‘Daddy!’ Annie called from the hallway.
‘Take the kids outside. Please?’ And then he swung again, breaking through to the other side, yellow swells of sun already seeping through.
When, two hours later, we returned from our walk to the school playground, Joe was sweeping up the debris in the new dappled light. He kissed me, kissed Zach in the backpack, picked up Annie, who exclaimed, ‘Wowee!’
‘Welcome,’ Joe said, ‘to our official Not-So-Great Room.’ I said, ‘But it is great.’
‘I don’t know why I never thought to do this. I should have done it a long time ago.’
Now I understood why that particular day, he did think to do it. He’d received Paige’s letter about the kitchen. The only letter he’d opened after I’d come into the picture. It was another letter instructing him to never call again. But was his motivation in tearing down the wall to bring Paige back? Or to make sure our life together never became what theirs had become?
Our walls were different, but we had them. Invisible walls. The illusion of light and space and even air. The kind you can’t see, that are fragile as glass. They work great until an unseen force pushes you into one and the illusion shatters, so that every step you take cuts you, cuts those who walk alongside you.
I opened the door to Annie and Zach’s room, and the kittens scrambled towards me. ‘Close the door or you’ll let them out,’ Annie said.
‘Him is mine,’ Zach said, grabbing and holding up a kitten.
‘No, Zachosaurus. Remember? They’re both both of ours.’ Even this sounded to me like a custody battle.
Annie explained that they had finally decided on names, Thing One and Thing Two. They just couldn’t agree on which was which.
I made coffee in what had once been Paige’s coffee maker. I stirred in milk with one of the spoons from her bridal-registry flatware and put the milk back in the same refrigerator on which she had once kept her family photos with magnets. I thought of that family photo she’d sent with her face cut out, and the words she wrote, I’ve cut my face out. Maybe you can glue in her face. I had walked in and slipped between their sheets. Hell, the very sheets she’d washed and folded and set in the linen closet before she walked out.
I didn’t think she would be a better mother to them than I was. But probably not a worse one, either. She had been hurt by her mother, she had been ill, apparently something was horribly wrong with her back, but none of that meant she wouldn’t be a good mother. And yet she hadn’t been completely honest in the mediation, hadn’t told Janice Conner that the first five letters she wrote to Joe told him she was never coming back, that he must never contact her. That’s when I stepped in. And then she had got help. She had eventually even got well.
I checked on the kids, still playing hide-and-seek with the kittens. I walked out to the garden and admired its rows set in a quilt-like pattern, the abundant order of it. This was mine. This was what I brought to the picture. The only thing.
I looked back at the house. Joe and I had called its quirkiness Funk Factor. I loved it the first time I stepped inside it, and still did. The slightly sunken imperfection of it, the porch that wrapped around it like a hug. It was no longer Paige’s house. In fact, it had never been the kind of home to her that it had been to me and was to me still. A set of flatware, some dishes and appliances, washed linens? So what. Joe and I and the kids had been happy here. Despite all the sadness she’d left in her wake.
How had it all fit me so perfectly? I had lived in a house in San Diego for years, had picked out every dish, every rug, and never felt at home.
I had happened upon this town, a man and his children, this house, these trees. I’d stumbled upon someone’s lost treasure. No, abandoned treasure, left behind.
I hadn’t stolen it, but I didn’t want to return it, either. What had been the reasoning of my subconscious at the time? Your loss, lady, my gain? How much did I know at some level, below the surface, what I’d refused to bring up with a simple question? Because I had my own fears. I’d feared honest but complex answers other than the convenient shrugged simplicity of ‘She left and she’s never coming back.’
No. I couldn’t distract myself with who might be the rightful owner of discarded forks and spoons and land and trees, a building, a garden.
I could no longer simply claim my children as my own. They had another mother who loved them too. A woman who may not have been treated fairly. I looked at the house and tried to imagine it without Annie and Zach. The earth tilted sharply. I grabbed the garden gatepost and hung on for my dear sweet life.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Lizzie picked up the kids. I got dressed to go to court. I kept putting the packet of letters in my purse, then pulling it out. I had already taken out the unopened letters to Annie and Zach and put them in my dresser drawer. No matter what, those belonged to them, not the court. Paige had subpoenaed the letters from her to Joe. She had neglected to specify the cards to Annie and Zach.
