by Jodi Picoult
Fortunately, there’s no snow yet, or for that matter an overturned truck on the highway. I park illegally in a spot that isn’t really a space (not a bright idea at a courthouse, but really, what am I supposed to do?) and run like hell into the building. “Excuse me,” I mutter, my head pounding as I run up the stairs to Judge Meyers’s courtroom. I bump into a woman with her two kids and a lawyer reading a brief. “Sorry . . . pardon me . . .”
I slide into the back row of the benches. I am sweating, and my shirt’s come untucked from my pants. I haven’t had a chance to shave, or even wash up in the bathroom. I sniff my sleeve, which smells like last night’s party.
When I glance up again, I see her staring at me.
Zoe looks like she hasn’t slept in seventy-seven days, either. She has dark circles under her eyes. She’s too thin. But she takes one look at my face, my hair, my clothing, and she knows. She understands what I’ve been doing.
She turns away from me and fixes her gaze straight ahead.
I feel that dismissal like a hole punched through my chest. All I ever wanted was to be good enough for her, and I screwed up. I couldn’t give her the kid she wanted. I couldn’t give her the life she deserved. I couldn’t be the man she thought I was.
The clerk stands up and begins reading through a list. “Malloy versus Malloy?” she says.
A lawyer stands up. “That’s ready, Your Honor. Can we have the process on that, please?”
The judge, a woman with a round, sunny face, has decorated her bench with seasonal items—Beanie Babies dressed like Pilgrims, a stuffed turkey.
“Jones versus Jones?”
Another attorney rises. “Ready, nominal.”
“Kasen versus Kasen?”
“Your Honor, I need a new date on that. Could I have December eighteenth?”
“Horowitz versus Horowitz,” the clerk reads.
“That’s a motion, Your Honor,” another lawyer replies. “I’m ready to go.”
“Baxter versus Baxter?”
It takes me a moment to realize that the clerk is calling my name. “Yes,” I say, standing up. As if there’s a thread connecting us, Zoe rises, too, all the way across the room.
“Um,” I say. “Present.”
“Do you represent yourself, sir?” Judge Meyers asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Is your wife here?”
Zoe clears her throat. “Yes.”
“Are you representing yourself, ma’am?” Judge Meyers asks.
“Yes,” Zoe says, “I am.”
“Are you both ready to go forward with the divorce today?”
I nod. I don’t look at Zoe to see if she’s nodding, too.
“If you’re representing yourselves,” Judge Meyers says, “you are your own attorneys. That means you have to put your case on if you want to get a divorce today. I highly recommend watching these other nominal divorces to see the procedure, because I can’t do it for you. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, but she might as well be speaking Portuguese for all I understand.
We are not called again until over two hours later. Which means I could have showered, since, even though I’ve now sat through five other divorces, I have no idea what I am supposed to do. I walk past the gate at the front of the courtroom into the witness box, and one of the uniformed bailiffs comes up to me holding a Bible. “Mr. Baxter, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
From the corner of my eye, I see the clerk directing Zoe to take a seat at one of the tables in front of the bench. “I do,” I say.
It’s funny, isn’t it, that you have to speak the same words to get married as you do to get divorced.
“Please state your name for the record . . .”
“Max,” I say. “Maxwell Baxter.”
The judge folds her hands on her desk. “Mr. Baxter, have you entered your appearance?”
I just blink at her.
“Sheriff, have Mr. Baxter enter his appearance. . . . You want a divorce today, Mr. Baxter?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re representing yourself today?”
“I can’t afford a lawyer,” I explain.
The judge looks at Zoe. “And you, Mrs. Baxter? You’re representing yourself as well?”
“I am.”
“You’re not fighting the divorce today, is that correct?”
She nods.
“Sheriff, have Mrs. Baxter enter an appearance on her own behalf, please.” The judge turns back to me and sniffs. “Mr. Baxter, you smell absolutely pickled. Are you under the influence of alcohol or drugs?”
I hesitate. “Not yet,” I say.
“Seriously, Max?” Zoe blurts out. “You’re drinking again?”
“It’s not your problem anymore—”
The judge bangs her gavel. “If you two feel like having a counseling session, don’t waste my time.”
“No, Your Honor,” I say. “I just want this to be over.”
“All right, Mr. Baxter. You may proceed.”
Except I don’t know how. Where I live, and whether I’ve lived in Wilmington for a year, and when I was married, and when we separated—well, none of that really explains how two people who thought they’d spend the rest of their lives together one day woke up and realized they did not know the person sleeping beside them.
“How old are you, Mr. Baxter?” the judge asks.
“I’m forty.”
“What’s the highest grade of school you completed?”
“I got through three years of college before I quit and started my own landscaping business.”
“How long have you been a landscaper?”
“For ten years,” I say.
“How much money do you make?”
I look into the gallery. It’s bad enough to have to say this to a judge, but there are all these other people in the courtroom. “About thirty-five thousand a year,” I say, but this is not really true. I made that one year.
“You allege in your complaint for divorce that certain differences arose between you which caused your marriage to fall apart, is that true?” the judge asks.
