Divorcing

full brother, she didn’t have to visit; he wasn’t curious about her or interested in his family. But she knew him best of all her Ripper uncles through her father’s frequent mention of him and his vivid evocation of Uncle Fritz wearing an elegant imported tweed suit, with breeches and cap, fancying himself an English duke, feigning a foreign accent, walking a wire-haired fox terrier along the corso on a red leash. She thought of Uncle Fritz exactly as her father pictured him to her, although she never saw him with a wire-haired fox terrier. Uncle Fritz was the incarnation of the sort of person her father found ridiculous. He couldn’t even give a decent imitation of him. If Sophie wanted to have a wire-haired fox terrier, that was just like Uncle Fritz. If she said she wanted to marry Prince Peter of Yugoslavia or join the English Navy, that was like Uncle Fritz. Whenever she expressed dissatisfaction with what she found vulgar, drab, boring, ugly and meaningless, it was like Uncle Fritz and her father pulled out the picture of Uncle Fritz. Actually, he always concluded, Uncle Fritz was to be pitied. His mother dressed him like a girl with ringlets down to his waist till he was twelve—that’s what made him crazy. He was a skin doctor. Her mother took her to his office one day. She had some scaly skin on her elbow and they’d ask his opinion what could be done with it. They sat in a narrow waiting room with other people. How sad it must be, Sophie thought, for a man who fancied himself an aristocrat to have to look at people’s pimples and rashes. When he appeared in a white smock she saw him differently every ten seconds. A crazy man with a very triangular face and thick glasses. A youngish man with full lips. A skinny man, but with fleshy eyes and lips. The teeth, showing behind a slight sneer, reminded her of Charlie Chaplin. A man with blue eyes that didn’t see her. Quick, sure hands. He was looking at her elbow in the waiting room. It was simple, he said, he could do it right now. He talked very fast with his eyes somewhere else. Her mother said they’d discuss it at home first. It was nice walking out of a doctor’s office without being jabbed or burnt. And Uncle Fritz wasn’t sad. He had a little sneer.

HER MOTHER never really lived in the house in Buda. It was not her real home even though she had the most beautiful room with the window overlooking the garden. The first time they knocked the walnuts off the trees, her mother wasn’t there. She came and went like a visitor. Everybody was upset when she was in the house. Sophie didn’t know where her mother lived when she was away but she had a glimpse of her mother’s real world away from the house. It was only a glimpse of her mother with her boyfriend at the baths, the ski slope, a drive in the country, even if for a whole day’s outing; still it could only be what can be glimpsed at random of a world Sophie knew didn’t belong to her, which had no part for her, which, in fact, was flawed by her presence. No matter how nicely she was treated, she felt acutely both the loveliness of her mother’s world and that her presence flawed it.

Glimpsed through the screen of her natural envy, loneliness, dismay, her sense of exclusion from a play for two with no part written for a daughter—none that Sophie could accept; still it was the beauty of her mother’s romances Sophie experienced. The nicer her mother’s suitors were, the more considerate, reserved, delicate, sensitive to the situation, the more hopelessly Sophie fell in love with them and the more she had to play at being a child.

On drives through city and country, the sights kept her busy. At the baths or ski slopes, she couldn’t do the graceful things her mother could: dive, do the Australian crawl, elegant ski turns. This belonged to her mother with whom she would not compete; on the positive side, she could do more, do it longer, faster: jump from higher rocks, take icy, messy slopes that arty skiers would avoid. It was for the general good if Sophie preferred to stay in the water or on the snow while her mother and friend had refreshment or a rest. This was a kind of life she enjoyed to see her mother living, except they were too leisurely—too many breaks for tea and wine, too much lounging around. That was boring. But then she was different from her mother. But what really offended Sophie was when she saw her mother tease men who courted her, and treat them with condescension, cruelty, coyness. Men who were nice and good looking, why did she go out with them and keep on flirting if she disliked them. Was this what Grandmother meant about bad women? She would never be like that.

When her mother was happy with somebody she was so different; the whole world changed, soft and quiet and gentle. It wasn’t that she was kinder or more affectionate to Sophie. No, she seemed just vaguely aware of Sophie, and sometimes she was quite oblivious of her presence, or when she noticed Sophie it was embarrassing; her voice took on a false ring. But mostly she was ignored by her mother’s boyfriends and by her mother most of all. It was strange and new, both wonderful and disturbing, her mother’s obliviousness and the fact that she wasn’t making any demands on Sophie or blaming her. A harmoniousness that they did not normally enjoy seemed assumed by both. If her mother stroked her face or drew her in her lap casually while conversing, Sophie accepted it naturally. It wasn’t like at home where her mother made it a problem. It was how Sophie liked