A Perfect Divorce

by Avery Corman

• ISBN13: 9780312329839
• ISBN10: 0312329830
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2004-09-01
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

The well-intentioned parents of a teenage son attempt to lessen the impact of their failed two-career marriage with an intelligent, successful divorce. But their son goes off the tracks, staggering under the weight of his parents' expectations and need for denial. His troubles send shock waves through adult relationships on all sides. The serious implications of divorce on ex-spouses, their new partners, their family members and the absurd college pressures on young people today is the emotional landscape of A Perfect Divorce. Through riveting storytelling, Corman addreses the popular cultural myth, created out of wishful thinking, that children of divorce can be emotionally protected by careful parenting, and that divorce can be relatively risk-free. With the same clear-eyed perspective and insight about contemporary life that he brought to Kramer vs. Kramer, Corman shows us where we have come since Kramer and where we are now, in a novel that is timely and moving.

Author Biography

Avery Corman is the author of the bestseller Kramer vs. Kramer, which was made into an Academy Award-winning motion picture, Prized Possessions, Oh, God!, which was adapted into a hit screen comedy, The Old Neighborhood and most recently 50. His writing has also appeared in Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Readers Digest, Ladies Home Journal, and syndicated by The New York Times in newspapers around the country and in Europe. He lives in New York City with his wife.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE


Kim Greenley was crying. The word spread through the classrooms, the corridors, and by evening nearly all of the 125 seniors at The Bantrey School and a substantial number of parents knew that Kim Greenley, a B-plus student, whose rendition on Music Night of "When I Marry Mister Snow" had received a standing ovation, whose father was an orthopedist and whose mother was an administrator at Lenox Hill Hospital--how bona fide can parents be--Kim Greenley, of the sweet, round face and blue eyes, a little chubby perhaps, but why should that matter, Kim Greenley, with a boyfriend at Cornell, which placed her off limits to the boys and nonthreatening to the girls, bright, likable with serious credentials, left the office of the college advisor for the crucial beginning-of-senior-year college assessment meeting, crying. Her parents solemnly followed her, the father biting his bottom lip, the mother grim and looking close to tears herself. Outside the advisor's door they paused for a few words between themselves along the lines of how could this possibly happen, as Kim moved on, shaken.

The next group waited on an oak bench, Karen and Rob Burrows and Tommy, their seventeen-year-old son. Tommy had known Kim since kindergarten and rushed over to her before she descended the stairs out of the building, wanting to offer solace, something; her parents had momentarily abandoned her. She looked at him through wet eyes, her world collapsing.

"Tommy, he said I'll never get into Brown."


The Burrows family was on deck to see the college advisor with this bleak foreshadowing, like the Lenny Bruce routine of the comic who bombs at the London Palladium, the comic just about to go on and the female singer on stage ahead of him asks the audience for a moment
of silence for the boys who went to Dunkirk and never came back. Not a good sign for the Burrows group, this Kim Greenley business. The advisor's secretary, a middle-aged woman of no discernible charm, appeared poker-faced as in I've-seen-them-cry-before, and said, "Mr.
Kammler will see you now."

They filed in. Karen Burrows was a slim brunette, forty-nine, dark brown eyes, a patrician nose, a thin, elegant face, nearly professionally beautiful, who could have qualified for one of the Ralph Lauren ads where they finally deign to show women of a certain age. She was wearing a charcoal suit, a business meeting suit, and what else was this other than a business meeting? Rob Burrows, a former miler for the University of Pennsylvania, was six feet tall
and still slim at fifty-one, with light brown eyes, and thinning brown hair which he cut short, an athletic man with a rugged face and firm jaw, a New Yorker who resembled someone from the heartland, which served him well in his business. Twice a week, or more often when she could, Karen went to a gym before going to work. Twice a week Rob ran around the Central Park reservoir, only once around, about a mile and a half, but he ran with his miler's stride faster than anyone else his age or virtually any other age, his attempt to beat another kind of clock.

