by Robyn Carr
He stared at me for a minute, got up and turned off the TV for the first time since we’d married, and then said, “No, Jack, I guess it isn’t working.” He is the only person who ever called me Jack.
“Maybe we ought to talk about ending it rather than fight about who’s right and who’s wrong.”
And we had. We were far more civilized in our divorce than we had ever been in marriage. It seemed we’d finally found something we could do together amicably. The little house we occupied was leased and I could afford the rent, utilities, car payment, and insurance for at least the rest of the year without alimony. Mike had friends he could move in with.
Alimony had not occurred to me; he was a starving student. We agreed to separate and divorce sans war; we hadn’t had a good time together anyway. Parting was the only thing we did that made sense.
I was twenty-three at the time. Now that I’m older, I realize how many times I have liked someone without loving him, or loved without liking. Mike I had briefly loved. I didn’t like anything about him. Now, though I’m not in love with him, I’m growing to like him. He has become admirable in my eyes.
We separated and I felt instant relief. Then I missed a period. Then two. My pregnancy was a complete accident that resulted from one of our rare sexual encounters.
My fear at the time was that he’d demand to move back in and stop the divorce proceedings. Or insist I have an abortion. Although I doubted the soundness of my decision, I had instantly decided I would have my child and raise him. My reasons were murky; I wasn’t sure this sort of thing would happen to me again. I hadn’t dated extensively; I didn’t have my sights set on love, marriage, and family. I was solitary, a trait of only children, and independent. I had learned I couldn’t live with Mike Alexander, but I was certain I could live with his child.
As self-centered as he was in those days, he let me have my way as long as it didn’t cost him anything. I called him from the hospital the day after Sheffie was born, and despite the fact that my parents were enormously rude to him, he was civil and thanked me for letting him look at his son. He asked if he could visit him once in a while and I said sure.
“I’m naming him Sheppard Michael Alexander,” I said. “I’m going to have my maiden name again. He will be Sheppard Alexander and I will be Jacqueline Sheppard.” He thanked me for giving the baby his name. Mike visited twice that first year, if I remember.
I was lonely in those first few months after Sheffie was born, but I loved him so devotedly and felt so needed that I didn’t indulge the self-pity.
Years of building myself up into my idea of success followed Sheffie’s birth. I moved back in with my parents to save money and have my mom’s help with the baby. I worked ferociously and ambitiously. After three years with the firm and a two-year-old child, I managed to get a scholarship to law school. Why settle for being a paralegal when I was smart enough to pass the bar?
I was completely unprepared for the demands of law school, though I had been warned by the attorneys in the firm I had worked for. The constant encouragement and even tutoring from lawyers I had once typed for helped me get through. They let me clerk in the summers and offered me my first job when I passed the bar. There I was, a brand-new, freckle-faced, single-mother lawyer with a five-year old son. I was back out on my own, settled with my child in a little tract house, practicing law.
I was one of those late babies; my mother was over thirty-five when I came along and my father was older still. I had only a year in the firm when my mom, then sixty-five years old, had a heart attack and died. Her death devastated me; there were no brothers or sisters, and my father, twelve years older than my mother, was not well. We had always expected to lose him first. In addition to dealing with my loss, I had to begin to take care of my father. Had I not had Sheffie, I might have crumbled. The arms of a small, loving child can do more than penicillin for what ails you.
This is when Michael Alexander came back into my life as, get this, a model ex-husband. He had remarried, a woman named Chelsea whom I would eventually choose for a best friend even with Mike betwixt us. Chelsea was ideal for us both. She quickly gave him two daughters and pushed him back into his son’s life, child support and all. He couldn’t be argued into back support, but he became generous with his time and his money.
I remember that Sheffie was stunned at first, and suspicious. He soon settled into the weekend routine, which gave us both something good. Sheffie, who was losing his grandpa, had a dad, and I had valuable time to myself. I owe Chelsea. It was Chelsea’s doing that Mike and I were able to forge a friendship that came as a minor relief when our son died. Mike told me it was Chelsea who said to her husband, “What do you mean you’re not paying any child support? Is that how you plan to demonstrate responsibility to our daughters? And what about their right to know their brother?”
Chelsea Alexander made of Mike something I could not have managed. She somehow found potential in this playful jerk; she encouraged his dreams, his performance, his fidelity. He had majored in criminology, and became a cop. He developed a more sensitive nature because of Chelsea, fathering daughters, and working with women. His partner, I learned by accident, was a woman. I never would have fallen in love with him, but I began to respect him. I do respect him. I owe him my life. Regardless of what all the pop-psych books say — that it is impossible to change another person — Chelsea fixed Mike. She entered his life and molded him into a husband and family man. Somehow he had reached an age and maturity to know a valuable woman when he had one — and Chelsea was it.
All these things and people combined to bring me here. My father, who suffered from hardening of the arteries, was diagnosed as having that tragic thief of the mind, Alzheimer’s. He had to be placed in a nursing home, and when Sheffie was killed, Dad wasn’t able to comprehend it. My father was the last thread that tied me to Los Angeles. When he died it was time, I thought, for a big change. I had come to realize that I would always be plagued by a certain sadness from my losses, but in a new town I needn’t be reminded by friends and acquaintances that I had once been so positive.
