Read The Divorce Papers: A Novel Online
Authors: Susan Rieger
Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Humorous, #Literary
The Divorce Papers: A Novel (48 page)
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
BILL FOR SERVICES
Attorney Work Product
| Client: | Maria Mather Meiklejohn |
| Rate: | $150/hour |
| Period: | 6/3/99 to 10/27/99 |
| Date: | December 10, 1999 |
| Attorney: | Anne Sophie Diehl | |
| | 42 Hours | $6,300 |
| | | |
| Attorney: | Proctor Hand | |
| | 2 Hours | $300 |
| | | |
| Attorney: | Felix Landau | |
| | 2 Hours | $300 |
| | | |
| Secretarial Support: | 30 hours at $40.00/hour | $1,200 |
| | | |
| Reproduction Costs, Postage, Messenger: | $400 | |
| | | |
| Subtotal: | | $8,500 |
| | | |
| Previous Bill: | | $5,700 |
| | | |
| Total: | | $14,200 |
| | | |
| Retainer Paid: | | $12,000 |
| | | |
| Total Due: | | $2,200 |
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET
NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555
(393) 876-5678
MEMORANDUM
Attorney Work Product
| From: | Sophie Diehl |
| To: | David Greaves |
| RE: | Maria Meiklejohn/Daniel Durkheim Last Shot Across the Bow !?!? |
| Date: | December 17, 1999 |
| Attachments: | |
I just got off the phone with Mia Meiklejohn. In the move, the movers took an ancient 17” cathode-ray black-and-white television that sat on the kitchen counter. It was supposed to stay with Dr. Durkheim at the St. Cloud Street house; he protested, formally, through Mamie Booth. Ms. Meiklejohn called him to tell him he was the most pathetic person she knew but, sure, if he wanted it, he could get it when he next took Jane out to dinner. I asked her not to kick it in. She promised.
New Year’s
| From: Sophie Diehl To: Maggie Pfeiffer Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 19:28:48 Subject: New Year’s | 12/19/99 7:28 PM |
Dear Mags,
I’m so glad you and Matt can come for New Year’s. Will is taking charge. I am sous-chefing, which is a real test of our relationship. He is a tyrant in the kitchen. His older sisters toughened him up and made him a feminist, but there’s no escaping he’s the family baby and his mother dotes. Can you imagine a Jewish Mother who is also an Italian Mother? He explained (instead of apologizing) when I complained about his kitchen bullying: “I can’t do anything about it. You’ve met my younger sister. Well, my older sister is Stella squared. Mom made each of us cook one meal a week, and I became very belligerent in the kitchen (and highly skilled) because they were so critical. An 8-year-old doesn’t exactly have a wide repertoire.” I suppose I’m feeling with him in the kitchen the way Francoise feels with me all the time.
He’s planning to make a fish stew, though not a bouillabaisse. “Nothing French,” he said, in a preemptive strike against any criticism I might make. I will do dessert. I’m dying to try a galett e. He thinks that’s too chaste, after fish. He wants chocolate. All this negotiation. I think I have a real boyfriend.
Shrinking is going … After our third session, Ms. Phelps said, “Your editing function seems to be on the fritz—I’m not talking about here, in this room, but out in the world. You know, you don’t have to say everything you think.” I’d say her diagnosis was dead on. Will says the same thing. So does Maman, so do you, David, the Judge. I just never really heard it clearly before she said it.
I’m almost happy.
Don’t bring anything. Just yourselves. Maman and Jake sent a mixed case of wine and champagne to celebrate the New Year’s. I think they know something’s going on.
xoxo,
Sophie
From the desk of Sophie Diehl
December 20
Dear Mia,
I’d like to meet for a drink, but not Golightly’s. Let’s do it in the new year and start with a clean slate. How about Frank’s Bar and Grill? It’s no better than it should be.
This is all I can manage in the way of monogrammed stationery right now. My mother, who’s always used it, is threatening to get me some for Christmas, as a sign I’ve grown up.
Are you ready for the new millennium? I’m hopeful.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,
Sophie
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET, NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555 (393) 876-5678
December 31, 1999
Stephanie,
Keep an eye out for Catherine Strand, a postdoc in Daniel’s lab and the first author on a recent paper in “Pediatric Oncology.” She’s a blond WASP with a trust fund, the Durkheim trifecta.
Mia
P.S. He did it with you; he’ll do it to you.
From the desk of Sophie Diehl
1/4/00
Final decree to issue 1/25/00
Send note to Mia Meiklejohn
TRAYNOR, HAND, WYZANSKI
222 CHURCH STREET, NEW SALEM, NARRAGANSETT 06555 (393) 876-5678
Like Jane Durkheim, I know my luck. Special thanks go to five women, the
sine qua nons
of this novel: my daughter, the writer Maggie Pouncey, for her readiness to read every iteration of the manuscript and her unflagging confidence in it; the novelist Karen Thompson Walker, for her early reading of the final draft, which encouraged me to look for an agent; my agent, Kathy Robbins, for her editorial skills, her gift for negotiation, her discretion, and her friendship; my editor, Lindsay Sagnette, for her commitment to the novel, which gave it life and put me in such good literary company; and publisher Molly Stern, for her belief in the novel, which allowed me to imagine a different third act, and for her talented design team.
Others, too, have helped me along the way. My thanks to: my son-in-law, Matt Miller, for his unblinking assurance that the book would be published; my stepsons, Christian Pouncey, Max Denby, and Tommy Denby, and my daughter-in-law, Victoria Pouncey, for their generous notion of family; Katherine DiLeo of the Robbins Office, for her staunch defense of Sophie when she behaved badly; Jane Booth, Becky Okrent, Nancy Dunbar, Barbara Fisher, Joanne McGrath, Carol Sanger, Jean Howard, Niki Parisier, and Jill Cutler, for their advice and stories; and Joanna and Jonathan Cole, for their bedrock support.
I want to acknowledge a particular debt to Carl Hovde, who died in 2009. I appropriated a line from a letter he wrote when he was dean of Columbia College (1968–72) and ascribed it in the novel to Judge Anne Howard; it is the line about fencing unicorns and foddering wolves. I know the line because I typed the letter. I was Carl’s secretary. Carl tossed off lines like that effortlessly.
The odds against this novel getting finished, not to say published, were long. I came to fiction late in life; I adopted an irregular genre, Epistolary 2.0; for many years I worked on it only intermittently. Early in our relationship, my husband, David Denby, read a very raw draft. He gave me criticism I wasn’t interested in hearing, let alone accepting. Years later, I realized he had made good points. David took me seriously and made me take myself seriously. He gave me the freedom and room to write.
Susan Rieger was educated at Mount Holyoke College and Columbia Law School. She was a residential college dean at Yale and an associate provost at Columbia, and she has taught law to undergraduates at Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, Columbia, and Yale. She has written frequently about the law, her articles appearing in publications including the
Berkshire Eagle
, the
Hartford Courant
, the
Boston Globe
, and the
New York Times
. This is her first novel. She lives with her husband, the
New Yorker
critic David Denby, in New York.