A Good Divorce

by John E. Keegan

  I called Mr. Washington to ask for his help. He’d given me his home number and that’s where I reached him. “I’ve decided to amend the divorce decree to take custody of the kids away from Jude.”

  “Now you’re talking, counselor.” I could hear the television news in the background. “I’ll tell you this. If you didn’t do something, the school district was ready to file an action for parental deprivation against your ex. You can still use the district’s reports to hang her.” He gave me the name of an attorney who used to do parental deprivation hearings for the Attorney General’s office. Someone who knew the in’s and the out’s of these kinds of cases.

  Then I called Jude.

  “I thought we’d salvaged enough respect that at least we wouldn’t stab each other in the back.”

  “If I didn’t do this, the school district would have tried something worse.”

  “Tell the school district to go screw itself.”

  If there was any doubt in my mind as to the wisdom of taking this course of action, Jude’s belligerence quickly dissolved it. “You left a pretty good trail. All their people had to do was follow your droppings. What did you expect?”

  “Why don’t they blame you for this? You’re as divorced as I am.”

  “I’m not having sex with a live-in man, Jude. The social workers said you flaunted it.”

  “What did you want me to do, lie? This is a witch hunt”—her phone must have hit the wall and I pulled my ear away from the receiver—“and why did you let them get into Justine’s medical records? That was none of their damn Nazi business.”

  I didn’t want to get diverted. “The point is the kids, Jude.”

  “Quit blaming it on the kids.”

  “Look, I’m as distressed as you. Strike that. I don’t know how distressed you are, but I’m very distressed. And I’m simply not convinced the kids’ living with you is good for them.” I could hear her cussing under her breath. “I’m willing to help work something out so we don’t have to go to court.”

  “Fuck your good intentions. I’m not going to stand by and watch you cut my heart out. I’ll fight it every step of the way.”

  “How much checking have you done, Jude? Have you talked to any professionals?”

  There was a pause, a silence that sometimes followed the spewing of the venom. Maybe she was just reloading. “God, this is so overwhelming, Cyrus. I’m not trying to scar them. Honest. But I can’t stand the idea of our kids living in a world where this kind of shit goes on.”

  We were back to dogma and I was tired of dogma. I wanted to get past that. “I don’t have anything more to say, do you?”

  “As a matter of fact I do. I think you should stop hitting on the mothers of Justine’s school friends.”

  We hung up and I flopped out on the couch, wondering whether I could get back into the book the Group Health doctor had recommended, but I was too stirred up. Jude had a way of making all of my ideas seem like leftovers from a medieval banquet. She was always the one fighting for enlightenment.

  I put on a jacket and headed out for a walk. Talks with Jude were like pot; they made me paranoid and restless. I was starving for a walk on Broadway, to see punks with greasy hair, Hari Krishna chanters with red and green paint on their faces, scatological messages on the tile at the Safeway. People who had nothing to do with me or Jude.

  Through a reliable source in the bar, I found out that Charlie Johnson had refused to represent Jude. “Bad for business to represent a lesbo,” he’d told a friend, who told my friend. Charlie apparently preferred the more predictable and slack waters of heterosexual adultery. Instead, Jude had hired Gloria Monroe, the lawyer who’d previously represented my construction contractor client, Leo Pescara. My overall assessment: Gloria could deliver the goods. I’d have hired her myself.

  The family decision-making machinery had broken down with the filing of my petition to amend the divorce decree. Jude wouldn’t speak to me. As far as she was concerned, a faceless reaper was working his way up her row with his scythe.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the adversarial process. I’d lived off it, I’d defended it against detractors. It was a system that allowed each side to throw its best stuff and let the crucible of twelve good people or one learned judge sort the wheat from the chaff. The truth would win out. But being an advocate for someone else’s cause was qualitatively different than choosing sides in a family fight. I had to use conscience instead of rhetoric and live with the results afterward. Our dirty little family secrets were threatening to break out the bottom of the bag I’d been carrying on my back.

