Times and Seasons (6 page)

“The whole neighborhood probably showed up, didn’t they?” Mark said, further accusation in his voice. “Best entertainment around, Mark getting convicted of drug dealing.”

“You didn’t hear me, Mark,” she said. “I told you they’re praying for you. You should be glad.”

“Yeah, big hurrah.”

The comment turned Jerry around. “That’s it,” he said. “You’ve gone far enough, Mark. If you don’t want to help with this decision, then we’ll make it for you. You’re pleading guilty, you’re facing up to your crime, and you’re taking whatever it is the judge hands down to you. And if you go to jail, maybe you’ll
learn something your mother wasn’t able to teach you at home. Respect.”

“Dad, I do have respect,” Mark said as tears came to his eyes. “I’m just scared.”

“So am I.” Jerry strode to the door, opened it, and looked around for the attorney. He turned his dull eyes back to Cathy. “I’ll go tell him he’s pleading guilty,” he said. He closed the door behind him, leaving mother and son alone.

Mark looked small as he stared in the direction his dad had gone. But Cathy couldn’t think of a thing to add to what Mark’s father had said.

The
courtroom smelled moldy, and paint peeled off the walls. A big crack cut through the ceiling plaster, and the industrial tile on the floor looked as if it needed a good washing with Lysol.

It was a depressing place, where lives changed with the strike of a gavel.

She saw Steve sitting with Rick and Annie, and on the other side of them, Jerry had slipped in. Behind them, Brenda, Sylvia, and Tory sat together. Little Hannah lay asleep in her stroller next to Tory. The court was already in session, and those with traffic violations were quickly being processed. Quietly, Cathy slipped into the row between Steve and her children. Brenda leaned up. “How do things look?” she whispered.

Cathy drew in a deep breath and indicated that she really didn’t know. Before Cathy could respond, a side door opened, and those charged with criminal offenses were paraded in, all dressed alike in their orange jumpsuits.

Annie made a noise and covered her mouth. Her shocked eyes fixed on her mother, as if asking if she was going to allow this.

Cathy couldn’t take her eyes from her son.

He sat next to a boy with a goatee and colored tattoos of serpents down each arm. The boy smiled as he saw some of his friends in the back of the courtroom, and she saw that two of his teeth were missing. He looked as if he’d recently lost a fight but hadn’t learned from it.

Steve held one hand as she waited for their turn, and Annie latched on to her other one. The toothless kid next to Mark was called, and she watched as his teenaged wife got up and limped to the front of the courtroom.

After the case was read out, the judge regarded the girl. “Want to tell me what happened to your face?”

She looked at her boyfriend. He gave her a threatening leer that no one in the courtroom could have missed. But little hinged on the obvious, Cathy thought. It was all about paperwork and lawyers making the right motions.

She turned back to the judge. “I fell,” she said. “That’s all. I just want him out of here.”

The judge gave a long hard look at the boy, who obviously had little respect for the girl next to him. “You’re charged with Assault and Battery. How do you plead?”

The kid’s proud chin came up. “Not guilty.”

The judge gave the lawyer a look of disgust. “If she won’t talk, my hands are tied. Case dismissed.” He pointed a finger at the kid. “But I’d better not see you back in here. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said, his chin held high. A grin cut across his face as they let him go.

And then came a case with a drunk driver who’d killed someone, and then a car theft followed by several other drug charges.

Finally, it came to Mark.

He looked like a little boy as he stood up and shuffled to the front. She thought he was about to cry. Wouldn’t the judge see that this wasn’t an everyday occurrence for Mark? Wouldn’t Mark’s young features soften his heart?

“What do you plead?” the judge asked.

“Guilty,” Mark choked out, then glanced back over his shoulder at his mom. Cathy nodded her head, hoping to give him some strength. When Mark looked at his father, Jerry looked down at his hands.

The judge flipped through the pages again, studying the file. She wanted to tell him to forget the papers and look at the boy. She wanted to get up and tell the attorney not to just stand there, to do something and do it quick.

“Your Honor,” Slater told the judge, as if her very thoughts had prompted him. “My client is only fifteen years old. His record will show some prior offenses, but it’s worth noting that both of them occurred on the same night a year ago. There haven’t been any since.”

“Until now,” the judge said, peering at the attorney over his glasses. “And if I let him off the hook this time, then he’ll do it again. Trust me. I see these kids over and over.”

“No, Your Honor!” Mark blurted out. His attorney tried to silence him, but the judge looked up as if he couldn’t believe someone had dared speak out of turn in his courtroom.

