Undue Influence

by Steve Martini

  He laughs a little too much, then gives me a look, the kind of tight smile I’ve seen on some men just before they call someone out of earshot an asshole.

  As I look in the distance, Jack’s son, Danny, is on a bench against the far wall studying his mother with her lawyer. He is lost in this setting, looking a little like the cartoon caricatures of Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow. For all of his six-foot size he has yet to grow into his ears. He lives for sports, mostly baseball and basketball, watching and playing and fills a hollow leg with six meals a day.

  His sister, Julie, is standing a few feet away from him, waiting for an opening to approach her mother.

  Julie would not be here except that her mother has forced her to attend. The girl wanted to stay home with her friends, party and frolic as if nothing had happened. Laurel thinks she is spoiled. I think it is Julie’s own defense mechanism.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jack tells me. ‘I suppose you gotta do what you gotta do.’

  ‘You mean my presence here, with Laurel?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘This is a labor of love,’ I tell him.

  He nods he comprehends this, forming his own favorable interpretation. But Jack doesn’t get my meaning, that this has only partly to do with family ties, the fact that Nikki and Laurel were sisters. I stand up for Laurel and the kids now, in the opposite corner from this man, for the same reason I might run over a rattlesnake on the hot pavement in front of my home.

  ‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Families. It’s the thing about blood and water.’

  I’m thinking sharks. He’s thinking family ties. Jack is giving me absolution, his forgiveness for my bad taste in siding with my sister-in-law. All the while he’s doing a number from Busby Berkeley, up on his toes.

  He offers his condolences for Nikki. I don’t remember him at the funeral. I tell him this.

  A few awkward starts and he makes amends. ‘I didn’t know if I’d be welcome,’ he says.

  I make a face, leaving him to wonder.

  He asks after Sarah. I tell him she is fine.

  To our right, Melanie emerges from the ladies’ room as if on cue. I wonder if she’s been listening through the lavatory’s louvered outer door. She comes up and does her own straight routine next to her husband’s soft-shoe.

  ‘Did you meet my wife?’ he says.

  I look over at Laurel. I’m not sure this is the right time.

  Still, Jack makes the introduction. I nod and smile. She gives me a look like a store clerk wondering if I’ve shoplifted.

  She stands silent for several seconds as we pass idle chatter, then finally looks at Jack and says: ‘Did you ask him?’ To Melanie the shortest distance between two points is a direct assault.

  ‘Gimme time.’ A look from Vega at his young wife. This does not put her off.

  ‘Jack’s got something to talk to you about,’ she says.

  He coughs, clears his throat, smiles at me as if to say, ‘Pushy women.’ Jack’s prance-in-place seems to move to a canter.

  ‘We’re wondering,’ he says. He looks over at Melanie. ‘We’re wondering if maybe you could talk to her?’ He nods toward Laurel across the corridor.

  I give him a look, a question mark.

  ‘Maybe talk some reason to her. This stuff is really hurting the kids,’ he says. He’s talking about the verbal bloodshed in the courtroom.

  ‘What the hell does she want, anyway?’ he says.

  I am dumbfounded by this tactless frontal assault.

  ‘Well, you know I could never read her,’ he tells me. ‘Maybe that’s why our marriage failed. Lack of communication,’ he says.

  That and Jack’s dozen mistresses.

  ‘Why don’t you read her pleadings?’ I tell him. ‘I think it’s all pretty clear. She wants the kids,’ I say.

  ‘Sure,’ he tells me. ‘But you know what I mean? What does she really want?’

  I am looking at him, unsure that even he is this dense. The confirmation is written in his eyes. Jack’s looking for some crass financial bottom line, the price to buy his own children from their mother. For the first time I wonder if maybe Jack has doubts about his case.

  ‘You think she wants something else?’ I’m incredulous.

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Talk to her. She’ll listen to you. We’re reasonable people,’ he says.

  I shake my head, not the kind of gesture that says no, but a show of disbelief. ‘You want me to spell it for you. Laurel wants one thing – the kids.’ I say this louder so that maybe half the people in the hallway can hear it. But Jack is impervious to embarrassment and relentless when he wants something.

