A Good Divorce

by John E. Keegan

  “I’m Cyrus and I think I’m getting divorced.” I laughed nervously. I’d decided to forego the obligatory penis biography. Rick’s was the only friendly face in the room. “My wife, or ex-wife … whatever, she’s been a good mother and a good wife. We’ve had a pretty good marriage. Well, up until recently. Things have kind of tapered off.” I realized I was running off at the mouth, going nowhere. “If you asked me why we’re getting divorced, I couldn’t really tell you for sure except that my wife’s really gotten into the women’s lib thing.” It was the worst thing I could think of. When I looked around for some knowing smiles, it was as if I’d said something in Latin. “Women’s groups, no bras, all that stuff. I’m not really complaining. I know a lot of it is overdue the way women have been walked on.” I’d lost my train of thought, plugged into one of Jude’s National Organization for Women tapes. I flashed on the time I gave Jude “J” The Sensuous Woman, mistakenly thinking that I was honoring her sexuality, and she ridiculed the butterfly flick. “Another male book on how to titillate the female doll,” she’d said. I thought it might resurrect our sex life, but she said, “Good sex starts with what happens between breakfast and bedtime.” I felt cheated. Just when I thought I’d overcome the guilt of a Catholic upbringing, a new movement came along that amounted to the same thing. Deny the flesh.

  Rick brought me out of my trance. “So how does this make you feel?”

  “Confused, I guess.”

  People laughed.

  “How are the children handling it?” Tony asked.

  “Fine, I think.” I would have said more but nobody here seemed to be into kids.

  “Thanks for joining the group,” Rick said. I had the impression he was unconvinced I had anything big enough to bother with, that he was patronizing me.

  The session lasted an hour and a half. An alcoholic dominated the discussion, and I couldn’t imagine some woman staying around for this guy. The more he talked the more I thought it could work out between Jude and me. I’d never laid a hand on her. I’d never broken chairs against the door jamb. Maybe Jude was the one who needed the therapy, to rid herself of the notion that everyone who peed standing up was a Neanderthal. If she could only get a glimpse of this group, she’d grab onto me and never let go.

  It was tempting to blame my predicament on the Sunday night meetings at Lill’s when Jude came home supercharged with reformist ardor. Women had a way of reaching out and taking care of each other while men egged each other on, always trying to compete. Men would rather have a good job than a good friend. At first I’d thought I could get in on the new religion, but whenever I asked her how the meetings went, she just talked about the problems everyone was having with their husbands. What emerged was a picture of women continuing to live in the same house with husbands they’d given up on emotionally. They were living with men they refused to collaborate with. These weren’t guys who were sleeping around; they were just guys like me who didn’t get it. For a while I figured the women’s group was a salutary thing. The more shit that other husbands pulled, the better I looked, but that had turned out to be wishful thinking.

  On the way out of the therapy session, I ended up at the urinal next to the diddling Jesus. “This Jude must be some package,” he said. Close up I noticed that his face was pockmarked and he looked more like Judas Iscariot. He was doing it no hands with his pants belted. I always unzipped, loosened my belt, and took it over the top of my underpants. The public urinal was another test of manhood. When he peered over the divider, I let go, a rebel gesture to show Jude that she wasn’t the only one who could ride the roller coaster, scream on the steep drops, and go bug-eyed on the corners. Somehow I was going to get even with her and Gloria Steinem.

  The Alhambra was located near the Broadway District within a triangle formed by the kids’ schools and the house, as near the geographic center of Justine’s and Derek’s world as I could find. The Safeway, Deluxe Bar & Grill, and Harvard Exit Theater provided all of my basic needs. We’d shopped there as a family when Derek was young enough to ride in the shopping cart with his bare legs hanging out of the legholes. The Broadway District was a village where the checkout clerks still chatted with the kids while they punched prices into the cash register and emptied the buggy onto the counter.

