So he has decided to begin by not attacking me. I recognize his elegance, his skill, even as I recoil from his guile. Beside me, Analee is writing as fast as she can.
When Analee’s turn comes, she rises slowly and begins by describing my own efforts to have a child before Patty offered her eggs, the playful discussion we had together about my choice of a sperm donor, Patty’s assistance to me as a new mother and her considerable assistance to Dawn and me as her guardian. I have never before heard her speak this slowly, but her pace quickens as she describes how Dawn has always known me as her mother and Patty as her aunt, how constant I was with my visits and my requests to have Dawn come back home. She describes the clarity of roles within Patty’s family, how Doug is Dawn’s uncle and the children are Dawn’s cousins. “Dawn knows only one mother,” she concluded, “and that is my client.”
As predicted, Patty is called as the first witness, and she takes the stand confidently, as if this were a daily role for her. She describes how involved she was from the outset, how she helped choose the donor and how important it was to me that we use her eggs. I wonder if she has made this up because I don’t remember that at all. She provides painstaking detail of the “ordeal” of generating her eggs, first taking hormone pills and then enduring a “surgical procedure” to harvest them for fertilization and implanting them into my body. She describes my descent into depression and inability to care for Dawn properly, my hospitalization, my initial apathy toward everyone and everything, and gradual recovery. She describes her concern about Dawn’s safety in my care, how I kept Dawn beyond the allotted weekend when her family was sick. She describes my fall into the river as if I had deliberately risked Dawn’s life and my own, as well as my refusal for a second time to return Dawn on time. Strangely, she says nothing at all about the termination of the guardianship proceeding, but she describes in vivid detail my hostility when I came to pick up Dawn and how my tires “screeched” as I drove away with her. She ends with how sad her whole family has been since I terminated contact with them and Dawn, and how Dawn needs two parents.
Analee rises to begin her cross-examination. I can feel her taking a deep breath, as if preparing to dive underwater. She walks slowly around our table to approach the witness stand, and her heels stab the floor loudly.
She carries a sheet of paper, which she asks the clerk to mark for identification.
“You volunteered to be the egg donor, did you not?” was her first question, and Patty said yes almost proudly.
“And as the egg donor,” she emphasizes the word ‘donor’ slightly, “you were informed, were you not, that you gave up all claims to being a parent of any child born of the process?”
“Informed by whom?” Patty asks her own question.
“Please read the document in front of you,” Analee instructs, as she hands the document to Patty.
Patty glances at the paper dismissively and then looks up at Analee silently.
“Did you read this document at the time?”
“Probably not. There were so many things we had to sign at the hospital that I couldn’t take the time to read them all before signing them.” Patty glances up at Analee, the glint of a challenge in her eye.
“Did anyone at the clinic discuss this document with you at the time?” I myself have a vivid memory of the woman who painstakingly explained to Patty and me that she would have no claims to the eggs or to any child born from them. But Patty claims not to remember.
Analee slows down, backs up, asks whether we had a counselor at the clinic, establishes that we did and that there was at least one discussion of the process, and that Patty was asked to sign a sheet of paper, which she says she did without reading at the time.
“The process was termed an ovum donation, was it not?”
“Yes. I gave my eggs to my sister; I didn’t try to sell them.” There is a hint of triumph in her sarcasm.
“And you understood at the time, did you not, that your donation meant giving up any rights to claim parentage?”
“I understood that the clinic wanted to know I would make no claim against them for ownership of the eggs; in that sense, it was a donation, and I willingly signed a paper to that effect.” She nodded toward the sheet of paper Analee held in her hand. “It had nothing to do with what Karen’s and my own roles were.”
Even I can feel Patty’s cockiness, but Analee holds her slow, steady pace of questions. I glance at the judge, who is attentive but impassive, and at Patty’s attorney, who appears to be communicating with Patty with his furled eyebrows.
Even when Analee confronts Patty with the language of the ovum donation contract that stated Patty would make no claim of parentage, Patty still holds to her account that she signed what the agency required in order to use her eggs, but that parentage was a question between her and me. After the ovum donation contract becomes Exhibit A in evidence, Analee asks Patty about her and my plans at the time.
“Did Karen ever tell you that she wanted you to be a second mother to Dawn?”
“Not in those words.” She seems about to go on, but glances at her lawyer and then closes her mouth. By the time I glance at him, he is looking down at his papers.
“My question calls for a yes or no answer. Did Karen ever tell you that she wanted you to be a second mother to Dawn?”
Patty now turns to the judge. “Your honor, I can’t answer that yes or no without putting it into context.”
The judge faces Patty. “You must answer yes or no. If counsel does not give you a chance to explain now, your own counsel will be able to do so on redirect.” Her tone is kind but firm.
“Did Karen ever tell you that she wanted you to be a second mother to Dawn?”
Patty strangles out a “no.”
Analee lifts several more papers from the table and has them each marked by the clerk.
“I show you Dawn’s birth certificate. Who is listed as Dawn’s mother?”
“Karen.”
“Who is listed as Dawn’s other parent?”
“Unknown.”
