by Warren Adler
“That first part’s the problem, Charlie.”
“Guess I do shoot from the hip,” Charlie mumbled.
“You can’t blame yourself all the time, Charlie. There’s more to it than that. Nothing’s black and white. Let’s see what the lawyer has to say.”
“Seems crazy, doesn’t it? All we want to do is see our grandson. Wouldn’t think you’d need a lawyer for that.”
They had seen a brief story in the papers about a case in New York state that dealt with grandparents’ visitation rights. Robert Forte had been quoted. “Yes, there is a statute in the state of Maryland which gives grandparents the right to petition for visitation rights under certain conditions.” It had taken ten minutes to make the call and a lifetime for the call to be returned. He had offered Forte a fractured outline, unable to sustain a simple, smoothly told narrative. Forte had been patient but probing and had offered an initial interview without promises. They might as well, Molly had agreed. They had nothing to lose.
Charlie felt himself growing sullen and patted her hand again. She put her other hand on top of his. He shrugged, looking at what he and Tray had called a hand sandwich. Instead of a grin, he felt morbid, drained of even the possibility of joy. Tears had come on without warning lately, as well as lips that moved, offering silent curses, which Molly had the good grace to pretend not to see.
“At least we’ll get her attention,” Molly said.
“I don’t want her damned attention. I want Tray.”
She smoothed the shoulder of his jacket, patting away as if there were dust or dandruff there. Mostly it was, he knew, a gesture to soothe his agitation. He felt another lecture coming on.
“If you show too much emotion, it turns people off. Especially anger. It just won’t do any good to show anger. Do you understand what I mean?” Her tone changed suddenly. “I don’t want to sound like a schoolteacher, Charlie. I just want us to make the best presentation possible.”
“You think I’ll blow it?”
“Of course not.”
She concentrated on his tie now, tightening the knot, then moving her hand to his still-full head of hair, another gesture of concern. Surprisingly, he was not embarrassed by her ministrations, which usually were done only in private. For a while he had toyed with the idea of pinning the patch of black crepe to his lapel again, but it didn’t seem right after all this time, although the ache in his heart was still as strong as ever.
He shot her a wink and a smile. He had always been proud of her. She was a good teacher and all her kids adored her. Not that he had done too badly himself, for a fellow with merely a high school diploma. The war had taken his college years, and Bethlehem Steel had taken the rest. He had been a damned good inspector, and rarely had he ever felt that what he did was beneath what she did. So he hadn’t worn a jacket and tie to do his work. But not a piece of pipe had gone out of that plant that didn’t meet its specs to a T. He took pride in what he had done and had been paid well for the effort, and it annoyed him even to raise the matter in his mind.
“Who’ll do the talking?” he asked. He knew that emotion would get in the way of his words, but it was impossible to stand aside and let Molly’s sweet reasonableness prevail. What they had to tell the lawyer needed bite, sharpness, outrage. What he feared was that her words would not excite the needed commitment on the lawyer’s part.
“He’ll need to hear from both of us,” she said sensibly.
“Let me start, then.”
“Just be calm.”
“Steady as she goes.” He stretched out his hand to prove the absence of tremors. It was not a very wisely chosen illustration.
The receptionist punched a lighted button on the board and murmured into the tiny microphone she wore on a wire, one tributary of which led to her ear. High tech, he thought contemptuously, thinking suddenly of the plant and all the lives displaced because of high tech. People had become like watermelon seeds, discarded and ground up in the disposal. He felt the cutting edge of depression surface again and then recede as the receptionist’s voice rang out, a clarion of hope.
“Mr. Forte will see you now,” she chirped, as if she was glad for them. Something she had observed about them must have blunted her disdain. Now he resented her compassion, thinking he and Molly must be transparent in their pain. He hated showing such things to strangers. “Make a left turn and follow the corridor to the last office.” Her instructions immediately went out of his mind and he nearly turned right. Molly gently guided him leftward.
