A Good Divorce

by John E. Keegan

  I took a sip of wine to let her gain composure. “Don’t stop.”

  “I’m not a very good dinner conversationalist, am I?”

  “You’re perfect.” I reached over and rubbed the top of her hand.

  “You must think I’m a simpleton.” She looked up at me and a trace of the gold light from the neon letters in the pole sign in the parking lot streaked her cheek. “You should have known your father back when he proposed to me on the Sausalito ferry.”

  “He proposed on the ferry?”

  “He’d just finished his training and I met him for a weekend furlough in San Francisco. We were next to the railing at the front of the boat. I can remember the wind beating against our faces.” She had a far-off look but her voice was strong. “We married in a little church in the Mission District before he shipped out.”

  “I don’t remember you ever telling us this.”

  “We weren’t always old, you know. We had dreams just like everyone else.” I tried to imagine Dad’s Navy bell-bottoms fluttering on the deck and Mom without the worry lines that had worn into her face. “You boys are the most important thing in the world to him.”

  I shook my head. “Now there’s an act of faith.”

  Her face drooped and she closed her eyes as if to say a silent prayer right there in the glow of the Holiday Inn sign.

  “Sorry. I’m not trying to rag on him, Mom. It’s just that we’ve always seemed like such an afterthought.”

  “He’s just hardest on the ones he loves. That’s been his job. To teach you boys to be prepared for the worst.”

  “Like a divorce.”

  “He’s sick about it.”

  “I wasn’t sure until today that he even knew about it,” I said.

  “He always liked Jude, you know that.”

  “They seem an unlikely match.”

  “You need faith too, Cyrus.”

  “Kind of late for that, I’m afraid.”

  In the morning, the duty nurse said Dad was worse and I told Mom I’d wait outside his room so that I wouldn’t get him riled up again.

  “He’ll want to see you.”

  “Really, Mom, it’s better.”

  There was a big, cylindrical coffee pot in the waiting room with a stack of styrofoam cups, sugar cubes, and powdered creamer on the table. I fixed myself a cup, stirred it with a red plastic swizzle stick, and grabbed three or four magazines from the top of the pile. The best I could manage was to look at the picture ads for skin creams and booze. The same models seemed to pose for all of them, men with wavy hair and women with big eyes, long lashes, and slits up their skirts.

  In the recesses of my brain, I’d always known this day would come. Even Dad couldn’t defy the life expectancy tables. I also knew that when it happened I’d be grief-stricken and fly to his side and seek forgiveness for all the thoughtless, shabby things I’d done or thought. Now that the moment was upon me, I couldn’t do it. I was too composed and on guard, too emotionally stunted, and I wished that my brothers had shown up. They were always so much better with Dad. They’d be able to console him. I tried to rationalize that his death, if that’s what was happening, was a private thing, something between him and Mom, the same way their engagement and marriage was. They didn’t need the aggravation of a son who hadn’t sorted out his own affairs.

  “He wants to see you.” Mom was clutching the remote control for the TV that she’d absent-mindedly carried out of the room.

  “How is he?”

  She choked. “Not so good.”

  I took her in my arms and the elbows she’d pulled in front of herself as a shield poked me in the ribs. “Are you coming with me?”

  “He wants you.”

  I helped her to a seat as two young boys in jeans and collar shirts stared at us. Their own parent was probably down the same hall. Mom and I didn’t offer them much hope. The news coming from that direction was bad.

  I dreaded seeing him alone. One of those morning news shows, where the anchors sit around in soft chairs, was playing quietly on the TV overhead when I entered the room. Dad was flat on his back, motionless. Creases of light coming through the blinds made a bamboo curtain pattern on the sheets. When I was practically standing over him, our eyes met.

  “Good morning, Dad.”