“Yes, Your Honor. We’ve been trying to have a baby for nine years. And I . . . I don’t want that anymore.”
Zoe’s eyes are glittering with tears, but she doesn’t reach for the tissue box beside her.
We got together two months ago—after she was served with divorce papers—to hash out all the details the judge was going to need. Let me tell you, it’s a strange thing to go back to the house you used to rent, to sit at the table where you used to eat dinner every day, and to feel like you’re a total stranger.
Zoe, when she’d opened the door, had looked like hell. But I didn’t think it was right for me to say that to her, so instead, I just shuffled at the threshold until she invited me in.
I think that—at that moment—if she’d asked me to come back home, to reconsider, I would have.
But instead Zoe had said, “Well, let’s get this done,” and that was that.
“Do you own any real estate?” the judge says.
“We rented,” I say.
“Are there any assets that are worth some monetary value?”
“I took my lawn care equipment; Zoe took her instruments.”
“So you’re asking that you be awarded the items in your possession, and that your wife be awarded the items in her possession?”
Isn’t that what I said, but more clearly? “I guess so.”
“Do you have health insurance?” the judge asks.
“We’ve agreed to each be responsible for our own insurance.”
The judge nods. “What about the debts in your name?”
“I can’t pay them yet,” I admit. “But I’ll take care of them when I can.”
“Will your wife be responsible for any debts in her name?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Mr. Baxter, are you in good health?”
/> “I am.”
“Do you understand what alimony is?” I nod at the judge. “It states here that you’re asking the court to allow you to waive alimony today?”
“You mean, so Zoe doesn’t have to pay me anything? That’s right.”
“Do you understand that it’s a permanent waiver? You can’t go back to this court or any other court and be granted alimony?”
Zoe and I had never had much money, but the thought of having her support me is completely humiliating. “I understand,” I say.
“Are you asking for an absolute divorce today from your wife?”
I know it’s legal lingo, but it makes me stop and think. Absolute. It’s so final. Like a book you’ve loved that you don’t want to end, because you know it has to be returned to the library when you’re done.
“Mr. Baxter,” the judge asks, “is there anything else you want to tell the court?”
I shake my head. “Not the court, Your Honor. But I’d like to say something to Zoe.” I wait until she looks at me. Her eyes are blank, like she’s looking at a stranger on the subway. Like she never knew me at all.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Because we live in Rhode Island, which is a predominantly Catholic state, it takes a while to really get divorced. After the seventy-seven days we waited to go to court, it’s about ninety-one days before the final judgment, as if the judge is giving a couple just one more chance to reconsider.
I admit, I’ve spent most of that time shitfaced.
Bad habits are like purple loosestrife. When that plant pops up in your garden, you think you can deal with it—a few pretty purple stalks. But it spreads like wildfire, and before you know it, it’s choked everything else around it, until all you can see is that bright carpet of color, and you’re wondering how it got so out of control.
I swore I’d never be one of the eighty percent of recovering alcoholics who wind up making the same mistakes all over again. And yet, here I am, stashing bottles up in the ceiling tiles of Reid’s bathrooms, behind books on his shelves, inside a corner I’ve carefully slit open in the guestroom mattress. I’ll spill full cartons of milk down the sink when Liddy’s not home, then gallantly volunteer to run out at night to get more so we have it for breakfast—but I’ll stop at a bar on the way home from the convenience store for a quick drink. If I know I have to be around people, I’ll drink vodka, which leaves less of an odor on the breath. I keep Gatorade under my bed, to ward off hangovers. I am careful to go out to bars in different towns, so that I look like someone who drops in every now and then for a drink, and so that I don’t get recognized in my own backyard by someone who’d narc to Reid. One night, I went to Wilmington. I drank enough to get the courage to drive by our old place. Well, Zoe’s current place. The lights were on in the bedroom, and I wondered what she was doing up there. Reading, maybe. Doing her nails.
Then I wondered if there was anyone else there with her, and I peeled away with my tires screaming on the pavement.
Of course, I tell myself that since no one seems to notice my drinking, I don’t have a problem.
I am still living at Reid’s, mostly because he hasn’t kicked me out. I don’t think this is because he enjoys having me living in his basement, really—it’s basically Christian charity. Before marrying Liddy, my brother got “born again” (Wasn’t the first time good enough? Zoe had asked) and started attending an evangelical church that met on Sundays in the cafeteria of the local middle school; eventually, he became their finance guy. I’m not a religious person—to each his own, I figure—but it got to the point where we saw less and less of my brother and his wife, simply because we couldn’t get through a simple family dinner without Zoe and Reid arguing—about Roe v. Wade, or politicians caught in adultery scandals, or prayer in public schools. The last time we went to their house, Zoe had actually left after the salad course when Reid had criticized her for singing a Green Day song to one of her burn victims. “Anarchists,” Reid had said—Reid, who listened to Led Zeppelin in his room when we were kids. I figured it was something about the lyrics his church objected to, but as it turned out, it was the character of the songs that was evil. “Really?” Zoe had asked, incredulous. “Which notes, exactly? Which chord? And where is that written in the Bible?” I don’t remember how the argument had escalated, but it had ended with Zoe standing up so quickly she overturned a pitcher of water. “This may be news to you, Reid,” she had said, “but God doesn’t vote Republican.”
