“All I know is he lives in Cleveland,” she tells the judge.
“How long has he lived in Cleveland?”
“A couple of years,” she said.
She tells the judge she has not received support for her three children. I cross my legs and shift in my seat. Another couple approaches the judge’s bench when their names are called.
“Two of the children are emancipated,” an attorney says.
“I agree to support my youngest child,” the man says sheepishly.
The judge assigns terms to the payment.
My former husband rushes in. I see him out of the corner of my eye and do not move to face him; I sense him. He sees Drew and does a double take when he sees me. I do not look up, I do not make eye contact. But I can see him. His hair is long, well below his collar, and he is wearing a trench coat, a black suit, a white shirt, nice shoes, a tie. He sits next to Drew. My chest starts to tighten.
He sits on the end of the row; Drew is between us. I try not to move, to act flustered, but my body is tightening. I am aware of him in my skin the way an animal is aware of a possible predator. He does not sit still. I see him bend down, his upper body flush to his legs, a sort of yoga pose, as if he is stretching, gathering himself. It is so odd I nudge Drew with my elbow. Drew looks ahead. He sits up straight and does it again suddenly; a bending bow, his chest touching his legs as he sits, his hands touching the floor.
At least ten more names are called. It is nearly 11 AM. His name is called—he is bringing forth the motions and I am the respondent—and I approach the bench and stand near my former husband for the first time in many years. I say nothing. Drew advised me to say nothing.
Spots start swirling in front of me, as if I am going to faint; an expanding wallpaper of stars unfolds in front of my eyes. I cannot possibly fall down. Not now. Not here. My chest and head are so hot I feel incinerated. Breathe through your mouth. Calm down. Don’t speak. Drew told me not to speak.
Drew answers the judge’s questions. The judge never looks at me.
“Your honor, I was assured when the boys were born, that college would be paid for,” my former husband says.
“By whom?” my attorney asks.
“By her family,” he responds.
My father died before my sons were born. My mother died in 2002.
Back and forth, back and forth, the pulse in my ears is nearly deafening and my breath is heaving and loud. I try to relax. I can’t. Drew requests he supply the last two years of income tax statements. Even though he has claimed on the statements that he still lives in the Netherlands, he has filed US tax returns with an income claim of zero. $0. The law review editor at a top private university. Former litigating attorney at a top firm. $0.
In my head I am screaming. How do you live on zero income? How do you eat? How are you wearing a new suit?
And then it’s over. I have to come back in twenty-one days. More answers to his questions. And then a hearing. And then a trial. I cannot have a trial. I do not want to spend any more time responding to him. I only want him to do what is right. For his sons. I go back to the bench and pick up my briefcase and raincoat and leave the courtroom, but not before I see my former husband mouth the words, “I would like to speak to Michele.”
Drew asks me in the hallway and I say yes.
“Michele, I want to be clear there are two separate issues: My insolvency is one issue. My gratitude for you paying for the boys’ college is another. I am grateful for all you have done.” He looks at me. I draw in a deep breath.
I have practiced this, rehearsed this soliloquy in my head ten thousand times. In the car, in the shower. When he misses another Christmas. When I see Colin cry when he says that his own father does not love him. When Brendan is enraged. When Weldon chides me for not putting his father in jail. I rear up and look him in the eye.
Compliment, acknowledge him. I learned this from writing opinion pieces for newspapers, magazines, CNN, from my training I do for The OpEd Project. Validate the other side. It keeps the crazy commenters at bay on blog posts, sometimes. At least it does not immediately alienate them. He loves a compliment. I am ready.
“You are an intelligent, resourceful, innovative, talented man.” And now I come in closer. “And you chose this. Shame on you. You chose to abandon your sons. You choose to have nothing to do with them, not for years.”
His face is blank; he does not look surprised, he does not react. He looks at me with all the emotion and involvement of someone staring at a train schedule posted on the wall of Union Station. I search his face for any reaction, I search his face to elicit any recollection in me of a man who is a father, of the man I married twenty-six years earlier. Of the man I divorced sixteen years earlier. Of the man who hurt my sons. I feel this trembling rage simmering inside me. Here is the man whom I believe chose to hurt my boys.
