When Horses Had Wings (19 page)

TWENTY-SIX

M
y divorce hearing took place on April Fool’s Day, at the Limestone County Courthouse. Inside the building, massive columns supported a cathedral ceiling accented with ornate moldings. The interior woodwork was nothing short of impressive: hardwood floors, solid maple congregation pews, and an elevated, hand-carved judge’s bench with a distinctly lower witness stand. It was the kind of place that, depending on your circumstances, could make you either want to thumb your nose or find religion.

From the looks of Kenny’s attire, it must have had the latter effect on him.

Kenny wore a gray western sports coat and bolo tie that I suspect he borrowed from one of his honky-tonk friends. Probably his attorney had advised him the same way mine had clued me in on what to wear.

Swindle had directed me to be extra-conscious of my appearance. “Wear a dress, something like you might wear to church,” he’d suggested. I hadn’t attended any religious services since Kenny and I had married, but I’d chosen one of those out-of-style getups Momma had made me about a hundred years ago, a floral print of muted mauves and pinks with a pointy Pilgrim collar. I felt pretty sure that, in that getup, I didn’t look the least bit slutty.

“All rise,” I heard a voice command. I wondered how I’d find the strength to lift my weight from the chair that supported me. Swindle nudged my left elbow as the judge, a sixty-some-odd-year-old man with a face like a cowpoke, took his seat atop what looked like gallows to me. I’d seen the man before, only a few months earlier, when he’d fully lived up to his reputation for being unfair. He hadn’t even flinched when he’d granted Kenny temporary visitation privileges that included Sean’s entire spring break.

Given the outcome of that earlier hearing, I had no reason to trust that steely-eyed bastard on the bench or the system that threatened to relieve me of my only reason for living.

If I lost custody of Sean, I couldn’t imagine what would happen to me. My reputation, from what I could tell, had been ruined already. I’d become the wayward daughter of a defrocked deacon, a harlot whose son had to be protected from her cheap ways. At least, that’s what Kenny had stated during his prior testimony.

All those grandiose plans I’d made with Anthony had faded into the nothingness from which I’d conjured them. I’d been left with only public humiliation and private regrets. I would never again be viewed as a good mother or a decent wife. Not after this. In fact, I was the same homely, immoral, and worthless person I’d been at sixteen. Nothing had changed. And Neta Sue, Kenny, and his attorney, Douglas R. Thornton, III, were present and ready to prove it.

Thick with the devastation of crushed dreams, the air around me smelled foul. I glanced to my attorney’s left, to the table opposite the one where Swindle and I sat, and spied Kenny scribbling away on a canary-colored tablet. Thornton appeared to be paying little attention to Kenny’s sudden interest in becoming a scribe. I suspected the lawyer knew he had a deadbeat for a client. Loser or saint, Thornton likely figured the fees generated by either one could pay his Brooks Brothers bill.

Neta Sue sat behind them, her hair pinned into a coil, wearing a dress Andy Griffith’s Aunt Bee would have liked. The white patent leather pumps into which she’d wedged her fleshy feet looked like they’d been purchased at a swap meet. Given her outfit and her daily disposition, I assured myself she’d fool no one. Her face, like her heart, had suffered severe freezer burn. Waiting amid the silence, arms folded across her chest, she maintained a due-center, don’t-tread-on-me stare.

With a nod, the court reporter indicated her readiness to record what certainly would be a dismal account, one that any sane person would want to avoid reading:

Girl meets Boy.

Boy gets girl pregnant.

Boy does responsible thing and marries girl.

Girl isn’t satisfied.

Girl leaves Boy so she can find a new boy.

Boy’s heart is broken.

Boy wants Child.

With only a few minor variations, the same story probably played out between those walls on a regular basis. Why record it hundreds of times? All anyone needed to do was create a standardized form and fill in the blanks with the appropriate names. From what I could tell, that must have been the method Swindle had used to ready himself for the hearing. It took all of fifteen seconds for him to reveal he’d arrived unprepared.

“Ms. Murphy, is it your testimony today that you’ve been the primary caretaker of Sam for the past...uh...the past…” Swindle hastily thumbed the pages of his legal pad and then, settling on one sheet, continued. “Uh, five years, essentially ever since he was born?”

“Sean,” I corrected, wondering if maybe my lawyer had suffered a lobotomy since I’d last seen him. The boy whose fate now dangled in midair, whose future was contingent upon this man’s ability to ask the right questions, was named
Sean
, not Sam. Did the idiot need bifocals to read his own handwriting? Was he looking at the correct page? This was the Murphy-versus-Murphy proceeding. I hoped like hell he’d brought the correct tablet.

“I’m sorry, yes. Yes, I mean
your son
, Sean Murphy,” he said, as if perhaps I, too, had forgotten the boy’s name.

When it came time to ask about specifics, Swindle gave out a fake cough and asked, “How would you describe your childcare arrangements? Where does Sam, I mean,
Sean
, stay when you’re at work?”

I considered how to best answer that question since, before I’d separated, I’d often let Sean stay with Kenny or Neta Sue. “Well, I used to have Kenny or his mother babysit,” I said, attempting to do as Swindle had instructed, keeping my answers thorough and clear. “But for the past eight months, Sean’s been attending kindergarten.”

Swindle again searched his notes. Assuming he’d thought things through far enough to anticipate my reply, which took a broad imagination, I sensed he was unsatisfied with my response.

I scanned up and to my right, looking at the judge whom I’d expected to find contemplatively listening to testimony. With his left hand, he tapped a pencil eraser on the dais, creating a sound that annoyed every bit as much as a leaky faucet. Using his other hand, he sifted through and sorted a stack of celery-colored legal folders, the day’s pending cases, I presumed.

