j:thwelay 13-8-2010 p:1 c:0

The Three Weissmanns

of Westport
j:thwelay 13-8-2010 p:2 c:0

Also by Cathleen Schine

The New Yorkers

She is Me
The Evolution of Jane
The Love Letter
Rameau’s Niece
To the Birdhouse
Alice in Bed
j:thwelay 13-8-2010 p:3 c:0

The Three Weissmanns

of Westport

Cathleen Schine
j:thwelay 13-8-2010 p:4 c:0

Constable & Robinson Ltd

3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
London W6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Corsair,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2010

Copyright Cathleen Schine, 2010

The right of Cathleen Schine to be identified as the author of this work

has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall
not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise
circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being
imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

data is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-84901-571-4

Printed and bound in the EU

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
23703_00_a-b_i-vi_r3ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:15 PM Page v

1
2
3
To the indelible memory of 4
5
Bertha Ehrenwerth 6
7
The fruit does not fall far from the tree 8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31S
32R

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 1

1
2
3
The Three Weissmanns of Westport 4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31S
32R

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 3

1
2

1 3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
When Joseph Weissmann divorced his wife, he was seventy-eight 14
years old and she was seventy-five. He announced his decision in 15
the kitchen of their apartment on the tenth floor of a large, grace- 16
ful Central Park West building built at the turn of the last century, 17
the original white tiles of the kitchen still gleaming on the walls 18
around them. Joseph, known as Joe to his colleagues at work but 19
always called Joseph by his wife, said the words “irreconcilable dif- 20
ferences,” and saw real confusion in his wife’s eyes. 21
Irreconcilable differences? she said. Of course there are irrecon- 22
cilable differences. What on earth does that have to do with divorce? 23
In Joe’s case it had very little to do with divorce. In Joe’s case, 24
as is so often the case, the reason for the divorce was a woman. But 25
a woman was not, unsurprisingly, the reason he gave his wife. 26
Irreconcilable differences? 27
Betty was surprised. They had been married for forty-eight years. 28
She was used to Joseph, and she was sure Joseph was used to her. 29
But he would not be dissuaded. Their history was history to him. 30
Joseph had once been a handsome man. Even now, he was 31S
straight, unstooped; his bald head was somehow distinguished rather 32R

3rd Pass Pages

Master
 23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 4

1 than lacking, as if men, important men, aspired to a smooth shin-

2 ing pate. His nose was narrow and protruded importantly. His eyes
3 were also narrow and, as he aged, increasingly protected by folds
4 of skin, as if they were secrets. Women liked him. Betty had cer-
5 tainly liked him, once. He was quiet and unobtrusive, requiring
6 only a large breakfast before he went to work, a large glass of Scotch
7 when he arrived home, and a small, light dinner at 7:30 sharp.
8 Over the years, Betty began to forget that she liked Joseph. The
9 large breakfast seemed grotesque, the drink obsessive, the light sup-
10 per an affectation. This happened in their third decade together and
11 lasted until their fourth. Then, Betty noticed, Joseph’s routines some-
12 how began to take on a comforting rhythm, like the heartbeat of a
13 mother to a newborn baby. Betty was once again content, in love,
14 even. They traveled to Tuscany and stood in the Chianti hills watch-
15 ing the swallows and the swift clouds of slate-gray rain approaching.
16 They took a boat through the fjords of Norway and another through
17 the Galápagos Islands. They took a train through India from one
18 palace to the next, imagining the vanished Raj and eating fragrant
19 delicate curries. They did all these things together. And then, all
20 these things stopped.
21 “Irreconcilable differences,” Joe said.
22 “Oh, Joseph. What does that have to do with divorce?”
23 “I want to be generous,” Joe said.
24 Generous? she thought. It was as if she were the maid and she
25 was being fired. Would he offer her two months’ salary?
26 “You cannot be generous with what is mine,” she said.
27 And the divorce, like horses in a muddy race, their sides froth-
28 ing, was off and running.
29
30
31S The name of Joe’s irreconcilable difference was Felicity, although
32R Betty referred to her, pretending she could not remember the cor-

