I can do this. This sensation is so new; I almost don’t recognize it. I can take care of my own child, and I know what to do. The thought forms into a mantra, my birthday gift to myself.
On Tuesday morning the phone rings early, before I can muster myself to call Patty. I pick up the phone from beside the bed, though I wince even turning my left leg.
“I need to run some errands today and want to know when you’ll bring Dawn back.” Her voice is studiously friendly.
“I can’t bring her back today. We had an accident at the river.” Bad start. I rush into the silence and explain in excruciating detail what happened, ending with the doctor’s instruction not to drive for a week.
“I’ll pick her up then.”
“No – don’t. I can take care of her, and I want to do this. You need to start trusting that I can and will take care of my own child.” Karen, you fool, never ever tell your sister what she must do.
She reminds me I am not mobile, I can’t even cook for Dawn, or bathe her or dress her. I tell her confidently that I can do all those things and will. What if you need to go back to the hospital? I tell her I will find a ride if that happens. I go too far and tell her that Dawn wants to stay here, which is probably a dare to her. Although we go back and forth, asserting why she should stay or go (“she has day camp this week with Ian”), neither of us declares war. She tells me she will talk to Doug and call me back in a day or so. That’s a good outcome; Doug has always been the more reasonable of the two of them and he has nothing to prove to me.
I install my “rig” as I will call it, tightening the Velcro strips at my thigh and calf. Hoisting myself upright and putting weight on my legs, I realize almost immediately that I cannot walk on this leg without a shooting pain. I can bend it with the rig, but walking is an agony. Dawn watches me intently and offers to get me breakfast, but she cannot reach the cereal shelf. I limp into our kitchen and watch in admiration as Dawn brings berries and milk to the table for us. I realize that tomorrow is my volunteer day at Rock Creek Farm and call to explain why I cannot come in this week. As I wonder how to fill our day Dawn tells me she wants to paint together. She clears the breakfast table and brings her own watercolor set to the table. She even brings two bowls of water to the table, one for her and one for me. “Paint here with me,” she asks, knowing I usually paint at my easel, and I agree to use the table with her.
She goes to work immediately, mixing red and brown together in a small puddle that morphs into a dragonfly on the paper. I find myself watching her rather than painting myself. Children don’t stare at blank paper as adults do, waiting for inspiration. Whatever it is that edits, restrains, inhibits, or judges our impressions has not yet formed, and expression blooms.
I decide to paint a portrait of Patty. I begin with a full face, but it forces me in too close, so I lay that aside and begin with a full body portrait of her seated in a chair; she should be in one of the white upholstered chairs in her living room, with each arm perched regally on the arms of the chair. In a navy blue dress, with a draped neckline and pearls, she looks direct and sincere, but not too severe. Her legs are crossed at the ankles, and her delicate sandals reveal colored nails. I am sketching these details with speed, putting a wash on the sides of the chair. From which direction comes the light? I decide that it comes from a hidden window on her right, at the left side of the portrait. It bisects her face at only a slight angle, her nose creating a slanted shadow down her left cheek. The side of her face in the light is bright yellow, a cheerful but unnatural yellow. The left side presents a far more complicated question, to which the answer becomes green, gray-green in the nose-shadow, brighter green below where the blue of her dress melds with the yellow of the sunlight, and a bruised purple-green in an arc below her left eye, a paler flesh/purple blend on her left forehead. I like that purplish arc and replicate it under her right eye, where it becomes rosier in the yellow wash already in place. I have pulled her hair back, as if in a ponytail. Her right eyebrow is raised, a skeptical curve; the left is furrowed, a darker slash. Her right eye is fully revealed, a cheerful blue, but the left is shadowy, enigmatic.
In the time that I have become absorbed in my own painting, Dawn has painted a portrait of the two of us, me with a grotesquely outsized left leg, which makes me laugh. She glances at my portrait of Patty but makes no comment.
