The Mongol Reply

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  While they read, Reece took a moment to size up each of the Tullys. Tom Tully radiated aggression as a lambent energy. Serena Tully was a striking woman, her white blonde hair, blunt cut, rippling with each movement like a curtain made of snow. Small dimples bracketed her full downswept mouth like parentheses. Her eyes were as large and bright as a pair of topaz stones.

  “How long do you expect this to take, Doctor?” Tom asked.

  “Depending on how many records have to be retrieved, I’d guess a few weeks. That’s if things stay as they are. Right now this is the only evaluation I’m doing.”

  “This thing about the initial retainer being only an estimate. Do you mean this could cost even more?”

  “That’s possible, Mr. Tully. When I begin to investigate a family situation, I have no idea what I’ll find. It’s like exploratory surgery. Sometimes I come across things that are a problem that no one else has noticed before. Sometimes I may require a consultation with another expert, such as a learning disability specialist or someone to diagnose hyperactivity. I just don’t know what I’ll find.”

  “What if there isn’t any more money?”

  “Then the evaluation comes to a halt until funds can be located. I’ll let you know how we’re doing against the retainer. If it’s exceeded, it won’t be a surprise. There’ll be time to make arrangements. I think my estimate is a good one. It should cover everything, but it is only an estimate, not a guaranteed ceiling.”

  “Tom, where did the money come from? We didn’t have that much in the accounts. Have you sold anything?”

  “Where I get my money from is none of your damn business. Nothing about my life is any of your damn business. You lost that right a long time ago, bitch.”

  “Whoa, let’s hold it right there. Those kinds of questions can be asked by your attorneys. The purpose of this meeting is for me to give you information about what I’m going to be doing. You should be asking me the questions, not each other. Can we continue?”

  Tully stared his wife down and she broke off her gaze. She switched over to Reece and asked, “I have a question, Dr. Reece. All the stuff about confidentiality is pretty confusing. Could you go over it one piece at a time?”

  “Okay, the first piece has to do with the children. Regardless of what happens in court, you two will continue to be these children’s parents.” Reece halted as he caught Tully sneering at that thought. “I want to protect those relationships if I can. I will explain to the children that I cannot guarantee that what they say to me can be kept secret. If they are concerned about either of you finding out what they said to my question, they can tell me that they are uncomfortable and would rather not answer. If they won’t answer questions, knowing why might tell me just as much. I am the children’s agent, not yours. What is best for them is my concern, not what is best for either of you.”

  “Thank God,” Serena Tully whispered. Her husband looked at her balefully.

  “As for you, there is no confidentiality here. Anything you tell me can and most likely will be discussed with the other side or third parties for corroboration. If it’s relevant to the question of custody then it will find its way into my report which will be sent to the court. When I send out consents for information, I’ll ask you both to sign them. It may not be legally necessary, but it alleviates anxiety on the part of the people we’re asking to send records and will speed the process. You did bring the list of collaterals that I requested?” Both of them nodded.

  The Tullys returned to reading the fee agreement. When they were done, Reece asked them each to sign one. He countersigned and gave them copies for their own records. He set Mr. Tully up in the waiting room with a lengthy questionnaire to fill out. An hour later, Tom Tully knocked on the open office door.

  “Here’s the questionnaire and the retainer,” he said, handing Reece a fat envelope. Reece invited him in, counted the money and gave Tully a receipt. Then he directed him to another office to take some psychological tests.

  Sitting in his office, he stared at the stack of bills and wondered where it had come from. He had never before been paid in cash.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  There was a knock on the door. “Come in.”

  Serena Tully opened the door and stood there with the clipboard in her hands. “I’ve finished the questionnaire.”

  Reece stood up, took the clipboard and motioned her to a seat. Serena tucked her purse out of the way, crossed a nyloned leg over the other and sat at attention. Her heart was pounding in her chest. This man was the key to getting her children back. How to impress him? Serena knew this feeling well, the frantic search for clues to the mystery at hand, the mystery that occurred whenever she met someone new. How to be pleasing and get by on the gifts of others. She didn’t think he was going to help her out. When was she going to stop this shit?

  “Let me look over the questionnaire, use that as a start for the interview.” Reece took a yellow marker and ran it through answers that interested him. He passed some blank consent forms over to her. “Sign and date these. One will be for the school, one for the nanny, one for the therapist who treated you as an adolescent, one for the one who saw you about ten years ago and one for your current therapist.”

  After she passed the consents back, Reece double-checked them and set them aside.

  “Let me start by asking you to tell me your side of the events of the past week. Why do you think your husband had you excluded from the home and from seeing the children?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t told me. He just yells at me, calls me names, threatens me and tells me I’m going to get mine.”

  “Why is he so angry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s pretty extreme behavior and you have no idea where it’s coming from?”

  “It could be anything. You have to understand my husband. He’s a bomb that doesn’t tick. It’ll go off, that’s for sure. You just don’t know when. He’s always angry. He thinks that everyone is out to get him. That he’s never treated fairly. He thought he should have been a Hall of Famer instead of a special teams player. He should have made the big money. Things never go the way Tom thinks they should and it’s always somebody else’s fault.”

