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1-2-3 magic for kids : helping your kids understand the new rules 2nd Edition Thomas W. Phelan
“Co-parenting 101 offers practical advice, information, and tools for parents that can be easily implemented, as well as a tremendous amount of hope. I recommend that parents read this book not only to avoid problems but also as a manual to consult when difficult situations arise.”
—Susan Pease Gadoua, author of Contemplating Divorce and Stronger Day by Day
“As a marital and couples therapist, I have witnessed how contentious divorces affect both the parents and their children. It can be agonizing. I would highly recommend and encourage those folks contemplating divorce to read this book first. It is extremely practical with many vignettes of actual parent struggles, including the authors’ own co-parenting journey. The interview with the authors’ daughter is particularly touching and poignant, a powerful message for all divorced parents.”
—Bari Benjamin, LCSW, BCD, licensed, clinical social worker
“An extraordinary book and required reading for separated and divorced parents, as well as mental health practitioners. [Co-parenting 101] outlines some of the possible pitfalls of the co-parenting process with which clinicians like myself are all too familiar and regularly deal with therapeutically. But now we can refer parents to Co-parenting 101 to help them mindfully approach the co-parenting process and examine the array of options they have in their parenting toolbox.
—Robert F. Fierstein, PhD, licensed psychologist
“Deesha Philyaw and Michael D. Thomas have done the impossible. This formerly married couple not only co-parent their children without rancor, but in Co-parenting 101, they teach us how to do it, too. What a helpful, detailed, and realistic guide to a widespread but much ignored situation! This book will help readers navigate the tricky and often treacherous waters of co-parenting with a former partner.”
—Ericka Lutz , author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Stepparenting
“As a family physician, I care for hundreds of families with parents living separately. The mental and physical health of children is directly impacted by the relationship between their co-parents. I’m recommending this book to every separated family I see. If parents were willing to step up and consider the suggestions made in Co-parenting 101, their kids would be healthier and far more resilient!”
—Deborah Gilboa, MD, of askdoctorg.com
Co-parenting Co-parenting
Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households after Divorce
Deesha Philyaw
Michael D. Thomas
New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
Publisher’s Note
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Acquired by Melissa Kirk; Cover design by Amy Shoup; Edited by Will DeRooy; Text design by Tracy Carlson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Philyaw, Deesha.
Co-parenting 101 : helping your kids thrive in two households after divorce / Deesha Philyaw and Michael D. Thomas. pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60882-463-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60882-464-9 (pdf e-book) -- ISBN 978-1-60882-465-6 (epub) 1. Children of divorced parents. 2. Parenting, Part-time. 3. Divorced parents. 4. Joint custody of children. I. Thomas, Michael D., 1971- II. Title. III. Title: Co-parenting one hundred one. IV. Title: Co-parenting one hundred and one.
HQ777.5.P48 2013 306.89--dc23
2013003020
To Taylor, Peyton, Troi, Lauren, and CEF with love
D.P.
To C., Taylor, Peyton, and Mika. You are both the “how” and the “why” in my co-parenting journey. I love you!
M.D.T.
Acknowledgments
Many people supported this book before it was a book at all. We thank Wednesday Martin, PhD; Robert F. Fierstein, PhD; Tony Norman; Cora Daniels; Yvonne Kelly of the Step and Blended Family Institute; Troy Johnson of the African American Literature Book Club; parenting coordinator Brooke Randolph for wise, wise counsel; Chris Ivey and Rebecca Cech for their love and manual labor; Kenneth Crudup for his brilliance; Laura Szabo-Cohen for providing sustenance; Ericka Lutz for her first-reader keen eye; Kim Ellis (aka Dr. Goddess) for her tireless cheerleading on our behalf and on behalf of children and families; Catherine Greeno and Andi Fischhoff for their “on the ground” support of us and our blog Co-Parenting 101; and Talibah Mbonisi for pretty much everything. For innumerable acts of kindness and help, we also appreciate Jennifer James Soto, Lissett Oliveri; Andrea Morgan; Taneshia Nash Laird; Heather Hetchler; Kim Daboo; Faith Adiele; Genie Maples; Tami Winfrey Harris; Carolyn Edgar; Yona Harvey; members of the CoParenting101.org Facebook group; and all our Twitter followers. Special thanks to the Flight School crew (Joe Dziekan, Jasdeep Khaira, and Courtney Ehrlichman), literary agent extraordinaire Danielle Chiotti; and Will DeRooy and the smart, keen-eyed folks at New Harbinger Publications. To everyone else who has graciously helped make this book possible, please charge the omission of your names to our faulty memories and not to our hearts.
Introduction: “You Should Write a Book”
In the spring of 2005, we delivered some news to our then-six-yearold daughter Taylor that broke her heart. We told her that we were divorcing because we had grown-up problems we could not fix, even though we’d tried very, very hard. We explained what divorce meant: the two of us would live in separate houses, and she and her eighteenmonth-old sister, Peyton, would stay with each of us on different days. We told Taylor all of the ways our lives would change because of the divorce, and we told her all of the things that would remain the same—especially our love for and commitment to her and Peyton. She still had a family, we reassured her.
Taylor’s reaction was one that is common to many children of divorce. “I made up a word for what I feel,” she told us a few days after our initial conversation. “I’m smad. Sad and mad at the same time.” We knew that we couldn’t take away her hurt entirely, but we made a pact to avoid compounding the pain and upheaval in our children’s lives. Through the sometimes tense legal process and the awkward early days of negotiating the day-to-d ay details of parenting across two households, we put aside our own wounds and concentrated on the most important task at hand: making sure we acted in our children’s best interest, emotionally and practically.
After our marriage ended, we became the poster children for divorce in our circle of friends and colleagues. We wish we could have
been the poster children for successful marriage, but it didn’t work out that way.
Instead, we have managed to establish a congenial co-parenting relationship that allows our children to thrive and that causes those who know us to ask, “How in the world do you do it?” There are simple and not-so-simple answers to that question—a nswers we have shared with other divorced couples, those contemplating divorce, and adult children of divorce through our blog Co-Parenting 101 and online radio show CoParenting Matters. Inevitably, the response we get is “You should write a book.” So we did.
We are not, however, advocates for divorce. In fact, we tell couples who seek our advice to consider divorce only as their very last option. We won’t debate whether staying together “for the sake of the kids” is best for children. That’s a personal decision each thoughtful couple must make for themselves. But we’ve heard from co-parents who say that using “for the sake of the kids” as the glue to hold their troubled marriage together ultimately didn’t work. This book is a resource for those parenting after divorce or separation, no matter what the reason for the split.
As divorced co-parents, the question we get most often after “How do you do it?” is “If you can get along this well—well enough to collaborate on this book—why couldn’t you make your marriage work?” Our answer: the platonic relationship we’ve cultivated since our divorce is possible only because we’ve removed ourselves from the parasitic resentments that ate away at our marriage, from the daily misery and conflict. In other words, we are able to get along now because we are free to have a relationship that is limited to what we are good at together: parenting. While co-parenting still forces us to bump up against those raw areas that contributed to the demise of our marriage, we deal with them in a different context now: It’s not about us anymore. Our obligations are to our children, and our love for them motivates us to proceed with caution through the rough spots.
