Other Men's Daughters

by Richard Stern

  Not living in a vase, the world leaked through a hundred thousand pores; and what he called essence was made up of thousands of components. Esmé sat on his lap, asking for a backrub; he rubbed her small shoulders, fingers on the vertebral signal nodes. They talked of an elephant hunt she’d seen on Wild Kingdom, the pacifying darts, the little plaques of identification to chart the elephant movements. “What’s the point of knowing where they go?” He told her of the inherent fascination in movement and grouping, the animal sense of “home ground,” its definition by food, drink, safety, love.

  “What would they learn if they charted our movements?”

  “Plenty.” Hand on his daughter’s hair, golden rivers in brown banks. He’d read a piece about a Chicago executive who took a panoramic movie shot of the city from his penthouse window every hour of the day. “I suppose he’s registering traffic flow, or light changes, you know, the way Whozit—Manet? Monet—did with Rouen Cathedral. I suppose he could enlarge the pictures and discover a million stories. You know, the messenger gets his package at ten, and instead of delivering it, goes to a bookie. I bet Mayor Daley’s police would eat it up.”

  “Oh, Daddy, that’s absurd. Who cares? Who’d want to find out about me going to Miss Bonney’s room, the john, phys. ed., waiting for a bus. Who cares?”

  “I care.”

  “You do not. You care about me, not my movements,” with a little laugh, thinking of the variety of movements.

  He thought it would be the reverse with Sarah: she doesn’t care about anything but my movements. Now and then she’d tell him where he and “your friend” had been seen, oh, she knew what he was about, what he was doing.

  “You’re right, sweetie. It’s these overall views of the world that make the most trouble. Cheers for close-ups.”

  “Here’s to us near-sighted ones.”

  With Sarah, now, there was nothing but short views. The Foundation reports stayed in his lap, his head filled with their quarrels. No matter what he’d done, how could she think as she did. Usurpers hired historians to rewrite history, but why did Sarah have to rewrite their life? “It was rotten from the first year. I saw it before Albie was born.”

  “Saw what?”

  “What a tyrant you were inside that quiet.”

  “Why did you stay? Why did we keep on having children?”

  “There was always hope you’d change.”

  After such an exchange, he sometimes checked her birth control pills (taken not for him but to stabilize her system); no, it was not her period. Maybe it was a glycogenic dysfunction. Or early menopause. But no, it went deeper. She had a nose for “tyranny.” She detested authority. She’d never been able to work under anyone. Almost meek to people’s faces, she could rage against women who ran charity drives, or senior teachers in the part-time teaching jobs she’d occasionally had. Merriwether, ranging over Sarah like a research problem, wondered if it might not have been the Wainwright family maid, Vera, a brilliant black woman who dominated the house and pulled the children around by the ears. He’d gotten along wonderfully with her, sitting for hours analyzing the family and its habits. She was the most literate and amusing member of the household, a domestic genius; she cooked like a great chef, she could have had a doctorate in the chemistry of filth. “Given” as a wedding present by Mrs. Wainwright’s mother, she’d stayed thirty years, the indispensable tyrant.

  “Why didn’t you speak up?”

  “You wouldn’t have listened to me. Everyone knows you despised my intelligence.”

  “I know I was wickedly stupid sometimes.”

  “Easy to say now. Admission is so easy. After you brought me to my knees. Or tried to. Because I’m not there now. Nor ever again.”

  “I wonder if you know how glad that makes me?”

  “You think you think that way.”

  He retreated to wine and the evening news: people on the roads of Africa and Asia carrying kettles, hoes, straw mats. Human tornadoes—acting out some subtle policy of devilment—had smashed them. But their misery deflected his.

  That double vision of the mind which knows but cannot feel or act its knowledge, which squats behind its own bones and measures everything from within those slats, which, at five o’clock, takes the long view of its own troubles like a surveying god, and at five-fifteen shrivels into a nut of egotism; human duplicity with its sparkling outer and inner crepuscular brains, cortical light dazzling over opaque old fear.

