Diary of a Yuppie by Louis Auchincloss Page A

husband, and you are leaving of your own free will. I doubt you'll even get alimony
pendente lite.
I shall fight you every step of the way, for the girls, for my money, for my home!"
    "I shall ask nothing of you. I shall support myself."
    "You won't find that so easy," I sneered.
    "I'll manage somehow. I assume that you'll pay for the girls and allow me to visit them here until I can afford a place of my own. We can work all that out. I've never criticized you as a father."
    For a moment my heart was ripped apart. How could I have lost this splendid girl? And if she saw me as a good father, which I certainly was, and not as a good man, was she possibly not right? Was it too late to undo the whole ghastly mess?
    "Alice, don't be an ass!"
    "Isn't that what you just said I was?"
    "If you walk out on me, you'll give me grounds for a separation. Don't put yourself in that position. Or at least talk to a lawyer first."
    "I appreciate the warning. And I realize it's not one that you would normally give a potential opponent. Thank you. But I don't care what advantage I afford you. Lawyers had nothing to do with our coming together. And so far as I'm concerned they shall have nothing to do with our coming apart."
    All my ire returned with her complacency. It even irritated me that she should take it for granted that I would give her no trouble as a father! Why should she assume so blandly that, mistreated as I was, I would not use any weapon in my arsenal? Actually, she was being an irresponsible parent to risk her own custody of her daughters!
    "I'm warning you, Alice. If you leave this apartment, you'll be breaking the deepest compact that can exist between a man and a woman. I cannot guarantee how I may change as a result. I may turn into an even uglier person than you think me. I may charge you with all kinds of things in court and claim custody of the girls. You may find yourself without money and without a family."
    "That's ridiculous, and you know it." Alice rose at this as if to terminate the interview. "What could you possibly do with two daughters, keeping the work hours that you do? You'd end up offering me a salary as their governess. But in the meantime I'll come here in the evening after the office and have supper with the girls and help them with their homework. We can arrange the weekends later. Who knows? Maybe I'll be back in a month's time, begging you to take me in! But I've got to try something else, Bob. I really do. And now we've said enough for tonight. It's been a terrible strain."
    "You don't show it."
    "I don't always show things. But it may comfort you to know I have a splitting headache. And I'm going to bed now. In Norma's room." The maid's room in our flat was occupied by Norma on the infrequent nights when we were both away. "I've already moved my things in there."
    "Alice!"
    "Please, Bob. It's enough for now. Really."
    And so, in a few wretched minutes, a life can be torn in shreds. I took a bottle of whiskey to the strange, hostile solitude of our bedroom.

7
    M Y LIFE has become such a furnace of work in the organization of my firm that I have not been able to maintain my comforting and consoling habit of entering comments in my journal. It seems to me that I have been nowhere except our new offices on Lexington Avenue and the apartment, where I try to see my girls at least once a day. I have almost lost the power to think except about the problems of my happily successful new law practice. And yet for all the nervous tension there have been rewarding moments. Sometimes at night when both girls are doing their homework and I allow myself a couple of stiff Scotches, my heart actually pounds with exultation. I am pulling it off. I am creating a law firm. By God, I am really pulling it off!

    But now, after reading over the last paragraph, I find I must qualify my statement about exultation. It is all very well for a man to talk about the delights of loving his children, but if he cannot confess to