The heat is unrelenting, even with Karen’s hat. I keep my eyes down and focus on plodding one foot in front of the other. As I round a sharp curve in the path, I nearly trip over the black dog that had so ingratiated itself with me at the trailhead.
It barks fiercely, and I jump back. Barking repeatedly, it stands directly in front of me but facing the other way. When the barking pauses, I think I hear a dry rattling, like seeds in a husk. The dog backs toward me a little, and I back up to the edge of the curve in the path. The dog growls, its tail pointed and twitching. Finally, I can see what has caused the alarm: a large rattlesnake lies curled in the center of the trail, its tail buzzing with irritation. I might have walked right into it but for the dog, which is now backing up further. Its owner appears from around another curve ahead of them on the trail, calling “Ranger.”
“Careful!” I call to him. “There’s a rattlesnake. On the path.”
“I see it,” the man calls back. He grabs a long stick and comes toward the snake with it. I back up further and call for Ranger to come. The dog comes to me and sits at my side. I pat its head tentatively, my heart still pounding. The dog’s owner pokes at the snake from behind, forcing it to turn around. I fear it will strike at him. Instead, it slithers off the path, down the hill. The man comes back to where Ranger sits beside me. He kneels and hugs his dog, lavishing “good boy” on him repeatedly.
“He was amazing,” I say gratefully.
Karen catches up with me at this point. I explain how the dog had saved me from the rattlesnake. Karen shakes her head, smiling.
“I was wondering why you were suddenly best friends with the dog.”
9
KAREN
As soon as we finish stumbling down the hill to the river, Analee strips off her boots and hiking socks. She wears full wool hiking socks, and I want to ask her if she thought this would be some scene from “Wild.” Next come the buttons to her pants; I hold my breath and look away. I am not prepared to see my lawyer naked. I take off my own shoes and glance again in her direction. She is wearing a swimsuit, a simple black one like swimmers who race. Blaming my own lack of planning, I have no suit. But I can feel the sweat running down the center of my chest, and there is no way I will not go into the river, so I just wade in and flop into the cool water in my clothes, which will dry before we clamber back up the hill to the trail. I kick my way toward the edge of the pool where the current runs and allow myself to drift a little downstream, before I swim back to where our shoes are. I feel good to be able to use my knee without pain. I glance back and see that Analee has found a big flat rock on the opposite shore where she lies in the full sun. I swim back to join her, pulling myself up onto a slab near her, but not without slipping back into the water first. She lends me her arm to hoist me up, but I get up on the second try without her help.
“This is heaven,” she pronounces as soon as I have settled my body onto the rock.
I just lie back and smile, glad to hear the real appreciation in her voice. I hope she can just lie here and listen to the gurgle of the river and the occasional birdsong. But silence does not appear to be her style.
“Do you take Dawn here?”
“Not yet. It’s too far and too steep for her to walk, and there are easier access points down river near where we parked.”
“Does she like the river?”
“Loves it. Patty gave her swimming lessons about a year ago in a pool, but she likes the river better. She gets excited when she sees fish. She wants to follow them.”
“My boys don’t like to swim where there are fish. Spooked by them, I guess. Crazy. My husband tries to take them into the Sacramento River, but they won’t go in beyond their knees. He says we should be glad we have kids who aren’t likely to drown by being daredevils.”
“Do you agree?”
“No. When I’m with them, I dare them to follow me, but they refuse. I drive my husband nuts that way.”
I laugh with recognition. If I had her kids, I’d do the same.
“How old are they?”
“Alex is six and Andy is four, the same age as Dawn.”
“I have sandwiches in my pack. Can I lure you back to the other side?”
Analee is in the water practically before I finish the question, and beats me easily back to the other shore.
“I’m starving,” she announces as she hauls a miniature towel out of her pack, wipes off her face, then her legs and feet. Then she unrolls her shirt from her backpack, puts it on and buttons it. She seems to do all this before I have even removed the sandwiches and oranges from my pack.
“They’re egg salad. I hope that’s okay with you.”
She is ahead of me again, biting greedily into hers. I notice a small clot of it fall onto the mound of her belly but say nothing.
“There’s dill in here; I love that.” A momentary pause while she chews. “My mother always used to add fresh dill from the garden to our egg salad.” More chewing. Then her face takes on a curious look.
“Is your mother still alive? I know a little about your father, but nothing about your mom.”
I bristle.
“Am I being interviewed?” As soon as I hear the barb in my question, I regret it. A glance at Analee’s face reveals hurt, before she recovers. She pauses a moment, as I do too, my apology too slow in coming.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “if I’m overstepping my bounds. I always ask a lot of questions, and sometimes in social conversation they’re rude. No, I’m not interviewing you and you don’t owe me an answer.”
I still can’t talk, my throat suddenly thick. I fumble my hold on my own sandwich and almost drop it into the sand.
“No, I should apologize to you. My mom has Alzheimer’s and is in a residential facility, has been for over six years.”
“That must be tough.” She leaves it at that and I don’t add anything more. I change the subject.
“What are your boys like? -- if you don’t mind my asking.”
