I went to bed in the same mood and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, awakened by the alarm for Day Two.
I wear the second of the four dresses I had bought, this one a charcoal gray wool with sleeves to my elbows and a flared skirt. It had snowed slightly in the night, and I put on my boots.
Like robots, Dawn, Megan and Jenny all assume their roles and I arrive at court on time again.
As soon as the judge is seated, Patty’s attorney announces, “I call Karen Haskins as my next witness.” Analee stands next to me, helps me pull out my chair and demonstrates with her arm where I should go to testify. Her left arm brushes my back lightly, as if in encouragement.
“Ms. Haskins, who are the members of your family?” I hesitate, and Analee seems to read my mind.
“Objection: vague.”
The judge tells Mr. Petrakis to rephrase his question.
“Whom do you consider as your family?”
“Well, Dawn, of course. My friends Megan and Jenny and their children are like family to me.” I begin to stumble as I sense the dangerous places in this question. “My sister Patty, you know, and her husband and two children. My parents are gone.” I stop.
“By ‘gone,’ do you mean both your parents have died?”
“My father died four years ago. My mother was in a memory care facility, and I lost track of her after I was hospitalized. I’m embarrassed to tell you I do not even know if she is still alive.” I can hear a tiny hiss from Patty but dare not look at her. How can I not even know this about my own mother?
“How would you describe your relationship with your sister Patty?” This is intentional torture; even I recognize what he is doing.
“Estranged. We haven’t really spoken since I picked up Dawn from her home last summer.”
“And Dawn has not seen Patty or Ian or Sandra in all that time, is that correct?”
“Except for one visit with Patty and Ian, yes.”
“Has Dawn ever asked to see Patty, Dan, Ian or Sandra in this time?”
“Objection: hearsay.”
“Overruled: answer the question.”
“Dawn asked to see Ian a couple times, but not the others.”
“And what did you tell her when she asked?”
“That it was difficult just now, but that I’d try sometime. I didn’t explain.”
I push back the terrible sense of how I have lost track of my own mother, but something else takes hold of me. I know this man is set on destroying me through my own words, and I muster myself. I deploy myself; that word flits into my head and I grab hold. I even think he senses my shift, and he loses his own grip. His questions become more innocuous and manageable. At the morning recess, Analee tells me I am doing well, but to keep my guard up; he will come back. He does.
“Let’s go back to the day you picked up Dawn from Patty’s home after the guardianship hearing.”
Ah, Mr. Petrakis, I too have read my deposition, and I’m not going to handle that event the same way again.
When he asks if I’d had an altercation with Patty, I admit, “I allowed myself to be provoked by Patty, and I shouldn’t have gotten angry in front of Dawn.”
“You grabbed her from Patty, did you not?”
“I took her too abruptly. It was an upsetting occasion for us all.”
He shifts ground again, to my hospitalization, but this time I’ve had my rehearsal. I can talk about it without going back into that space, and he knows it. He isn’t making a dent. He lets me off the stand by noon. Analee tells the judge she will save her questions for when she calls me as her witness.
I look at Patty for the first time as she gets up for the noon recess. Her composure is apparently unruffled, but she avoids my eye. I want to ask her what she knows about Mom, but I hold back, knowing I should ask Analee first. Analee tells me in no uncertain terms not to ask Patty, that she will ask Petrakis herself, but I tell her not to; it would only enhance his sense of accomplishment. I will contact the care facility myself.
In the afternoon, Patty’s counsel calls what even I would call innocuous witnesses – the director of the day care center who testifies that Patty has treated Dawn like a loving mom, a couple of friends who testify about what a wonderful, caring mom she is to Sandra, Ian and Dawn and how good the kids are together, and the pediatrician who had seen Dawn on a few occasions during the guardianship.
By the end of the day I am fed up and almost bored: I have to sit through this rather than be with Dawn after school and paint and teach? I think I even ask Analee whether I have to come the next day. She looks shocked.
“Our case will start tomorrow, and I need you. If you don’t show up, you are likely to lose this battle; it’s that important for you to be here.” She glares at me.
“I’ll be here.” I think I have added to her worries, and I feel bad immediately. “You can count on me. I won’t let you down.”
“I believe you.” She pronounces it as an order to appear.
On the drive home, I call the memory care facility where my mother had been, not knowing how I would ask them or whether they would even answer my question. I identify myself as one of Myrtle Haskins’ daughters and ask if I can speak with her. I am told that Mrs. Haskins cannot handle telephone conversations but that I can visit her between nine and five any day. I tell Jenny I want her to take us there; it is on the way home.
Jenny is a tactful and compliant friend, but she glances at me with a look that tells me I’m crazy. She doesn’t even say anything, just keeps driving.
“I guess it’s more important I get home to see Dawn.”
“Now you’re talking.”
