Starter House A Novel (27 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

THE LAWYERS SPOKE
too fast and there were too many of them. And where was the green line on the floor? Lex had followed the green line to this room, which was Family Court, even though the judge was too young and wasn’t wearing a black robe. How could you tell who the judge was when everybody was dressed the same? The judge wore a plain blue tie. Plainer than any of the lawyers’ ties. Lex’s lawyer, the young one, wore a brown tie with tiny gold squares in it, and sometimes the squares were floating and sometimes they were falling. Lex kept his eyes on the plain blue tie, but he was worried about the green line. Without it, he would never be able to find his way out.

“I have to go,” he said.

The lawyer pulled at his gold-squared tie. He had a tiepin with a square yellow stone in it. It wasn’t lined up with the gold squares in the tie. Lex had to look away. When he looked up, he couldn’t find the judge. Where was the plain blue tie? Where was the green line that would take him back to the big glass door?

“I have to go,” he said again.

Jeanne’s lawyer, that scary woman, was staring at him. He pushed his chair back and lunged for the courtroom door. It was a plain gray door, plain as the judge’s tie.

Bangs and shouts. The young lawyer grabbed Lex’s elbow and yanked him downward and sideways, back into his chair. “Mr. Hall, you have to stay here.”

“Where’s Theo?” They had to give Theo to him now. That was what the hearing was for. Lex’s lawyer would explain everything, and then the judge would give Theo to Lex, and Lex would take her home. All these words, the story, the evidence, that was what had to happen, the only thing that mattered. Plain blue tie. There it was. He looked straight at the judge’s tie—always look straight at the judge and keep your face up, the old man said, long ago, when Lex used to get in trouble.

“She’s at home with her grandmother,” the lawyer said.

That was wrong, because Theo’s grandmother was dead. “There’s no grandmother,” Lex said loudly. He stood up again. “She died a long time ago! Where’s Theo?” They had her in a room, maybe in a closet or some small place, the kind of place where a little kid would hide when there were too many words and the words were too loud. “She’s dead,” he said to the Family Court. Maybe Theo was nearby and she could hear him. “Theo!”

“Counselor,” the judge said angrily to the young lawyer, and Lex recognized that voice; all judges had that voice. “Control your client.”

“She’s with your wife’s mother,” the lawyer said. “It’s almost over; you’ve just got to sit down for a minute.”

Theo was with Big Jeanne? “No,” Lex said. “That’s not right.” Nobody would listen; they never did. “You can’t do that,” he said, and two of the courtroom cops dragged him outside and made him sit in a cold metal chair in the hallway, and they wouldn’t even let him go to the bathroom.

But the green line went straight up to the Family Court door. He leaned forward in the chair so that he could look at the intersection of two gray hallways. The green line turned left, so that was the way out. One of the courtroom cops slammed Lex back against the wall and said, “Stay where you’re put.”

Lex was used to staying where he was put. That was what courts did. They put him places, and he stayed there. Eventually they would let him go, and he could go back to his house that he had bought, and his job that he was good at, and he would take his baby home and take care of her like a good daddy should. If he needed help, the old man would help him. He leaned back against the wall and began to hum.

“Stop that,” the cop said, so he stopped.

Everybody came out of the courtroom. Jeanne walked past him with her lawyer, and she didn’t even look at him. Here came his lawyer at last, looking tired and sick and alone. Something bad had happened to him. “When do I get Theo?” Lex asked.

The lawyer pulled off his brown tie with the gold squares. Lex was relieved. He wouldn’t have to look at the squares changing direction anymore, or the sideways tiepin. “You didn’t help yourself back there, but there wasn’t much doubt how it would go.”

“When do I get Theo?”

“Friday, from two to four, in MacAvoy’s office. Supervised.”

The lawyer didn’t understand. Lex said patiently, “When can I take her home?”

“You’ve got supervised visitation in MacAvoy’s office, two hours a week.”

