Authors: Philip Roth
Only months after my arrival, it became clear to me—depressingly so—that New York City was probably the worst possible place, outside of the Vatican, for a man in my predicament to try to put an end to his old life and begin a new one. As I was discovering at these parties, I was in no shape to get much pleasure out of my status as a
“
single
”
man; and, as I discovered in my lawyer
’
s office, the state of New York was hardly about to grant that status
de jure
recognition.
Indeed, now that the Peter Tar
nopols were New York residents, it looked as though they would be husband and wife forever. Too late I learned that had we gotten separated back in Wisconsin, we could, according to the law there, have been divorced after having voluntarily lived separate and apart for five years. (Of course, had I returned to Wisconsin in June of
‘
62, rather than staying on at Morris
’
s apartment and from there la
unching into my career as Spiel
vogel
’
s patient, it is doubtful that I ever could have managed to set myself up in Madison separate and apart from Maureen.) But, as things turned out, in the sanctuary that I had taken New York to be, the only grounds for divorce was adultery, and since Maureen did not want to divorce me on any grounds, and I had no way of knowing whether she was an adulteress, or proving it even if I knew, it looked in all likelihood as though I would be celebrating my golden wedding anniversary on the steps of the State House in Albany. Moreover, because my lawyer had been unable to get Maureen and her attorney to agree to a legal separation or to any kind of financial settlement (let alone to a Mexican or Nevada divorce that would have required mutual consent to be incontestable), my official marital status in New York very shor
tly
came to be that of the guilty party in a separation action brought by a wife against a husband who had
“
abandoned
”
her. Though we had lived together as husband and wife for only three years, I was ordered by the New York court to provide ma
intenance for my abandoned wife
to the tune of one hundred dollars a week, and to provide it until death did us part. And in New York State what else could part us?
I could, of course, have moved and taken up residence in some state with a less restrictive divorce law, and for a while, with the aid of
The Complete Guide to Divorce
by Samuel G. Kling—the book that became my bedside Bible in that first bewildering phase of my life as a New York resident—I seriously investigated the possibilities. Reading Kling I found out that in some eleven states
“
separation without cohabitation and without reasonable expectation of reconciliation
”
was grounds for divorce, after anywhere from eighteen months to three years. One night I got out of bed at four
a.m.
and sat down and wrote letters to the state universities in each of the eleven states and asked if there might be a job open for me in
the
ir department of English; within the month I had received offers from the universities of Florida, Delaware, and Wyoming. According to Kling, in the first two states
“
voluntary three-year separation
”
provided grounds for divorce; in Wyoming, only two years
’
separation was necessary. My lawyer was quick to advise me of the various means by which Maureen might attempt to contest such a divorce; he also let me know that upon granting me a divorce the out-of-state judge would in all probability order me to continue to pay the alimony set by the New York court in the separation judgment; fur
the
rmore (to answer my next question), if I refused after the divorce to make the alimony payments, I could be (and with Maureen as my antagonist, no doubt would be) hauled into court under state reciprocity agreements and held in contempt by the Florida or Delaware or Wyoming judge for failing to support my former spouse in New York. A divorce, my lawyer said, I might be able to pull off—but escape the alimony? never. Nonetheless, I went ahead and accepted a job teaching American literature and creative writing the following September in Laramie, Wyoming. I went
imme
diat
ely
to the library and took out book
s on the West. I went up to the
Museum of Natural History and walked among the Indian artifacts and the tableau of the American bison. I decided I would try to learn to ride a horse, at least a little, before I got out there. And I thought of the money I would not be paying to Dr. Spielvogel.
Some ten weeks later I wrote to tell the chairman of the English department in Laramie that because of unforeseen circumstances I would be unable to take the job. The unforeseen circumstance was the hopelessness I had begun to feel at the prospect of a two-year exile in Wyoming. After which I might be able to ride a horse, but I would
still
have to pay through the nose.
If
the divorce even went uncontested! And would Florida be any better? Less remote, but a year longer to qualify for the divorce, and the end result just as uncertain. It was about this time that I decided that the only way out was to leave America and its marital laws and reciprocal state agreements and begin my life anew as a stranger in a foreign country. Since I understood that Maureen could always attach future royalties if they were to come through a New York publishing house, I would have to sell world rights to my next book to my English publisher and receive all payment through him. Or why not start from scratch—grow a beard and change my name?
…
And who was to say there would ever be a next book?
