Custody (33 page)

“No. Anne’s parents live on Nantucket, as you know, and won’t be able to get off the island. They’ve got a house full of immigrants.”

Mont grinned. “I’ll bet they do.”

“You were saying that Anne’s mother—?”

“Sarah. She’s wonderful. Full of life. And more idealistic than Randall and Anne put together and magnified to the tenth power. But she never had much time for Anne.
She
was
raised by a nanny, so she never learned how to cuddle and doddle and coo. So Anne never learned how to show affection. Add that to the fact that Anne’s seen a lot of disaster in her life, as a nurse, you know, and what you’ve got is a mother in a pretty much constant state of alarm, whose main concern is keeping her child safe. So, Tessa’s safe, and she’s clean, and she’s fortunate, but in many ways she’s deprived.” Mont wrinkled his forehead. “Have I gotten off track somehow?”

“Not at all. You’re being very helpful. Tell me about Randall as a father.”

Mont pulled a face. “Now that Tessa’s growing up, he’s becoming just about the best father a man could be. When Tessa was an infant, however, and a young child, he didn’t have as much to do with her as he would have liked. It was too much of a struggle for him. Anne saw Tessa as
her
child, and she guarded her jealously. For example, if he tried to toss her up in the air—I remember this happening when Tessa was about three—Anne went crazy, sure Randall would drop her. She made such a fuss about it, about everything, it was just too much of a battle for him to interact much with Tessa. As time passed, Anne’s energies were focused on the child, and her house, her committees; she shut Randall out. So Randall found, how shall I say this, other outlets for his affections.”

“Anne says Randall is promiscuous.”

“I’m afraid she’s right. Although I do believe, over the past year at least, Randall’s been a model of chastity. You know he’s planning to move back to the farm?”

Dr. Lawrence checked his notes. “I didn’t know that.”

“I believe he’s just recently decided. I think it’s a good idea. I’ll always be there in case Randall gets called out in an emergency. Plus, Tessa’s got a good girlfriend across the road, Brooke Burchardt.” Mont leaned forward. “Randall is trying to do what’s right by Tessa. He spends a lot of time with her now and plans to spend more. He’s changing his life so he’ll be able to spend more. He made a real effort—I saw him make that effort—to make a go of his marriage with Anne. Now he’s going to make an effort to be a good father to Tessa.”

Dr. Lawrence wrote on a pad. Scratching his forehead with the eraser end of his pencil, he looked over his notes, then up at Mont. “Is there anything else you think I should know? About Tessa, or Randall or Anne?”

“I don’t think so,” Mont said.

The two men rose and shook hands, and the psychiatrist thanked Mont again for coming in. As Mont made his creaking way out to his car, he searched his mind, worried: Was there something else he should have said?

Kelly hadn’t been lying when she told Jason that after each day she was seriously exhausted. If one could breathe toxic fumes while working in a polluted factory or mine, then one could just as easily breathe in the toxic fumes of all the anger, bitterness, hatred, and sorrow that steamed from the people who passed through the courtroom each day. She left the court stricken with a sort of emotional flu. Many judges alleviated this, Kelly knew, with several medicinal shots of whiskey, and Kelly didn’t blame them.

Her way to exorcise her body and mind was to run. Each night she went back to the hotel, changed into running gear, and headed out. She liked running in a strange town. The unfamiliar scenery claimed her attention, and the new roads with their sudden turns compelled her to stay in the present. She ran for an hour, returning to her hotel room physically drained and moderately brain-dead. She stood under a blissfully hot thundering shower, wrapped herself up in a terry-cloth robe, and enjoyed a room service meal while watching television.

It was a pretty efficient way to avoid thinking of her own life.

Friday began with a divorcing husband and wife who couldn’t agree on anything. Most terribly, they couldn’t agree on custody of their two children, a boy of seven and a girl of five, who had been adopted at birth.

Judge Parsons was a compassionate woman, willing to wait patiently for each individual to be given his or her chance to express himself. This was often a crucial moment for a person, Parsons assured Kelly, their rightful moment to stand before a judge and ask for justice.

Friday afternoon the wife’s lawyer was cataloguing the list of expert witnesses he’d lined up to testify to the wife’s brilliance as a mother and the husband’s failure as a father when the husband suddenly blew up.

“All right!” he yelled, standing up, holding his arms up as if surrendering. A slender man, a computer entrepreneur with buckets of money, his normally pale face was suddenly flushed bright crimson. “I give up. I give up completely. Give the bitch custody of the children. Total, sole, complete custody. Oh, I’ll pay the child support, but I relinquish all rights to them. I won’t have them on weekends or evenings, I won’t call them, I won’t even see them.”

“Mr. Dollard,” Judge Parsons said, “if you can’t control yourself, I’m going to have to ask the court officer to help you control yourself.”