Our Tuesday passes as companionably as Monday did. Jenny calls to wish me happy birthday and offers to bring us dinner, which I gladly accept. We laugh together at my outsized leg. She inspects Dawn’s bump and proclaims it a first-class bruise, full purple. Dawn wants to see it but we can’t arrange a mirror at the right angle to do it. Dawn is as giddy as we are and clearly not suffering, though the spot is tender. It has been a good birthday.
On Wednesday morning we both sleep in, and are resting in bed together when there is a loud knock on the front door. I get up, but it takes me extra time to put on my leg apparatus and throw on my robe. I glance at the clock and out the front window. Patty’s car is parked outside, and it’s 9:10. Patty has never been to this little house before. My eyes dart around; I know she will hate it.
I open the door, and she marches in like an inspector, asking me first why it took me so long to answer the door. I confess that we had been sleeping in and that it takes me a few moments to put on my leg brace.
“You’re worse than I thought,” she comments as she glances down at my leg. “How’s Dawn?”
“Much better. She has a big bruise on the back of her head but no concussion or other problems.”
Patty makes no comment but marches uninvited into Dawn’s bedroom, where Dawn is getting dressed.
“Hi sweetheart, how’s your head?” Dawn murmurs okay and keeps pulling up her pants. Patty hovers over Dawn, turning her around by her shoulders so that she can see the back of Dawn’s head. Patty says nothing but shoots me an accusing look.
“I’ve come to take you home,” she says to Dawn. “Since your mom can’t drive you.” Dawn glances up at me with the obvious question.
“Patty, let’s talk outside.” I open the front door. She walks through it and sits down on one of the two rocking chairs on the porch. I tell her it’s time for her to let me manage my own daughter, that I can do this and she didn’t need to just show up on our doorstep. Though she manages to keep her voice down, she practically hisses her reply: “You get one four-day span and manage to injure both of you. No way can you be trusted to take her back.” She gets up and tells Dawn to gather her things to go back home.
“Aunt Patty wants you back,” I say as I hug her as best I can without being able to bend my left leg. She hugs me hard and follows Patty out the door.
I did not see this coming. Maybe I should have. I walk around the little house in a kind of daze. I make my bed. I make myself some coffee and a piece of toast. I have worked myself into a fury by the time the cup is drained, but I am no longer accusing myself.
I throw open my computer and google best Sacramento family law attorneys. Herb Well is not up to dealing with Patty. I find half a dozen different resources, including Super Lawyers (which sounds like blow-up toys), Best Lawyers, Yelp and other sites that remind me of looking for restaurants rather than for a professional. Sore loser stories abound. But I locate someone I find promising.
Analee Meriwether has less than ten years in the practice but is already listed as one of the Best Lawyers in Sacramento. She’s served as president of the young lawyers group in the county bar. She handled many child custody matters and her Yelp comments praise her dedication in these cases. Her photo reveals a plain face, direct gaze and stocky build; I don’t know why but I find that reassuring. And the woman who answers the telephone – Gerta Dobner -- takes some real information from me, including Patty’s name (for “conflict of interest” check, she said). She sounds like a wise old teacher, and I tell her more than I intend. Gerta calls me back within an hour to rep
ort no conflict and offers me an appointment for the following week.
7
Analee Meriwether’s office is quite modern, with upholstered, comfortable chairs in the waiting room. The Teutonic woman who presides over the space is obviously Gerta, whose warm smile belies her severe mien. She stands to greet me, an imposing woman of about sixty-five, her gray hair in a bun curled around the side of her face as if pasted at night into that shape. She could easily have been a German frau in a film from the forties. She asks me to fill out a form with my name, age, address and information about Dawn, as well as the name and age of my spouse, which I leave blank.
After I hand the form back to her, she begins to ask me questions, all with a smile, but I can’t help thinking she is there to gather intelligence. I feel pegged when she asks if I am related to Neville Haskins, and I admit he was my father.
