The Mirror Apocalypse

by John Ayang

  “Call the case of the day,” Judge Montgomery spoke her command with professional ado, without even looking at the bailiff.

  “In the matter of discrimination and emotional battery, in the case of Eshiet and Eshiet versus Cletus McCarthy and the Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, will the litigants indicate their presence in court,” the bailiff called out. Each Counsel responded present.

  “We shall begin the proceedings of the day with the Defense,” Judge Montgomery said. “Counsel may call its witness to the dock.”

  “Counsel would like to call Mrs. Hannah McCarthy,” Stacy announced. Hannah McCarthy moved to the dock and the bailiff administered the usual oath.

  “Ma’am, you may be seated,” Stacy said, politely. “And, for the record, state your full name please.”

  “Hannah Therese McCarthy,” Hannah said in her singsong voice.

  “Ma’am, you are the adoptive mother of the Reverend Cletus Nicholas McCarthy of Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church, am I correct?” Stacy queried.

  “Objection,” Patrick Turner said, somewhat disinterestedly. “Counsel is leading witness.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Montgomery cued in her customary call.

  “I will put the question another way,” Stacy said, not really seeing what her opponent was objecting to. “Do you know the Reverend Cletus Nicholas McCarthy of Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church? If you do. What is your relationship with him?”

  “Yes, I do know him,” Hannah affirmed. “He is my adopted son and I am his adopted mother.”

  “Can you tell the court how you came to be his adopted mother?” Stacy said, facing the jury box and away from the witness, in that characteristically dramatic way lawyers use to create an impression when they know their question is going to elicit a cardinal point from the witness. “What did you go through; what was the whole process like?”

  Hannah McCarthy shifted in her seat, adjusted her clothing, and, striking the pose of a gone-through-a-lot mother misunderstood, she told her story. After she was done, Stacy turned and asked, “Did you sign any papers indicating that you were adopting the newborn baby?”

  “Yes,” Hannah answered curtly.

  “Are these the papers? Can you recognize your signature?” Stacy said, spreading a handful of copy-size typed documents in front of Hannah. She squinted slightly at the papers as though she was seeing them for the first time.

  “Yes,” Hannah said, resolutely. “That’s the contract document that the hospital gave me, and those are my signatures.”

  “Your Honor, Defense submits documents as evidence,” Stacy said.

  “Does Prosecution agree?” Judge Montgomery asked as Stacy moved to show the papers to Patrick Turner.

  “Yes, Your Honor.” Patrick Turner said, a shade too fast and a fraction of a second too soon, before even looking at the papers, nearly giving away the charade. Stacy placed the documents on the judge’s desk.

  “Did you at any time have any conversation with the biological mother of your adopted son, either before or after the adoption was finalized?” Stacy asked.

  “No, Ma’am. I was not allowed that,” Hannah replied resolutely.

  “Your witness,” Stacy said, looking at the prosecution desk and smiling only with her eyes.

  Patrick Turner got up, adjusted his tie, and, slightly backing away from the witness, leaned on the witness railing with one hand and the other on his hip, all red tape and boredom. He did not even look at Hannah, but proceeded with his brief cross examination.

  “Ma’am would you recognize the biological mother of your adopted son if she appeared now in court?”

  “No, Sir,” Hannah replied curtly.

  “If she appeared now in court and made a motion to claim her biological son back, what would be your reaction?”

  “Well, I had the best part of him as my son for thirty years. Now that he has become a problem child with a lawsuit on his head, she can have him back; all of him, with the lawsuit,”

  Hannah replied, throwing the court into a raucous guffaw. Hannah sat still, maintaining a stone face. Patrick Turner was greatly tickled at the wry humor and Judge Montgomery permitted herself a chuckle even as she banged on her gavel for order in court.

  “No further questions, Your Honor,” Patrick Turner said, moving to his seat still chuckling quietly.

  “Ma’am, you may stand down,” Judge Montgomery said, watching with amusement as Hannah walked the short distance to her seat beside her husband at the Defense Counsel desk. “Counsel may call her next witness.”

