Beautiful Boy

It is the morning Nic is set to leave for Los Angeles. He says meaningful goodbyes to Jasper and Karen, and says “everything” to David at the airport. David  acknowledges how much he hates joint custody: children are divided between two homes with different sets of expectations and values that can contradict one another.

The week after Nic leaves, David interviews child psychologist Judith Wallerstein, who investigated the effects of divorce on children. In a series of books, she interviewed children whose parents divorced in the early 1970s, and she followed up with them for the next 25 years. Her findings showed that more than one third of these children experienced moderate to severe depression, and a significant number were “troubled and underachieving.” She explains to David that going back and forth gave them a sense of impermanence. Children found it difficult to find stable friendships with other children, and teenagers complained about having to spend summers with parents instead of friends. She writes that it’s difficult for children to keep up these “parallel lives.”

When summer is over, Nic returns to Inverness. The day before Nic’s freshman orientation, the family spends one more day at the beach. Nic and David surf together. Nic and Jasper build a sandcastle together, and Jasper asks Nic what LA is like. Nic says that he stays in a town on the edge of LA that is not unlike Inverness—but he missed Jasper. Jasper asks if Vicki can come and live in their house in Inverness so that they can all stay together.

On the way home from the beach, Nic complains about the back and forth between his parents. Nic would never choose between David and Vicki, but his current situation is also not ideal. David concludes that the divorce has made Nic more responsible and sensitive than he might have been otherwise, but the toll has been great as well. David thinks in hindsight that Nic should not have been forced to do the traveling: David and Vicki should have.