They had been divorced for four years and communicated for the past three weeks leading up to this meeting with e-mail, a boon for ex-spouses who wished to spend as little time as possible on their exes, but needed to get a certain amount of ground covered. In this case, when is the meeting, when will you get there, what will we ask, what will we say? Tommy officially lived with his mother. A joint custody arrangement was modified on request of the parents in the second year of the divorce when they realized the logistics of his shuttling between apartments turned him into a spinning bear in a penny arcade. Rob, the more substantial wage earner with a playground equipment manufacturing company, paid the big-ticket items like Tommy's private school tuition. Karen, with a crafts retail store in SoHo, handled most of his day-to-day bills. Generally, Tommy spent weekday nights with his mother, every other weekend with his father. They alternated his school vacations, but
the last summer he had been away as a counselor at the children's camp in Vermont where he had spent his camper summers. He was spindly, five feet ten, long brown hair, with his mother's slender face, his father's light brown eyes, the good-looking son of attractive parents. He walked with an athletic grace, ironic since he was a young man with no interest in athletics. He ran around the reservoir with his father for exercise when Rob ratcheted down his speed a couple of notches to accommodate him, and some tennis instruction in camp revealed him to be a possible player. After talk of his trying out for the Bantrey tennis team Tommy learned the squad was picked by the contenders playing each other winner-take-all, which he found too competitive. With his noncompetitive nature, honed at the noncompetitive summer camp he attended, he gave up the idea of the team, so there would be no varsity tennis line on his college applications.


Martin Kammler, the college advisor, was in his fifties, a stocky man of five feet eight who had taken to dyeing his hair reddish to get the gray out. An unimposing person physically, he was at this time of year arguably the most powerful person at The Bantrey School. The rumors. For their graduating class, June of 2001, the competition for colleges was going to be even worse than the year before. That a conspiracy exists. That Mr. Kammler makes deals with the admissions people at the colleges. That he steers students away from schools to make slots available to other students--someone who is a shoo-in to get into Harvard or Yale is asked not to apply to Brown where he might block the one who might get in, but might not
get into Harvard or Yale, and so on down the line. That the colleges give him quotas. That he's guaranteed a certain number of slots. That he'll say to the admissions people, take this one or don't take that one, and they listen to him. That he has his preferences. If he likes you, he'll fight for you. How else to explain why Bantrey, not a boarding school like Exeter, simply a Manhattan private school, placed so many students with the top colleges? And never, never
ignore his advice. If he says apply to Columbia, early admission, rather than wait and try for Princeton, that's it, he knows, he can make it happen.


The office was small, spare, a few bookcases with college catalogs and college guidebooks, professional certificates on the walls, the room a charmless laboratory where the doctor of colleges made his prognoses.

"So, Tommy, Mr. and Mrs. Burrows," the voice warm, friendly, a paradox considering the verdicts rendered here. "I see your grades are pretty consistently C pluses and B minuses."

"Could be I'll do better this year." The remark for appearance's sake. He had no expectation of doing better in his senior year. He did what he did year after year, an average student at Bantrey with no peaks and no valleys, but no peaks.

"Tommy is conscientious. I can't remember the times he's missed school," Karen said out of anxiety.

"Good attendance is a given," Mr. Kammler said without even looking at her. I was told, don't be aggressive in the room, Karen thought, let Tommy be the focus. I shouldn't have said that.

"Your SAT score," referring to Tommy's file. "1020 the first time. You are planning to take it again?"

"He is," Rob said quickly then caught himself. D amn it. We talked about this. Don't volunteer anything. Mr. Kammler didn't look at Rob either.

"You should," he said to Tommy. "Have you been tutored?"

"Yes."

"Years ago we never officially recommended SAT tutoring, but then everyone was doing it, so we capitulated. Now I can't see an argument against it. I'd like to see you improve on your score."

"All right," Tommy said.

"There's a new company, Power Testing. I'm not fond of the name, but they do very rigorous tutoring, one on one. Expensive, but they get results. "

"We'd be prepared to pay for it," Rob hurried to say.