  “That sounds pretty hard to live with. Why are you still in this marriage?”

  “I could tell you it’s for the children, but that wouldn’t really be true. Well, not all of the truth. I’m still here because starting over and having to deal with Tom just seemed too hard and too scary. I’ve never done the hard things in my life, the scary things. I was always looking for someone else to do them for me. In the beginning, Tommy did that. He isn’t afraid of anything. I think he got bored with me. Instead of rescuing me, he became my latest mistake. The older I get, the bigger my stack of regrets, the less energy I have to try to do anything about them. So here I am.”

  “You seem to understand yourself pretty well, but that hasn’t helped you one bit.”

  “No. I had a therapist once who said, ‘Insight changes nothing. It just tells you the name of the crossroads you’re at. Change is courage, moving your feet in some direction.’”

  “What about suicide? That’s a move in a direction.”

  “I haven’t tried that one in about ten years.”

  “Tell me about your attempts. The transcript of the hearing they held said you attempted suicide twice. I think it was your sister who talked about it.”

  Serena smiled and shook her head. “My sister. Did she say that I tried to commit suicide after I found out that my boyfriend was sleeping with her too? That blew me away. I was already in trouble, drinking and smoking dope. That’s one way I learned not to be afraid all the time. Bobby liked me best when I was fucked up, so I got fucked up all the time. I was pretty rowdy when I was fucked up. There was nothing I wouldn’t do if you dared me and I had enough shit in my system. I danced naked on the altar at St. Mary’s. I’d have had sex with Bobby right there and then, only he was too afraid to get it up. My
sister and I have never been close. It’s a real jealousy thing. There’s never been enough of anything for both of us to be happy. Bobby made me happy so she had to have him. When I found out I just took more pills than usual. Sleep the big sleep; stop feeling bad. Feel nothing at all.”

  “What about the second attempt?”

  “I was working as a model. I’d been having a relationship with my agent. He was starting to pull out of it, getting interested in a younger girl, a fresh face, a new look. I pulled the same stunt. I cut my wrists and almost died. My sister found me and called the ambulance. I still wonder why she did that. That was the stupidest thing I ever did.” She extended her hands in front of her and looked longingly at them.

  “I had beautiful hands. Some of my best work was as a hand model for jewelers.” She turned them over and looked at the slick rubbery scars across each wrist. “Now I look like Frankenstein.” She looked up at Reece. “The second one was hard to do. I cut the first one so deep, I almost didn’t have the strength to hold the razor.”

  “Why haven’t you done it now? You seem to have lost just about everything.”

  “Have I lost it? It’s been stolen from me, but I know who the thief is. You’re the judge. I’m counting on you to get it back for me.”

  “And if I don’t, what then?” Her candor was veering dangerously close to becoming self-destructive. Nothing new about that, Reece thought.

  “I don’t know. I won’t kill myself. Not for myself, but for the kids. They’ll need me even more if Tom has them. He hasn’t a clue how to raise kids. I couldn’t abandon them like that. I brought them into this world. I probably shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Why?”

  “Mistakes number two and three. Things with Tom were already bad. I thought being a family would make them better. I look back at that now and wonder what possessed me to think that. Maybe being a mother would make me feel better. It did. It was the first thing I felt good at. But I should have left Tom and had them on my own. I didn’t, and now I can’t leave them behind.”

  Morgan Reece put his pen down and stared out the window. The bullet train of grief was making another run through him. Roaring past every station. The wind that cored him left nothing standing. Reece searched for his voice. When the wind died down, he spoke.

  “After each suicide attempt, you spent some time in therapy. What was your motivation for being in therapy at this time?”

  “Things were getting worse with Tom. I asked him to get into therapy with me, try to turn things around. He wouldn’t have any part of it. He thinks he has no problems. The world has problems, but not Thomas Drew Tully. I went anyway. I wouldn’t have made it this far without it. It’s been a lifesaver. When I need support or tips on how to deal with Tom, Doctor Tepper has always been there.”

  “Simon Tepper?”

  “Yes. Do you know him?”

  “Only by sight. We’ve been at a few of the same conferences.” Simon Tepper was a psychiatrist who ran a treatment center in Fairfax.

  “What attracted you to Tom Tully?”

  “He wanted me. Bad. He was famous. Sort of. The way any professional athlete is. He knew what he wanted and he went for it. He had all the energy for life that I didn’t have. I attached myself to that.”

  “Did it ever work?”

  “For a while. I did everything I could to please him, but it wasn’t possible. There was never enough of anything to please Tom, to live up to how he thought things should go for him. He turned his rage against me and then it all went bad. The baby delayed things, that’s all. A son named after him, a fresh start. We were going to be the perfect family. Well, we weren’t, we were just real. With the morning feedings and the shit and the vomit and the colic and the ear infections. It never got better again.”

  “Your husband got this emergency order on the basis of an affidavit that you had threatened to cut off his penis while he slept and that you had a fight with him where you tried to scratch his face. The nanny reported that.”