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 5

rect name, sometimes as Pleurisy, more often as Duplicity. But that 1

was later, when Betty had surrendered the apartment on Central 2
Park West. During the negotiations leading up to that move, Betty 3
and her daughters were left to speculate, to surmise, and to suspect 4
the existence of a Felicity to whom they had never been formally 5
introduced. 6
“I will be generous to my wife,” Joe told Felicity. “After all, I did 7
spend almost fifty years of my life with the woman.” When he said 8
the words “my wife,” it made Felicity glare at him. But he didn’t no- 9
tice, for when he said the word “fifty” it made him sad and confused. 10
That was more than half his life. What was he doing? He was too old 11
to be starting out fresh. But when the word “old” passed through his 12
thoughts, that heavy, gloomy syllable, followed so closely by the 13
word “fresh,” his doubt passed and he uttered the word “woman” as 14
if Betty were a rude ticket taker at a tollbooth, a stranger with her 15
unmanicured hand out, and Felicity’s glare softened. 16
“Of course you’ll be generous,” Felicity said. “You are a gen- 17
erous man. Anything you do will be generous, Joe.” She took his 18
hand and kissed it. “And I will help you, Joe,” she said. “I’ll help 19
you be generous.” 20
“Naturally I’ll give her the apartment,” Joe said. “It seems only 21
right. We’ve lived in it all our lives. She’s put so much work into 22
it. It’s her baby.” 23
Felicity had seen the apartment. In a magazine. It sparkled and 24
gleamed with a comforting Old World charm. Or so the magazine 25
said. To Felicity, it just looked big and luscious, though the various 26
shades of cream could do with a little splash of color, and some of 27
the furniture seemed a bit rickety, antique or no antique. She would 28
like to live in such an apartment. But she said, “Naturally.” Then 29
she looked thoughtfully at Joe, who sat on her own sofa in her own 30
living room, a perfectly respectable place in Lincoln Towers that 31S
had once had a view of the Hudson River. She stood up and peered 32R

3rd Pass Pages

Master
 23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 6

1 out the window at the Trump Towers that now blocked that view.
2 “You bought that place for a song, didn’t you?” she asked.
3 Joe smiled. “We did. We never missed a mortgage payment,
4 either.”
5 “You never missed a mortgage payment,” Felicity corrected him.
6 “Yes, of course. That’s true.”
7 “Paid it from your salary?”
8 “Well, who else’s salary would there be?” he asked. “Betty
9 never worked a day in her life. Never had to. You know that.”
10 Felicity did know that. She, on the other hand, had worked
11 many days in her life.
12 “But it was her money that made the down payment,” Joe
13 added. He thought of himself as a fair man.
14 “A mere song,” Felicity said. “You said so yourself.”
15 Joe considered this. “Yes. Five thousand dollars down. Can you
16 imagine?”
17 “And now the apartment is worth—what? Three million?”
18 “Oh, at least.”
19 Felicity was silent, letting the implication sink in.
20 “That’s quite a return on a five-thousand-dollar investment,
21 isn’t it?” he said.
22 “I suppose the upkeep is very high these days.”
23 Joe nodded.
24 “It’s really a burden, that big old place,” Felicity said. “Poor
25 Betty. I don’t envy her. At her age.”
26 “She ought to downsize,” Joe said. “We should sell the place,
27 and she can take her share and buy something a little more real-
28 istic.”
29 “Joe, you really are a generous man,” Felicity said. “And self-
30 sacrificing, too.”
31S He looked at her blankly. He knew he was generous and self-
32R sacrificing, but just for a moment he could not quite make out