We’re not alone in pursuing this particular postdivorce path. Through our blog, we’ve connected with other former couples who tell us that, despite a rocky start, they are doing what at first seemed
impossible: striving for civility, compromise, and cooperation. And their children are better off for it.
With straight talk, practical advice, and a dose of humor thrown in for good measure, this book is a guide to help exes become successful co-parents…truly for the sake of the kids.
Once the legal dust settles, children may be the only reason former spouses remain in contact with each other. Every interaction can stoke residual feelings of betrayal, desire for revenge, anger, and disappointment. Those are all typical, understandable post-breakup sentiments, but they do not give anyone a “Get Out of Parenting Free” card, nor do they render either parent expendable in a child’s life.
In fact, we believe good parenting after divorce means cooperative co-parenting. This book is based on the premise that cooperative coparenting after a breakup between fit parents is a must, not an option. It is as essential to your child’s emotional well-being as nutritious food is to his physical well-being. Research (Kuhn and Guidubaldi 1997; Joakimidis 1994; Bauserman 2002; Center for Parental Responsibility 2004; Shackelton 2006), anecdotal evidence, and plain old common sense bear this out:
• Children benefit from having both of their fit and willing parents play an active role in their lives and from spending substantial time with both parents. (This is the cornerstone of co-parenting.)
• Children look to their parents for reassurance during the difficult time after a breakup. Having both parents involved in their lives—working together to meet their needs—provides more security and stability for children after a breakup.
• Parents who refrain from doing things that put their children in the middle of their conflicts—a sking the children to relay messages, denigrating the other parent in front of the children, or forbidding mention of the other parent in their presence—f ree their children from the stress of loyalty conflicts.
• Co-parented children feel less rejected by their parents, and they report feeling attached to both parents.
• Parents who share custody experience less emotional loss, depression, grief, and anger after a breakup. Happier, healthier parents raise happier, healthier kids.
• On average, children with two actively involved parents fare better in studies of rates of teen pregnancy, suicide, drug abuse, poor academic performance, school dropout, and delinquency.
• Ongoing conflict between parents after divorce increases children’s risk factors for depression, behavioral problems, teen pregnancy, suicide, delinquency, and school failure and dropout.
• Co-parenting avoids the false “winner/loser” dichotomy of divorce, casting neither parent as a “visitor” or secondary parent, thus allowing the child, ultimately, to win.
Further, as more family courts move away from the traditional mode of thinking about divorce—Mom automatically gets primary custody of the kids, while Dad gets visitation, typically on weekends— mandatory shared custody arrangements are becoming the norm (except in extenuating circumstances, such as proven abuse, neglect, domestic violence, or mental illness that renders one parent unfit). Perhaps you have been given such a mandate as part of your divorce proceedings. This book can equip you and your parenting partner to honor the court-ordered agreement and care for your children together without high levels of conflict.
There are legal and financial benefits to co-parenting as well. Coparenting significantly reduces child support default (US Bureau of the Census 2011), and co-parents are half as likely to go to back to court to settle their disputes as those without joint custody or visitation arrangements (Joakimidis 1994). Less time stressed out about legal wrangling means more time to be fully present and engaged with your children.
In the wake of divorce, children need to see their parents functioning cooperatively. We know from our own family’s experience that to move forward in this way is a challenge, but not an insurmountable one. In the following chapters, we’ll offer a blueprint for you to:
• Establish a new, “working” relationship with your former spouse or partner, one that moves beyond your rocky marital past and looks forward to a more peaceful parenting partnership.
• Identify specific strategies for co-managing the day-to-d ay demands of your children’s lives, such as schooling, scheduling, health, holidays, and extracurricular activities, across households.
• Play a positive, meaningful role in your child’s life even if your co-parent isn’t willing to cooperate.
• Talk with your child in age-appropriate ways about the breakup, and address her questions and concerns.
• Understand the different needs of infants, toddlers, schoolage children, and teens during a breakup.
• Address the challenges unique to co-parenting an only child or those unique to co-parenting siblings.
Although shared parenting is in the best interest of most children (Center for Parental Responsibility 2004), we recognize that cooperative co-parenting is not possible if one or both parents refuse to facilitate it. See part III, “But You Don’t Know My Ex,” and remember that your children are worth your best effort regardless of what the other parent does or does not do. That said, co-parenting should never put a child or parent in harm’s way.
Okay, So … What Is Co-parenting, Exactly?
Regardless of the specifics of your physical custody arrangement and parenting time schedule, successful co-parenting can be defined as any postdivorce or post-separation parenting arrangement that (1) fosters continued, healthy relationships for children with both parents and (2) is founded on a genuinely cooperative relationship between the parents. “Co-parenting” is often used interchangeably with “joint parenting,” “joint custody,” “shared custody,” and “shared parenting.” For a variety of practical reasons, one parent’s house may be defined as your child’s primary residence, but if every effort is made for her to maintain a close, loving relationship with both parents, then you are a successful co-parent.
Now, we know what you may be thinking: That whole cooperative co- parenting thing sounds great…in theory. But he cheated on me! or But I hate her! Why do you think we’re getting a divorce in the first place? However, putting your kids first requires you to love your child more than you hate your ex. If you’re like most parents, you love your children so much that you say you would die for them. But the question is: Will you live for them? Will you love them enough to put their need for cooperative co-parenting above the need you may feel to rail against or punish your ex?
While parents may remain mired in the muck that contributed to the end of their relationship, the children are concerned with what the breakup means for them. They wonder, “Will I still get to be with Mom and Dad? Can I still love them both?” Divorce ends marriages, but families endure. Kids want reassurance that even though the family they have known is breaking up, they are still part of a family in which they receive love and care from both parents, unconditionally.
Cooperative co-parenting after a breakup helps not only your children, but you as well. Minimal conflict between you and your coparent reduces the stress in your life and allows a mutually beneficial
partnership to flourish; you both have someone with whom to share the parenting load. Further, less time and energy spent fighting a cold war (or worse) with your ex gives you more time to enjoy your kids as an engaged, positive, responsive parent.
Perfection Is Not the Goal
Maybe you’re still rolling your eyes and thinking Yeah, right. And we can’t say we blame you. Divorce in American culture is synonymous with combat, not cooperation. Everyone has heard (or suffered through) the horror story of a bitter divorce. But there are other stories, like the story of our own family. You don’t often hear these “feel-good” stories because if the post-breakup situation is a peaceful one, presumably there’s no story to tell.
We founded the blog Co-Parenting 101 for precisely this reason: to provide a place for cooperative co-parents to share their stories so that others might be encouraged, and to challenge the stereotype of the always-messy divorce.
Our co-parenting relationship isn’t always easy. We’ve made— and still make—m istakes along the way. The goal is not perfection, but rather an ongoing, sincere effort to cooperate with each other where our children are concerned. We believe that more divorced couples can co-parent successfully if they make a firm commitment to really live for their kids—including honoring and encouraging their kids’ relationship with the other parent and seeing that parent as an ally instead of an enemy.
