A Good Divorce Read Online Free PDF Page B

smell like burned toast?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
    â€œIt’s old eggs,” Derek said.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” I breathed deeply but all I could smell was the mint of my Gleem toothpaste. “It just needs to be lived in. Brand new houses smell. The point is we have a roof over our heads. And we’re together.” Derek, chin still in his palms, watched me. “Besides, we don’t have to spend all our time inside. There’s a courtyard.” The only people I’d seen in it were two elderly ladies with sun hats sharing a park bench in the shade.
    â€œSo where’s Derek sleeping?” Justine asked.
    â€œI think you mean, ‘Boy, do Derek and I get this whole bedroom to ourselves?’”
    She slumped and pushed her bag onto the floor, and it landed cleats down on the gray concrete floor like a tap dancer, startling Magpie. “Go ahead, Derek.”
    He leaped onto the bed, spread-eagled, trying to fill it with his eight-year-old frame. Magpie got up and put her head on the bedspread, testing. Maybe she’d gotten lucky.
    â€œNot so fast,” I said. “We’re going to learn to negotiate in this family.” Contracting with your partner was another one of those feminist tools for demystifying marriage. Jude and I had attended a second wedding for one of the women in her group where they read a marriage contract out loud instead of vows. It covered everything from whether to have children to who does the dishes.
    â€œBut she said I could have it,” Derek said.
    â€œThat was before she knew there was a choice,” I said. “In bargaining, there are always choices.” I wondered if they could hear Jude’s voice.
    â€œI’ll sleep with Dad in the waterbed then,” Derek said, rolling to the edge, draping one arm over Magpie’s neck, and giving me those same beggar-dog eyes. The waterbed had always been clearly marked as the marital bed. No kids allowed.
    The next thing Jude would have mentioned was boundaries. Everything had boundaries: people, the solar system, even ecstasy. She said that was one of my problems; my mother had never taught me any. I’d been fed, served, and applauded on demand. “My bed is out of bounds,” I said.
    â€œThen there aren’t any choices,” Justine said. “Dad, I’m fifteen. I have a boyfriend. I’m not going to sleep with my little brother.”
    She knew how to work me. I didn’t want to hear boyfriend and sleeping in the same paragraph. It was a mistake to let her have a boyfriend at this age but Jude had insisted. “She can’t learn to putty without a trowel,” Jude said. So a pointy-headed kid who talked like he needed to blow his nose was her trowel. “You’re right. Sleeping together is a bad idea.”
    When the negotiations ended, Derek had the first weekend on the living room couch in his sleeping bag and Magpie as a consolation prize. In a side deal, Justine secured permanent first rights to the shower in the morning in return for Derek getting his name ahead of hers on the mailbox. But Justine couldn’t resist discounting the value of what she’d conceded. “Nobody’s going to send you anything at your dad’s apartment.”
    I’d underestimated the burden of raising kids. Jude was pregnant when we decided to get married or, rather, because Jude was pregnant we decided to get married. But if marriage was the moon to me, parenting was Mars. Jude always thought I was too passive and needed to get more involved with the kids. Whenever we had those discussions, it felt as if she was comparing me to my dad and I felt shamed.
    Derek woke up with nightmares the first night and he and Magpie showed up in my bedroom. His pajamas were soaked with sweat so I hung them over the shower rod and made a mental note to move them before Justine got up. He changed into yesterday’s underpants. As I