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 7

how this act of taking half the proceeds, rather than none, fit that 1
description. Then Felicity said, with some alarm, “But what about 2
the taxes? There will be hardly anything left from the sale after 3
taxes. Poor Betty.” She saw it was six o’clock and made him his 4
drink. “It really will be a burden on her, much more than on you. 5
You have so many deductions. She doesn’t. Not having a business.” 6
Joe was not a stupid man, and he liked to think of himself as a 7
generous man; but he loved the big, airy apartment Betty had 8
made so comfortable for him, and he loved Felicity. Obviously the 9
apartment would be too much for Betty to handle, he told him- 10
self. How could he have been so thoughtless, so insensitive? 11
“At her age,” Felcity murmured again, as if reading his thoughts. 12
The apartment was far more suitable for him and Felicity. She 13
was young and energetic. He was neither, but he was so used to the 14
place. Was it fair that he should be thrown out of his own home 15
just to pay good money to the government? It would be very bad 16
judgment. It would bankrupt Betty with taxes. It would be cruel. 17
And so it was decided. Joe would be generous and keep the 18
apartment. 19
20
21
Betty had been married before she met Joseph Weissmann. Her first 22
husband had died suddenly and young in an automobile accident, 23
leaving her with two little girls, Annie, age three, and Miranda, two 24
months. Joseph came into their lives not quite a year after the acci- 25
dent. He married Betty, and though they ate dinner in the kitchen 26
before he came home from work and never saw him on the Satur- 27
days when he went to the office, the girls took his last name, called 28
him Josie, considered him their father, and loved him as if he were. 29
When Annie got the phone call from her mother announcing 30
Joseph’s discovery of irreconcilable differences after almost fifty 31S
years, she immediately urged a visit to a neurologist. Had Josie been 32R

3rd Pass Pages

Master
 23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 8

1 complaining of headaches? Erratic behavior, headaches, dizziness:

2 Of course it was a brain tumor. Did her mother remember her
3 friend Oliver from graduate school? He died just like that. Betty
4 had better get him to a doctor that day. Poor Josie.
5 “It’s not a brain tumor,” her mother said. Joseph was feeling
6 better than he had in years. “And you know what that means.”
7 Annie grudgingly accepted what her sister, Miranda, under-
8 stood immediately.
9 “He is in love,” Miranda said when Betty called her to tell her
10 the news.
11 “I’m afraid he must be,” Betty said.
12 The two women were silent. They were both believers in love.
13 This love was heresy.
14 “What does Annie say?”
15 “She’s going to speak to him. And she suggested I get a lawyer.”
16 “A lawyer?” Miranda’s voice was disapproving. “What does
17 Josie say about that?”
18 “He suggested we use a mediator.”
19 “This is not really happening,” Miranda said.
20 And she, too, decided to see Josie.
21
22
23 “I am entitled to live my life,” Joseph told them when they ap-
24 peared together at his office. But there were tears in his eyes. “I am
25 entitled to my life.”
26 Both women were moved by the tears. And both agreed that he
27 was entitled to his life, but with these provisos: Annie explained that
28 the life Josie was entitled to was the life he had always lived, the one
29 with their mother; Miranda, a more romantic soul, pointed out that
30 while life must be lived to the fullest, Josie was no longer young,
31S and his present life was surely full enough for someone his age.
32R “This is difficult for me, too,” Joseph said. He squeezed his

