A Good Divorce

by John E. Keegan

  When I got home, I wrote in my journal for the first time in months, about how Dad had bartered his labor for simple affection, how he believed that manhood meant doing instead of emoting, and how he was willing to trade the remainder of his life so that Mom could survive in decency. I remembered something Lill had told me, a quote from an ancient rabbi, the only thing she remembered from her Jewish upbringing. The simplicity of it had moved me at the time, and I paraphrased it as best I could recall. Don’t do to your fellowman what is hateful to yourself. That is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary.

  I was tired of dealing with the commentary.

  “Here Comes the Sun” was playing when I woke up and rolled over to look at the radio-alarm. My journal was still open on the nightstand. It was eight-forty and I was going to be late to court.

  I nicked the underside of my chin in two places shaving and the cuts, still oozing when I put on my shirt, stained the collar. It was my last pressed shirt so I did my best to dilute the stain with a cold washcloth smeared with bar soap. Once in the car, I realized I’d forgotten to put a hankie in my pocket and, at the light, I rummaged through the glove compartment until I found an old napkin to daub the cuts in the rearview mirror.

  I found a space with a meter a block from the courthouse but didn’t have any change and parked there anyway. In the bigger scheme of things, what did it matter if I got a ticket? When I crashed through the big door at the rear of the courtroom, the first person I saw was Lill in a mauve cape coat and I slid into the pew next to her.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to be here.”

  “So did Jude, but I decided this was my business too.”

  I squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you’re here.” I’m sure she had no idea why I’d say that but there was no time to explain.

  Judge Purnell was already on the bench. Larry Delacord was pacing in front and looking back at me. It was nine thirty-five and we were late. “Petitioner calls … Mr. Stapleton.”

  Everyone turned to watch me come to the front. Mr. Washington, seated with his cadre of experts, nodded approvingly and I knew that I probably should have tried to call him and Larry. On the other hand, didn’t the inscription over the courthouse door say Justitia est Veritas? Without really hearing what the Judge said, I raised my right arm, affirmed the oath, and backed into the witness chair. As I looked at Justine and Derek in the front row, I knew that I’d made the right choice. It was about time they knew where I stood on something other than Beatles music or NFL football. This had to be public.

  Larry carried his questions on a yellow legal pad, letting his weight rest on one leg as he leaned against the empty jury box. He asked introductory questions to establish the dates of the marriage, my education, and the fact that I’d been timely on support payments. Everything was proceeding according to script.

  “Are you a … ware of the relationship … of your ex-wife with Miss Epstein?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Wha … what is it?” His eyes lit up.

  I was hearing his questions differently than I had in his cramped office. That’s what this whole case was about, the it, and I could feel fear of the it rising out of the middle pews in the courtroom like the stench from a shallow drainfield. The two lady investigators sat upright, confident that the weight of centuries of Judeo-Christian ethics was about to waggle my tongue in their favor. Mr. Washington leaned on his forearms and I imagined him mentally beating his fists into his palms, urging me to give Jude the roundhouse. Then I blinked and there were the kids again, waiting to see if I was going to be part of the mob. I took a deep breath and looked Larry straight in the eye. “As far as I can tell it’s a very loving relationship.”

  Larry searched his yellow pad, then looked up and scowled. “Wha … what else?”

  “They have problems like any other couple trying to make a go of it, probably a few more.” I looked at Jude, who had a skeptical look on her face and was rubbing her thumb hard against one of her fingernails.

  “Your … honor, may I … take a recess?”

  The judge looked up at the oversized Bulova mounted over the jury box. “Counselor, we’ve just started.”

  “But …”

  “I’ve scheduled a phone call for ten forty-five and that’s when we’ll take it.”

  Larry looked out toward Mr. Washington, who’d folded his arms across his massive chest. The door in the back creaked open and it was Warren, slipping his Johnny’s Flowers cap into his pocket, like he’d just stepped into church. Larry scratched the inside of his collar, flipped his page over, and I could see his eyes running down the tablet. I’d just become his worst nightmare. “Cuh … can you tell the court … why … this woman”—he pointed toward Jude—“should not retain custody of your children?”

