"Reno": City of Divorce — and City of Loneliness!

— She is one of the hundreds of women who visit Reno, the well-known divorce city in the United States —

"Cured and graduated" — that is a current expression in Reno. My diploma is written on white paper, stamped with the gilded seal of the State of Nevada, and tied with a red silk ribbon.

I faced the judge with composure and boldness, and stood up to his many questions: Why did you come to Reno? How long have you resided at this address of yours? When did you marry? Have you children? Why do you ask for a separation?

And I answered every question calmly. As for the ground for divorce: it was a resolve I meant to carry through, a breach I had worked to close. My husband travels; he comes home; and I have no part in any of it. His travels stretch into years, with no word from him, and how much pain I have borne, and how many wounds of the heart.

The judge called for the landlady of the house where I am staying, and she swore to him that I had been living with her for four months, during which she had seen me daily; and on that basis he consented to grant me my divorce papers.

The story of my going to Reno seems, even to me, strange, scarcely to be believed. After living in our beautiful home, my children around me, our neighbors and friends about us, and then the social life of the town — for I was among the foremost to take part in it — all of these bound me firmly to go on with my routine life. And yet here I am now, in Reno!...

There was no one particular cause for our divorce; but the children are now at

the university, so there is no fear of the shock for them — especially since I have been living in desertion, of mind and body, for several years.

What divorce meant, or what circles concern themselves with it, had never crossed my thoughts before; but the call of Reno found an answer in my soul — and would that it had not!

Some may think Reno a land of consolation, gaiety, and liberation; but it stifled my breath, and pressed on my chest with a hand of iron, while the shawl of loneliness wrapped me at every moment.

A lawyer was appointed for me the moment I arrived, and I began to feel my lostness and my loneliness in the crowd of hundreds — of women awaiting the issuing of their pardon.

I informed the office I had approached of my need for work, so as to meet my expenses, and I made the round of the bureaus; always the same question confronted me: How long is your stay in Reno? And naturally no office will consent to employ a woman who intends to stay four months in the city. My luck outside the offices was no better than this, and there came a time when I began to feel the sum of money I carried running out. At last I obtained temporary work in an establishment, and it covered my expenses and the children's.

The material help that work gives is no less than the lift it gives one's spirits; and so work fills the time, until one scarcely feels the hours slipping by. The women invented every kind of device for killing time: to buy a necklace, one of them would spend a full four hours!!

Reno is ringed by mountains of magnificent beauty, their peaks clothed in snow most days of the year; around it the lakes ripple their blue, blending with the blue of the sky, and the rivers glide by like glittering necklaces. The heart of the city is constant movement, between farewell and meeting; but the inner life is monotonous, varied only in its kinds of pain.

The women with me took an interest in my case, as I did in theirs; and at every moment there was one bursting into tears, or spending the night wrestling with sleeplessness by means of pills to deaden her nerves. My daughter, who is twenty years old, was not shaken when I told her of our divorce; she answered quite calmly: We shall build a new life with my brother, since we three have always lived together and live together still. And she went on writing to me quite naturally, as though I were passing a holiday far away from her, to come back with fresh energy and vitality.

But when my stay in Reno had run to five weeks, she sent a letter in which she tried to persuade me to return to our old family life. Yet can our life return to its former course? The idea settled in my head, and I set about searching the past for something with which to build my life anew — from what could I gather the means of building? Had my step been over-hasty? Or ought I to have done this when my children were small? At last I sent her my answer: "I do not know where the Reno road is leading me, but there is no way back home for me" — even while I longed for a happy family life in which my children could find comfort.

And how many times I looked at myself questioningly: Am I that lady, the mother of two children? And quickly there would stand out alone, overwhelming everything, a flash traced in fire, hanging bewildered in the air before me: Tomorrow! Whither?

The days pass swiftly, the case takes its course, and my routine life goes on. I stand for the last time before the judge to receive my diploma, then fly to the station. My eyes cling to the lights, watching the sign and its letters: Welcome to Reno, the biggest little city in the world! In a flash the days I spent here come back to my mind; I push the thought away, then take up my suitcase and walk on. I am cured... I have graduated!