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more social of the couple, especially in a home in which only the man was working. The woman’s non-historical friends come from the chil- dren’s schools, from the car pools to and from children’s activities, from PTA, from bridge games, from courses, from synagogue. Second, also in the past, the woman was somehow regarded as the weaker of the pair, the one in need of protection, and would find her friends banding together to provide succor. Men, for their part, were unlikely to have as many friends or, at any rate, as many protective ones.
This effect is unwittingly reinforced by the children, who never wanted the divorce in the first place. Their school activities, games, plays, and conferences go on, and they wish both parents to continue their involvement. For me, this meant, for example, driving to West- chester to sit, feeling very much alone, in an audience of unfriendly people, if I wished to see Rachel, and to have Rachel see me watching her, perform in a play at the Solomon Schechter School, an environ- ment that I hardly cared for before the separation. (She was absolutely wonderful in the role of Ado Annie in what I could not help referring to as Oy!-Klahoma.) And as I would dutifully do this, probably not as much as Rachel would have liked, I’d be treated to the scene of Phyllis smil- ingly and very publicly encountering her friends and neighbors before and after the performance, all while I would sit uncomfortably alone in the back, dying to get out of there.
And my discomfort was exacerbated by the treatment that I received at the hands of the institution itself: One afternoon I drove up to Schech- ter in order to confer with the school psychologist concerning some problems that Rachel had been having, undoubtedly problems related to what she perceived as the disappearance of her family. Phyllis had already spoken with the school. Thus, I was alone in this endeavor as well. The proper subject of the meeting was, of course, Rachel and her needs, but the school psychologist, who looked to me to be a kid maybe four years out of college, managed to detract from that goal with a lack of professionalism that both astonished and angered me. She would not desist from reminding me that, as far as she was concerned, since Phyllis and she had already met and agreed on a course of action, her presence
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