Frosty December winds chill me to my bones as I scurry through rapidly descending darkness towards a meeting virtually every one of my friends has warned me is a huge mistake. Clutching my flapping coattails, I dart around a cluster of red-jacketed car parkers, huddled as if to share body heat, in front of Le Rendezvous — a picturesque French Bistro tucked neatly within the heart of Chicago’s famed Old Town Historical District.
I am a full half hour early.
Inside, candlelit tables set with brightly painted flatware and a pungent odors of roasted meat surround me while a soft conversational drone is punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter and popping bottle corks.
Requesting a seat with “some privacy” I am led to a secluded window table overlooking glowing vintage street lights festooned in pine swags seemingly from some bygone era. Under different circumstances I would feel happy and privileged to be in this snug, welcoming spot on a cold winter’s evening. But not tonight.
Snowflakes appear in dizzying magical patterns as a glass of Old Vine Zinfandel appears before me. Savoring its rich sweetness, I watch a taxi deposit its female passenger into swirling snow. Her dark, fringed shawl and ankle length black skirt hang stiff against the wind as her narrow, angular frame cuts, knifelike, through the whorls of dancing flakes. My back stiffens slightly as she moves, swiftly, beyond my line of vision towards the front door of Le Rendezvous. Suddenly, she is there — standing beside me.
“Judy,” I say. And to my immense surprise, I impulsively rise to embrace her.
Why am I here, I wonder, as I feel her boney, angular frame pressed against me. Once again, I remember how friends have cautioned against this meeting? “What can you possibly say? What can she?” They speak like stern parents of a curfew violating teenager. “This woman destroyed your life-long marriage…almost caused you to loose custody of your son.”
How can I explain? My reasons are many. First, most pressing and practical, I need a legal document signed by Judy releasing me from all liability for libel, slander, invasion of privacy and/or “any other cause of action” she might have against me in connection with a manuscript I am seeking to publish — an autobiographical account of my divorce in which she, as “the other woman,” figures prominently.
Amazingly, she has agreed to sign off on my manuscript sight unseen. Why? Guilt? Indifference? A genuine desire to rekindle a “friendship” that existed before she seduced my then, husband? (“How crazy is that,” I hear friends voices asking.) Or is she, perhaps, only now, beginning to understand and appreciate the full magnitude and character of all that has transpired? Does she, maybe, like me, need resolution? Or does she, like me, have baser more practical reasons for agreeing to this meeting. For example, perhaps she believes reconnecting with me may help gild her sordid past actions (a major primary school scandal) with some patina of respectability – making everything seem like an agreement between consenting adults for a restructuring of everyone’s life…a sort of musical chairs of love. I can see how for the sake of her son (once my own little boy’s best friend) that might be helpful for her. Perhaps she feels, too, like me, that this meeting will move her forward in getting on with her life – a new life she is seeking to fashion out of pieces of my old one.
Getting on with one’s life seems to be expected by the divorce machine. Conventional wisdom dictates divorcing parties must be released from the bonds of matrimony upon request, without retribution for (or resolution of) any underlying issues relating to “fault,” or marital misconduct. “Move on with your life,” is the mantra of divorce judges, lawyers, mediators, family therapists and others plying their trades in and around divorce and family law courtrooms. Parties are not encouraged to work through and resolve whatever issues are causing them to part ways. If people could do that, it is argued, they wouldn’t need a divorce (a point of view which fails to acknowledge how relationships can change over time even while love remains.) Aside from joint parenting requirements, little, if any, interest is directed to the future relationship of divorcing parties. While this may work well for young people who, perhaps, never truly connected, for more mature couples with lifetime shared goals, children, extended families, friends and assets, I don’t see how, realistically, it can.
Personally, I am unwilling to simply turn my back on my entire life to date – walking away as though everything up to this point has been simply a huge mistake. Instead, I have chosen to see my divorce experience through fully to its end (like I would an illness, a bankruptcy petition, or any other challenging life experience). I have determined to find some genuine resolution and healing for all concerned. I know my goals are at odds with a family law system that neither demands nor encourages post-divorce friendships between former spouses.. It is considered “enmeshment” (apparently the only relationship misconduct which is viewed as truly reprehensible in today’s family law system). For me, however, it is the only way. My meeting with “the other woman,” Judy, several years subsequent to my finalized divorce, is a part of my ongoing process.
Judy sits, poised awkwardly on the edge of her seat, waiting, I suppose, for me to set the tone and pace of our meeting. “The steamed muscles are great here,” I offer noncommittally. “And their bistro salad.”
“I have some reservations about this whole release thing…” she blurts out timidly. Here it goes, I think. She’s dragged me down here on a false pretext and now she’s going to back down on her word just like she did before — at the last supper we shared back before my divorce when I knew something bad was happening and I confided in her my fear that Kevin seemed to take more interest in her than in me and that my marriage was in trouble.
“Maybe he will divorce me and marry you,” I had said – half jokingly.
“I would never let that happen,” she had responded solemnly.