“Now just be calm,” she warned again.
“Hey, babe, I got it the first time,” he said. His heart was beating a tattoo against his rib cage, and perspiration had begun to crawl down his back. He noted a slight chattering of his teeth and bit down on his lower lip to still it. Molly led the way to an open door beside which on the wall was a gold nameplate engraved with the lawyer’s name, Robert Forte. He stood up as they entered.
Charlie saw a full head of black curls, some tipped with premature gray; large, dark brown eyes, thick-lashed and heavy lidded; olive-tinted skin that set off white teeth in a boyish smile. A navy blue blazer hung over the back of his large leather chair. The collar of his striped shirt was high, made higher by a gold pin over which crawled the tight knot of a yellow tie. His waist was small, and he wore a gold bracelet just below the buttoned cuff on his left hand. On his desk was a picture of a pretty blonde woman and another of Forte and two small boys on the deck of a sailboat. On the wall were diplomas. Charlie’s weight shifted from foot to foot, and his eyes wavered from the lawyer’s firm gaze.
“I’m glad you could see us, Mr. Forte,” Molly said, jumping into Charlie’s gap of silence after the handshakes and polite preliminaries. The lawyer’s hand felt cool, while his own was clammy, a constant cause of embarrassment. He hadn’t remembered to wipe his palm on his pants.
“As I told Mr. Waters on the phone, I thought the case worth discussing. The grandparents’ angle is beginning to make its way into domestic law as more and more senior citizens’ groups lobby the legislatures.”
On the phone Forte had seemed older, more sympathetic than he appeared now. A pretty boy, Charlie thought. Too many curls.
“Can I get you some coffee?” he said.
“That would be nice,” Molly answered. Charlie shrugged a grudging consent. He’d already had four cups that morning. What else was there to do?
He felt an antagonistic first impression growing in his mind. Was he going to spill his guts to this overeducated smoothie half his age? His roving gaze picked up the word Harvard on one of the diplomas.
Pressing a button, Forte gave the coffee order into the intercom, smiling as he caught Charlie studying the picture of the two boys on the sailboat.
“Columbia Thirty-two,” Forte said, leaning back in his chair.
“I had a Rhodes Meridian,” Charlie heard himself say. “Not too wide in the beam, but a good cruiser.” He swallowed, remembering Chuck hanging out on a low heel, scaring them white and climbing the mast like a squirrel.
“When the kids get bigger, we’ll trade up. Something to be said for growing your own crew.”
“Sold mine a couple of years ago. Was beginning to look around for another for when my grandson got older. . . .” He checked himself, looked swiftly at Molly, who turned away.
The coffee came in china cups on a silver tray carried by a tall secretary who set it down and left the room. Molly lifted hers daintily and sipped. Charlie held back, his hands pressed under his thighs, fearful that they would shake.
Forte talked some more about sailboats in general, and Charlie waited for the inevitable cliché, which came on schedule.
“The happiest two days of a boating man’s life are the day he buys his first boat and the day he sells it.”
Charlie forced a smile, a little less intimidated now that he had heard Forte’s broad Baltimore O. Boat was “boot,” which brought him down a peg or two from his Harvard diploma and the oak panels in the
reception room and the Columbia 32 and the gold bracelet.
Forte leaned back in his chair, playing with a black pen. Behind him, Charlie could see the Baltimore harbor in all its resurrected glory.
“You say your daughter-in-law refuses to allow you to see your grandchild,” Forte said, his eyes roaming to take in both their faces.
Charlie nodded. Saying it so bluntly was like blowing on live ashes.
“That, more or less, is the problem,” Charlie said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. He looked toward Molly, who nodded approval, perhaps of his calm, which encouraged him to go further. “The question is, can she do that to us?”
“Depends,” Forte said. “There are now new ways of looking at the situation.”
“That’s what the story talked about,” Charlie said. “And why we’re here.”
“How long has it been since you’ve seen your grandson?”