“You have missed it all. The graduations, the hospitalizations, the laughs, the breakups, the awards, the jobs, the flu. It is not just the money, though that has made their lives lean. You have changed who they are.”
I feel tears coming into my throat. But I won’t let them. I clear my throat. Because this is it. And I tell him why it matters.
“They are sons with a father who does not care at all what they do or who they are. And they are wonderful. Weldon is in graduate school in Spain. Brendan is smart and funny and doing well, finishing his third year at Ohio State. Colin just won this big award—the spirit of the team—in wrestling at Oak Park High. And he is going to the University of Iowa. You don’t even know them. You missed it all. Shame on you.”
I am not done, but I take a breath. He fills in the pause in a low voice.
“They have not responded to my communication,” he says crisply.
But he has told a lie and I will not let it pass.
“You have not communicated to them in any way for five years. Five years. Not one thing. Not a phone call. Not a letter. Not an e-mail. Not on Christmas, not on a birthday. Not any support. They could have used the money. Their lives would have been OK, not so much struggle. But shame on you for the choice you made to have nothing to do with your sons. Snakes know better. They stay with their eggs. You abandoned your own sons.”
“I don’t have their addresses,” he answers.
“We have lived in the same house for sixteen years. And if you write to them, you better goddamn beg for forgiveness. The first three words of anything you write to them better be, ‘I am sorry.’”
He starts to say something, then stops, closes his lips. He turns and walks away. My hands are shaking, sweat is pouring down my back. I stood up to the bogeyman. But I don’t feel better.
Drew puts her arm around my shoulders. We wait a few minutes and take the elevator to the first floor, past the security checks. Outside it is raining hard, the sidewalks are slick. I press my umbrella open and walk to the garage.
28
Final
* * *
December 2012
Avoiding a full hearing and without going to trial, we settled. The judge ordered my former husband to give me a cashier’s check for $30,000 in accordance with the Joint Settlement Agreement and Release. After two years of court appearances trying to have him pay any of eight years of child support and educational costs, he signed an agreement that with this payment of less than 10 percent of what he owed, he would stop all legal claims against me. And I would in turn relinquish all claims against him for financial support or any kind of support for all three of the boys.
We were done.
In consideration of payment as set forth herein, Weldon hereby completely releases and forever discharges X from any and all child support claims, demands, obligations, actions, causes of action, rights, damages, costs, losses of service, expenses and compensation of any nature whatsoever, included but not limited to alimony, child support, education expense, medical expense or any right pursuant to this divorce decree under Illinois law.
I didn’t go to c
ourt on December 5; funny, it was my half birthday and my best friend Dana’s birthday. Since we were roommates in our freshman year in the Northwestern University Apartments, room 203, on Orrington Avenue, we celebrated our half birthdays in person or by phone. Over thirty-seven years, our twice-annual birthday and half-birthday talks shifted from boyfriends to husbands to ex-husband to should-be ex-husband back to boyfriends to sons.
I had a class that morning and signed off on the agreement by fax to my attorney. I had to make corrections in it; under “Recitals” he had our wedding date wrong, listing it as April 23, 1986, not August. He also wrote that Colin attended Iowa State University. He spelled Brendan’s name wrong—with an o.
Apparently the appearance in court was uneventful. My former husband handed the check to the judge, who handed it to my attorney. I e-mailed my sister to see if it had gone OK. Later that evening, Madeleine called and said she had a bottle of champagne and wanted me to come over to celebrate the end of this chapter. It had been eighteen years of legal wranglings for a nine-year marriage. Terrible odds of 2:1.
I don’t like champagne—it gives me a headache. But I understand its significance. I had a glass.
