Kramer vs. Kramer (7 page)

He met Billy at school and brought him home. Thelma called and offered to take him. The children played well together. It was no imposition. She wanted to know if he had heard from Joanna. He owed people an explanation, he thought, so he told Thelma that Joanna was not coming back. She was giving up Billy. Thelma gasped. He could hear it over the phone, a palpable gasp.

“Good Lord!”

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said, giving himself a pep talk. “It’s a beginning.”

“Good Lord!”

“Thelma, we sound like we’re in a soap opera. These things happen,” he said, although he could not think of it happening to anyone he had ever known.

The phone was busy the rest of the day. He had fallen into a pat explanation: Joanna apparently had to get out of what she viewed as an impossible situation. She would not seek outside help, and that was the way it was. People were offering child care, meals, anything they could do to help. Bring her back, he thought, just bring her back.

While Billy played at Thelma’s house, Ted went through the boy’s clothes, his toys, his medicines, trying to familiarize himself with his needs. Joanna always took care of these details.

The next day, a brief note came to Ted, again without a forwarding address, this time with a Lake Tahoe, Nevada, postmark.

“Dear Ted: There is a certain amount of legal shit. I’m having a lawyer send papers regarding our pending divorce. Also am sending you documents you need for legal custody of Billy. Joanna.”

He thought it to be the ugliest note he had ever seen in his life.

B
EFORE HE CALLED HIS
parents or hers or anyone else, he called Mr. Gonzales, who was suddenly the most important person in the world to reach. Mr. Gonzales was his customer’s representative at American Express. The $2000 Joanna had taken from their joint savings account was the exact amount her parents had given them when they were married. Ted assumed she thought of it as her money. They both had American Express cards, but Ted was listed as the policy holder. All her statements came to him. She could have been out there, flying to different cities, signing for gin-and-tonics at swimming pools, taking gigolos up to her room—and the bill would come to him. Now, that was a cuckold, he decided, modern style. He called Mr. Gonzales and had their cards voided with a new card number issued for him.

M
RS. COLBY ADVERTISED IN
The New York Times
and the Yellow Pages, “Household help for discriminating people.” As an advertising man, Ted placed a value on the word “discriminating” as meaning “we charge more.” At least Mrs. Colby did not also advertise window washers and floor scrapers as part of her personnel, as some of the others did. He wanted an agency in the business of supplying reliable people who did this kind of thing for a living. He was not certain at first just what kind of thing this was. He found himself involved in calibrations he never conceived of—do you go for someone stronger on cleaning than cooking, stronger on child care than cleaning? The advice of friends was, You’ll never get anyone good at everything, which collided with his fantasy of a Mary Poppins straightening out his life. He had rejected the idea of Billy’s being in a day-care center. The day-care centers in the city were a scandal—reduced funds, poor facilities—he would have trouble on his income getting him in anyway, and he did want to keep Billy’s routine on some normal pattern. He went to see Mrs. Colby in her Madison Avenue office. On the walls were letters of recommendation of people from U. N. delegates to borough presidents of Brooklyn. Her office was tearoom Victorian, and behind a desk sat Mrs. Colby, a crisp woman in her sixties with a British accent.

“So, Mr. Kramer, was it a sleep-in or by-day you were wanting?”

“By-day, I would think.”

Ted had determined a sleep-in housekeeper would cost a minimum of $125 a week, which was beyond his budget. A college student might keep an eye on Billy and do light housekeeping for her room and meals, but this might not be a stable enough influence. Ted wanted a substitute mommy. What was within his means and more sensible would be a nine-to-six woman in the $90-$100-a-week category—and who spoke good English. Thelma, his neighbor, had advised Ted on this. “The person is going to be around Billy a lot,” she said. “You don’t want him growing up with a foreign accent.” Ted was amused by this at first and then he was not. The idea was for Billy not to feel too different.

“Someone who speaks good English, Mrs. Colby.”

“Oh, good English. Well, now you’re talking closer to a hundred-­five a week than ninety to a hundred.”

“Just for a good accent?”

“For a good person, Mr. Kramer. We don’t cotton to flotsam and jetsam around here.”

“All right, closer to a hundred-five.” Ted realized something had just been negotiated and he had lost.