  “Counsel would like to call Dr. Josef Horacek to the stand,” Stacy announced, and after the usual oath and stating of name in full, she proceeded to examine the witness with the same set of questions. Then she asked him to recount the events that took place at Norfolk General Hospital thirty-one years ago, which resulted in the adoption of Cletus Nicholas McCarthy. The entire courtroom was spellbound as they listened to Dr. Horacek’s story. From time to time, Patrick Turner and his client, Dr. Eshiet, conferred in whispers and nodded their agreement on some point of issue. Everything seemed to go fine, and his story even began to bore the court. But as he mentioned the part when he substituted the donor sperm with his own, the whole court broke into pandemonium, as had happened on the first day when Fr. McCarthy was outed as having been conceived via IVF. Reporters and camera crews stampeded one another while trying to get to the lobby of the court to call in the breaking news to their different newsrooms. Fr. McCarthy was not only conceived via IVF, but also happened to be the biological child of a prominent Norfolk Fertility Clinic owner, Dr. Josef Bernard Horacek, whose story turned out as the background to set the case straight. Legally, it meant that Fr. McCarthy was the adopted son of Stephen and Hannah McCarthy, but the biological son of Dr. Josef and Barbara Horacek. The documents of adoption exonerated the McCarthys from any direct involvement or complicity in the IVF conception process of Fr. McCarthy. And Fr. McCarthy, himself, was not to blame because it wasn’t his fault that he was conceived that way. The Horaceks not being Catholic, the Church was bereft of the power to impose on them the doctrine on the immorality of IVF as a binding article of faith and morals. As such, they had no case to answer. In the end, Dr. Edidiong and Dr. Ima Eshiet were left with only one charge to pursue in their case: emotional battery. That was the part of the settlement that merited the legal fees as due from the Archdiocese because, from all indications, Stacy would have lost on that score. There would have been no way to prove that publicly shaming the Eshiets by denying them Holy Communion in full view of other parishioners was not emotional battery, a category of tort litigations that is always difficult to disprove. So, Stacy was only too glad to stage the drama of putting her witnesses on the stand to bring the case to the point where Patrick Turner would declare prosecution’s agreement to an out-of-court settlement.

  Judge Montgomery regained order in her court after incessantly banging on the gavel. “Counsel may continue,” she called.

  “Dr. Horacek, on the adoption contract, who signed for the father of the baby?”

  “The hospital management signed. Technically, the baby had no father, so the hospital signed in loco patris.”

  “Your Honor, defense rests,” Stacy announced with formal ado, turned to Patrick Turner and added, “Your witness.” Then she walked back to her seat.

  “Dr. Horacek when the sperm from the first donor was found to be unfit for use in fertilizing the egg of the surrogate mother, because of aneuploidy as you said, what did the hospital do?”

  “The hospital management asked me to find another donor and I found one,” Dr. Horacek replied.

  “You found one?” Patrick Turner asked, looking confused.

  “Yes,” Dr. Horacek replied, resolutely.

  “Who?” he asked, creasing his forehead.

  “Me,” Dr. Horacek responded, matte
r-of-factly.

  “Oh! I see,” Patrick Turner said, looking like one who has in fact gotten it, finally.

  The court broke into another round of laughter. He turned and faced the audience with a shark’s smile. Scratching his head and looking stunned, he admitted, “He threw me off,” exacerbating the laughter. Then, turning theatrically on the balls of his feet to face the bench, he announced, “Prosecution rests,” bowing obsequiously.

  “Mr. Turner, is this a charade?” Judge Montgomery asked.

  “No, Your Honor. It is not,” he replied, getting serious again.

  “Good,” Judge Montgomery said with a slight edge to her voice. “Because, if I can recall well, at Turner and Stendhal, you don’t kid around.” She parroted Patrick Turner’s statement on the day of the preliminary hearing.

