Kramer vs. Kramer by Avery Corman

Author:Avery Corman [Corman, Avery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7037-0
Publisher: Open Road Media

TED KRAMER RESENTED HIS former wife’s intrusion into his organizational structure, and his emotions. Seeing her again was unnerving. Once, he was married to the prettiest girl at the party and somehow she got away, and now the party was dull. “Serial relationships” was Thelma’s term for the style of their social lives, one person after another, nothing, no one sustained. Ted’s two months with Phyllis, the lawyer, had exceeded any of his friends’ totals. Thelma said they were all bruised people, Charlie insisted it was the time of his life now, and Larry was still compacting entire relationships into a weekend.

Ted might find himself in the playground on a Saturday rocking Billy in a swing alongside Thelma rocking Kim, and on the following day alongside Charlie rocking Kim. Charlie and Thelma’s divorce was final, Ted having attended successive, joyless divorce celebration dinners at each of their apartments.

“Think you’ll ever get married again?” Charlie asked, as the two men shivered in a patch of sun in the playground, watching their children playing in the snow.

“Beats me. With a child already, I’m what they call in advertising, a hard sell.”

“I was thinking … what if I get married again and what if I have another kid, and get divorced again and have to pay child support twice?”

“Charlie, all those what-ifs. I don’t think you can set that up as a reason not to.”

“I know. But the money! That’s a lot of cavities.”

Thelma had her own perspective on remarriage. She aired it in a guerrilla conversation, a few adult remarks stolen from the children’s hour as, from the phonograph in Billy’s bedroom, Oscar the Grouch shouted how he loved trash, and the children played hide-and-seek through the house.

“The first time you marry for love, but of course, you get divorced. The second time, you know that love was invented by Hallmark. So you marry for other things.”

“Hold it,” he said. “Billy and Kim! Turn down Oscar or turn down yourselves!”

“So … the second marriage is really to confirm your own life style or your own views. You know, the first time, you marry your mother.”

“I didn’t know that, Thelma. I don’t think you should let that get around.”

“But the second time, you marry yourself.”

“You just saved me a lot of trouble. Then I’m already married.”

It was Larry who broke away from the pack after years of running. He was marrying Ellen Fried, a twenty-nine-year-old teacher in the city public schools system. Larry had met her on Fire Island and had been seeing her while dating other women, as was his style. Now he had decided to retire his girlmobile. Ted had met Ellen several times and noticed she was a calming influence on Larry. She was soft-spoken, thoughtful, plainer and more dignified than Larry’s usual women.

The wedding was held in a small suite at the Plaza Hotel, a few friends and the immediate families, which in this case included Larry’s children from his first marriage, a girl of fourteen and a boy of sixteen.

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