The Divorce Papers: A Novel (13 page)

TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI

222 CHURCH STREET

NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555

(393) 876-5678

MEMORANDUM

Attorney Work Product

I am writing this on the fly. I’ve got a ton of things to get done by the end of the day, but I thought you should be informed of some late-breaking developments in the Durkheim divorce. I shall try to be orderly.

Vronsky made his appearance! Late yesterday afternoon, about 5 p.m., a visibly distraught Mia Durkheim appeared in my office, clutching a letter. She said she needed for me to read it right then, in her presence. Of course, I did. I’ve enclosed the letter with this memo. I was reassuring and told her not to worry; we’d pull out all the stops and protect her and her interests. I told her that divorces get ugly at times—she had to expect that—and that threats, veiled or open, were part of the negotiating process. I did my best to calm her down and send her home in a moderately composed state of mind.

Did I say the right things? I believed them when I said them. Do you think Dr. Durkheim would actually follow through? Or is she panicking needlessly? She had been up the night before writing the letter and only fell asleep after Jane left for school this morning. When she woke up at 4:30, she decided she had to speak with me immediately. She looked so different from the way she had at the interview: older, haggard, depressed, sad, anxious. I felt so bad for her. I hate divorces.

She lied to me during the intake interview, or rather, she left out things she should have told me. I should have known; I never believe my criminal clients—they’re always innocent—but she seemed so sane and so frank. I don’t think her confession changes anything (does it?), but I’m glad she came clean. I don’t like surprises. Do I need to wait for the other shoe to drop? Will there be more confessions, more surprises?

MARIA DURKHEIM

404 ST. CLOUD STREET

NEW SALEM, NA 06556

April 5, 1999

Anne Sophie Diehl
Traynor, Hand, Wyzanski
222 Church Street
New Salem, NA 06555

Dear Sophie:

I was not altogether straight with you at our interview, and now that you are officially my lawyer, I think I have to come clean. My sin is one of omission. I didn’t lie to you; I just left something out that probably bears on the case. You asked me if there was another woman in Danny’s life, but not if there was another man in mine (were you being kind? or discreet? or did you think I wasn’t the sort?)—and so I didn’t volunteer the information I will now disclose.

The summer before Danny and I got involved, I was involved with another married man, a French one, considerably older than I, named Jacques Valery, who was a sportswriter at the
New York Globe
. (His marriage was badly frayed—aren’t they all?—and I was young, self-centered, and a bit wild.) I broke it off the day after Danny and I went out for the first time. I was already madly in love with him and could see a future for us. There was none with Jacques; he was too old and too encumbered with wife, children, mortgage, cat, the usual suburban flotsam of married life. And he wasn’t interested in starting over. He was pure affair material, right down to the accent. In the spring of 1993, about a year and a half after the move to New Salem, I discovered that Jacques was working in Philadelphia for the
Chronicle
. I was wretchedly unhappy and decided to look him up during one of my visits to my sister, Cordelia. He had gotten divorced and remarried, but the new wife was living in New York; he was commuting
and, during the three days he stayed in Philly, at loose ends. We had dinner a few times, and then one night we went back to my hotel for a drink. One thing led to another, and before too long, we had resumed the affair. It lasted almost five years. I gave it up last winter; Danny and I were getting along horribly, and I thought perhaps he had gotten wind of it. I now think I sensed Danny was fooling around and I got scared that we would break up. (I was right; it turns out he was starting up with Dr. Stephanie just as I was breaking off with Jacques.)

Danny and I were very happy in the beginning (I have to keep reminding myself of that). I loved listening to him; I loved the way his mind worked, and no one has ever made me laugh the way he did, and probably still could. He could be the best company. Even now sometimes, when I’m reading a book or watching a movie, I’d like to know what he thought about it.

Things started going off after Jane was born. We couldn’t seem to make each other happy. I don’t know what happened. I think now Danny was jealous of Jane, or of the way I felt about her. I fell in love with her, and he felt displaced, supplanted. He was so used to my admiration, almost as fawning as his parents’. Nancy Reagan had nothing on me.

Do you know that bit from
A Room of One’s Own
, where Woolf talks about women serving as looking-glasses with the “magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” That was my job in the marriage—worship—and for the first ten years, I did it effortlessly, wholeheartedly. I was mad about him. Then I grew up, had a baby, and wanted a marriage with two normal-sized people. Isn’t ten years of adoration all a reasonable narcissist has any right to expect from a wife? You’d think the parents of his patients would take up the slack. I saw one of them actually kiss his hand, as if he were the pope. Then there are the letters he gets regularly from them, thanking him for all he does for their children. I’ll show you the most recent. He left it on the counter for me to see (no doubt as a rebuke), and Jane too. She cried when she read it. To my credit, I didn’t crumple it up and toss it out. I’m inured to these
outpourings. I know I shouldn’t be so mean and petty about all this. Those parents are utterly sincere, heartbreakingly grateful. And he is truly a first-rate doctor. If only he weren’t a third-rate human being.