“Now I’ve got to know something about your personal situation. It’s yourself and your little four-year-old boy, you said, and you’re in advertising?”

“Yes.”

“And Mrs. Kramer?”

“Flew the coop, Mrs. Colby.” A brand new way of putting it.

“Ah, yes. We’ve been getting more of that lately.”

“You have?”

“That’s right.”

You would know, wouldn’t you, lady, he thought. You’ve got the goddamn pulse of the city in this little office.

“We’re still mostly your mothers-without-husbands, of course. On your fathers-without-wives, you’ve got your normal deceased, your strokes, your highway fatalities, your freak accidents—slipping and falling on your flights of stairs and in your bathrooms, your drownings kind of thing—”

He seemed to detect her eyes twinkling as she did her run-through.

“—your heart attacks, your—”

“I get the idea.”

“But we’ve had a few … ‘flying the coop,’ as you put it. One in particular came across my desk recently, a woman of thirty-eight, two children—girls, ten and seven,—didn’t leave a note or anything. Just took out her husband’s dress shirts and eliminated her wastes all over them.”

“Mrs. Colby—”

“Ended up institutionalized, so I wouldn’t put that as a flying the coop exactly. More of a mental defective.”

“Could we discuss housekeepers, please?”

“I have three marvelous people in mind. In the hundred-fifteen-a-week range.”

“You said closer to a hundred-five.”

“Let me check my cards. Ah, yes, a hundred-ten.”

“Have you ever thought of selling advertising space, Mrs. Colby?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Let me see the people and then we’ll discuss the price. After nine at night in my house. And I’d like this settled soon.”

“Very good, Mr. Kramer. I’ll call you later in the day.”

T
HELMA AND CHARLIE CAME
by, Thelma bearing a cooked roast beef. A slim, attractive woman in her early thirties, she was shored up by a combination of American cosmetics, tinted hair, contact lenses she squinted through, the latest fabrics, the newest fad diet—if it all slipped an economic notch or two she might have been just a plain woman, as she was when she was tired and the seams showed. She was unraveling now. Joanna’s leaving had unnerved her, confronting Thelma with the problems in her own marriage and sending her back into therapy.

“I wish I really knew why she did it,” she said.

“Maybe she just flipped out,” Charlie offered, tiptoeing around so as not to step on any of his own eggs.

“I married a dentist, obviously, and not a psychiatrist,” she said sharply, Ted avoiding both their eyes with his guilty information about Charlie.

“You know, she talked about going out to work, and I said it would have cost too much. Now I end up paying for a housekeeper anyway and I don’t have the income she would have brought in if she stayed.”

“That’s pretty funny,” Charlie said. “You pay if you do, and you pay if you don’t,” and he laughed too hard at what was not as funny for anyone else in the room.

“Be quiet, Charlie!” Thelma shouted, and Ted realized that his own predicament had suddenly become a field for their battles. “Can’t you see the man is in pain?” she said, covering her own pain. She knows, Ted realized. They all knew Charlie was playing around.

“But why did she just leave? Didn’t you people communicate with each other?” Thelma said in a tone rebuking the men present.

“Not very much, I guess.”

“Well, I don’t mean to hurt you, Ted. So don’t take this wrong. But I think she’s kind of brave in a way.”

“Thelma, don’t be an asshole.”

“Shut your filthy mouth, Charlie! What I mean is, it took a kind of courage to do such an antisocial thing. And I respect her for it in a way.”

“Thelma, I don’t think she was brave at all. It’s not brave to me to just run away!” The rage he had been trying to contain was leaking out. “And that feminist bullshit! Joanna was no more a feminist than—Charlie is.”

“Leave me out of it, will you, Ted?”

“What the hell difference does it make why she left? She’s gone! It matters more to you, Thelma, than it does to me.”

“Really, Ted?”

“The goddamn ball game is over. You’re like the announcers who sit around the booth doing a wrap-up. So what if we would have communicated? The game is over. She’s gone!”

“And if she comes back, you’ll never know why she left.”

“She’s not coming back!”

He lunged for the note from Joanna which he had left on a table. Gossip, they wanted? They could see just how ugly it was. He thrust the note at Thelma. She read it quickly, uncomfortable with the scene this had become. Ted grabbed it from her and shoved it at Charlie.