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 9

fists into his eyes like a child. The two women put their arms 1
around him. 2
“Josie, Josie,” they said softly, soothing the distinguished man in 3
his pinstriped suit. They had never seen their stepfather cry. 4
He stood back and looked down at his two daughters, his 5
“girls,” and he saw that his girls were no longer girls. Miranda was 6
as lovely in her skittish, eye-flashing way as ever, her light brown 7
hair shining, grazing her shoulders, the style not much different 8
from what she wore as a teenager. But now in her still-youthful 9
beauty there was something willed and hard. As for Annie, she had 10
never looked youthful, always so serious, her dark eyes taking 11
everything in and giving nothing back. He could see a faint line of 12
gray where her hair parted. She watched him anxiously. What 13
could he do for her, his sad little girl? Decades ago, in his youth, a 14
man in his position might have handed her some bills and told her 15
to buy herself a hat to cheer herself up. He imagined her in a lit- 16
tle velvet cocktail hat, inclined rakishly to one side. The incon- 17
gruity of it made him want to shake her. 18
“I will be very generous to your mother,” he said. “You can 19
count on me for that.” 20
And the daughters left the office, angry, disappointed, but 21
hopeful for their mother’s material comfort, at least. 22
“Hi, Felicity,” they said with forced cheerfulness to the pretty 23
VP who had initiated the increasingly successful online side of the 24
business. There was no point in letting their misery show. Perhaps 25
the whole thing could be patched up before Felicity and the oth- 26
ers in the office knew anything about it. 27
28
29
“Well, at least they’re not getting lawyers,” Miranda said. “Lawyers 30
are parasitic vultures.” 31S
“You’re mixing unpleasant species characteristics.” 32R

3rd Pass Pages

Master
 23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 10

1 “Vermin,” Miranda said defiantly. Miranda was a literary agent

2 and resented the legal profession on principle for interfering in
3 matters that ought not to concern them, like her clients’ contracts,
4 but her experiences with lawyers had been particularly painful in
5 the last six months. “They should mind their own business.”
6 “Unfortunately, divorce sort of is their business. Some of them
7 anyway.”
8 Miranda had never been divorced herself. This, she knew, was
9 only because she had never been married. She fell in love too eas-
10 ily, too frequently, too hard, to get married. Miranda loved to be
11 in love. It was a pleasure she was willing to suffer for, but not give
12 up. Right now she was in love with a ne’er-do-well day trader. She
13 thought of him and felt a flutter of giddy admiration: his bare
14 back bent over her computer in her dark bedroom late at night,
15 the pained expression on his face illuminated by the big, bright
16 monitor.
17 Love was one of the reasons she gave for never getting married,
18 the primary one. But there was another. She had always been too
19 busy, constantly on the phone, barking out orders to her harassed
20 assistant, flirting with a publisher on the hook, raising the spirits of
21 a disappointed author. She specialized in the genre of what Annie
22 dubbed the Lite Victory memoir. Her clients, the Awful Authors,
23 as even Miranda called them, had always overcome something
24 ghastly and lurid, something so ghastly and so lurid they had to
25 write a ghastly and lurid book recounting every detail of their
26 mortification and misery. At the end of the book, there was a nice
27 epiphany, and since no one could really object to an epiphany, not
28 even Annie, the books were very popular and Miranda had built a
29 thriving agency that required her constant attention.
30 Until the lawyers got to it, she thought. “Vermin,” she said
31S again. “Ha! No divorce lawyer will ever dine on my flesh.”
32R Annie said nothing. Miranda’s antipathy to marriage was a point

10

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 11

of contention between them. Annie had always maintained that 1

Miranda simply lacked the imagination to get married. 2
“Marriage is too much like fiction for you,” she once told Mi- 3
randa. “Too unpredictable, too influenced by idiosyncratic char- 4
acters.” 5
Miranda, who considered herself a hopeless romantic, had re- 6
plied, “Fiction has a plot, the same old plot. In what way is that 7
unpredictable?” 8
“Because it all hangs on temperament, on personality, on 9
serendipity and happenstance. On chance. Your books, and all your 10
love affairs, are about control, losing it and then reasserting it.” 11
To which assessment of the genre of memoir and the miracles 12
of the heart Miranda would shake her head, smile pityingly at her 13
benighted older sister, contemplate her puzzling insistence on al- 14
ways wearing such drab colors, and say gently, “I want to be free, 15
Annie. And I am.” 16
Then, invariably, the sisters would quote Louisa May Alcott 17
at each other—“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her 18
brain”—and move on to other things. 19
Now, as Miranda walked beside her sister, she wondered if 20
Josie wanted to be free, free of Annie and herself. As well as their 21
mother, of course. 22
“It’s so sad,” she said. “Lawyers would make it ugly, too.” 23
She felt her phone vibrating. When she saw who it was, she 24
didn’t answer. 25
“Christ,” she muttered, but Annie didn’t hear her. 26
“And expensive,” Annie was saying. “They make it so expen- 27
sive.” That had certainly been her experience. She had been mar- 28
ried, many years ago. She had two grown children to prove it. But 29
her husband, such an intense, driven young man, had turned out 30
to be a gambler. Annie hadn’t seen him after the divorce, eighteen 31S
years ago, nor had he kept in touch with his children. She had been 32R