  “No, I can’t.” There was a murmur from the audience and I looked over to the judge. “Your honor, let me explain.” Larry’s shoulders slumped, his yellow pad drooped at his side, and the judge urged me on with the whisk of his fingers. “I’ve been tormented by this thing. Stupefied really. The only thing I knew was something wasn’t sitting right with the kids. So when the school district did their investigation, I slipstreamed behind their recommendations. I thought they were right. I wanted the kids with me and this was the chance to get them.”

  “Your … honor.” Larry stepped toward the bench. “Ma … may I ask to wi … withdraw this witness?”

  The judge glared at Larry. “You can ask anything you want, counselor.”

  Gloria jumped up, bumping the table with her hip as she raced to get into the judge’s view. “Your honor, I have the right of cross-examination. The witness has already testified. If he steps down, the defense will recall him. One way or the other, you can’t excuse him. He’s the father of the children. You have to hear from the father of the children.”

  Judge Purnell had a twinkle in his eye, maybe it was just a twitch, as he looked down on Gloria. “This is very interesting, Miss Monroe.” He twisted the head of the gavel like a pepper grinder. “Didn’t your brief say he’s not a fit parent? Now why would you call someone like that as your witness?”

  She flicked her hair back and raised her chin. “Your honor, the defense is entitled to change its mind. I can assure you we will scratch, bite, and kick if we have to in order to prove that my client shouldn’t lose her children. If Mr. Delacord doesn’t want him, I do.”

  Larry seemed bowled over by Gloria. She could spit out whole sentences between his stuttering monosyllables. And, of course, there was the added dilemma: I was his client. “I don’t have any fur … further questions, your honor.”

  The judge waved the attorneys away. “Sit down then, both of you. I have a few of my own. In cases involving children, it’s my responsibility to make sure the facts get out and I’m not going to be shy about it. I don’t care who brought the petition or who supports it.” Larry slunk back to his desk like a kid who’d just drawn the wrong equation on the blackboard. Gloria pivoted on the heel of one shoe and returned to her seat. “Mr. Stapleton, I don’t know what you’re up to but I’m about to find out. Your wife is accused of being lesbian. Is she or isn’t she?”

  “She is, sir.”

  “To be honest with you, Mr. Stapleton, her condition is of grave concern to me. And if I were the kids’ father, I’d be breaking the door down to get them out of there. What do you think I should do?”

  “I think you should dismiss the petition, your honor.” Justine and Derek practically bumped their heads together trying to trade whispers.

  “Please go on, I’m all ears.”

  I lifted my legs and I could feel the bottom of my pants unsticking from the witness chair. “Your honor, I was looking at this whole thing through my own eyes and I was missing it. Then I tried to see it through theirs. Sure they were freaked out when they learned about their mom. So was I. But what’s going on in this courtroom is their worst fear. The danger isn’t Jude and Lill. It’s how the rest of us react to
Jude and Lill.” My voice was starting to tremble. “A decent father doesn’t take his kids’ mother away. It’s that simple.”

  I looked down, searching for a place to hide my weakening face, closed my eyes and then let my breath out slowly, following it with my mind’s eye. I felt the kind of childhood rush that came from unexpected gifts, like the time my dad said I could shoot his thirty-aught-six out at the dump. Through the blur in my eyes, I looked at Justine and Derek. “There’s something about the world that panics when a woman chooses to live without a man. But there’s nothing wrong with your mom.” I was afraid to look at Jude but it didn’t matter what she felt. I was doing this for me.

  “Are there any more questions, Mr. Delacord?”

  He shook his head. He was stutterless.

  “Miss Monroe?”

  She cupped her hand, said something to Jude, and Jude cupped back. “No, your honor.”

  He looked at the big clock; we were early. “After my phone call, I’d like to meet with counsel in chambers.” He banged his gavel and exited, clutching his robe as he found the steps with his brown oxfords.