I spent the following few months deciding whether to return to Italy, where I still had a few friends, or to try Norway, where chances were slim that anybody would ever find me (unless of course they went looking). How about Finland? I read all about Finland in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
High rate of literacy, long winters, and many trees. I imagined myself in Helsinki, and, while I was at it, Istanbul, Marrakesh, Lisbon, Aberdeen, and the She
tl
and Islands. Very good place to disappear, the Shetland Islands. Pop. 19,343,
and
not that far, really, from the North Pole. Principal industries, sheep farming and fishing. Also raise famous ponies. No mention in
Britannica
of treat
agreement with New York State for extradition of marital criminals…
But, oh, if I was outraged in New York over all I had lost in that marriage, imagine how I would feel when I woke up bearded in my cottage on the moors in Scalloway to discover I had lost my country as well. What
“
freedom
”
would I have won then, speaking American to
the
ponies? What
“
justice
”
would I have made, an ironical Jewish novelist with a crook and a pack of sheep? And what
’
s worse, suppose she found me out and followed me there, for all that my name is now Long Tom Dumphy? Not at all unlikely, given that I couldn
’
t shake her in this, a country of two hundred million. Oh, imagine what that would be like, me with me stick and Maureen with her rage in the middle of the roarin
’
North Sea, and only 19,343 others to hold us apart?
So, unhappily (and not at all, really) I accepted my fate as a male resident of the state of New York of the republic of America who no longer cared to live with a wife whose preference it was to continue to live with (and off) him. I began, as they say, to try to make the best of it. Indeed, by the time I met Susan I was actually beginning to pass out of the first stages of shell shock (or was it fallout sickness?) and had even found myself rather taken with (as opposed to
“
taken by,
”
very much a preoccupation at the time) a bright and engaging girl named Nancy Miles, fresh out of college and working as a
“
checker
”
for the New
Yorker.
Nancy Miles was eventually to go off to Paris to marry an American jour
nalist stationed there, and sub
sequen
tly
to publish a book of autobiographical sh
o
rt stories, most of them based upon her childhood as a U.S. Navy commander
’
s daughter in postwar Japan. However, the year I met her she was free as a bird, and soaring like one, too. I hadn
’
t been so drawn to anyone since the Wisconsin debacle, when I had thrown myself at the feet of my nineteen-year-old student Karen (for whom I intermittently continued to pine, by the way; I imagined her sometimes with me and
the
sheep in
Scallo
way), but after three consecutive evenings together of nonstop dinner conversation, the last culminating in lovemaking as impassioned as anything I
’
d known since those illicit trysts between classes in Karen
’
s room, I decided not to call Nancy again. Two weeks passed, and she sent me this letter:
Mr. Peter Tarnopol
Institute for Unpredictable Behavior
62 West 12th Street
New York, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Tarnopol:
With reference to our meeting of 5/6/63:
While I fully recognize that numerous demands of this nature must strain the limits of your patience, I nonetheless make bold to request that you fill out the above questionnaire and return it to the address below as soon as it is convenient.
I remain,
yours,
Perplexed
Perplexed perhaps, but not broken. That was the last I heard from Nancy. I chose Susan.
It goes without saying that those seeking sanctuary have ordinarily to set
tl
e for something less than a seven-room apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in which to take refuge from the wolves or the cops or the cold. I for one had never lived in anything approaching Susan
’
s place for size or grandeur. Nor had I ever eaten so well in my life. Maureen
’
s cooking wasn
’
t that bad, but generally dinnertime was the hour reserved at our house for settling scores with me and my sex—un
settle
d scores that some evenings seemed to me to have been piling up ever since the first nucleic acid molecule went ahead and reproduced
itself several billion years ago; consequently, even when the food was hot and tasty, the ambience was wrong. And in the years before I took to dining in each night on Maureen
’
s gall, there had been army chow or university cafeteria stew. But Susan was a pro, trained by masters at
what she had not learned at Cal
purnia
’
s knee: during the year she had been waiting for her
fiancé
to be graduated from Princeton and their life of beauty and abundance to begin, she had commuted up to New York to learn how to cook French, Italian, and Chinese specialties. The course in each cuisine lasted six weeks, and Susan stayed on (as she hadn
’
t at Wellesley) triumphantly to complete all three. To her great glee she discovered she could now at least
outcook
her mother. Oh, what a wonderful wife (she hoped and prayed) she was going to make for this fantastic stroke of luck named James McCall the Third!
During her widowhood Susan had only rarely had the opportunity to feed anyone other than herself, and so it was that I became the first dinner guest ever to appreciate in full a culinary expertise that spanned the continents. I had never tasted food so delicious. And not even my own dutiful mother had waited on me the way
this
upper-crust waitress did. I was under standing instructions to proceed to eat without her, so that she could scamper freely back and forth into the kitchen getting the next dish going in her wok. Good enough. We had little outside of the food to talk about anyway. I asked about her family, I asked about her analysis, I asked about Jamey and the McCalls. I asked why she had left Wellesley in her first year. She shrugged and she flushed and she averted her eyes. She replied, oh they
’
re very nice, and he
’
s very nice, and she
’
s such a sweet and thoughtful person, and
“
Why did I leave Wellesley? Oh, I just left.
”
For weeks I got no more information or animation than I had the night we met, when I was seated next to her at the dinner party I was invited to annually at my publisher
’
s town house: unswerving agreeableness, boundless timidity—a
frail and ter
rified beauty. And in the beginning that was just fine with me. Bring on the blanquette de veau.