Lawyer for the Dog (9 page)

“He is, but maybe we should put him on the leash.” There were kids and dogs everywhere, not to mention the cars going back and forth along the Battery. Maybe this was why I'd never had another dog after Brownie—so much responsibility. What if something terrible happened to him?

“If you'd feel better,” Mr. Hart said. “Come here, boy. The lady says you've had enough fun for today.”

*   *   *

Every case is a story, my favorite law professor used to say. If you want to win, you must tell a convincing story. First, understand the facts, then arrange them to tell your client's story. Remember, you're an artist. The arrangement must be artful.

This sounded like fabrication to me, and I said so.

He smiled. “Ms. Bright, you are ever so idealistic.”

“I thought … I mean, we can't present perjured testimony, can we?”

“I said nothing about perjury. What I mean to impart is simple: that two lawyers can take the same set of facts and construct two very different narratives. One may emphasize Fact A and use it like a dagger poised at the throat of the defendant. The other may admit A, but argue that Fact B renders it inconsequential. But let me stress something…”

You could hear a hundred pens moving across a hundred notebooks. He waited for us to look up. “Don't make the mistake of constructing your story before you have fully mastered all the facts. The premature narrative in your head will interfere with your ability to understand the facts, and that fact you don't know, that fact you overlook, Fact Z, may be the key to the whole case. If you forget everything else in this course, remember that.”

 

A No Win

My friend Ellen Sadler, the prosecutor, is tenacious. She won't let me skip another book club meeting. She dismisses all my excuses like a judge denying a string of frivolous motions.

“My mother doesn't like the night sitter,” I begin.

“So ask Delores. She probably won't mind.”

“I don't like to ask her to stay late unless it's an emergency.”

“Then Mandy will do it.” Mandy is Ellen's daughter, a senior in high school.

“You think she can handle Mom?”

“She babysits all the time. If she can handle a two-year-old, she can handle your mother.”

“I haven't read the book.”

“Nobody cares.” Which is true enough. Our group of women, mostly lawyers, has been meeting for at least a decade. We're all avid readers, but the chosen book is just the excuse for conversation that may start with the text but meanders—with the assistance of several bottles of wine—to life, work, war stories, and eventually, just plain gossip.

“What's the book, anyway?” I ask.

“Cormac McCarthy.
The Road.
It's short. I'll send a runner over with my copy if you want to—”

“I read it a couple of months ago. Grim.”

“But the relationship between the father and son was so beautifully done, don't you think?”

“Very sad.”

“If you want to look at it that way, but I thought it was inspiring. There they are after the apocalypse, starving, and the father is still determined to pass on something good to his son. Anyway, I'll be at your place by six. That'll leave enough time for you to give Mandy the lay of the land.”

“I don't have anything to bring for the potluck.”

“This time we're just ordering in from Beijing Garden.”

“But—”

“Six!”

Ellen is the best kind of friend, fiercely loyal but honest when I need that. We went through law school together. She, Joe, and I used to study together. She'd known him since elementary school in Charleston and liked him, but would often tease him about his “South of Broad airs”—she was a suburban girl—and when I told her he'd asked me to marry him, she didn't keep her reservations to herself: “He's a sweetheart, and I can see why you love him, but I just worry that he's going to want you to be somebody you can't possibly be. Maybe you shouldn't just jump right into this…”

“What are you talking about?” I'd pressed her, feeling both insulted and indignant. “He's crazy about me.”

“It's hard to explain. Maybe you have to live in Charleston to understand. He just assumes everybody wants what
he
wants, which is basically to live in a nice historic house below Broad Street—which as far as he's concerned is the center of the universe—practice law with his father's firm, and spend weekends at the yacht club.”

“You're selling him short. He reads a lot. And he likes to travel.”

“And what does he read?
Field and Stream
?”

“He likes mysteries.”

“And I don't remember him traveling farther away than the mountains of North Carolina.”

“There's nothing wrong with the mountains of North Carolina,” I said.

“Yeah, but you'd like an occasional trip to New York, right? And maybe London or Paris?”

“Maybe, but it's not really important. I just want a simple life.”

She'd laughed. “You can't be a member of the Baynard family and live a simple life. It's a whole social system and you'll be sucked into it: the yacht club, the hunting weekends down on Edisto, the Cotillion—”

“What's the Cotillion?” I asked.

“That's what I mean! You have no clue! The Cotillion, my dear innocent Sally, is the debutante club. There are others, but this one is THE club.”

“I'm way too old to be a debutante.”

She laughed again. “Of course you are, but you'd never have been invited, even when you were the right age.”

“That's not nice.”

“What I mean is, you only get invited if you're from a certain kind of family.”

“So, why are we even talking about it?”

“Because Joe's a member, and you'll be expected to go to all the dances. If you have a daughter, I'm sure Joe will want her to make a debut.”

“I doubt it. It seems so … I don't know … antiquated and silly.”

“The Baynards and their ilk take it absolutely seriously.”

“Well, we're getting way ahead of ourselves.”

“You really don't get it, do you?” she said.

And of course I didn't get it, because I didn't want to. I was in love. I was in lust.

At the wedding Ellen was my only bridesmaid. Joe and I decided on a small ceremony with only our parents and a few friends. I thought at the time that this was a good sign, that he didn't really want a big showy wedding, but looking back, I think he wasn't ready to put me on display for the whole Baynard clan. He wasn't quite up to the ordeal of prewedding parties and dinners. So we opted for a civil ceremony in Columbia the day after the bar exam, with a magistrate presiding. My mother was there, and his parents drove up from Charleston. I'd met them only once, and they were cordial enough, but when they made some excuse about having to get back for a charity event that evening, I felt the chill.

