Reef Dance

by John Decure

  “Your Honor, might I say a word?” Gilbride said. He was standing now, his hands held out like a pauper.

  “I’m cross-examining a witness!” I said.

  “Mr. Gilbride, be seated,” Foley said. “Don’t interrupt again.” Gilbride shook his head in disgust, which drew a glare from Foley. “No more warnings,” Foley added. “Monetary sanctions come next.”

  “These signs of bad things to come, Ms. Nettleson,” I said, “was this before Nathan was born?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you know that you and the Danforths and Mr. Gilbride all felt the same way, saw signs of fraud?”

  “We discussed it,” she said.

  “When was the first time you discussed it?”

  “The first day we all met in Nelson’s office. The day we decided on the open adoption.”

  “What concerns were raised about the Randalls that day?”

  Lois paused to think. “Corwin and Kitty thought they were greedy, asking a lot of questions about how much allowance for food and rent, whether Corwin would pay for cable TV in their new place. Ty even hinted to Corwin that he wanted him to try to get Ty a job with his company, as if, if Corwin didn’t, there might be a problem.”

  I imagined Ty Randall making just such a clumsy come-on. But was it an indication of fraudulent intent?

  “I didn’t really buy all the questions Sue Ellen kept asking about the terms of the open adoption,” Lois said. “It was like she was trying to prove to us how interested she was in holding up her end of the deal.”

  “When in fact she really wasn’t going to give up Nathan,” I said. Sue Ellen closed her eyes, quietly fuming.

  “That’s right.”

  “What about Mr. Gilbride?”

  Lois looked searchingly at Gilbride.

  “Ms. Nettleson,” I said, “please answer.”

  “He didn’t like the looks of them,” she said. “Thought they looked . . . too desperate to be trusted.”

  “He told you the Randalls couldn’t be trusted?”

  “Objection, calls for hearsay,” Belinda said.

  Foley leaned forward. “Overruled, I want to hear this.”

  “He predicted they’d do something like this,” Lois said. “He also reminded us how hard it is to find suitable birth mothers.”

  “Suitable—hah!” I cried. “What Mr. Gilbride meant by ‘suitable’ mother was a mother who had a white baby to give up, didn’t he?”

  “That’s just the reality today,” she conceded.

  I bent over and whispered to Sue Ellen. “Did you know they were meeting behind your back?”

  “No idea.”

  I paced the floor again. “Now here you are, Ms. Nettleson, the first day this adoption gets off the ground, and you, Mr. Gilbride and the Danforths have all got serious misgivings about the Randalls. And yet, no one says anything to them. They weren’t invited to this little meeting, were they?”

  “They’d already left,” Lois answered.

  “But they were your clients, just like the Danforths. And they were Nelson Gilbride’s clients”—I leveled a disdainful stare at Gilbride—“just like the Danforths. True?”

  “True.”

  “Your clients, Gilbride’s clients. You’d think they’d deserve the same treatment, the same level of input and support the Danforths got. And yet all of you met privately and talked behind their backs, without their knowledge.”

  “We were concerned.”

  “Concerned?” I said. “Look at these two people, Ms. Nettleson.” I stood between Sue Ellen and Ty and placed my hands on each of their shoulders. “Look at their faces. Do they look concerned enough for you?”

  “Objection, argumentative,” Belinda said.

  “Withdrawn,” I said. But I was rolling. “Let me put it differently, Ms. Nettleson. We’ve heard a lot about the dishonest way Ty and Sue Ellen supposedly behaved. But don’t you think it was dishonest for you, Mr. Gilbride and the Danforths to secretly confide in each other that you didn’t trust them?”

  “It’s . . . not that simple,” she said slowly.

  “No, it isn’t. If you told them how you really felt, they might have backed out. They might have said ‘these people have got us all wrong, they think we’re criminals, we better rethink our dealings with them.’ They might, Ms. Nettleson, have given their white baby up to someone else, isn’t that right?”

  Lois Nettleson was deflated by the poor turn her testimony had taken. “It’s possible.”