“I’ve got her room all nice for her.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hall.” The lawyer started walking along the green line, and Lex followed him. “Here’s the thing. After what happened last week—”

“Nothing happened.”

“You drove across town with the baby naked in your car, because you couldn’t give her a bath. You’ll have to let the custody issue lie for a while, that’s all.”

They waited for the elevator. Lex checked: yes, the green line ran toward the elevator doors. How did the judge know about Theo’s bath that went so wrong? The lawyer’s wife knew, but he was Lex’s lawyer. The nice lady, the lawyer’s wife’s mother, she knew about it, because she had helped get Theo clean. Was she the one who told Jeanne’s lawyer? He couldn’t believe it. She didn’t even ask him,
What happened, are you okay?,
the way the old man did, over and over; she just cleaned Theo and played with her.

The old man. The old man knew. He called someone. “The old man told Jeanne,” Lex said as the elevator arrived.

“I really can’t say,” the lawyer said, and Lex knew what that meant. The lawyer pushed his foot against the elevator door to hold it open, but he didn’t get in. “Mr. Hall, you’re going to have at least a month before your next hearing. So you’ve got time. You’re going to have to look into getting new representation.”

“What does that mean?”

“You need another lawyer, Mr. Hall.”

“Is it too hard for you? Do you need help?” Lex was disappointed. But the lawyer looked tired. Maybe he was scared of Jeanne’s lawyer. Jeanne’s lawyer was a very scary woman. If he needed help, then asking for help was the right thing to do. “Is it something you can’t handle on your own?” Lex asked.

“Mr. Hall. This is something I can’t handle at all. Here’s a list of firms. As soon as you’ve got a new lawyer, I’ll send your file. You need to do this right away.”

“But you’re my lawyer.”

“I can’t be your lawyer anymore.” He pushed the piece of paper toward Lex. “You call one of these people, and they’ll help you better than I can. Take the paper.”

Lex took the paper.

“Call them today. They need to deal with spousal support, that’s coming up next. Now you’ll call them today, won’t you? Say yes.”

“Yes,” Lex said. He folded the paper in half so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

“Good.” The lawyer pulled his foot out of the elevator and patted the doors as they closed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you, Mr. Hall, and I’ll have all your files ready for your new lawyer. You take care, now.”

“Thank you,” Lex said as the door closed. He closed his eyes. The elevator shook, and then it began to climb, slowly, in little jumps. He crumpled the piece of paper and dropped it. He didn’t want a new lawyer. He already had a lawyer. He just had to make him understand. The elevator stopped, and he waited a few seconds with his eyes closed, hoping that when he looked, if he was patient and good, he would see the green line that would lead him to the big glass doors.

Chapter Thirty-three

LACEY KEPT COUNTING THE MONEY,
and it came out the same every time. “Two thousand dollars,” she said. “It’s not much, considering.”

“Something will come up.” Ella Dane was in the bathroom, emptying the melted water from the ice bags. Lacey could smell the dog, not the usual dark smell of Bibbits, but a sharper odor, with a skunky, sulfuric overtone. The sooner they got the poor animal buried, the better.

Something will come up
. For as long as Lacey could remember, that was Ella Dane’s motto, and something usually did come up. They’d live in the car for a few days and then start traveling from one of Ella Dane’s friends to another, sleeping on couches, in sleeping bags, in attic bonus rooms with no air-conditioning, in basements or converted garages. One of these friends would hook Ella Dane up with a friend of a friend who needed a house sitter or had a trailer sitting empty on family land. Once, they lived for three months in a model home in a new subdivision, the builder paying Ella Dane to keep it and the two other models clean and ready to show.

Mostly, Ella Dane earned a few dollars here and there, babysitting, housecleaning, gardening. And she could always work with dogs. She’d advertise
dog training in your home, house training a specialty
. They always had money, never much, just enough.

