Kramer vs. Kramer

by Avery Corman

  “You’re here, Ralph. We had a good night.”

  The veins began to swell in Ralph’s forehead.

  “Teddy! You got to need something!”

  “I’m telling you, Ralph—”

  Ralph reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out his checkbook, his other hand squeezing Ted’s arm.

  “Don’t say anything, Teddy. Don’t move.”

  “Ralph, I won’t take it.”

  “Teddy, let me do this thing.”

  “No, Ralph.”

  “I need to do this. Let me do this for you.” And he rushed to write a check before Ted could turn away from him, hurrying, folding it and shoving it into Ted’s pocket.

  “You can pay me back when you’re rich.”

  Ralph squeezed his brother in a half hug, said, “It’s only money,” and walked on.

  Ted did not look at the check. He could not bring himself to do it. He went home, sat at the dining room table and finally unfolded the check on the table. He looked at it and then buried his head in his arms. The check was for $3000. His brother had bought him time. In the morning, he could call Packaging World and tell them to take their lousy job and shove it.

  TIME MAGAZINE CONTACTED HIM, and he spent several days seeing executives of the company, and everybody appeared to be impressed. There was one problem. A salesman in their West Coast office who originally said he did not wish to come to New York was now reconsidering. The man had priority.

  It was maddening. He had a child to take care of. He felt he was not succeeding in what he considered a basic function, the business of being a provider.

  He began walking downtown, thirty blocks to the library, and walking back uptown to keep from getting logy, and to save the carfare. Charlie pressed a phone number on him. “She’s beautiful. Fantastic teeth. I’m doing her crown.” He said he had no money, no interest, no strength to start from the beginning with somebody and go through all the what-do-you-like?s and the what-don’t-you-like?s.

  Jim O’Connor called with a long explanation of how he spoke to the company president and they did not want a new salesman who would work on commission, since they wanted to reduce open-end costs—and Ted began to hold the phone away from his ear. I’ll even take a quick no. Somebody, a quick anything. I can’t stand all this waiting!

  “And anyway, Ted, I had to agree. So it would be selling space, plus the details you’re so good at—working with research, talking to the copy guys, like that.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s just no commissions. I don’t know what you’d call it. Sales and administration. Assistant to the advertising manager, I guess. Twenty-four thousand to start.”

  “So when can you set it up?”

  “It’s set up.”

  “So who do I see?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Come on, Jim!”

  “It’s my choice.”

  “Jim—”

  “You’re my main man, Ted. Do you want it?”

  “Yes, I want it!”

  “Then you got it. You’re hired. Ted, I’ll see you Monday at nine-thirty.”

  He hung up the phone and leaped through the air—“Yahhah!” shouting and jumping like a football cheerleader. Billy came running out of his room, where he was making a factory with his Tinker Toys.

  “What is it, Daddy?”

  “I got a job, little man! Your old man is out of the cold!”

  “That’s nice,” he said placidly. “I told you, you would.”

  “You sure did.” And he picked him up and spun him around and around in the air. “Your daddy takes care! Yes, he does. We’re going to be a-l-l r-i-g-h-t!”

  But never again, my son. I don’t want to ever live through anything like this again.

  THIRTEEN

  MEN’S FASHION MAGAZINE WAS on the stands, a stylish-­looking publication with a large number of color pages. The company was part of a conglomerate from South America with holdings in the apparel industry, and the directors of the company wanted a magazine that could help promote men’s fashion. Ted was working with sales presentations he helped create, and he was off to a fast start with several contracts. He was pleased to remember he was good at what he did.

  He returned the $3000 to his brother, along with a gift he found in a second-hand bookstore, Who’s Who in Baseball? 1944. “What ever happened to the St. Louis Browns?” he wrote in his note. When he came to the salutation, he recalled the various detached ways he had chosen to sign off notes to his brother in the past—“Best,” “Regards,” “See you.” This time he was able to write “Love, Ted.”

  He registered Billy in a day camp for the summer, on Thelma’s recommendation. Kim had attended the previous summer, the last summer of Thelma and Charlie’s marriage.

  “Charlie’s not too happy about the money this year,” she said. “I think what he’d like for us to do is sit in the apartment all summer with the air conditioner off.”