  “We need to talk.” His voice was anemic but gruff, and I wanted to crank up the handle on his oxygen so he could feel the vigor of a full dose of air. “I know you think I’m a horse’s ass”—he straightened his arms against his sides to raise himself up off the bed—“but I wanted to explain something before I kick off and go to the grave without you and I talking.” He closed his mouth and sucked in a deep breath through the tubes in his nostrils. “When we won the War, I thought the world owed me one. That’s probably where I got the chip on my shoulder, but that was the way it was in those days.” His voice was a whisper, and I looked over at the gauges to see if anything was falling. “My objective was to make a good living for your mother.” He was putting too much energy into this and I was afraid he was going to strain himself. “I should have bought the store from Harold. I know that. Your mom and I could have taken one of those Hawaii vacations, maybe bought a Winnebago and toured the country.”

  “You always wanted one of those rigs.”

  “I’m worth more dead than alive right now.”

  “That’s not true. Mom would be devastated if you …”

  “She’ll be better off without me.” He pounded his chest with the palm of his hand the way he used to pound the top of the TV to straighten out the picture. “God damnit, listen to me.” He blinked his eyes and the strangest thing happened: tears started to puddle in his eye sockets. “I need you to do something.” He was trying to get rid of the tears, will them away. “That’s why I called you in here. And I’m not asking ’cause you’re a lawyer. It’s ’cause your mom trusts you.” He rotated his head as if he were looking for something. “I don’t want them to keep me alive with a bunch of tubes hangin’ out of me. You understand? No miracles.”

  “Have you talked to Mom about this?”

  His eyes flared in the way I’d learned to recognize. “That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  The man who’d never trusted me to mix the oil and gas for the power lawnmower was asking me to help him die. “Dad, you might still pull out of this.”

  “There’s no such thing as something for nothing … and I’ve run out of trading material.” He was retired, he was at that point in our lives we all worked for, when we could tip back and cash in our reserves. Nobody had worked harder than my dad for this reprieve. “Get me one of those papers to sign. That’s all I want. Where it says I don’t want to live hooked up to wires. There’s a name for it. You know what I mean.”

  “Most of these expenses will be covered by insurance. You’re not going to bankrupt anyone, Dad.”

  “Listen to me. This is all I’ve got left to give her.”

  As if in a dream, my dad was finally saying something I understood, something I had an opinion on. There was a pressure building behind my eyes that I was trying to diffuse. It enraged Dad when I used to cry. I didn’t want to disappoint him at the very moment he’d shown such confidence in me. “Dad, I’m sorry I sounded off on you yesterday.”

  He waved me away with his hand. “Don’t grovel. You were great.”

  I turned my head away and scrambled to find my handkerchief. I could hide my eyes but I couldn’t hide the shuddering. Then I felt my dad’s finger tugging at my pocket like a kid trying to find a nickel for a piece of licorice.

  19.

  I’d entered the King County Courthouse hundreds of times in my life, to do battle over construction projects gone sour, property trespassed upon, a ship’s anchor that severed a power cable, real estate transactions that cratered. I was sworn in as a member of the bar in this building. This was the palace of disputes, where every imaginable kind of civil and criminal wrong was laid bare. The people you rode the elevators with were the pla
intiffs and defendants, their counsel, their witnesses, their supporters, their judges, and their jurors. I’d never entered the courthouse for a case in which any member of my own family was a party. And I was terrified.

  I got off on the seventh floor and turned right to find our courtroom in the west wing. Just ahead of me was a man in orange overalls with his hands cuffed behind his back slouching toward his arraignment in the company of two corrections officers. The same judges who decided the custody of good kids presided over the felonies as well. The hallway near the courtroom was surprisingly crowded with people who I assumed were waiting for their cases to be called.

  A man reached out of the crowd and grabbed my wrist. It was my old neighbor Mr. Sweet in a string tie with an imitation ivory slide over a blue plaid shirt. “We know what you’re fighting, buddy. Me and the Mrs. here can testify for you.” How did he know about the hearing? He was either reading Jude’s mail or Mr. Washington had told him. My eyes went to the discolorations where chewing tobacco had darkened the spaces between his teeth. The man who flossed his lawn edges had ignored his dental hygiene. “You got the whole neighborhood in your corner.”