  I hated to be the one who had to move out. I loved the old place, which was an oversized two-story house with an attic, a partially-finished basement, and a long flight of painted red cement steps from the street to the porch. The front lawn was so steep that I had to wear my high school track shoes to push the mower back and forth. We’d made the fourth bedroom upstairs into a family room and taped blown-up photos of the kids and their finger paintings, and recycled John Travolta and Shaun Cassidy posters to the veneer oak walls. Jude had said if she moved out, she wanted something in Madison Park, maybe the Edgewater. That would have meant more than twice the rent of the Alhambra. Since I paid the rent no matter who moved, I traded elegance for price, hoping it was only temporary. The Alhambra was also an opportunity to show Jude and the kids that our standard of living was going to take a nosedive with a divorce. No more Gloria Vanderbilt jeans for Justine.

  I looked forward to the kids’ first weekend with me since the separation and wanted the new apartment to feel like a home. We still hadn’t settled temporary custody for the kids. Jude, or maybe it was her attorney, was dragging her feet. I figured I had no chance if it was left up to Jude and her attorney, so I was still lobbying for letting the kids decide. At neighborhood garage sales, I’d found a five-drawer unfinished dresser, a striped couch with a small tear across the back, and a barely dented chrome and vinyl kitchen table set. They’d finally see how the other half of the world lived, how you had to stack your clothesbasket on top of the washer to save your place in line, how you could listen to Happy Days through the ceiling without turning on your TV. They’d marvel at the dart holes in the walls, the iron burns on the linoleum drain board, and the warped ceiling tiles with broken corners from previous falls.

  “Where is Derek going to sleep?” Justine asked, as she dropped her rainbow overnight bag onto the sagging single bed in the second bedroom. Seven years older than her little brother, she was used to getting her way. At school it was a different story, of course, where deference to peers and popularity were more important. Justine had a natural beauty like her mom’s, with good lips and straw-blonde hair that she felt compelled to shampoo every morning. She wore risers to make her look taller.

  “You’re both in here,” I said. “One of you can sleep on the cot until we get another bed. For tonight, you can sleep in the same bed.”

  “No way,” Derek said. “I’m not sleeping with her. She kicks.”

  Justine bared her teeth like a mule. “I don’t either.”

  “Maybe we need to take the tour one more time,” I said, despite Jude’s admonition that sarcasm wasn’t a good teaching tool. “I only counted the master bedroom and this one.”

  “You don’t need the biggest bedroom,” Justine said, “with you and Mom splitting up.”

  “They might not,” Derek said, his Nike athletic bag still on his shoulder. Magpie had parked herself at Derek’s feet and was still panting with the excitement of a new set of smells.

  Justine sat down on the bed, daring Derek to put his bag on it. She studied the watermarks on the wall where the moisture had flared into a series of rusty stains. “Well Mom’s sure not going to live in this dump.”

  Derek peeked up at me through the reddish shock of hair that had fallen over his right eye to see what I was going to do. Despite Jude’s work, he was pure boy, always getting into fights on the playground over yo-yo and spitting contests. A gang of kids had once jumped him for name-calling and banged his forehead against the sidewalk so hard they knocked him out. I knew that Justine’s challenge was a defining moment for this new relationship and so did Derek. It was about time for a dose of the real me.

  “Think about what you just said, Justine.”

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nbsp; She rolled her eyes and folded her legs under her. “What?”

  “Do you even remember what you said?”

  “Dump,” Derek said.

  “I know,” Justine said. “So?”

  I was beginning to realize how much we’d spoiled them, with ski lessons, ski vacations, and their own record players. Of course, Jude had insisted that we gender cross-train them so Justine took drum lessons, Derek the violin, Justine weights, and Derek had a diary with a key. Inadvertently, we’d also taught them to argue in the voices of their mom and dad. “So how many apartments have you been in?” I said.

  Justine started counting silently on her fingers as she gazed up at the ceiling. A sooty cobweb clung to the bouquet wallpaper in the corner. “Ugh!”

  “She’s changing the subject,” Derek said.

  “No I’m not,” she said. “I’ve been in lots.”

  “Name them,” Derek said.

  “Derek,” I said, and he sat down on his bag and put his chin in his hands.