I set about making new friends. In a place like Coleman, a small-town civility abounds, yet conceals standoffishness. At first glance it appears friendship will be easy. I found a group of men who had coffee and cigarettes every morning at the cafe; after stopping there for a muffin-to-go three days in a row, I had become a regular and one of their acquaintances. I purposely lingered to stretch the truth with them every day. Two ranchers, a telephone lineman, a county surveyor, the hardware-store owner, and Harry Musetta, Roberta’s husband. They seemed to enjoy teasing me about the time — all of eight thirty a.m. — and the fact that they had already worked half a day.
That was where I first met Billy Valenzuela, a forty-five year old man who had suffered brain damage in an auto accident when he was in his late twenties. From the time he had recovered enough to begin to function, town people gave him little jobs like yard work, dog sitting, deliveries. He was sweet and shy and had the mental capacity of a ten-year old. He was large — six feet and two hundred pounds — with a kind and gentle disposition. He drove around town in his beat-up old pickup with his dog, Lucy, and he lived alone at the edge of town in a tiny two-room house that he had shared with his mother until her death. Now the town took care of Billy, in a way, keeping him in enough cash to get by.
One morning in the cafe I ran into Tom Wahl while I was getting my muffin. He was not sitting at the long table with the men; he seemed to be adjacent to them, at his own table talking to one of the guys on the end. As if I were being reacquainted with an old friend, I gave him a big hello.
“You should watch the company you keep, Tom. These old liars are going to get you into trouble,” I teased.
“Lady lawyers,” Harry said, “are what get you into trouble. You can trust me on that one.”
“Roberta files her briefs at work, washes Harry’s briefs at home,” someone joked.
“I wash all the b
riefs,” Harry said. “They call it retirement,” he added.
“I’m hanging around here waiting for you,” Tom said. “I have that drawing and materials list.”
“Great,” I said. He passed an envelope to me and I slid it into my purse.
“Think you’ll have time to look it over this morning?” he asked.
“Sure. Can I call you later?”
“I don’t know where I’ll be today. If I am around home, I might have the saw or drill running. I’ll call you.”
From that point on, I guess, I thought about Tom most of the time. And will, I suppose, for the rest of my life.
2
I chose Saturday for Tom to come to the house to install the finished living-room bookcases. Oh, the drawing impressed me, as did the list that broke down the materials and labor costs. We firmed things up when he dropped by Roberta’s office with his contract, spelling out that he would do the work and be paid the sum of $457.
“Labor is only one hundred forty-two,” I said. “You can’t be making much of a living at this rate.”
“Believe me, I get along fine. You want to give me a tip?”
“That isn’t what I had in mind,” I said. “I’m surprised, but pleasantly so. Don’t press your luck. I might decide to try to build the shelves myself.”
When he finished laughing, he said he’d see me on Saturday at about nine. It was going to take him all day to do the work.
I found myself looking forward to the day. The people of Coleman were cordial, but until you’ve entered a small town as a newcomer and tried to wedge your way in, it’s difficult to understand the kind of resistance there is to a new resident. It feels like hesitancy. I wondered if it was suspicion or timidity. The old-timers in the cafe were great jokesters, but I was not invited to the town picnic or the Chambers’ potluck supper. The women in the beauty shop were likewise friendly, fun in a down-home kind of way. There were no invitations for dinner.
And there was Billy; large, klutzy, sweet Billy, who cleaned up my yard every Friday. Billy ran errands and made deliveries for Roberta twice a week. For me, he did mowing, raking, and trimming. He did not qualify as a gardener; his work was mediocre and he left things undone: a tuft of unmowed grass here, a forgotten pile of cuttings there. Plus, he needed constant encouragement to do it at all. For fifteen bucks a week I found him a value, but he was not a conversationalist.
My relationship with Roberta was warming up; we were developing a kind of mutual respect, but there wasn’t any of that “Come out to the house to eat with Harry and me.” I could see the potential for that more from Harry than her. Nothing about settling into Coleman was quick for me.
Then there were the summer transients: vacationers, those passing through, and some part-time residents. It takes months to know which faces are here for a day, a week or two, a season, or permanently. Sometimes you find a long-term resident or permanent resident when they find you — in the grocery store or in front of the post office. “Hey, are you the lawyer? Let me ask you something.” Those acquaintances don’t offer camaraderie or amusement either, and if they do, it’s usually for free legal advice.
I made do on long distance — I didn’t have to look at my old friends’ pitying eyes and was able to cover any tones of my own depression over the phone. Or not talk. A trick I had learned was to use my cheeriest voice to say, “Doggone it! I was on my way out. Let me call you back later.” Later, when any symptom of the blues passed, I could pick up the phone.
Roberta Musetta is a whole story in herself. She was sixty and dyed her hair brown, but I never got the impression she had an ounce of vanity. She was about thirty pounds overweight and heavily bosomed; she might have had a grandmotherly appearance for anyone not acquainted with her rough edges, stern, humorless nature, and pigheadedness. She had glasses for reading, but was either uncomfortable wearing them or used them to emphasize her reaction to statements. She kept track of them with one of those chains around her neck; I knew, instinctively, she had worn that long before it became chic.
