To My Ex-Husband (5 page)

Now, about Annie. I'm worried about her. We're into our third day of stony silence. She's obviously angry and upset, but all she'll say to me is, “I'm fine, Mom.” She also won't let me do “Mommy things,” like smooth her hair back or fix her collar. She was probably never fond of “Mommy things”—what adolescent is?—but she usually indulged me.

Somehow we could have handled this whole thing better. One of the problems is that, for Annie and Peter, there isn't the relief that comes of a sudden cease-fire, the stunning quiet after the last plate crashes in the corner.

There was no fire. Our yelling and shouting turned inward, slowly poisoning us, breaking us.

To begin, it was a bad idea to tell them at dinner. We should have taken a lesson from the Maple family in
Too Far To Go
, which I've recently reread. Remember that scene when the eldest daughter comes home from France at the end of her semester, and they have this lobster and champagne dinner? The plan is to tell the children later, one at a time, but it doesn't work out that way because one of the sons notices that his father has been silently crying all through dinner, and asks why. The son gets drunk and shouts, “What do you care about us? We're just little things you had.” Then the boy stuffs his sister's cigarettes in his mouth, along with the napkins, and chews them all up. A wonderfully written piece of fiction that felt so real, so awful, that I thought I was reading about us.

I wonder if Peter felt like that boy. “You should have told us you weren't getting along,” he says. The father answers, “We do get along, that's the trouble, so it doesn't show even to us …” The line goes on to read: “‘That we do not love each other,' is the rest of the sentence, but he can't finish it.”

It didn't show to us, either. Or at least until recently it didn't show to
me
. So Annie and Peter were completely unprepared for what to them is a tragedy.

I wonder how many parents who decide to end their marriage think that was the worst moment of their lives, when they told the children. You're familiar with those movies of traffic accidents that you have to go watch at the local high school when you get too many moving violations. There should be a movie of nothing more than scene after scene of parents telling children that they are going to be living apart. It should be a legal prerequisite for all those contemplating such a thing. I have to believe that nearly everybody would reconsider. They would see their worst fears played out in the faces of their children, and they would take that extra step, cross the bridge, look back, see what it actually is they are about to do, and be repelled. If someone had shown me a film of that night, projected it big as life on the dining-room wall, so that we could have seen ourselves sitting in the candlelight—Annie struggling to hold herself together and clenching her milk glass so tightly that I thought it would crush in her hand, and Peter eyeing each of us levelly, coolly, and with absolute disgust as he rose from the table and went to put his dishes away—I couldn't have let it happen.

DECEMBER 20

I've been looking at the kids' Christmas lists. Somehow, I am not interested in giving them “Patagonia anything” or “gloves” or “watch like the one I lost.” What I'd like to see is “red bicycle” or “basketball hoop.” Toys. Christmas makes me want my children back. There are these tall, slender, young adults walking around, yes; but where are my children? I want Christmas to be fun. I don't want home to be the place where nobody wants to come anymore. Somebody stop me, please, before I go and do something stupid and compensatory, like buy a puppy.

Am I feeling sorry for myself? You bet I am! Blame it on the season. Dickens is a wonderfully warm and cozy companion, especially on lazy Sunday mornings when I let him up onto the bed. But he won't roll over for a hug on Christmas morning and badger me for hints about his present. That was the real Christmas, wasn't it? That little slice of time to ourselves before the kids got us up, and we lay in the snowy blue darkness of early morning, giggling under the blankets and guessing. I loved the elaborate game we played just to put each other off when the guesses got too hot. Dickens is my Santa Claus now. I know he'll make a noble effort.

DECEMBER 26

How ironic to have had such a nice Christmas together just after separating. Not that it wasn't a little strange to have you arrive like a friend of the family, for the festivities, rather than as part of the pajama parade down the stairs. But that moment quickly passed, and it seemed almost as if you'd never left. Which is a problem: How to resume the separation.