Putting the Kids First
Co-parents should seek to act in the best interest of their children— children who did not ask to be born, who should never be asked to agree that divorce was the right decision, and whose needs should be their parents’ primary concern. While it’s impossible to meet all of
your child’s needs all the time—a fter all, your child would likely say that he needs for the two of you to get back together—you’ll never hit a target if you don’t at least aim for it. If you aim to put your kids’ needs first, you’re guaranteed more close hits than if you didn’t aim at all. Putting the kids first is the foundation for a successful coparenting relationship—a relationship built for the sake of your children, in spite of the animosity, hurt, and baggage between you and your ex.
Now, when we preach the gospel of Putting the Kids First, we are not minimizing parents’ needs, the very real emotions parents wrangle with post-breakup, or the marital history that preceded the breakup. Believe us, we’ve been there. We know it’s not easy, and we hope the strategies offered in this book will help you succeed as a co-parent. But nothing we suggest here, nothing the court orders, and nothing mental health professionals advise will matter unless you embrace the following truth—a nd we mean this in the nicest possible way:
It’s not about you.
Given that you’re a parent, this is probably not an earth-shattering revelation. Kids routinely move parents out of their comfort zones. This is as true after your divorce or separation as it was before. Even when she was in utero, your child’s needs mattered to you. She became the center of your universe and the topic of nearly every conversation. Children challenge, inconvenience, and push their parents to their limits. Parents change their lifestyles and their priorities for the sake of their children. If need be, parents sacrifice and do without, so that their children may have. The freedom and indulgences they enjoyed before they had children are eroded by kids’ never-ending need for time, attention, and basic care and feeding. Every day, in ways large and small, parents put their children’s needs before their own grown-up wants.
We aren’t suggesting that parents become martyrs, sacrificing all their needs on the altar of Putting the Kids First. For example, successful co-parenting does not require you to be a doormat or to “play nice” and ignore the fact that your ex-husband never calls to say he’s going to be late picking up the kids or the fact that your ex-g irlfriend is verbally abusive toward you and your new wife. Successful
co-parenting requires that you address the discourteous behavior with your ex…when the kids aren’t around. It requires that you comfort your disappointed children and acknowledge their feelings… without calling the other parent a selfish jerk, for example. Hugs and affirming words comfort your children. “Your dad is a selfish jerk” comforts no one but you.
But remember: it’s not about you.
Honoring Your Child’s
Relationship with Your Ex
Even if your child is the one who calls your ex a selfish jerk, remember that this same child still loves that selfish jerk tremendously. The relationship between your ex and your child, however rocky, is sacred. Honor it. Your child is depending on both of you to set aside parental hurts and axes to grind, at least enough to put her needs first. This may require some healing on your part as a prerequisite. If so, skip ahead to chapter 2, “Good Grief: Strategies for Starting the Healing Process.”
Now, you might be shaking your head as you read this, thinking: I’m all for putting the kids first. But you don’t know my ex! She’s a real basket case. It’s been years since the divorce, and she still hates me. Worse, she’s trying to turn the kids against me! She’ll never go for this co- parenting thing.
Actually we do know your ex—a nd countless mothers and fathers just like her. She was married to friends and colleagues of ours and to some of the thousand-plus co-parents who visit our website (coparenting101.org) each month. We may not know your ex personally, but we are quite familiar with the bitterness that needlessly turns children into the collateral damage of divorce. And you’re right: your ex may not go for this co-parenting thing, but we encourage you to skip ahead to part III, “But You Don’t Know My Ex,” for some tips on how to be the best co-parent you can be in the face of her resistance.
,Parenting after divorce—w ithout all the drama—really is possible. We are living proof. This book contains our ideas and experiences—what’s worked for us and what hasn’t—a s well as what we’ve learned from other parents (all names of co-parents and their children are pseudonyms). Often in the following chapters, we will use the term “divorce,” but we address some of the unique needs of never-married co-parenting families in chapter 10, “What about Us?”
We also presume shared parenting within the same state, but chapters 7, 8, and 10 offer specific information and strategies for noncustodial parents and those who are co-parenting across state lines. Throughout the book, we’ll also provide tips for building a strong parenting partnership with a noncustodial or nonresidential parent.
It’s our hope that you and your co-parent will craft from these pages a plan that accommodates your personalities and circumstances and, most important, meets the unique needs of your children. We wish you and your family a successful co-parenting journey!
Part I
Divorce 101
This section will help you lay the groundwork for successful coparenting. How you mind the details—a nd your manners—at the outset of your separation and subsequent divorce will influence your children’s emotional adjustment and will set the stage for the success—or failure—of your co-parenting relationship. This section will also guide you toward healthy means of coping with your own grief associated with the breakup so that you can help your children heal and adjust as well. Even if you’re already divorced or well into the process, read on! This section can affirm your best co-parenting practices or, alternatively, help identify those areas in need of damage control or a co-parenting “do over.” It’s never too late to act in the best interest of your children.
Chapter 1
Before You Call a Lawyer: Laying the Groundwork for Co-parenting Success
The first commitment I made was that I would be there for the kids physically and financially, no matter what. Before divorce, I shared the parenting responsibility, and I was determined to not be an every-other-weekend parent.
Carlton, dad of two
Divorce with kids in the mix is a time of intense personal sacrifice, calling for tremendous amounts of maturity and patience—at precisely a time when you’re least able to muster them, because it’s also a time of tremendous loss and grief. Those who know us from our blog or online radio show often assume that, because we’re friendly with
each other now, our divorce process was amicable from start to finish. It wasn’t. We hurt. We grieved. Threats were made. The f-bomb was dropped. Angry e-mails were fired off at one in the morning. We disagreed about many issues, and loudly.
But one matter on which we were in full agreement from the outset was that we wanted to spare our children as much as possible. We didn’t delude ourselves into thinking that divorce wouldn’t hurt them, but we did agree to do everything we could not to compound the hurt. We knew it would be easier for our kids if we agreed to do the following:
1. Never bad-mouth each other to or in earshot of the kids.
2. Be civil during drop-offs and pick-ups, so that those times of transition would not be laden with our conflict.
3. Go on occasional whole-family outings, during which the children could spend time with both of us together.
Of these commitments, we believe numbers 1 and 2 are essential to any post-breakup parenting partnership that allows children to heal and ultimately thrive. Number 3 might not appeal to some coparents, and it’s not advisable for those in high-conflict co-parenting situations.
Despite the conflicts that led to the demise of our marriage, and the conflict inherent in separating and divorcing, we still respected each other as parents. This made commitments 1 and 2 pretty easy. Number 3, however, made for some inwardly awkward and uncomfortable moments for us early on. Our kids, however, seemed none the wiser; they loved when we all went out to dinner or for ice cream. They’ve both shared with us that one of the hardest parts of the divorce is being with one of us or the other, so these outings were (and continue to be) cherished times.
These are the commitments we made for our children before either of us picked up the phone and called a lawyer. They formed the basis for our co-parenting ground rules, the foundation upon which we began to build our post-breakup parenting partnership. However,
co-parenting is not a one-size-f its-a ll proposition. Each family’s coparenting ground rules will reflect that family’s particular circumstances. Even if your divorce is already final, it’s never too late to commit to improving your co-parenting situation.
