A Better Man (23 page)

As he is thinking these things, his eyes slide over the sticky, milk-splashed counter to the last wrapped gift, the one with his
name on it. It’s a thin, rectangular parcel, meticulously bound in fine tissue paper dotted with sleigh bells and holly. A silver ribbon, curled at the ends, pulls it all together. Nick pictures Maya sliding the ribbon over a pair of scissors to get the curl just right—something he has seen her do dozens, if not hundreds, of times but has not fully appreciated until this moment.
I married a woman who curls ribbons,
he thinks, hot tears springing to his eyes. He opens the card. On the front there is a photograph of a kitten in a Santa hat, and inside it says, simply, “For Nick.” A bit cool, he thinks, wishing for “love” or at least an “xo,” but any communication is progress. Throwing back the final swig of Scotch for courage, he rips the present open.

Inside are three things. The first is the familiar yellow folder, the one he gave to Gray labelled “Wakefield Family Assets.” The second is Gray’s note, the one guesstimating the asset breakdown for the split he couldn’t face. The third is from Maya—a petition for divorce.

Statement of Claim

Victoria Ottoline Everton Heathfield
and
Jacob Michael Brooks

TO THE DEFENDANT: A LEGAL PROCEEDING HAS BEEN COMMENCED AGAINST YOU by the Plaintiff. The Claim made against you is set out in the following pages.

IF YOU WISH TO DEFEND THIS PROCEEDING, you or a lawyer acting for you must prepare a Statement of Defence in Form 18A prescribed by the
Rules of Civil Procedure,
serve it on the Plaintiff’s lawyer or, where the Plaintiff does not have a lawyer, serve it on the Plaintiff and file it, with proof of service, in this court office WITHIN TWENTY DAYS after this Statement of Claim is served on you.

The Plaintiff claims:

The Defendant has breached the terms of their divorce agreement, which granted shared custody of their son, Baxter James Heathfield Brooks (referred to hereinafter as “Baxter”), and in which he promised to “co-parent kindly, openly and cooperatively.”

In September of this year, shortly after Baxter started attending preschool, the Plaintiff noticed a change in her son. He became bad-tempered and angry, and would call her “nasty” and say, “I’m going to poo on your head.” When she asked him where he got such ideas, he would say, “Daddy told me to.”

The Plaintiff was distressed and took Baxter to see a play therapist (see attached report), as well as several other mental health specialists (see attached social worker report and child psychologist report), and she determined that her young and impressionable son was having his mind poisoned against her by her ex-husband, who is and remains bitter, following the fallout from the divorce.

The Plaintiff believes this denigration is tantamount to a form of child abuse, as it “confuses Baxter and makes him unhappy.” She is loath to see a small child’s loyalties tested by divorce and wants her son to have as happy, secure and stable a life as possible. So long as the Defendant persists in denigrating the Plaintiff in a manner that is emotionally abusive to their son, this is impossible.

BACKGROUND

The Plaintiff and the Defendant were together for eight years and married for four. The Plaintiff describes it as a difficult
relationship in which she tried to make peace and the Defendant “was consistently distant and resentful of her family’s money and success.” The Defendant’s anger, she says, was mostly centred on his bitterness about her privileged upbringing and his resentment of her father, a successful entrepreneur. After the Plaintiff had her son, she felt compelled to provide him with a more stable home and resolved to leave the Defendant. Once she had done so she felt things were better, but after their divorce settlement—in which the Plaintiff, a full-time homemaker, was awarded the family house and support payments—she felt things begin to sour. This period of difficulty culminated in her husband’s alleged campaign of denigration and abuse, where Baxter is concerned.

REMEDIES

The Plaintiff asks that:

The court amend the custodial portion of the divorce agreement, granting her sole custody of Baxter so she can provide him with a fit and stable home, free from abuse, denigration or conflict, and in which he will feel secure, confident and loved.

She be granted sole discretion over every major aspect of Baxter’s life, including education, health care, nutrition and extracurricular activities and lessons.

The Defendant be granted a thirty-six-hour window of access (Saturday morning to Sunday evening), every other weekend until Baxter reaches the age of consent.