“He was an able lawyer,” is all she says about him. She takes the form into the attorney’s office after knocking on the door peremptorily, closes the door behind her, and remains in there for about five minutes before returning to her desk and bowing her head over her computer.
The door opens again, this time by the attorney herself, and I am surprised how short she is, a tree stump of a woman. Her face is as plain as her photo, with eyebrows that are two straight lines above her eyes, but her eyes animate her with their intensity. She introduces herself and shakes my hand in a firm but friendly manner, and gestures me to one of the chairs facing her desk.
“What brings you here?” she asks, although I am fairly certain she already knows why I have come. I tell her about Dawn and wanting to end the guardianship.
After what seems like a lot of preliminary history, she asks to see a photo of Dawn, which I show her.
“She doesn’t look much like you; how did she get those gorgeous red curls?”
And so I tell her about Dawn’s origins, relieved that she has asked a vital question. She asks if Patty’s husband was the sperm donor, and I tell her I had chosen a complete stranger from a sperm bank, which seems to reassure her. I shudder inside to think of how much worse this would be if all Dawn’s genes belonged to Patty and Doug. I tell her all about the hospitalization, what led up to it, and the time since.
When she asks me what happened to my leg, I tell her about my birthday accident on the river and the precipitating event that led to my being here. I tell her I think Patty regards my fall into the river with Dawn as proof of my incompetence as a mother. After asking how Dawn had fared in the river incident, she tells me she thinks there is hardly a parent alive who has not had some mishap with her child. She even tells me she had once slipped into the Sacramento River while carrying one of her children on her back; they’d both come home slathered in mud and wet from sliding into the river. We laughed, both of us. She made me feel human.
She explains that seeking to end the guardianship might or might not be simple, depending on whether the court wants an evaluation. If not, it could be a simple court appearance, such as Herb Well had described to me; but if an evaluation were ordered, it would take longer and entail interviews and home inspections for Patty and me. I tell her Patty would come out on top on the home inspection front, with her faux mansion in Roseville. As soon as I say those words, I wince; for all I know this attorney may live in a similar place.
“I know just what you are describing,” she says, “Roseville seems to have more than its share of them.”
“What are my chances? On the surface, Patty and Doug look so much more put together than I do.”
“But you are indisputably Dawn’s mother, and you seem to have recovered the ability to care for her again. Barring something I don’t know about your caretaking, the guardianship should be terminated.”
She looks at me fixedly. “Is there anything else I should know?”
She has been so thorough; I assure her I have told her everything.
“Would you represent me to terminate the guardianship?”
“Of course.”
“What will it cost?”
She explains that it will depend on whether the court orders an investigation, that she charges $350 an hour and will need a $2,500 deposit, which she will apply monthly to her bill. If there is no investigation, the deposit will probably cover her charges, but the overall charge will be unpredictable if an investigation is done.
Twenty-five hundred dollars. I have not had to spend that much money on anything since I rented my house, and needed first and last months’ rent and a deposit. I do have the money, from what I inherited from Dad, but I have intentionally not touched this money. It still feels tainted.
When Mom was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he divorced her and placed her into a residential home – probably well before she needed it – and he took all their assets, their home, his practice, and whatever savings they had. He’d explained to Patty at the time, but not to me, that he needed to own all their money in order for Mom to receive Medicaid for her residential care. Without the divorce, they would have been wiped out. Patty was the only one to whom that made sense. Mom resented him from then forward, refused to see him in her residential care facility, and the Nevada City community seemed to reject him also, which is apparently why he relocated to Sacramento.
“Do you want to retain me?” The lawyer looked at me as if I had spaced out.
“Yes. I can write you a check now, but I ask that you hold it until tomorrow. I need to move some money.” Whatever the source of the money, I really want this lawyer.
“Of course.” She picks up her phone and instructs Gerta to prepare a retainer agreement for terminating a guardianship, gives her the details, and hangs up.
