“I am thinking about how happy I am,” I wrote in my journal one day that summer. “Very sad,” just a few days later. “I don’t know who or what I am crying about.”
One thing that did feel good was working. My editor kindly asked me if I needed a break or wanted to slow down. She said she would follow my lead on these matters. I said to pile it on. Which is why, for a few weeks there, I just couldn’t shut up about the fact that I was getting divorced in every corridor of power in Washington.
One Thursday afternoon in July, I sat across the table from Senator Chuck Schumer in a small office at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
That day, he had his campaign hat on, so instead of occupying his ornate office at the Capitol he was stuffed behind a metal desk in a drab room in the Democratic Party headquarters, conducting back-to-back interviews in order to disseminate talking points about winning back the Senate. I tried pushing him for specifics, about the map or the candidates he was trying to recruit in key states, but he would not budge. Schumer is very good at repeating the same thing, over and over, when he doesn’t want to say more.
“What are you doing this summer?” he asked as I gathered up my things to go.
“I’m getting divorced,” I volunteered.
He peered at me over those famous bifocals that are always about to slip off the tip of his nose.
“How old are your kids?” he asked me. My daughter was three and my son was seven.
“Men are so stupid,” he said, shaking his head. “Just so stupid.”
He had not pried for any details, simply drawn a quick conclusion, and I took this reaction like I would take it from a well-meaning distant relative at a family gathering: not particularly revelatory, but a somewhat reassuring conversation nonetheless. Sometimes it just feels good for someone to shake their head on your behalf.
The kids were, in fact, all right. My daughter would have no memories of our family arrangement before the split. My son was mostly just excited to have bunk beds in his dad’s new house. We did not use the word divorce, but my son lived in the world and was searching for it. “What’s it called when you have two houses?” he asked me. “It’s just called having two houses,” I said. When the divorce was finalized many months later, I told him that the big thing in his life had already happened when he started living in two houses and that the official change was just a piece of paper.