  As it turned out, the court session of January 8 was, in fact, a charade. The background negotiations that Dr. Murphy and Dr. Horacek had participated in had resulted in Dr. Eshiet agreeing to an out-of-court settlement. Dr. Eshiet had even agreed to drop the claims to damages for emotional battery except for the legal fees that the Archdiocese would pay to Turner and Stendhal, to cover costs and time spent. In turn, Dr. Edidiong and Dr. Ima Eshiet would be restored to the Sacrament of Holy Communion after they would have been duly absolved. In lieu of this, they would do the mild penance of bagging relief material for two days, for needy clients at the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry, a job at which Dr. Ima Eshiet was already a regular volunteer for two days a week, and a cause which was already a pet project for both husband and wife, as they had donated huge sums of money and material toward it. They gleefully embraced the penance and even finished it before the court date. They even continued donating their time and money to the Food Pantry, as they did so almost weekly prior to their penance. Thus, their penance was also a charade, to give the parishioners of Queen of Peace the impression that the Eshiets were punished for their insubordination. And both husband and wife made a big splash of finally giving in to the authority of the Church, by doing their “penance” in the limelight, with reporters and cameras all over the place. But Dr. Edidiong Eshiet kept insisting that he and his wife were contented they had made their point by forcing the Church to review its record of justice and fair treatment of its members. So, all parties concerned knew ahead of time what was going to happen in court, and were, to a certain extent, coached on how they would respond to certain questions. So, the edge in the judge’s voice was a cue for Patrick Turner to do what he had agreed to do to bring a close to the matter.

  “Your Honor!” he called, raising his forefinger like a town council voter. “One minute, please.” He bent over his desk and conferred in whispers with the Eshiets, then straightened up, adjusted his suit, cleared his throat and intoned in a powerful baritone voice, “Your Honor. Given all the submissions by the witnesses, especially the testimony of Dr. Horacek, and in consultation with my client, prosecution has decided to drop the charge of discrimination against the Reverend Cletus McCarthy and the Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. On the Charge of emotional battery, prosecution, in consultation and after due negotiations with all stakeholders, has agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the defense counsel.” He gave a slight bow and sat down.

  “The discrimination charge against the defendant is hereby declared dropped,” Judge Montgomery said and banged her gavel. “On the charge of emotional battery, litigants are hereby advised to settle their grievances out of court. Court is dismissed.” She banged the gavel one more time and walked out from the bench into her chambers, as if she couldn’t wait to get out of there. The crowd rose and started for the door in a raucous din, looking a bit disappointed at the seemingly anticlimactic ending to such an explosive case. Not in the least disappointed was the Houston KHOU TV Channel that had obtained the streaming rights to air the proceedings of the day. It announced, somewhat unenthusiastically, that the discrimination case against the Catholic Archdiocese had been dropped after a high-powered negotiation had forced the prosecutor’s hand.

  In the Chancery office on San Jacinto Street, Cardinal Umberto Felice punched the air in a gesture of victory and said, “Yes!” Bishop Montano and Sister Ellis, who were watching the procedure together on the conference room TV, abruptly stood up, hugged, and kissed each other. Then, suddenly self-conscious, they quickly disengaged and scuttled out of the room before anyone noticed. Fr. Callahan and Fr. Tung, who were also watching the procedure on Fr. Callahan’s office TV, high-fived each other, and Fr. Tung waxed scriptural, “And the powers of the netherworld will not prevail against it.”

  “The bark of Peter is, once more, on safe waters,” Fr. Callahan concurred.

  At the courthouse, Stacy escorted the McCarthys into their vehicles to drive home. She promised to call Fr. McCarthy and bring him up to date, then turned to walk to her car in the parking lot behind the courthouse where John McCarthy was waiting for her. Fr. Charles Polanski was on his cell phone pacing on the steps of the courthouse. He waved to Stacy and she waved back, suspecting he had beaten her to it, updating Fr. McCarthy. She hoped he was giving him the message the right way, though it didn’t matter a whole lot as she would still call him to advise him on the next steps to follow.