  I turned back to Justine, who sat stiff-spined. “Do you know that more people live in apartments than houses? Ninety-five percent of the children in the world would beg to live in a place half this nice. Hot and cold running water. Electricity at your fingertips. Paned glass windows. Insulation. Carpeted floors. Refrigeration.”

  “Do they all smell like burned toast?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “It’s old eggs,” Derek said.

  “What are you talking about?” I breathed deeply but all I could smell was the mint of my Gleem toothpaste. “It just needs to be lived in. Brand new houses smell. The point is we have a roof over our heads. And we’re together.” Derek, chin still in his palms, watched me. “Besides, we don’t have to spend all our time inside. There’s a courtyard.” The only people I’d seen in it were two elderly ladies with sun hats sharing a park bench in the shade.

  “So where’s Derek sleeping?” Justine asked.

  “I think you mean, ‘Boy, do Derek and I get this whole bedroom to ourselves?’”

  She slumped and pushed her bag onto the floor, and it landed cleats down on the gray concrete floor like a tap dancer, startling Magpie. “Go ahead, Derek.”

  He leaped onto the bed, spread-eagled, trying to fill it with his eight-year-old frame. Magpie got up and put her head on the bedspread, testing. Maybe she’d gotten lucky.

  “Not so fast,” I said. “We’re going to learn to negotiate in this family.” Contracting with your partner was another one of those feminist tools for demystifying marriage. Jude and I had attended a second wedding for one of the women in her group where they read a marriage contract out loud instead of vows. It covered everything from whether to have children to who does the dishes.

  “But she said I could have it,” Derek said.

  “That was before she knew there was a choice,” I said. “In bargaining, there are always choices.” I wondered if they could hear Jude’s voice.

  “I’ll sleep with Dad in the waterbed then,” Derek said, rolling to the edge, draping one arm over Magpie’s neck, and giving me those same beggar-dog eyes. The waterbed had always been clearly marked as the marital bed. No kids allowed.

  The next thing Jude would have mentioned was boundaries. Everything had boundaries: people, the solar system, even ecstasy. She said that was one of my problems; my mother had never taught me any. I’d been fed, served, and applauded on demand. “My bed is out of bounds,” I said.

  “Then there aren’t any choices,” Justine said. “Dad, I’m fifteen. I have a boyfriend. I’m not going to sleep with my little brother.”

  She knew how to work me. I didn’t want to hear boyfriend and sleeping in the same paragraph. It was a mistake to let her have a boyfriend at this age but Jude had insisted. “She can’t learn to putty without a trowel,” Jude said. So a pointy-headed kid who talked like he needed to blow his nose was her trowel. “You’re right. Sleeping together is a bad idea.”

  When the negotiations ended, Derek had the first weekend on the living room couch in his sleeping bag and Magpie as a consolation prize. In a side deal, Justine secured permanent first rights to the shower in the morning in return for Derek getting his name ahead of hers on the mailbox. But Justine couldn’t resist discounting the value of what she’d conceded. “Nobody’s going to send you anything at your dad’s apartment.”

  I’d underestimated the burden of raising kids. Jude was pregnant when we decided to get married or, rather, because Jude was pregnant we decided to get married. But if marriage was the moon to me, parenting was Mars. Jude always thought I was too passive and needed to get more involved with the kids. Whenever we had those discussions, it felt as if she was comparing me to my dad and I felt shamed.

  Derek woke up with nightmares the first night and he and Magpie showed up in my bedroom. His pajamas were soaked with sweat so I hung them over the shower rod and made a mental note to move them before Justine got up. He changed into yesterday’s underpants. As I spread out his sleeping bag at the foot of the bed, I noticed on the manufacturer’s tag that it was designed for minus sixteen degrees. No wonder he thought dogs were chasing him around in a burning house.

  I couldn’t get back to sleep and wondered what Jude was doing on her weekend off. Nothing pleasant came to mind; distance seemed to spawn the worst possibilities. Maybe she’d looked up Jordan, my secretary’s boyfriend, whom she’d met at the office picnic at Golden Gardens and surprised me by volunteering for volleyball.