Analee gives me a broad smile. “Andy -- the younger one -- is a total eccentric, eats only red and green food, and helps me in the garden. He’s got his own little tomato garden, in the raised beds we have behind our home. He knows the difference between Early Girls and Genovese and favors an obscure species called Lakota Black, which we found at our local farmers’ market a year ago. He and I are the family foodies. Alex is a budding scientist, always building space stations or rocket launchers.” What she says makes me suddenly grateful for my own child, her predilections so compatible with my own. I want to ask her how it is like for her as a parent, but know I shouldn’t, after the way I cut her off about my own mother.
From her first step on my porch this morning, I have felt she was judging me. “Welcome to the boondocks,” was my way of greeting her, and her tentative step onto my front porch and look around told me that’s what she was thinking. Of course, it only got worse when she saw my bathroom and heard me talk about Dawn preferring the outhouse. I had told the old man who owned my house that the bathroom needed fixing, but he has never gotten around to it and we have just adapted to the unfinished floor.
When she looked at my illustrations on the walls, she asked me if all of my stories were for girls. No one has ever asked me that before. Rather than answering the question, I rummaged into the old suitcase where I keep copies of “Cleo and the Leopard” and gave her one for her boys.
“Here’s one I hope your boys might like; it’s about animals.” I asked Analee their names and inscribed it to Alex and Andy.
From the way Analee looked up at me when she thanked me, I had the impression she’d never received an autographed book before. Maybe she wasn’t even a reader herself.
We are going to have to get used to each other.
10
ANALEE
I don’t like going to court unprepared. Two weeks earlier, I had p
honed two separate colleagues in Nevada County and asked them about Judge Hobson, who has been assigned to our case. Each of them told me that Judge Hobson is an experienced family law judge and that he really cares about families. They couldn’t tell me whether “really cares about families” means he would favor a two-parent guardian family over a single parent. At least he knows the law, which is unhelpfully broad – whether it is in the child’s best interest to terminate the guardianship.
Karen’s sister has hired a lawyer in Sacramento who, I know, has never handled a guardianship before. Geraldine Hennefer - she is elegant on her feet, a master at insinuation and surprise, unreliable, and inclined toward the ‘gotcha’ style of lawyering. She appears on nearly every larger case I have had, and each turns nasty. Her responsive declaration, served on the last hour of the deadline day, regales how well adjusted ‘little Dawn’ is in Patty and Doug’s home and in her preschool, voices Patty’s doubts about Karen’s recovery since her hospitalization, and implies that Karen is dependent on anti-depressants or other drugs. I’ve arranged for Karen to be available on the day after the response was due, so that we could pound out a reply debunking Patty’s allegations. “I took Paxil for seven months, and I’ve been off it now for over a year,” she reports calmly. We filed our reply on time.
The hearing is set for 8:30 on a Monday morning in mid-July, and Karen has offered to let me stay at her home the night before. The thought of trying to shower and dress in that shack of hers is too awful to imagine, so I get up early and am on the road to Nevada City before seven, arriving as the courthouse doors are being unlocked at eight o’clock.
Judge Hobson’s department is still locked when I arrive, but the docket shows only two matters on the calendar, and ours is the first. Karen arrives a few minutes after me. I am relieved to see her dressed appropriately. I’d told her to dress like a successful writer and illustrator of children’s books at a book reading. “Cornflower Blue,” that old Kate Wolf song, comes to mind – it is the color of her short-sleeved dress, tied at the waist in the back. It masks her extreme thinness.
But she paces and darts about maddeningly, going to the bathroom twice in the twenty minutes we wait for the doors to open, twiddling her hair and swinging her leg while she tries to sit, jumping up and asking me extraneous questions. This is usually my time to calm myself, empty my own mind and prepare it for the myriad of unexpected challenges that can arise in any hearing. I would be a better lawyer if I could be sociable at this time, calming my client with patter and assurances that everything will go well.
Patty and her lawyer march in like a small armada, their high heels echoing in unison on the stone floors, Geraldine’s paralegal flanking them with the file in hand. Geraldine’s paralegal is well known in Sacramento courts; she sits at counsel table and takes all the notes. I glance at Karen to see how she greets Patty. Seated on the bench, she looks away.
“Good morning, Gerry,” I say as she approaches, knowing she doesn’t like to hear her shortened name in front of clients. She introduces me to Patty, who shakes my hand firmly and says, “Good morning, counsel,” as if playing lawyer for the day.
I introduce Geraldine to Karen, who, to my relief, stands up and says ‘hello’ politely. She mutters ‘hello’ to her sister, not meeting her eye. Patty may or may not have heard her. She looks past Karen’s head and turns away without greeting her sister. Patty looks like a shorter and more well fed and well dressed version of Karen, with eye makeup.
The courtroom doors are finally opened at eight forty, ten minutes after the hearing was to have begun. Country time, I think to myself, but the clerk explains apologetically that Judge Hobson is ill and we have a visiting judge from Sierra County, Judge Shottell, I thought she said. So that’s why there are only two matters on calendar: all the locals knew and had already continued their matters to another day to avoid the visiting judge. This is just the kind of unknown that makes it unwise for a city lawyer like me to travel to an unfamiliar small county. How did I get myself into this?