  Ted attended a parents’ meeting for the “5’s” one afternoon during his lunch hour. It turned out to be a mommys’ meeting—he was the only man in the room. He sat with the women and met Billy’s counselors, a boy and a girl who were in college and who looked to Ted as if they were fourteen. Ted took notes—Billy had to have name tapes, extra sneakers and a change of clothes. He sensed the others staring at him. What do you think, folks, a widower? Unemployed while my wife works? I bet you’d never guess. As the head counselor described a typical day at camp, Ted became nervous. A swimming pool, was that safe? An entire day, would Billy be lonely? His Billy was going to be leaving the city in a bus, taken by strangers to a place outside somewhere, more than a cab ride away. And in the fall, Billy would start school, real school, with Board of Education door knobs and Assembly days and the Pledge of Allegiance. They would be taking over. His precious primitive was going to be institutionalized, his edges rounded out, another little face on the milk line. Billy was going off to camp and then to school, and Ted was having separation anxieties.

  Ted would wait with Etta in the mornings for the camp bus, but Billy was already embarrassed about kissing his father goodbye in front of the other children. Shaking hands seemed too grown up—Ted wasn’t ready for that. He settled for patting Billy on the back.

  The outside world was making its presence felt, children were raising questions, and so was Billy.

  “Daddy, where is Mommy?”

  “Your mommy is in California.”

  “Is she remarried?”

  “Remarried? She’s not remarried, as far as I know. Who used that word?”

  “Carla in my camp. Her parents are divorced and her mommy is remarried.”

  “Yes, that happens. Somebody gets married again to somebody new.”

  “Are you going to remarried?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to remarried Phyllis?”

  Phyllis? The lawyer. He had nearly forgotten her.

  “No, Billy.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, Billy?”

  “Will you and Mommy remarried?”

  “No, Billy. Daddy and Mommy will never remarry.”

  JIM O’CONNOR TOLD TED to take two weeks vacation time and he expected him to get away.

  “Maybe.”

  “Ted, you’ve been working your ass off. Don’t you have anybody in your life to tell you you’re run down?”

  He ruled out Fire Island, not wishing to be in the audience for any more nervous breakdowns. He looked through the travel ads, special packages based on double occupancy. That was Ted, double occupancy, he and his shadow. On a trip, Billy would never be out of his sight, unless Ted attempted to hire a chambermaid to baby-sit so he could look for pickups at the bar. Not exactly a class vacation. He was tired. The jobless period had exhausted him, he had been working hard, and he knew that an intensified time alone with Billy making typical children’s demands was not rest and rehabilitation. He eventually decided to take two weeks in August, spend the first
week with Ralph and the family in Florida, a reunion was long overdue, and then he would return to New York for a week. With Billy in day camp full days, he could be alone to rest, nap, go to movies, stay home, eat chocolate-chip ice cream in bed and watch daytime movies on television, and just relax.

  On the way to the airport, he revealed the big news, which he had confirmed with his sister-in-law.

  “Billy, when we get to Florida, we’re also going to Disneyworld.”

  The boy’s eyes enlarged. He had seen the Disneyworld commercials on television.

  “Yes, William Kramer. You are going to meet Mickey Mouse.”

  They were met at the airport by Ralph and Sandy, and Dora and Harold, who greeted Billy with kisses authentic and chocolate, a bag of candy which would have made the child’s other grandparents apoplectic. His mouth full of sweets, he loved Fort Lauderdale. The plan was to sleep in a nearby motel and for everyone to spend the days at the pool in Dora and Harold’s complex. After checking in, they linked up with Ted’s niece and nephew. Sandy had been a showgirl in Chicago, a tall long-legged redhead who kept most of the old men poolside in a coronary danger zone whenever she came down for a visit. Their eldest, Holly, was also tall with attractive features, and at sixteen had already refined adolescence into a smoky sulk. The young lifeguard was in love—drownings could have occurred at his feet. Their other child, Gerald, fifteen, was a strong, gangling boy, who was cannonballing into the pool. They acknowledged Ted with teenage “Oh, hi’s.”

  “Billy is a fabulous-looking kid,” Sandy said. “But you look terrible.”

  “Give me a chance. I haven’t had my mother’s cooking yet. I’ll look worse.”

