Episode Thirteen: D-I-V-O-R-C-E

Many people considering divorce choose in the end the stay together for the sake of the kids. As traumatic as my parents’ divorce was, I can’t imagine them remaining together until the children reached an age when they would be able to better understand the situation. Never mind living with the ugly slings and arrows of bitterness and resentment generally passing between the parents.

My parents are married for 17 years. Theirs is one of thousands of marriages pushed on young people during World War II, so the soldier or sailor going to war has someone at home to care.

During nearly her entire marriage to my father, my mother is in love with someone else.

When Shirley files for divorce, she gives John, the love of her life, an ultimatum: “Either leave your wife or we’re done.” John is not as strong a person as Shirley or has not had as difficult a life. Despite being in an unhappy marriage with an unstable but wealthy wife, he says he can’t. John is driving his adorable little red Corvette on Canal Road in Washington when Shirley pulls the gold ring he’d given her off her finger and throws it at him.

She won’t see him again for another four years. According to Jake, she begins an active dating life. I’m too young to remember much of it.

The years that follow are lean. My father faithfully sends $400 every month, $100 for each child. This sum never increases. My mother is pulling a salary teaching creative writing at American University. We have enough to get by but there are no great extravagances. And one Christmas we’re told money is so tight we must pick a single present each.

Dad’s aunts, my grandmother’s sisters, show their real colors and demand the return of the quilts they’ve made and given each of the kids over the years. Mine has tulips on it. It’s odd they’d take their venom out on the children. After all, aren’t we still Dad’s kids? In the end, it turns out the great aunts didn’t make the quilts but bought them from country women. Old biddies.

The house feels strangely empty. Even though my father wasn’t the chummy type, his presence is missed. Do the children connect with each other in a supportive way? I don’t think so. We are four solo moons orbiting my mother as she comes and goes.

When the divorce goes through, my mother is ostracized by her friends. She is even uninvited to a party when the other women say they won’t come if she’s there. Mom eventually makes friends with a few other outcasts, including gay men working at American University. They too have been spurned by society despite their gifts. Several of these gentlemen become lifelong friends.

The community around us takes note. Although Cabin John has a ‘live and let live’ mantra, a divorce in the 1950s is rare. Little girls in the neighborhood feel emboldened to tell me my father isn’t my father anymore.

“Hunh?” Nobody told me that.

Shirley always wanted a lot of children and now she’s got them. She is a lonely only child, prey to the vagaries of Hjalmar and Faye’s poor parenting. Yet, she isn’t fully prepared for the demands of parenthood, having learned nothing from them. And once she has four children, her life fragments with the divorce from my father and the breakup with John.

By now, Shirley is ready to have fun. No one is running her life anymore. Certainly, the four children take full advantage, roaming Cabin John from the Potomac River to the edges of Potomac, a high-end community.