A Good Divorce (12 page)

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Goodbye. I've got work to do.” And I hung up.

I wanted to take him to court and make him earn his fees. The trouble was, the court would probably make me give Jude half of the goodwill and pay his fees to boot. Unemployed mother versus downtown lawyer-father, the odds said pick the mother. Unless a stroke wiped out the circuits in my head first, I was dead meat in a contested case.

I finally screwed up the courage to call Lill for a movie and she consented.
Revenge of the Pink Panther
was playing at the Lewis & Clark down by the airport. I was still apprehensive about the kids seeing me with someone so I wanted to stay away from Capitol Hill.

Lill looked great in a dark green velvet vest, which she wore unbuttoned, and a blouse with ruffles up the front and on the cuffs. Maybe she was a size smaller when she bought it but the tightness through the chest had a pleasant effect. I always thought Jude had a salty aroma. Lill was definitely dairy, with a hint of butterscotch. I kept glancing at her during the daylight scenes, just to make sure it was her and not Jude.

After the show, we stopped at the Bai Thai, the first restaurant on Pacific Highway that looked like it had some atmosphere. The front door was built into a gigantic bamboo barrel.

“I love foreign food,” Lill whispered as an Asian girl led us to a table in the back.

So far, Lill had been a lot easier to please than Jude. Her likes came in broad categories: warm, funny, foreign. There was none of the gender-dueling that I would have expected. I pulled out her chair and took the seat across from her. The waitress dropped the menus and snatched away the other two place settings. Our table was next to the restrooms so there was a constant parade of women in tight pants and patterned nylons going in and out. The ones in leather squeaked like horse saddles as they passed and the spiked heels made even the squat ones look leggy. The waves of cologne that washed over our table made the Pud Thai taste like orchids.

“Everyone's dressed to kill in this place,” she said.

“Too much make-up.”

Lill quickly glanced at herself in the mirrored tiles on the wall next to our table. Her lashes were heavy with black wax. She had gray eye shadow, emerald green eye liner, and pink lipstick with gloss, although much of that had already come off on the rim of her water glass. “Some of us will stoop to anything.”

“I wasn't talking about you.”

The prospect of dating had returned all of the old fears about the size of my ears, the plainness of my face, and the shallowness of my imagination, flaws that I'd been largely able to ignore while I was married. Familiarity tended to camouflage physical imperfections and magnify character defects. Struggling for subjects we had in common besides Jude, I talked about Derek's soccer. Throw-ins, slide tackles, and corner kicks. It turned out that Lill loved sports.

“Especially those played in short pants,” she said.

“I wish Justine played sports.”

“I always closed my eyes when someone threw the ball to me.”

“You don't strike me as a blinker,” I said. “Did you ever want kids?”

“You're putting me on the spot. Here I am talking to a father who can't mention his kids' names without getting mushy.” She rotated her glass to find a clean space on the rim and took another drink of water. As she set it down I inspected it to find the new lip marks. “When other girls played doll house, I played doctor with the boys or shot beebee guns at cars. I was always scared that if I had a kid I'd feed him the wrong food and make him retarded.”

“I think everyone has those fears.”

“But I had facts to back them up.”

“How so?”

“That's another story.”

“I thought all little girls dreamed of being a mother.”

“Hey, I'm not knocking it. It's a gift. You and Jude got it, I didn't.”

The calm introduction of Jude's name into our conversation was actually reassuring. It represented an advancement in our relationship. “I think I dreamed of being a father. I just didn't dream of having kids. Until you see their faces, they don't exist. I couldn't see their faces back then.”

The goodnight in front of her apartment was as awkward as I'd feared. What had started out as a roll of the dice had turned into something I wanted to become a keepsake. I let the motor idle while we talked. When she turned to face me and rested her hands on the seat between us, I put one hand on hers. It was a long journey from there to intimacy but I found myself visualizing the steps. The streetlight sparkled off the cap on her front tooth as she talked. Before leaving the restaurant, she'd excused herself to cake up her lips and they looked soft again. We were both leaning on the emergency brake handle, sharing a cane.