Establishing Your Ground Rules
Consider the following questions when setting your own co-parenting ground rules. Discuss them explicitly with your child’s other parent. If a sit-down conversation isn’t feasible, ease into the conversation via e-mail. Or, make these commitments on your own until you are able to have a civil conversation with your ex.
1. Can you both agree to never bad-mouth each other to or in earshot of your kids?
2. Can you both agree to be civil during drop-offs and pick-ups?
3. What other commitments can you both make to your children right now to help them transition and adjust?
4. What are you willing to sacrifice to make the transition and adjustment as easy as possible for your children?
5. Think of your children’s unique personalities and needs. What are some specific areas in which they would benefit from your cooperation and civility? For example, if your child plays soccer, commit to attending his games and practices as you normally would, keeping your focus on him and not each other.
After setting some basic ground rules, as you move into the process of separation and divorce, you’ll need to make some additional commitments as co-parents.
Commitments for Building a Strong Post-breakup Parenting Partnership
Though raw emotions are running high for both of you (to say the least), for your children’s sake, you’ll need to sit down with your soonto-be-ex and talk about how you can work together to minimize the upheaval and conflict your children will experience during the divorce process and beyond. You can commit to strengthening your parenting partnership at any time, even if you’re already divorced. And as with the ground rules, you’ll want to choose a time to meet when you are both open and calm, or bring up one or two of the following commitments in an e-mail. Or, make these commitments on your own until you are able to communicate with your ex about them.
Commit to putting love for your children and concern for their well-being ahead of your grown-up grievances. In common parlance: love your child more than you hate your ex. Now more than ever, your kids need their parents to provide unconditional love, security, and as much stability and peace as possible, given the circumstances. Consider whether your actions, in the legal process and in daily life, align with who you are as caring, committed parents.
One way to keep your children’s welfare at the center of things— without putting them in the middle—is to honor the “Bill of Rights for Children in Divorce and Dissolution Actions,” a helpful list of rights that children have in any divorce. Created by the New Jersey Chapter of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (DeVaris et al. n.d.), these rights include:
• The right to be treated as important and separate human beings with unique feelings, needs, ideas, and desires, not existing solely to gratify the needs of their parents
• The right to not participate in the painful games parents play to hurt each other or be put in the middle of their battles
• The right not to be a go-between or a message carrier for their parents
• The right to a continuing, relaxed, and secure relationship with both parents
• The right to express love and affection for, and receive love and affection from, both parents
• The right to know that expressions of love between children and parents will not cause fear, disapproval, or other negative consequences
• The right to continuing care and guidance from both parents
• The right to be protected from hearing degrading or bad comments about either parent
• The right to experience regular, consistent, and flexible shared parenting time with both parents, and the right to know the reason for changes in the parenting schedule
• The right to not be forced to choose one parent over the other
We’ll explore these and other rights in later chapters; the complete “Bill of Rights” can be found at afcc-nj.org/bill_of_rights.html.
Commit to upholding these rights for your kids as you go through divorce proceedings or navigate the aftermath of divorce.
Agree on as many logistical details of co-parenting as possible. On what days and evenings will your child be with each of you? What schedule will allow your child to spend as much time as possible with both parents? This is a practical matter as well as a core concern for your child. How will you handle expenses related to your child’s care and decisions regarding health- a nd education-related issues until a formal agreement is reached? How will you handle this once you are divorced and parenting across two households? See chapter 7 for a detailed discussion of these considerations. Determine how many of
these co-parenting basics you can agree upon, and put them in writing, if possible.
At this point in the process of our own separation, we weren’t explicit about cooperation with regard to practical matters such as doctors’ appointments, buying clothes, and the parenting time schedule. It just seemed to follow that if we were committed to giving the kids our post-breakup best, we’d do whatever we had to in order to make life as simple and convenient for them as possible, make sure they had what they needed at both houses (no suitcases back and forth), and make sure they spent as much time as possible with both of us. To these ends, for the first four years of our separation and divorce, we lived only a block away from each other. Then, for about two years, the distance was a few miles. Currently, we live on the same street, with a short walk between houses. Such an arrangement may not be feasible for your family; aim to coordinate these co-parenting basics as best you can for your children, given your circumstances.
If you have not yet told the kids, agree on the dos and don’ts of telling them about the divorce or separation. Plan to tell them together, preferably after you’ve determined what your parenting time schedule will be upon separation, even if the schedule is just temporary. Agree in advance about what you will say—a nd what you won’t say. Kids want to know how the separation and divorce will affect them—where they will live, whom they’ll be with and when— not who’s at fault or other grown-up matters. An excellent picture book to share with your kids is Mr. Rogers’ Let’s Talk about It: Divorce (Puffin, 1999). Also, see chapter 5 for more suggestions related to telling the kids about the divorce.
We strongly recommend not having this conversation with your children until after you’ve both consulted attorneys (or the same attorney; see chapter 3). For some parents, the legal and financial realities of divorce are a splash of cold water to the face, one that leads them to decide to postpone the divorce or take it off the table altogether. Others come away from a consultation with information that helps them make important decisions regarding their divorce, about when to file, parenting time, housing, money, and when to tell their
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“Oh, do give your consent to our marriage,” he gurgled. “I know that there is a difference of religion. But I have ventured to think once or twice that you could overlook that difference. I have remarked sometimes that you did not appear to attach very great importance to your religion. I’ve even ventured to pray that you might come in time to perceive the errors of Romanism. In fact, I have dreamed more than once, ma’am, that you were washed in the blood of the Lamb. However, do not imagine that I should try to influence Letizia to become one of the Peculiar Children of God. I love her too dearly, ma’am, to attempt any persuasion. From a business point of view— and, after all, in these industrious times it is the business point of view which is really important—from a business point of view the match would not be a very bad one. I have a few humble savings, the fruit of my long association with you in your enterprises.”
Caleb paused a moment and took a deep breath. He had reached the critical point in his temptation of Madame Oriano, and he tried to put into his tone the portentousness that his announcement seemed to justify.
“Nor have I been idle in my spare time, ma’am. No, I have devoted much of that spare time to study. I have been rewarded, ma’am. God has been very good to me and blessed the humble talent with which he entrusted me. Yes, ma’am. I have discovered a method of using chlorate of potash in combination with various other chemicals which will undoubtedly revolutionise the whole art of pyrotechny. Will you consider me presumptuous, ma’am, when I tell you that I dream of the moment when Fuller’s Fireworks shall become a byword all over Great Britain for all that is best and brightest in the world of pyrotechny?”
Madame Oriano’s eyes flashed like Chinese fire, and Caleb, perceiving that he had made a false move, tried to retrieve his position.
“Pray do not suppose that I was planning to set myself up as a manufacturer of fireworks on my own. So long as you will have me,
ma’am, I shall continue to work for you, and if you consent to my marrying your Letizia I shall put my new discovery at your service on a business arrangement that will satisfy both parties.”
Madame Oriano pondered the proposal in silence for a minute.
“Yes, you can have Letizia,” she said at last.
Caleb picked up the hand that was hanging listlessly over the coverlet and in the effusion of his gratitude saluted it with an oily kiss.
“And you’ll do your best to make Letizia accept me as a husband?” he pressed.