“I show you the registration forms for Dawn’s initial pediatrician. Who is listed as the mother?”
“Karen.”
“Who is listed as the other parent?”
“N/A. Not applicable.”
“When Dawn came to live with you, you took her to your own pediatrician, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“And on those forms you are listed as ‘legal guardian,’ not ‘mother,’ are you not?”
“Yes.”
“After Karen was hospitalized, you asked her to sign guardianship papers so that you could make medical and other decisions for Dawn, yes?”
“Yes.”
I am beginning to like Patty’s more obedient chorus of yesses when her attorney asks if we can take the morning recess. Analee asks the judge for permission to ask a few more questions before the recess and the judge allows her five more minutes.
“You realize a guardian is not a parent, do you not?”
“Objection: calls for a legal conclusion.”
“Your Honor, the witness is a California attorney.”
“Overruled.”
“Ms. Ward, you are a licensed California attorney, are you not?”
“Yes, but I’ve never practiced.”
“You are aware, are you not, that a guardian is not the same as a parent?”
“Well, a guardian acts in the place of a parent,” Patty answers almost proudly.
“You did not answer my question: are you aware that a guardian is not the same as a parent?”
Patty yields a grudging yes.
“A guardian can be nominated by a parent, isn’t that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Karen, as Dawn’s mother, nominated you as guardian, did she not?”
“Yes.”
Here
the judge herself calls the morning recess.
In the hall, I can see Patty’s attorney ushering her quickly to one end, where they turn a corner to talk. Analee practically emits sparks; her eyes burn with intention. I try to tell her she is doing brilliantly, but she tells me it is too early. She counsels me to show no emotion in the courtroom or as we are exiting. Jenny takes my arm and leads me to a bench in the hallway so that Analee can think by herself. Analee paces back and forth intently, while we sit for the recess. Jenny firmly holds my hand. We say nothing to each other.
Back in the courtroom, Analee begins with a different line of questions, about Patty’s allowing me regular weekend visits after I left the halfway house, without any supervision, and that this went well for over a year. Patty notes the two exceptions, of my keeping Dawn an extra two days when she had strep throat, and my falling into the river with Dawn. Analee gets Patty to admit that I treated Dawn appropriately when she had strep throat. About the river incident Patty said that I “tend to take unreasonable risks.” Apparently, just taking a small child to the river is an unreasonable risk.
24
ANALEE
After Petrakis led Patty through her rendition of Karen’s sinking into a depression that finally caused her to hospitalize her sister, he asked, “What was that like for you?”
I should have objected, interjected anything – “vague,” or “calls for a narrative” – anything to have interrupted her, but I didn’t.
I now sit at home staring at the partial transcript, and I still don’t know what I should have asked her on cross. I just slid past it, as if it didn’t exist, hadn’t happened, hadn’t drowned us, but here it is in black and white.
“It was frightening. It hadn’t been that much earlier that I had lost both my parents, in different ways – my father abandoning us and then dying of a heart attack and my mother leaving us via Alzheimer’s – and now my sister seemed to be falling apart too. I didn’t know why she was so listless, so depressed, so totally without any energy. I wanted to get her help -- if she could be helped -- and then there was her baby also. So we took Dawn into our household, and we took Karen to the hospital. The first days were frantic, with us going back and forth to the hospital and trying to manage with a new child in the household. Then when Karen was discharged, it wasn’t as if she was well; the hospitals keep people now only until they are out of crisis. We thought we could take her in, but that proved unworkable. We found a rehab facility for Karen, where she stabilized, and we made a home for Dawn.
“How did you relate to Dawn while she lived with you?”
“At first it was clear that she was my sister’s baby. I had spent a lot of time with her and Karen, so she was already quite used to us. But over time the relationship became much deeper and more attached. Knowing that she was as much my child as Sandra or Ian created a deep sense of her belonging with us, a sense of protection and love and attachment that I feel only for Sandra and Ian. I can’t quite explain it, but the connection of being a parent is not like any other relationship on earth. I didn’t expect it at first, but once it came on I couldn’t let go of it. Dawn and I are bonded as mother and child, and we shouldn’t be separated.”
Counsel: “What were your feelings for Dawn when she was born?”
“I loved her as my sister’s child, of course, but I was curious, too, since I knew she was biologically my child. I looked for physical resemblances. I think she has my eyes. But when Dawn came to live with us, the sense of her as my own child grew. I noticed small gestures that were like mine; I watched her with her siblings. I developed a sense of protection for her that one has only for one’s own children. It’s very deep – and hard to explain at the same time. The first time she fell down and hit her head on the bookcase, I realized how strong this was. She wasn’t hurt for more than the few moments she cried, but I felt the fear, the worry, the need to comfort that one really feels only for one’s own child. This sense of connection only grew deeper the longer Dawn lived with us. By the time she had been with us for a year it was as if she had always been one of us, and we were her family. When Karen started asking to take Dawn back to her home, I felt worried on so many different levels – whether she would be safe, whether she would adapt to being in a family of only herself and Karen, whether Ian and Sandra could adapt to not living with their little sister…. I worried about how much we would all miss her, and how much she would miss us. We had become her primary family.
