And the Lord said: “you shall say to him…if you refuse to send them off, I will scourge all your region”
Vaera Exodus 6:2
At last, she heard the sound of his key in the door. She had waited all day for it, and even so, her heart was pounding. The door opened and he looked into her eyes, holding the papers rolled up like a newspaper that you’d use to swat a dog in the nose when it had misbehaved.
“You must be proud of yourself” he said.
No response came from her, so he continued.
“You just wanted to surprise me in the office, didn’t you? It would have killed you to tell me in advance that this was coming.”
“You knew this was coming. I told you I wanted out. Many times. You never took me seriously. I was always serious.”
“If you want out, there’s the door.”
He jiggled the lock rhythmically. Then flipped it to one side and opened the door. He made a grand gesture with his hand, leading into the cool Encino evening air.
“Do you expect me to just walk out after thirteen years of marriage with nothing? It doesn’t work that way, Arnie.”
He left the door open as he stumbled to the couch, and then spread out the papers on the coffee table. He looked at each page just long enough to taste what was unpleasant in it, and then skipped to the end.
“Where did you find this Benjamin Bernstein guy? From your Jewish friends?”
“Actually, yes. From Miriam.”
She saw him pondering what that meant. His eyes jumped back and forth as he pictured the married Miriam that she introduced him to ten years ago, and then the unmarried Miriam since maybe four years ago. The unmarried Miriam didn’t seem to be hurting.
“OK, tell me what you want.”
The next night, the key in the door sounded more forceful. The door took a second to open and she saw his head and eyes zip around looking for her. He made sure to speak before she had a chance to.
“Benny Bernstein is a pussy. Have you ever heard of Raymond Chalfont? Ask your man Bernstein if he’s ever heard of Chalfont. Because I now have Chalfont in my corner, and he says he’s been up against Bernstein at least half a dozen times, and every time he left Bernstein’s clients begging for mercy. Last night I said ‘Tell me what you want.’ Tonight, I say ‘Fuck you.”
“I’m not trying to make this hard, Arnie. I just want to move on, find my own place, and get what’s mine.”
The papers were still strewn across the coffee table from last night. He picke a few pages up and waved them around. “Did you even read this? You can have the house. This house is old and I can buy another house. I can buy five houses. But the business is mine. I built it. You took care of the house. I took care of the business. I built it from nothing.”
“Houses have upkeep. I have upkeep. Arnie, I need to be taken care of.”
“You’re a big girl.”
“Actually, you’ve kept me here like a child. The only work I’ve ever done, I’ve done for you. We don’t have any children. The least you can do is take care of me.”
He spread the papers out over the coffee table until they covered the entire surface. Then he reached over to find a pen and began slashing through pages. He’d look at a page and grunt an acceptance, and then put it in a stack. Then he’d find another page that she could see put horror in his eyes and he’d slash through it. She couldn’t bear to watch him anymore, so she went to the bar, poured herself a drink, and stood with her back to him. She could only monitor what was happening from his grunts and his slashes and the sounds of the pages being stacked.
He walked up and tapped her on the shoulder with the rolled up documents. “Give this to Bernstein.”
“Shouldn’t you be giving it to your lawyer first?”
“I’m the one to decide what I want. Chalfont is just here to make sure I get it.”
The next week, the two of them agreed that they needed to make accommodations. Neither wanted to move to a hotel, nor could they really live together, so they lived in the same house in parallel universes. He didn’t protest her taking up the bedroom because it at least isolated her. He also felt that it would anchor her to the house, which was the one thing he could easily part with. He moved the sofa into a corner of their sunken living room corner and ordered a new one that opened into a bed that he was surprisingly comfortable in. Things were not bad. He had his own part of the house. It was becoming a little messy, but it was his own mess. He had Chalfont. He had time. Then after two weeks the time ran out. He came home with a new notice, this time holding it up over his head with two hands.
“How am I supposed to run my business with this lien on it? I’ve got a payroll to meet.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Bernstein gave you no clue?”
He could see that she really was like that deer caught in the headlights, so he laid it all out. Her lawyer had done all sorts of crazy stuff to make it impossible to run the business. Bank accounts were frozen. One of his supplier’s checks had bounced and now he wouldn’t be getting any more shipments. He was going to have difficulty meeting demand if this kept up.
“All I know, Arnie, is that Benjamin said he was going to make life a little difficult.”
“And you let him?”
“He’s the boss in this affair.”
He then went on a long lecture explaining that if she was going to get a share of the business, that it was in her own best interest to keep it healthy.
“Arnie, I told you, he’s the boss in this affair. You can make this all go away. I don’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to. But Arnie – didn’t you know this was coming?”
“Chalfont told me that Bernstein was pulling some crap, but that he’d take care of it.”
“I guess he couldn’t.”
He called out to her. “I want to show you what we’ll be serving your lawyer tomorrow. I don’t believe in surprises.”
He was standing in the far corner of what was now his living room, and he was waving his roll of legal papers as though it was a magic wand. She began to step down into his territory and stopped.
“There are cockroaches, Arnie.”
“Do you want advance notice, or do you want to first hear it from your Bernstein?”
“You can walk over and hand it to me.”
He walked up to the lip of the living room and extended the papers toward her but just far enough that she’d have to step down. He swirled them in a tantalizing magical spiral. She reached in to touch her toe into the swamp, grabbed the papers, and bounced out. She looked down, relieved that no vermin had jumped onto her shoe.
“Your bank account is about to be frozen. My business is frozen? Well, my guy can do everything your guy can.”
“Benjamin, is he going to make me starve?”