  ‘She’s not capable of dealing with them,’ he tells me. ‘Hell, I’ve offered her the summers.’ He looks at Melanie and they both nod like this is a deal. Six weeks during the summer, a week at Christmas.

  ‘I’ll even fly the kids out and back.’ He lays this added treat on like the clincher on closure at an auto sale. Melanie’s nodding at his side, batting her eyes as if to emphasize the weighty value of this offer.

  ‘Not exactly like having the kids, is it, Jack?’ I look at him.

  ‘Well, how the hell do you think I feel? They’re my kids too,’ he says.

  ‘Laurel’s not taking them out of the state,’ I remind him.

  ‘What do you want me to do? I gotta make a living.’ Jack makes it sound like tassel-loafered lobbying is a blue-collar job.

  ‘Besides, the kids are getting older,’ says Melanie. ‘Danny’s starting to get into trouble. The boy’s picked up with the wrong crowd,’ she tells me. ‘We think we could do a better job.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so maternal,’ I say.

  She gives me a look, straightens her skirt with flattened palms on curving hips, as if to say, ‘What do you think this body is for?’

  Jack steps in before his wife can get into it with me.

  ‘Did you see the police report?’ he says. ‘On Danny?’

  ‘I’ve seen it. What can I say? Kids get in trouble,’ I tell him.

  ‘Come on, Paul.’ He gives me a hearty smile, then gets personal. He puts one hand on my shoulder – something from the male fraternity.

  ‘You and I,’ he says, ‘we know the realities. Laurel lives in a dream world. The woman’s had a sheltered life.’ He makes it sound like he was slaving in the vineyard through their marriage while Laurel was eating bonbons.

  ‘That was fine when she was growing up and her father was paying the bills, when we were living together and I was supporting her.’

  ‘And there are some,’ I say, ‘who might argue that she was raising three children back then.’

  Jack ignores this, but the smile fades and his tone becomes more earnest. ‘She can’t take care of Danny and Julie the way we can, and she knows it. You and I know it. Hell, if there’s problems, we can give them the proper counseling by professionals, put ’em in private schools. Can she afford that?’

  ‘Maybe you should tell the court to increase your spousal and child support,’ I say.

  He looks at me dead in the eyes. ‘I thought maybe we could talk reason,’ he says. ‘This is your niece and nephew who are in trouble,’ he tells me.

  ‘And I feel for them,’ I say. ‘They are now children from a broken family, with all of the attendant problems.’ I dump it, the divorce and all of its progeny, back in his lap.

  Melanie gives me a look, something defensive, like maybe the subject is shifting to the question of home-wrecking.

  ‘You sound like some touchie-feelie therapist,’ he says. Suddenly the touted professional counseling he could give the kids sounds like a labor performed by quacks.

  ‘Did you talk to him?’ I ask.

  Vega looks at me, dense. I’ve lost him with the question.

  ‘Danny?’ I say. ‘After he was arrested, did you talk to him?’

  ‘Sure. I chewed his ass.’

  ‘But did you talk with him?’

  ‘What’s to talk about? The kid needs some
discipline,’ he says.

  ‘That’s something only his father can give a boy.’ Melanie gives me a quick up-and-down with her head like this is holy writ direct from the source.

  ‘The kids are getting older,’ says Jack, ‘and she can’t control them.’ Then he brings up the issue of Laurel’s drinking.

  Now I’m getting it, both barrels from the two of them.

  ‘She drank,’ I say. ‘Past tense. She hasn’t touched a drop since this started, even with all the crap laid on by your witnesses.’

  ‘Yeah. Until the next time,’ says Melanie.

  ‘It’s been nice.’ I start to go laterally to get around the two of them. Our conversation has become too loud, too obvious. Laurel is making overt moves to break away from her lawyer and Julie.

  ‘Yeah? Well, it’s gonna get a whole lot worse,’ says Melanie, ‘unless she’s willing to talk reason.’

  Prancing in place, shifting his weight, Jack gives her a look that could kill.

  Their case is over, all their evidence, their witnesses presented. I wonder what Melanie is talking about. I linger for a moment, an invitation for her to open her mouth, maybe put her foot in it.

