“No wonder Josh picked your ad out of the Dreamchild newsletter,” I remarked, remembering Ellie’s glow of surprised pleasure when she told me how Josh had selected Amber out of all the birth mothers in the listings. “He must have written the damned thing in the first place.”
She didn’t bother confirming something so obvious, just walked back and forth along the cold wooden floor, her long toes reaching for the boards like prehensile appendages.
She was thinking, searching for words to explain the unexplainable, to justify the unjustifiable.
Then she found them. “It was like I told you,” she began. The insolent stare was gone; her eyes refused to meet mine. “We went out on a date. We had dinner, and the next thing I knew, he was ripping my clothes off. I told him I didn’t want to, but he forced me. Then when I told him I was pregnant, he said he’d adopt the baby but his wife couldn’t know it was really his. So he set up the whole thing with Doc Scanlon and Marla, made me pretend I’d never seen him before.”
I was having a hard time accepting Josh Greenspan as a rapist, but even if Amber had consented to sex, it made sense that Josh would try to protect Ellie from knowledge of his affair with another woman. Especially another woman with working ovaries.
I decided to proceed as if I believed Amber’s story—at least for the moment.
“So you decided to get revenge,” I said. “Set him up to believe you’d give him the baby, then change your mind at the last minute. Pay him back for raping you. Good plan, Amber,” I complimented my client, “except of course that you’re hurting Ellie even more than Josh and she certainly didn’t rape you.”
Amber turned her face toward the window, where the April sun struck the crystal wind chime, making long rainbow streaks of color against the white wall.
“He hurt me,” she said in a low growl. “He pinned me down with his big hairy arms and pushed himself into me. Then when I told him I was pregnant he grabbed me and—” Amber ran long fingers against her arm, rubbing herself as if to soothe the pain of that long-ago assault.
“He said he had to have the baby. He said he’d pay anything, anything I asked for. His eyes were crazy.” She turned her own blue eyes on me, begging for understanding. “And after what he did to me, I didn’t want his baby, so I said yes. And then I met Ellie, and I—”
She dropped her eyes, let her hands fall to her sides. “I wanted so much to make her happy.”
She stood in silence for a moment, seeming to go deep inside herself. I’d never seen Amber so naked, so vulnerable.
“It’s not revenge,” she said at last. She turned the full force of her intense blue eyes on me. “It’s the baby. He doesn’t look like Josh, he looks like Scott.”
“So your wanting him back depends on the outcome of a DNA test?” I asked. “Marla’s petitioned the Family Court to order one, so we’ll know soon enough who the father really is.”
She shook her head. “That’s what I thought at first,” she replied, her voice a near whisper. “But the more I think about Jimmy, the more I know I can’t live without him no matter who the father is. I want my baby, Ms. Jameson. I want him more than anything in the world.”
Jimmy. It came back to that, to the silly name she’d called her unborn child when he nestled in her womb. If she hadn’t named him, or if she’d called him Adam as a reminder that he was destined to become a Greenspan, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
“Could I see the baby’s room?” I asked. It was an abrupt change of subject, but I wanted an antidote to the image of Josh forcing his heavy body onto Amber’s.
“I want to be able to tell the judge that you and Scott are ready to give the baby a good home,” I explained, trying to soften the investigative aspect of the situation.
Amber ushered me into the back bedroom with a triumphant smile. All the stuffed animals from Amber’s room at the group home were lined up on a white shelf unit. A white crib with a Sesame Street mobile hanging over it sat in one corner of the room, while a matching changing table and chest of drawers flanked the opposite wall. A baby quilt with the letters of the alphabet appliquéed in pastels hung over the crib.
“Nice,” I said.
There were cardboard cartons with a Kansas return address sitting open in one corner of the room. “Looks like you’re getting baby presents already,” I remarked.
“From my folks in Kansas City,” Amber said. “And my sister in Baltimore.”
“Scott’s parents live here on Staten Island, don’t they?” I asked. “I imagine they’re pretty excited about their new grandchild.”
