Custody (25 page)

“Eeeugh,
no
. I just want—maybe—like, to paint my fingernails black or blue. Or to wear those removable stencil tattoos. A lot of girls have these like star and moon stick-on tattoos. They’re really pretty. Mom won’t let me have one.”

“What would your father say about having your ears pierced?”

Tessa deflated against the chair. “I guess he wouldn’t like that, either. He wants me to wait awhile. But he would let me watch more TV. And he would let me have a computer. He
thinks I should have one.”

“Let’s say we talk to your parents, and your mom agrees to let you watch more TV and have a computer. Would it be okay then for you to stay there with her, living with her?”

Tessa said slowly, “I don’t know.”

“Well, think about that question, why don’t you? I’m going to be talking to some other people this week, and next week we’ll have you in to talk with me with your mother, the two of you together. Maybe we can broach some of these subjects then. Okay?”

She nodded.

“You’re a bright girl, Tessa, you know? And you’re a good girl, too. Don’t beat yourself up too much because you think you might hurt your parents’ feelings, okay? Give yourself a chance to feel what you really feel. Your parents are both strong. They can take it.” He rose. “Our time’s up. I’ll bet your mother’s out there waiting for you.”

Tessa stood up, too. “I’m sure she is.”

Mont Madison parked his ancient beloved woody station wagon carefully in the garage. No longer confident about his driving, he only brought it out on special occasions, and the funeral of one of Concord’s old-timers was quite certainly a special occasion.

He hadn’t cared for Franklin Sparks much, and they’d always been on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but he’d known Franklin since childhood, which caused its own kind of affiliation. And Jeanette Sparks was a lovely woman, and kind, and when she’d asked him to speak a few words at the memorial service for Frank, how could Mont refuse?

So he’d spoken. And he’d done fine, almost.

Mont went through the kitchen from the garage, and up the back stairs to his bedroom. His good gray suit was loose on him—he’d had to wear suspenders to keep his trousers up. Probably, he thought as he carefully hung it in the closet, it wouldn’t be worn again until the time he was buried in it.

Which, if he was lucky, would be soon.

He was a useless old man. And he was becoming a forgetful old man. It was funny, in an ironic kind of way, that during his eulogy he’d forgotten the name of the disease that took Frank’s life: Alzheimer’s.

What wasn’t so funny was that this morning he’d forgotten to turn the burner off under Madeline’s treasured teakettle. Got up to look like a cat, the tail its handle, the kettle had a plastic bird in its spout that whistled when the water boiled. Mont hated that damned whistle. It was just too shrill. So he’d removed it, long ago.

This morning, rushing a bit to get organized for the funeral, Mont had decided he’d better have a cup of coffee to jump-start his system. Disliking instant but needing the boost of caffeine, he’d stirred the crystals in boiling water, then tottered back up the stairs to shave and dress.

It was sheer luck that he’d decided to drive the woody instead of the Jeep. He’d had to return to the kitchen to fetch his other keys off the hook by the door, and it was then that he smelled something burning. There on the stove was that blasted kettle, boiled dry and kind of rocking on the glowing red burner.

He’d turned off the heat, then fortunately had the sense to grab a dish towel to protect his hand, and tried to lift the dry kettle off, but it was welded to the burner.

For a long moment he was nauseated with shame. If Randall found out … Poor Randall had enough on his hands without the knowledge that his senile father had nearly burned the house down.

He waited until the burner was cool, then lifted it away and set it in the sink. Paint flaked off the bottom.

Enough, he told himself, one thing at a time. Funeral first. So he went, and spoke, and said the appropriate things to Jeanette and her three children, and now here he was sitting on the end of his bed with his shoes in his hands, staring off into space.

He roused himself. He slipped on his disreputable old loafers, which he sloped around in with the heels bent down beneath his foot. Madeline wasn’t here any longer to chide him about that.

Madeline wasn’t here any longer. That was the problem in a nutshell.

“I just don’t want to go on,” Jeanette had told Mont after the service, weeping.

“I know,” he’d replied. And he did know. But he made the expected protest: “But you’ve got to think of your children.”

Jeanette had smiled through her tears. “Cindy’s having another baby. This time they hope it’s a girl.”

Mont rambled down the stairs and into his study. He’d eaten a huge amount of food at the Sparkses’ home, and he was drowsy in the heat of the early afternoon. He checked himself over—buttons buttoned, fly zipped—just in case someone dropped by—then settled into his
recliner. Taking up a copy of
Yankee
magazine, he opened it, laid it in his lap, rested his head back against the chair, and fell asleep.

When he woke, it was twilight. He’d slept the day away. He sat there a moment, orienting himself, cogitating. He couldn’t conquer a sense of embarrassment, a deep shame, each time he woke after a nap during daylight hours. It reminded him how unnecessary he was. The greatest pain of aging wasn’t the aches of joints or the indignities of the guts and bladder, although those could be cruel. The worst thing was the sheer simple uselessness, the sense that you were only taking up space and air, and contributing nothing.

