His father had to work on the morning of Ferguson’s graduation, so his mother came to the ceremony alone. Afterward, they drove to South Orange Village and stopped in for lunch at Gruning’s, the site of so many delectable hamburgers in the years before the Blue Valley Country Club had destroyed the old Sunday ritual, and for the first several minutes after they found a table in the back, they discussed Ferguson’s plans for the summer, which included a job at his father’s outlet in Livingston (a multipurpose, minimum-wage position that would have him working at such tasks as mopping floors, squirting Windex onto the screens of the show-room televisions, washing down the refrigerators and other appliances on display, and installing air conditioners with the delivery man, Joe Bentley), two outdoor basketball games a week in the Maplewood — South Orange Twilight League, and as many hours at his desk as possible: he had come up with ideas for a couple of new stories and was hoping to finish them before school started again. Not to speak of books, of course, all the dozens of books he wanted to read, and then, with whatever time he had left, he would write Amy as many letters as he could and hope she would be at the addresses he mailed them to.
His mother listened, his mother nodded, his mother smiled a distant, thoughtful sort of smile, and before Ferguson could think of what to say next, she interrupted him and said: Your father and I are splitting up, Archie.
Ferguson wanted to make sure he had heard her correctly, so he repeated the words back to her: Splitting up. As in divorce?
That’s right. As in So long, it’s been good to know ya.
And when did you decide this?
Ages ago. We were planning to wait until you went off to college, or wherever you go after you finish high school, but three years is a long time, and what’s the point of waiting? As long as you approve, of course.
Me? What do I have to do with it?
People will talk. People will point fingers. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.
I don’t care what people think. It’s none of their business.
So?
By all means. By any means. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.
You mean it?
Of course I mean it. No more lies, no more pretending. The age of truth begins!
TIME PASSED, AND again and again during the months that followed, Ferguson would stop, take a good look at the things around him, and tell himself that life was getting better. Not only was he finished with junior high school now, which meant that nothing he wrote would ever be judged by Mrs. Baldwin again, but the breakup of his parents’ marriage seemed to be breaking up many other things as well, and with the old, predictable routines no longer in place, it was becoming more and more difficult to know what would happen from one day to the next. Ferguson enjoyed that new feeling of instability. Things might have been in flux, at times verging on out-and-out confusion, but at least they weren’t dull.
For the time being, he and his mother were to go on living in the big house in Maplewood. His father had rented a smaller house in Livingston, not far from the house of his lady friend Ethel Blumenthal, who was still a secret at that point and therefore not known to Ferguson, but the long-range plan was to sell the big house within a certain number of months after the divorce was finalized and for both of his parents to move elsewhere. It went without saying that Ferguson would go on living with his mother. He would be free to see his father whenever he wished, but if it turned out he didn’t want to see his father, then his father would have the right to see him for two dinners every month. That was the minimum. There was no maximum. It seemed to be a fair arrangement, and they all shook hands on it.
His father was writing a monthly check to his mother for what was termed sundry and essential living expenses, each of them had a lawyer, and the amicable parting that was supposed to have been wrapped up in a matter of weeks dragged on for months in less than amicable disputes about alimony payments, the division of common property, and the deadline for putting the house on the market. From Ferguson’s point of view, it seemed that his father was the one who was gumming up the works, that something in him was unconsciously but actively resisting the divorce, and although he felt frustrated on his mother’s behalf (who wanted it over and done with as quickly as possible), in the early days of his parents’ wrangling Ferguson felt oddly reassured by his father’s obstructionism, since it seemed to suggest that the prophet of profits was capable of normal human feelings after all, which had not been apparent to his son for many years, and whether it was because Stanley Ferguson still harbored an abiding love for the woman he had married almost two decades earlier (the sentimental reason) or because the ignominy of divorce represented failure and humiliation in the eyes of others (the social reason) or simply because he was reluctant to see Ferguson’s mother walk off with half the money from the sale of the big house (the financial reason) was less important than the fact that he felt something, and even though he ultimately gave in and signed the divorce agreement in December after Ferguson’s mother said she would be willing to relinquish her share of the house, that didn’t mean money alone had had the last word, for Ferguson sensed that the sentimental and social reasons were the true cause of the conflict and that holding out for the money was merely an attempt to save face.
At the same time, using that money as a wedge in the negotiations struck Ferguson as an unforgivable act. The largest asset his parents owned in common was the house, the big house Ferguson had always detested, the show-off Tudor-style manor he had never wanted to move to in the first place, and by depriving his soon-to-be ex-wife of her share of the proceeds from that most valuable asset, Ferguson’s father was in effect pauperizing Ferguson’s mother, making it all but impossible for her to buy a new house of her own, thus condemning her and his own son to a diminished life in a cheap, cramped apartment somewhere near the railroad tracks. He was punishing her for not loving him anymore, and the fact that Ferguson’s mother had agreed to such a harsh stipulation only proved how desperately she wanted to be liberated from the marriage, even if it wrecked her financially, and so Ferguson’s father forged on with his cruel demand and wouldn’t back down. If there was any hope in the wording of the final agreement, it was that the house wouldn’t have to be put on the market until two years after the divorce became final, which would more or less cover the three years Ferguson would be in high school, but still, after trying to give his father the benefit of the doubt ever since the Sole-Soul contretemps, after doing his best to treat his father amicably and politely all during the long, tedious summer of working at the Livingston store, Ferguson now turned against him with something close to hatred, and he resolved never to accept another penny from his father for the rest of his life, not for spending money, not for clothes or a secondhand car, not for college tuition, not for anything ever again, and even after Ferguson was a grown man and had failed to publish any of his books and was living as a wino on the lowest block of the Bowery, he would refuse to unclench his fist when his father tried to press a fifty-cent piece into his hand, and when the old man finally left this world and Ferguson inherited eighty million dollars and the ownership of four hundred and seventy-three appliance stores, he would close the stores and distribute the money equally among the bums he had known from his days of living as a forgotten man on the sidewalks of skid row.