Ellen took me under her wing in Charleston, introducing me to some of the other female lawyers in town. After the miscarriage she hovered over me like a mother (I hadn't told my mother about the pregnancy) until she thought I'd had sufficient time to recover. Then she took me to lunch and locked onto me with those steady blue eyes. “Sally, this is about more than the miscarriage, isn't it?”

And of course she was right. She suggested counseling, but I couldn't see Joe Baynard in a psychologist's office. I'd heard him say, “We Baynards keep our problems to ourselves.” No, I told her, we needed some time apart. “It's just a trial separation,” I said.

Again she tried to warn me. “Honey, if you leave him, you'll never go back. I know you. So don't kid yourself.”

And two years ago, after my mother's diagnosis, when I told Ellen I was moving her in with me “for just a few months until I can arrange something,” she was brutally straightforward: “And then what? It's a no win. If you let her stay, you'll drive each other crazy. If you put her somewhere, you'll feel like a creep.” Ellen grabbed my hands, squeezed them hard. “You're a strong woman, Sally Baynard, but you're no saint. Do you know what happens to people with Alzheimer's? First she won't remember your name. Then she won't remember
her
name. She'll poop in her pants. Then she'll stop eating.”

“I can't put her in a nursing home … not yet, anyway.”

“You're just trying to make up for all those years you hardly saw her,” said Ellen.

“That's not fair.”

“It's true.”

“I was busy, and she was two hours away. She could have made an effort, too.”

Ellen squinted her eyes to let me know she wouldn't let me get away with this. “You're both so damn stubborn.”

“She's got nobody else. Anyway, I've already put a down payment on the condo.”

“I see you've made up your mind. You can always use an extra bedroom.”

And tonight, when Ellen's daughter calls in the middle of the book club meeting (after two bottles of wine but before we've gotten around to gossiping) to say “It's really weird, and I hope I didn't do something wrong, but your mother threw a bowl of Jello on the floor and, like, she seems really upset,” Ellen drives me home. She stays until I've calmed my mother down, helps Mandy clean up the mess while I put my mother to sleep with the first three pages of
The Wind in the Willows
(we never get past the first three pages) and stays a while longer to make sure I'm okay.

“Lunch tomorrow,” she says before they leave.

“I'll have to check—”

“I know you don't have a trial.” She knows this because if I had a trial tomorrow, I'd be preparing tonight, and no amount of cajoling would have gotten me to the book club.

“I need to do some research for the dog case. Maybe next week.”

“You can take a break for lunch. I need to talk to you about something. I'll bring sandwiches to your office.”

“No meat.”

“Right.”

*   *   *

In the old days, before there were law schools, my secretary Gina would have been a lawyer. She'd have earned the right to practice law by doing what Abraham Lincoln did: apprenticing, reading the law, studying, drafting pleadings and briefs. This morning she's assembled some cases and articles for me to review, including a survey of U.S. pet owners. Fact: more than half of them would prefer a dog or cat to a human as a companion if they were stranded on a desert island. Fact: Americans spend over 50 billion dollars annually on their pets. Fact: 70 percent of respondents who shared their lives with animal companions said they thought of their animals as children.

Despite all this, the courts have been reluctant to grant pets the same status as children:

Bennett v. Bennett,
lst Dist. Court of Appeal, Florida: “While a dog may be considered by many to be a member of the family, under Florida law, animals are considered to be personal property … While several states have given family pets special status within dissolution proceedings … we think such a course is unwise. Determinations as to custody and visitation lead to a continuing enforcement and supervision problems … Our courts are overwhelmed with the supervision of custody, visitation, and support matters related to the protection of our children. We cannot undertake the same responsibility as to animals.”

Good point. Even if I can work out an agreement between Mr. and Mrs. Hart, will they be able to live with it? I can imagine the continuing spats, the motions filed because one or the other has returned Sherman late, or failed to take him to the vet, and so on and so on. Will Judge Baynard or any other judge of the family court want to spend time enforcing an agreement? And if the case ever gets as far as the Court of Appeals or state Supreme Court, it's certainly possible there'll be a pronouncement like the one in
Bennett v. Bennett
, and a return to the trial court with instructions to treat Sherman as property, no different from a piece of furniture.

And there's another issue I haven't considered—dog support:

Dickson v. Dickson,
Arkansas: The parties agreed that the wife would have primary custody of the dog, and ordered the husband to pay $150 per month in “dog support.” Later the parties stipulated to a modification of the decree: the wife would have sole custody but the husband would have no further financial responsibilities for the pet.

Gina has also found an article from the
Boston Globe
that makes me feel completely inadequate to my task:

Pet custody disputes have become an increasingly common fixture in divorce cases and [Dr. Anny] Marder, an animal behavior specialist, has consulted in several. To do a proper evaluation, she likes to spend at least an hour and a half with the couple and the pet. She asks the owners a barrage of questions: which of the two spends more time with the animal, who plays with it more, who feeds it … Marder frowns upon so-called “calling contests,” a method used by lawyers in some custody cases, in which the owners stand at opposite ends of a room and call the pet to see which way it will go. She prefers to observe the animal's body language as it interacts with its owners … Sometimes she recommends joint custody, but only if she thinks the animal can handle it.

I'm no animal behavior specialist. I don't even own a dog. If I can't work out some kind of shared custody agreement between the Harts, if the case goes to trial, I'll have to write a report of my investigation. No matter which one comes out looking better, the other will surely challenge my qualifications and my judgment. I can imagine the cross-examination:

Ms. Baynard, you don't own a dog, do you?

No.

And can you tell us about the last time you had any significant contact with a dog?