  I looked around and, sure enough, there were three ladies sitting on the bench next to him who looked like election poll watchers from the basement of St. Patrick’s, and then I recognized some of the others standing there—parents of kids who used to babysit Derek and Justine, and the manager of Don’s Grocery. Who would have thought that the first trial for the block watch group I once headed would be mine and Jude’s? The neighbors wouldn’t be allowed in the courtroom, unless they were witnesses or the parties had consented to their presence. There’s no way Jude would have consented. Nor I for that matter. I was doing this for the kids, not for the mob.

  As I entered the sour light of the courtroom, my eye immediately caught the purplish haze of Mrs. Leonard’s bouffant hairdo, the lady from Child Protective Services. She was in the same row as Mrs. Perryvan, the school district’s counselor, and Mr. Washington, who gave me a thumbs-up sign from behind the back of his pew.

  I took my place at counsel table with Larry Delacord, who was wearing a good white shirt with no stains on the collar. The plan was to put on the investigators and experts first and finish with my testimony. Jude was sitting next to Gloria Monroe at her table and she turned to look at me as my chair shuddered into place. Her shoulders were stooped, her face washed-out, the swagger gone. She looked scared and I had to look away, back at the kids, who were in the front row next to a studious man with a bald spot resembling a monk’s tonsure. He must have been one of Jude’s experts. Justine was pensive, but I could tell that Derek wanted to wave so badly that his wrist hurt. Lill was absent. Gloria Monroe had probably advised her to stay home and bake cookies. She was going to make Jude pretend a little.

  The case had been assigned to Judge Purnell, a good draw for my side. He was a retired army colonel and considered a hanging judge, with unwavering notions of right and wrong. People shuffled in their seats as Larry delivered his opening statement. Then Gloria Monroe stood up. She seemed so much more the attorney with her gold wire-frame glasses, smooth delivery, and trim sand-colored hair.

  “Your honor, we would ask the court for the opportunity to defer opening statement until the beginning of our own case.”

  The judge granted her request and she sat down. Although I had the perfect profile view, I knew I couldn’t look at her. Jude had helped break me of that practice by telling me how easy it was for a woman to tell when your eyes were on her body. Besides, I could feel Jude’s hollow eyes on me.

  Larry Delacord called Mr. Washington as his first witness, and the floor heaved as the Seward Elementary principal lumbered past me in a natty dark suit that looked too hot for him. After a lengthy recitation of Mr. Washington’s stellar record as a school administrator, Larry moved to Derek’s capture under the mowing machine and then to the follow-up investigation.

  “It was like following a ball of string that someone had unraveled. One thing led to another until we found the source of the problem.”

  “And wha … what was that?”

  Mr. Washington spit out his answer. “Their mother’s sexual orientation.”

  “Move to strike the last response,” Gloria said. “There is no foundation. It calls for the opinion of an expert which this witness is not.” Her voice was measured as she enunciated each word like a veteran stage actress.

  The judge licked his upper lip and bobbed his head in sync with the mallet tapping against his hand. “This man is an educator, he’s spent more hours in the school room than the rest of us put together. I’m going to let the answer stand.”

  Gloria showed no outward disappointment but whispered something to Jude as Mr. Washington continued with his testimony. Jude remained inert. The first time Mr. Washington said “unfit mother” she objected again.

  “No foundation. Calls for a legal conclusion. Non-responsive to the question.” There were no wasted words, no histrionics, just three quick darts into the target.

  The judge sustained the objection and directed counsel to ask the question again. This time Mr. Washington went straight to his point.

  “The school district operates on the principle of parens patriae.” He looked up at the judge, as if to make sure the judge caught his highfalutin phrase, as if to demonstrate that the judge’s opinion of his education wasn’t misplaced. “We’re the parent of last resort. When the family breaks down, we’re there to catch the kids who fall through.”