“One more thing,” she adds, “and I won’t charge you for this. I want to make a home visit, not with Dawn there, but to see where and how you live, so that I can inform the court if there are any questions.”
I must have sat there, gap-mouthed, for a second. She adds, “It may feel intrusive, but if the court has questions, I want to be able to answer them.”
I don’t know what I was thinking. I am definitely stunned by her thoroughness, but also I cringe a bit at how my home may look to her. Judging by the modern, clean feel of her office, and her business suit and pearls, I wonder if my environment will put her off.
“You mean you’ll drive to Rough and Ready on your own nickel, just to see how I live?”
“Yup.”
“If you come this Saturday, I can take you on a hike along the river. It’s beautiful.” I already know Patty won’t give me Dawn this coming weekend, having only recovered her eight days earlier. She will like the river more than she likes my little house. I make the invitation without thinking of my knee.
“You’re on, but will you be able to walk with your knee? I’ll definitely come, and we can see how your knee is on Saturday.”
I sign her retainer agreement, and we agree to meet at my house the following Saturday morning.
Driving home, I feel shaky and overwhelmed. It has nothing to do with my knee, which is clumsy but painless while I drive. I have hired a lawyer to sue my sister to get my daughter back. On top of that, I have mixed feelings about the lawyer’s coming to see my house. My first reaction is to admire her thoroughness and my own good judgment in choosing her, but somewhere down the road the thought turns into her not trusting me and wanting to check up on whether I am worthy to be her client. The doubt makes me look at my little house much more defensively.
After I get home, and before I transfer the money, I call Patty to check if she will relent about this coming weekend. As expected, she tells me no, but she is civil. She tells me Ian and Sandra have missed Dawn. I tell her to say hi to Ian and Sandra for me, hang up the phone, and transfer the money.
8
ANALEE
She darts about in her narrative, this one, like a squirrel switching back and forth before dashing ac
ross a road. Of course, new clients all ramble a bit in their first session, and I let them go on for a while, so I can see better what they reveal when unfettered by my questions. But this one is taking no cues when I shift in my chair, as if to call an end to a paragraph, and I can see it will be difficult to insert a question. So I keep watching and listening. I find myself curious about her, and her story is certainly unusual. What a way to conceive a child!
She has a forlorn, waif-like affect, looking out at me from under the floppy brim of a dark blue hat. She is so thin, concave in her middle, where I bulge. I want to feed her. She helps herself to the bowl of jelly bellies I keep on my desk, eating them one at a time between thoughts. Her wide-spaced, round eyes, blue as cornflowers, framed by sliver-moon eyebrows, fool me into thinking she is much younger than her forty-six years. The only lines on her face are deep ones, at the corners of her mouth, unseen counterweights to any attempt at a smile. Certainly she is quirky, which appeals to me, and she seems to have a sense of humor, although self-deprecating. She has a colorful way of expressing herself. At the same time, I am professionally cautious; I may be seeing only the nicest part of her in this initial interview.
“Tell me a little about Dawn. What’s she like?”
“She’s my life. She’s a little ball of energy with impossibly curly hair the color of persimmons. You know how it is to come on a persimmon tree on a gray November day, when everything else is dying and then suddenly there are these balls of bright orange? That’s what it’s like to meet her. She’s cheerful, bright, curious - and very affectionate.”
“Do you have a photo of her?”
“Of course.” Karen opens her phone and lets me scroll through many shots of a carrot-headed little girl. I must have looked up at her quizzically. The child whose photo I see looks nothing like her mother. In one of my least tactful moments, I ask if Dawn is Karen’s natural child.
“Good question; most people are too polite to ask.” She explains that she had borne and birthed this child, whose embryo consisted of her sister’s egg and a donor’s sperm. I like her all the more for not taking umbrage at my blunt question.
Raising Dawn Page 6