Some say you need a village to get over a divorce, Steven Axelrod writes, but he had something else.
When I was younger I thought love was the great meal of life and friendship was just garnish—a nice chutney with the shrimp curry. Divorce changed all that. Of course it taught me the volatility and fragility of love—an emotion was more like a blown-glass Christmas ornament filled with nitro-glycerine. I was still shuffling through the burnt shards. But I also learned some lessons about friendship. My friends became my allies, my co-conspirators, my partisans … not to mention my patrons and my landlords. They offered moral support. I remember one them snooping my ex-wife’s house on his way out to a job in ‘Sconset. “It’s still a pig-sty in there,” he cackled. “She’s the slob, buddy! I even checked the basement. You can still see laundry mountain down there.”
One of them gave me not one but two places to live, both at impossibly low rents. I could never have stayed on the island without his generosity.
Then there was Byron Clark. I had seen him for years—at poetry readings, out surfing on big days, working on job sites. I hitched the occasional ride in his Cessna. But we only became friends after the divorce. He had just gone through his own, a much more harrowing separation than mine, complete with public tantrums and alcoholic blackouts. We went out to dinner and told our war stories (he could always top me); he found me painting jobs, dragged me out in the ocean when he knew I needed it, gave me interesting new authors to read (Murakami, Bolano), loaned me small amounts of money when I was short.
When a customer went bankrupt owing me $10,000, Byron’s kindness was put to a more severe test.
I read about the bankruptcy in the local paper—the guy never even called. I had been checking my mailbox every day, measuring the time it would take the check to arrive and clear against the suffocating weight of my obligations. I had thought about calling him, but those phone calls were excruciating. I hated badgering people for money.
Well, now I wouldn’t have to.
But the obligations remained: car payment, rent, IRS, State tax, insurance, liability, workman’s comp., credit card bills, hospital bills from an emergency room visit … The $10,000 would have barely covered it. I’d already sent the check to the State of Mass., crazily certain the check would arrive that day. But of course it didn’t. That one was going to bounce; there was nothing I could do about it. Over $1,000 was felony fraud in this state. I could wind up in jail.
I spent hours pawing through my circumstances, my jobs and customers, my family and friends, debts I could cash in, obligations I could stall, looking for a solution. It was like rummaging through the junk drawer in my kitchen for the car keys. The only real question: how many times would you dump it out and sort through the putty knives and stamps and defunct cell-phone chargers before you accepted that the keys weren’t there? Still, the fact was, sometimes you did find them on the fourth or the tenth attempt, after looking everywhere else, after you’d already given up, doing it by rote, just to be doing something so you wouldn’t have to admit the truth and make the loss official. And there they were, under the stack of credit card offers and old shopping lists, behind the packing tape and the throwaway camera you never took in to get developed. There they were, somehow, as if someone was playing a trick on you, a practical joke they’d decided wasn’t funny anymore. There they were.
So I kept searching. An advance on the Keller job? But that wasn’t supposed to start until Spring. Or the Silverstein job? But they were living here and they’d expect me there every day. That was fine, but the money wasn’t enough. I’d have to start at least three jobs and lay off people at the same time. I couldn’t afford to pay anyone anything. I could conceivably get first checks from Foley and Landau, but the Foleys were here all winter, and the Landau’s caretaker would be checking up daily, and he’d be delighted to bust me with the owners if I wasn’t on the job.
Finally I got in the car and started driving, the trees on either side of Milestone Road tumbling by in a blur. I thought of Robin Hood, hiding in the forest. There was nowhere to hide here. What was I going to do? Live in a tent? I hated camping, and I’d be busted the first night anyway. I thought of running away, just buying a boat ticket and driving west. But I’d thought that a million times and the answer was always the same. You couldn’t do it without money. You couldn’t start fresh somewhere with nothing. It was a child’s fantasy.
But I couldn’t make this work. I couldn’t be on all those jobs simultaneously, with just two guys. Still, I added it up: if I got all the checks this week, or next week at the latest, if I could convince the Kellers to let me start early, that would just cover my outstanding obligations. No, I’d still be about 2,500 shy. And that was only until the first week’s wages were due; then I’d have no more money from anyone until I got to the half-way mark on some job. Anyway, I was up to my limit on my charge at Marine; how was I supposed to buy the materials for three new jobs at once? That was around $1,500 right there. I added it up. I needed $6,000 to survive this siege. Not even to survive it, just to get to the next onslaught. But if my crew would agree to wait for their checks until I got the next checks from the owners, and everyone agreed to let me start, and paid me quickly … no, no, no. No good, with the materials and the IRS and rent, you can’t forget about the rent, I was still at least $1,000 in the red. And I needed some money to live on—food and gas. Another grand? Would that do it? Say it would: that meant he had to find $7,000—by tomorrow.