  “Oh, I think it’s darned likely,” I said. “Then again, if you had the courage to tell them the truth, they might have been surprised, probably a little hurt. They might have assured all of you that they were on the level. They might have been more outwardly appreciative of the Danforths, more realistic about how tough it would be to eventually give up Nathan.”

  “Objection,” Belinda said. “No question pending.”

  I ignored the objection, and Foley let me. “Had you told the truth, this adoption might have had a fighting chance. But you didn’t tell them the whole truth, did you?”

  Lois Nettleson looked ready to stand up and walk out. “Not in so many words.”

  “Nelson Gilbride didn’t tell them the truth.”

  “Objection!” Belinda and Lily shouted.

  “The Danforths didn’t tell them the truth.”

  “Objection, Your Honor!” Belinda said again, but Foley dismissed her with a shake of his head and kept watching me.

  I went back to my chair at counsel table. “Don’t feel bad, Ms. Nettleson,” I said. “You told the truth today, and I appreciate it. I only wish you could have done it sooner.”

  Belinda got up after Lois left and went outside to find her expert witness. Two thirty-five. Where the hell was Jackie? Dr. James was next up, so I laid out a legal pad of questions I’d written out for his testimony. Kitty Danforth would be last to take the stand for the county; she’d be their star witness and this case’s emotional favorite. I’d fared well with my cross on Lois, but I knew I’d been lucky. Kitty Danforth would be better prepared by Gilbride and more careful. I needed Rosemary Egan.

  Foley called a five minute recess, but I stayed in my chair, rereading the expert’s report Belinda had supplied me with a mere three days ago. It’s sadly typical to receive critical information this way, at the very last minute. The Welfare and Institutions Code says that in dependency, the rules of discovery are relaxed. The ever-popular best interest of the child mantra dictates this area of practice as well. But in reality a parent’s right to due process is often squashed. Lawyers who come into these courts from the outside are unfailingly dumbfounded by the Mickey Mouse way that evidence is handled.

  Last night, sitting up late in bed, I’d highlighted certain portions of the report; but now, I was having difficulty remembering why I’d done so.

  I stared at the top of the page. Wilfred Scott James. What a name, I thought, like a character from Jane Austen, perhaps a well-meaning yet sniveling bachelor from a neighboring hamlet. But Dr. James’s curriculum vitae was impressive. Yale undergrad. Doctorate in child psychology from Stanford. Adjunct professor there. Author of Ties that Bind—Bonding and the Psychological Health of the Adolescent— which, of course, I hadn’t had a chance to locate, let alone read—and a wealth of articles in professional journals. That’s the problem with doing a no-time-waiver trial; at times you can’t help but operate by the seat of your pants.

  Dr. James was a slight man of about sixty-five. He had Gilbride’s sparse, snow-white hair, but his face was hollow and curiously lacking in color and his lidded eyes were narrow and set deep in their sockets. He had the look of a man who’d spent the balance of his years reading and doing research in closed-off rooms, breathing stale air. When he pushed through the partitions and ambled forth, he prodded the carpet with an ebony cane, his dull black wingtips squeaking. The gallery grew very quiet, as if the headmaster had returned to the classroom.

  Normally I might have waived th
e necessity for Belinda to spend time establishing Wilfred James as an expert, but Kitty Danforth was testifying next and Jackie was still nowhere to be found. Belinda lurched page by page through the esteemed doctor’s lengthy vitae, finding time to cast an occasional sideways dirty look my way as she went. Come on, Jackie, I silently prayed.

  Dr. James said just what we’d all expected him to say. He aptly described the concept of bonding, starting first with the characteristics of mammals and their young, then narrowing the scope to humankind. He described the misguided perception and belief infants hold, that is, that they are at the center of the universe. He talked about the natural growth of a child’s personal boundaries, the infant’s expanding sense of self, the important role that interdependence between parent and child plays in the healthy development of the young adult. At one point Boris rocked slowly forward, eyes closed. Sue Ellen had to reach over beneath the table and goose his knee or he’d have probably fallen asleep. Judge Foley sat very still as he listened, gazing down at his blotter, pen in hand. He didn’t seem to be taking many notes.

