Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [176]
“We’ll travel. I’ll read. We’ll manage, Miriam.”
“Barney, you only pretend to hate your production company. The truth is you love the deal-making and the money and the power you enjoy over the people who work for you.”
“I could go to my bank and help them with an employees’ buyout. Miriam, you can’t leave me over a stupid one-night stand.”
“Barney, I’m weary of pleasing everybody. You. The children. Your friends. You’ve been making all the decisions for me ever since we married. I’d like to make some decisions of my own, good or bad, before I’m too old.”
Once Miriam had moved into a bachelor apartment in Toronto, and resumed full-time work for CBC Radio, she sent Saul round to pack and collect her things.
“Whoever would have thought it would come to this,” I said, offering my son a drink.
“You miserable old bastard, I’m glad she left you. You never deserved a woman of such quality. The way you treated her. How you took her for granted. Shit shit shit. Now you have to show me which of all these books and records are hers.”
“Take whatever you want. Pack the lot. Now that I’ve raised a family of ungrateful children, and my wife has abandoned me, I’m not going to need a big house like this any more. I think I’ll sell out and move into an apartment downtown.”
“We had a family. A real family. And you fucked it up and I’ll never forgive you for that.”
“I’m still your father, you know.”
“There’s nothing I can do about that.”
Kate pleaded with Miriam, unavailingly, to forgive me my embarrassing lapse, and Mike refused to take sides. I flew to Toronto every weekend and took Miriam out to dinner, and made her laugh, and began to suspect that she was enjoying this second courtship as much as I was. “We’re having such a good time together. Why don’t you fly home with me?”
“And ruin everything?”
So I risked another tactic. I told Miriam that if she wanted a divorce, she would have to make the arrangements, I would have nothing to do with it, but she could have whatever she wanted. I would sign anything her lawyers presented me with. Meanwhile, I added, we still had a joint bank account, and she must continue to use it as she saw fit. Instead, humiliating me, she allowed that she had drawn ten thousand dollars on the account, which she considered a loan, but she had also written to the bank, returning her chequebooks and volunteering that her signature was no longer valid for our account.
“What are you going to live on, for Christ’s sake?”
“My salary.”
“You’re no longer a young woman, you know.”
“But you have already made that abundantly clear, haven’t you, darling?”
Mike phoned: “I want you to know we’ve invited Mummy to come over and stay with us for a while, but that invitation holds good for you too.”
Kate said: “She starts on a story about a trip you made together to Venice and Madrid, and then she bursts into tears. Hang in there, Daddy. Keep plugging away.”
Friends tried to cheer me up. Women Miriam’s age, they assured me, often did squirrelly things before they settled down. Be patient, she would soon come home. The Nussbaums were foolish enough to invite me to dinners, providing a sparkly widow or divorcée whom I insulted gratuitously. “My wife never found it necessary to dye her hair, and she is still beautiful. Mind you, I suppose the loss of beauty is not something that ever troubled you.”
O’Hearne reported at Dink’s: “Your Second Mrs. Panofsky took the news well. She hopes the divorce costs you a fortune. And that it brings on a stroke or a heart attack.”
“God bless her. Oh, incidentally, I’m thinking of committing another murder.”
Blair was the candidate. I had phoned Miriam to say I would be arriving in Toronto late Friday night. “I can’t see you this Saturday, Barney,” she said. “I promised to go to North Carolina