Read The Divorce Papers: A Novel for Free Online Page A

30-year mortgage
    409  for $250,000 at 8%. Carrying costs, including local taxes but
    410  not utilities, are about $3,500 a month. Daniel will want to
    411  keep the house. I suppose that gives me some leverage?
    412  Q. It may. Is there any other real estate?
    413  A. My father and I own a house on Martha’s Vineyard,
    414  on the water in Aquinnah. It was my mother’s house, and
    415  she left it to us in a trust; the survivor gets it all. There’s a
    416  special name for that. This creates problems for my father. Of
    417  course, he doesn’t want me to predecease him, but his wife,
    418  my stepmother, Cindy, would like to be able to use it and to
    419  decorate it. The house is a wreck. Nothing’s been done to it
    420  since 1920, except the bare minimum to keep it from falling
    421  down, and the Vineyard in those days wasn’t what it is today.
    422  It has no inside toilets, only an outhouse with a row of 4 WCs
    423  off the back porch. And my father and I have to agree on any
    424  changes because we own it together, and we can’t so we don’t.
    425  [Pause] We don’t agree on much, except Jane.
    426  Q. Do you know what it’s worth?
    427  A. When my mother died in 1979, it was valued at $90,000.
    428  It’s probably worth $3 million now. Maybe more. The land,
    429  not the house. The site is spectacular.
    430  Q. Do you use it? Does your father?
    431  A. My father never goes up. He finds the toilet situation
    432  unacceptable. Oh, and there are no showers, only bathtubs.
    433  I go up at least once a year with Jane, who loves it. When
    434  she was smaller, she thought the outhouses were great fun,
    435  but now she’d like a proper inside toilet. I think she’s been
    436  lobbying my father. My father wants to fix the whole place up,
    437  make it an Edgartown kind of house. That or nothing.
    438  I want inside toilets and a shower and a dishwasher and cable,
    439  but I want to keep the house’s essential character. It’s all I
    440  have left of my mother. Daniel went up once, never again. He
    441  is hugely resentful that I haven’t put him on the deed. I keep
    442  explaining that I can’t, but he refuses to understand, seeing it
    443  as a deliberate act on my part. And he, too, hated the toilets.
    444  I think in some ways men are more fastidious than women.
    445  Q. Any other property?
    446  A. The usual detritus of middle-class acquisitiveness. The
    447  only things I think we’d argue over are a Persian rug, which
    448  was a wedding present from my grandparents, an early Cindy
    449  Sherman photograph, and a Jenny Holzer sign, “Abuse of
    450  power comes as no surprise.” They’re the only things we’d
    451  both want.
    452  Q. Are you likely to inherit any money, property?
    453  A. I suppose I’m likely to inherit money from my father
    454  when he dies, if he dies, but I can’t count on it. For one thing,
    455  I might easily predecease him. My mother died young, 46,
    456  and so did her mother. For another, he’s only 68, and the
    457  Meiklejohns live forever. He’s got a brother who’s 87 and
    458  still sits on the federal bench. Both his parents died in their
    459  90s. For a third, he’s controlling. And he’s always rewriting
    460  his will. Ask his lawyer, Proctor, as in
The Crucible
. He’s a
    461  member of your firm. I think he does a new one every three
    462  months. He recently said he created a trust for Jane and me,
    463  but he’s the trustee. What does that mean? He won’t tell me
    464  anything else. This may change with the divorce. He doesn’t
    465  like Daniel. He doesn’t exactly think he married me for my
    466  money, but he doubts he would have married me without
    467  it. But that could be said for my looks as well. Daniel likes
    468  tall blondes with irregular features, bluestockings with trust
    469  funds. Helen, his