The Divorce Papers: A Novel (22 page)

TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI

222 CHURCH STREET

NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555

(393) 876-5678

ATTORNEYS AT LAW

April 27, 1999

Maria Mather Meiklejohn
404 St. Cloud Street
New Salem, NA 06556

Dear Mia:

I am forwarding to you a letter from Ray Kahn together with a settlement offer from your husband. The offer is unreasonable but not so unreasonable that we can ignore it. Look it over, then call the office for an appointment. We’ll thrash out a response, equally unreasonable but not so unreasonable
they
can ignore it.

I am also forwarding a letter David Greaves sent Kahn this morning, responding to his smarmy suggestion that the two men put their heads together and come up with an agreement. David is not defending me or my role in the negotiations (“As if you need defending,” he said); he’s defending you the best way he knows how. If he thought for a minute that the two of them could hammer out a satisfactory agreement quickly and privately, he’d do it. Instead, he has written a letter that is at once disingenuous and bullying, and sent with it a fairly harassing set of discovery requests. My bet is they will annoy your husband. Be prepared (#4 especially is a zinger).

Don’t panic at the request for joint custody or the veiled threat of sole custody. Kahn can’t expect his client to win on that point; he is negotiating. (Kahn’s a bit like a pit bull piddling his way down a lane to mark his territory, completely oblivious to the fact that the dog next door is a very large, ill-tempered rottweiler.) He is likely to give it up when we give up our request for the house. To be truthful, I’ve never understood—or appreciated—the so-called art of negotiation whereby each side stakes out an
extreme position and then sits down at the table and begins horse trading, the cat for the dog, the Jenny Holzer for the Persian rug, the pension for the 401(k) plan, the child for the house. But men believe in it (it must make losing easier), so we shall have to play along.

Your father wrote to David to let him know he approves of the two-lawyer arrangement. He also said that if we find we need to bring in a third or fourth, he would pay. We don’t think it will ever come to that, but it’s nice to know we can call out the troops if we need them and if
you
find it acceptable. We will do nothing of the kind without your explicit and informed consent. We may want to employ a private investigator and a forensic accountant—or at least threaten to employ them, if, as David says, it becomes necessary in “a case of this sort.”

I’ve got some ideas about a counteroffer; I look forward to hearing what you think.

Yours,

Anne Sophie Diehl

MARIA MATHER MEIKLEJOHN

404 ST. CLOUD STREET

NEW SALEM, NA 06556

April 29, 1999

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

Dear Sophie:

Your letter with the enclosures brought on an attack of nausea. I’m not kidding. I felt a rise in my gorge when I saw the fat envelope with your firm’s name on the flap. I took a Xanax before I opened it. I would never have guessed getting divorced was so mentally disorganizing. I was ready for depression, but this is something else. I feel I’ve lost my underpinnings, literally, like a desk chair that’s thrown a pin and wobbles precariously on its shaft. And yet, I don’t feel as miserable as I thought I would. After that breakdown in your office three weeks ago, I’m more anxious and worried than depressed—and intermittently more optimistic too. Do you know the Emily Dickinson line “Hope is a thing with feathers”? Every so I often I feel a fluttering of hope, hovering nearby, like a hummingbird at my shoulder. I’m also really pissed at Daniel.

I know I shouldn’t go on like this, and I’m truly ashamed of myself, but I don’t know who else to talk to. I’m the first in my crowd to go through a divorce. Cortez upon a peak in Darien. It’s funny, a couple of acquaintances—not real friends, but parents at Jane’s school—have asked me out to lunch, ostensibly to offer support but really, I think, to see what it’s like, being dumped and having to rethink your whole
future. I let them know it isn’t pretty. Whatever thoughts they had of getting out of their marriage, they sober up quickly. Then they start worrying that I might be after their husbands. As if.

I know you said Danny’s offer was unreasonable, but did you do the math? He’s offered to pay $24,000 in child support, $14,000 for Jane’s tuition, and $36,000 in alimony, for a total annual outlay of $74,000. If you take away $12,000 for the taxes I’ll have to pay on the alimony and the tuition, which I’ll never see but will go directly to the school, Jane and I would have $48,000 a year. Rent will take at least half that and my car another sixth. Meanwhile, Danny gets to keep $200,000 a year after taxes, probably more, since the alimony is tax-deductible.

Then there’s his request for joint physical custody and the threat perhaps of asking for sole custody. How can he be so cynical about his own child? He hasn’t spent a whole day with Jane since we moved to New Salem—not even when I’ve been in Philadelphia visiting my sister. And don’t say it’s his lawyer telling him what to do. He hired that lawyer. He wanted that kind of advice. What a shithead. If he keeps up that crap, I swear I’ll sic my father on him. I know you think (not without cause) that my father is an anti-Semitic asshole. Well, he is, in his class-bound, hidebound way (though with Daniel, his hatred is personal and aboriginal, going back to their first meeting, for reasons I’ve never fathomed), but he’s more than that. When he’s not being a jerk, he can concentrate wonderfully—and he has a genius for revenge. You wait. If David Greaves gives my father the go-ahead, he’ll dismember him, limb by limb, and Danny won’t know what happened to him until he looks down and sees he’s been cut off at the knees or, better yet, the balls. (I somehow feel uninhibited writing to you. I figure you have to have heard worse.)

I called this morning to see about coming in tomorrow, but they said you had a criminal court date. On Monday, the 3rd, I’m going down to
Philadelphia to see my sister. I’ll be back on Tuesday night. I’ve made an appointment to see you on Wednesday morning, the 5th. Unless, it’s an emergency, I’d rather not put off my visit to Cordelia. We always plan our visits ahead of time, and she counts on my coming.