My heart went out to Annie and Peter, how courageous and strong they were, making such valiant efforts on our behalf. It's dangerous, I think, to view your marriage as it's reflected in the eyes of your children. But I thought they were saying, in effect, “Come on, you two, take a second look, see how beautifully we fit together. Just love each other. Is it that hard?”

Their grown-up behavior made me feel childish and petty. What possible grievance could we have that compared with the family, with the well-being of our “team”? The day worked because of them—and the incomparable Nina. It was a risk. I doubt she even thought about it; she just has that go-ahead impulse. I can just see her riding down the escalator in Bloomingdale's and, suddenly, her eyes are like pinwheels. There they are,
carrot slippers
—perfect!

I had my problems preparing dinner while shuffling about in a pair of twenty-four-inch vegetables in brilliant orange, but I think we'd agree that the atmosphere they created was worth the extra effort it took to get within arm's reach of the stove. What was great was that the kids got as much of a kick out of them as we did. Our job has always been to make Christmas a happy time for them; this year, they did it for us.

Is that all we were doing, though? Rising to an occasion? I'm not so sure. It isn't that we don't love each other, it's that we ceased to make the effort. I keep having this feeling that we're sliding toward a divorce neither of us really wants. And I have to ask, are we letting this happen, or are we making it happen? The answer is, we are not making it not happen. When it's all over—is it only then that we'll ask,
Why? Why in God's name didn't we make the effort?

1985

JANUARY 5

I shouldn't complain to you about my lack of privacy, but it occurs to me that scheduling a good, productive cry has its inherent difficulties, like having an affair. By the time you've seen your child off to the movies, put a spare key under the plant in case she comes back for something, left notes for all of her friends who might conceivably stop by, unplugged the telephone, and flung yourself dramatically across your bed, holding a box of tissues, you're not in the mood anymore.

I do know, of course, that this is the up side. I've lost my privacy, but I'm not lifted out of context. My life has changed, but I have all the familiar trappings: the furniture, the paintings on the walls, the water spots on the ceilings, Annie and Dickens to wonder where I am when I'm late. All this inextricably associated with who I am. Everything, if not normal, has the appearance of being normal. It's just that you're not here right now.

But
you
. You come home from work and walk into a dark, one-room apartment. No one says, “Hi, Dad,” or jumps up to lick your face. No welcoming aromas to whet your appetite. What you see are the harsh reminders of transition: an unmade futon; a door that doubles as a dining table and a desk; your half of the double boiler; a spotless oven mitt in a kitchen so small that it necessitates deciding, before entering, which direction you want to face once inside. This, the black hole of the separated man. The bachelor pad, the room at the bottom.

JANUARY 15

I've been out getting a preview of Life From Now On from one of the women in my exercise class. She's been seeing this doctor, a resident. He's about twelve years younger than she is, a fact that bothers her not at all, which is something of a mystery since he says he'd like to have children someday. You'd think that would pretty much rule him out as a serious candidate. They've had at the most four dates, and already she's offended if he shows up without his overnight bag. Sex so far hasn't been good for her. “I just don't know where I stand with this guy,” she tells me.

If not, why not? I don't get it. Women are beginning to annoy me. Yes, a lot of men are noncommittal, and behave badly, but aren't they getting the permission to do it—from women? Why should men treat them with any more respect than they treat themselves? In a rare gesture of intimacy, my editor, whom I met with recently, leaned across her desk, lowered her voice, and said, “So much of it, though, is the guys. I mean, don't you think—really?”

We had been talking about miserable relationships, nearly all those she knew. And all had to do with women who were hanging on too long for too little by their fingertips. After a while it became hard to listen. I was ready for them to let go, to drop into the abyss and be done with it.