Was I cross-examining my client or just making polite conversation? Amber looked at me as if she wasn’t sure, and I couldn’t have sworn which I was doing myself.
“Not really,” she said in a small voice. “I wish they were. I’d love the baby to have grandparents close by, but they don’t get along with Scott. They think his marrying me was a mistake.”
“Amber, are you sure about this?” I blurted out. I looked at the nest she’d made for her offspring and realized it was a monumentally stupid question. Sure or not, Amber wanted this child and had made ready for it. What else did the law require? What else could I require?
She gave a long sigh. “Yes,” she said, her tone firm. “I know I can raise Jimmy with Scott’s help. I’m sorry about Josh and Ellie, I really am, but I can’t let them keep him or I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”
“Look, it’s better this way,” I said for the fifth time. “The last thing that kid needs is to become the Baby Jessica of Brooklyn.”
“Baby who? Oh, that case in the Midwest. God, that was awful,” Dorinda said, her eyes widening. “Can you imagine raising a child for two-and-a-half years and then—”
“My point exactly,” I cut in. My finger hit the counter as punctuation for my words. “If those adoptive parents had given back the baby as soon as the birth mother changed her mind, they could have done their grieving and started over with a baby they could keep. And that poor kid wouldn’t have been carried off crying for Mommy and getting used to a new name.”
“You make it sound so simple,” my old friend objected. She was wiping glasses on a vintage fifties dishtowel with a red-and-blue rooster print. Her long, wheat-colored hair hung in a thick single braid behind her head. She could have auditioned for a revival of I Remember Mama and gotten the part hands down.
“I didn’t say it was simple,” I muttered. “Look, just pour me another iced coffee, will you?”
“You drink too much coffee,” Dorinda pronounced. “I made some cold red zinger. You could—”
“I said iced coffee and I meant iced coffee,” I replied. “This court appearance is the worst thing I’ve faced since Rojean’s arraignment. I’m going to need caffeine and plenty of it, so zing me no zingers.”
“O-kay,” the proprietor of the Morning Glory Luncheonette sang as she strode to the oversized jar filled with the healing brew. She scooped ice into an old-fashioned soda glass and let the dark brown liquid flow into it. My mouth watered just looking at it; Dorinda, for all her pretenses to running a health food restaurant, had invested in a nice blend of Colombian, Javanese, and French Roast that stood up to ice very well. Of course, she had me as her consultant on what she loftily referred to as “stimulants.”
“Sure, the Greenspans will feel terrible for right now,” I went on, “but they’ll get over it. They’ll find another baby, and maybe the next Adam won’t come with a cloud on the title.”
The flippancy in my tone reminded me forcibly of Marla; I took a long swallow of the cold coffee to cover my sudden embarrassment.
Dorinda’s gray eyes narrowed. “Oh, so you’re doing the Greenspans a favor?”
I addressed my next remarks to the Formica counter. “The law’s the law. All I’m doing is my job.”
Why did I feel like a used car dealer?
“Cass, I can’t believe you.” Dorinda’s normally soft voice was raised, and she shook her head. “It�
��s not that easy. Here’s a woman who wants a child so badly it hurts. She finally holds this baby in her arms, feeds it, smells it—and you think she can just give him up because the law says she should?”
“Hey, adoption is about taking chances,” I countered. “Everybody who adopts has to face the possibility of the birth parents changing their minds. Thirty days isn’t a long time in the law. Once that’s over—”
My old friend came back with a one-liner I couldn’t argue with, couldn’t explain away, couldn’t top.
“Thirty days is a long time if you’re only a month old.”
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious
I said the words to myself as I stepped back from the curb to let a passing car splash the area where I’d been walking a second earlier. The rain had stopped, but there was water everywhere, dirty, muddy, ugly New York snow-melt on top of April showers.
Mud-luscious, my——! The man was a fool, I decided, as I surveyed the huge puddle separating sidewalk from street in the crosswalk at Court and Atlantic. How was I going to get around this without damaging my Italian leather shoes?