But she did and it did…the divorce part, anyway. Kevin and she never married…never even moved in together. So now I’m still not sure how it will all end. Apparently, neither is she. Arrogance and smugness she projected during Kevin’s and my divorce proceeding are noticeably absent now. Perhaps she has begun to understand that Kevin is not, never really has been, easy.
“Without your release, no publisher will consider my manuscript,” I say in a tight voice – remembering the last time I asked her for something (to leave my family alone).
“Here, take it,” she says suddenly – shoving an already signed piece of paper across the table at me.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
Just that quickly, my feelings for this woman – who at one point I might have murdered without flinching – shift. She is scared, I see, and not without good cause. I am now free to write anything I want about her and she has no legal recourse. She has made herself vulnerable to me – like I was to her when I welcomed her into my life as a friend, never dreaming she would participate in the destruction, or at least deconstruction and reconfiguration, of my family. For her to give me permission to publically expose her past action takes, I am forced to admit, a certain amount of guts and spunk. For some odd reason, I feel a flash of my old liking for her seeping through cracks in my carefully constructed wall of anger. I silently curse an undergraduate degree in anthropology that causes me to view even my own life, occasionally, from the vantage point of participant-observer (analyzing processes rather than just feeling them).
“Watch your step,” I hear friends admonishing. “She burned you once, why not again?” It does occur to me to wonder, once again, what it is she hopes to gain from me and from this meeting. Then our food comes and, surprisingly, I have a robust appetite. Judy mostly just rearranges food on her plate without really consuming any; but that was her style even before the divorce.
We eat. We drink. We talk – mostly about “safe” topics. Then Judy tells me about loosing her job (with a major advertising agency) how embarrassed she feels bumping into former co-workers. I remember how envious I was of that job of hers during my divorce. As I fought to retain whatever shreds I could of my former life, she was safely ensconced within her Downtown skyscraper office with security tighter than a prison on lockdown. Now she’s down here in the cold and snow along with the rest of us. I am surprised to realize I feel some compassion for her predicament.
Conversation turns to how everyone is doing – especially our respective young sons — childhood best friends no more. They never speak. What must that be like for them? As for Kevin, we both agree he has seen better days. His health has suffered since the divorce and, despite his former claims that I was the cause of all his miseries, he still doesn’t seem particularly happy. In my mind I can still hear him telling me how we had had to get divorced because living with me made him so depressed that he would rather be dead than remain married to me. I remember how utterly worthless I felt when he made that remark to me. But, oddly, I feel concerned rather than pleased that our divorce was not the panacea Kevin had hoped. He and I did, after all, spend most of our adult lives together taking care of one another thru good times and bad.
In fact, as I sit here, I am silently trying to determine who, if anyone, has come out ahead in all these machinations. This much I know: During divorce, my pain was so great I did not see how I could survive. Fighting to retain custody of my son and some scraps of what we acquired thru lifetime of hard work, I never lost sight of my love for Kevin. I told everyone who would listen how I intended to fight to the end for what was mine but that I also would fight to preserve my friendship with this man who had been my constant companion throughout life.
Fortunately, in the end, we were able to share custody of our son and redevelop some semblance of our former friendship along new lines. Buddhist philosophy tells us everything is changing. A key to happiness is to accept change. Not my strongest life skill. But a philosophy I clung to during my divorce.
Now, I am comfortable in my new post-divorce persona. In fact I must admit that divorce gave me learning and growth opportunities I could never have experienced within marriage. I know myself better, love myself more and have greater confidence in my own abilities than ever before. I believe, in fact, that I am happier divorced than married.
As I sit observing Judy, I realize that whatever anger I felt towards her before has diminished. I simply do not actively feel it anymore although I am not unmindful of events upon which my former anger was based and still feel, of course, somewhat guarded in her company.
At the end of our supper, Judy and I depart — sucked from the fragrant, colorful warmth of Les Rendezvous by a wicked blast of what will become the season’s first real blizzard. Once again, I hug her skeletal frame before we enter our separate taxi-cabs.
I do not yet know that our reconnection, like our separation, will take time to develop. There will be school events where, instead of pointedly avoiding one another as we did during my divorce, we will laugh together at a table shared with Kevin – who will be run ragged refreshing drinks for the both of us. When Kevin slacks on his work-outs, Judy and I will jointly present him with a health club membership for his birthday. When he falls ill with cancer, we will join forces to provide care to him. And we will help each other: I comforting her during the death of her mother. She wheeling me to my doctor’s appointment when I break a leg skiing.
Christmas, about one year after our supper meeting, I will send out a homemade Christmas card featuring a picture of myself, Kevin and our son taken on the occasion of his graduation from grammar school. It’s the first post-divorce Christmas card picturing all three of us together again, Kevin included. Jointly cherished friends acquired over a lifetime together need no explanation. They understand. What they may not realize is that, ironically, this photo was taken by Judy (whose own son was graduating that same day). I had forgotten my camera and luckily Judy was there with hers – picking up the slack and documenting smiling faces of our reconfigured, no longer “in-tact” but still functioning, family, Kevin’s and mine.