  I’d just given a big yank to the rug under Mr. Washington, probably aggravated Larry’s speech impediment, and confounded the judge, but I felt blissful for the first time in a year. In some small way, I hoped I’d lived up to those scrapbook wishes on the C&H notepaper. It was easy to identify my friends because they moved forward into the space between the judge’s dais and the tables. Derek, in his white shirt and clip-on bowtie, made a beeline with his head for my belly button, and I rubbed the back of his neck and folded his collar down. Justine moved more slowly but, despite her teenage detachment, couldn’t hide a faint smile. I reached out to her and she came close enough to let me pull her against us.

  Gloria and Jude held each other in a sustained embrace and, when they broke, it looked as if Gloria was coaxing Jude towards me. Jude whispered something to Gloria, then glanced sideways at me. That’s all right, Jude, you don’t have to do anything. There’s too much history.

  I watched Larry Delacord drift into a huddle with the school district team in the back of the courtroom. I was wrong-way Corrigan; they’d lateralled the ball to me and I’d just run it across the opponent’s goal line. From the jerking up and down of Mr. Washington’s head, I guessed that he was chewing out Larry.

  Lill strode up the aisle with her cape draped over her arm and a sly grin on her face. Confirming the neighborhood’s worst fears, she gave Jude a quick kiss on the lips and the two of them hugged. As the kids let go of me, Lill came over.

  “That’s powerful karma,” she whispered.

  “I changed my mind.”

  “You didn’t change anything,” she said. “You were always on the kids’ side.”

  Warren stood at a distance, alternately crushing, then puffing out the top of his Johnny’s Flowers cap, looking like he’d just lost his job.

  “Cuh … can you come here?” Larry was tapping me on the shoulder.

  We marched past Warren and back to Mr. Washington’s coterie. The Sweets and the poll watchers had entered the back of the courtroom and were staring at me like my feet were cloven. Mr. Washington’s brow was sweaty and his breath stale. The wider he opened his eyes, the whiter they became.

  “When friends of mine made lawyer jokes, I always stopped them,” he said. “They reminded me too much of black jokes. But you want to know something?” He stabbed his thick finger into the space between us. “Your testimony was a bad lawyer joke.”

  “Slow down, sir. Those aren’t your kids. What business is it of yours to lynch their mother?”

  “Don’t talk to me about lynching.” The veins on his neck were like ropes. “Or didn’t you notice? I’m not some blackface clown.” He unbuttoned his shirt and spread it open to show his skin. “You’re a coward, Mr. Attorney, and I don’t know what’s worse, a fairy mother or a castrated father.”

  I started toward him, I wanted to slug him, push him ass-back-wards over one of the benches, but someone grabbed me by the shoulders.

  “Cyrus, cool it.” It was Warren.

  “Don’t you eyeball me,” Mr. Washington said, pressing the tips of his fingers against my chest. I struggled to get free of Warren’s grip.

  “Back off, sir, right now,” Warren said, “or I’ll let him go and the two of us will lay you out. Understand?”

  I yelled. “You’re a dangerous man, Mr. Principal.”

  “Hey, what’s going on here?” Someone must have called security because a deputy sheriff in a beige and green uniform stepped between us.

  “This guy’s an asshole,” Mr. Washington said.

  “This guy’s threatening my family,” I said.

  The deputy put a stiff arm against each of us, and I was relieved that I wasn’t going to get the chance to swing at him. Washington had a four-inch height advantage and about forty pounds on me. “What kind of case are you involved in here?”

  “Lesbian mother,” Mr. Washington blurted at the same time I said, “My kids.”

  The deputy looked around, surveying the participants. “What’s your role here, sir?” he asked Mr. Washington.

  “I’m a principal in the Seattle School District.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m the father.”