It was only the second time she’d actually been to her lawyer’s office. The first time it seemed very imposing and professional. Now it was just an office. Bernstein’s desk could have been picked up in any outlet store. His window had a view of the parking lot. She wondered if Arnie’s guy – Chalfont – had a nicer office and if that was a good or a bad thing.
Benjamin Bernstein had a neatly trimmed balding head, which he made up for with wiry eyebrows and a goatee. He put on his reading glasses with a look of skepticism and just skimmed the documents she put in his hand.
She explained, “You should be getting this from Chalfont today, he said”
“There’s a reason he wanted you to read this first. He wants to scare you. I’ve seen this before. It’s bullshit. Let me handle it. Here’s what you can tell him. Tell him to let you go. Tell him to meet your demands. Tell him I fucked his business, and I’m going to fuck him personally. I want you to use those exact words. Do you want me to write them down?”
“Arnie said that Mr. Chalfont usually leaves your clients begging for mercy.”
“If Arnie were so smart, he would have checked the records personally and not believed everything Raymond told him. Now, do you want me to write that down?”
“I don’t feel comfortable saying that; it’s beneath me.”
“I understand. But if you’d feel more comfortable…”
“I know what you said.”
He was lying back comfortably on his sofa bed island in his sea of vermin, watching television, when she got home.
“I heard you met with Bernstein this afternoon. What did he tell you?”
“You need to let me go. You need to meet my demands. He fucked your business and he’s going to fuck you personally.”
“Is that really what he said?
“It’s what I say.”
He looked down and surveyed his declining kingdom.
“I’ll call Raymond. Let’s end this.”
At her lawyer’s request, she prepared to move out of her home and into a hotel. She had become comfortable in her own part of the house, but her lawyer suggested that during the period of final negotiation, she should do everything possible to not antagonize him. She should not make him feel defeated. That time could come once the ink was dry and all the property distributed and she was not just free to go, but she was fully gone. Until that time, the goal was to make him feel as though he had won. He needed the feeling of victory; she needed the goods.
“The way you’re packing, someone would think that you already bought a new home.”
“No, it’s just a modest hotel room.”
“I know what it is. I’m paying for it. Are you going to have the space to fit it all?”
“I like my things.”
He counted the boxes. Just the clothes seemed like more than everything he owned in the house.
“You know, I’ve lost half my revenue. It’s worse than losing half my business. The revenue is half of what it was, but the expenses don’t change. Your guy made it so I could pay my people, but once this is over, I’m going to have to lay off a good third of them. I hope that makes you feel good.”
“Arnie, I haven’t felt anything for so long I can’t even keep track of it.” She was dragging the boxes around the foyer trying to make them neat so that she wouldn’t be reminded her of the space her husband was living in.
Her back was to him, so he tried to get her attention. “Maybe I should introduce you to Gustavo. I’ll introduce you and then I’ll fire him in front of your eyes, and then leave the room so that you can deal with it.”
“Miriam should be here with the van soon. I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Maybe I should introduce you to Rachel. I’ll have to let her go too.”
“You know, Arnie, Mr. Bernstein said that I should get out of your hair and make you feel like a winner. But I’m incapable.”
The doorbell rang and she was so relieved to open the door and see Miriam there with her SUV parked out in front. Miriam was thin and muscular, and she had deep brown eyes that always looked wide open and interested in whatever you were saying. Her dark frizzy hair was pulled back with a multicolored band around her head and then widened out behind her. Miriam gave him an uncomfortable smile and a little flicker of her fingers, and then immediately lifted the first box and carried it out.
She knew that the best thing was to help Miriam, keep her eyes down, and just get her stuff moved out. For every box she moved to the van, she noticed that Miriam moved two. She tried to work harder and faster. But her efforts to keep up only made her want to jump into one of the boxes and cry. How had she become so weak? Was it her own fault? Would she someday become strong, like Miriam? Had Miriam always been like this, or had she changed in the past four years?
With the last box in her hands, she pushed back into the door, against the wall, to catch her last breath.
“Hey,” he said, “you said you were incapable of getting out of my hair, but I guess you’ve done it after all.”
“Arnie, that’s not what I meant. What I said was, I’m incapable of making you feel like a winner.” She rushed out to the van with the last box, and Miriam ran back to close the door.
Bernstein told her that usually the papers would be signed in the office, but in this case, he wanted to handle things in a neutral place, in the courthouse. It was ten o’clock, and they sat on the bench outside the courtroom. Arnie and his advocate would be arriving momentarily. But at a quarter-after neither had shown up. Then at twenty-after, Bernstein recognized Raymond Chalfont emerge alone from the elevator, and he was not carrying his brief case. She realized that she was the only one who had never seen Chalfont before. Based just on his name, he should have been a Liam Neeson: dashing and trim, with intense eyes, and a determination in his jaw. But he was obese, his pants drooping off of him held up with outdated suspenders. Chalfont ignored her. He walked up and shook Bernstein’s hand, coming so close to him that she felt embarrassed for her lawyer.
“Benjamin, everything is off the table. Arnie had a change of heart.”
Bernstein looked at his client. He looked right into her eyes, making her feel even more uncomfortable.
“Did you tell your husband what this would mean?”
She looked back at Chalfont. “We fucked his business. Now we’re going to fuck him personally.”
Bernstein seemed almost sorry. He put his hand on Chalfont’s shoulder. “Tell him that, Raymond.”
“He knows.”
But all that she knew was that this would never end, and that she would never be like Miriam. She would be caught in this jacket of thorns, and this would continue indefinitely, and then even when it was all over she would still be bleeding.
Some novels about divorce
More on the biblical portion Vaera
Oy! too much like my 30-year career as a family law attorney. Too true in too many cases. It only takes one side to drag everyone along, with the attorneys being the only ones who benefit.