A Good Divorce (27 page)

He muttered into the pavement as we jaywalked Jefferson. “I told you I could help get the kids back but you won't let me in on it.”

I'd told him he didn't have any personal knowledge that would be useful in the custody dispute. His contacts with Jude had been minimal since the separation and his knowledge of Lill was purely anecdotal. Mainly, I didn't want to drag him into it and enlarge the damage between Jude's family and ours. “There's nothing you can do, Warren.”

“You don't show some moxie, you're going to lose 'em.” He kicked a flattened pop can up the hill. “I'm ready to fight this thing with you and you're parsing the evidence. Let me in on it.”

“It's my fight, pal.”

As we drove in silence to the Alhambra, I wondered when Warren would experience the sting and bliss of his own parenthood. It was a transformation that began without your knowledge in a dark room full of whispers and joyful spasms and culminated in a birthing process that produced a chemical change in the mother, flushing undivided loyalty and candlelight romance out with the placenta. Forever after, love had to be shared and the husband and wife became partners. And like partners, they fought over the profits and losses. When things went bad, they hired lawyers to partition the remainders. And what was once a whisper in the dark became a roar in the light.

18.

I'd checked out the attorney that Mr. Washington had recommended in Martindale-Hubbell. Larry Delacord was Order of the Coif at UW Law School and had practiced with the King County prosecuting attorney as well as the attorney general's domestic unit before going into his current five-person practice in the Hoge Building. Divorces and domestic relations were the mainstay of his firm's business. Nobody in my office knew the first thing about domestic relations, an ignorance that was typical of the larger law firms in town. I couldn't have used my own firm anyway, because the canons prevented it from participating in a case where one of its own attorneys was a party.

The first time we met, Larry greeted me in his waiting room, which Jude would have loved. No brass, no glass sculptures, no cut flowers, no pretense. Just the morning newspaper dumped on top of a cluttered wooden table. Larry was a stuttering, flat-footed lawyer that I would have guessed to be in his early forties. On first blush, I was skeptical of Mr. Washington's choice, but there was a kindness in his thick handshake and a sincerity in his voice. A litigator didn't have to be slick, I knew that; it was more important that he be believable. He was wearing a white shirt with sweat stains around the collar and a narrow deacon's tie. His desk was hidden behind a maze of grey, steel filing cabinets that filled his windowless office and spilled out into the hallway. On a Farmer's Insurance calendar taped to the side of one of his filing cabinets, there was a picture of foxhounds milling around a group of horses with riders in red jackets and high boots. The hunting imagery resonated with me. I also noticed how many case names had been penned onto the calendar, a prolific workload. Another good sign.

While he was with the Prosecutor, Larry told me he'd handled civil commitments at Harborview Hospital where it was his job to commit people alleged to be dangerous to themselves or others. “It was called the cuh … crazies calendar,” he said. “I turned out to be guh … good at it.” When he got stuck, he closed his eyes and concentrated until the words burst forth like gunshots. “No sur … prise. My … fav … rite course was ab … abnormal psych.” He smiled the same pleasant smile that I saw in the framed picture on his desk with his wife and six kids. The pace of his delivery allowed me time to look around between comments. “Cuh … couldn't get into med school.”

Larry told me he'd represented the Seattle School District in a parental deprivation case, where he had to prove sufficient abuse and neglect to permanently and irrevocably sever the parental relationship. “That's wha … what Mr. Wa … Washington wanted here. If he had his way. But don't … don't take custody fights lightly. We … we've still got an uphill battle. She's the mom.”

The second time we met I reviewed a report that had been prepared by one of Jude's experts, who'd separately interviewed Jude, Lill, and the kids. The case had already turned into a contest between social workers and psychiatrists. I blushed as I read her report, then became sweaty and, by the end, I was irate. It was full of half-truths and innuendo. I'd been “sleeping around” since the divorce. I'd disappeared on “secret trips” and “lied to the children” about my whereabouts. I'd taken them “gambling at the race track.” I had a “history of drug use.” Maybe Warren was right; I was a candy ass. Jude's team was using nuclear weapons while I was aiming high with my Winchester, giving warning shots.