11

3rd Pass Pages

Master
 23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 12

1 informed of his death, of leukemia, two years ago. “Nothing lasts,”

2 she said now, thinking of the waste that was love.
3 Miranda said, “You’re so literal minded.”
4 And the two sisters continued down the street, arm in arm, af-
5 fectionate and indulgent, each smiling a small, comfortable smile
6 at her superiority to the other.
7
8
9 On leaving her stepfather’s office, Annie had given Felicity Barrow
10 a brave, friendly hello, yet she had never liked Felicity. Felicity had
11 round, oversized eyes, bright blue eyes, like a child actor who knows
12 how to act like a child. Annie respected her stepfather’s colleague.
13 She knew how hard Felicity worked and how much she had con-
14 tributed to the company, but she knew of Felicity’s accomplishments
15 by way of Felicity. It was not that the woman boasted. Quite the op-
16 posite. She was modest to a fault, the fault being that she insinuated
17 her modesty, deftly, into almost any conversation, proclaiming her
18 insignificance and ignorance, thereby assuring a correction.
19 Even so, under other circumstances, Annie would have stopped
20 for a more extended greeting, for Felicity’s older brother was the
21 distinguished novelist Frederick Barrow, and through Felicity’s
22 generous intervention he had been induced to speak at the library
23 where Annie worked. It was a small, private, subscription library
24 started in the nineteenth century by wealthy furriers hoping to
25 help promote literacy and thus good citizenship among aspiring
26 young men entering the trade. It was endowed with funds not
27 quite sufficient to keep it going, and among her other duties as
28 deputy director, Annie arranged readings there. They had become
29 something of an event in the Upper West Side neighborhood
30 where the library was located. The tickets were sold for twenty-
31S five dollars apiece, and after a rocky start, they had gotten audi-
32R ences of over two hundred people for three years running.

12

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 13

One of Annie’s talents was convincing writers to participate. 1

At first she had simply kept abreast of who had a book coming out 2
and might therefore be eager to promote it. But after a few years, 3
she began giving the authors a percentage of the take, something 4
she had observed at readings she’d attended in Germany. It seemed 5
to excite the writers when she handed them a wad of smooth, 6
worn bills, far more than an honorarium check would have done. 7
They were like children receiving shiny coins. Annie had no illu- 8
sions about authors. On the one hand, she admired them, for they 9
created the books she admired. But, too, she felt most of them 10
were rather sad, desperate people who couldn’t hold down a job, 11
and she counted out the money into their open palms with the 12
same expression she wore when tipping the doorman. 13
But even with the inducement of a pile of twenty-dollar bills, 14
it was unusual for her to get a writer like Frederick Barrow to read 15
at her library. He was not only revered and rich, he was also re- 16
served, and he rarely appeared in public. Felicity’s offer had been a 17
welcome one. 18
Annie had first met Felicity one evening a year ago when An- 19
nie went to the suite of offices to surprise her stepfather and join 20
him on his walk home. Joseph walked home every day, rain or 21
shine, and Annie liked to join him sometimes. It was not far from 22
his office to the apartment, eighteen blocks, it was on her way 23
home, and that night had been a lovely, cool spring evening, the 24
sunlight lingering and the finches warbling gloriously from the light 25
poles. 26
The receptionist was not there when Annie stepped out of the 27
elevator. Felicity, who was just leaving Joseph’s office, appeared to 28
be the only other person around, and Joseph introduced the two 29
women. It was then that Felicity had offered up her brother. An- 30
nie, though excited at the prospect, did not take her seriously and 31S
forgot all about it. But a month later, an e-mail appeared in her in- 32R