“If I say you can have Letizia, caro, you willa have her,” the mother declared.
“You have made me the happiest man in England,” Caleb oozed. Whereupon he walked on tiptoe from the room with a sense even sharper than usual that he was one of the Lord’s chosen vessels, a most peculiar child even among the Peculiar Children of God.
Just when the hot August day had hung two dusky sapphire lamps in the window of the room, Madame Oriano, who had been lying all the afternoon staring up at the shadows of the birds that flitted across the ceiling, rang the bell and demanded her daughter’s presence.
“Letizia, devi sposarti,” she said firmly.
“Get married, mamma? But I don’t want to be married for a long time.”
“Non ci entra, cara. Devi sposarti. Sarebbe meglio—molto meglio. Sei troppo sfrenata.”[7]
[7] “That doesn’t come into it, my dear. You must get married. It would be better much better. You are too harum-scarum.”
“I don’t see why it should be so much better I’m not so harumscarum as all that. Besides, you never married at my age. You never married at all if it comes to that.”
“Lo so. Perciò dico che tu devi sposarti.”[8] [8] “I know that. That’s why I say that you must get married.”
“Thanks, and who am I to marry?”
“Caleb.”
“Caleb? Gemini! Caleb? Marry Caleb? But he’s so ugly! And he don’t wash himself too often, what’s more.”
“Bello non é ... ma che importa? La bellezza passa via.”
“Yes, I daresay beauty does pass away,” said Letizia indignantly. “But it had passed away from Caleb before ever he was born.”
“Che importa?”
“I daresay it don’t matter to you. But you aren’t being expected to marry him. Besides, you’ve had all the beaux you wanted. But I haven’t, and I won’t be fobbed off with Caleb. I just won’t be, and you may do what you will about it.”
“Basta!” Madame Oriano exclaimed. “Dissa talk is enough.”
“Basta yourself and be damned, mamma,” Letizia retorted. “I won’t marry Caleb. I’d sooner be kept by a handsome gentleman in a big clean cravat. I’d sooner live in a pretty house he’d give me and drive a crimson curricle on the Brighton Road like Cora Delaney.”
“It does not import two pennies what you wish, figlia mia. You willa marry Caleb.”
“But I’m not in love with him, the ugly clown!”
“Love!” scoffed her mother. “L’amore! L’amore! Love is mad. I have hadda so many lovers. Tanti tanti amanti! Adesso, sono felice? No! Ma sono vecchia assai. Yes, an old woman—una vecchia miserabile
senza amanti, senza gambe—e non si fa l’amore senza gambe, cara, ti giuro—senza danaro, senza niente.”
Sans love, sans legs, sans money, sans everything, the old woman dropped back on her pillows utterly exhausted. A maid came in with candles and pulled the curtains to shut out the dim grey into which the August twilight had by now gradually faded. When the maid was gone, she turned her glittering, sombre eyes upon her daughter.
“You willa marry Caleb,” she repeated. “It willa be better so—molto meglio cosi. Gli amanti non valgono niente. All who I have been loving, where are dey now? Dove sono? Sono andati via. Alla gone away. Alla gone. You willa marry Caleb.”
Letizia burst into loud sobs.
“But I don’t want to marry, mamma.”
“Meglio piangere a diciasette che rimpiangere a sessanta,”[9] said Madame Oriano solemnly. “You willa marry Caleb.”
[9] “Better to weep at seventeen than to repine at sixty ”
Letizia felt incapable of resisting this ruthless old woman any longer She buried her head in the gaudy satin coverlet and wept in silence.
“Allora dammi un bacio.”
The obedient daughter leaned over and kissed her mother’s lined forehead.
“Tu hai già troppo l’aria di putana, figlia mia. Meglio sposarti. Lasciammi sola. Vorrei dormire. Sono stanca assai ... assai.”[10]
[10] “You have already too much the air of a wanton, my daughter. Better to get married. Leave me alone. I want to sleep. I’m very tired.”
Madame Oriano closed her eyes, and Letizia humbly and miserably left her mother, as she wished to be left, alone.
CHAPTER IV
MARRIED LIFE
So, Caleb Fuller married Letizia Oriano and tamed her body, as without doubt he would have succeeded in taming the body of any woman of whom he had lawfully gained possession.
Madame Oriano did not long survive the marriage. The effort she made in imposing her will upon her daughter was too much for a frame so greatly weakened. Once she had had her way, the desire to live slowly evaporated. Yet she was granted a last pleasure from this world before she forsook it for ever. This was the satisfaction of beholding with her own eyes that her son-in-law’s discovery of the value of chlorate of potash as a colour intensifier was all that he claimed for it. That it was likely to prove excessively dangerous when mixed with sulphur compounds did not concern this pyrotechnist of the old school. The prodigious depth and brilliant clarity of those new colours would be well worth the sacrifice of a few lives through spontaneous ignition in the course of manufacturing them.
The first public demonstration that Caleb gave was on the evening of the Fifth of November in a Clerkenwell tea-garden. It is unlikely that Madame Oriano ever fully comprehended the significance of these annual celebrations. If she ever did wonder who Guy Fawkes was, she probably supposed him to be some local English saint whose martyrdom deserved to be commemorated by an abundance of rockets. As for Caleb, he justified to himself some of the pleasure that his fireworks gave to so many people by the fact that the chief festival at which they were employed was held in detestation of a Papist conspirator.
On this particular Fifth of November the legless old lady was carried in an invalid’s chair through the press of spectators to a favourable spot from which she could judge the worth of the improved fireworks. A few of the rabble jumped to the conclusion
that she was a representation of Guy Fawkes himself, and set up the ancient chorus:
Please to remember the Fifth of November Gunpowder treason and plot; We know no reason why gunpowder treason Should ever be forgot! A stick and a stake for King George’s sake, A stick and a stump for Guy Fawkes’s rump Holla, boys! holla, boys! huzza-a-a!
Madame Oriano smiled grimly when Caleb tried to quiet the clamour by explaining that she was flesh and blood.
“Letta dem sing, Caleb. Non fa niente a me. It don’ta matter notting to me.”
A maroon burst to mark the opening of the performance. This was followed by half-a-dozen rockets, the stars of which glowed with such greens and blues and reds as Madame Oriano had never dreamed of. She tried to raise herself in her chair.
“Bravo, Caleb! Bravissimo! Ah dio, non posso più! It is the besta colore I havva ever seen, Caleb. E ottimo! Ottimo, figlio mio.”
She sat entranced for the rest of the display; that night, like a spent firework, the flame of her ardent life burnt itself out.