Her blouse pooched open where a button had come loose and I wondered if she'd done it on purpose. When I dated in high school, you kissed for months before moving on, but Eisenhower was President then. There'd been a sexual revolution. Lill swayed her back and gave into my kiss, nibbling my lips, and I could taste the cinnamon in her lipstick. She moved closer and I twisted to embrace her more fully, but my hip was trapped under the steering wheel. Her face pushed my glasses against one eye and I let my mouth open wider in response to her. The journey was getting shorter and shorter. I was as erect as the brake handle. She said my name and stroked my face but I was uncomfortable saying hers so I just moaned. In my mind's eye, I could see the spot where her blouse had come unbuttoned. When my hand slid down the front of her and across the ruffles, she made no attempt to withdraw. I rubbed neutral territory between her breasts and wished I had eyes and brains in my fingertips.

At first I thought it was a dream but a man was knocking on the passenger window.

Lill stiffened and pushed my hand down. “Oh God, it's Douglas!”

The man's voice was muffled. “I don't have my key.”

We returned to our own sides, ironing our fronts. I pulled out my handkerchief, scrubbed the lipstick off my mouth, and straightened my glasses. When I turned the volume of the radio back up, the news was on. Who was Douglas?

“I better go, Lill.” I wasn't ready to duke it out with a man who had a key to her apartment.

“I'm coming,” she yelled through the closed window, “hold your horses.” There was a matter-of-factness about her tone, like this had happened before. “I'm sorry.”

“You didn't do anything.”

“About my brother.”

“Your brother?”

“He's staying with me while he does interviews.”

My heart resumed pumping; the tickle returned to my lips. I shook her hand and she sprang out.

On the way home, I stopped by Dick's on Broadway and ordered fries and a Special. The Thai food had left a hollow spot and I needed protein. The parking lot was full of high school kids with their car doors open and boom boxes playing even though it was March and cold enough to see your breath. People sat on their fenders and sipped milkshakes, bobbing to the music. Watching them made me wonder if the part of me that was young and careless had atrophied, but I yearned for something old-fashioned that would last. Something cast iron instead of plastic.

Warren's phone message said he'd buy me dinner at the J & B Cafe in Pioneer Square, the oldest part of Seattle, which was filled with art galleries, funky restaurants, red brick, stained glass, and soup kitchens for transients. A place where the chic and the shiftless shared the sidewalks. He must have needed another loan, and I momentarily wished that I'd charged him interest on the old ones. With the divorce, this wasn't a good time to be lending more money to my little brother.

The J & B used to be a cardroom—Warren said it stood for “jacks or better”—with a long oak bar that looked like a bowling alley with beer glasses for pins. The regulars on the bar stools eye-balled us as a pale-faced waitress showed us to our table. The place was more bar than restaurant and the menu consisted of corned beef sandwiches, spaghetti, green salad, and garlic bread. Our tabletop still showed the ring marks and catsup and mustard streaks left by previous customers. I wadded up a couple of napkins from the dispenser and wiped the table.

“Before we order, I should let you know I'm tapped out. I'll buy you a beer but I can't play Household Finance this time.”

Warren laughed. “What kind of monster have I created? Do you think I'd hit a guy when he's down?” Then he looked over his shoulder and back at me again, all business. “Cyrus,” his voice was lowered to a whisper, “Mandy's pregnant.”

“Congratulations!” I extended my hand.

“Knock it off, I'm serious.”

“This can hardly be a surprise. You've been sleeping together, haven't you?”

“Yeah, and she's been on the pill …”

“And she got tired of filling her body with chemicals.”

“How'd you know?”

“We went through the same thing after Derek.”

“So how come you didn't have another kid?”

“Abstinence.” I hadn't told Warren that Jude had her tubes tied.

He pushed my arm away. “Get outta' here. No wonder you're getting divorced.”

“Why didn't you use a rubber?”

“I hate rubbers. They take away the spontaneity.”