Puddle-wonderful. What was so wonderful about puddles?
Of course the man who wrote those words wasn’t trying to propel himself over great brown puddles of probably toxic mud without dirtying his new pumps. The man was talking about childhood, when mud really was fun and puddles were wonderful and you ran out to play in new red galoshes and floated paper boats on the high-flooded streets of your small town.
He wasn’t talking about making your way to court to take a baby away from parents who’d already had a bris for their son, who’d held him and rocked him and sung to him and taken thousands upon thousands of pictures.
I walked into the courthouse at 360 Adams Street the back way, through the County Clerk’s office and into the corridor leading to the single courtroom used by the Surrogate. Marla was already there, her possessions strewn on the front bench as though she’d spread out a picnic lunch. Her lavender briefcase was open; her butter-soft teal-colored leather bag sat next to her, its open top a gaping mouth, inviting pickpockets; papers sat in piles on the empty bench around her.
She looked up as I entered, staring at me with her game face. Hard, closed, prepared for battle.
I had expected as much. Whatever friendship we had shared was over now; we each had a client to represent, a job to do. And Marla couldn’t be blamed for resenting my role in Amber’s change of heart. Just as I couldn’t blame her for Josh’s claiming paternity.
Unless, of course, Marla had known all along that Josh—
Which would explain Marla’s jumpiness, her desire to get an unenforceable consent out of Amber, her wariness about my meeting alone with my client.
“Let’s talk outside,” she said. Her hammered silver bracelets clanked as she rose; she wore the same silver outfit she’d had on the day we first agreed to work together.
She walked me to the end of the corridor, away from our courtroom. Oblivious to the No Smoking sign, she lit up, took a long drag, and let her words float out on a carpet of smoke.
“How much does she want?”
My response was less than brilliant. “What?”
“How much, Cass?” Marla persisted. “I know that’s what this is about. The little bitch thinks she can hold Josh up for more money. I hate to admit it, but she’s right. Josh and Ellie will pay another three thousand, but that’s it. You tell her that, Cass. That’s it. Three thousand and not a penny more.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I stood there stunned, silent, stupid while a hundred thoughts whizzed around my head like mosquitoes.
A nice simple adoption. A piece of cake.
Money. Amber wants money. That’s what all this is about.
Marla could be disbarred for saying this.
I could be disbarred for listening to it.
“Amber doesn’t want money,” I said, my voice rising. Hoping against hope that my indignant denials were the truth. “She wants the baby back. She and Scott—”
“Spare me, Cass,” Marla interrupted. “Let’s cut through the bullshit and get down to business. The only reason Amber married that bozo was to get herself a husband at exactly the right time. It was a brilliant move; I take my hat off to both of you, and I’m willing to pay for my mistake in letting it happen. Just give me the bottom line.”
It took a moment for the full import of my old friend’s words to sink in, and when they did, the color rose to my face. “What do you mean you take your hat off to both of us? You really think I advised Amber to get married when she did, don’t you?”
“I don’t think she did it on her own,” Marla answered with a grim smile. “She’s a clever little bitch, but that took real legal genius.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said with all the sarcasm I could muster. “That means a lot coming from you.”
“Just tell your client she can take the three thousand or face the fight of her life,” Marla pronounced. She dropped her cigarette to the floor and crushed it with her silver pump.
“If you think I’m going to convey a completely illegal offer to buy this baby, you’re—”
“Oh, you’ll convey it, all right,” Marla said with rock-hard certainty. “It’s what your client’s been waiting for and you know it.”
“I wonder how Judge Feinberg would react to this little conversation,” I said to Marla’s retreating back. “I can’t see her approving of lawyers selling babies outside her courtroom.”
Marla’s eyes held a malicious glint as she shot back, “What conversation, Cass? It’s your word against mine.” Her heels clicked on the pavement, and she swung the courthouse door open with a wide flourish.
And the hell of it was that I didn’t really know how Amber would react. I couldn’t convey the offer the same way I’d tell a criminal client about a plea bargain proposed by a district attorney, or the way I’d discuss a settlement in a civil case. What Marla had proposed was illegal, pure and simple.