The death of his mother-in-law allowed Caleb to carry out a plan he had been contemplating for some time. This was to open a factory in Cheshire on the outskirts of his native town. He anticipated trouble at first with the Peculiar Children of God, who were unlikely to view with any favour the business of making fireworks. He hoped, however, that the evidence of his growing prosperity would presently change their point of view. There was no reason to accuse Caleb of hypocrisy, or to suppose that he was anything but perfectly sincere in his desire to occupy a high place in the esteem of his fellow believers. Marriage with a Papist had in truth begun to worry his conscience more than a little. So long as Letizia had been a temptation, the fact of her being a daughter of Babylon instead of a
Peculiar Child of God had only made the temptation more redoubtable, and the satisfaction of overcoming it more sharp. Now that he was licensed to enjoy her, he began to wonder what effect marriage with a Papist would have on his celestial patron. He felt like a promising young clerk who has imperilled his prospects by marrying against his employer’s advice. It began to seem essential to his salvation that he should take a prominent part in the prayermeetings of the Peculiar Children of God. He was ambitious to be regarded himself as the most peculiar child of all those Peculiar Children. Moreover, from a practical standpoint the opening of a factory in the North should be extremely profitable. He already had the London clients of Madame Oriano; he must now build up a solid business in the provinces. Fuller’s Fireworks must become a byword. The King was rumoured to be ill. He would be succeeded by another king. That king would in due course have to be solemnly crowned. Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, and many other large towns would be wanting to celebrate that coronation with displays of fireworks. When the moment arrived, there must be nobody who would be able to compete with Fuller and his chlorate of potash.
So to Brigham in Cheshire Caleb Fuller brought his wife. In some fields on the outskirts of the town in which he had spent a povertystricken youth he built his first sheds, and in a dreary little street close to Bethesda, the meeting-house of the Peculiar Children of God, he set up his patriarchal tent. Here on a dusty September dawn just over two years after her last public appearance at “Neptune’s Grotto,” Letizia’s eldest daughter was born. The young wife of Caleb was not yet thoroughly tamed, for she produced a daughter exactly like herself and called her Caterina in spite of the father’s objection to a name associated with the wheels of which he made so many. Not only did she insist on calling the child Caterina, but she actually took it to the nearest Catholic chapel and had it baptised by a priest.
It happened about this time that one of the apostles of the meeting-house was gravely ill, and Caleb, who had designs on the vacant apostolic chair, decided that his election to it must not be endangered by the profane behaviour of his young wife. When he remonstrated with her, she flashed her eyes and tossed her head as
if he were still Caleb the clerk and she the spoilt daughter of his employer.
“Letizia,” he said lugubriously, “you have destroyed the soul of our infant.”
“Nonsense!”
“You have produced a child of wrath.”
“My eye!” she scoffed.
Caleb’s moist lips vanished from sight. There was a long silence while he regarded his wife with what seemed like two pebbles of granite. When at last he spoke, it was with an intolerable softness.
“Letizia, you must learn to have responsibilities. I am frightened for you, my wife. You must learn. I do not blame you entirely. You have had a loose upbringing. But you must learn.”
Then, as gently as he was speaking, he stole to the door and left Letizia locked behind him in her bedroom. Oh, yes, he tamed her body gradually, and for a long time it looked as if he would tame her soul. She had no more daughters like herself, and each year for many years she flashed her eyes less fiercely and tossed her head less defiantly. She produced several other children, but they all took after their father. Dark-eyed Caterina was followed by stodgy Achsah. Stodgy Achsah was followed by podgy Thyrza. These were followed by two more who died almost as soon as they were born, as if in dying thus they expressed the listlessness of their mother for this life. Maybe Letizia herself would have achieved death, had not the way Caleb treated little Caterina kept her alive to protect the child against his severity.
“Her rebellious spirit must be broken,” he declared, raising once more the cane.
“You shall not beat her like this, Caleb.”
“Apostle Jenkins beat his son till the child was senseless, because he stole a piece of bread and jam.”
“I wish I could be as religious as you, Caleb,” said his wife.
He tried to look modest under the compliment.
“Yes,” she went on fiercely, “for then I’d believe in Hell, and if I believed in Hell I’d sizzle there with joy just for the pleasure of seeing you and all your cursed apostles sizzling beside me.”
But Letizia did not often break out like this. Each year she became more silent, taking refuge from her surroundings in French novels which she bought out of the meagre allowance for clothes that her husband allowed her. She read French novels because she despised the more sentimental novelists of England that were so much in vogue at this date, making only an exception in favour of Thackeray, whom she read word for word as his books appeared. She was learning a bitter wisdom from literature in the shadows and the silence of her wounded heart. After eight years of married life she bore a son, who was called Joshua. There were moments when Letizia was minded to smother him where he lay beside her, so horribly did this homuncule reproduce the lineaments of her loathed husband.
Meanwhile, the factory flourished, Caleb Fuller became the leading citizen of Brigham and served three times as Mayor. He built a great gloomy house on the small hill that skirted the mean little town. He built, too, a great gloomy tabernacle for the Peculiar Children of God. He was elected chief apostle and sat high up in view of the congregation on a marble chair. He grew shaggy whiskers and suffered from piles. He found favour in the eyes of the Lord, sweating the poor and starving even the cows that gave him milk. Yes, the renown of Fuller’s Fireworks was spread far and wide. The factory grew larger year by year. And with it year by year waxed plumper the belly and the purse of Caleb himself, even as his soul shrivelled.
In 1851 after twenty years of merciless prosperity Caleb suffered his first setback by failing to secure the contract for the firework displays at the Great Exhibition. From the marble chair of the chief apostle he called upon the Peculiar Children of God to lament that their Father had temporarily turned away His countenance from them. Caleb beat his breast and bellowed and groaned, but he did
not rend his garments of the best broadcloth, because that would have involved his buying new ones. The hulla-balloo in Bethesda was louder than that in a synagogue on the Day of Atonement, and after a vociferous prayer-meeting the Peculiar Children of God went back to their stuffy and secretive little houses, coveting their neighbours’ wives and their neighbours’ maids, but making the best of their own to express an unattainable ideal. Horrid stuffy little bedrooms with blue jets of gas burning dimly through the night-time. Heavy lumps of humanity snoring beneath heavy counterpanes. Lascivious backbiting of the coveted wives and maids on greasy conjugal pillows. Who in all that abode of prurient respectability and savage industrialism should strip Caleb’s soul bare? Who should not sympathise with the chief apostle of the Peculiar Children of God?
Yet, strange to say, Caleb found that God’s countenance continued to be averted from his own. He was still licking the soreness of his disappointment over the Exhibition fireworks when one morning in the prime of June his eldest daughter left the great gloomy house on the hill, never to return. While Caleb stormed at his wife for not taking better precautions to keep Caterina in bounds, he was aware that he might as well be storming at a marble statue. He lacked the imagination to understand that the soul of Letizia had fled from its imprisonment in the guise of Caterina’s lissom body. But he did apprehend, however dimly, that henceforth nothing he might say or do would ever again affect his wife either for good or for ill.
Cold dark eyes beneath black arched brows surveyed him contemptuously. He had never yet actually struck Letizia; but he came near to striking her at that moment.
“She wanted to go on the stage.”
“A play-actress! My eldest daughter a play-actress!”
“Alas, neither she nor I can cup those drops of blood she owes to you. But her soul is hers and mine. You had no part in making that. Even if you did crawl over my body and eat the heart out of me, you slug! Do what you like with the others. Make what you can of them. But Caterina is mine. Caterina is free.”
“As if I had not suffered enough this year,” Caleb groaned.
“Suffered? Did you say that you had suffered?” His wife laughed. “And what about the sufferings of my Caterina all these years of her youth?”
“I pray she’ll starve to death,” he went on.
“She was starving to death in this house.”