  One evening, a week before Thanksgiving, Sarah went up to Merriwether as he poured his evening glass of wine. (He no longer asked her if she wanted any; she made herself a nightly martini.) “Bob.” It was a not unkindly voice. “My lawyer is going to call you in the next half hour or so.”

  “What?”

  “I finally went. You wouldn’t go. Everything is ready. He’ll tell you everything. He’s a very good man. You’ll get along with him. Tina told me about him. He’s helped someone she knew.”

  Merriwether went up to his old room and sat on the bed by the phone. When the phone rang, he did not pick it up. As it began its third ring, Sarah called up, “You getting it, Bob?”

  “Yes.” He picked up the black handle, steadying everything by gripping hard.

  “Dr. Merriwether.” A cold voice, a hint of roll in the “r’s.” “This is Donald Sullivan. Mrs. Merriwether has spoken to you, I think.” Sitting on the bed he’d slept in so many years, not daring to put his feet up as he used to, Merriwether felt the plastic handle contain his future, his children’s future. Why had she? The Moby Dick wallpaper, the mushroom-white gauze curtains veiling the Japanese urns across the street: this room was going, the whole bit was going. “I’d like to see you in my office tomorrow morning.” The handle spoke an address.

  “You couldn’t make it out to Cambridge, Mr. Sullivan?” There were still things retainable, his lab work, his lecture preparation, his lunch.

  “That’s impossible. Is ten o’clock all right?”

  “All right, Mr. Sullivan, I’ll be there.”

  The rest of that evening Sarah spoke to him almost with the tenderness of years ago. Under the stone of their last years were thousands of moments which were not stony. So much of their lives were each other’s; for months, years, she’d thought only of the stone parts; now some of the others bloodied the stone. Not just children, birthdays, vacations, but looks, jokes, meals, a rewound movie blur (rated G, passion was censored). His promotions, his discoveries, his papers, his “recognition.” Not even the pronominal bulk—his, his, his—was bitterness tonight. She felt as if she were looking in the rearview mirror at an accident; their own life cracked up there.

  On Merriwether’s trip to Boston the next morning, everything was dense with significance. There was a power failure on the MTA, he had to get off at Boylston, a stop early. Hating to be late—and hating what made him hate it—he rushed through crowds, huffing, charging. He passed DeVane’s where he’d had his grandmother’s diamond set for Sarah’s engagement ring. Sullivan’s building turned out to be the same one Sarah’s Uncle Barton worked in. (Barton, an auto-didact, had had Merriwether down to the building for lunch to pump psychological lore out of him for a client’s survey on soda pop.)

  Sullivan was a squarish, elderly, odd-looking man. “Maybe it’s a requirement for tenancy here,” thought Merriwether. (Barton looked like a duck.) His charcoal suit covered a complicated body, huge arms, a smallish box of a torso, long legs that stretched under his desk to Merriwether’s side. Sullivan’s accent was a two-tiered cake of Irish lilt and Harvard vowels. Very pleasing. He spoke softly, firmly, but the eye bulge had metal in it, the face sharpened, as if the business at hand turned it into a revolver. Innocuous and open at first sight, the face in action seemed the skeptic registry of a million connivances.

  Merriwether sat in a low chair by the window. They were on the twelfth floor. Merriwether had the sense that above and below him, counterparts of Sullivan and himself spelled out similar options of termination.
r />   That was their subject. First, coldly, then, seeing he had a legal patsy, intimately. Sullivan said, “Sarah has had a terrible time. Her physical condition is poor. She’s got blood sugar, her blood pressure is low, she’s anemic. This relationship has worn her down.” The ow in “down” rang mournfully. “This woman friend of yours has caused Sarah a lot of anguish. In a community like Harvard, it is especially humiliating.” The a of “Harvard” was pure Boston, the a in “humiliating” was drawn out of Ireland. Merriwether was taken by the speech, he was taken by the view out the window, the roofs of Tremont, the pyrite fire of slate. He said, “I know, it’s been terrible for her.” A brilliant day; from here it could be summer.

