Chapter 3. Divorce (1984)

Vagrant: Let’s go back some more... Back to the fall... Back to the place where Max completely lost his protection.

I clacked out my frustration on the keys of my Remington:

Amicable divorce… what a strange concept. Hey, you were both tired of each other and cringed to think of engaging in physical love-making, or anything physical, beyond picking up the kids from soccer practice. Let us pretend that nothing happened to send us on our separate ways; no anger, no slamming doors; no late-night arguments that went nowhere. no sitting at the kitchen table nursing a beer in silence waiting for her to come home, no resentments, no foolin’ around. Let us take this contempt we have left for ourselves and mock the love we began with. Let us imagine that we are amigos, friendly with each other and friends with the lovers who occupy our separate beds. Let us smile and nod amicably as our lawyers sort out the mess we have made of our child’s life. Let us make this business as painless as possible; the way funerals bury the dead, corpses all made up, waxed and pretty, so that folks will say, “He looks good… so alive… like he’s sleeping!”

The hardest part of the whole business, up to that point, was deciding who got what of our record albums. Nine years of giving each other Christmas, birthday, and anniversary presents, in which I gave her the albums I wanted and she gave me the albums she wanted. There were a few that we both wanted and had to make some deals. Celeste wanted to split up the dogs but I wanted nothing to do with them. The first thing I would want to get as a pet would have been a cat. I was decidedly not a dog dude but Celeste was allergic to cats and I went along like I had for so long gone-along with her aversion and allergies. We did give each other Ariel but Ariel lost-out on that deal, big time. Like Solomon’s judgment, her affections would be split.

“I do love you, Max…” she talked formally like that when she was uncomfortable, like an actress on the stage of a pathetic 1930’s musical-comedy, “I must be going… the valet has my bags! Oh, poor Max, I do love you. Be strong: Good-bye my love!”

The words were flat on my ears. It was all pretense and show for an audience that wasn’t there. It, the show, was certainly not meant for me because she knew that I knew it was bullshit. She needed to feel good about what was going to happen the next decade or so; thus, the pretense.

There I was at last, alone. The house was cold. That first night it was raining and I had no bed so I rolled out a sleeping bag on a work table that was left in the living room. I had packed all I could of her stuff; canvasses, books and what little furniture we had left in a U-Haul van but I kept the work table. It was a hollow-core door on 4x4s for legs… made to hold weight. The carpets were cold and though dry, smelled of dog dander. I rolled out my bag and lay there on the table top in the dark as tears welled up along with a friggin’ lump in my throat. It was over: so culminated nine years of trying to make the impossible work. I thought of Ariel and all the other Ariel’s of this generation: kids with no father. A revolving door of Mom’s lovers coming and going in, and out, of their fragile little lives; divorce courts, child custody cases, awkward visitations, weekends split up with mom one week and dad the next, daycare and careers to attend to. I’d done all I could to avoid the inevitable and now, my duty was to be her long-distance father like all the rest… incidental to her life… becoming unraveled and perhaps even a deadbeat dad… relegated to little more importance than that of a sperm donor. The memory of that last long-clinging-hug would turn out to be all I had left to hold… a vapor whisked away.

Another feeling came over me before the car left the driveway, though I loathed to admit it, that feeling was relief… relief that the masked ball was finally over. The music had stopped. The lights were brightened. The hall was empty. The illusion was no more and there would be no charade… the Audi, the white picket fence, house in the suburbs… all of it was gone. I had no one to answer to and that felt like freedom. I could go to the bar and drink until closing time. I could take off on a road trip anywhere I wanted without having to make plans. I could hang out in motel rooms with any barfly. After all, I was only thirty-eight, having enough red blood in my veins to make up for lost time. Just go… go… go! I swore I’d never invest in love so thoroughly ever again.