Your discovery order was very thorough. Danny’s going to have a fit over your request for all the records of his NIH grants. There’s always money in a grant for the chief investigator, though I’ve never been quite sure how it was handled. I’ve always assumed it was included in his salary and W-2 forms, but it may not be. Of course, you should hire an accountant and a detective if you think they would be useful. You can hire an enforcer and a voodoo priest if you think
they
would be useful. I’ll pay. I trust you and David.

Yours,

P.S. April 23 was Jane’s 11th birthday. She was wretched and I was wretched, but her father was as jolly as a Macy’s Santa. He wanted to have a celebratory dinner with her and couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to go. He told her to buck up. I thought she’d burst into tears. As a present, he got her Rollerblades but no helmet, no knee pads, no wrist guards. Let’s hear it for pediatricians.

P.P.S. Where in God’s name did they get the $6 million valuation of my mother’s house? We haven’t had it appraised since she died. It’s worth real money, or at least the land is, but not that much. They are so full of shit. Excuse me.

MRS. DANIEL E. DURKHEIM

245 CLAREMONT AVENUE

NEW YORK, NY 10 027

May Day

Sophie,

I’ve made a major sociological breakthrough. I’ve discovered the seven stages of divorce, a kind of parallel to the twelve stages of grief. (Have you noticed how many things come in twelves and sevens? With twelves, there are AA’s Steps, the Tribes of Israel, the months of the year. With sevens, there are the Pillars of Wisdom, Snow White’s dwarves, the deadly sins.) Right now, I’m smack in the middle of
Fury, No. 4
. First, there was
Shock, No. 1
, which lasted about a week, followed by a month of
Despair, No. 2
, and two months of
Numbness, No. 3
. I’m waiting for the last three, or what I imagine them to be:
Vengeance, No. 5
,
Relief, No. 6
, and
Bliss, No. 7
. (I played with the idea of adding an eighth,
Self-Pity, but that is so pervasive, I think of it as the Muse of divorce rather than a stage.) I’m expecting Vengeance to kick in shortly and stick around at least until the settlement signing, which will herald Relief. Bliss is a new house with a brand-new king-sized bed—and the news that Danny’s dick has fallen off. (I’m counting on that voodoo priest for that.)

As always,
Mia

P.S. Don’t you love the monogram? A first-anniversary wedding present. I found it as I was going through some old papers.

Sanity

Dear Maggie—

Thanks for talking me down last weekend. I was a mess. I went home and slept for the next 11 hours. When I woke up, I had a message on my answering machine from Harry. He said he had been called away on an emergency and would be back in New Salem the end of this week, Friday at the latest. I spent all of last weekend reading
What Maisie Knew
. Have you read it? I thought it was going to be cool and ironic (I don’t know why). Not a bit. It is so cruel, at times I couldn’t go on reading. Maisie’s parents are so awful, so mean, the absolute worst, not counting those who lock their children in closets or put their cigarettes out on their legs. (And I can’t seem to get away from divorce.) But slowly, sanity returned, as it must with James. You have to pay attention to those goddamn sentences.

I won’t do anything about my mother’s letter. I reread my deranged email. You were right. I was jealous. And infantile. Our parents don’t want us to have sex until we’re grown. And we never want them to have it.

Let’s have dinner Tuesday night. I’ll take you and Matt to Racquets. You take such good care of me. What would I do without you? Well, we know the answer to that. I’d ruin everything and make an ass of myself to boot.

Love,
Sophie

TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI

222 CHURCH STREET

NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555

(393) 876-5678

MEMORANDUM

Attorney Work Product

Mia Meiklejohn wrote me a letter responding to the Settlement Offer from her husband. It’s a doozy. Is that the way divorce clients usually respond? She seems to think so. If Jerry Springer ever decides to do a talk show with Mensa members, she’d be a natural. Among my clients, those who show an epistolary bent tend to ramble incoherently, suggesting improbable alibis or character witnesses (I’ve been asked to depose the pope and Hillary Clinton) or attacking the prosecution (one client said the assistant district attorney was prejudiced against him because he had killed two children and she was a mother).

Ms. Meiklejohn’s decision to go to law school strikes me as very sensible. She’s logical and sharp. She did the math, adding up the proposed child support and alimony offers. There can’t be many clients who are able to focus so clearly and so effectively at this stage of a divorce, if ever. (Do you remember she got a valuation on the St. Cloud Street house even before she met with me?) It’s a bit daunting. I don’t think I’ve ever had a client who wasn’t a psychopath who was smarter than I. Or better read. I had to call my mother to find out what she meant by “Cortez upon a peak in Darien.” (Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” You knew that, didn’t you? Your generation is so much better educated than mine.) It threw me for a loop. I kept thinking of Darien, CT, which
made no sense.

Ms. Meiklejohn is coming in Wednesday morning at 10. We’ll hammer out a bottom-line proposal as well as an extravagant counteroffer to send Ray Kahn. She suggested (humorously?) we hire an enforcer. Did she realize that I actually know enforcers, the whole range of hired goons, from stalkers to bone breakers to hit men? With most clients, I’d say no; with Ms. Meiklejohn, who’s to say. She’s one tough cookie.

Did you notice the letterhead? On April 8 (I was so curious that I went back through the docket to find my memo), Ms. Meiklejohn told me she was going to resume her maiden name. In three weeks, she has had new stationery printed up—even though she’s probably going to move out of the St. Cloud house within the next six months. (The envelope only has the address, so she can keep using the old ones. A savings!) Once again, I am reduced to saying admiringly, the rich are different. (Fitzgerald 2; Hemingway 0.)

Bliss is a new king-sized bed. Is that true for men too?