But I wanted to hear Amber turn it down. I wanted to wave the money under her nose and watch her lip curl in disdain. I wanted to know she hadn’t set this whole thing up just to squeeze a few more bucks out of Josh Greenspan.
So I went to the courtroom where she and Scott sat in the second row and motioned them into the hall.
Amber was dressed in schoolgirl mode, circa 1954: white blouse, plaid skirt, flat shoes. Her lush, thick hair was pulled back and tied with a big plaid bow. She looked about seventeen, and she carried a diaper bag with a big plaid Scotty dog appliquéd on the front. Scott, too, was dressed for court, wearing a suit and tie—a conservative tie—and black comfort-soled shoes that could pass at a distance for business wing tips. I noted with approval that the skeleton earring was gone from his right ear.
“I want to be very clear about this,” I said, letting my voice drop to a register I hoped conveyed extreme seriousness. “Marla just made me an offer I ought to take straight to the District Attorney. And the only reason I’m not is the slim chance that you two would really consider taking it. Because if you would, then I’m off this case. And I need to know exactly what kind of people I’m representing here.”
I laid out the offer. Three thousand dollars in return for Amber and Scott walking into the courtroom and withdrawing the revocation of consent. Three thousand dollars for letting Jimmy remain Adam Greenspan.
Before I’d finished talking, Scott was bouncing like a rapper, punctuating his movements with grunts of “No way. No fuckin’ way. Sick fuck thinks he can buy our baby?”
Amber shook her head, a pitying smile playing around her lips. “That sounds like Josh,” she said. “Money solves everything, according to him. But the answer is no, Ms. Jameson. Absolutely not. I won’t take money for my baby.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” I said, relief weakening my knees. As I walked back to the courtroom, I reflected that I had an ethical obligation to report the conversat
ion I’d had with Marla to somebody. To Judge Feinberg, to the Kings County District Attorney. To somebody.
The door opened behind me; I turned. Ellie came in first, Josh holding the door behind her. Her face was devoid of makeup; she looked like a woman recovering from chemotherapy. At the court’s insistence, she had brought the baby.
He was tinier than I remembered, and he was almost a month older than he’d been when I’d seen him last. He lay in her arms, sleeping. The still center of a storm that would sweep him forever into one family, cut him off from another.
The temperature around my body dropped twenty degrees; the sweat that had formed on my skin froze into a cold shroud.
Everybody knows the Bible story of Solomon and the baby claimed by two mothers. Everyone thinks they know how the mothers felt, how Solomon felt. Does anybody wonder what the lawyer for the mother felt?
I knew.
“All rise,” the bailiff said. We rose. I gave a hasty, guilty glance back at the Greenspans. Ellie looked nearly transparent; Josh was the enigma. All the energy seemed to have been drained from him. He held Ellie’s thin hand in his big paw and stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge Amber’s existence. He lumbered out of his chair when Judge Feinberg took the bench, then fell back like a rag doll. The masculine force of his personality seemed to have seeped out of him.
It was my motion, which meant I argued first. The advantage: I could set the stage, characterize the facts, define the issues. Disadvantage: I laid out my cards for Marla to trump when it was her turn.
I needed something to grab the court’s attention.
“Joshua Greenspan lied to this Court,” I began. “He also lied to his wife. He pretended to be the disinterested adoptive father of this child when the fact was that he raped Amber Lundquist while married to Ellie Greenspan.”
I sensed a stir at the opposing counsel table, but didn’t bother to look over at Marla. The judge’s eyes opened a little wider, which was all I cared about.
I continued my indictment, letting some of my indignation at Josh’s clumsy attempt to buy Amber off fuel my argument. “He used Amber as an unpaid surrogate mother to produce a biological child he intended to manipulate this Court into letting him adopt. He filed perjurious affidavits, he concealed vital information from the social workers preparing the pre-adoption investigation. And, yet, for all this—”
Fresh Kills Page 8