  “So there are these options, Doctor.” Sullivan leaned forward, thin hands flat on the leather rims of the Florentine blotter. Merriwether swung fully around to him. The revolver pointed, then discharged, gently. “There can be legal separation, or divorce. If the divorce is contested, there is no doubt in the world that Mrs. Merriwether has evidence to secure everything she needs. If the divorce is amicable, then you and she, being two reasonable human beings, will be able to work out arrangements. I have the papers filled out now. In fact, I’m going to walk over to the courthouse as soon as we finish and file. If you come along, it’ll save you the serving officer’s fee. There is, of course, the possibility of reconciliation—and I’m always for that—but, as far as I can gather from Sarah, this is not a real possibility.”

  So there it was. Twenty-two years. More since Timmy had introduced them in the get-together at Eliot House, since they’d gone on the ski trip to Stowe. Years and years, and now it was on the operating table, and here was Sullivan leaning over with the scalpel.

  “In my view, separation is a halfway measure. It only means that neither of you can date”—the incredible teenager’s word—“and nothing is really fixed. There is no halfway possibility here. You can only go toward reconciliation or toward divorce. If there’s to be reconciliation, it should come now. And I see—judging only from Sarah’s appearance, her health, her feelings—that this is not likely.”

  “I suppose not,” said Merriwether. And he had to bring out a handkerchief, blow his nose, shake his head. Why not? Let the man see the job he did on people.

  “Sarah says you’ve always been an excellent father. She has no reason at all not to let you have every reasonable visitation privilege. Indeed, I am sure the court will leave that to your discretion. Here is the statement of charges.” A packet of typed onionskin came over the desk, Merriwether glanced at it: cruelty, neglect, adultery, all money in savings account, stocks, bonds, the house, the car. “My God,” he said. “What is this? You don’t expect me to sign this? Adultery is not to come into it. No one else is to be brought into it.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Doctor.” The thin hands pushed air his way. “It doesn’t mean a blessed thing. We state the worst as something we could—but won’t, I hope—draw on. You and Sarah can draw up a list of stipulations which you both sign. And that will be that. The grounds will be mental cruelty. This is just for legal purposes. It means nothing. Sarah wants only child support. She is planning to work. But the court maintains permanent jurisdiction in divorce cases. If a situation changes, say you were to inherit a lot of money—”

  “My parents are dead.”

  “Sarah could feel that she wants the children to have some of it—of course you would want them to anyway—and we could come back into court.”

  So it was no longer just Sarah and he, no longer even Sullivan and Sarah and he, it was a large machine made after thousands of years of mismatched coupling, contrived as the guillotine had been, for merciful conclusions. For a minute or two they were its case.

  “I don’t have a lawyer, Mr. Sullivan.”

  “If you are planning to contest this procedure, then you better get yourself one.” The lawyer sat back, the revolver uncocked, the face wrinkled in general benignity. “Otherwise, though I can’t act for both of you, I can advise you. You won’t need a lawyer. I’ll file for you. You have to pay my bill anyway. I better tell you the bill will be a great deal steeper if the divorce is contested. Even now, the court would award me—on the basis of what Mrs. Merriwether has told me of your assets—fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand dollars.”

  “My God,” said Merriwether. “I understand you can get a divorce for under fifty dollars.”

  “A kind of divorce. No guarantees. No counsel. That might be all right when there are no assets, or when there is perfect agreement. But Mrs. Merriwether has already consulted me. So there’s already a fee. But I am not going to charge you what the court would award me. I am going to charge you half-fee. If there is a stipulated settlement, the fee will be eight hundred dollars. You couldn’t match that anywhere in Boston.”

  He’d come in here, breathless, running to be on time, sweating, taking off his rubbers—it had looked like rain—this odd-limbed box of a man had been waiting for him by his secretary’s desk, perhaps ready to file charges if he’d been a minute late, and from that human moment, he was now buying—what?—the end of his domestic life, it was called “freedom.” Sarah was buying it. It was a product of the machine. A bill of divorcement, a vinculo matrimonii. Had the American machine been made in Rome? Sumeria? Each state had its own. His sausage was made by Massachusetts. Divorce—di-vertere, to turn from. A litus et thoro. From bed and board.