  A senior partner in the firm was nibbling on a carrot stick when he stopped by my office one day. “I ran into a mutual friend of ours.” His smug look made me wary. “Ben Washington.”

  I stopped taking breaks in the coffee room for fear that the people who knew what was going on would ask me about it. The Pescara appeal had been taken away from me without explanation and I suspected it had something to do with client relations. Leo must have found out my ex was a lesbian.

  I fully expected Jude to cancel my regular weekend with the kids, but she made a point of calling me to say that the kids were expecting me to pick them up on Friday afternoon. “I’m not going to stoop to other people’s level,” she said. I surmised that her attorney had probably advised her not to pull any shenanigans, especially now with the hearing coming up. I decided to surprise the kids and take them to the ocean for the weekend. Derek had soccer Saturday morning, so we agreed to leave after his practice.

  Iron Springs Resort was a series of cottages perched on a bluff overlooking Copalis Beach. A wooden stairway zigged and zagged down a steep draw, from one landing to another, until it hit bottom. The beach had a collection of monster driftwood pieces: whole trees with giant root balls scrubbed clean by the tide and sections of washed-out piers worn smooth and bleached bone white, like the site of a prehistoric Armageddon.

  After unpacking, we played frisbee on the beach. The pressure of the sand massaged my arches and created space between my toes. The wind played tricks, sometimes lifting the frisbee with an updraft just as you reached for it and sailing it over your head. Magpie chased every throw with her teeth bared, enjoying the power she must have felt at making the earth move with each push of her paws. When she caught it, all three of us had to chase her down as she teased and dodged us. Derek dove for catches, not bothering to brush off the sand that coated his cheeks and his pants. I was surprised at how adept Justine was. Most beginners didn’t know how to keep the edge down, which allowed the frisbee to rise and slice like a golf ball. She also caught it close to her body without flinching.

  “Let’s see how many we can catch in a row,” she said. “No goofing around, Derek.” There wasn’t a game made that Justine couldn’t turn into a test. In the old days, I would have said she was extremely competitive for a girl.

  Magpie became bored when we stopped dropping the frisbee as much and parked herself in the middle of our triangle. We made a big deal of each consecutive catch that matched one of our ages. Justine caught number nine for Derek and fifteen for herself. I strained a hamstring catching twenty-nine for Warren and the kids clapped. When I caught thirty-six, Justine yelled “Jude,” which seemed oddly distant and I chided myself for reading too much into everything.

  “Dad’s next,” Justine said. “Don’t wreck it, Derek.”

  “Hit me deep, Dad,” he said, taking off on a run.

  “Don’t,” Justine said. “You’ll mess up.”

  Derek darted left one step, then right, then left, throwing his arms into space and shouting with each lurch. Magpie perked up. She had an eye for waggishness and wanted in on it. Derek pirouetted in the sand and broke toward the ocean with Magpie trotting to catch him. Taking into account the breeze coming off the water, I brought my arm behind my back and swung with all my strength. The frisbee swished by my hip and into the glare of the setting sun. Its intended pathway was the hypotenuse of a triang
le that Derek had to close with his churning, nine-year-old feet that were kicking up divots as he ran.

  Justine moaned as we lost sight of it in the brightness.

  Derek’s eyes were trained skyward as he looked back over his shoulder. From my vantage point, the frisbee was one of those dark spots that floated across your vision after someone popped a flashbulb. Magpie was running stride for stride at Derek’s heels. As the frisbee dropped low enough to be seen again, the wind slowed it, Derek let up, but Magpie kept coming. Dog and boy collided, rolling like tumbleweeds across the sand, Magpie’s white chest then Derek’s carrot hair and plum shorts visible. As they came to a stop, the frisbee hovered in the air just beyond them, then settled to the sand, gyrated like a bottle cap on a countertop, and stilled.

