bed until she fell asleep.
The next morning Danny came down to breakfast while Jane and I were eating. He looked whipped and haggard. He apologized profusely to her, saying how sorry he was that she had heard all he had said. She wouldn’t look at him, but stirred her cereal. “You’re not sorry you said it, are you?” she asked. “Only that I heard it?” He said he was sorry for everything. She shrugged, and kept stirring her cereal.
I don’t know if I can take any more. I can face down Danny, but I can’t stand what this is doing to Jane. I keep thinking we should move out. I’m sure my father would support us if I asked him, for no other reason than he could tell everyone what a dick Danny was for tossing us out without a cent.
I won’t do anything without talking to you, but the situation is approaching the intolerable.
If he does anything like that again, can I get an eviction order against him?
Yours,
P.S. For 18 years, I was caught between my husband and my father, who couldn’t stand each other. I spent hours and hours negotiating awful social occasions with them both, pouring oil on the troubled waters, trying to achieve a shaky truce. Now I find I’m at war with both of them. And I say to hell with both of them.