I made one last call, this time to my mom, and told her what I’d read in Paige’s letters. She said, ‘You shouldn’t have to deal with all this right now. You want to know my opinion? Like my own grandmother, every woman needs to have a trapdoor under her kitchen rug, Ella.’
‘Are you saying I should have my own moonshine business?’
‘I’m saying that you do what you have to do for your kids. Even if it means breaking the law.’
‘Mom. I don’t want Annie and Zach to grow up thinking their mother didn’t want them. If I don’t turn over those letters to the court, then what? I live a lie. Even if I do show them someday, they’ll know that I withheld evidence that showed their mother wanted custody. If I turn over the letters, I don’t think the judge will change his mind. Their life is here with me and the Capozzi family.’
‘You think . . . but you don’t know.’
‘Here’s what I do know. You want me to “protect” them by lying, by keeping information from them that helps them understand that none of this was their fault? That they have no reason to feel blame or shame?’
‘Who are we talking about here?’ She paused. ‘Jelly, I understand why you’re upset.’
When I didn’t reply she said, ‘I’m going to catch a plane down.’ I told her to wait, that I might need her more later.
I made it out to the Jeep without the packet, but then ran back up the porch steps and down the hall and grabbed it off the kitchen table, knocking over the pepper grinder. It rolled off the table and fell onto the floor with a thud. I picked it up and set it back on the table, watching it for a moment. Joe’s favourite pepper grinder. Was he trying to tell me something? Now he was speaking up? I waited, but it stayed put. I shook my head, trying to shake at least a shred of logic into place.
I almost got out the door with the letters, but every step down the hallway echoed with the shouts and laughter and cries, the wondrous chaos of Annie and Zach, and I decided I wouldn’t be able to do the honest thing, the right thing, after all. As much as I wanted to, I simply couldn’t. I shoved the letters in the nightstand drawer, and this time Joe’s picture flopped over. ‘Stop it,’ I said aloud. ‘Don’t do this,’ and I rushed outside and to the car before I could change my mind again.
I passed the vineyard that had been all yellow light a few weeks before – now the leaves had turned to blazing reds and oranges. A man stood with his back to the road, hands in pockets, staring out at the fields as if he himself had set it on fire and was simply watching it burn.
At the courthouse, when I saw the security X-ray machine, I was glad I’d left the letters at home. But they were letters, not a gun. Still, if I’d kept them in my bag, I would have been concealing a powerful weapon.
I sat at the end of a row of chairs outside of the courtroom, waiting. Gwen Alterman bustled down the hall towards me, seemingly impatient with her own short legs, thighs rubbing together in their maroon pant-suit casing. She said, ‘I’ve already spoken to Paige’s attorney. As I’ve told y
ou, they’d like to work out a deal today with limited visitation with the possibility of increasing visitation as the children get older.’
‘How much visitation?’ I asked.
She slipped on her reading glasses and scanned the document. ‘Four times a year for weekends. Two weeks in the summer. One week during Christmas vacation.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s it. She does want them to go to her house, though. She’s very adamant about that one – and is even willing to fly here to pick them up.’
Paige sat farther down along the wall, leaning towards her attorney, a tall, older man with a red bow tie and wire-framed glasses, who was talking to her.
Gwen went on. ‘Read the stipulation over and go ahead and sign it. And then we’ll go before the judge and tell him both parties have come to an agreement. We’ll read it in court; you’ll be asked if you consent. You’ll say yes, and we’ll be done and you’ll go home to your children.’ She added. ‘Not to mention, save a boatload of money.’
Paige had already signed it. Her signature looped across the line; I recognized that handwriting now. I signed the paper. A few minutes later, Gwen Alterman stuck her head outside the door of Courtroom J and motioned me inside. Along the back row sat Joe Sr, Marcella, and David. I wanted to believe they were there to support me, but I knew they were making sure I behaved.