  “Cooking? I’m not doing any cooking,” Dora said over her shoulder without missing a beat, while talking to friends at the pool. “I wouldn’t cook for all you people.”

  “We’re all going out for dinner on Ralph,” Harold announced.

  “Ralph, I don’t want you bankrolling my stay here,” Ted said.

  “Forget it. I’m writing a lot of it off.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “Easy.”

  Ralph approached one of Dora and Harold’s friends, a bony octogenarian sunning himself on a chaise lounge.

  “Mr. Schlosser, I meant to ask you. Would you be interested in a liquor delivery route in Chicago?”

  “You kidding? I wouldn’t be interested in a walk to the grocery.”

  “Thank you. There, Ted—it goes in a diary. ‘Discussed liquor route with S. Schlosser in Florida.’ I just made this a business trip.”

  “There is a certain sense of humor in our family.” He indicated his parents. “Not always intentional, but it’s there.”

  “That’s my Ralph, a big liquor executive,” Dora was saying a while later. “And that’s my Ted, he sells men’s clothes.”

  BILLY PLAYED IN THE overflow of the pool with a toy boat, but when several children jumped into the pool, splashing water, he scurried back to Ted’s chair.

  “We’re inseparable,” he said to Sandy, with a mixture of pride and annoyance.

  Ted had asked for a conference with Billy’s teacher before the nursery school term ended, and she said she felt he had adjusted well. “He seems to be a perfectly normal child.” He focused on the “seems to be.” “Does he have any problems that you can see?” “No,” she said. “What about being too timid?” “Every child is different. Some parents feel their children are too aggressive.” And now Billy was on his lap, hardly too aggressive. He realized he might, in fact, be watching him too closely, but this was unavoidable with the boy sitting on him.

  He slept about three hours that night, Billy snored, the air conditioner rattled. At eleven the next morning, Billy discovered he, too, could cannonball into the pool, provided Ted caught him before he went under. After a half-hour of this, Ted was so exhausted his hands were trembling. Several skirmishes took place over toys between Billy and other children. He lost his toy boat to another child and Ted intervened with sandbox diplomacy, unable to watch while his child cried so bitterly over the loss.

  “If it’s yours, stand up for it!” he shouted at him.

  “You have no right to yell at me,” Billy protested in tears.

  After negotiating magazine deals in New York he had come to Florida to negotiate toy boats and was not doing it very successfully. Sandy, who had been observing, asked Holly to take Billy to the nearby swings.

  “I got you ten minutes.”

  “Thanks, Sandy.”

  “I don’t like what I see. I was talking to Ralph—and I think you need a little time away. The kid, too. Sometimes parents and kids need a little time away from each other.”

  “You’re very uptight,” Ralph said.

  “Here’s what we’ll do and don’t say no. We’ll all go to Disneyworld and we’ll take Billy. You can do what you like. Stay here, go to Miami, check into a hotel. He’ll be fine with us. It’ll be good.”

  “I’m not sure. Let me think about it.”

  Involuntary erections settled the decision. In his nylon bathing suit, with Billy moving around in his lap, Ted was getting involuntary erections. They were uncomfortable and embarrassing, and when Billy sought out Ted’s lap again and Ted got another one, he had an overwhelming desire for freedom from involuntary erections. Let Billy sit on Mickey Mouse’s lap for a while.

  When Ted informed Billy he would be going on to Disneyworld with the rest of the family, while Ted would be taking a few days by himself, the child looked betrayed.

  “It was supposed to be our time together.”

  “We have a lot of time together.”

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “To Disneyworld? Actual Disneyworld?”

  A stacked deck. He could not resist actual Disneyworld. The family settled into a rented station wagon for the drive north, Dora attempting to sweeten the pot with a large bag of brown and red licorice for Billy. “Don’t worry. He’ll be okay,” Dora shouted. “Eat your candy.” Billy waved a forlorn goodbye from the window, the first time father and son had ever been separated.