“I won’t do it again,” Mark said. “I swear. You can ask my mom. She’ll probably ground me from now till Christmas.”

Cathy closed her eyes. She knew he was making himself look more naive and clueless, as if he still didn’t understand that months of his life behind bars was not the same as being grounded in his bedroom. Annie squeezed her hand, and she clung to it, trembling. The judge took a deep breath, as if the very thought of what was about to happen pained even him. He leaned forward, pressing his elbows into his leather inlaid desk.

“Young man, what you did was a very serious offense. And you may have heard that in my courtroom people don’t get off the hook. Not guilty people.”

Mark looked over his shoulder at Cathy again, and she let go of Steve’s and Annie’s hands and slowly brought hers to her mouth. A feeling of terror rose up inside her.

“I’m going to sentence you to a year at River Ranch Juvenile Correctional Facility.”

Mark swung around, his mouth open, and looked at his mother. She got to her feet and looked across to Jerry. He looked as stricken as they did.

“
No!
” Mark shouted. “
You can’t.
”

The judge banged his gavel and ordered Mark to be quiet.

“Your Honor,” Cathy shouted. “
Please!
”

“I will have order in my courtroom!” the judge insisted, banging the gavel again. The bailiff came to take Mark out of the room. He turned back with tears on his face, waiting for someone to run to his rescue.

When no one could, he cried, “Mom!” as if she had let him down. “Dad!”

Cathy had never felt more inadequate in her life. Jerry was standing now and looked as helpless as she.

Steve got to his feet and pulled Cathy against him, and she felt as if the world were going black. It all became shaky as he helped her out of the row of spectators and led her out of the courtroom.

Cathy
fought her way down the hall and to the door where they had led Mark out. Annie, Rick, and Steve ran to keep up with her. She tried to catch Mark, but they had already gotten him into the processing room.

“I want to see my son!” she yelled to the bailiff who was coming back to the courtroom.

“You can’t see him right now, ma’am. I’m sorry, but he’s being processed.”

“He is my son!” she shouted. “You can’t keep him from me!”

“He’s not yours right now, Mrs. Flaherty. He’s a ward of the state.”

“How dare you!” she shouted. “You can’t keep me from talking to him!”

“You can talk to him later, but right now there are things that have to be taken care of.”

She started to lash out at the bailiff, who could have picked her up and snapped her in two, but Steve stopped her.

“Calm down, Cathy,” he whispered. “This man’s just doing his job.”

“Well, his job stinks!” she said. “They can’t take a child away from his own mother.”

“Of course they can,” he said. “They do it all the time.”

She turned on Steve, as if he had declared the verdict himself. “Not to
me
, they don’t!”

She saw Jerry coming up the hall and jerked out of Steve’s hands. All the rage that had built over the last twenty-four hours tornadoed toward the man who had fathered these children, then left her to raise them on her own.

“
You!
” she shouted as he came toward her. “This is your fault!
You
did this to us!”

“Did what?” Jerry asked. “Mark did this to himself.”

“He needed a father!” she screamed. “He needed somebody he could count on. He needed a man to show him how to be a man. Do you even know how, Jerry? Do you even know what that means?”

“Quiet, Cathy. You’re making a scene,” Jerry spat out. “I don’t have to listen to you talk to me that way.”

“No, you never have to listen, do you?” she shouted. “All you have to do is walk out, just disappear, and nobody will hold you accountable. Nobody will expect anything. And then when they come visit you on weekends and you let them run wild just because you don’t want to have to deal with them, then you can blame
me!
”

Jerry pointed at Annie and Rick, who leaned against the wall with tears on both their faces. “Hey, these two turned out fine,” he said. “Apparently they weren’t too badly warped by my leaving you, so you can’t blame Mark on me.”

“Well, I do!” she said. “I blame you, and I blame the divorce, and I blame that little wife of yours that broke up our marriage! And I blame every morning that Mark woke up without a father in the home. I blame every night that he went to bed without knowing what it was like to have a male role model!”

Steve touched her shoulders, trying to calm her down, but she couldn’t be comforted.

“I’ve tried to forgive you, Jerry Flaherty,” she cried. “I’ve tried my hardest. I thought I had.”

Jerry’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t want your forgiveness, and I don’t need it.”

She opened her mouth to lash back, but Steve put his arms around her and stopped her. “Come on,” he whispered in her ear. “Come on, Cathy. Just walk away. Come on.”