  The deputy rolled his eyes. It was clear he didn’t get it but he didn’t care. “You stay on this side,” he said, pointing Mr. Washington to his seat, “and you come over here.” Gripping me roughly by the arm, he set me down in the front row. Not sure who or what Warren was, he made him sit alone on the other side of the aisle. Then the deputy walked toward the door to the judge’s chambers, his holster drooped off one hip, his rayon pants so tight in the butt they were shiny.

  After a minute or so, the deputy emerged and took a seat about five rows back so he could watch all three of us. Then the bailiff announced that the judge wanted to see counsel in chambers. As they reached the door, Gloria opened it and let Larry enter first.

  I’d been grounded and I motioned for the kids to sit with me. When I’d told them stories as object lessons about the fights I used to get into playing basketball and football, Justine said she couldn’t imagine me fighting with anyone. The truth was that this little scrap with Washington was nothing more complicated than male ego. Just when I thought I’d evolved to the next level, I’d suffered another relapse.

  “Were you going to hit him, Dad?” Derek said.

  “Probably. Maybe I’ll get him at parents’ night.”

  Derek looked over my shoulder, hurling malevolence at the principal.

  “He’s just fighting for what he believes in,” I said.

  Clients always hated conferences in chambers. It confirmed their suspicion that the system was rigged, that the attorneys all knew each other and play-acted for the benefit of the clients while the real deals were made behind closed doors. Judge Purnell was a cigar smoker and I imagined he was most of the way through one of his stogies by now; the attorneys would be begging for air. Larry was at a definite disadvantage in this format, where there were no assigned turns and you had to just blurt things out.

  Then the door opened and Larry emerged, followed by Gloria, who was shaking her hair like she’d just broken loose from a wrestling hold. The aroma of Havana wafted into the courtroom. Just as the hydraulic pump on the door was about to let it smack shut, the Judge appeared and everyone stood. He gathered his robe in his fist and trudged up to his chair.

  “Sit down.”

  The judge wiped the cigar juice out of the corners of his mouth, fumbled with a piece of paper, then looked out at the audience. “This has been a first for me, folks. I’ve seen parents fight over the china, the station wagon, the woman next door, but I’ve never seen a custody hearing where the husband testified for the wife. It’s probably a signal I should be getting out of this business. Let me get to the point.” He looked at the clock again. “Miss Martin’s attorney has moved in chamber for a dismissal of the petition and I
’m going to rule on her motion right here. I don’t know if Miss Martin can be a good mother or not. I’ve read all the reports and, as usual, no help there. Four experts, five opinions. But I’m not going to play God.” He glared at everyone at the front tables before continuing. “It doesn’t sound like the kids are squawking. It’s not my brand but then I don’t have to smoke it. Here’s what I’m going to do. The petition to take away Miss Martin’s rights as custodian of these kids is denied. As cockamamie as it seems, I’m going to change the dissolution decree to give the parents joint custody. You two can divide up the time any way you want. Miss Martin, you owe him one. I want the parents and the kids to appear before me six months from today. If necessary, I’ll play God and the devil both if things aren’t right.” He looked out at Mr. Washington and his people. “If things go to hell in a handbasket before six months is up, somebody better speak up. Case dismissed.” Jude had accused the law of being blind, and maybe she was, but she could sure find her way around in the dark.

  As the judge gathered up his notes and whispered something to the bailiff, Jude and her attorney shook hands under the table. I spread my arms to cover the laps next to me, and Derek and Justine grabbed on. I had no hand to wipe the rebel tear that trickled down my left cheek.

  21.

  The court’s decision didn’t cause so much as a ripple in the world at large. There was no article in the paper, no TV or radio story, no change in the price of local stocks.

  In the smaller world in which I dwelt, the decision was a veritable tsunami. Rather than pummeling the shoreline, though, it had a remarkably cleansing effect. Derek insisted on staying at Seward even though I’d offered to transfer him to Stevens. His grades, which had slipped badly with hand-written warnings at the bottom of his cards, started inching back up. All to Mr. Washington’s dismay, I was sure. His first playground fight was with a kid who’d called him a fag.