  But Jack has her by the hand, squeezing her fingers till the ends are white.

  ‘Talk to her,’ says Jack. ‘Tell her to be reasonable.’ They start to move off. Suddenly behind them I see Laurel, coming on like a locomotive at a crossing, her eyes ablaze, two white-hot coals. She swings it over one shoulder with both hands like a misaimed hammer throw in the Olympics, and three pounds of purse crash across Jack’s shoulder. The purse misses Melanie’s head by an inch and instead catches Melanie’s own little bag, a beaded thing carried under one arm, sending it careening to the floor with Laurel’s.

  There’s lipstick, compacts, and wallets everywhere, slapping and sliding on hard terrazzo, the objects women carry scattered for the world to see. A plastic brush caroms across the floor where it ricochets off the polished shoe of a bailiff outside Department 14.

  Before I can move, Laurel’s into it with the broken strap of her purse, gripping this strip of leather as a handy garrote and seizing Melanie’s throat. For some reason this venom is not unleashed on Jack but Melanie Vega.

  I grab one arm before she can move.

  Jack is caught in the middle between the two women. He has both hands and forearms to his head now, covering up like a prize-fighter backed into a corner. He’s wearing a woman’s hanky near the crotch of his pants. A lacy black thing like a doily, it clings to the wool nap of his suit.

  The bailiff’s moving toward us.

  I grab Laurel by an arm and put myself in front of her, blocking her way. She has an athletic vitality, a sensuous muscularity. As I lean against her I am amazed by the mass of rippled muscle in her arms, and her legs of coiled spring.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he says. The bailiff’s best command voice.

  The guy recognizes me and nods.

  ‘Just a disagreement,’ I tell him.

  ‘Disagreement, my ass.’ Jack’s coming out of his crouch. ‘Bitch tried to nail my wife with her purse,’ he says. Not an ounce of fat on her body, thin narrow hips, feeling Laurel’s upper arms, Jack’s fortunate she didn’t take a swing and come up short. He’d be on his ass, cold-cocked on the floor.

  ‘You can use the lawyers’ conference room.’ The bailiff seems interested in avoiding problems, ducking a formal charge that will mean a lot of paperwork.

  Melanie with two fingers picks the woman’s hanky off her husband’s pants and lets it float to the floor. She gives the bailiff an imperious look like he should do something more.

  He does. He picks up the handkerchief and hands it to Melanie. ‘Belong to you?’ he says.

  It is the closest thing to spit I have seen from a woman. Hemple’s picked up Laurel’s purse. I take the handkerchief from the cop and stuff it inside. People are picking up objects from the floor.

  ‘You bitch. You stay away from my kids.’ Laurel is pumping up the venom again, a second wind. ‘I wish it was a goddamned sledgehammer.’ She’s holding up the purse by a piece of its broken strap.

  I’m pushing her away now. The bailiff is giving us one of those dubious law-enforcement looks, perhaps second thoughts as to whether he should ask the victim if she wants to press charges.

  ‘Ask her what she did.’ Laurel’s in my face now as I block her with my chest and move her toward the conference room.

  ‘And you,’ she says. Laurel turns it on Jack now. ‘You don’t give a damn if she destroys your own children.’ She calls Melanie a liar, among other assorted and more odious epithets.

  I have no idea what she’s talking about, but lawyer’s instinct tells me it has no place here in a public corridor.

  Hemple’s now joined us. She’s coaxing Laurel along from behind like a tugboat at the stern.

  Melanie’s talking to the bailiff, all hands and facial gestures, like maybe she can convince him to get out his handcuffs. He gives her a face, lots of sympathy and equivocation. All the while he’s backstepping toward the courtroom, picking up things, offering them to Melanie for her purse, no doubt wishing he’d been looking the other way when this started.

  Inside, behind louvered blinds and enclosed glass, Hemple gives me the news.

  Laurel is still too angry to talk.

  ‘It’s Julie’s school,’ says the lawyer. ‘They caught another girl with drugs. The kid claims she got them from Julie.’

  To the extent that anything involving adolescents can surprise me, I am startled by this. From every appearance my niece’s only narcotic to date is the adulation of her peers. To this she is heavily addicted. I wonder if it has led to heavier things.