Summoning all the strength she had, she shook out of Steve’s arms and took another step toward Jerry. She was trembling and felt as if something inside her would explode, that they would have to pick up the pieces and declare the end of her. “You’re going to be accountable one day, Jerry,” she said. “You’re going to have to face God with what you’ve done for your kids. He’s going to ask you where you were all those years, and if your little mistress was really worth it.”

Jerry shook his head and walked away. She thought of going after him, grabbing him and making him listen to what he didn’t want to hear. But she couldn’t make him take the blame, or the pain, or the guilt that wasn’t supposed to be shouldered alone.

She leaned against the wall and wept. Steve stood just off to her side, not touching her, but quiet as he waited. “I hope I’m there when God holds him accountable,” she said. “I hope I get to hear the answer, because I really want to know…” She brought both hands to her head. “I can’t take 365 nights like last night! I can’t live like that!”

“I know, honey.”

She covered her mouth with both hands and turned to her children. Rick and Annie hugged her as she wept out her anguish. Steve was behind her again, touching her back, stroking her hair. She knew that she was distressing him as much as the judge had distressed her, but there was nothing she could do. It was not a time for comforting. It was a time to mourn.

Finally, Steve tapped her shoulder and said, “I’m going to go check on Mark.”

He was gone for a few minutes, and she just stood there with Rick and Annie, desperately trying to hold herself together. She was at the end of her rope, about to let go and fall and fall and fall…

When he came back, she stepped toward him. “Where is he?”

“They’ve already taken him.”

She slammed her fist against the wall. “Taken him
where?
”

“To River Ranch. Cathy, they said you can’t see him until Wednesday night. That’s the next visitation.”

“No!” the word came out in horrified grief. “No, no, no!” Steve pulled her against him and held her.

“Cathy, I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

Her body racked with despair. She had to stop them, she thought. She had to
do
something. She pushed out of Steve’s arms and bolted up the hall. He followed on her heels. She turned a corner and ran into Tory, Brenda, and Sylvia. “Cathy, are you all right?” Sylvia asked.

“No!” she said, pushing through them. She grabbed Rick and Annie. “Come on, let’s go home,” she said. The two fell into step behind her as she hurried out to her car. She got into it and sat behind the wheel and looked back up at the courthouse. Steve stood on the sidewalk, hands on his hips, watching her with that helpless look on his face. She knew she was hurting him, but she couldn’t help it. She just had to get away, close herself in her room, and weep and cry and pray.

Rick got in the front seat and Annie in the back, and she started the car and pulled out into the traffic.

“Mom, are they really going to keep him for a year?” Rick asked.

“Yes,” she said through her teeth, “and there’s not a thing in the world I can do about it.”

Silence passed for the next five minutes, and finally, Annie spoke from the backseat.

“Mom, what you said to Dad…”

She almost couldn’t see through the blur of her tears. “I shouldn’t have said it in front of you.”

“Why not?” Rick asked. “Everybody else heard it.”

Again, silence ticked between them, and she had to force herself to drive more slowly than she felt like driving. She tried to replay the tape of what she’d said to Jerry in the courthouse. How condemning had it been? How upsetting for the children?

“I’m sorry I said those things. I’ve tried all these years not to talk bad about your father in front of you, and I know I haven’t always been successful at that. Sometimes I’ve just seen red and I just rant and rave and say whatever comes to my mind. Today was one of those days.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Annie said. “Maybe those things needed to be said.”

Cathy looked in the rearview mirror and saw that Annie had tears on her face. She was wiping them away.

“And maybe they didn’t,” Rick said.

She glanced over at him and saw the bitterness in his gray eyes. He hadn’t let the tears fall, and she could see that the grief was eating him from the inside out.

“You know, Mom, Mark made that choice on his own,” Rick said. “It’s like you always say. We can make choices in our teen years that affect the rest of our lives. This one’s going to affect Mark.”

Her face twisted as she turned the corner to get them home. She shouldn’t even be driving. It wasn’t safe.

“I know you’re right,” she said. “Your dad didn’t do this. I never should have accused him.” But as the silence followed, those accusations rose in her mind again. Maybe if Jerry had been around to tell Mark to stay away from drugs, he would have listened. Cathy had told him a million times, but sometimes a mom’s word wasn’t as powerful as a dad’s. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so willing to follow his friends, to seek their approval, if his dad had been there for him.

As she turned onto Cedar Circle and pulled into her driveway, she knew that bitterness was eating her up. And no words were going to cure the sin in her heart. It had been deeply planted and cultivated, and Jerry fertilized it every time she saw him.

Before the kids had even gotten out of the car, she got out herself, ran into the house, and hurried for her bedroom where she could lock herself in.