  She was just coming level with her BMW convertible when she heard her name. Turning around she saw Dr. Horacek walking briskly toward her. In tow was a stately middle-aged lady whom she surmised was his wife Barbara. She had never met her. The day she visited Dr. Horacek, Barbara was out, she was told. Stacy was struck by her beauty and felt secretly happy for Fr. McCarthy, though, technically, Barbara wasn’t his mother.

  “Ms. Donovan, I want to thank you so much for a wonderful job,” Dr. Horacek said, almost swooning. “You don’t know how much it means to us for Reverend Cletus to finally be exonerated.”

  “Yes, thank you so much, Ms. Donovan, for representing our son so well,” Barbara concurred. Then, realizing she might be misunderstood, she quickly added, with a tinge of embarrassment, “Well, technically speaking, not our son. But, you know the sense in which I am saying that. He came from…, well, my womb, you know.” She chuckled, awkwardly. “We love him and we’re proud of him.”

  “You’re welcome, Dr. Horacek,” Stacy replied, shaking his proffered hand. Then she gave Barbara a hug. “Don’t make too much of it, Mrs. Horacek. I am sure he will be glad to welcome you to be part of his life, as his ‘other mom’.”

  “Oh, that is such a sweet thing to say,” Barbara cooed, hugging Stacy again. “I can’t wait to meet him when he comes back from vacation.”

  “Yes, please, Let us know as soon as he is back,” Dr. Horacek said. “We would like to meet him and offer him our support and encouragement. We would like for him to know that even though we are not his parents, still we do love him.”

  “No problem I’ll let you know,” Stacy assured. “Have a nice day,” she said, waving as she walked on and grabbed the car door thrown open for her by John McCarthy. They waved back with smiles and gratitude.

  “What a fine young lady,” Barbara said.

  “Yes,” Dr. Horacek agreed. “And well at home in her profession.”

  It was an unusual Saturday afternoon on January 12, 2013, at the McCarthy residence on Hollow Wood Circuit. It felt like it was Thanksgiving again. The food, the guests, the camaraderie, the stories, and the fellowship were all typical, except that the gathering was for a different reason. Fr. McCarthy had come back from his vacation almost a week earlier and, having met with his biological parents, Barbara and Josef, and his sister, Crystal, at Barbara’s house, he insisted on arranging a meeting during which both his adopted family and biological family would meet and get to know each other. As he put it, there was no reason why both families could not relate together in mutual friendship. After all, it wasn’t a “new normal” as the popular phrase went, that he had adopted parents and biological parents. Having four parents had always been the
lot of any adoptee since ever the first child was adopted, whenever and wherever that was. So, it was one big celebration at the McCarthy residence, despite the stories in the media about them which came in all slants and angles, depending on the paper and the TV station, and the intent of the publishers. Even their neighbors came to visit and share in the euphoria, but most probably to see Fr. McCarthy, the first IVF-conceived Catholic priest, as the media had put it.

  Fr. McCarthy felt like a celebrity. As a matter of fact, his parishioners treated him that way at the reception they held after Mass, the previous Sunday, to welcome him back to the parish. Not that it was unusual to welcome a pastor back from a short vacation with a reception ceremony. Just that it was appropriate to do so as a matter of solidarity, considering the situation of things. And Greg Sullivan and his wife openly rejoiced, almost tripping over themselves to show how much they and the parishioners supported him ‘in these trying times’, as he put it in his brief speech. There was more than enough food and drinks, music and dancing, and brief speeches here and there—some exaggerated—to show how much Fr. McCarthy had touched their lives. It was a good ceremony, but, through it all, Fr. McCarthy could not help feeling that something had changed in their relationship with him. On the general level, the normal pastor-parishioners relationship was still in place, but beyond that veneer, the dynamics had changed. In fact, without actually saying so, some parishioners exhibited an unintended curiosity in the way they looked at him, probably wondering whether a ‘test tube-conceived’ person was just like any other normal person.