Custody (50 page)

He stared at her as if she’d just gone mad. As if she’d just spoken in tongues. As if she were a stone angel who’d fallen off her pedestal and come to life.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I told you the truth, but not the whole truth. I didn’t tell you that after René took my inheritance, a professor came to me with a proposition. He told me that if I would be a surrogate mother, and do it in complete privacy, he would arrange to see that I received fifty thousand dollars, enough for law school.”

“George Hammond,” Randall said.

The name jolted through her. So it really was true. “Yes. Professor Hammond.”

They stared at one another, dumbstruck. Kelly whispered, “I held my daughter when she was born. She had a birthmark like a leaf on the left side of her neck.”

“Tessa’s birthmark.”

“Of course we could do DNA testing to be sure.”

“This is too wild.” Randall rose. “I’ve got to walk.” Reaching down, he took Kelly’s hand and pulled her up.

They set off up the hill, striding toward Fountain Avenue and Tulip Path, toward their mothers’ graves.

“This changes everything,” Randall said.

“Yes.” Kelly couldn’t stop smiling. “It does.”

“It means we have to go at this slowly.
Carefully
. Very carefully.”

Kelly frowned. “I don’t understand—”

“Tessa has been wanting to meet her birth mother. I can’t just say, okay, here’s the woman I’m going to marry, and by the way, she’s your birth mother. We have to go about it the other way around. For her sake. That’s too fast. If it’s confusing for us, think how it will be for her. We have to let her meet you, and get to know you, and feel comfortable with you, and come to like you.”

“You know, in Massachusetts the birth mother and
both
adoptee parents have to give their written permission before the identifying information can be released.”

“God.” Randall ran his hand through his hair. “Anne won’t give her permission. Perhaps, if I’m awarded custody, I could speak to Anne about this from a position of strength.”

“Perhaps.” Long shadows fell across their path. “Let’s see what Judge Spriggs decides. Then we’ll go from there.”

“All right. Look,” Randall said, taking her by the arm. “I want to promise you—there’ll be no more women for me. No matter how tired or depressed or confused I get. I’ve learned who I want, and I’m certain about that now. So you can trust me. Okay?”

She searched his face. She could not help herself: she loved this man. She had to trust him. They had to trust one another. “Want to seal your vow?” she asked lightly.

And, not lightly, he kissed her.

Wednesday afternoon in Courtroom 1, Kelly was at work again, sitting at her bench in her black robe, listening to a case between grandparents and father fighting for custody of a five-year-old boy. His parents had divorced when he was two, and his father had moved to another state. His mother had been ill for three years. During that time, the mother and the little boy had lived with his maternal grandparents. Now the mother had died and the father wanted to take his son with him to another state. But the little boy had seldom seen his father for five years. He knew his grandparents’ house and neighborhood as his home. He loved his grandparents, who were young and healthy.

They were grief-stricken at the thought of losing him. Yet the father had legal rights of custody. It was another heartbreaking case.

That afternoon, in Courtroom 5, Randall Madison and Anne Madison stood in rigid attention before Judge Spriggs.

“Look, Mrs. Madison, Dr. Madison,” Judge Spriggs said. “You are both good parents. You’re both civilized, capable, and loving. I don’t know why you’re here in the first place. Seems to me you should have been able to figure this out yourselves. But you’re here, and I’ve heard all your witnesses and read all your documents and I’m not going to take up anybody’s time with this. Your daughter, Tessa, is a twelve-year-old girl. She’s on the verge of puberty. She’s been living in one house all her life, and that’s home to her, that’s where she’s safe. Now, Dr. Madison, you’re a fine parent, too”—she waved an admonishing finger at Anne—“and I don’t care how many women you sleep with, it seems to me you’re not letting that interfere with your parenting of Tessa. Still. Still, I think it’s in the best interest of this child to remain with her mother in the house where she’s been raised. I’m granting joint legal custody to the parents, and sole physical custody to the mother.”

Judge Spriggs continued speaking, talking about the mother’s responsibility to discuss health and educational matters with the father, but Anne didn’t really hear her. She was so relieved, so exhilarated, so
triumphant
, that blood rushed through her ears like the applause of thousands. She had
won
, she thought.
She had won
.

For the kids who attended the public schools, classes had begun, but Tessa’s private school didn’t start until next week. She was glad. It was an enormous relief to be allowed to stay at home with Carmen while her mother and father were in court. While she waited to see who would be awarded custody of her.

Awarded
. As if she were some kind of prize.

Actually, she felt like that’s what she was to her mother, like a kind of badge, or one of those fancy medallions that royalty wore hanging from a scarlet sash over a satin gown. She was an accomplishment of Anne’s, an ornament Anne could display to the public as one more bit of evidence that she was a magnificent woman.

Tessa lay in her room on her bed, reading and trying not to mess up the comforter too much. She was deep into a book called
Misty Midnight
, about an ill-tempered orphan girl sent to live on a farm where she develops a relationship with a tempestuous colt no one could break. It was one of Tessa’s favorite books, and for a while during the day she’d been able to lose herself in it, she’d been
there
, in the barn, smelling the sweet hay, hearing the huff of the colt’s breath on her neck, feeling the danger of the large, unhappy, unpredictable animal so near to her own cranky and fragile self.