As soon as I see the judge, I wonder if I should seek a postponement. His face hangs like a granite cliff with everything below his ponderous brow having cleaved away centuries ago. His eyes hide under the shadow of his brow, and only when he looks up is their intensity revealed. I try unsuccessfully to read the nameplate on his desk as I recite my appearance.
“Good morning, Judge….”
“Shotkill.” I quail. He looks up and the granite cracks on his face. He smiles disarmingly. “It works well at sentencing hearings. Don’t let it deter you.”
“Thank you, your Honor.” I marvel that he is trying to put me at ease.
I begin to explain my motion as a routine step, to end a guardianship begun as a temporary measure, now that my client has fully recovered from her illness. My client had responsibly asked her sister to care for her daughter when she became ill, and now it is obvious that she has fully recovered and Dawn should come back home. I have submitted with my papers a declaration from Karen’s treating psychiatrist that he had overseen her since the beginning of her hospitalization and there was now no reason she could not resume care of her own daughter.
“I’ve read the file,” the judge tells me curtly. He turns to Geraldine.
“How often has Ms. Haskins been visiting her daughter?”
“For the first six months after she was hospitalized, she came every Saturday for a few hours. After that, it was every weekend.”
“How long on the weekends?”
Geraldine looks toward Patty, who interjects, “Friday afternoon to Sunday at five.”
Judge Shotkill directs the clerk to swear both parties as witnesses. He begins to question Patty directly.
“And does Dawn spend the weekends at her mother’s home?”
“Yes.”
His questions come at rapid fire. Was Karen faithful in visiting every weekend? Did Karen handle all of the pick-ups and drop-offs? Was Dawn happy to see her mother? Did Dawn come back from the visits with any problems? If Patty was concerned about Karen’s use of drugs, had she ever asked Karen what drugs she was taking? Had she ever come to inspect Karen’s home? Had she ever asked Karen to consult with her doctors about her recovery?
He is doing my cross-examination for me, and draws out of Patty better, shorter, more helpful answers than I could because he is far more intimidating. I can’t see Patty’s face because Geraldine sits between her and me, but I can hear her faltering voice.
“Your Honor,” Geraldine begins.
“I’m not finished,” Judge Shotkill pronounces, and Geraldine sits down abruptly while he continues his blunt questioning and Patty continues to make my case.
“Now,” he says, directing his attention to Geraldine, “do you have any direct evidence whatsoever that Ms. Haskins is not fit to resume full-time parenting of her daughter?” It comes out as a pronouncement, no inflection of a question.
“Your Honor, fitness is not the appropriate legal standard. This court’s task is to determine whether it would be in Dawn’s best interest to remain in my client’s intact family or to disrupt that routine by returning to Ms. Haskins’ custody.”
“I find,” he looks up so that his eyes come out of their shadow and penetrate downward at Geraldine, “that Dawn’s best interests are served by her returning to her mother’s full-time care. The guardianship is terminated, effective today.” Turning to me, he asks if I have prepared an order.
“It’s attached to my moving papers, your Honor.”
He signs it, hands it to the clerk to stamp it filed, and she hands it back to me. In the half-minute it takes for him to pronounce and sign the order, Geraldine has neglected to ask for visitation rights. I hurriedly pack up my papers while the judge calls the next matter and gesture for Karen to follow me out of the courtroom.
Karen practically flies at me once we get out of the courtroom. Hugging me with tho
se wiry arms of hers, she breathes into my ear, “You’re my hero.”
“It’s better than I’d hoped for. I’m happy for you and Dawn. I need to go to the clerk’s office and get this order filed.” The judge could have put it over for an evaluation and a trial. I get professionally nervous when everything falls in my favor in court, but I don’t want to ruin her moment by telling her. “We need to work out the logistics for you to pick up Dawn.”
Glancing down the hall at Geraldine, I can see she is doing damage control with Patty. At one point I hear Geraldine tell Patty to keep her voice down.
“I never expected this to happen today,” Karen confesses. “I don’t even have groceries in the house.” I suggest that she put her house in order today and pick up Dawn tomorrow. I think it will also give Patty a chance to simmer down, pack up Dawn’s things and create an orderly transfer. Karen readily agrees.
Looking back on it – as I have so many times since -- I wish I hadn’t rushed out of the courtroom before the judge could grant visitation rights to Patty.
I ask Karen to stay on the bench while I go down the hall to talk with Geraldine. I walk noisily toward them to alert her and ask if I can speak with her. She gives me the only unguarded, beleaguered look I’d ever seen on her face. “Excuse me, Patty,” she said as she followed me to a place out of earshot of both of our clients.
“Well, that was unexpected!” She laughs ruefully. “I should have disqualified him.”
“When I heard ‘Shotkill’ I thought of doing it myself,” I tell her to soften the blow. I propose that Karen pick up Dawn the next afternoon to allow her time to say goodbye and pack up Dawn’s things.
“Thank you,” she says as if she means it and walks back to Patty to arrange the details.
Raising Dawn Page 8