I know Reid wants me to join their church. Liddy’s left pamphlets about being saved on my bed when she changes the sheets. Reid had his men’s Bible group over (“We put the ‘stud’ back in Bible study”) and invited me to join them in the living room.
I made up some excuse and went out drinking.
Tonight, though, I realize that Liddy and Reid have pulled out the big guns. When I hear Liddy ring the little antique bell she keeps on the mantel to announce dinnertime, I walk up from my guest-room cave in the basement to find Clive Lincoln sitting on the couch with Reid.
“Max,” he says. “You know Pastor Clive?”
Who doesn’t?
He’s in the paper all the time, thanks to protests he’s staged near the capital building against gay marriage. When a local high school told a gay teen he could take his boyfriend to the prom, Clive showed up with a hundred congregants to stand on the steps of the high school loudly praying for Jesus to help him find his way back to a Christian lifestyle. He made the Fox News Channel in Boston this fall when he publicly requested donations of porn movies for day care centers, saying that was no different from the president’s plan to teach sex ed in kindergarten.
Clive is tall, with a smooth mane of white hair and very expensive clothing. I have to admit, he’s larger than life. When you see him in a room, you can’t help but keep looking at him.
“Ah! The brother I’ve heard all about.”
I’m not anti-church. I grew up going on Sundays with my mom, who was the head of the ladies’ auxiliary. After she died, though, I stopped going regularly. And when I married Zoe, I stopped going at all. She wasn’t—as she put it—a Jesus person. She said religion preached unconditional love by God, but there were always conditions: you had to believe what you were told, in order to get everything you ever wanted. She didn’t like it when religious folks looked down on her for being an atheist; but to be honest, I didn’t see how this was any different from the way she looked down on people for being Christians.
When Clive shakes my hand, a shock of electricity jumps between us. “I didn’t know we were having guests for dinner,” I say, looking at Reid.
“The pastor’s not a guest,” Reid replies. “He’s family.”
“A brother in Christ,” Clive says, smiling.
I shift from one foot to the other. “Well. I’ll see if Liddy needs some help in the kitchen—”
“I’ll do that,” Reid interrupts. “Why don’t you stay here with Pastor Clive?”
That’s when I realize that my drinking—which I thought I’d been so secret and clever about—has not been secret and clever at all. That this dinner is not some friendly meal with a clergyman but a setup.
Uncomfortable, I sit down where Reid was a moment before. “I don’t know what my brother’s told you,” I begin.
“Just that he’s been praying for you,” Pastor Clive says. “He asked me to pray for you, too, to find your way.”
“I think my sense of direction’s pretty good,” I mutter.
Clive sits forward. “Max,” he asks, “do you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?”
“We’re . . . more like acquaintances.”
He doesn’t smile. “You know, Max, I never expected to become a pastor.”
“No?” I say politely.
“I came from a family that didn’t have two nickels to rub together, and I had five younger brothers and sisters. My dad got laid off when I was twelve, and my mom got sick and was in the hospital. It fell to me to fee
d the household, and we didn’t have any money in the bank. One day, I went to the local food store and told the cashier that I would pay her back as soon as I could, but the cashier said she couldn’t give me the food in my basket unless I paid. Well, a man behind me—all dressed up in a suit and tie—said he’d take care of my expenses. ‘You need a shopping list, boy,’ he said, and he scribbled something on his business card and set it on one side of the cashier’s scale. Even though it was only a piece of paper, the scale started to sink. Then he took the milk, bread, eggs, cheese, and hamburger out of my cart and stacked them on the other side of the scale. The scale didn’t budge—even though, clearly, all those items should have tipped the balance. With a weight of zero pounds, the cashier had no choice but to give me the food for free—but the man handed her over a twenty-dollar bill, just the same. When I got home, I found the business card in my grocery bag, along with all the food. I took it out to read the list the man had written, but there was no list. On the back of the card it just said, Dear God, please help this boy. On the front was his name: Reverend Billy Graham.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me that was a miracle.”
“Of course not . . . the scale was broken. Grocer had to buy himself a new one,” Clive says. “The miracle part came from the way God broke the scale at just the right moment. The point, Max, is that Jesus has a plan for your life. That’s a funny thing about him: He loves you now, even while you’re sinning. But He also loves you too much to leave you this way.”
Now I’m starting to get angry. This isn’t my home, granted, but isn’t it a little rude to try to convert someone in his own living room?
“The only way to please God is to do what He says you have to do,” Pastor Clive continues. “If your job is baking pies at the Nothing-but-Pies Bakery, you don’t go to work and decide to bake cookies. You’ll never get your promotion that way. Even if your cookies are the most delicious ones in the world, they’re still not what your boss wants you to bake.”
