SOMEWHERE IN VIRGINIA

 

 

 

 

“I’ve been thinking about divorce,” I said, as we sat waiting for the traffic light to turn from red to green at the end of the road that leads away from Bryan’s house.

 

“Why, do you want one?” was my wife’s reply, as of course it would be. That had been a running joke between us for many years of our marriage. Whenever one of us was complaining unnecessarily or losing an argument and knew that to be the case, we’d call out “I WANT A DIVORCE!” and the matter was settled amicably.

 

“It just seems strange to me. I mean, Bryan’s divorce made plenty of sense; we all saw that coming. But is it true? Is divorce becoming an institution? ‘Divorced’ used to be a part of the description you gave people you’d just met. ‘Hi, I’m Stan, I’m a stockbroker, I’m 39, and I’m divorced.’ Pretty soon I’m going to have to introduce myself by saying “I’m an architect and I’m married.”

 

“That’s a load of crap,” my wife laughed. She notices these things.

 

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s a load of crap.”

 

“On the other hand. . .” She looked out into the distance, which in this case consisted of the ten foot setback between the curb and the house along the street, with the frown she wears when she has an idea but isn’t sure what to make of it.

 

“What?” I said, as I always do when I want to force her to say what’s on her mind and quit stalling. Often it’s a battle that can last for hours. This time she did me the grace of spilling the beans.

 

“Did I ever tell you about Divorcee Ridge?”

 

“Divorcee Whom?”

 

“Divorcee Ridge.”

 

“Obviously not. Was there a particular shade of green you were hoping for?”

 

My wife, seeing that the light had indeed turned, stepped on the gas and steered my bright, shiny yellow Metro left through the intersection and down the treeless road that leads out of the subdivision. As we got to the main road, I indicated my desire to discover the mystery she had so ubiquitously named by saying “Okay; so?”

 

“Well,” my wife began, as she begins all her stories, "Last year we had three kids in one class who’s mothers had gotten divorced recently. Of course, the School System doesn’t have any kind of mandate or anything, but it became a topic of conversation among the teachers, and eventually a few of us decided we might be able to do something to help the kids adjust."

 

“With you leading them stalwartly, of course.”

 

“Hell, no! Kids adjust to things like that better than adults do, usually. But I did get drafted, don’t ask me how.”

 

“How?”

 

“Smartass.”

 

“Anyways. .  . “

 

“So, the thought was we could have a little session with these three kids, kind of see how they’re adjusting, see if they seem to have any emotional needs

 

[My wife says “emotional needs” that way most ten-year-olds say “liver”]

 

or any issues.

 

[Same inflection on “issues”]

 

Which, of course, they don’t. I felt like we could have stopped it right there, but, of course, we didn’t. I’m kind of glad we didn’t in a perverse sort of way.”

 

“That light’s red, hon.”

 

“Whoops.” The Metro came screeching to a halt, air bags deploying from sheer G-force, our bodies colliding with them heavily. Okay, I’m exaggerating. My wife stopped the car at the light. “So, anyway, one of the other teachers, Pam, you know Pam, right?”

 

“Like the back of my hand.”

 

“Pam decides that maybe they should have a conference with the mothers, to see if they have any issues.”

 

“Right. There’s nothing wrong with the kids, so let’s find something wrong with the parents."

 

“Pretty much. Well, these mothers talk the thing over, and they get all excited about it, I mean really psyched.”

 

I winced. I hate the word “psyched.”

 

“Before you know it, we’ve got this whole do set up, and instead of three divorced mothers, we’re meeting with like twelve.”

 

“Excuse me; where was I all this time?” I hate to be selfish, but some things a man needs to be appraised of.

 

“It . . was. . . September, and you were obsessing over that church sanctuary you were designing for Pineville UMC.”

 

“Ah.” That explained it. The words “Pineville UMC" in our house had become the equivalent of the phrase “Growing tensions in Yugoslavia” for about three months. Why do religious people fail to grasp simple economic facts? Oh, sorry; the wife’s story:

 

 “So: the big day comes, and we all meet for lunch one Saturday at one of the mother’s houses. The whole thing was very creepy. Most of them couldn’t put two words together without one of them being ‘divorce’ and the other being ‘good.’”