  They would be at Disneyworld for three days. Ted could meet them when they returned or he could stay away for the rest of the week, since Sandy was staying on. He could also be away for the following week, but that would mean Billy would be in the exclusive care of Ted’s parents, and he had a reluctance about leaving him that long in candyland. Harold was not exactly Dr. Lee Salk. In one of the poolside toy arguments, when Ted was groping for a solution, Harold called over, “Tell him to punch in the belly. That gets ’em. You gotta teach that kid to punch in the belly.” But he was free. He could barely remember how long it had been since he had this much freedom. He could have a voluntary erection, sleep until 10 A.M. He could have a liaison with the Widow Gratz, a youngish woman, perhaps not even fifty, he judged—the best-looking local lady at the pool, a still-trim figure, appealing, if one overlooked the plastic hair piled up on her head. He had caught himself eyeing the Widow Gratz, but of course if word of such a peccadillo ever reached his parents, they would be lighting candles for him—“You did what?” Still, he was free to even have such thoughts.

  He chose not to spend any more time in the Fort Lauderdale–Miami area. In New York he had seen a series of ads for a new resort hotel on the west coast of Florida, The Shells, patterned after the Club Mediterranee, one price for all facilities. The place looked attractive and it was in Sarasota, a short flight away. The Widow Gratz he would just have to leave to Mr. Schlosser. He phoned the hotel and made a reservation through Sunday morning. The next flight was early evening, and he left Fort Lauderdale traveling much lighter than when he came.

  The Shells was a modern facility at the beach, a strip of attached rooms, motel style, overlooking the water, with a screened-in dining terrace and bar, and a swimming pool. He was led to the dining area, where dinner was being served buffet-style and it was immediately apparent that The Shells was fresh-paint new and two-th
irds empty. The people scattered about the room seemed to be from a convention of airline pilots, so uniformly clean-cut they all were. He took a seat at a table of eight, five healthy-looking men and three healthy-looking women, and managed to feel simultaneously swarthy and green.

  He learned that The Shells had become a spa for local Delta and Eastern employees and the people at his table who looked like pilots were pilots. Arriving on a Tuesday, he was out of the flight pattern—there seemed to be several ongoing relationships at the table. The discotheque opened at 10:30 P.M. He did not know if he could stay awake that long. He had a drink at the bar and noted another demographic pocket among the guests, New Yorkers, about a dozen people, shorter, stouter, tenser than the air wing, who were clustered together for warmth. He did not want to go through any New York talk. When only a few people showed up at the discotheque, mostly couples, he went back to his room, expecting to sleep until noon. His internal mechanism, tuned to five years of Billy, woke him at 7:15.

  Ted ate breakfast in an empty dining room and then walked down to the beach, spectacular in the morning light. Disneyworld was babysitting for Billy. No one was pulling at Ted’s hand. No one was making demands. He had no responsibility other than to himself. He raced into the water and swam for a while, peacefully alone. When he came out, he stood on the shore and feeling his surge of freedom, released a Johnny Weissmuller a-a-h-a-a-h-a-h! terrifying a flock of small birds in the trees behind, who had never seen a jungle movie and who took off in the direction of Miami.

  During his stay, he never mentioned Billy. A few times, when the talk was personal, he said he was divorced. He did not wish anyone to know more than that—no complicated discussions, no explanations, no Billy. This worked externally. But Billy was still on his mind. He wanted to call on several occasions, see if he was all right, talk to him. He resisted, though. He had left a number. They could reach him in an emergency.

  Several of the pilots organized volleyball games on the beach and Ted, of Fire Island, had instant respectability. He was “Ted, boy,” to Bill and Rod and Don; “Ted, honey,” to Mary Jo and Betty Anne and Dorrie Lee in the coed games. The days became a blur. He swam, played volleyball, swam, played volleyball, ate, swam. The nights evolved to Dorrie Lee, a cute young woman of twenty-four from Jacksonville, who had never been north of Washington, and worked Atlanta-Miami as a stewardess. They would make love in his room and then she would go back to her room to sleep because she was sharing with Betty Anne and did not want to get a reputation. He was to have difficulty later recalling anything specific they discussed. It was all the most immediate, casual talk, how nice the day, how much fun the volleyball, how good the dinner. They discussed their professions very little. He did not tell her about Billy. On Saturday morning, when she checked out to return to work, she thanked him for helping to make it a wonderful vacation, and he thanked her for the same. They exchanged numbers and would call if they were in either of their respective cities, concluding a near-perfect limited commitment vacation relationship, semitropical and semiromantic.