A Good Divorce by John E. Keegan Page B

didn’t want another shortbread; he wanted to corner Jude in the kitchen and get their signals straight. I guessed that if the kids decided to go with Jude, Charlie would call it a wrap and leave her with the whole package—kids, house, and all the fringe benefits. If the vote went haywire, he’d take it to court. I hoped the kids dropped the Dirty Dora on him.
    â€œWhat happened to the cookies?” I said, when they returned from the kitchen.
    Charlie and Jude looked at each other and said “Oh” at the same time.
    The fact that Jude seemed comfortable with this high-powered divorce lawyer shouldn’t have been surprising. Unlike me, she came from a family of considerable public achievement. Her grandfather was a lawyer in Great Falls, Montana who was elected prosecuting attorney five times. Her dad was an investment banker who started work at six a.m. in their den so he could talk to people on the East Coast. He once chaired the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and I’d seen his picture on the wall with the past presidents of the Washington Athletic Club. Although Jude chafed at her family’s wealth, she’d been carrying her own Visa card since she was in grade school. Her mother always chided her that she didn’t have the drive of her older brother and needed to be realistic about college. “Keep your weight in check,” her mother had warned her. “You won’t win a man just because you have breasts.” Jude always had something to prove.
    Our fathers had one thing in common, though: they delegated child-rearing to the mothers. As manager of the Thriftway in Quincy, my dad had to open the doors and give cash to the checkers in the morning and count the take at night. When he took afternoons off, it was to golf for a quarter-a-hole with the owner. In the fall, they’d take a deer hunting trip. Once, they put their names in the draw and won goat hunting permits for the Blue Mountains. When Dad won a trip to Disneyland for the family through a wholesale grocery drawing, he cashed it in and bought a new Winchester rifle with a scope and leather carrying case.
    Derek came downstairs with a list of questions in Justine’s handwriting, some directed to Jude and some to me. We had to whisper our answers into his ear as he went back and forth across the room. Their questions covered the same areas that troubled me. Who would do the cooking? Would we always live at the Alhambra? Would I ever get married again? I didn’t know if they considered remarriage a positive or a negative but I answered honestly. “I doubt it.”
    I’d never heard of kids going with their dad as long as their mother was alive and not incarcerated, but it felt good to be fighting for them. I wasn’t going to be one of those fathers who goes out for a cigarette and never returns. They’d have a father whether I had a marriage or not. As I watched Jude whispering her answers to Derek, I was struck by the thought that she might be a better mother with me out of the way. Justine used to worry because she was developing slowly compared to her girl cousins. For her twelfth birthday, Jude bought her a bra with size C cups she’d have to grow into and made sure she opened it in front of her cousins. The fact that Justine was upstairs directing this investigation was due in no small measure to her mom.
    I’d never understood, though, where Jude had developed her combativeness, growing up in a home with more than enough of everything to go around. I’d made the mistake when we married of paying too much attention to her parentage, assuming that the fruit didn’t fall that far from the tree. I thought her parents’ polished walnut table with leaves to seat ten would someday be ours and when the grandkids came over on holidays we’d set up the game table in the TV room. I pictured Jude patting me on the shoulder to hand me the carving knife and two-pronged fork