  “Had the Sta … Stapleton family broken down?”

  While Gloria was making her objection, Mr. Washington was answering the question. You didn’t need to hear his answer; his jutting chin said it all.

  When Larry was finished, Gloria stood, pressed the lap wrinkles out of her skirt, and approached the witness stand. Mr. Washington glowered at her. Although she wore heels, her step showed the balance of a dancer. “Mr. Washington, where did you grow up?”

  “Hattiesburg, Mississippi,” he said proudly.

  “And where did you go to school?”

  “Howard University in Washington, D.C.”

  “What was your major, sir?”

  Mr. Washington looked over at the judge with a perplexed look on his face. The judge nodded for him to answer. “It was history. I took down a B.A. in history.” Gloria had obviously pulled his file.

  “Then you’ve heard of the Jim Crow laws?”

  “I sure have, M’am.” Mr. Washington answered before Larry could register his objection on the basis of relevancy, which the court waved off. It was obvious that the judge thought this witness could handle himself. The mere mention of the South, however, seemed to have caused a transformation in Mr. Washington’s demeanor. He was more tentative and Gloria Monroe was suddenly a madam.

  “And in 1896, didn’t the highest court in this land say that Louisiana’s Jim Crow car law was legal and constitutional?” Larry squirmed in his seat and looked at me as if to ask if I knew where this was heading.

  Mr. Washington scratched one side of his face with a cluster of fingertips and scooted closer to the front edge of his seat. “I don’t remember the year, but those laws have been thrown out.”

  “Are you familiar with the miscegenation laws?” Gloria was a pitching machine. As fast as Mr. Washington answered, another ball appeared in her hand and she fired it before he had a chance to think.

  “Sure, but they’ve been thrown out too.”

  “In some states, quite recently, isn’t that right?”

  “What’s that have to do with anything?” He unbuttoned his jacket and searched the inside pocket until he found a handkerchief to wipe off his face.

  “Would it be fair to say, Mr. Washington, that these laws, all passed on by wise and learned legislators and judges, had one thing in common? They said a black person was unfit to be educated with or live with whites?”

  “So?”

  “And unfit to vote or play baseball on the same team
with whites?”

  I saw a recognition break across Mr. Washington’s face as he rubbed the palms of his hands together and readjusted his feet to square himself. “M’am, those laws were a whole different thing.” Gloria let him go on this time. “Those were products of deeply rooted discrimination. My God, we were slaves. We fought a Civil War over that one. If you’re trying to make some kind of connection between the treatment of blacks and your client, it’s not going to compute.” He looked over at the judge, satisfied with his answer.

  “When Orval Faubus closed four high schools in Little Rock twenty years ago, don’t you think he was trying to protect the school children in Arkansas?”

  “There’s a huge difference, M’am. Governor Faubus, pardon my saying so, was a racist and a bigot.”

  “Someone who was stubbornly devoted to his own preconceptions regardless of the facts?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Governor Faubus had probably never seen an integrated school he didn’t detest?”

  “Probably not.”

  “And Jude Martin is your first encounter with a lesbian mother?”

  “That’s true, but …”

  “Isn’t it possible, Mr. Washington, that you and the school district have jumped to some conclusions about my client that are based on fear and intolerance?”

  Larry was rising to his feet to make an objection and trying to scoot his chair back at the same time.

  “Sit down,” Mr. Washington said. “I’ll answer that.”

  The judge smacked his gavel down. “Nobody’s going to answer that question. You can all save your breath. Miss Monroe, the objection is sustained. Ask another question.”

  She seemed almost to have expected the judge’s ruling because she already had her next one ready. “Let me put it this way, Mr. Washington. What fact about being lesbian is harmful to Ms. Martin’s children?”

  He readjusted himself and tugged on his lapel. “Well, for starters, it’s immoral.”

  “That’s an opinion. What fact?”

  He looked at the judge for assistance, then back at Gloria. “I think the fact of how her kids have behaved is harmful.”