 

I put on my best Neanderthal and grunted “Um. Divorce good.” My wife ignored me, as well she should have.

 

“After a while, I started noticing that most of the women lived right there in that neighborhood. I started asking probing little questions, trying to make them sound innocent enough, and eventually I found out that all of them lived in that neighborhood.”

 

“So?”

 

“So I had to get out of there. It was just all too creepy.”

 

I sat back in my seat, or as much as you can sit back in a Metro, and regarded my wife doubtfully. “I don’t get it. How’s that creepy?”

 

“The neighborhood was a little cul-de-sac they carved out of some woods off Sharon Road. None of the houses was more than three years old. They all had kids, they all had two each, they were all five and seven years old. They all got divorced, and they all got the house. That’s creepy.”

 

I succeeded in leaning back farther than it’s possible to lean back in a Metro. “You’re making that up, aren’t you?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“You’re making at least some of that up, just to scare me, aren’t you?”

 

“Not a bit of it.”

 

“And let me guess, these were former Stepford Wives, right?”

 

“You got it, babe.” Anyone my wife thinks is conforming too much to classic suburban behavior she calls a Stepford Wife. Unless you’re a man, in which case you’re a Pod Person.

 

I resumed a more normal position in my seat. “You’re right. That’s creepy. Did they all drive SUV’s?”

 

“No, no. Some of them drove Ford Tauruses.”

 

The light turned green and we started off, the loving wife, the loyal husband, the bright yellow Geo Metro with the top down on a lovely summer day, trailing behind us a big ol'cloud of Feelin' Creepy.

 

I began thinking about Bryan. The year after he got divorced, three of the families in his subdivision moved out. Bryan was convinced at the get go that they didn’t want to live next to a divorced guy. I argued with him: it was a small subdivision, the lots were dinky (except for Bryan’s, since he bought his lot early on), people got new jobs and relocated. Perfectly normal. Suddenly, it didn’t seem so unlikely that the people in his neighborhood might have suddenly gone “My God! A divorced man! Quick, let’s get the kids out of here before we have to start explaining where babies come from!”

 

“So,” my wife continued, “the next day at school, I’m going on and on about Divorcee Ridge, and how creepy it all was, and trying to make jokes about it, but no one wants to laugh, so there I am suddenly clamming up before someone takes issue with me. Of course, Pam called the next night, and we spent half an hour on the phone making fun of all these divorced women on the cul-de-sac. Speculating on what their husbands had done for a living. Thinking about what the poor saps might have gone on to, were they living in apartments, were they having any luck dating, were they making passes at the women in their offices, were they bothering their friends with hour-long diatribes on the evils of marriage. On and on and on.”

 

I hmmed a hmm. Very creepy indeed. Just what I needed, too. More evidence of the largesse and the wisdom of the Animal Human. “All those Jessicas divorced their Sams.”

 

My wife looked at me half in agreement, then it hit her that she didn’t have the slightest idea what the Hell I was talking about.

 

I began: “Did I ever tell you about the girl I dated my sophomore year of college?”

 

“This would be while you where still an English major?”

 

“It would.”

 

“Then probably not. Don’t tell me about her unless I can make fun of her.”

 

“Agreed. She was a theater major, but she changed her major halfway through the year to English.”

 

“Because?”

 

“Because it’s what I was taking, and I, you see, was The Intellectual.”

 

“Ah! Were you now?”

 

“According to her, and she’d defend the matter to her death. Anyways, she was fascinated with the whole literary thing, and, being that her immediate background was in Theater, playwriting had to be the absolute height of literature. It didn’t help matters that I was obsessed with Beckett at the time.”

 

“Beckett?”

 

“Samuel, not Thomas a`.”

 

“I say again: Beckett?”

 

“Irish playwright. Bird who wrote Waiting for Godot. So, at that point the hot thing was re-discovering Sam Shepard’s plays. He had made it big in movies, and it looked like he was going to become a real hot property, and suddenly everyone was going ‘Wow! He can act, and he can write, too!’ On top of that, of course, at that point he was married to Jessica Lang, so not only was Sam Shepard the perfect man. . . .”