  When Justine and I caught up with them, Derek had his arm around Magpie’s neck and was patting her. His mouth was so caked with sand it looked like a squirrel hole. Justine knelt and brushed Magpie with one hand and Derek’s shirt with the other.

  Derek looked at her. “Aren’t you mad I missed it?”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Dad’s just one year too old for this game.”

  I dropped to the sand and wrapped my arms in a huddle around the three of them. Derek spit sand through his grin.

  We walked into town to eat dinner at a café with a gas pump out front and a general merchandise store that stocked chips and pop, clam-digging shovels, dusty souvenir ashtrays, and ceramic starfish. Derek ordered a bacon-burger with fries and Justine chose the salad bar. She’d already succumbed to the image of the models in the supermarket teen magazines and started to worry about her weight, a social expectation I would have loved to relieve her of.

  There was a silence after we’d placed our orders while Derek fiddled with his belt buckle and Justine ironed the edges of her paper napkin against the placemat. Neither of them had brought up the custody issue, and I didn’t know if Jude had even discussed it with them, although I guessed that she had. The bell on the door jingled each time someone came in to pay for gas. In the kitchen a radio played that we could only hear when the waitress pushed through the swinging door and let Willie Nelson or Maria Muldaur out. Gradually, the swings of the door shortened and muffled the music like a mute on a trumpet.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” Derek asked, his eyes in his lap.

  “What do you want to happen?”

  He twisted his neck one way, then the other, trying to form a sentence. “I don’t even know what it’s about.”

  “You know what it’s about,” Justine said.

  I waited for her to continue but she rolled her lips and stared in the direction of the cash register. Derek’s fork made a tap-tap sound against the table. Public places usually made it easier to talk about this kind of stuff, kept it from getting so dark, but we were strangers waiting for an introduction. “What about you, Justine?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked around as if measuring the strength of her voice against the distance from us to the people two tables away. “I did not like those two ladies from the school district or wherever. I practically had to take them through my laundry basket. They wanted to know if there was any nudity in the house. Like I showered in my pajamas.” I wondered if Jude still jump-roped in the raw and whether that had been another sign that I’d missed. “Mom’s no fun anymore. She’s not eating. Her and Lill are fighting. She just seems tired of it all.”

  “What’s wrong with Mom?” Derek asked. “And why did you guys even marry?”

  The kids and I had never discussed why we’d gotten married. I’d never thought of it as something that was any of their business, but I wasn’t sure I could give Derek a fair answer to his question, partly because I wasn’t entirely sure why we’d divorced. The one should have been counterpoint to the other. I still wasn’t convinced that Jude would have chosen a new path for herself if we’d managed a better marriage. “We liked each other a lot. Then, gradually, I guess we just forgot why.”

  “This is so crappy.” Justine’s face cracked and she started to cry. “Sometimes I just wish you’d left me in the garage.”

  “Come on, don’t say that.” I scooted my chair over and put my arm around her. She grabbed her napkin, spilling her knife and spoon onto the table. I slid my hand under the hood of her sweatshirt and tried to rub her neck, but she turned away to hide the crying. My eyes were a little blurry but I could see Derek across the table standing lookout, checking to make sure no one was watching.

  Back at the cottage, we put a match to the kindling tepee in the fireplace and played Hearts and then O Pshaw. The kids bickered during every hand. Justine wanted to toast a marshmallow and Derek teased her that it was a kid thing. They started a pillow fight with each other and I tried to distract them with my grumpy man imitation, where I squinted my eyes, hunched my back, and came at them in a hoarse voice with a limp like one leg was a stump. They used to run out of the kitchen screaming when I did that in the old house, but I couldn’t get them to move this time.

  Afterward, Derek threw sticks to Magpie on the beach while Justine and I sat on a tilted remnant of a pier that had washed ashore. I told her that I knew about the condoms, which suddenly made me feel sweaty and sticky underneath my polypropylene windbreaker. She looked downbeach toward Derek and Magpie as I talked.

  “I don’t want to put some big parental judgment on this, but that worries me.”