“Ay, I suppose that’s what the Church folk will be saying next. The idle, good-for-nothing slanderers! Not content with accusing me of starving my cows, they’ll be accusing me of starving my children now. But the dear Lord knows....”
“You poor dull fool,” Letizia broke in, and with one more glance from her cold dark eyes she left him.
Caterina had as dissolute a career as her father could have feared and as miserable an end as he could have hoped, for about twelve years later, after glittering with conspicuous shamelessness amid the tawdry gilt of the Second Empire, she died in a Paris asylum prematurely exhausted by drink and dissipation.
“Better to die from without than from within,” said her mother when the news was brought to Brigham.
“What do you mean by that?” Caleb asked in exasperated perplexity. “It’s all these French novels you read that makes you talk that high-flown trash. You talk for the sake of talking, that’s my opinion. You used to talk like a fool when I first married you, but I taught you at last to keep your tongue still. Now you’ve begun to talk again.”
“One changes in thirty-four years, Caleb. Even you have changed. You were mean and ugly then. But you are much meaner and much uglier now. However, you have the consolation of seeing your son Joshua keep pace with you in meanness and in ugliness.”
Joshua Fuller was now twenty-six, an eternal offence to the eyes of his mother, who perceived in him nothing but a dreadful reminder of her husband at the same age. That anybody could dare to deplore Caterina’s life when in Joshua the evidence of her own was before
them enraged Letizia with human crassness. But Joshua was going to be an asset to Fuller’s Fireworks. Just as his father had perceived the importance of chlorate of potash in 1829, so now in 1863 did Joshua perceive the importance of magnesium, and the house of Fuller was in front of nearly all its rivals in utilising that mineral, with the result that its brilliant fireworks sold better than ever. The Guilloché and Salamandre, the Girandole and Spirali of Madame Oriano, so greatly admired by old moons and bygone multitudes, would have seemed very dull affairs now. Another gain that Joshua provided for the business was to urge upon his father to provide for the further legislation about explosives that sooner or later was inevitable. With an ill grace Caleb Fuller had complied with the provisions of the Gunpowder Act of 1860; but, when the great explosion at Erith occurred a few years later, Joshua insisted that more must be done to prepare for the inspection of firework establishments that was bound to follow such a terrific disaster. Joshua was right, and when the Explosives Act of 1875 was passed the factory at Brigham had anticipated nearly all its requirements.
By this time Joshua was a widower. In 1865, at the age of twentyeight, he had married a pleasant young woman called Susan Yardley. After presenting him with one boy who was christened Abraham, she died two years later in producing another who was christened Caleb after his grandfather.
The elder of these two boys reverted both in appearance and in disposition to the Oriano stock, and old Mrs. Fuller—she is sixtythree now and may no longer be called Letizia—took a bitter delight in never allowing old Mr. Fuller to forget it. She found in the boy, now a flash of Caterina’s eyes, now a flutter of Madame Oriano’s eyelids. She would note how much his laugh was like her own long ago, and she would encourage him at every opportunity to thwart the solicitude and defy the injunctions of Aunt Achsah and Aunt Thyrza. When her son protested against the way she applauded Abraham’s naughtiness, she only laughed.
“Bram’s all right.”
“I wish, mamma, you wouldn’t call him Bram,” Joshua protested. “It’s so irreverent. I know that you despise the Bible, but the rest of us almost worship it. I cannot abide this irreligious clipping of Scriptural names. And it worries poor papa terribly.”
“It won’t worry your father half as much to hear Bram called Bram as it’ll worry poor little Bram later on to be called Abraham. That boy’s all right, Josh. He’s the best firework you’ve turned out of this factory for many a day. So, don’t let Achsah and Thyrza spoil him.”
“They try their best to be strict, mamma.”
“I’m talking about their physic, idiot. They’re a pair of pasty-faced old maids, and it’s unnatural and unpleasant to let them be for ever messing about with a capital boy like Bram. Let them physic young Caleb. He’ll be no loss to the world. Bram might be.”
Joshua threw his eyes up to Heaven and left his unaccountable mother to her own unaccountable thoughts. He often wondered why his father had never had her shut up in an asylum. For some time now she had been collecting outrageous odds and ends of furniture for her room to which none of the family was allowed access except by special invitation. Ever since Caterina had run away old Mrs. Fuller had had a room of her own. But she had been content with an ordinary bed at first. Now she had procured a monstrous foreign affair all gilt and Cupids and convolutions. If Joshua had been his father he would have taken steps to prevent such a waste of her allowance. He fancied that the old man must be breaking up to allow such furniture to enter the house.
Not long after the conversation between Joshua and his mother about Bram, a travelling circus arrived at Brigham on a Sunday morning. The Peculiar Children of God shivered at such a profanation of the Sabbath, and Apostle Fuller—in these days a truly patriarchal figure with his long white food-bespattered beard— preached from the marble chair on the vileness of these sacrilegious mountebanks and the pestilent influence any circus must have on a Christian town. In spite of this denunciation the chief apostle’s own wife dared to take her elder grandchild on Monday to view from the best seats obtainable the monstrous performance. They sat so near
the ring that the sawdust and the tan were scattered over them by the horses’ hoofs. Little Bram, his chin buried in the worn crimson velvet of the circular barrier, gloated in an ecstasy on the paradisiacal vision.
“Brava! Bravissima!” old Mrs. Fuller cried loudly when a demoiselle of the haute école took an extra high fence. “Brava! Bravissima!” she cried when an equestrienne in pink tights leapt through four blazing hoops and regained without disarranging one peroxide curl the shimmering back of her piebald steed.
“Oh, grandmamma,” little Bram gasped when he bade her good night, “can I be a clown when I’m a man?”
“The difficulty is not to be a clown when one is a man,” she answered grimly.
“What do you mean, grandmamma?”
“Ah, what?” she sighed.
And in their stuffy and secretive little bedrooms that night the Peculiar Children of God talked for hours about the disgraceful amount of leg that those circus women had shown.
“I hear it was extremely suggestive,” said one apostle, smacking his lips with lecherous disapprobation.
“Was it, indeed, my dear?” the dutiful wife replied, thereby offering the man of God an opportunity to enlarge upon the prurient topic before he turned down the gas and got into bed beside her.
“Bram was very naughty to go to the circus, wasn’t he, Aunt Achsah?” young Caleb asked in a tone of gentle sorrow when his pasty-faced aunt leaned over that Monday night to lay her wet lips to his plump pink cheeks.
“Grandpapa was very cross,” Aunt Achsah mournfully replied, evading the direct answer, but implying much by her expression.
“Gran’papa’s not cross with me, is he, auntie?” young Caleb asked with an assumption of fervid anxiety.
“No, my dear child, and I hope that you will never, never make your dear grandfather cross with you.”
“Oh, I won’t, Aunt Achsah,” young Caleb promised, with what Aunt Achsah told Aunt Thyrza was really and truly the smile of one of God’s most precious lambs.
“Thyrza, Thyrza, when that blessed little child smiles like that, nobody could deny him anything. I’m sure his path down this vale of tears will always be smoothed by that angelic smile.”
She was talking to her sister in the passage just outside young Caleb’s bedroom—he had already been separated from his elder brother for fear of corruption—and he heard what she said.