"The issue is whether Tommy is prepared to do it," Mr. Kammler said.

"I would do some more tutoring," Tommy said.

"Good," Mr. Kammler responded. "Now what else do we have?" thumbing through his folder. "You did your community service at an after-school program in the Bronx?"

"In a rec center."

"I like the feel of that. And there's cartoonist for the school paper. You did a good one last week, Tommy. What was it again?"

"Two kids are talking and one of them says, `You think I can list my SAT tutoring as community service? My tutor is, like, poor.' "

The slightest trace of a smile appeared on Mr. Kammler's face.


Copyright (c) 2004 by Avery Corman, Inc.

Excerpts

CHAPTER ONE


Kim Greenley was crying. The word spread through the classrooms, the corridors, and by evening nearly all of the 125 seniors at The Bantrey School and a substantial number of parents knew that Kim Greenley, a B-plus student, whose rendition on Music Night of "When I Marry Mister Snow" had received a standing ovation, whose father was an orthopedist and whose mother was an administrator at Lenox Hill Hospital--how bona fide can parents be--Kim Greenley, of the sweet, round face and blue eyes, a little chubby perhaps, but why should that matter, Kim Greenley, with a boyfriend at Cornell, which placed her off limits to the boys and nonthreatening to the girls, bright, likable with serious credentials, left the office of the college advisor for the crucial beginning-of-senior-year college assessment meeting, crying. Her parents solemnly followed her, the father biting his bottom lip, the mother grim and looking close to tears herself. Outside the advisor's door they paused for a few words between themselves along the lines of how could this possibly happen, as Kim moved on, shaken.

The next group waited on an oak bench, Karen and Rob Burrows and Tommy, their seventeen-year-old son. Tommy had known Kim since kindergarten and rushed over to her before she descended the stairs out of the building, wanting to offer solace, something; her parents had momentarily abandoned her. She looked at him through wet eyes, her world collapsing.

"Tommy, he said I'll never get into Brown."


The Burrows family was on deck to see the college advisor with this bleak foreshadowing, like the Lenny Bruce routine of the comic who bombs at the London Palladium, the comic just about to go on and the female singer on stage ahead of him asks the audience for a moment
of silence for the boys who went to Dunkirk and never came back. Not a good sign for the Burrows group, this Kim Greenley business. The advisor's secretary, a middle-aged woman of no discernible charm, appeared poker-faced as in I've-seen-them-cry-before, and said, "Mr.
Kammler will see you now."

They filed in. Karen Burrows was a slim brunette, forty-nine, dark brown eyes, a patrician nose, a thin, elegant face, nearly professionally beautiful, who could have qualified for one of the Ralph Lauren ads where they finally deign to show women of a certain age. She was wearing a charcoal suit, a business meeting suit, and what else was this other than a business meeting? Rob Burrows, a former miler for the University of Pennsylvania, was six feet tall
and still slim at fifty-one, with light brown eyes, and thinning brown hair which he cut short, an athletic man with a rugged face and firm jaw, a New Yorker who resembled someone from the heartland, which served him well in his business. Twice a week, or more often when she could, Karen went to a gym before going to work. Twice a week Rob ran around the Central Park reservoir, only once around, about a mile and a half, but he ran with his miler's stride faster than anyone else his age or virtually any other age, his attempt to beat another kind of clock.