  Belinda finished strongly with the doctor, extracting from him an opinion I’d known had been coming now for fifty minutes. It was like watching a slow train snake into the station from way down the tracks.

  “And what effect would his removal from the Danforths have on little Nathan?” Belinda asked at last.

  “A quite serious adverse effect, I’m afraid,” Dr. James said gravely. “He has spent every formative moment of his young life with Corwin and Kitty Danforth . . .”

  “Yeah, and their nanny,” I whispered to Sue Ellen.

  “. . . bonded to them,” he continued. “To the child, they are his true parents, the only family he knows. To lose them now, the upset,” he said, “would be immeasurable.”

  Lily Elmore expended twenty more minutes, extracting not a thing that was new, with her cross on Dr. James until Foley grew agitated and pressured her to stop. “Ten minute recess, people,” he said, gazing at the metal clock on the far wall. Inching up on four o’clock. “We’re making good time. Mr. Shepard, your witness in ten minutes.”

  “Where’s you’re friend?” Sue Ellen asked me. Her nerves looked shot.

  “He’s on his way,” I said with utterly false conviction.

  The gallery was still full when we resumed. Jimmy Nicholsen, Belinda’s boss, had come in during the break with a few gray-suited men who looked like county honchos. They’d slipped behind Shelly Chilcott’s work area and pulled up three chairs to watch. The Danforths and Gilbride must have made their share of calls to County Counsel’s higher-ups this past couple of weeks. Shelly looked nervous as hell, sorting files for the next day’s calendar and smiling politely as Nicholsen and his guests whispered amongst themselves.

  Dr. James’s weakness was in the hypothetical nature of his testimony. Nathan was pre-verbal; he could not be interviewed as to his wishes, nor could he attest to any discomfort or difficulty in assimilation that a move from one family to another would cause him. The concept of bonding, with infants at least, was built entirely upon theory and conjecture. And one thing I knew about theories from my college days was that professors loved to compare and contrast them. It was what they did to fill their hours-long lectures.

  “Doctor,” I said to the expert, “do you know how dependency court cases are ultimately resolved for the parents of children who are taken from their custody?”

  “No, I don’t, Counselor,” he said amiably.

  “Well, the death penalty for parents who lose their kid is termination of their parental rights. But that doesn’t happen very often. You see, the system is designed to repair families, not to tear them apart, so parents get a long time—eighteen months—to fix their problems, go to counseling, visit the child, or live with the child again under a social worker’s and the court’s supervision. It’s called reunification.”

  “Objection, relevance,” Belinda said.

  “Overruled, but keep it moving, Mr. Shepard,” Foley warned me.

  “I know something about reunification rules, Counselor,” the witness said to me.

  “The reason I’m telling you about this, about reunification, is because I firmly believe that Nathan Randall is going to be reunified with his natural parents, the Randalls. Now I can’t say when that will happen—today, a month from now, six months from now, but it will happen.”

  “Is there a question, or is Mr. Shepard going straight to his closing argument?” Belinda said. Jimmy Nicholsen’s presence had increased her nasty quotient.

  “I’ll ask my question,” I assured the judge. “Doctor, I want you to assume for a moment that this judge”—I motioned to Foley—“is going to one day send Nathan home to Sue Ellen and Ty Randall.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “Now, that being the case, Nathan inevitably going home to the Randalls, what would be best for Nathan? With all you know about bonding, would it be better for Nathan if he were to be reunited with the Randalls sooner, so he can immediately start bonding with them, or would it be better to wait six months, a year, a year and a half?”

  Dr. James looked stymied. He knew he was stuck, at least on the facts I’d given him. How could he say it would be better to wait?

  “Wouldn’t Nathan’s bond to the Danforths only grow stronger over time?” I said, circling in. “Wouldn’t a breakup down the road be that much more shattering for him?”

  “Well,” he said, “at this age, if the child’s going to go one day to new parents, hmm . . .” He was hedging.

  “Objection, overbroad, and calls for speculation,” Belinda offered.

  “Overruled.”

  “Sooner or later, Doctor? If Nathan is one day going home to the Randalls, should it be sooner or later?”