  Jordan’s torso looked like it had been dipped in Coppertone and he wore a gold neck chain with a male symbol charm and three bulky class rings on his fingers. Jude played on Jordan’s team. It wasn’t really much of a team because Jordan spiked, scooped, or set every shot we sent over, giving his body to every point. When he dove for a sideline shot and dredged a scoop of sand into his sweatpants, somebody on the sidelines yelled to my secretary. “Is he that good in bed?” Everyone laughed while Jordan sucked his stomach in and reached into his crotch to shake the sand out. Milking the moment, he brushed sand down one leg and then the other. Someone whistled. When I looked through the webbing of the net, I saw that Jude was transfixed with a rapturous smile I hadn’t seen since Derek was still in the cradle.

  Sometimes I just didn’t understand her. I thought she would have detested this highly competitive male with a bulge in his sweatpants. She’d always said that a woman’s sexuality was more complex than a man’s, that a woman’s genitalia were connected to the heart, and men were wired from the penis to the ego. So why was she so fascinated with a guy who could grip his sweatpants between his buttock muscles and had a pouch in his crotch that looked like a sack lunch?

  It wasn’t that I was any better than Jordan. If Jude had ever stuck her arm down my golf bag, she’d have croaked. That’s where I kept a water-stained Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition and an old Playboy. For emergencies. I could still conjure up the globe-faced girl paddling a canoe in Sports Illustrated that reminded me of Jude. Of course, Jude had convinced me there was nothing wrong with nudity per se. We had let the kids run through the sprinkler naked when they were little. Jude drilled a small hole and glued a cribbage peg into Derek’s GI Joe doll to make him anatomically correct. Justine used to ask me male body questions while I shaved. For a while, Jude even did her jump roping in the raw. Her point was to take the titillation out of the human form. It was like seeing Wizard of Oz so many times that you lost your fear of witches. She said it would give us a jump start on the kids’ sex education. Derek gained a reputation at day care with his penis questions. We used the correct names in our house; there were no “doodads” or “thingies.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a volleyballer,” I had said to Jude on the ride home from the office picnic.

  Her head was forward as she brushed her hair from the back to the front, letting particles of sand sprinkle onto her purple cords. “What did you say?”

  “I was glad to see you enjoying yourself.”

  Sh
e shook her hair and then picked at it. Somebody behind us blinked their headlights on and off to move me into the right lane. “Is this about the jock?”

  “Yeah, what did you think of him?”

  She flipped her head back and started brushing it in the other direction. She turned the rearview mirror so that I could see her in it. She was now the car on my ass, but she was smiling. “The truth? I thought he was a hunk.” I didn’t know if she was serious or just trying to get a rise out of me, but it had the opposite result. Maybe the penis was connected to the ego. She put her hand on my thigh. “But I’d prefer a dollop of tenderness anytime.”

  The rattle of Magpie’s dog tags startled me as Justine stumbled into the bedroom and tripped over her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I felt scared.”

  I put out my arm, felt the flannel of her nightgown, and wrapped my hand around her legs.

  “Be quiet you guys,” Derek said. His voice was coming from somewhere under the bed.

  “Shh,” I said, putting my finger across my lips. It was pitch dark. The single window next to the ceiling looked into a corrugated metal window well. I had to turn on the overhead light in the middle of the day if I wanted to match a shirt and tie.

  “Can I sleep with you guys?”

  I remembered nights when Justine used to fuss because she was teething or had an earache, and she slept between me and Jude. She did kick in her sleep. They weren’t so much kicks as territorial spreads. What her mother had taken two and a half years of Sunday night caucuses at Lill’s to learn, Justine seemed to know instinctively. Claim a wide berth for yourself. “Sure, sleep here till you settle down,” I said.

  As she climbed onto the bed, I started dismantling the fortress of pillows and duffel bags that I had stacked around myself at night to reduce the vastness of sleeping alone. Justine kneed me in the ribs. We probably hadn’t been in the same bed together for twelve years.