13

3rd Pass Pages

Master
 23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 14

1 box from Felicity with Frederick Barrow’s phone number, e-mail

2 address, and pledge that he would participate.
3 The reading promised to be a huge success. They had sent out the
4 announcements, and one hundred tickets had been ordered already.
5 Frederick Barrow himself, though he wrote turbulent, wrenching
6 books, turned out to be as tranquil a man as Annie had ever met.
7 They went for drinks to discuss the event, drinks somehow be-
8 came dinner, and dinner led to after-dinner drinks at Bemelman’s
9 Bar. They walked together up Fifth Avenue past the closed muse-
10 ums and the dark forest of Central Park at night. They walked and
11 walked in the windy night, quoting Shakespeare like undergradu-
12 ates and holding hands.
13 Never, Annie thought, have I regretted an evening as a librar-
14 ian less. This mood lasted for weeks. Then Frederick Barrow
15 joined the library and began to use it for his research, which led to
16 more lunches, more dinners, and considerably more quotation.
17 Indeed, on the day that Annie and Miranda left their stepfather in
18 tears and retreated to a café to drink tea, Annie was planning to
19 have dinner with Frederick.
20 “He’s so handsome in his author photos,” Miranda said.
21 “They’re not terribly recent. His hair is almost white now. I
22 think writers should keep their photos up-to-date. When he does
23 finally use a new one, it will be a terrible shock to his readers.
24 They’ll think he’s been ill.”
25 “Good God, Annie.”
26 Miranda’s cell phone gave a plaintive cry, and she checked a
27 text message, frowned, and swore beneath her breath. “Where does
28 he live, anyway?” she said as she typed into the cell phone. “These
29 fuckers.” She put the phone away. “So? Where?” It was important
30 to Miranda that Frederick Barrow be a New Yorker. It would not
31S do anyone any good if he lived in San Francisco or taught at the
32R University of Iowa.

14

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 15

“He’s been in Berlin for the past year—that’s where I first got 1
in touch with him.” 2
“Oh, Berlin!” Miranda, in her enthusiasm for a city she found 3
endlessly fascinating, forgot for a moment that she wanted Freder- 4
ick to live nearby. “Wonderful.” 5
“But I think he actually lives in Massachusetts. Cape Cod? He’s 6
been staying with his kids in the city.” 7
Massachusetts was not bad. Miranda nodded in approval. She’d 8
had a boyfriend in college who went to Harvard while she went 9
to Barnard. There was a good train, and Miranda liked trains. A 10
train felt fast, faster than a car, faster even than a plane, and the il- 11
lusion of speed was almost as important to Miranda as was speed 12
itself. She became bored and impatient easily, but had found that 13
anything framed by a train window could hold her attention, as if 14
the undersides and back ends and rusty corners of dying cities 15
were episodes of a rough, rousing life flashing by. She had ended 16
up detesting the Harvard boyfriend, Scarsdale Nick, as she used to 17
call him, but the train had never disappointed her. No, Frederick 18
Barrow in Massachusetts was not bad at all. 19
“He is still pretty good-looking,” Annie said. “He wears nice 20
old tweed jackets.” 21
Annie’s tone was serious and full of warmth. Miranda gave a snort. 22
“What?” Annie said. 23
“Ha!” 24
“You’re crazy.” 25
“I know what I know,” Miranda said. 26
27
28
As the weeks wore on, the marriage mediation sessions began. 29
Betty and Joseph went to an office oddly situated in Chelsea. 30
“Where did you find out about this woman?” Betty asked. 31S
“Referral.” 32R