 

”Ahhh, he and Jessica were the perfect couple, too!”

 

“Bingo. I remember driving to Richmond with that girl one time. Her idea was, that’s where they lived, we had a better than even chance of running into Sam and Jessica over the course of a three day weekend.”

 

“You’re joking!”

 

“No. I’m exaggerating, but I’m not joking. She always tried to sound like she was joking when she suggested we might run into them, but I think deep down she believed that three days couldn’t possibly go by without our paths somehow mystically crossing.”

 

“I’m still not sure I get it. What did she want, an autograph?”

 

I paused and thought about it. I had come to a conclusion years ago, and I wasn’t sure about it then, but it suddenly made perfect sense. “A model.”

 

“A what?” my wife asked, pulling into the driveway of our house.

 

“A model. I was the young writer, honing my skills; she was the young actress, deepening her emotional reach through the study of literature. We were to be the perfect couple. We had to have a model to go by. She wanted to see Jessica and Sam in action so she’d know how to go about things. I don’t know. Maybe she was hoping they’d give us some pointers.”

 

“Now that,” said my wife, “is creepy.”

 

“Hey, that’s what a lot of college kids are like.”

 

“So what happened to this girl, did you break up with her?”

 

“No, she broke up with me. Eventually I got fed up with it, told her that I thought Shepard’s plays were a load of crap, told her that no, I didn’t want to be a playwright, and she called me a fascist and walked out on me.”

 

“She called you a fascist?”

 

“That’s what you called people in those days. So then I applied to the School of Architecture, got in, started dating you, graduated, we got married, and since then,” I said, leaning over to kiss her, “My life’s been a living Hell. You want to go into the house, now?”

 

I started to turn away, but my wife brought her hands up beside my head and pulled me back. She kissed me, rather strongly, on the cheek. She backed off just enough to look into my eyes, and asked, earnestly, “So you never wrote a play for her?”

 

“Nope. Never did.”

 

“Good. Because otherwise I would lose all respect for you and we’d have to get a divorce.”

 

“And then you’d have to move to Divorcee Ridge.”

 

“No, no. You can’t move to Divorcee Ridge. You have to get Divorcee Ridge in the settlement.”

 

She opened the door and we stepped into the house. She headed for the kitchen, calling behind her “You want a beer?”

 

“Yes, please.”

 

“Good. Go get some. What do you want for supper?”

 

“Swordfish.”

 

“Swordfish!" said my wife, putting on her best Chico Marx, no mean feat in and of itself indeed. "Hey, didn’t they get divorced a while back?”

 

“Who?”

 

“Sam and Jessica.”

 

“I don’t know. I’m trying to remember. I don't think so. Anything else we need from the store?”

 

“No. Hey, get steaks if the swordfish doesn't look fresh.”

 

I trotted back out to the Metro, thinking along the way of that trip to Richmond. In all honesty it was a lot of fun.  She had a flair for the dramatic, which does wonders for an five hour car ride and three days in what is admittedly not the heart and soul of American culture.

 

But I was better off with things the way they had happened. The night I told her I didn’t like Shepard’s work, I was at least half lying. Most of what I’d read by him I had found fairly stimulating. But it was on the way back from that trip to Richmond, I was driving, she was reading out loud from a novel she’d bought the previous day, and suddenly I thought I’d divorce her. I hadn’t even realized that I had been thinking I might ever marry her, but I had been thinking just that, and then here’s this whole and perfectly formed idea, we’d get divorced. And I knew, somehow, that even coming so out of the blue like that, it was true.

 

When I proposed to my wife, the opposite thing had occurred to me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get married at all, but then, same voice, suddenly in my head well, at least you won’t get divorced. Okay, so maybe it’s not the best basis for a lifetime decision. But so far it seems to have worked out fine.

 

I pulled out of the driveway, half wondering whatever happened to that girl—Beth? Cathy? Beth, I think-- and half imagining her, driving through the hills of Virginia, desperately looking for either Sam or Jessica so she can ask them just exactly what the Hell went wrong.

 

 

 

 

James MacFarlane Williams