As Larry explained, I was also on trial and the entire parental history, Jude's and mine, would be under consideration. If I was a whoremonger, there was more reason to leave the kids with Jude. Larry took scrupulous notes—there was no stutter in his penmanship—while I gushed out my side of the story. Knowing he'd heard crazier stories made it easier.

“You … slept with Lill Epstein?” His eyes were open windows.

“Not since she moved in with Jude. I didn't really sleep with her. I'm not saying the thought didn't occur to me. And fibbing about that overnighter to the dunes was just so there'd be one less thing for the kids to worry about.”

“Wha … what about the drugs?”

“Since leaving Jude, none. I take that back. I may have smoked a leftover joint or two.” He wrote furiously and stroked the oil out of his hair. Here I was living out my old nightmare of confessing to the prosecutor.

“Were … were you a user?”

Maybe I'd said too much already. There had to be a statute of limitations on this. “Jude and I used to keep some in the house. We'd smoke socially with friends, mostly hers.” I waited until he'd stopped writing. “Larry, it's not an issue, is it?”

“Too small … potatoes.”

The longer we talked, the more his stutter seemed to subside and, by the time we were done, I hardly noticed it. He had a religious zeal about his work, and I could tell that he enjoyed saving people from the predicaments they'd created for themselves. Jude and I were your regular sinners. He didn't despise anyone; he'd already absolved us. Now he just had to administer the penance, and I was confident he'd do it as compassionately as he committed the crazies to their fourteen-day stays at Western State.

Jude's mother surprised me with a long-distance call from Palm Springs a few days before the hearing to find out what was going on. I heard the clinking of dishes in the background as she explained that they'd just finished nine holes and were cooling off in the clubhouse.

“That woman from the school district had a lot of questions,” she said.

“What did you tell her?”

“Well, I told her the truth. Jude was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She had a privileged upbringing. This whole business is as surprising and revolting to me as it is for everyone else.”

“Did they ask you to testify?”

“They mentioned it.”

“Against Jude?”

“I prefer to think of it as in favor of sanity.” She whispered a drink order to someone, with no ice. “You know my attitude on this. I think it's a fad. Jude's always been susceptible to fads. When she was in college, she wore her hair like Jackie Kennedy. She'll pass through it and, when she does, she can have the kids again.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“I tried, but she won't talk to me. That's why I called you.” She was slurring her words and in a hurry. “Are they blaming me for this, Cyrus?”

“For what?”

“Her sexual deviancy.”

“I hadn't heard that, Martha. Should they?”

She laughed. “You know better than that. I'm hetero' to the core.”

Her parting words were Martha's version of encouragement. “I'm sorry you married a lemon, Cyrus. I'm ready to fly in if you need me.”

My mother's voice was thin, like someone had put it through a strainer, when she called the next night to tell me about Dad's heart attack.

“This is worse than the first one,” she said. “He should have had the bypass.” Since Dad's hospitalization for a myocardial infarction three years ago, he'd been on nitroglycerin and digitalis.

“How do you think he's taking it?”

“You know your father. He thinks he'll live forever.” My parents knew I was divorced, but I hadn't told them about the custody petition. Like everything else, I thought I'd wait until there was an outcome, and I didn't want to worry Dad in his condition. “You don't have to come over.”

“I'm coming over, Mom. But I'll have to be back for something with the kids.”

“I don't want you to miss anything with the kids.”

I considered flying but the schedule into Ellensburg was limited. I didn't trust my Plymouth on a trip over the pass, so I rented a two-year old Ford Pinto with twenty-eight thousand miles from Rent-a-Wreck.