Lacey sat at her computer, trying to figure out what baby was born at 571 Forrester Lane in 1971—Greeley Honeywick had been so positive, surely there was a way to find this out—and thinking Eric-type thoughts about Ella Dane. Would she drift from one odd job to another for the rest of her life? Did she have any money saved? What kind of Social Security benefits could a person receive, who had practically no official income over her lifetime? Who was going to take care of Ella Dane when she was old?

Who else, but the daughter who had taken on thirty-eight thousand dollars of student loans (plus another ninety-seven thousand for Eric), in order to qualify for a stable career. Lacey was on the Census Bureau website, trying and failing to get into the records for 1980, when her computer crashed. She slammed the top down and snapped at her mother, “How are we going to pay for this hotel?”

“I’m going down for a facial and a mani-pedi,” Ella Dane announced, “and I made an appointment for you, too.”

“And how are we going to
pay
for it?”

“That’s the advantage of traveling light. We’ll walk out of here, and they’ll send the bill to Eric. Let’s go downstairs and get all girled up.”

“Really?” Lacey said. “After all that’s happened, that’s all you can think of, really?” She knew she wasn’t being fair. Her fear of Drew, her grief over Bibbits, her terror of the blank, solitary, Eric-less future were all part of the poisonous mix, but everything in her came to a point, aimed at Ella Dane. “Because here we are again,” Lacey said, “stuck in some hotel that we can’t pay for that we’re going to sneak out of”—and where was Eric with his instinctive, bone-deep honesty, Eric who stood in line at the bank and argued with the teller if there was ten dollars too much in the account after he balanced the checkbook, where was he?—“and we’re eating cashew nuts out of the minibar, and then we’re going on the road with barely enough money for gas, and how are we going to eat, how are we going to survive?”

“One thing and then another,” Ella Dane said placidly.

No, no, no. That was the way Lacey organized her school year. It couldn’t be the way Ella Dane organized her life. Lacey was nothing like her mother, no matter what Eric said. Nothing like. “It’s your fault,” Lacey said. “If you hadn’t brought that dog into my house. It was the dog that made Drew so mad. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be home right now, and Eric would be frying me a pork chop and rubbing my feet.”

“Bibbits was a good dog, he was an old soul; he was getting ready to move on but he wasn’t ready yet. I came here for you, Lacey. I came because you needed me.”

“I don’t need you.” Lacey felt breathless, but she hurried recklessly on, because Eric was wrong; she was nothing like Ella Dane. “I never needed you. I always used to wish I could go back and live with Grandpa Merritt like a real person in a real house, so I wouldn’t have to grow up like I did, like a tramp. I never knew from one week to the next where we’d live and I hated it! All I wanted was a real home.” She had a real home with Eric. What if it was over?

“I only ever thought of you.”

“You only ever thought about what
you
wanted. Why couldn’t you let me stay with Grandpa Merritt? It’s the only real home I ever had.”

“It was time to move on,” Ella Dane said. She gave Lacey a serene, superior smile. This happened every time Lacey brought up the subject of Grandpa Merritt, and the white house with the green door: Ella Dane took a giant step backward and upward onto the moral high ground, leaving Lacey ready to cry with frustration. “It was necessary,” Ella Dane said. “I forgive you. Bibbits forgives you too; he knows you couldn’t help it. And now it’s time to get our nails done. Everything in its own time.”

“Oh, you are so selfish!” Ella Dane had her hand on the doorknob, ready to walk out of the room, taking her unsullied vegan temper with her, and leaving Lacey red-faced and screeching like a spoiled first grader, and Lacey couldn’t let her go. She kept hearing Eric’s voice.
Exactly like your mother
. “You were the worst mother ever,” she said.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Ella Dane said, which was what she always said when Lacey called her names. Never an apology, never an excuse; she just pushed Lacey’s feelings back at her. It made Lacey frantic.

“I hated living with you. I hated never having a real home. It was
embarrassing
. I always wanted to stay late at school, so I wouldn’t have to go back to you.”