Despite the community’s reticence, it was with Roberta that I felt both needed and respected. She was overworked, though there were some other lawyers in town and several in Henderson County. We had one secretary, Peggy, whom Roberta snidely referred to as “part-time” although she was meant to be full-time. She arrived late, often left early, and did as little typing and filing as possible. Roberta’s office — our office — was a disaster. Files were stacked everywhere; ashtrays remained full until they overflowed. She had a caseload that appeared impossible for a lone attorney. Her memory for details was astonishing. There were more civil suits per capita in Coleman than in large cities like Denver or Colorado Springs. People are going to see one another for decades; they require more legal closure on their arguments.
During that first week, when Roberta was going through some of the cases pending, lifting a file, explaining it, putting it down on the other side of the desk, my first reaction was to say “Jeez.” I was more in awe of the clutter than of the work.
“You aren’t going to try to organize me, are you?” she asked unkindly.
“Not unless you ask me to.”
“I am not only not asking you to, I am ordering you not to. Though it may not appear so, I have a system and I know what I’m doing. If you want a challenge, work on Peggy,” she suggested. Peggy was down at the store buying snacks, something that happened several times a day. Peggy had a genuine weight problem, about one hundred extra pounds. “If you can get the Cheetos stains off my paperwork and get her to empty the trash or wash up the cups, I’ll give you a Christmas bonus.”
“You have no objection to my being neat, do you?” I asked.
She leveled a stare at me with those hard eyes of hers, looming over the rim of her glasses. Surely there was a sense of humor in there somewhere, I thought. Then it came. There was a deepening of the lines at the corners of her eyes and around her thin lips; there was a slight twitch in the mouth. “Whatever blows your skirt up, dear,” she said evenly.
Roberta worked at being a pain in the ass. She might not have been frivolous or forthcoming, but she had many traits I admire in successful, older women. She worked like a farm animal, for one thing. She didn’t seem to be easily manipulated into doing anything other than what she had planned. Harry seemed equally autonomous; he didn’t pester her for any of the wifely duties that I could see. She called him an old fart.
“Although your background is in family law and most of the cases I’d like you involved in are areas in which you’re already experienced, I don’t want you to get the idea you can specialize in a place like Coleman. You’re going to have to get your feet wet in some other areas as well: property closures, historical water rights, change of easements, tax law, corporate law, et cetera. I’ll be able to help you with most of that.”
“You don’t think I’ll be a handicap, do you?”
“You wouldn’t be here if I thought so.” She could be so matter-of-fact; there was the merest hint of a compliment in there. I had no trouble at all getting used to that aspect of her personality. I like the straight shot. “As it happens, there is more of the kind of thing you’re used to going on here all the time. Divorce, property settlement, social services work like foster care, adoptions, custody disputes, restraining orders... a sad amount of domestic violence. I don’t mean to imply that these circumstances are new; hardly that. These people have only recently discovered law. Many are still settling things behind the barn with fists or guns.”
In small towns that survive on seasonal work there is economic dislocation that lends itself to domestic disharmony. Translated: A man works timber all spring, summer, and fall. He is laid off and collects unemployment, sits around the house and drinks beer all winter. Ninety percent of our domestic abuse, restraining orders, and divorce filings takes place between Christmas and the end of March.
“Here’s one for you,” she said, handing me a folder. “You can run over to the county
seat and file for a restraining order — in proper — not in Family Court, in Superior Court. We need to keep the live-in man away from his girlfriend’s mother.”
I took the file and saw that a grandmother was trying to get custody or long-term foster care for a grandchild she felt was in jeopardy. I scanned through: possible child abuse, drug-related difficulties with the cohabiting couple; the child had been removed to foster care and the mother had been ordered by Henderson County Social Services to get family counseling. At first glance it looked like the major problem was the live-in man, possibly the child’s father.
“How do things like this generally go in a place like Coleman?”
“It might go away before it gets to court — people enjoy their family fights, but they like them at home. The grandmother may work her own deal to be primary caretaker of the child, often negotiated in a huge family quarrel. There could be years of back-and-forth nonsense until the poor kid reaches thirteen or so. Eventually, this whole scenario will probably repeat over and over.” She shrugged, a gesture more helpless than anything. “So it goes.”
“Won’t the state get involved?”
“County. This is their involvement, modest though it seems. These people can’t manage separation. Since we don’t send kids out of town to foster homes, they are always connected to the same group of people. This county-appointed foster home? This grandchild is now the second generation to be cared for there. The same problems crossing generations. Physical abuse, alcohol abuse, long-term family troubles, and tripe.”
“Tripe?”
“Bullshit.”
“I bet you can see the case coming before it comes,” I suggested.
“Much of the time. I’ve known these people most of my life. We have our town hotshots, our town trash, and our town nobles. The names rarely change, although there have been some nice surprise successes over the years. It’s much of the same stuff you’re used to dealing with, except here it all has a different flavor. We seldom solve problems in this office — we mainly change the rules temporarily. You’ll see.”