  Serena Tully looked at Morgan Reece as if he’d just sprouted a giant sunflower from his forehead. “He said I did what? Cut off his penis? I never said such a thing. I never even thought such as thing. And the nanny said I had a fight with Tom. This is rich. This shows you how well Tom has thought this all out.

  “You asked me why is he doing all of this? Because he wants a divorce and he wants to hurt me and leave me with nothing. I think he’s got a girlfriend and he’s ready to switch and he doesn’t want me to get anything. This is all choreographed.

  “Let me tell you about our nanny. Felicia Hurtado. Tom comes home one day about three months ago and says we need a nanny for the kids. I need to get out of the house and get a job. We need to bring in more money. So why are we paying for a nanny? Let me get a part-time job, work while Tommy’s in school. Put Tina in a daycare program. No, got to have this nanny. Now I see why he’s got her in the house. She’s my replacement after I’m locked out. That way Tom doesn’t have to take care of the kids. You want to know about our ‘fight’? Tom was after me for sex. I didn’t want it. I was pissed off at him over the nanny thing. He got me in the kitchen. He grabbed my wrists and pulled them behind my back, then he was making gross noises while he told me what he wanted me to do. Felicia asked him something, he told her to come into the kitchen. I was furious that he wouldn’t let me go, so I kicked him and told him I’d scratch his eyes out. Of course Felicia was in the doorway when that happened.”

  “What about your sister’s report of an invitation to a dinner for the whole family? They show up and you haven’t prepared anything.”

  “That’s another part of Tom’s plan to make me look like a nutcase. He wanted a big family dinner, so he suggested a date. I told him fine. I’d shop the week before, do all the cooking. He said he’d tell Amber and his parents. Only he told them a different date than he told me. So yes they all showed up and yes I looked like a complete fool. I didn’t want to embarrass myself any more by accusing Tom of doing it on purpose, so I just apologized to everyone. When I confronted him afterwards, he denied that he’d told me the wrong date. I thought that I was going crazy, I’d misheard him and it was all my fault. I never suspected that he’d done it on purpose as part of a scheme to completely discredit me.”

  Reece had heard stories like this before. Gaslighting or paranoia? Would he know at the end of his tour of the funhouse?

  “The whole idea of me being violent with ‘Tom the Bomb’ Tully is laughable. He’s a guy who made his reputation as a completely nuts special teamer. The hardest hitter in the league. If there’s anyone who’s violent, it’s Tom. He’s never as happy as when he’s hitting something.”

  “Has he ever been involved in any assaults on anyone? Bar fights? Traffic incidents? Has he ever used a weapon?”

  “Tom has had so many run-ins, I couldn’t begin to tell you.”

  “Has he ever been arrested?”

  “No. Tom is a very scary guy when he’s lost it. Most people back down. The couple of times people haven’t backed down, he’s goaded them into throwing the first punch. Both of those guys went to the hospital, but Tom got off on self-defense.”

  “As for a weapon, he’s never used one. He has a couple of guns at home. Some huge revolver. He called it ‘Dirty Harry!’”

  “A .44 Magnum?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. He said he thought we should have something for self-protection. I was very uncomfortable having that gun in the house with two little children. I know there was a time that Tom slept with the gun under the mattress. He never talked about it. He’d get it and put it there after he thought I was asleep. I guess he pissed someone off and was worried about them coming after him. But that wasn’t too long and he put the gun away.”

  “You said he had two guns.”

  “Yeah, the other was a gift from some fan. It was an automatic. The metalwork was all engraved with patterns, you know filigree—it was actually beautiful if you didn’t think about what it
was. The handles were made out of wood, really polished with a strong grain. Black walnut I think, and the wood was carved. One side was a football player and the other had Tom’s name and number. He called it a presentation piece. It had a wood and velvet case. Tom kept it on the mantle. He never took that one out of the case.”

  “Tell me about your children. How would you describe them? What are their strengths? What is hard for them?”

  Serena leaned forward and her eyes brightened for the first time all morning. “Tommy is a typical little boy. He’s inquisitive, adventuresome, mischievous. He’s not a troublemaker though. He has a good heart. He’s affectionate and he’s very protective of his little sister. He’s got his father’s genes for athletics. He’s already playing up a year on the soccer team. He starts at forward. His father isn’t too happy about that. He wants him to play football, period. He’s a happy kid most of the time. What’s hard for him? He has trouble sitting still. I think he might have problems with homework, but he doesn’t get any yet. The teachers haven’t commented on it as a problem but I watch it. When he’s tired at night he loves being read to and he goes straight off to sleep.

  “Tina’s a lot like me. She’s been a quiet, shy child ever since she was a baby. She used to startle easily and it took forever to breast feed her. She’s very observant. I think she’s very bright. She thinks about everything, but you won’t hear about it for a while. Then out of nowhere, boom, she’ll make a pronouncement. She’s artistic. She loves to color and paint. Bright colors. She doesn’t seem to be athletic, but it’s too soon to tell. I think she’s a happy kid too. She gets scared a lot more easily than her brother, even when he was her age.”