A Good Divorce (29 page)

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.”

“Are you saying that you've never experienced that kind of behavior in the child of a heterosexual mother?”

“I don't think it's mere coincidence, M'am. We've got experts to back me up.”

“I'm asking you to speak from your own knowledge, Mr. Washington. Can you give me a fact, an action taken by my client that has been harmful to those kids?”

“You're twisting it around, that's what you're doing. It's obvious to everyone in this courtroom what's going down here.” Mr. Washington's voice deepened as he became more righteous. “These were perfectly good kids. They had outstanding records until their mother turned into a lesbian.”

“And how do you know it wasn't the result of the divorce?”

“Because our interviews with the kids showed they were scared to death of what their mother had become. Don't ask me, ask the kids.” Justine and Derek were looking into their laps.

“Are you aware that the kids chose to live with their mother?”

“That was before they knew. Besides, they're kids, they're just kids. If their mom was a sword swallower, maybe they'd swallow swords, but that doesn't mean we should let them. I'm not here for my own health. I'm here because I think those kids are in danger and I refuse to stand by and let something happen to them. I may not be able to give you the technical ins and outs of it but I've got a pretty good nose and my nose says get her away from them now.”

Gloria wasn't a fool. She'd gotten all she was going to get out of this witness. Mr. Washington had found his groove and the judge wasn't going to let her knock him out of it. He inhaled far enough to button his jacket before exiting the witness stand, winking at Larry Delacord as he strode back to his seat. He may not have won the battle on the facts but he'd succeeded in creating an aura of concern for the kids and that, after all, was the core policy driving this custody hearing. He'd also won the heart of Judge Purnell, who followed Mr. Washington with his eyes back to his seat.

Jude must have been picking up on the same vibrations because she had her hands cupped over her face. I knew this was her worst fear. A male senior military officer with a crew cut was going to decide whether she was a fit mother. She didn't even look up as Mrs. Perryvan took the stand and started her testimony.

“It took me a while to draw Derek out,” Mrs. Perryvan said. “He was very protective. But he finally told me how he'd gone into his mother's bedroom with one of his nightmares.” Her face twitched with the same tic I'd noticed in my interview at the Alhambra as she drew her knees together and pressed her gloved hands down on her thighs. “They were on top of the sheets, he said, in some form of coitus. Derek, of course, used his own words.” For this kind of testimony, I would have wanted Derek out of the courtroom, but then again, he was the one who'd seen it first hand in the raw.

“Your honor,” Gloria said, “I don't see how this is any more relevant than Mrs. Perryvan's sexual behavior.” Mrs. Perryvan put a gloved finger against her lips and bit it.

Before Larry could respond, the Judge spoke. “As far as I can figure, sexual behavior is about all this case is about, counsel. Overruled.”

“How … did Derek react to this?”

“The children fled to their father's. I think Derek was shocked and deeply embarrassed. For himself, for his mother, for his whole family.” Derek had told me he'd seen them kissing and I was naive enough to leave it at that. No wonder it was easier to tell his friends his mother was dead. When I tried to catch Derek's eye, he turned the other way.

All Jude's lawyer could do on cross-exam was get the witness to admit that an eight-year-old might feel some disgust at any form of adult sexual conduct. “But,” Mrs. Perryvan added, “the child would learn over time that heterosexuality was normal and accept it. The image of your mother with another woman, I suspect, would be quite another thing.”

Mrs. Leonard from Child Protective Services concentrated on Justine when it was her turn, describing to my dread the suicide attempt. I'd debated with Larry whether it was necessary and, of course, it was. The specter of that incident and the possibility that her staying with Jude could trigger another try was one of the main reasons we were there. “The poor girl's desperate to be recognized as attractive,” she said. “Her mother's condition has caused her to question her own sexual identity. She wilted, thinking there was something genetic and nothing she could do about it. I think she temporarily gave up on herself.” Mrs. Leonard patted her hairdo to make sure nothing had slipped.

“How is she … she doing now?” Larry asked.

“When I interviewed her, I sensed an ongoing desperation to prove something. She joked about becoming a prostitute. I think she perceives promiscuity as a way to prove that her sexual desires are normal.” More shame, and I almost welcomed Ms. Monroe's objection.

“Your honor, this is highly speculative. The state's witnesses shouldn't be allowed to make flip asides about the private lives of these kids.”

Judge Purnell ground the mallet head into the palm of his hand like a pestle and mortar. “I'm here to protect the interests of you kids.” He nodded in their direction. “That's why I want to hear everything, but maybe I should have cut this off a little sooner. Mr. Delacord, isn't this kind of stuff all in the reports?”

“Your honor,” Ms. Monroe said, “I don't think it's relevant if it's embossed in gold.”

The judge ignored her comment.

“Mo … most of it … is in the reports.”

“Thank you. I look forward to reading them. Now let's move this along. It's time for lunch recess and you're not finished with your case yet.”

Larry put on our two psychiatrists after lunch in anticipation of the two that we knew Jude's attorney would call. Numbers gave weight but in this case there was another reason. One of our psychiatrists was a school district employee and, seeing how frail she was, it was easy for someone to imagine Mr. Washington browbeating her.

“The mother's lesbianism is like trying to jumpstart the kids' sexual identity by connecting the negative cable to the positive terminal,” she said. “If someone doesn't stop her, it'll destroy the whole electrical system.”

The other one was more gaurded. “A child's sexual preference is developed early in life,” he said. “The mother's homosexuality won't necessarily change that unless she's flaunting it.”

When Gloria was done with her lengthy cross-exam, it was also evident where her witnesses would be coming from. Neither of our experts could cite a single long-term study that showed academic or emotional deficits in children raised by a lesbian mother.