It’s hard to describe how I felt, but mostly I felt relief. Definitely I was incredulous, because it had been almost all of Colin’s lifetime that I had been reacting to their father’s behaviors. This new state of release had the same surreal fog around it as if I was finding out something all along I believed to be true is now rendered false. The world really is flat! Not a good surprise, but a feeling that you were duped.
I have read that long-term stress deleteriously affects your health and physically changes your brain; specifically your hippocampus. When people say something is a load off their minds, it literally is like that. Your mind is released of a burden, a weight, like lifting a dumbbell off your forehead—the headache is gone. You feel your mind open up, like a black-out window shade lifted in a dark room that had closed up for years. With the shade newly open, you see for the first time it is midday, the sun is bright, and you can breathe.
I felt as though for the past sixteen years since I was divorced, there had been an uncomfortable presence in my life, no matter how much I tried to ignore it, compartmentalize it, pretend it wasn’t there. In the past few years, it had been monthly if not weekly appearances in courts, and responses for requests for documents. I worried what he may do next. I worried how whatever he did may hurt the boys—again, more, still, forever. I no longer looked for him lurking in places, but I never felt free of him. Now I do.
I do feel as if I do not have to be afraid anymore—of him and his legal machinations, denials, and unpredictable swipes. And that notion is liberating. I sense a literal lightening, as if my brain and my life are being cleared of debris, making clean a space for new ideas, new adventures, new thoughts, new loves. The past vacuumed away. A clean slate.
With the money from their father, I paid Weldon’s second semester tuition at Universidad de Complutense. I paid Brendan’s final tuition as a senior at Ohio State. I paid Colin’s second semester freshman year tuition at University of Iowa. I paid the electricity, water, gas, and cell phone bills. I let Brendan get a new iPhone. I paid off the $1,100 plane ticket from Madrid for Weldon to come home for Christmas. I paid off the Best Buy credit card for the refrigerator I had to buy last summer when the old one just stopped working. I still have not had the water line connected for the ice maker; the installer wanted $150 for that convenience. I figured some time the boys or a friend of theirs could hook up the water line.
In the meantime, it is not hardship to buy a ten-pound bag for less than two dollars at the grocery store every week. I paid off my MasterCard bill and did some Christmas shopping. I hosted Christmas Eve for my family, twenty-five for dinner. Brendan helped me marinate the salmon and beef filets, roast the potatoes with garlic, olive oil, and sea salt; I splurged. Then all the money from him was gone.
Three weeks later I took my last dose of Femara. I had been on the cancer medication for five years, after the breast cancer surgery and the tamoxifen, and the surgery to remove my ovaries after suspecting I had ovarian cancer but did not. I was considered cured of cancer. I was free. When I told Weldon, he sent me flowers—dozens of alstroemeria in shades of pink, deep red, yellow, and white. There were so many, I put them in four vases so I could have them in different rooms of the house.
It’s two clothespins and an egg carton filled with a scrap of folded blue cloth masquerading as Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus in a manger. The clothespins are Mary and Jesus, respectively; Mary in a mouse-size swath of pale-yellow cotton the color of lemonade, Joseph in striped cloth. Bits of fabric are glued on their heads, their faces inked in marker. Jesus is lying in a torn piece of gray cardboard egg carton—the manger is the spot for a single egg. A square of fabric is folded around a half popsicle stick with a smaller face; Jesus’s face. The Savior of the World is propped on top of shredded, crinkled brown strips of paper, the kind they use in fancy wrapping, that usually arrive in gold, silver, or bright colors like pink or blue.
Colin made it fifteen years ago when he was three and in the afternoon session of First United Nursery School, the preschool all three of my boys attended, the one by the public library and the one where they hold graduations every May in the basement and many of the mothers cry.
On the living room Christmas tree—a fake tree with lights attached (“I am so surprised you do not have a real one,” my friend Lisa announced) are a dozen rolls of gold wire-rimmed ribbon cascading from bottom to top, where a wire angel the size of my hand grips the tallest fake branch for dear life. I love a real tree—the way it smells, the way the branches spread and droop over the weeks, the daily watering you must do before the sap seals the fresh cut and the needles become so brittle they hurt as you kneel down to put one more present under the tree. But we can’t have one.