Maya takes a breath and then bends down and rests her forehead on the cool, varnished cherrywood of her desk. She is tired. More tired than she has ever been. She tries to remember what she felt like in the sleepless days and nights after the twins were born (a time she can only remember as a colour—a fleshy, bewildering pink). She must have been tired then, but it was a different sort of exhaustion, one buoyed by hormones and a sense of powerful, goddess-like accomplishment (two people had just come out of her, after all). Today, six weeks after leaving her husband and hours before her first big hearing, she is tired in an entirely different sort of way. She is scooped out, empty, like a dried-out and discarded corn husk. There is nothing left where her old self used to be. And yet as she lies there, bent over her keyboard, breathing in the clinical smell of toner and carpet cleaner, she knows what she has to do. She takes a deep breath in, gets up, puts on her coat and leaves.

Twenty minutes later she is at the courthouse. The hearing isn’t for half an hour, but she has booked a private room to meet with the client first. When she gets there, Jacob Brooks is already waiting. “Thank you,” he says with a slight bow, as if he wasn’t sure she would come, despite having prepaid her court fee of $17,000. She carefully pushes the money from her mind.

She hands him the counterclaim—which simply asks that the custodial arrangement be left as is for Baxter’s welfare—and watches Brooks quietly absorb it. He doesn’t smile, but she can see his relief in reading his own case laid out clearly and reasonably before him. “Mr. Brooks is a model citizen and a loving father who never asked his ex-wife for anything apart from joint custody of their son.” Maya sometimes suspects that
half the job of a lawyer is to offer solace in the form of such documents.

Brooks closes the file and shuts his eyes for a moment before looking up and out the window. Although he is calm and immaculate in his slim navy suit, Maya can feel the anxiety radiating from his body in waves.

“What a mess I’ve made,” he says finally.

Maya shakes her head. “Not you,
her.
You didn’t bring this case. And what was your option but to fight? You’ve got to remember that there are some things worth fighting for in life, and this is definitely one of them.”

He nods and clears his throat to indicate he’s ready to begin.

“Now remember, when the judge asks you to speak, try to keep your comments focused on Baxter’s well-being, rather than your ex-wife’s faults,” Maya says.

Brooks dips his head to say yes, he understands. She wishes she could promise him natural justice, rather than the official kind to which he will be subjected.

A clerk calls their number and in they go.

The judge, a burly, white-haired man in his fifties with a yellowing Santa’s beard, calls the hearing to order and then asks, in that brusque, half-irritated way that almost all judges have, “So what exactly is going on here?”

The opposing counsel begins to speak on behalf of Uptown Girl, but Maya interrupts.

“Your Honour, it is abundantly clear that Ms. Heathfield is a vexatious litigant. This is the seventh action she has brought before this court in two years, and my client is simply a committed father who wishes to be a part of his son’s life.”

The judge swivels his great big bear head and studies Uptown Girl through a pair of bifocals. She’s had her highlights brightened for the occasion and is wrapped in a coat that appears to have been made of thousands of sheared animal tails woven together and dyed purple. Maya notices a well-thumbed copy of
The Way
sticking out of the top of her handbag.

“And what does your client have to say to that?” the judge asks Whatshisface, who snaps to attention.

“My client is here only because she is concerned, as any mother would be, with the welfare of her son, Baxter. It is her opinion—backed by a small team of psychologists and social workers, as we have documented—that he is exhibiting distressing behaviour which is the result not just of his unsettling custodial situation but also of his father’s pernicious influence.”

The judge’s eyes flick to the other side of the room, where Jacob Brooks sits trembling with badly concealed rage. He is sitting bolt upright and staring straight ahead, hands clenched into white-knuckle fists. Looking at him, Maya feels her stomach flip like a dying fish.

The judge is churning through documents, sliding papers this way and that across his desk. When a stack falls from the bench in a flutter, Maya jumps up and beats a clerk in handing them back to him. He adjusts his glasses again and sighs.

“You two,” he says, pointing a thick sausage finger at one side of the court and then the other. “Come here where I can see you both.”

