Divorce--L.A. Style

Los Angeles isn’t really trying to fire Willie Williams. What Los Angeles is looking for is a friendly divorce.

Think of L.A. as a woman of a certain age who, about five years ago, after a long and increasingly trying marriage to a man named Daryl F. Gates, got divorced.

And then another man came along, a man who got her--Los Angeles--over the rough spots. Willie Williams was the transitional man.

In the angry, confusing time after the divorce from Daryl, Willie was there for her, got her through the wide-awake late nights of remorse and self-doubt. He gave her hugs and told her that things were going to be fine. He was everything Daryl wasn’t.

And then she woke up one morning six months or maybe five years later, and she looked over at him, and said to herself: What was I thinking?

*

When she married Daryl, she knew that he was a good breadwinner, dog-faithful, a man of rectitude. He was such a straight arrow that if he found a penny on the sidewalk he’d ask passersby if they’d dropped it. She liked that about him. It made her feel safe.

Sure, he spoke his mind, and it made some people mad, but he always said you were nobody if everybody liked you. When it came to the kids, he believed that sparing the rod spoiled the child, and that seemed all right too. But toward the end of 14 years of wedlock--even though neither of them knew it was about to end--matters were getting difficult.

He began to seem cranky, blaming others when things went wrong. He was no longer just a stickler, but downright hidebound--a martinet. She didn’t know which of them was changing, but she knew she couldn’t live this way any longer.

It was a nasty divorce. He didn’t want them to split, didn’t see the need for it, couldn’t understand what had come over her, why she just couldn’t pull herself together and go back the way they were before. It left her wrung out emotionally. She doubted herself, questioned her own judgment.

Then she met Willie. He was affable, thoughtful, easy to talk to--different. Everything that Daryl wasn’t.

She hadn’t so much as flirted since she married Daryl, and the idea of dating, of being on the rebound, terrified her. So when Willie suggested they get married, even though the ink was barely dry on her divorce, she agreed.

He was younger than Daryl, and seemed more easygoing about everything. It was a relief not to have to wake up to early-morning jogging noises.

Willie was more relaxed, less intense; if she had asked him to take off from work at lunch for a hair-in-the-wind drive up to a little country-western place with a good jukebox, she had the feeling he’d do it for her.

Before, when her girlfriends took her out on the town for her birthday, Daryl had told her to be careful and have fun, and then settled in with his briefcase. Willie, on the other hand, was always happy to squire her around, even go to Vegas. Daryl would have hated Vegas. Her friends thought he was charming, but they said among themselves that Willie was her transitional man, whether she realized it or not.

But then the cracks began to show. All the little things that she’d had imperceptible qualms about began to turn into big things.

Daryl had ridden the checkbook like an IRS agent, and it was a relief when Willie didn’t. But then things got out of kilter. She never knew exactly what was coming in or going out--and then he drove up one afternoon in that brand-new Chrysler New Yorker, more car than she thought they could afford--and she began to wonder.

Maybe he was a little too easygoing. Maybe he should get up and jog in the morning; the good times were beginning to show. And some things he had told her about himself hadn’t quite panned out 100%.

Then came the day when she realized it wasn’t working, and it wasn’t going to work. In some ways, she said, she would always love him. He was a sweet guy, and just about any woman would be lucky to have him, but she wasn’t that woman, and it wouldn’t be fair to either of them to go on acting as if she were.

She had hoped he had been reading the signs too, but evidently he hadn’t. He told everyone he was floored when she asked for a divorce.

*

He asked her friends to get her to change her mind, but they didn’t want to get into it.

Then she started hearing that he might be going after big alimony bucks. If he tried that, her friends told her, she should stop feeling bad about the breakup. Because they’d both gotten something out of this, both learned from it.

Her rebound marriage had served a purpose. She didn’t want to go back to Daryl or anyone like him, as much as she missed some things about him. And even though she couldn’t stay with Willie, she would always be grateful to him. Like Daryl, he had shown her more about what she wanted in a mate.

That man was out there, somewhere. He had to be.