Every child needs two parents – for the other to fill in when one is sick or too busy or too preoccupied to attend to what the child needs. Or when the other can’t exercise good judgment. I love Dawn as much as I love Sandra and Ian, and they love her as a sister. I want to restore the rest of Dawn’s family to her.”
By the time I objected that she had gone beyond answering the question, the damage had already been done. The judge overruled my objection without a second’s hesitation. I could feel Petrakis’ satisfaction. I glanced at Karen next to me, who blinked hard but did not move or make any faces. The judge was attentive but opaque. I felt how insidious this was, to have one’s parenting siphoned away over time. An anger I hadn’t felt before, along with an anxiety I couldn’t identify, built within me. Petrakis had rehearsed Patty very, very well.
I tried, however lamely, to dissect this speech on cross, by recalling how strictly she had limited Karen’s time with Dawn after Karen’s recovery, but Patty portrayed concern that she not ‘overburden’ Karen with parenting responsibilities after her ‘ordeal’ in the hospital. Her veneer of compassion for her ‘troubled’ sister survived all my questions. I focused on the day when she was to transfer Dawn to her sister and tried to get her to acknowledge that straightening Dawn’s hair was something she knew would provoke her sister. I failed, even when I asked why she had waited until the last day she would have Dawn living with her. “It was my last chance to do it,” she’d said simply.
When I read Patty’s statement to Adam at dinner, his only reply was a legal one: why hadn’t she appealed the guardianship termination? He responded like the law professor he is, but I felt our judge was taking this in as a fellow parent, and human being. He let me off the hook of dish duty and encouraged me to play with the boys after dinner. Was he trying to make the same point as Patty in her testimony, that my kids now needed the ‘other parent’? I need to stop asking such questions, I tell myself, or I will overthink my life.
Alex asked me to build with him and his Legos, a good distraction, I thought. I let him give me orders and I followed them, building pillars for whatever structure he had concocted in his mind, while he erected the structure. I knew better than to ask him what it was, for he lacks the words to describe the elaborate shapes in his head. But he seemed satisfied with what we built together. When I put him to bed, he asked me to read him “The Little House in the Big Woods,” a tattered Golden Book left over from my own childhood. “I want to build my own house,” he told me before falling asleep, and I assured him that he would build a beautiful one someday.
I was reading Patty’s deposition transcript when Adam came to bed at nearly eleven. He climbed in, naked as usual, and laid one warm hand on my arm. I tried not to be distracted by the sheer warmth of him.
“You always torture yourself with the worst that happened. What was the best thing that happened today?”
“I violated a rule,” I said, without missing a beat. “I asked a question for which I didn’t know the answer. Petrakis called the doctor who had treated Karen and Dawn after they fell in the river. She seemed to want to say more than answering Petrakis’ questions, so I asked her if she had any independent recollection of her encounter with Karen and Dawn.”
“What did she say?”
“That what struck her about the whole encounter was that this mother, whose injuries were much more serious than that of her child, was focused only on her child, and on tending to her.”
“What made you ask the question?”
“Instinct.”
“Trust that, Analee. It’s one of your best trial skills.” He gently pried the transcript from my hands, put it on my nightstand, and curled up around me. I swear I could feel the beat of his heart through my own body, as the rhythm of mine slowed and I fell asleep in his warmth.
25
KAREN
I must have fallen asleep in the car on the way home from the courthouse, and I woke up when Jenny pulled into the driveway of Megan’s house. Through the front window I could see Megan leaning over Dawn at the dining table.
Megan welcomed us back, but Dawn remained at the table, looking down at the puzzle in front of her. I kissed her on the cheek and hugged her shoulders, but she continued to stare at the puzzle, as if her face would crack if she looked at me. “I missed you,” I whispered into her ear. At that, she turned, clambered off her chair and threw her arms around my legs.
“Why did you stay away so long?”
I apologized to her. “Roseville is a long way away, and we had to work all day.” I’d never seen her so moody.
Megan signaled me with her eyes into the other room, but Dawn still clung to me. I told Megan I would call her later and thanked her and Jenny again.
I took Dawn for hamburgers at Jeremiah’s Hut, her favorite place, and we shared a large order of fries laced with ketchup in the shape of a heart. She smiled only slightly as she watched me draw the heart with the ketchup stream. When I asked her how school went today, she said only “long.” With her widest blue eyes, and still this solemn face, she asked me to take her to school and pick her up tomorrow. When I told her I could not, that this would be a long, hard week for us both, she took her fork and messed up the pile of fries, undoing the heart. She asked again at bedtime, and I gave her the same answer. For the first time ever, she turned away from me without kissing me goodnight.
I phoned Megan after Dawn was asleep. She told me that Dawn had pushed another girl at kindergarten, and the teacher had asked where I was. “I told her you had to work in Roseville this week, that Dawn was unhappy about it but there was nothing you could do about it.” Megan denied that Dawn had given her a hard time, telling me only that Dawn had been quiet and a bit glum.
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