Dawn comes running to the door this time. I lift her up and twirl her around, so relieved to see the return of her normal self. Jenny leaves without a word, and, while Dawn plays and Megan and I cook dinner, Megan tells me that Dawn had been quiet but obedient at school, not a problem like yesterday. When I tell her about my mom and asking Jenny to take me to visit her, she almost blurts something but adopts a calmer tone. She advises me to wait until the challenge of this trial is over before I tackle that problem. Megan knows I have not gone back since the Mother’s Day incident when my mother handed Dawn to Patty. Megan’s own mother died a few years ago with Alzheimer’s. What goes unspoken between us this evening is our knowing that I will need her counseling before seeing my mother again.
I wake up before six this morning, Day Three of the trial, as full of anxiety as I had the past two mornings of trial, but this time from a vivid dream. I get up in the full dark, knowing further sleep is out of reach. Of the four dresses in my closet, I choose the dark blue one I had arbitrarily designated for day three of trial. As I stand in front of the meager pickings of dresses, the dream reclaims me.
In it I hold in front of me a watercolor I had been painting of an expansive old oak with three sturdy, almost horizontal limbs. While I study it, I notice a wolverine atop one of the limbs, clambering toward the tree trunk. Transfixed, I watch in wonder as it clambers down the tree – now a real tree rather than my watercolor – and ambles toward me. I am totally frightened but frozen to the spot, and the wolverine makes steady progress toward where I stand exposed outside. When it reaches where I stand, it circles me twice, before climbing up my back. Miraculously, it causes no injury as it scrambles up my body and comes to rest on my left shoulder. Still petrified, I feel it run its claws through my tangled hair, as if combing it. Even standing in front of my closet, I still feel the imprint of its weight. That this fierce animal causes me no harm is wondrous, inexplicable.
After I dress, wash and comb my hair, and even apply lipstick (my ‘stage makeup,’ as I tell Megan), I wake Dawn for breakfast. As usual, she wakes with a smile at my kiss, and bounds out of bed herself, making her way to the shower. At five, she is a child of reliable habits.
Jenny herself arrives early, my stead
y and reassuring friend. She fluffs Dawn’s orange curls when she emerges from the shower, splaying a few drops of water.
“What time tonight?” Dawn asks her, as if I would not tell her the truth.
“I’m not sure, honey, but I think it’s the last day,” she reassures her.
When Megan arrives to take over and drive Dawn to school, Dawn announces to her that today is the last day. They both hooray, before Megan casts me a wary look.
Today I will be cross-examined by Patty’s attorney about my breakdown and hospitalization, as well as about everything else negative he can dredge up about me. I give Megan a cautious thumb’s up.
In the car on the way, Jenny is quiet, waiting to take her cue from me.
“Are there wolverines in California?” I ask her.
She throws me a look that asks what planet I am on this morning.
“I have no idea,” she responds after a moment. “When I think of wolverines, I think of a Michigan team.”
After another pause, she asks me why I asked, and I recount the dream to her. A slow smile opens her face.
“He had your back.”
I smile too, in gradual recognition. “He did.” He does, I hope.
Trial Day Three begins with Patty’s counsel announcing that the Petitioner rests. Analee immediately rises from her seat and announces that she calls Karen Haskins as her first witness. I walk like a zombie to the witness stand. Once there, I take hold again, remembering what we have rehearsed.
She has me describe the helpful woman at the fertility clinic, who told us over and over again that this process could not go forward unless Patty understood it was a true donation. The counselor had warned us it could be very difficult to know that a new person with one’s own genetic material would not be one’s own child. She’d asked Patty pointed questions about that, and Patty had told her that her own two children were all the children she’d want or need in this lifetime.
Analee asks me what I recall of the guardianship papers, and I testify that Patty had told me at the time these papers would give her the temporary authority to tend to Dawn until I got better. I recount the several times I had asked Patty to allow me to take Dawn back, and her telling me I was not ready. I explain why I had kept Dawn more than a weekend when she and the rest of the family had had strep throat, and when we had fallen in the river. On each of those times I had told Patty I would keep Dawn longer, and why. And I had returned her.
Before I know it, Stephen Petrakis looms over me again. First he tests my memory of the fertility clinic and why I remember so vividly what might have occurred six years ago.
“It was a momentous occasion for me,” I explain, “and I was impressed with the counselor’s thoroughness.”
At some point in the afternoon he asks me whether it is true that Dawn uses an outhouse for the toilet in my home.
“Objection: beyond the scope of the direct.”
“Sustained: pursue another line of questions, counsel.”
He takes a different tack.
“You and Patty used to be close, were you not?”
“Yes, very close.”
“You sought her advice about whom to choose as a sperm donor.”
“Yes.”
“And for parenting advice, you also looked to her?”
“Sometimes.”
“You relied on her experience and good judgment, did you not?”
“I relied on her experience, yes, though I did not always agree with her judgment.”
“And you knew she always cared about Dawn.”
“Yes.”
He sits down. The judge asks if Analee has any redirect. She stands, thanks the court, and slowly approaches me in the witness chair.