15

3rd Pass Pages

Master
 23703_01_001-296_r6ss.qxp 12/14/09 5:27 PM Page 16

1 “This is a very dumpy office,” Betty whispered. They had

2 walked down the narrow stairs of a decrepit brownstone to what
3 was the basement level. “This was called the English basement
4 when they first started doing them in New York. Nineteenth cen-
5 tury. Very Upstairs, Downstairs, don’t you think? Do you remember
6 when Annie hired a carpenter she found in the Village Voice classi-
7 fieds? Did you find this woman in the Village Voice classifieds, honey?
8 Those bookcases tilted terribly.”
9 A small dumpy woman appeared at the door to an inner
10 dumpy office. She had full, poorly cut salt-and-pepper hair. She
11 was, Betty noticed, wearing space shoes.
12 “Are those back?” she asked the woman. “They were very
13 popular in the fifties. Our dentist wore them.”
14 The mediator did not smile. But she did hold out her hand and
15 introduce herself. Her name was Nina Britsky. A matzoh-punim,
16 Betty thought, feeling sad for her.
17 The office was small and crowded with piles of bulging fold-
18 ers. It resembled a closet, really—the bulging file closet. The me-
19 diator sat on a complicated ergonomic chair and placed her feet
20 on a small stool that was on rockers. So much specialized equip-
21 ment, Betty thought, just to listen to Joseph and me disagree.
22 Nina Britsky opened her laptop and began to type and speak.
23 Betty did not hear much of what she said. The initial barrage of
24 New Age pop-psychological platitudes delivered in a hoarse Bronx
25 accent immediately told Betty that daydreaming would be the most
26 polite response. And Nina Britsky looked so much like a chimpan-
27 zee curled on her ergonomic chair: her coarse cap of hair; her lips
28 pursed in contemplation, then opening wide to reveal large teeth.
29 Betty imagined herself in a dark chimpanzee cave, though she did
30 not believe, now that she thought of it, that chimpanzees slept in
31S caves. Surely they slept in trees. But the room was almost as dark as a
32R cave. Perhaps there was a divorce mediation lighting theory: if the

16

3rd Pass Pages

Master
23703_01_001-296_r5ss.qxp 12/1/09 3:14 PM Page 17

two people could no longer see each other, they would leave each 1
other more easily. The woman was probably just trying to keep her 2
electricity bills down, and who could blame her? Betty had just be- 3
gun changing over to the new energy-saving bulbs herself. They 4
were so pretty, twisting and turning, like old-fashioned filaments . . . 5
“It’s good there’s no child custody involved,” the woman was 6
saying. She typed importantly on her laptop. “In these cases, that 7
can get pretty ugly.” 8
“These cases?” Betty said. “In all cases, I would think.” 9
“Well, it can be much worse in same-sex cases.” 10
“But Joseph and I are not the same sex,” Betty explained gently. 11
Joseph was squirming a bit, she noticed. 12
“Are we, Joseph?” 13
“I was referring to the third party,” Nina Britsky said. 14
“There is no third party,” Joseph said hurriedly. 15
“And if there were, I don’t think it would be a man,” Betty said. 16
“Well, I assumed it was a woman,” Nina Britsky said, throwing 17
Betty a pointed look. “A same-sex woman,” she added, to Betty’s 18
further confusion. “Why else would you come to me?” 19
It was only after they had been handed pamphlets inviting them 20
to a support group—My Spouse’s Closet Anonymous or MYSPCL, 21
pronounced like bicycle—and left the office in a dull daze that 22
Betty asked Joseph exactly who it was who had referred the er- 23
gonomic chimpanzee. 24
“Because, Joseph, she seems a rather specialized mediator.” 25
Joseph said, “That was a disaster. Let’s go get dinner.” 26
“Look at her card: For couples seeking divorce when women seek 27
women. It could be a classified ad in The Village Voice, couldn’t it? 28
Maybe she’ll build us a crooked bookcase.” 29
Joseph couldn’t help laughing. Betty had always made him laugh. 30
“You’re so funny,” he said. 31S
Betty burst into tears. 32R

17

3rd Pass Pages

Master