When the footsteps of his aunts died away along the passage, the fat little boy got out of bed, turned up the gas, and smiled at himself several times in the looking-glass. Then he retired to bed again, satisfied of his ability to summon that conquering smile to his aid whenever he should require it.
CHAPTER V
TINTACKS IN BRIGHAM
On a wet and gusty afternoon in the month of March, 1882, Bram Fuller, now a stripling of sixteen, sat in one of the dingiest rooms of that great gloomy house his grandfather had begun to build forty years before. It looked less stark, now that the evergreen trees had grown large enough to hide some of its grey rectangularity; but it did not look any more cheerful in consequence. In some ways it had seemed less ugly at first, when it stood on top of the mean little hill and was swept clean by the Cheshire winds. Now its stucco was stained with great green fronds and arabesques of damp caused by the drip of the trees and the too close shrubberies of lanky privet and laurel that sheltered its base. Old Mr. Fuller and his son were both under the mistaken impression that the trees planted round Lebanon House—thus had the house been named—were cedars. Whereas there was not even so much as a deodar among the crowd of starveling pines and swollen cryptomerias. Noah’s original ark perched on the summit of Ararat amid the surrounding waters probably looked a holier abode than Lebanon House above the sea of Brigham roofs.
The town had grown considerably during half a century, and old Mr. Fuller had long ago leased the derelict pastures, in which his cows had tried to eke out a wretched sustenance on chickweed and sour dock, to accommodate the enterprising builder of rows of little two-storied houses, the colour of underdone steak. The slopes of the hill on which the house stood had once been covered with fruit-trees, but the poisoning of the air by the various chemical factories, which had increased in number every year, had long made them barren. Joshua had strongly advised his father to present the useless slopes to Brigham as a public recreation ground. It was to have been a good advertisement both for the fireworks and for the civic spirit that was being fostered by the Peculiar Children of God. As a matter of
fact, Joshua himself had some time ago made up his mind to join the Church of England as soon as his father died. He was beginning to think that the Bethesda Tabernacle was not sufficiently up-to-date as a spiritual centre for Fuller’s Fireworks, and he was more concerned for the civic impression than the religious importance of the gift. On this March afternoon, however, the slopes of Lebanon were still a private domain, for old Mr. Fuller could never bring himself to give away nine or ten acres of land for nothing. He was much too old to represent Brigham in Parliament himself, and it never struck him that Joshua might like to do so.
So, Bram Fuller was able to gaze out of the schoolroom window, to where, beyond the drenched evergreens hustling one another in the wind, the drive ran down into Brigham between moribund or skeleton apple-trees fenced in on either side by those raspberrytipped iron railings that his grandfather had bought so cheaply when the chock-a-block parish churchyard was abolished and an invitingly empty cemetery was set apart on the other side of the town for the coming generations of Brigham dead. Bram was still a day-boy at the grammar school, and as this afternoon was the first half-holiday of the month he was being allowed to have a friend to tea. Jack Fleming was late, though. There was no sign of him yet coming up the slope through the wind and wet. Bram hoped that nothing had happened to keep him at home. He was so seldom allowed to entertain friends that Jack’s failure to appear would have been an overwhelming disappointment. He looked round the schoolroom dejectedly Never had it seemed so dingy and comfortless. Never had that outline portrait of Queen Victoria, filled in not with the substance of her regal form, but with an account of her life printed in minute type, seemed such a futile piece of ingenuity; never had the oilcloth seemed infested with so many crumbs, nor the table-cloth such a kaleidoscope of jammy stains.
Old Mrs. Fuller had been right when she recognised in the baby Bram her own race. She and he had their way, and Abraham was never heard now except in the mouth of the grandfather. Yes, he was almost a perfect Oriano, having inherited nothing from his father, and from his mother only her pleasant voice. He was slim, with a clear-
cut profile and fine dark hair; had one observed him idling gracefully on a sun-splashed piazza, he would have appeared more appropriate to the setting than to any setting that Brigham could provide. He was a popular and attractive youth with a talent for mimicry, and a gay and fluent wit. His young brother, who fortunately for the enjoyment of Bram and his friend had been invited forth himself this afternoon, was a perfect Fuller save that he had inherited from his mother a fresh complexion which at present only accentuated his plumpness. All the Fuller characteristics were there —the greedy grey eyes, the podgy white hands, the fat rump and spindle legs, the full wet lips and slimy manner. To all this young Caleb could add his own smile of innocent candour when it suited his purpose to produce it. At school he was notorious as a toady and a sneak, but he earned a tribute of respect from the sons of a commercial community by his capacity for swopping to his own advantage and by his never failing stock of small change, which he was always willing to lend at exorbitant interest on good security. Bram was badly in debt to his young brother at the present moment, and this added something to the depression of the black March afternoon, though that was lightened at last by the tardy arrival of his expected friend with the news that Blundell’s Diorama had arrived in Brigham and would exhibit itself at seven o’clock.
“We must jolly well go, Bramble,” Jack declared.
Bram shook his head despondently.
“No chink!”
“Can’t you borrow some from young Caleb?”
“I owe him two and threepence halfpenny already, and he’s got my best whalebone-splice bat as a security till I pay him back.”
“Good Lord, and I’ve only got sixpence,” Jack Fleming groaned.
“Anyway, it’s no use,” Bram went on. “The governor wouldn’t let me go into Brigham on a Saturday night.”
“Can’t you find some excuse?”
Bram pondered for a few seconds.
“I might get my grandmater to help.”
“Well, buck up, Bramble. It’s a spiffing show, I hear. They’ve got two girls with Italian names who play the guitar or something. We don’t often get a chance of a decent evening in Brigham.”
“You’re right, Jack. All serene! Then I’ll have a try with the grandmater. She’s such an old fizzer that she might manage it.”
Bram went up cautiously to old Mrs. Fuller’s room. She was seventy now, but still able to hate fiercely her octogenarian husband who was for ever browsing among dusty commentaries on the Old Testament nowadays, and extracting from the tortuous fretwork of bookworms such indications of the Divine purpose as the exact date and hour of the Day of Judgment. He was usually clad in a motheaten velveteen dressing-gown and a smoking cap of quilted black silk with a draggled crimson tassel. The latter must have been worn as a protection to his bald and scaly head, because not a puff of tobacco smoke had ever been allowed to contend with the odour of stale food that permeated Lebanon House from cellar to garret.
The old lady was sitting by the fire in her rococo parlour, reading Alphonse Daudet’s new book. Her hawk’s face seemed to be not so much wrinkled as finely cracked like old ivory. Over her shoulders she wore a wrap of rose and silver brocade.
“Why, Bram, I thought you were entertaining visitors this afternoon.”
“I am. He’s downstairs in the schoolroom. Jack Fleming, I mean.”
“Is that a son of that foxy-faced solicitor in High Street?”
Bram nodded.
“But Jack’s rather decent. I think you’d like him, grandmamma.”
“Ah, I’m too old to begin liking new people.”
Bram kicked his legs together, trying to make up his mind what line to adopt for enlisting the old lady’s sympathy.
“Blundell’s Diorama is here,” he announced at last.