“What effect, if any, has this lawsuit had on your family?”
We had rehearsed this question, and I recognize it as the marker for the end of my testimony.
“Win or lose, I have lost my sister. We used to be close, and now I doubt if we can ever be close again. I feel as if she’s trying to parent me, not Dawn. I will always be Dawn’s mother, whether Patty is her aunt or ‘another mother,’ but we will never be able to be sisters again.”
The judge reaches for her gavel, then seems to think it unnecessary.
“Counsel, court stands in recess. I want to see you both in chambers.”
Analee does not even glance at me as she strides into chambers, with her pad in hand. Stephen Petrakis follows her, no stride in his step. I looked down at my hands, not daring to glance at Patty, but I can see her stand up and leave the room. Once she is gone, I glance at the clerk, as if to ask if I can leave the witness seat, and he indicates permission with a wave of his hand. I stumble back to my seat at counsel table, and pour myself a glass of water. I am drained of energy.
26
ANALEE
Judge Garcia zips open her robe and slings it off her shoulders, hanging it on the back of her chair.
“Sit down, counsel.”
We obey, both of us meekly.
“Whatever the outcome of this trial – and I don’t have any indicated decision for you – this family has been damaged.”
She glares at us each in turn, her next words contradicting the indictment of her gaze.
“I don’t blame either of you, but I want to see you use your skills to try to help heal this family rather than wreck it further.”
She pauses and glances down, as if debating whether to say something else.
“There’s a therapist in San Francisco I heard speak at a recent parenting conference, to whom I’d like you to send your clients. She works with fractured families. I’ll get you her name. Or you can choose someone yourselves, but this trial is not helping this little girl, and it certainly isn’t doing any good for your clients or the other children involved.”
“We tried mediation before trial,” Petrakis begins to explain.
“I’m not blaming you, or that mediator. These two women may have needed to go through this ordeal before being ready to solve their problems themselves. But my decision isn’t going to make their lives any better; that I can see right now. What I want to know from you two is whether you are willing to work on solving this problem rather than making your clients enemies for life. I want to recess this trial for 30 days to allow your clients the chance to mediate their own solution. Can you get them to do this?”
We each agree to ask our clients, while the judge pledges to look for the San Francisco therapist’s name.
When I walk back into the courtroom, Karen sits with her hands folded and head bowed, as if in prayer. Patty is nowhere to be seen. Petrakis goes out into the hall, presumably to find her, leaving me alone with Karen.
She looks up at me wearily. “I’m so tired of this. I just want to go home to Dawn and take up our lives again. I don’t know if I can do another day of this.”
I describe what the judge has proposed.
“Sure. Whatever she says. I doubt it will work with whatever mission Patty is on, but sure.”
I put my hand on her shoulder as paltry comfort, then go to look for Petrakis. When I leave the courtroom, I can see him hunched next to Patty on a bench down the hall, talking intently. He has the harder job. I return to the courtroom and sit next to Karen.
“You nailed that answer,” I say, then immediately regret it as Karen gives me a baleful look.
“It’s just true. We’ll never be sisters again.”
27
KAREN
Taking Dawn to school this morning is a welcome re-entry into my life. I have the day off, since it is one of the designated trial days. No one else in the home besides Dawn and me, we crunch our cereal together and grin at each other. She’s dressed herself in bright red pants and a pink sweater, a tame combination for her but still festive. She hands me a folded sheet of paper, a drawing she
made the night before. In it I wear a drab gray dress and a frown, and she, all in red, holds onto my leg. I thank her with a kiss atop her head, catching a gritty scent and the realization that she has not showered this morning.
“Do you have to go back?”
“I don’t know, but not this week, and maybe not at all.”
“Try not to,” she tells me. I promise her I will try.
When we get to school, it is snowing lightly, and she holds out a mittened hand to catch flakes. I suddenly recall doing the same thing with Patty years ago, comparing the size and shape of flakes of snow before they melted, at the same school, when we were really sisters. I used to hold Patty’s hand to make sure she would not fall on the ice.
On the way back to the house, I wonder when and how I had lost my role as the protective older sister. Less than two years separated us, but as a child I was much taller and the role was obvious. Probably in high school, when Patty began to shine. She became the pretty one with the boyfriends – the good boyfriends, I should say – not like the older artist I met in town, who introduced me to marijuana while Patty went to the proms with the football player. I resented her popularity and didn’t try to compete in her arena, striking out with companions Patty and our parents judged inappropriate. Stereotypes, both of us, and we carried those differences with us throughout college and, for her, law school. We were both good students, but she was always the more attentive to the rules.
I think our mother despaired of me, while our father saw something in me he wanted to encourage. I decide suddenly this morning that I will visit her, whatever is left of her, without preparation from Megan. I couldn’t ask Patty during the trial, but I can see for myself. I look up the location of her memory care facility and am relieved it is just outside Nevada City, not another long drive to Roseville.
Raising Dawn Page 20