But now it was after five, and she was trapped in the Ice Palace waiting for the Ice Queen, who would be home soon.

Then she heard the sound of tires against gravel. And a different engine humming. Two doors slammed. Two cars. Her mother and father.

Tessa smoothed her shirt and brushed her hair. She heard voices downstairs, her mother talking with Carmen. The front door shut: Carmen had left.

“Tessa?” her mother called up the stairs. “Could you come down, please?”

And Tessa knew.

Her mother’s voice in all its variations was as familiar to Tessa as her own weather
system of moods. Her mother didn’t even have to say words, she could call out the Declaration of Independence and Tessa would know how to translate it. Her mother’s voice could be as light as a butterfly dipping through flowers when she was happy, and that was the way it sounded now.

Tessa trudged down the stairs.

Her parents were in the living room. Her mother was at the drinks cart, fixing a pair of vodka tonics over ice in cut-crystal glasses. Her father sat on a sofa, elbows on knees, hands hanging down, shoulders slumped. When he saw Tessa, he sat up straight and smiled.

“Hey, Tessa,” he said. “How’s it going?”

She shrugged and gave him a black look
.
What did you do wrong?
she wanted to demand.
Why didn’t you win? Didn’t you try hard enough? Didn’t you want to bad enough?

Her mother was squeezing a slice of lemon into each glass. “Would you like some juice, Tessa?” her mother asked sweetly.

“No.”

“No?”

“No, thank you.”

“Sit down for a moment, dear. We want to talk to you.”

Tessa perched on the end of a chair next to her father. Her mother handed him his drink, then sat across the coffee table from him on the smaller sofa her mother called a loveseat.
Loveseat
, hah.

“It’s official, Tessa,” her mother announced. “Your father and I have been granted a divorce.” Her cheeks were flushed as she looked over at Randall and raised her glass in a toast. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Randall replied, raising his glass as well.

Her mother sipped her drink and smiled at Tessa. “And the judge has awarded full physical custody to me.”

Tessa sat still. Nothing she could say or do would make a difference.

“But joint legal custody to both of us,” her father hastened to add. “Which means that on any important decision, about where you go to school, or trips, or religion, or should you want rhinoplasty—”

Anne cut him short. “This is not a joke, Randall!”

“No. No, I know it’s not. I was just—” Randall looked down at his drink, then up at Tessa. “Honey, I’m still going to be as much a part of your life as before. Maybe more so.”

“But I won’t live on the farm? I won’t have my room there?”

“Of course you’ll have your room there. And you’ll live there sometimes. I’ve got liberal visitation rights—that means I can have you stay with me a lot, Tessa. At least two weekends a month, maybe more.”

“The judge left it to us to decide,” Anne added. “Sometimes in cases like this, the child spends one school night with the noncustodial parent, but it’s such a long drive for you from Concord in to your school that Randall and I have agreed it would be best for you to spend all school nights here, and most weekends with your father and grandfather.”

“But I’ll come in to take you out to dinner during the week. Or drive you to school events, that sort of thing—whatever you want. And I’ll be allowed to have you with me for entire months in the summer,” Randall hastened to add. “And for holidays.”

“Some holidays,” Anne corrected. “We’ll decide as we go along.”

“Are you going to keep your apartment?” Tessa asked her father.

“I don’t think so, honey. I want to move out to the farm. I’m cutting back on all my hours. I might even close my practice here and open up a smaller one in Concord.”

“Basically, your life won’t change much at all, darling,” Anne said. “Except that you’ll probably see more of your father than you used to.”

“Do you have any questions?” Tessa’s father asked.

Tessa shook her head.

“You know we both love you, Tessa,” Anne assured her. “And we’ll try very hard to see that you’re happy. I know it will be hard, at first, having divorced parents, but many of your friends have parents who are divorced, don’t they?”

Tessa nodded her head obediently.

Randall drained his glass, put it on the coffee table, and rose. “Well, then, I guess I’ll go.”

“Have a date?” Anne asked archly.

“Yes. With my father.” Randall knelt in front of Tessa and hugged her to him. “I’ll see you this weekend, kid. I’ll call you tomorrow night. And you call me whenever you want, right?”

She nodded.

“Okay, then.”

“I’ll walk you to the door.” Anne rose.

They left the room. Tessa sat alone. Anne’s perfume lingered in the air, and a kind of shadow form of Tessa’s father remained as well. She’d always liked having him in the house. He was like a live, hungry animal rambling around in a museum. He was like a steady throb of rock
music after the polite fussiness of Mozart. He was like a great big McDonald’s meal with a hot fudge sundae from Friendly’s instead of a tossed salad and a chicken breast. It was irrational, Tessa knew that much, but when she heard the door shut and then the engine start up in the driveway, she felt abandoned by her father. She felt angry, and lonely, and cold.