I was all the way to ‘Sconset when the answer came to me, discovered like the keys in the junk drawer. It wasn’t even a surprise, as if some part of you knew they were there all along. There was only one place to go, only one person I could turn to at this moment.
♦◊♦
I turned around and started the long drive to Byron Clark’s house at the other end of the island, in Madaket.
Driving west, I remembered helping Byron clear out his parents’ house after they died. It was packed with 30 years’ accumulation of pack-rat trash: collections of animal skulls and fishing lures, mold-rotted books and antique jam jars, bales of twine and barbed wire, lobster pots and scallop boxes, check-books and unopened bills from the 1960a, lampshades and chair cushions, broken radios, and unraveling wicker. After a week of 10-hour days we were able to see the floor. When the Thomas Tompion grandfather clock and the Tony Sarg puzzles had been taken to the auction house and everything else had been carted to the dump, the cleaning had begun. The once-white walls were stained a toxic amber from decades of cigarette smoke; they were black from mold where the roof leaked. We wore vapor masks and rubber gloves and scrubbed the place for another week. Byron’s brother never volunteered to help; neither did anyone else.
It made sense: Byron and I were the real brothers. He’d probably already know about my situation, tonight—news moved across the island like strep throat through an elementary school.
I was rolling past the crowded subdivision of Tristram’s Landing, with its ugly houses packed tight together in concentric circles, cut by the creeks. I remembered when there was nothing but dune grass here. Change was always for the worse on Nantucket. The bulky shadows swept past. Most of the houses were dark. These were summer people; they showed up for a week or a month a year.
I had never borrowed this much money from Byron before. More importantly, I had never asked for a loan without knowing when I’d be able to pay it back. And I’d never been this desperate, driving too fast with rage and dread and self-loathing climbing my throat as I took a turn too wide and the wheels shuddered against the jumbled dirty snow on the shoulder. These curves were deceptive. I eased back to 40 miles an hour. Soon I was crossing Millie’s bridge, turning onto the ruts and craters of Vermont Avenue.
The lights were on in Byron’s beach shack. I parked and sat in the car, listening to the surf and the faint sound of Van Morrison from Byron’s house, carried on the wind. “Blue Money,” how appropriate. I had no idea what he was going to say, or how I was going to begin.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to say anything.
♦◊♦
Byron came to the door in sweatpants and an old Toscana t-shirt. The wood stove was going and the little house was warm. There was a faint smell of varnish. Van was singing “Cleaning Windows,” now. Maybe it was a message; people always needed their windows cleaned.
Byron pulled me into a bear hug and said “Come in. Have a drink. Tell me how much you need.”
“No, look, I didn’t—”
He pulled me inside. “Hey, relax, check yourself out. It has to be money, unless you have something incurable, and I can’t help with that.” He kicked the door closed with his foot and stared at me. “You’re not sick?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. I hope not.”
“Then I have an idea. Let’s get out of here. I’ve been working this bird feeder all night. I was just getting some sealer on it. If we move we can get to the Box before it closes.”
I explained the situation as we rode back to town. I was finishing as we turned away from the Stop & Shop into the Chicken Box parking lot: “So I need $7,000, and I have no idea when I’ll be able to pay it back.”
Byron laughed. “Don’t stop there—really sell me. Say you’ll gamble it all away at Mohegan Sun and then avoid me like I was contagious for the next five years.”
“No man, come on, you know there’s no way—”
Byron punched me on the arm, “I’m kidding. Relax. Gentleman’s rule: retain your sense of humor under duress.”
I let out a long breath. “Oh yeah—I remember those rules. Your dad was great. Borderline psychotic—but great.”
“And he really was a gentleman, in his own way. He never broke his own rules. Don’t argue about politics. Pick up the tab. Notice small improvements. Remember birthdays. Call home. Walk the dog.”
“Help your friends.”
Byron nodded. “Treat them like family. Because they are.”
He leaned over and pulled his checkbook out of his pocket, pulled a pen from the ashtray, scribbled a check, tore it off, handed it over.
I was confused. “This is for $9,000.”
“That was one of my dad’s best rules: a gentleman never asks for as much as he needs.”