  ‘Crack cocaine,’ says Hemple, ‘The other girl, her friend, had enough for personal use, not dealing.’

  Thank God for little favors. ‘Are they bringing charges?’ I ask.

  Hemple makes a face likes she’s not sure. ‘They caught the kid three days ago. They’re still investigating.’

  ‘How did Jack find out so fast?’

  ‘What I’m wondering,’ says Hemple, like maybe there’s some artful device going down here, Jack and Melanie engaged in creative self-help. A kid caught on charges might be willing to fabricate a story, implicate some innocent for a price. The rules of commerce. Jack is not above seeing the social problems of his children’s school as an ocean of opportunity, a place with more substances of abuse than the average pharmacist’s shelf.

  ‘It gets worse,’ says Hemple.

  ‘It’s a lie,’ says Laurel. She looks at me stone cold, an edge to the expression in her eyes. We have reached bottom, like the thump of an elevator in the basement. To Laurel this is now something fundamental, a tenet I must believe.

  Still, denials are the small talk of the lawyer’s venue, more common than discussions of the weather, and Hemple ignores her.

  ‘According to the kid,’ she says, ‘Julie made admissions.’

  ‘What kind of admissions?’

  ‘The kid says Julie told her the stuff came from home, a stash her mother kept in the house. What’s worse, Melanie has confirmed this. She says Julie also told her the same thing, that her mother used drugs.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ says Laurel. ‘She’s a lying bitch.’

  I might expect her to fold, to be fighting back tears, driven to the edges of the glass enclosure by the charge. Instead she is standing, head erect, shoulders squared, shaking her head, and in clear unassailable language telling us that this is crap.

  Laurel came to the divorce with a schoolgirl’s faith in the justice of courts. It has been rocked by the slow recognition that money speaks here as clearly as anywhere in life. If I believe her, and I do, she is now getting a cynic’s first taste of how the scales can tip with the preponderance of perjury.

  As I stand and study her, at the opposite end of the small conference table, standing in the glare of fluorescence, there is a cold recognition, like a dark cloud, that passes ac
ross her face.

  ‘I’m gonna lose the kids,’ she says. ‘Aren’t I?’

  Chapter 2

  ‘Wake up, kiddo.’ I whisper softly into my daughter’s ear, not enough to rouse her. The TV has gone white with snow, a local station that signs off the cable at the witching hour.

  Sarah is dressed like some fairy princess – a Halloween party earlier in the evening with some kids from her school.

  I’m sprawled in the recliner in the family room, my feet up on the pop-up footrest.

  We’ve fallen asleep, Sarah in my lap. We have done this now three nights running. Without Nikki to impose a regimen on our lives, it seems we are adrift, anchorless, without the hale habits of life.

  I shift in the chair and Sarah clings to me, her little fingers digging into my shirt like the claws of a kitten. As I move she gives off a feckless moan, then little mewings.

  I look at the clock. It is after one in the morning. There is no chance of waking her. I lift her, dead weight in my arms, and carry her off to her bedroom.

  She will sleep in the chiffon of pretend royalty tonight. She can change in the morning, before school.

  These days I worry what her teacher, or some of the mothers must think, when they see my daughter. Her clothes are clean but not pressed. Perhaps it is merciful that Sarah, who was born a clotheshorse, has with her mother’s passing lost the fascination for things feminine. The dresses she used to wear, frilly things of pride to Nikki, now hang like listless ghosts in Sarah’s closet. My faculty for color coordination has never embraced my own tie rack. It is painful to the senses when applied to a little girl’s colored tights and tops. The braids and fine ponytails that seemed to take Nikki five minutes defy my thick fingers, so that most mornings Sarah’s bountiful hair now looks like hay in a Kansas windstorm. When we play games together these days it is not jump rope or jacks, but baseball, or tossing hoops in the yard, where I hold her up near the rim so she can do her own version of slam-dunk. When she trudges off to school each day, backpack slumping across her scrawny shoulders, I wonder if by yoking her affections to her widowed father’s wagon my daughter has doomed herself to life as a tomboy.