Neta Sue took the witness stand. Thornton, who’d obviously expended more review effort than Swindle, led his client’s mother carefully through examination. “And how would you describe Renee Murphy’s relationship with your grandson?” he asked, measuring his steps as he backed away from his witness.

Neta Sue pursed her lips and frowned as if trying to recall some distant memory, like maybe the last time she’d seen her husband or the first time she’d ever said a curse word. “Well now, I’m not sure I can rightly say. I haven’t seen all that much of Renee and Sean
together
.” She corrected her posture and thrust out her chin. “She’s always got more important things to do than be a
mother
.”

“Ob-jec-tion,” Swindle drawled as though talking in his sleep.

“
Sus
-tained,” the judge said without looking up.

Thornton began again. “What kinds of things do you believe Renee Murphy prioritizes over being a mother to Sean?”

Swindle momentarily came to life. “
Objection,
Your Honor.”

“I’m merely trying to get the witness to clarify her earlier comment,” Thornton countered, still facing the bench.

“Overruled,” the judge said, his face buried in a folder.

Swindle unlocked himself from his half-risen, half-seated position. The courtroom didn’t resemble any I’d seen on television, nothing like the kind where everyone remained attentive and concerned to get at the truth. In fact, I wasn’t sure why any of us even needed to be there. Whatever this so-called man of justice used to formulate his decisions must have been contained in those green folders because he didn’t seem to be listening to anyone’s testimony.

“Let me rephrase the question, Mrs. Murphy. What kinds of things are you stating Renee Murphy held in higher interest than being with Sean?”

I could almost hear a drum roll.

Neta Sue steadied herself to speak. “Things like working and taking typing classes and going to night school...and,” she added with a full cymbal crash, “sleepin’ ‘round with other men.” Her song lost its intended crescendo because Kenny had already accused me of as much.

From underneath a pair of glasses, ones he must have purchased for show, Kenny cried like a newly weaned pup. “I didn’t want to b’lieve it,” he said, eyes darting from his attorney to the judge. “Turned out to be true, though. She was having an affair with some Mes-can man she worked with. They’d been getting it on, the whole time we was married.”

I felt relieved that Momma and Daddy weren’t in attendance to hear this. No other relatives existed for me to disappoint. Grandma Goodchild’s heart had given out after she’d learned of Daddy’s deviant ways. There was no one left to kill with mine.

This was the kind of shame one shouldn’t have to share with her loved ones. What more did Kenny and his lawyer want from me? It seemed their next move might be to strip me buck-naked and parade me down Main Street wearing a banner that said, “Town Whore.”

The judge didn’t care that Anthony and I were no longer seeing each other. I’d been indecent with this man in public. Kenny’s attorney successfully pried that much out of me, which was enough to cast me in an unfavorable light—one with a bright red tinge to it. I admitted under oath to being unfaithful. The circumstances surrounding my offense, however important to me, remained irrelevant in that courtroom. By afternoon, I’d be divorced from Kenny, but ridicule and guilt would remain my companions for life.

Those were the stories Sean would forever hear about his mother, tales of selfishness, neglect, and sexual misconduct. I followed the path of destruction, imagining the ruin that day would leave behind.

Immediately I understood what Pearly had been trying to tell me about that tornado.

~

During break, Swindle and I sat outside the courtroom on what looked like an antique church bench fit for the occasion. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, and already I’d called upon God several times. “I don’t think this is going to last much longer,” Swindle offered matter-of-factly. “We’ll next hear from the social worker Ms. Pratt—”

“That’s
Platt
,” I stressed.

“Thank you. Yes, Platt. And then I think there’ll be another witness or two.” Swindle glanced down at a handful of typed pages. “You ever heard of anyone named Billy Wayne Edwards?”

I searched my mind for the names of Kenny’s thieving cousins, but I couldn’t recall any of them. “No, I haven’t.”

“Hmph. Probably a character witness.” Swindle checked his watch. “We should return to the courtroom.”

The court back in session, Helen Platt acted as if she’d been called to testify on her only day off work. Possibly she had been. Fidgeting in her seat and picking at her unpolished nails, she kept her responses brief.

“And have you had an occasion to meet with Sean and Renee Murphy in their home and witness them interacting with one another?” Douglas Thornton, the third, asked.

“I have.”

“And when you met with Sean at his mother’s home, what were your observations of the child, Ms. Platt?” Thornton’s voice sounded steady, confident.

“That he seemed healthy and well-groomed, polite and eager to speak with me…” She paused. “And that he missed his father.”

It was Thornton’s turn to fall momentarily mute. He let Platt’s final remark hang in midair before he followed up with, “Do you, in your professional opinion, have reason to believe that Renee Murphy has ever struck the child, Sean Murphy?”

Platt adjusted her gray A-line skirt. “Yes, I think she did on at least one occasion.”

I’d never given Sean anything more than a light, open-handed swat on his legs or behind. And I could count those rare occasions on a single hand.

Thornton had coerced her to say what he needed her to say. There was no need for Platt to elaborate. “Thank you for your testimony,” he said. “That’ll be all.”

I only hoped Swindle’s cross-examination would force Platt to cite specific incidents. I’d scribbled my comments about spanking on a tablet Swindle had provided for such purpose.

Swindle, however, never bothered to address the matter.

~

By the time the court adjourned for lunch, my stomach ached and head pounded. I hadn’t eaten anything that morning, so I bought breakfast at a nearby diner. Swindle excused himself from joining me, stating he needed to make some calls.

Thornton had begun questioning me before the break. He could have written my biography from the information I’d been forced to divulge. What did my sex life have to do with parenting, anyway? Didn’t married parents have sex? No one had inquired about Kenny’s intimate life. He certainly wasn’t going to take an oath of celibacy if he gained custody of Sean. And he darn sure wasn’t about to give up his part-time porn business.