I felt a sudden surge of emotion burning my face, making my eyes prickle.
But that was another Clark rule: maintain your composure.
“Thank you,” I said
Byron cuffed me lightly on the head, “Come on. Let’s shoot some pool and have a beer. You’re buying.”
And so I survived another crisis; and I eventually paid Byron back. None of my old lovers would have been willing to help—most of them wouldn’t even have returned my phone call. But the friends stayed with me. Some helped with money, like Byron, some helped me move, some just listened—and agreed with me.
“I always hated that bitch,” one of them said. “I thought you’d never get free.”
I didn’t point out that I’d been dumped; or that I felt more exiled than liberated. But it was good to have someone on my side. These were my allies, my unit, my comrades in arms, my partisans. Some well-meaning acquaintance told me, “It takes a village to survive a divorce.”
And I thought to myself—keep your village.
I have a platoon.
—Photo mikebaird/Flickr
Another interesting read on the long term inviability of traditional marriage:
No to Nuptials
Will opposite-sex civil unions spell the end of traditional marriage?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/01/are_states_that_experiment_with_opposite_sex_civil_unions_offering_a_way_to_opt_out_of_oppressive_ideas_about_marriage_.html
From the paper: “…the argument is that people are still marrying in large numbers because of institutional lag; they have yet to realize that marriage is no longer important. A nonmarital pure relationship, to use Giddens’s ideal type, can provide much intimacy and love, can place both partners on an equal footing, and can allow them to develop their independent senses of self. These characteristics are highly valued in late modern societies. However, this alternative also suggests the predominance of fragile relationships that are continually at risk of breaking up because they are held together entirely by the voluntary commitment… Read more »
I, too have been through divorce. I, too, relied upon the comfort of good friends. I agree, ‘having a wife’ should not mean much of anything. Nor should ‘having a husband.’ Being married, being committed, that could mean something, if that is the life that someone values. If those sorts of commitments don’t have real value, then by all means, forgo making them. I am curious of the definitions of ‘social obligations of being a wife and mother’ translate to you, versus the ‘social obligations of being a husand and father.’ I find myself edging toward judgement and would much… Read more »
I don’t see a difference between “being married, being committed, ” and “having a wife”, at least from the standpoint of being a husband. Given the context of the article was one of support, compassion and loyalty, I am surprised you did not understand those traits were the ones I would define as “social obligations of being a wife and mother”. I sense a need to leap to judgement from the tone of your post. Read The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage (http://tinyurl.com/7uq6ocf) to see more on this issue. The increasing social erosion of the institution of marriage has been underway… Read more »
I am intrigued by the words you choose which apparently have prejudged me as a person. You have determined I am closed minded, needy, and misunderstanding the point of the article. I was asking, not of the writer, but of the commenter. ‘Having a wife’ is not a statement of endearment nor social obligation, but of ownership, in my judgement. I do not want to ‘have a husband,’ but to share a life, a partnership. I have also found that speaking of the increasing social erosion of the institution of marriage places a great deal of unrealistic idealism around the… Read more »
Thanks for talking about your rushing to judgement of my post and your subjective interpretation of my choice of words.
Please read the paper I referred to for additional context.
You are quite welcome. I recognize when I am projecting and viewing through the filter of my experience. I appreciate that you can do the same.
I think we are probably on the same page. I would not take umbrage at a woman saying she wants “to have a husband”. The hard part, from the male perspective, is the third party in a marriage/partnership – the government and the associated credentialed “professionals” whose business model hinges on the government’s involvement in marriage or cohabiting relationships. The government’s role often results in women being very privileged in terms of supporting women’s custodial rights, rights to make accusations of domestic violence, right to have the ex husband pay attorney’s fees and right to alimony and child support. I… Read more »
The odd thing about this article, which captures my experience and those experiences of men going through similar situations, is that we realized having a “wife” does not mean very much of anything anymore. A wife may not be at all supportive as your best friend, may not be helping you out financially at all, may not be at all good for your kids as some of your male or female friends may be. But you’ll still be carrying her financially after your divorce. Why should men get married when the social obligations of being a wife and mother have… Read more »
What you didn’t say was that you would not have had financial difficulty without the divorce.It was implied, but never said.
She cost you that 9 grand,right?
All I have to say is great story…and how true it all is. True friends are always there for you.
I love this piece. Everyone should have a Byron in their life. I don’t know how I would have survived my own divorce without the kindness of friends.