I'd come to look forward to going home less and less. It reminded me of everything I'd done wrong in my life. My brain switched to a lower gear when I was around my parents, especially Dad. I couldn't form coherent thoughts. I had to work hard just to contribute to the simplest conversations. It was as if I'd been lobotomized, with everything that I'd done since leaving home surgically removed. Vocabulary that I used in my work became jumbled in the face of Dad's skepticism. Words popped out that I didn't even know the meaning of. I couldn't muster an opinion on anything that mattered to Dad. I had the vocabulary of an adult but the experiences and syntax of a child. My ego dried up and blew away in his presence. I couldn't manufacture a sincere statement about who I was or what I did. So instead, we talked about what everyone else was doing or about what we did twenty and thirty years ago when I still lived at home. None of us could generate an interest in the man who'd grown up and married and made his own family in Seattle. I vowed from my cockpit in the little Pinto that things would be different this time over. There might not be another chance.

I asked directions for the hospital from a checker at a grocery store in Ellensburg, which in its size and ambience reminded me of the Thriftway that Dad had managed in Quincy. There was a big freezer in front of the store with ice, block and cubes. You could trust the customers to tell the checker if they were going to pick up a bag. On either side of the freezer, there were sagging racks with potted pansies, daisies, geraniums, and bags of bark, fertilizer, and charcoal briquets.

The hospital was a modest two-story building, about the size of the elementary school my brothers and I had attended. When I told them who I was at the desk, the nurses gave each other knowing smiles.

“So you're the son,” the one with the blood donor button on her cap said.

“One of them. There's three of us.”

“I'm going up,” the Asian nurse said. “I can show you his room.”

We took the elevator, which was deep enough for a stretcher and smelled like someone had spilled a bottle of rubbing alcohol in it. As I watched the nurse, I imagined my dad bawling her out the way he used to bawl out waiters who didn't bring him crackers with his soup or sugar substitute for his coffee.

“I take it my dad's been a pain in the ass.”

Her hands rushed to cover her mouth as if she'd been the one to say something offensive. “Oh, no, he's the patient. It's all part of our job.”

Dad was in a private room with the shades pulled and the television going. The bed was tilted up and he had one of those tubes clipped to his nose. Mom was sitting in a straight-back chair next to the bed.

“Lee,” she said, “it's Cyrus. Cyrus is here to see you.”

His face and the bald space on his head were sweaty. The tube in his nose curved down like a plastic mustache. When he used to work seven days a week, he shaved every morning before I ever saw him, but now his cheeks were covered with grey stubble.

“What's the matter, they fire you?”

“Lee,” Mom said.

“Mom said you were sick.”

“Hell, I'm not sick. My arteries are clogged. You'd look like this too if you couldn't pump any blood through your heart.” The exertion strained him, and he closed his eyes to regain his breath.

Purely out of duty and the knowledge that this was what you did at the bedside of your ill father, I moved closer. Mom stepped back to let me pass. The truth was, I was scared to get near for fear he might slug me. “Take it easy, Dad.”

“They're starving me up here. Everything's soft and gooey like baby food. It's making me gassy.”

“He's supposed to take another pill,” Mom said.

“I want a cigarette, that's what I want. Audrey won't give me a measly cigarette. Get me a cigarette, Audrey!”

“Dad.”

“Get me a god damned cigarette.”

“Dad, quit yelling.”

“Butt out. This is between me and your mom. Audrey!” Mom was backed against the wall with her hands over her face.

“Don't yell at her,” I said. “For God's sake, you're sick. She's trying to get you better.”

“I can yell at my own wife. Maybe if you'd yelled, you'd still have one.” He was wheezing and stopped to stock up on the oxygen that was coursing through the plastic tube.

I knew this was neither the time nor the place to be arguing with him. But when would it be? We always got to this point and then I slunk off into the kitchen or, when I was young, went outside and hid in a tree. “You think that's why Mom's stayed with you? Because you've bossed her around like some drudge? Fetch my cigarettes? Jesus, Dad.” His eyes were wide open and he was glaring at me the way he always did, but he was too weak to do anything but listen. “No, I didn't yell and prod Jude the way you've done to Mom. In fact, I've tried to do everything the opposite of you.”