They had been divorced for four years and communicated for the past three weeks leading up to this meeting with e-mail, a boon for ex-spouses who wished to spend as little time as possible on their exes, but needed to get a certain amount of ground covered. In this case, when is the meeting, when will you get there, what will we ask, what will we say? Tommy officially lived with his mother. A joint custody arrangement was modified on request of the parents in the second year of the divorce when they realized the logistics of his shuttling between apartments turned him into a spinning bear in a penny arcade. Rob, the more substantial wage earner with a playground equipment manufacturing company, paid the big-ticket items like Tommy's private school tuition. Karen, with a crafts retail store in SoHo, handled most of his day-to-day bills. Generally, Tommy spent weekday nights with his mother, every other weekend with his father. They alternated his school vacations, but
the last summer he had been away as a counselor at the children's camp in Vermont where he had spent his camper summers. He was spindly, five feet ten, long brown hair, with his mother's slender face, his father's light brown eyes, the good-looking son of attractive parents. He walked with an athletic grace, ironic since he was a young man with no interest in athletics. He ran around the reservoir with his father for exercise when Rob ratcheted down his speed a couple of notches to accommodate him, and some tennis instruction in camp revealed him to be a possible player. After talk of his trying out for the Bantrey tennis team Tommy learned the squad was picked by the contenders playing each other winner-take-all, which he found too competitive. With his noncompetitive nature, honed at the noncompetitive summer camp he attended, he gave up the idea of the team, so there would be no varsity tennis line on his college applications.


Martin Kammler, the college advisor, was in his fifties, a stocky man of five feet eight who had taken to dyeing his hair reddish to get the gray out. An unimposing person physically, he was at this time of year arguably the most powerful person at The Bantrey School. The rumors. For their graduating class, June of 2001, the competition for colleges was going to be even worse than the year before. That a conspiracy exists. That Mr. Kammler makes deals with the admissions people at the colleges. That he steers students away from schools to make slots available to other students--someone who is a shoo-in to get into Harvard or Yale is asked not to apply to Brown where he might block the one who might get in, but might not
get into Harvard or Yale, and so on down the line. That the colleges give him quotas. That he's guaranteed a certain number of slots. That he'll say to the admissions people, take this one or don't take that one, and they listen to him. That he has his preferences. If he likes you, he'll fight for you. How else to explain why Bantrey, not a boarding school like Exeter, simply a Manhattan private school, placed so many students with the top colleges? And never, never
ignore his advice. If he says apply to Columbia, early admission, rather than wait and try for Princeton, that's it, he knows, he can make it happen.


The office was small, spare, a few bookcases with college catalogs and college guidebooks, professional certificates on the walls, the room a charmless laboratory where the doctor of colleges made his prognoses.

"So, Tommy, Mr. and Mrs. Burrows," the voice warm, friendly, a paradox considering the verdicts rendered here. "I see your grades are pretty consistently C pluses and B minuses."

"Could be I'll do better this year." The remark for appearance's sake. He had no expectation of doing better in his senior year. He did what he did year after year, an average student at Bantrey with no peaks and no valleys, but no peaks.

"Tommy is conscientious. I can't remember the times he's missed school," Karen said out of anxiety.

"Good attendance is a given," Mr. Kammler said without even looking at her. I was told, don't be aggressive in the room, Karen thought, let Tommy be the focus. I shouldn't have said that.

"Your SAT score," referring to Tommy's file. "1020 the first time. You are planning to take it again?"

"He is," Rob said quickly then caught himself. D amn it. We talked about this. Don't volunteer anything. Mr. Kammler didn't look at Rob either.

"You should," he said to Tommy. "Have you been tutored?"

"Yes."

"Years ago we never officially recommended SAT tutoring, but then everyone was doing it, so we capitulated. Now I can't see an argument against it. I'd like to see you improve on your score."

"All right," Tommy said.

"There's a new company, Power Testing. I'm not fond of the name, but they do very rigorous tutoring, one on one. Expensive, but they get results. "

"We'd be prepared to pay for it," Rob hurried to say.

"The issue is whether Tommy is prepared to do it," Mr. Kammler said.

"I would do some more tutoring," Tommy said.

"Good," Mr. Kammler responded. "Now what else do we have?" thumbing through his folder. "You did your community service at an after-school program in the Bronx?"

"In a rec center."

"I like the feel of that. And there's cartoonist for the school paper. You did a good one last week, Tommy. What was it again?"

"Two kids are talking and one of them says, `You think I can list my SAT tutoring as community service? My tutor is, like, poor.' "

The slightest trace of a smile appeared on Mr. Kammler's face.


Copyright (c) 2004 by Avery Corman, Inc.

---

Excerpted from A Perfect Divorce by Avery Corman
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.