With a sudden transformation that was somehow chilling, the husband curbed his emotions. His entire demeanor changed.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I apologize. But I would like to say, Judge, I do mean what I said. I surrender completely, all access to the children.”

“Well, now, Mr. Dollard, I’m not sure that would be wise. Not for you, and especially not for the children.”

“It’s all right. They’re not really my children anyway.” Shooting a smug look at his wife, he said, “I’ll get married and have my own with someone who’s not barren.”

At this, the wife burst into tears.

“It’s late in the day,” Judge Parsons sighed. “And the end of the week. Counselors, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to adjourn court now and let your clients have some time to consider the way this case is going. I’m not happy with it at all, and I bet you aren’t, either.” Addressing the Dollards, she said, “Take the weekend. Get some rest. Think about your children. Think about these young people whose lives you hold in your hands. I’ll see you Monday morning. Okay, people, court’s adjourned.”

Kelly followed Judge Parsons out of the courtroom into the privacy of her chambers.

“What a pair!” Judge Parsons said. “Plenty of money, good education, and a lifetime of bitterness ahead. I’ve seen this before. They’re going to be in and out of this courthouse like boomerangs, doing everything they can think of to aggravate one another. But this relinquishing the children bit is a new one on me.”

Randall’s rounds at the hospital Friday morning were grueling. He’d had to deliver too much bad news. Seen too many faces tighten with fear, too many wives’ and children’s faces sag with sorrow. The acrid stench of dying, open wounds, vomit, and foul breath clung to him, the moans and cries of those suffering rang in his ears, and he thought of his mother in her dark grave and his father in his shortening years. He felt deluded and helpless in his attempts to ameliorate the indignities of old age. He felt heavy with his own mortality.

At his office, all day long, there was more bad news to give. From experience he knew
that this happened, that sometimes things went in cycles. For days his patients’ complaints would be caused by nothing more ominous than cataracts, high cholesterol, and heartburn, and then all at once everyone who walked through the door was diagnosed with cancer, Parkinson’s, or Alzheimer’s. And this afternoon his nurse and first lieutenant, Pam, who ran his office with brisk humor and efficiency, had had to leave early to deal with her teenage son who’d been caught with pot in his school locker during a surprise drug-dog sweep.

At six-thirty Randall found himself at his desk, through for the day but depressed and exhausted. He was so hungry his stomach cramped, but he couldn’t face any more take-out or microwave dinners. He could go to a restaurant and buy himself a proper meal with a decent wine, but the thought of sitting by himself at a table was just too bleak.

Perhaps he’d call Mont, see what he was up to. As Randall reached for the phone, it rang.

“Hi, Randall.” Her voice was breathy, shy.

“Lacey. Hi.”

“You said we might get together for a drink—”

“I don’t—”

“But I thought you might prefer to come here for dinner instead. I’ve made lasagna.”

Lacey’s lasagna was as delicious as she was; Randall could remember that so clearly he could almost smell the spicy tomato sauce and feel the plump cheese on his tongue. There’d be a freshly tossed green salad, too, and a healthy tart dessert with oranges or apples.

“Lacey—”

“Just come for dinner. No strings attached. I mean it.”

“I won’t be able to stay long.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll pick up some wine on the way.”

“Great.”

All of a sudden, late Friday afternoon, Anne found herself without appointments. It was an unpleasant sensation, like stepping off the solid ground into open air. Like falling.

In the privacy of her study, she reviewed her calendar. Today had been exhausting, one meeting after another, beginning at seven a.m. with a Land Conservation executive board
meeting, ending with a grueling course on building a computer database. The whole week, actually, had been jam-packed with engagements, and tomorrow she would begin going door-to-door, introducing herself, handing out her brochures, personally asking people for their votes.

When she’d worked on her schedule with Rebecca, she’d insisted on leaving this evening open. Now she wondered why.

Usually, on Friday as well as Saturday evenings, she had at least one cocktail or dinner party to attend. But now it was the middle of August, when most of her acquaintances were off in summer homes on the Vineyard, or in Maine, or Nantucket.

Nantucket. Her mother would fill every spare room in the Nantucket house with immigrants, leaving not even one bedroom free so that Anne and Tessa could visit. Sarah had always been generous to the most obviously distressed, completely overlooking any needs her own normal daughter might have, and Anne’s father, engrossed in the eccentricities of his own life, let Sarah rule the household. When hurricanes destroyed Florida towns, Anne’s father flew down to help rebuild. Whenever a task force was formed to help assuage the ravages of a drought in Tunisia or a dictator in Africa, Anne’s father rushed to take part. Both Sarah and Arthur reacted to the astonishing amounts of money they’d inherited by dashing all over the globe to help other people, feeling that it was absolutely the least they could do. They were a wonderful, liberal, magnanimous couple who received the admiration and gratitude of many.