“Two years,” Charlie said, swallowing a ball of phlegm that had jumped into his throat. “Not since she got married again and moved to Columbia. Guess we’re not good enough for them anymore.” Molly snapped him a look of disapproval. “My wife thought she would come around.”
“You’ve talked to her about this?” Forte asked.
“You might call it that.” Charlie shrugged toward Molly, who acknowledged that fact with a nod and a pursing of her lips. Forte looked toward her, provoking an explanation.
“I’ve had two—no, three conversations with her,” Molly said. For some reason, Charlie held back mentioning his own confrontation on that last day and the later one at school. Nor how awful they had felt on the last two Christmases. On the first one, Frances had actually sent back their gifts to Tray. On the second one, they had not exposed themselves to the humiliation. He wasn’t ready to relive that, not yet.
“Counting when she left,” Charlie interrupted. That was the crucial conversation, he thought, after which Molly had said that Frances would come around, that it was only a condition of the moment to impress her new husband, to make him more secure by ignoring the past.
“Left?”
“When she married her new husband and took Tray.”
“What reasons did she give?” Forte asked, turning to Molly. Somehow Charlie felt that he hadn’t quite finished, that it was too early to throw Molly the ball. At first she looked at him, perhaps to show him her reluctance. It did not prevent her from answering.
“She said that she wanted to get on with her life, that the most important consideration was Tray and Peter, and Peter wanted to start fresh. No ties to the past.” Molly swallowed and cleared her throat. “She said she hadn’t been too happy with our Chuck.” Her eyes glazed over for a moment, moistened, then cleared after a deep breath. “She also said that she knew we were being hurt, but that we had to bear that for Tray’s sake. She just wanted to start all over, and we were part of the past.”
“Just being damned selfish,” Charlie muttered, feeling the inevitable tightening in his gut. “Maybe she’s afraid she’s gonna blow this new marriage like she blew the one with Chuck. If she had been a good wife, maybe he wouldn’t have gone away.” His remarks, he knew, qualified as an outburst, and he shot Molly a sheepish grin, embellished with a shrug.
“Gone away?”
“He worked on oil rigs in the North Sea and the Persian Gulf. Good money, but dangerous.”
“And he died when?”
“Less than two and a half years ago,” Charlie croaked hoarsely, trying to hide the old ache. “Fell off a rig in a storm. Probably took some damn fool chances—just like him. Anyway, she was in the sack with Peter in no more than ninety days; married less than six months after the funeral—couldn’t stand to wait a proper time, insulted his memory, his honor—which gives you some idea of the kind of woman she is.”
“You haven’t tried to see the child?” Forte studied both their faces, deliberately skirting a response. Charlie cast a frightened look at Molly. As always, he thought, he had probably gone too far.
“Did you or didn’t you?” Forte asked firmly.
“I did,” Charlie said.
“Did what?”
“Tried to see him.” Charlie shook his head. “I did see him. It turned out badly. She accused me of harassment and threatened to call the cops.”
“I’m sorry,” Forte said, but he didn’t press for any further explanation.
“Can she do that?” Charlie asked, unable to hide his bitterness.
Forte sat back in his chair and made a cathedral with his fingers.
“Did the new husband adopt the child?” Both the question and the pose seemed ominous. Charlie looked at Molly, puzzled.
“Yes,” he answered hesitantly.
“I was afraid of that.”
“What difference does that make?”
Forte shrugged.
“The law. I could read it to you. In a terminated marriage the grandparents have rights. But in the case of adoption and remarriage”—he waved his graceful fingers as if he were blowing away the words—“the new father and his parents have all paternal rights. In other words, in the eyes of the law, you no longer exist as grandparents.”
Charlie felt as if he had been kicked in the midsection. He could see his own condition mirrored in Molly’s face, which had gone white.
“You could have contested the adoption,” Forte said gently.