Maya glances at Uptown Girl, who blinks her watery eyes wide and stands, smoothing down her skirt before clipping up to the bench. Jacob Brooks soon joins her, and they stand there,
side by side, both pairs of hands clasped behind their backs like naughty children awaiting punishment.

The judge closes his file before reluctantly resting his eyes on the couple before him. “What I want to know,” he says slowly, “is what exactly is wrong with you two that you were able to stay together for—what?—eight years and have a child together, but you are incapable of resolving even the simplest dispute about your son’s future? Why can’t you just … I don’t know, go have a glass of wine and talk it over?”

Jacob Brooks clears his throat and begins to speak. His voice, to Maya’s surprise, is soft and low, and the judge has to lean in to hear him. “Your Honour, if I may. My ex-wife has made normal relations impossible. She communicates with me only through lawyers and has refused my repeated requests for mediation. She does not have the best interests of our son at heart. She will say or do anything to get what she wants, and in this case that is our son. She will stop at nothing and has the funds to use the court system to her own ends indefinitely.”

The judge nods. “And you, Ms. Heathfield? What do you have to say for yourself?”

Uptown Girl is silent, and for one hopeful moment, Maya thinks she may be too nervous to speak. Then she sees her shoulders quivering and realizes she is silently weeping—or affecting to weep, because when she speaks her voice is calm and clear.

“Your Honour, all I want to say is that I love Baxter more than the world and I am simply doing what’s right for him. It’s my belief that any responsible mother in my position would do the same.”

The judge shifts and settles, allowing his girth to reassemble itself on the bench. He jots down a few notes before scooping the
papers before him into a pile in a manner that indicates he has come to a decision.

“Ms. Heathfield,” he says, looking at Uptown Girl, “I have no doubt you are a loving and responsible mother, but the amount of litigation you have brought before this court is shameful. You need to take responsibility for the marriage you made and deal with your ex-husband in a more humane and adult way. The civil courts are not a family counselling service or a forum for you to play out your interpersonal melodramas. They are here to resolve disputes when private citizens cannot. In light of this, and despite my lack of sympathy for Ms. Heathfield’s crocodile tears, I am amending the original custodial agreement to grant full custody to the mother with fortnightly weekend access visits to the father. I am sorry, Mr. Brooks, but I do not feel that you and Ms. Heathfield have the tools required to successfully co-parent your son. Therefore I must make a difficult decision, but one that I hope will bring a swift conclusion to your endless legal disputes.”

Jacob Brooks rocks back on his heels, blown as if by an invisible wind. When he turns, Maya can see a terrible blankness in his expression. It’s the face of a man who has not yet grasped the events that will change his life forever. Uptown Girl spins on her kitten heels and gives Maya a wincing smile, her fists crunched into little balls of joy. “Thank you, Your Honour,” she squeaks.

The judge watches all this without amusement.

“You do realize that you’ve rewarded her bad behaviour?” Jacob Brooks says plaintively, loud enough for the entire court to hear. But the judge is already banging his gavel and gathering up his robes to leave.

Maya pleads, “Your Honour, my client is being punished for his ex-wife’s refusal to seek mediation or come to an equitable solution. Surely the existing custody agreement best reflects the needs of the child: to have both parents fully involved. Studies show—”

But the judge, who is now standing, cuts Maya off with a raised hand. “You can keep your studies, Ms. Wakefield.” He pauses to look at Jacob Brooks, who is standing limply before him, unmoving, as if he might stay there until reality sets in. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Brooks. Your lawyer here is certainly determined to earn her keep. But that’s my final ruling, and nothing will change it. Now the two of you go home and do your son a favour by never showing your faces in this courtroom again.”

And with that, the judge sweeps out. Once he is gone Uptown Girl makes no secret of her celebration. She shrieks and throws her arms around her lawyer, oblivious to her ex-husband’s despair. Three feet away, Maya and Brooks pack up their files as if in a parallel universe. As they leave, Maya feels the energy draining from her body and the old exhaustion crashing in.

“Don’t worry, we can challenge this once the dust settles,” she begins, but Jacob Brooks is already shaking his head.