Paige entered, walking straight, as if she held a book on her head. I recognized now that the familiar stance of hers was a brave front. Her eyes, void of makeup, gave her grief away. I knew all about No-Mascara Days.
When we were called, we sat at the dark veneer tables in front of the judge’s bench. Paige’s attorney read the agreement in a soothing, kind voice that seemed out of place in the courtroom and softened the edges of words like custody and petitioner and visitation – as if he were reading a fairy tale with the foreshadowing of a happy ending – and if I just kept my mouth shut, everyone could live happily ever after. I focused my gaze on the bored-looking court reporter who was taking down what the attorney read. There was nowhere else safe I could look. Not to Paige and her own watery eyes. Not to the judge, who might read my face and instinctively sense guilt. Not behind me to the appointed guards of the Family Capozzi.
Paige stood first. She held up her hand to be sworn in and agreed to the stipulation. And then it was my turn. I stood, shaking, a drop of sweat rivuleting down my back.
I held up my hand. I saw Marcella’s hand, raised, before it smacked across my face, trying to slap sense into me. I saw Grandma Beene’s hand, raised, slapping shame into me. I would never slap Annie or Zach. And yet my raised hand was not any different; it was joining the ranks of the Silencers, hiding the whole truth, the most important truth, from Annie and Zach.
All I had to do was say ‘Yes, I am,’ and ‘Yes, I do.’ I said yes. I closed my mouth, waiting for the next cue. I opened my mouth. I said, ‘Your Honour? Can I say something?’ My heart hammered so loudly in my ears, I could barely hear my own voice.
The judge, who was almost bald but fairly young, probably in his late forties, smiled as if slightly amused. ‘No, you should let your attorney do the talking.’
‘But Your Honour?’ I said. ‘I have evidence that I need to submit.’
‘And why, Ms. Beene, would you want to do that? Counsel, I think you better take your client out in the hallway before she –’
‘Because it’s the truth,’ I said. Gwen gripped my arm. ‘And I want the truth to be known. I found Paige’s letters.’
Marcella’s voice pierced the air. ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’ Paige’s attorney stood. ‘Excuse me, Your Honour, we asked for those letters and Ms. Beene swore under penalty of perjury that they didn’t exist.’
Gwen also stood up. The judge said to her, ‘Counsel, is it correct that your client was asked to produce those letters?’
‘Your Honour, I haven’t seen them yet. I didn’t know my client found anything.’
‘Ms. Beene, where are these letters? And when did you find them?’
‘They’re at home. I found them Sunday night. Your Honour, I still think my home is the best place for Annie and Zach. But I don’t want that decision to be based on a lie.’
The judge sighed. ‘Ms. Beene. You’ve evidently been watching too many Law and Order episodes. Had you not thought to discuss this with your counsel? How far away do you live?’
I told him I lived a half hour away.
‘I want you to get those letters to your counsel. I also want you to let her speak on your behalf. That’s what you’re paying her to do.’ He turned his gaze on Gwen and ordered her to get copies to everyone.
The judge motioned the clerk towards the bench, and they spoke while she leafed through a book. He nodded and she sat back down.
‘My clerk just told me,’ he said, ‘that a case that was being tried has been settled, so I have some time on my calendar this afternoon. I’m going to hear any objections there are to receiving those letters into evidence.’ He spoke to Paige’s attorney. ‘I’ll consider a continuance if you want it.’ His gavel made one dull thud and he ordered us all back at two o’clock.
I sat, still not looking to the side or behind me. Gwen closed her briefcase and said under her breath, ‘So. I’d say that just knocked the slam dunk out of this case.’
Paige and her attorney had already left, so we walked out of the courtroom. Marcella approached us. ‘What’s the matter, Ella? You think the government knows better, what’s best for Annie and Zach? These people, they rip families apart. You be careful or they may put our babies behind some barbed-wire fence in the middle of nowhere.’