“That”—Charlie cleared his throat—“didn’t seem our business. How are we supposed to know about the law?” Frances had told Molly about the adoption, but how could they know that it would forfeit their rights? Who was there to tell them about such things? No, they hadn’t liked the idea, but what could they have done about it?
“But we are in fact his grandparents,” Molly said emphatically. “Law or no law. That’s the truth. That child is our blood.”
Charlie nodded vigorously.
“The law is the law,” Forte said. “And there has never been a Maryland case on that point.”
“So she can do it?” Charlie asked.
“I’m afraid so. Legally, that is. She can always claim it is in the best interests of the child. That’s the ball game.”
“Which means we’re dead in the water,” Charlie muttered.
“It means that you have a weak legal case under the present law.”
“Which stinks,” Charlie said, discovering suddenly that he had clawed his nails into his palms. “I don’t understand any of it.”
He hated to flaunt his ignorance on any matter. But this confounded him. He and Molly loved this child. And he was sure that Tray loved them. What more had to be decided than that?
“I hope this won’t sound insulting,” the lawyer said, getting up from his chair. He looked out toward the harbor, shimmering in the midwinter sun, then turned around and faced them. Charlie wondered how he really felt about all this, whether there was any compassion or involvement. He wasn’t sure. “But she must feel that somehow your association with the child would be a detriment to his well-being—”
“That’s a crock,” Charlie snapped, his voice rising, his fist slapping the arm of the leather chair.
“Charlie, please,” Molly said, reaching out to touch his forearm.
“But it is a crock. We love the boy. I’ve been more than a grandfather. When Chuck died . . .”
“Not now, Charlie,” Molly pleaded, watching him.
“But I was both father and grandfather to that child. And you, Molly. He was as much ours as . . .” He felt the sputtering of overwhelming rage.
“We know that, Charlie. That’s not the point of this conversation. Mr. Forte is informing us of the problems because of the adoption. All right, we didn’t know what to do. Maybe they didn’t realize, either—”
“Bull. That Peter knew what he was doing.”
“Really, Charlie . . .”
“It’s wrong. It’s unjust. It’s against nature.” Without quite realizing it, he was now banging both fists against the arms of the chair.
&
nbsp; Forte walked to the open door and shut it, an act that made its point. Charlie settled down.
“Tantrums don’t help, Mr. Waters,” Forte said. “I’ve seen enough of them to know.”
“You haven’t seen anything like this. Not like this.”
“You’ll have to excuse him, Mr. Forte. He’s taking it rather badly.”
“She’s pretty cold-blooded herself,” Charlie mumbled.
“He thinks I feel it less than he does,” Molly sighed.
“She was the one who said it would all pass.”
“Not that again, Charlie.”
“You did, though.”
“All right, I was wrong.”
“Maybe we could have stopped it then, nipped it in the bud, instead of crawling here to these fancy lawyers.”
Forte leaned against the wall, hands folded.
“He wasn’t always this cynical about things, Mr. Forte,” Molly said.
“You could have fooled me.”
Charlie reached for the coffee cup. The tremors in his fingers made it clatter against the saucer. Control, he begged himself. He was silent as he sipped his coffee.
“It just gets me so damned mad,” he said when he had regained control. “Putting a little kid through that.”
“Through what, Mr. Waters?”
The Italian face seemed to expand in the room, filling the space like a giant balloon. The brown eyes grew larger, more luminous, their gaze inescapable. He felt as if he were being turned inside out, and he didn’t like that at all. It was like a child’s nightmare, where imagined shame and guilt were futilely defended against a punishing and inevitable force.
“Being deprived of his grandparents’ love,” Molly interjected. “In today’s world a child needs all he can get.” Charlie felt the strength of her alliance and the image of the monster receded. “And for us as well. We need it, too.” Her hand reached out and grabbed his, which returned the squeeze. “Some might call it selfish. But it’s a two-way street.”
“Except that as a legal entity you don’t exist,” the lawyer said calmly.
“Then what are we doing here?” Charlie said. “You could have told us all this on the phone.”