He missed his friend Patrick. He’d been furious at him for committing suicide, but with each passing day, Mont understood the impulse that drove his friend to end his life.

And so, he prodded himself, what should he do about it? Hang on desperately until some kind of illness claimed him, in the meantime risking the chance of burning down the house he intended to leave to his children?

He’d never been a passive man. No reason he should be one now. As a physician, he had any number of painless pills he could drink down with a glass of fine single-malt Scotch. He wasn’t afraid of death. He doubted that there was an afterlife, but whatever awaited him there wasn’t half as difficult as facing a future full of empty days, dwindling faculties, and loneliness.

Slowly he stirred his creaky old joints and dragged his dreary old self into the kitchen, where he stood staring into the refrigerator as if expecting by magic something tasty to appear there.

Perhaps just some cheese, he was thinking, when he heard the car and a few moments later Randall came in. His suit was wrinkled, his tie loose and twisted, and his silver-blond hair sticking out in all directions like some kind of punk rocker’s. Still, the sight of him delighted Mont. No doubt about it, even rumpled, Randall was a good-looking man.

“Hey, Dad.” He set a flat cardboard box on the kitchen table. “Pizza.”

Mont slapped his forehead. “Was I expecting you for dinner?”

“No. I just had the urge to come out. If you’ve already eaten, we can freeze some of this for another day.”

“No, no. I haven’t eaten. Smells good.”

“Mushrooms, sausage, anchovies, double onion, the works.” Randall took two plates from the cupboard and set them on the table.

Mont lifted an eyebrow. “Am I being bribed?”

“I brought beer, too.” Randall dug through the utensil drawer, found the church key, and popped the lid off a bottle. “It’s still cold.” He handed a Heineken to Mont.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at your office?”

“I’ve moved a lot of my patients to other physicians. I’m cutting down. Almost in half.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. This divorce business—well, it’s made me realize how little time I was giving to Tessa. I can’t do everything and still find time for her.”

Mont deliberated. “Yes, you’re right about that.”

His stomach grumbled as Randall lifted the lid, slid a spatula under a triangle of pizza, and hefted it onto Mont’s plate. He took a bite. “Good pizza.”

Randall nodded. They ate in companionable silence. When he was lifting his second piece from the box, Randall announced, “I had another idea, about Tessa and me.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. About Tessa, me, and you, actually. I want to move back here. I want this to be my primary residence. I want Tessa to go to school in Concord. What do you think?”

“Well!” Mont scratched his ear, pretending to think about it, trying not to explode with joy.

“The thing is, Dad, if I get full custody of Tessa, or even joint custody, I want a stable home for her, someplace she’s comfortable in, someplace she’d like to bring friends home to. No rented apartment I can find can ever compete with this place in Tessa’s heart. And something else, I think it would make a big difference in getting custody if there were two adults here looking out for Tessa. Certainly it would make my life simpler and Tessa’s happier, if she knew you were always here. That way if I got called away on an emergency or was going to be late some evening, I wouldn’t have to worry, and Tessa would feel safe. Plus, she likes being with you. She wouldn’t be lonely. And her friend, Brooke, lives right across the road. It seems perfect.”

Mont’s heart swelled up so full it pushed tears into his eyes. Hiding them, he coughed into a napkin. “Something in my throat,” he croaked.

“Take a sip of beer. So what do you think, Dad?”

Mont took a sip of beer, and when he could trust himself to speak, he said, “I think it’s a
great idea.”

Every evening after court adjourned for the day, Judge Flynn and his wife treated Kelly to dinner and an evening of music at Tanglewood and once to the theater in Stockbridge and another night to the theater in Williamstown.

“This is what you’ve got to learn, too,” Judge Flynn assured her. “You can’t live with the law every minute of every day. You’ll burn yourself out too fast if you do. Yes, you do need to keep up on your reading, the statues, the changes in the law, but you wouldn’t be a judge if you weren’t already a Type A, driven, compulsive, heart-attack contender in the making. You have to get out of your house, or you’ll start drinking too much or eating too much and brooding on the terrible state of the world. You’ve got to force yourself to go off and get entertained. It’s good for you. It’s like mental vitamins. Without something amusing, distracting, you’ll get sick.”

Friday night after the last case was finished, Judge Flynn asked Kelly, “Millie and I are going out to dinner at the 1886 House. Want to join us?”

“Thanks, but I’ve got to get back to Boston.”

“You all packed and ready to roll?”

“I am.”

“All right, then.” He shook her hand, patting the top of it with avuncular affection. “I’ve enjoyed your company this week. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. You’re diligent, thorough, and patient. For what it’s worth, I think you’ll make a helluva judge.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”