I wanted to reassure her, to tell her not to worry. To tell her that the judge will still rule in our favour. I wanted to say, I will raise my kids and not have to hide a shameful secret from them, that would somehow wedge itself into their subconscious and create a quiet, persistent havoc in their souls. A secret that might stifle them or blind them so they can only see what they want to see. And I wanted to tell her and the rest of the family all how much I still loved them and needed them, that I didn’t do this to hurt them.
Instead, I mumbled that I was sorry and let Gwen guide me past them, through the door, and up to the cafeteria, where I called Lucy and asked her if she could run to the house and then bring me the letters.
‘Are you sure?’ she said. When I didn’t answer, she told me she’d be at the courthouse within the hour.
Lucy brought the letters. She hugged me long and hard and said she’d be out in the hallway if I needed her. Gwen set a coffee down in front of me, which I didn’t touch. She left to make copies of the letters and deliver them, then came back and started reading.
Finally, she looked at me over her reading glasses. ‘Ella, where did you find these?’
I told her about the kittens, the box springs. I told her about how I had opened the sealed envelopes.
She shook her head, looking directly in my eyes before I could avert them. A chair scraped the linoleum from somewhere behind me.
‘Gwen, tell me I did the right thing.’
She shook her head. ‘You should have told me so we could have been better prepared. But I’m not sure I could have prepared for this.’
‘Annie and Zach shouldn’t grow up thinking their mother never wanted them. I want the truth out. But I still want the kids to be with me. Won’t the judge still see that’s best? I thought judges in California ruled in favour of what’s best for the children.’
She stirred her coffee, kept stirring, then said, ‘For me, this case goes beyond wanting to win. I agree that those kids should be with you. But you’re their stepmother. Even though you may see it as a technicality, the court doesn’t. The birth mother still has all the rights.’
‘But you said –’
‘Forget what I said. These letters change things. Right now we have to figure out, do we have any objections to these going in as evidence?’
‘Well, no, that’s the point, isn’t it?’
She explained
that we couldn’t pick or choose between the early and later letters. ‘It’s got to be all or nothing. So I say we don’t object because I think the court will let them all in anyway.’
I nodded. She left to meet with Paige’s attorney. I sat and tilted my head back to keep the tears in place, pulled out my cell phone, and dialled Lizzie’s number. I wanted to hear Annie’s and Zach’s voices, but no one answered.
Gwen returned and said that Paige’s attorney agreed and had notified the judge that the letters would be admitted, but Paige had also made a settlement offer.
‘It’s joint custody with physical custody going to Paige. Visitation for you . . . four times a year plus two weeks in the summer, one week after Christmas.’
I shook my head. ‘Visitation for me? Absolutely not. Come on, Gwen. You yourself said that I’m their real mom.’
She pulled her sleeves down so they showed under her suit jacket, splayed her chubby fingers over the letters. ‘Ella, our entire case was built on the abandonment issue. These letters make that go away. You, as a stepmother, have no rights when a loving, willing birth mother wants to have custody of her children. You weren’t even made their legal guardian.’ My throat tightened. ‘Those letters prove that Paige should be in their lives. But we still have the issue of what’s best for Annie and Zach on our side. Elbow, where they’ve grown up with their close extended family? Or Sin City?’
She pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘Look, we don’t have to decide on the offer right now. Let’s hear what the judge has to say.’
Back in Courtroom J, Judge Stanton let out a long sigh. His gaze ping-ponged between Paige and me. He spoke with tired resignation. ‘I have read the letters, and they do certainly shed a new light on this case. In fact, the mediator’s recommendation was based on the fact that the petitioner had not communicated with her children for three years. The letters disprove that and reveal a loving but emotionally disturbed young mother, who by leaving was acting in what she believed was in the best interest of the children. It very well may have been. I have to say, I am dismayed that the now deceased father did not work with the mother to reunite her with the children. One cannot help but wonder what role the stepmother played in all of this. I’m going to order a custody investigation and set this over for a hearing once that can be completed. But I’ll tell you right now my inclination is this: with respect to the youngest child, his mother figure is Ms. Beene. With respect to the older child, her mother figure is Ms. Capozzi. And maybe that’s the way this custody situation should be handled.’
The Underside of Joy Page 20