Custody (15 page)

“—don’t you think?” Anne concluded.

“Muphg,” Sarah responded, her mouth full of cake.

“What are you eating?” Anne demanded.

Sarah sighed, scattering cake crumbs on the bosom of her turquoise summer shift. One of the reasons Sarah and Herbert had decided to give up their winter home in Boston and move full-time to Nantucket was this maddening watch-dog attitude of Anne’s. “Chocolate cake,” Sarah admitted, knowing she might as well tell her daughter she was eating live babies.

“Mother, think of your cholesterol.”

“I’d rather not. How’s Tessa?”

“Oh, I don’t know, honestly I don’t. She’s so volatile.”

“Did you send her to camp?”

“Yes. She’s there now.”

“Does she enjoy it?”

“I suppose. Listen, Mother, I need to ask you a favor.”

“Oh? Well, go on. Out with it.”

“You know Randall and I are having a battle about who should get custody of Tessa.”

“Yes, you want him to take her and he wants you to have her?” Sarah laughed heartily.

“This isn’t a joke.”

“I know it’s not. I apologize. But wait a few years, until Tessa reaches full-scale gale force adolescence. You might understand better then.”

“Mother. Concentrate. Please.”

“Yes, dear,” Sarah said dutifully.

“Randall and Tessa and I have to meet with the guardian
ad litem
. It’s ordered by the
court. I told you this at the beginning of July, just after the fourth, remember?” She didn’t wait for her mother’s reply. “I’ve already met with him. Dr. Lawrence. He seems intelligent and fair. I’d like you to come talk with him. Help me convince him that Tessa should be with me.”

“Oh, Anne, you know how I hate leaving the island.”

“I do know that. But this is urgent, Mother. You must understand. I could lose custody of Tessa.”

“I don’t actually see why that would be so bad, Anne.” At the explosive sputtering from the other end of the line, Sarah cried, “Wait a minute, would you please? Hear me out! I’m thinking of
you
, Anne. I know you think I’m dotty, but I’m not really, and I do love you in my own way, and what’s more, Anne, I
know
you, probably better than anyone else does. Probably better than you do. I know what you were like as a little girl. I know how much you hate disorder. I know—”

“Mother. I have Carmen.”

“I’m not talking about keeping the house clean! I’m talking about relationships. I’m talking about dealing with a young woman! Adolescence is fraught with tensions, animosities, hormonal explosions. This is when daughters start rebelling against their mothers. They can’t help it. It’s like the course of the seasons. They
pull away
.”

“Tessa and I—”

“Read the literature, Anne. Please. As a favor to me. There will be all sorts of hell breaking loose in the next few years, Oedipal stuff, Electra stuff. Tessa won’t be a little sweetheart anymore. She’ll be hostile and secretive and emotional. You’ll try to help and she’ll shut you out. It will be very hard on you.”

“Other mothers survive it. I’m sure I can. Anyway, I can always—”

“Always what? Take more Valium?”

“I don’t take Valium.”

“Xanax, then. Or something. Be honest. Don’t you take tranquilizers?”

“My work is very demanding, Mother. I get nervous, and with the election coming up I get anxious.”

“Then you should let Tessa live with Randall.”

“I can’t
believe
you said that to me! I can’t believe you feel that way! What kind of mother are you?”

“One who loves you, Anne.” Sarah gripped the phone. She could feel her daughter listening. “One who loves you and admires you
enormously
. And sees you clearly. Anne, I wish
you’d think about why you want Tessa living with you. Your gifts are many. You have the chance to make vast, significant changes that will better the lives of thousands of people. Why tie your hands with the responsibility for one adolescent?”

“I can’t—”

“Please hear me out. It’s not as if Randall is vindictive. You know that if Tessa lives with him, he’ll let you see Tessa any time. Let
him
deal with the exhausting daily stuff. Then you’d be free to travel—what was that conference you were asked to speak at last spring? In San Francisco? About public transportation and working parents?”

Interesting, Sarah thought, how something as ineffable as a telephone connection—was it actually bouncing off a satellite in space?—could convey so much anger and despair in nothing but silence.

“Anne? Darling?”

Her daughter’s voice was flat. “So I can’t tell the guardian
ad litem
that you’ll speak with him.”

“Right. It won’t matter, I’m sure. Just tell him we live on an island and seldom see you or Tessa. That’s the truth.”

“Fine. I’ve got to go. I won’t say it’s been a pleasure talking to you.”

“Oh, my dear.”

“Good-bye, Mother.”

Sarah clicked off the phone. Looking down, she saw Brownie sitting at her feet, adoration and gluttony in her eyes.

“They say chocolate’s bad for dogs,” she told her.

Brownie wagged her tail hopefully.

“Although I’ve always fed my dogs chocolate with no ill effect.”

Brownie shivered all over in ecstatic expectancy.

Why couldn’t people be more like dogs? Sarah wondered. Bending, she fed Brownie just the tiniest sliver of cake. Mostly white icing, really.

Anne stood in her shower, weeping. What an
awful
day today was! Rejected and insulted by her own mother!

She soaped herself all over, for the tenth time. The water sluiced over her, swirling down the drain, and still she felt unclean.

Sarah had always liked Randall best, right from the moment Anne brought him home to meet her parents. They were so much alike, warm, openly, even flamboyantly affectionate, humorous, given to spells of silliness. They behaved almost flirtatiously with each other. Sometimes when they were together, they made Anne feel like
she
was
their
parent. Randall didn’t mind the chaos of the Franklin household. He even seemed comfortable in it. Of course, he would.