The bartender finally came to our table, wiping his hands off on his apron as he spoke, explaining that our waitress had gotten sick. We looked at each other and I was thinking of a dozen places on Broadway where we could have met instead of this sinkhole. Not wanting to contract whatever our waitress had, we ordered our beers by the bottle.

When the bartender returned, he slapped down two long-necked Buds hard enough to make foam ooze out the top. I toasted to Warren and Mandy, and then took the best swig of the bottle, the one that shocked the taste buds. Warren half-heartedly tipped his.

“Now look who's moping? I thought you loved her.”

“She's already planning the baby's wardrobe. Can't I make her get an abortion? I'm the father.”

“You're just sperm. Once it's in her, it's her choice. If she wants to have the baby, she can have it and there's not a thing you or a warehouse full of lawyers can do about it.”

His shoulders drooped and he drew a slow determined breath. Warren had curly chestnut hair, the color of a good acoustic guitar, even though he preferred electric. He looked as angelic as Art Garfunkel, even though he wanted to be demonic like Mick Jagger. He was someone on whom you could see beads and a bandanna whether he was wearing them or not. Although he had a decent build, he'd grown soft. He'd never been interested in contact sports or weights. “I had plans, man. I'm tired of being poor. I wanted to live on a houseboat and do my music.” I knew he had no clue as to the contradiction in what he'd just said. The houseboats on Lake Union and Portage Bay were some of the highest rents per square foot in the city—that is, if you were lucky enough to find a vacant one. “I met a guy who wanted our group to cut a demo. I wanted to wait until I had a contract and just drop it on you. Watch your eyes pop out of your head. I could have repaid your loans.” He wiped the bottom of his chin with the side of his hand. “If she has the kid, does this mean I'm responsible to pay for it?”

“Only for twenty-one years.”

“I won't live that long.”

I found myself doing most of the talking during dinner, extolling the virtues of fatherhood, while Warren moped and wound spaghetti noodles onto his fork. I told him about the time the kids begged me to let their dwarf bunnies play in the living room. Jude was away somewhere and I was just trying to read the paper in peace. Pretty soon Derek came in bawling because their bunnies had disappeared into the motor under the refrigerator. Without thinking, I tipped the refrigerator up and the milk, leftover peach halves, and whatever else was in there clattered to one side. But then I couldn't set it down without crushing the bunnies.

“This is supposed to encourage me?” Warren said.

“Justine held a match under there to find them and singed her hair. They rattled dust mop and broom handles off the bottom of the refrigerator. I thought we were going to have to call the fire department. But they finally scampered out and the kids clapped. I dropped the refrigerator back down and we rolled on the kitchen floor laughing. We swore to never tell Jude.”

“So you're telling me to get used to living with a little rabbit shit?”

“I'm saying there are built-in consolations. And I remind you that our wills still make you the guardian if Jude and I kick off. The kids think you walk on water.” That had been true ever since Warren babysat them on the weekend that Jude and I were in San Francisco for an American Bar Association seminar. He made a one-story high papier-maché' dinosaur that was tied to the chimney when we came home.

“This ode to children from the mouth of the man who's marriage has just crumbled like a dry sand castle.”

Warren seemed uncharacteristically moody and finished two beers for every one of mine as we talked. “I just can't believe she'd do this,” he kept mumbling. He grew increasingly resentful each time I sided with Mandy, and I finally decided it was time to go. On the way to the door, he insisted on a nightcap at the bar but there was only one stool free.

“I want to be one of the reg'lars.”

“Skip it, Warren.”

“No, you take the stool. I'll stand. Let's have a shot Rhode Island-style. Short and straight up.” His words slurred.

“Then we go.”

“Say, fella.” Warren was talking to a burly man in overalls on the stool next to me. “Move over and make me a little standin' room.”

The guy looked down at Warren with a sneer, then went back to his beer mug.

“That's all right,” I said, “we're only going to be here a few minutes.”

“Bullshit. My money's good as his.” Where the guy's overalls had come unbuttoned on the side, I could see the top of his grungy boxer shorts. He looked like someone who demolished buildings for a living.