My editor wanted me to write a column about emotionally impotent men. But no, I didn't think it was the guys. I thought a lot of it was the women. You read an awful lot about why men arc jerks. Even
men
think that most other men are jerks. But no one wants to talk about why, because so much of the why can be laid at women's doorsteps. As long as women perceive that theirs is the greater need, men will get away with what they can. A woman may say, “This is unacceptable; you can't do this to me.” But just let that phone ring, and she's right there, ready to give him his last, fifteenth chance.

Men have gotten the message, all right. And that message is, “I don't have to do anything. I don't have to be a decent person. All I have to do is show up.”

More and more, I feel like someone severely disconnected from the world, as if I've only just been released from a long confinement. This woman I spoke of, she's out there, part of that world, while I hide behind my typewriter. She tells me that if I want to have any social life at all, I'd better get used to the idea of sleeping with men on the first date, because “that's the deal.” Maybe this is my New Year's resolution to myself:
Don't get too needy
.

JANUARY 20

You know that little song you used to sing every time you replaced a washer or rehung a window? “It's so nice to have a man around the house …” It's a catchy tune, but time is running out if I'm ever going to teach Annie that it need not be background music for
her
life. So I've planned some home-improvement projects, a sort of mini-forum on role modeling. The first session started early yesterday, at Conran's, where I bought a set of bookshelves to hang above the bed. I knew it would be an easy project to begin with, because the woman who sold me the shelves said it would be “no problem.” I would not, she assured me, have to hire a structural engineer. My thought, you understand, was that Annie would see how masterfully her mother could perform this simple but terribly useful task, and thus the screwdriver, like her hair dryer, would become a normal and congenial part of her life.

That was my thought. Her thought, as I laid all the parts out on the bed, was to ask me why I didn't call someone who knew what he was doing. Trying to ignore “he” as the personal pronoun of choice, I picked up the diagram that came with the instructions in search of some important clues, such as where, in the drawing, the wall was in relation to the shelves—not as easy as it might seem for a verbal, as opposed to visual, person. Next, I set about trying to identify all the pieces. The two long, flat parts I recognized as the shelves. So far so good. Then there were some curved things that I figured were the brackets. After that things got a little fuzzy, but fortunately June showed up with the drill and the drill bits I'd asked to borrow. I thought, at first, that she had brought me some freshly baked rolls, appearing as she did, like Little Red Riding Hood, with a wicker basket and an inviting red-checkered napkin covering its contents. You'd have thought the tools were contraband and I was breaking out of prison, which in a way I was. Anyway, she had all the pertinent questions: Where were the studs; did I need the bits for plaster or wood or concrete?

I responded with an expression that said, “brain-dead,” an embarrassment that Annie took as an opportunity to excuse herself in favor of watching “Kate and Allie,” who may have been having similar problems of their own.

So I didn't know where the studs were. I could pretend, and walk around hammering my fists on the wall. But I'm a trial-and-error person; so, drill in hand, I would proceed in a trial-and-error manner. The possible errors, as I considered them, were a) hitting an electrical wire and going up in flames; b) drilling eight perfectly gorgeous holes that, for some strange reason, didn't line up; c) plunging too far into the plaster, and thus into the medicine cabinet on the other side of the wall, thereby puncturing a pressurized can of hairstyling mousse. Far worse than any of these, to my mind, was calling someone who knew what “he” was doing, some Tom, Nick, or Harry. Having been married to Tom, Nick, or Harry, I would frankly rather have died.

No one went up in flames. But as June and I concurred, there is some latitude between a twelve-alarm fire and a reliably secure set of bookshelves, especially when one is trying to fall asleep beneath them. So the good news is that the shelves are up—technically. The less than good news is that they may not support more than the thinnest layer of dust. I hesitate to open the window at night lest they sway in the breeze. In which connection (and for future reference), the molly bolt may have worked its way into my mechanical consciousness. Annie remains skeptical. But, as I said to her, in an offhand if unoriginal fashion, Rome wasn't built in a day. And—thank you, Woody Allen—eighty-five percent of life is showing up.