Still, Sarah was Anne’s mother, not Randall’s!

No use torturing herself. She hadn’t counted on her mother. Long ago she’d learned not to do that. She still had Carmen to support her at the psychiatrist’s and, of course, Reverend Christopher. Still, she hated it that she had to demean herself by asking them to speak to Dr. Lawrence. How could her mother chastise her for using the occasional tranquilizer? It was a wonder Anne wasn’t using more, what with the election coming up at the same time as her divorce, and Randall, once her husband, suddenly her enemy. And it didn’t help
at all
that Tessa’s personality was changing. Randall said it was normal, and Anne supposed it was. Tessa wasn’t a child anymore. She was almost a teenager. God, she’d probably start her period any day now, poor child. She’d be even more difficult to deal with then. The subject of boys would arise—it was all too disgusting to dwell on.

“Mom?” Tessa’s voice broke into her thoughts, startling Anne so that she dropped the soap on her foot.

“What?”

“Carmen’s going to drive me to camp now.”

Anne turned off the water, grabbed a thick white bath sheet from the heated drying rack and wrapped it around her. When she opened the door, steam billowed out around her into the bedroom.

Tessa stood there in her white shorts and navy T-shirt, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her long blond hair neatly plaited and tied with a plaid grosgrain ribbon. Lovely innocent child, Anne thought, smiling, although over the past few weeks as Tessa had grown taller, it appeared that her waist was thinning and her chest developing, making the sight of her bittersweet.

“Have fun, then,” Anne said. “I’ll be here when you get back this afternoon.”

“Okay. Bye, Mom.” Tessa skipped from the room and down the stairs. The front door
slammed.

Anne dressed in an empire-waisted dress of violet linen and slipped a matching headband on to hold her blond hair away from her face.

The house as she walked down the stairs and through the hall to her office hummed steadfastly around her: air conditioner, refrigerator, clocks, computer—all the machines that so reliably, more reliably than human beings, attended to her needs.

Carmen had dusted and vacuumed her office while Anne showered, and now it waited in immaculate serenity for Anne’s presence. Anne’s assistant, Rebecca, had today off. Anne would be blissfully alone while she worked at her desk, making phone calls, dictating letters into her tape recorder, catching up on her mail.

Anne seated herself at her desk. Folding her hands, she took a deep breath: then with the tips of her perfectly manicured fingernails, touched her white telephone, the small caller ID box, the thick Rolodex, and delicately moved her daily calendar a fraction of an inch, so that it was exactly in the center of her desk. She touched her tape dispenser, her stapler, the malachite box where she kept her stamps. She touched the pastel Lucite in and out boxes. Last, she set both hands on the silver and amethyst tray where her pens lay. Her blotter was centered perfectly on her desk.

She opened her appointment book and began to work.

After taking the oath of office, all new judges spent a month in training at four different courts around the state. Tuesday morning Kelly began her training at the Middlesex County Courthouse—the largest court in the state, serving over one and a half million people—the courthouse where at the end of the month she would preside.

Today she sat with Judge Marjorie Spriggs, a wiry, tiny African-American woman in her fifties. Kelly had argued cases before Judge Spriggs before and had been impressed by the woman’s astuteness and compassion, a dynamite mixture.

When Kelly entered Judge Spriggs’s chambers at 8:45 on Tuesday morning, she found the office already bustling.

“Good morning, Kelly,” Judge Spriggs called from behind her desk, barely looking up from the piles of folders she was plowing through. “Welcome to the madhouse.”

“Good morning.”

“Arlene, meet Kelly, Kelly, Arlene.”

Judge Spriggs’s secretary rose briefly to shake Kelly’s hand before diving back into the papers on her desk. “We can’t find a file. We have to manually file all our cases, and it’s time-consuming and confusing. We need to be computerized.”

“We need a whole new courthouse,” Judge Spriggs barked.

“But it’s a beautiful building,” Kelly protested.

“Beautiful, schmutiful—this place is a dump. Found it!” Yanking a folder out, Judge Spriggs flipped through it, scribbling her signature on various documents, talking to Kelly as she worked. “It’s unsafe and impossible to organize. The staff has to run all over the place to get anything done. Ask the probation officers about ‘beauty.’ Hah! Judges and registers and staff have to ride the same elevator as the people we’ve just ordered to give their wives their life savings. Security’s impossible here. You’ll be getting your own key for the back entrance of the courthouse. Don’t lose it. You can ask a court officer to escort you from your car and back, and you ought to do it. Don’t forget that attorney, what’s his name—”

“Barton,” Arlene said.

“Barton—a few years ago, leaving the courthouse with the woman he’d represented in a divorce, the ex-husband shot and killed both the woman and the lawyer. Don’t forget you’re dealing with people in states of terrible emotional distress. Men hate letting someone else tell them what to do. I predict in the next few years we’re going to see our court officers carrying guns. And I need another cup of coffee. Where’s my mug? Arlene, have you seen my mug?”

“Here you are, Judge. Would you like some, Judge MacLeod?”

“No, thanks.” Kelly felt she was absorbing all the adrenaline she could handle just by being in the same room with Judge Spriggs.

Judge Spriggs’s register opened the door from the courtroom. “Ready, Judge.”

“Come in here a minute. Judge MacLeod, this is Merry Wickes, my register. The registers are our guard dogs—remember that. Merry’s bright and thorough. You need anything, ask her. Okay, let’s go.”