  “It’s nothing,” she mumbled, as she tore a splinter off the pier.

  “My mother told me that sex enhanced you with someone you loved but cheapened you with anyone else. I didn’t know what she meant for a long time. Partly, I guess, because she never actually used the word sex.” Justine just played with her splinter of wood as I talked. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m not a tramp.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I’m just mad.”

  “What did your mom say about it?”

  “Just make sure your partner is using one.”

  “That’s all she said?”

  I wanted to explain to Justine how that kind of flip attitude was partly why her mom and I were in this mess, but I knew that Justine would feel she had to report back to her mother, and I didn’t want to make her the courier of my anger.

  In the middle of the night, Derek crawled into bed with me, something he hadn’t done for a while. We watched the branches of the maple tree swish back and forth in front of the floodlight outside our unit, creating a series of inkblots in motion against the wall.

  “This is the best time I’ve had all year,” he said.

  I wanted to weep at the thought of what could have been, at what we’d missed living in this craziness. But as I listened to the dull roar of the waves and the wind whistling under the eaves, I still felt a warm glow inside me, the kind of high a marathon runner is supposed to get. The same yawing ocean I’d feared as a kid seemed safe. I was feeling very much a father and I didn’t want to go home.

  Mr. Washington’s voice on the phone was as gruff as an opposing counsel’s. “This Monroe woman is fighting back. She’s hired a male and female psychiatrist. Smart, huh?” I was on auto-pilot. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about your own business, but you’re going to have to score some points for us.”

  So many times I’d been on the other end of this conversation, encouraging a reluctant witness. “Mr. Washington, I don’t want this to become personal.”

  “I don’t mean anything dirty, just the facts. You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

  From the weekend at the ocean, I was more convinced than ever that it would be healthy to have the kids with me. Once they were with me and things settled down, I could work out a visitation schedule with Jude. There was a satisfaction in knowing I could finally make a lie out of her complaint that I was a spectator parent. “I’ll do everything I can,” I told him, “but you can understand my feelings. I lived with Jude for over sixteen years. We’ve known each other half our lives.”
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  He cleared his throat. “You sound like Hamlet. The picture couldn’t be any clearer. If the kids stay with her, you’re going to lose ’em.” He paused to let the weight of his words sink in and I envied his certitude. “I’m not anti-feminist, Stapleton. Don’t worry, my wife wouldn’t let me be. But homosexuality is a whole ‘nother kind of poison.”

  I hated overstatement in anything other than a closing argument in the courtroom, but I didn’t have a convincing rebuttal. “This is a private conversation, Mr. Washington. That’s why we can talk like this. Trust me. When I take the stand, I’ll speak with a clear voice.”

  “Good. Ms. Monroe is going to stub her pretty toes on this one.”

  “Do you want to testify, Mr. Washington?”

  “Couldn’t keep me away.”

  “Then don’t say her toes are pretty.”

  His laugh rumbled into the receiver. “Thanks, counselor.”

  The phone woke me about two in the morning. Warren was in police custody.

  I put on a pair of cords and dug a dress shirt out of the laundry basket. Not knowing what kind of trouble it was, I threw on a sport coat and stuck in my checkbook in case I had to kite a check for bail until I could borrow some money. A robust officer with a wad of chew in his cheek was sitting at the night desk, reading a shopworn copy of Slapstick. I hadn’t been in the County Jail since taking a tour there with the Bar Association when I first became a lawyer.

  “I’m Warren Stapleton’s brother,” I said, and he shoved a clipboard at me with a sign-up sheet.

  I waited in what was the lobby for further instructions from the officer. “Three Times a Lady” was playing on a fuzzy transistor radio under his desk. Finally, they let me into the visitor’s room. Warren was on the other side of a grimy plate of glass, slumped over with his forehead on his arms. When I tapped on the glass, he looked up.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Warren rubbed the sides of his hands against his face. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. “Mandy broke up with me and I got a little wasted.”