“Nice, huh? Is that a heroine? She’s just a lousy quitter. And she’s gone, that’s all, gone.”

He took the note, crumpled it into a ball and kicked it into the foyer.

“Ted,” Thelma said, “it might be a good idea—even if Joanna didn’t want to—for you to see somebody. You could talk to my therapist.”

“What do I need a therapist for when I have my good friends?”

“Look, Ted, you don’t have to get nasty,” Charlie said. “You’re upset, I realize—”

“You’re right. And now I’d like to be alone. I thank you for the roast beef and the helpful talk.”

“There is nothing wrong with self-awareness, Ted,” Thelma said.

They said good night stiffly, Thelma and Ted exchanging kisses without touching. He did not want any more self-awareness than he already had or explanations for Joanna’s behavior beyond what he had. He did not want any more theorizing from his friends. Let them piece together their own marriages without examining his. He wanted only to get a housekeeper and have orderly days, a pattern, someone at home for Billy and the moment that was accomplished, Joanna would be dead.

M
RS. COLBY ARRANGED FOR
a Miss Evans to come for an interview. She was a tiny old woman who showed remarkable verve by talking nonstop about her dietary needs, Breakstone’s cottage cheese, not Friendship, Dannon yogurt, not Sealtest, salt-free bread from the health-food store, not these breads they put sugar in. When she asked for a tour of the house and first requested to see where the bathroom was—she didn’t have to go, she pointed out, she was just checking—even before she asked to look in on the sleeping Billy, Ted decided they were dietarily incompatible.

He located a Mrs. Roberts who had placed a situations wanted ad in the
Times.
She advertised, “Good cook. Good with children.” She arrived, an immense Puerto Rican woman, who conceivably had an agent representing her, since she had such a suitable ad, and an Anglo name like Roberts, while she spoke barely understandable English.

“I work weeth maynee Spaneesh deefomads.”

“I see,” he said, to be polite.

“Maynee Spaneesh esecutees.”

The plot thickened.

“Well, I have one little boy.”

“Your womeen?”

“Vamoosed.”

“Loco,” she said.

She pinched him on the cheek heartily, a real pinch. He could not make out whether it was an editorial pinch or a sexual pinch, but it hurt.

“You’ve taken care of children?”

“I haff six baybies. Puerto Rico. The Bronx. The baybi-est, tweynty-two. He enyinee.”

If Mrs. Roberts were employed, Ted figured Billy would be speaking Spanish by age five.

“You cude.”

“Excuse me?”

“You cude peerson.”

She was either making an improper advance or her agent had recommended the lusty approach. In any case, further inquiry revealed Mrs. Roberts was not even free immediately. She was going on “vacaytion” to Puerto Rico, where her husband currently worked for a “deefomad.” By the time she had left, Ted figured out that deefomad was diplomat, esecutee was executive, enyinee he guessed was enyinee, and Mrs. Roberts was a cude peerson, but he had not found a Mary Popeens.

He contacted other employment agencies, followed the news­paper listings and unearthed a few “live-out” housekeepers, an attractive Jamaican lady with a lilting voice Ted would have liked to read him to sleep or other things, but who was available only for the summer, a stern lady who appeared for the interview in a starched white uniform and a starched face, a retired English nanny, who said several generations of children called her Nanny, but she wasn’t up to full-time any longer—could she work two and a half days a week?—and an Irish lady with a heavy brogue who terminated the interview on her own by severely criticizing Ted for permitting his wife to leave, the woman having clearly lost the drift. Mrs. Colby called and said she would make it her life’s mission to find the right person for Ted within hours, since she had taken a personal interest in Ted’s case, owing to his wife’s unfortunate demise, somehow having gotten Joanna’s notation mixed up with your highway fatalities and your drownings kind of thing.

Mrs. Colby sent him four people, one in the $125 range, of which the lady informed him immediately and did he have a cook? Another, a dizzily absent-minded woman who seemed quite pleasant but who forgot she had taken on another job beginning in August. A plump woman who giggled and who seemed as if she might do, except she called back to say she got a live-in for more money. And a Swedish woman named Mrs. Larson who found the place too dirty for her liking, which made Ted uncomfortable, since he had carefully swept and mopped so that no Swedish woman would find it too dirty for her liking.