I always had fresh trees in the apartments I lived in by myself, on Fullerton Avenue then Wrightwood Avenue then Cedar Street in Chicago; Gaston and then Oram Street in Dallas when I was married; Lake Shore Drive in Long Beach, Indiana; White Oak Drive in South Bend; Linden Avenue in Oak Park. And now, in the red brick River Forest house with my boys, for our seventeenth Christmas here, we have a fake tree.
“Do you have a real Christmas tree?” the ear, nose, and throat doctor on North Avenue asked as she peered into Weldon’s nostrils. He was five years old.
It was three days before Christmas, Brendan was just two, and I was a few weeks away from delivering Colin.
“Yes,” I replied dutifully, struggling to contain Brendan in my minimized lap.
“You have to get rid of it as soon as you can. He is highly allergic.”
“Really? Before Christmas?” I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant and so pleased that I had managed to decorate the house at all. Now I had to take it down.
“Yes, he can barely breathe from it. Take it down today.”
So I did. And I didn’t put up a replacement but promised the boys Santa would place the presents in the spot where the tree had been. We would have a sign indicating as much in case he couldn’t figure it out. Neither boy argued. We left out cookies on a plate for Santa and carrots for the reindeer. You can’t ignore the reindeer; after all, they do most of the work, and stay out in the cold the whole time.
I was married then, but I don’t recall my husband helping with the tree—putting it up or dismantling it, or even hauling it to the street. I remember returning from the doctor and dutifully undressing the tree and putting the decorations in plastic bins, and then dragging the tree out onto the front porch, no doubt causing the neighbors to wonder if we had our calendar skewed. I used to worry about what the neighbors thought—Lou and Rosalie to the south especially. Lou was a kind old man with soft blue eyes who pulled weeds in his backyard in his worn pajamas; his wife was in a wheelchair the last few years of her life. Before that she was a volunteer at the Trailside Museum, where they had raccoons and po
ssums in cages. That always seemed odd to me; all I needed to do was walk past the garbage cans late at night to see the same animals. Lou still sends me Christmas cards. There was the hostile old woman—French—to the north who put up a six-inch-high plastic fence between our front yards because she said I pushed the mower too far outside the lot line and mistakenly cut the grass on her property.
A single woman lived across the street with two young children; I never quite understood who the father was or if she received sperm donations—that was the rumor on the block. I didn’t care, it was none of my business, and with all I was going through at the time, using a sperm donor seemed a smart move on her part. I waved to her when I took the boys for walks in the stroller or shoveled the front walk in the snow. The Dohertys lived across the street a few doors to the south with their triplets and older daughter who was Weldon’s age—they used to play together on our swing set in the backyard.
I decorated the outside of the house with fresh garland, the inside of the house, the bathrooms, the kitchen, the den, every room in the house to pretend it was happy. It didn’t really work.
The only decorations I put on the tree this year are ones the boys have made—Weldon’s is a triangle-shaped tree with multicolored random puzzle pieces glued to it from at least fifteen years ago. Brendan’s is a photo of himself as a third grader glued to a circle of bark and sprinkled with glitter. Colin’s is a green paper Christmas tree with colored cotton balls attached with glue.
It will be the ninth Christmas since their father has disappeared from their lives completely. They are not small; they are twenty-four, twenty-one, and eighteen, and they do not believe in Santa Claus. But they do believe in fathers, even if it is a notion afforded only other families, even if they do not believe in their own.
The fatherless space is a hole grand and vacuous and painful, even if only Colin says so. Weldon will dismiss it and Brendan will say his father never really cared about him. I talk to the boys about Barack Obama and tell them to look at what he has done with his life; I throw in Bill Clinton for good measure. Neither had a father growing up. I talk about all the love they do have, about how their father’s deliberate absence is about him, not them.
Escape Points Page 23