The last years of our marriage were awful, just awful. After I broke with Jacques, I became terribly depressed and gained 30 pounds. I began to hate Danny. I’d have fantasies when the phone rang late at night and he wasn’t home that it was the police calling to say they’d found him in his car wrapped around a telephone pole. I wanted him so much to change, to be what I needed, but there was no way that would happen. He grew to hate me too, I think. He hated living with a depressed woman. If only he could have said to me how much he appreciated what I had done for him, moving to New Salem and putting his life and career first, maybe I could have rallied. But he didn’t. And I didn’t.

I’m getting scared now that he may decide to go for custody. We had a set- to last night; we ran into each other in the kitchen. I was eating ice cream out of the container and weeping to myself. He looked at me with such disgust. “This isn’t good,” he said. “Pull yourself together. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Do you ever think that your self-pity has no effect on Jane? No child should have to grow up under that kind of baleful influence.” Baleful! God, he can be so devastatingly mean. Could he win custody? I couldn’t bear it.

You’ve got to help me. I’ve made a mess of things, but I love Jane more than I can say, and I’m the parent who’s raised her. What if he knows about the affair? Could that hurt me in court? I’ll give up anything, everything to get custody. Am I being hysterical (it’s 2 a.m. and I’m never at my most rational after midnight)? I’ll probably feel saner in the morning if I can manage to get some sleep, but at the moment, I’m feeling desperate and so, so scared.

I couldn’t have written this to Fiona. Thank you for taking my case.

Yours,

TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI

222 CHURCH STREET

NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555

(393) 876-5678

MEMORANDUM

Attorney Work Product

You said exactly the right things to Mrs. Durkheim. Custody turns on the best interests of the child, which has been interpreted by the Narragansett Supreme Court to mean that in a custody dispute, custody goes to the child’s primary caretaker, absent a judicial finding of unfitness. It’s an excellent rule; it not only insures continuity of care, it prevents one parent, typically the father, from threatening a custody fight as a means of applying leverage in the settlement negotiations. Most women are willing, as is Mrs. Durkheim, to give up “anything, everything” to secure custody.

There are no grounds for a finding of unfitness here. If weeping and late-night binging were considered adequate grounds for a finding of unfitness, the Primary Caretaker Rule would have no effect at all. Everyone getting a divorce feels sorry for himself, unless he feels self-righteous. I’ve come to believe that self-righteousness is simply a protective mechanism against self-pity (usually male) and the terrible sense of vulnerability that accompanies it. As for her omission, you shouldn’t have been surprised. All clients, even well-dressed, well-spoken ones, lie to their lawyers. They want you to like them, to take their side. There may be more surprises, but if she’s still holding anything back, it’s more likely she’s suffering from memory lapse or thinking the information unimportant rather than intentionally hiding something.

Dr. Durkheim probably believes what he said about his wife’s “baleful influence,” but I don’t think he really wants physical custody, and he
certainly doesn’t want a long, drawn-out battle, which a formal custody hearing would entail. We could tie him up for at least two years. I know how to do that and I’ll teach you if it becomes necessary. This being said, it doesn’t mean that Dr. Durkheim won’t sue for custody or, more likely, threaten to sue as a means of applying leverage, rule or no rule. He knows his wife is vulnerable on this point. This divorce could get very ugly. If anyone other than Ray Kahn were Dr. Durkheim’s lawyer, I’d call him up and express our intentions to be reasonable. Kahn thinks if you make that kind of overture, you’re weak.

You might follow up with a note to Mrs. Durkheim enclosing a copy of the Narragansett case
Paynter v. Paynter
, setting out the Primary Caretaker Rule. I don’t have the cite, but it’s about 10 years old. It should reassure her, as should the Narragansett child custody statute, which provides in relevant part: “The court shall not consider conduct of a proposed custodian that does not affect his relationship to the child.” That goes for adultery and baleful behavior both.

An Apology and an Invitation

Dear David:

Thanks for getting back to me on Mrs. D’s letter. I’ll write her a note and send her the
Paynter
case.

I am very sorry about my rambling memo; I’ve fallen into bad habits riding shotgun with the gang on the second floor. It won’t happen again. I’ll save memos like that for Joe.

I’d like to make it up to you. Would you like to have lunch on Friday with me and my mother, Elisabeth Dreyfus, a.k.a. Elisabeth Diehl? I’m betting you two would like each other. She’s funny and smart and beautiful, too. She went to law school (after getting a Ph.D. in English) but never practiced. She’s a mystery writer, pretty famous and admired. She wrote her first novel when she was pregnant with my brother Remy and put on bed rest. You may know it:
A Gun in the First Act
. After that, there was
The Scottish Play
(she—and I—wouldn’t want you to think the Ph.D. didn’t come in handy). I was thinking of going to Porter’s. I have a friend who’s a member, and he’ll let me use his charge. I don’t think she’s ever been there—like me, she’s unclubbable. There’s no point taking her to one of the local chichi places. New Salem can’t compete with the food she’s used to eating in New York, so I say we go for the Dink Stover atmosphere. And those double lamb chops are pretty impressive.

I’m free-associating again. (It’s a side effect of email correspondence, which unfortunately leaks into other modes of writing. Just wait.) Sorry.

Sophie