The Maples stories - By John Updike Page 0,67

state. At this point, Dick, it’s what we make of it. I don’t know what he’ll do. We should be prepared.’

‘Well – aside from the politics, we didn’t get along that well sexually.’

The air between them thickened; with his own father, too, sex had been a painful topic. His lawyer’s breathing became grievously audible. ‘So you’d be prepared to say there was personal and emotional incompatibility?’

It seemed profoundly untrue, but Richard nodded. ‘If I have to.’

‘Good enough.’ The lawyer put his big hand on Richard’s arm and squeezed. His closeness, his breathiness, his air of restless urgency and forced cheer, his old-fashioned suit and the folder of papers tucked under his arm like roster sheets all came into focus: he was a coach, and Richard was about to kick the winning field goal, do the high-difficulty dive, strike out the heart of the batting order with the bases already loaded. Go.

They entered the courtroom two by two. The chamber was chaste and empty; the carved trim was painted forest green. The windows gave on an ancient river blackened by industry. Dead judges gazed down from above. The two lawyers conferred, leaving Richard and Joan to stand awkwardly apart. He made his ‘What now?’ face at her. She made her ‘Beats me’ face back. ‘Oyez, oyez,’ a disembodied voice chanted, and the judge hurried in, smiling, his robes swinging. He was a little sharp-featured man with a polished pink face; his face declared that he was altogether good, and would never die. He stood and nodded at them. He seated himself. The lawyers went forward to confer in whispers. Richard inertly gravitated toward Joan, the only animate object in the room that did not repel him. ‘It’s a Daumier,’ she whispered, of the tableau being enacted before them. The lawyers parted. The judge beckoned. He was so clean his smile squeaked. He showed Richard a piece of paper; it was the affidavit. ‘Is this your signature?’ he asked him.

‘It is,’ Richard said.

‘And do you believe, as this paper states, that your marriage has suffered an irretrievable breakdown?’

‘I do.’

The judge turned his face toward Joan. His voice softened a notch. ‘Is this your signature?’

‘It is.’ Her voice was a healing spray, full of tiny rainbows, in the corner of Richard’s eye.

‘And do you believe that your marriage has suffered an irretrievable breakdown?’

A pause. She did not believe that, Richard knew. She said, ‘I do.’

The judge smiled and wished them both good luck. The lawyers sagged with relief, and a torrent of merry legal chitchat – speculations about the future of no-fault, reminiscences of the old days of Alabama quickies – excluded the Maples. Obsolete at their own ceremony, Joan and Richard stepped back from the bench in unison and stood side by side, uncertain of how to turn, until Richard at last remembered what to do; he kissed her.

GRANDPARENTING

THE FORMER MAPLES had been divorced some years before their oldest child, Judith, married and had a baby. She was living with her husband, a free-lance computer programmer and part-time troubadour, on the edge of poverty in Hartford. Joan Maple, now Joan Vanderhaven, told Richard Maple over the phone that she and Andy, her husband, were intending to go down from Boston for the birth, which was to be induced. ‘How ridiculous,’ said Ruth, Richard’s wife. ‘The girl’s over thirty, she has a husband. To have her divorced parents both hovering over her isn’t just silly, it’s cruel. When I had my first baby I was in Hawaii and my mother was in Florida and that’s the way we both wanted it. You need space when you’re having a baby. You need air, to breathe.’ Remembering her own, efficiently natural child-births, she began to pant, demonstratively. ‘Let your poor daughter alone. It’s taken her ten years to get over the terrible upbringing you two gave her.’

‘Joan says Judith wants her there. If she wants Joan she must want me. If I let Joan go down there alone with Andy the baby will think Andy’s the grandfather. The kid will get – what’s the word? – imprinted.’

Ruth said, ‘Nobody, not even an hour-old infant, could ever think Andy Vanderhaven is one of your family. You’re all ragamuffins, and Andy’s a fop.’ Richard had long ago grown used to Ruth’s crisp way of seeing things; it was like living in a pop-up book, with no dimension of ambiguity.

But the thought of letting his first grandchild enter the world without him near at hand was painful. Judith