  Dr. James sighed. “I would have to say sooner.”

  A big murmur went up from the gallery. Gilbride was red-faced, his eyes bugging. “You quack!” Kitty Danforth cried. “Nelson, what the hell is going on?”

  “That’s enough, Mrs. Danforth,” Foley said.

  Kitty Danforth momentarily glared at Foley then thought better of challenging him and nodded in compliance. Gilbride whispered something to her in an attempt to calm her down, with little visible effect.

  “Mr. Shepard, continue,” Foley told me.

  I checked my watch: 4:25. Kitty Danforth was fuming, Gilbride tittering into her ear. Jackie was still out there somewhere—had he made his connection? Even without him, I thought this was the perfect time to have Kitty Danforth take the stand. Upset witnesses tend to testify more impulsively, and truthfully.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” I said. “Nothing further.”

  Belinda’s redirect was brief. “Doctor, let’s try another hypothetical,” she said. “Let’s say that the judge orders Nathan to be with the Randalls. But then let’s say the Randalls screw up, try to sell him again and get caught.”

  “Objection,” I said. “This is more pointed innuendo than a hypothetical question.”

  Foley frowned. “Get to the point, Miss McWhirter.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.” She smirked at me. “Okay, Doctor, Mr. Shepard wants us to stick closer to reality. We can do that. Doctor, let’s say Nathan goes back to the Randalls today, but they wind up going to jail on the criminal charges that are currently pending against them.”

  “Ouch,” I whispered to Sue Ellen. Belinda was as sharp as she’d ever been today.

  “So Nathan gets handed back to the Danforths again,” Belinda said. “Wouldn’t the back-and-forth handoffs of this poor child be disorienting?”

  Dr. James perked up at the chance to redeem himself. “Oh, absolutely!”

  “Damaging?”

  “Clearly. The child would have to reestablish his bond with the Danforths, but having had it broken once before with them and once with the Randalls, he might lack the requisite sense of confidence in himself, that is, in his inherent lovability. He believes he’s been rejected and may find it difficult to rea
ch out all over again. He could develop into an emotionally isolated young boy, insecure with his place in the world and incapable of trusting those closest to him.” The doctor looked right at me. “One cannot underestimate the deleterious effect that rejection from a parent, even if it’s only a perceived rejection, can have on a child.”

  I closed my eyes and saw my house on Porpoise Way, the door that I always kept closed at the end of the hallway. Outside the master bedroom, an empty, windburned sundeck. A rusted planer in the garage. A pile of junk in the attic, blanketed in dust.

  “Mr. Shepard?” I heard Foley’s voice say.

  “Yes, Your Honor?”

  “I asked if you had any re-cross.”

  I’d apparently blanked. The doctor tugged at his lapels and sat up, readjusting his posture. “No, thank you, Your Honor,” I said. I’d heard enough.

  Belinda thanked the doctor, as did Foley, and called her final witness. Kitty Danforth regarded none of us as she strode determinedly between the bailiff’s desk and counsel table to take her oath. She wore a tight, tailored coatdress, notch-collared with three buttons, the jacket and skirt a soft lavender hue that somehow struck me as motherly. Matching low-heeled pumps. Impeccable. Gilbride had probably supervised the choices himself.

  For the next half hour, Belinda and Kitty pounded home the image of Sue Ellen and Ty, the greedy, cruelly fertile young couple, exploiting the emotions and pocketbooks of the childless Danforths.

  “We gave them everything they asked for,” Kitty said, “but they kept wanting more.”

  She stopped to dab away the tears, but had no handkerchief. Where was that box of tissues, the one that was always stationed on the witness stand? Gilbride grinned behind me when Foley offered his own handkerchief to Kitty. Son of a bitch Gilbride—he’d probably stolen the Kleenex during the last recess.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Shelly Chilcott. “You have a visitor,” she whispered.

  Behind her work station, in the back of the courtroom next to Jimmy Nicholsen and the county suits, stood Jackie. When we saw each other, he smiled slyly, put his hand over his breastbone, and coolly but emphatically shot me a thumbs-up sign.