  He put on his rubbers, Sullivan helped him on with his raincoat, and they walked through crowds to the Civic Plaza, and took an escalator up to an enormous room, where scores of people behind windows took and distributed papers. Sullivan joked with a black woman who stamped a paper Sullivan told Merriwether to sign. “It’s nothing. Read it. It just acknowledges that you were served. You save ten dollars by not needing an officer of the court.” Merriwether made out a check for fourteen dollars, accepted the papers, and saw that he and Mrs. Sarah Wainwright Merriwether, Plaintiff, had a long file number. While Sullivan read other papers, he noticed that the papers he’d signed were full of mistakes: the wrong date for their marriage was given, the wrong name of a Savings Bank, his own middle name misspelled (“Stil” instead of “Still”). Good. Grounds for appeal. But what kind of appeal? He and Sullivan went down the escalator, and at the bottom shook hands warmly. “I’ll be in touch with Sarah as soon as I have a court date. The whole thing’ll be over by March. God be with you, Doctor. Don’t worry. Everything is going to work out.”

  The sun had come out, the sky was a profound, a thoughtful blue. He and Sullivan parted and the lawyer went off in the direction of his office; Merriwether followed his long, scissoring forks and apish arms till he was lost in the crowd.

  Amidst the people fanning out of buildings toward restaurants, Merriwether walked vaguely toward the MTA. Ahead was Old South Church. For some reason he walked over and stood by it, taking in the sun, the chill, the gaseous air, the sense of the crowd. Shards of sensation stuck on odd thoughts. Had there been a Merriwether at the meeting Adams had called in the church? A Still? A Wainwright? Abigail Adams wrote her husband about a Merriwether who overcharged for coffee, and was besieged by infuriated women. John Hancock was in Sarah’s mother’s family. He’d wanted to be president. His insurance building strutted in the skyline the way his signature did on the Declaration. Mental dazzle: Sullivan’s overcoated back, Esmé’s, Back Bay, Marblehead, boats, sails, the longest journey. His marriage was over.

  On the train back to Cambridge, he fixed on the almostempty car, the iron rattle, the plank seats, the white poles, the underground hole; this train headed him toward displacement. Nothing was going to be familiar. What to do? He had to talk with someone. Not Cynthia. Sarah. (The old Sarah.) Almost funny. A friend. Maybe a lawyer, but he knew no lawyer well. Maybe Stuart Benson. They were close friends again after a bad time a few years ago. And Stuart had been through divorce. He was probably at home; he worked there mornings.

  At the Square, he ran up the escalator and called Stuart
from the phone outside the Cambridge Trust. “Of course, Bobbie. Come right on over. If I’m in the bath, I’ll leave the door unlatched.”

  “I’m very grateful, Stuart.”

  “I’m grateful you think of me, Bobbie.”

  They’d had a serious, almost adolescent estrangement. Benson was not an easy man. A brilliant one, an immensely learned one, and not only in science. His library was one of the great private collections of Cambridge. Some professors of English Literature, even specialists in the nineteenth century, knew less about the Victorians than Benson.

  Benson was smallish, red-faced, green-eyed. He worked enormously, published several papers every year. A neurophysiologist, he’d lately done pioneer work in prostaglandins. He also kept up with more work in the biological sciences than anyone on the faculty. Unlike Tom Fischer, though, he had little sympathy for other men’s work. He was vituperative to both pupils and friends; he had very few of either.

  His two best friends were Merriwether and Fischer. Fischer’s genius, accomplishments, industry, even his fine appearance, filled Benson’s talk. He considered himself unattractive and was enormously sensitive to good looks, especially the good looks of young men, but he’d neither had nor seriously thought of a homosexual experience. He had married once, a graduate student, but it hadn’t lasted. He had dominated her, even with his tenderness, which was proprietary. A non-stop talker, his tongue darkened her thought and life. One day, she ran off with another graduate student.