Authors: Sarah Bilston
I tried to read her face, pale orange in the glare of the street
lamps. “Are you wondering if Dave—?” I began, interested, but she bit her lip and looked down.
“No. I mean, that’s not why I’m asking,” she returned hastily. “I mean, Dave obviously…But it’s not because of Dave. I was just wondering.”
I cast my mind back to the early days with Tom. I knew that I loved him, I suppose, almost immediately. Marrying him never seemed like a decision, it was obviously going to happen.
“In my case it all happened rather quickly,” I explained. “But I think it’s different for everyone. Some people take years settling into a relationship.”
She nodded shortly, her face preoccupied.
“Do you—are you enjoying being with Dave?” I tried.
“Of course. I mean, he’s funny, and kind, and—stuff,” she answered. I had the strong sense that there was a “but” hovering on the edge of her words.
We had come within sight of the small bar, set in a purpose-built block atop a large parking lot; I felt almost regretful as we entered the circle of bright floodlight. Things were just getting interesting. “So what are we trying to do here?” she asked quickly. “With this old man, I mean?”
“Well, we’re going to be very strategic,” I explained, navigating a parking truck. “Kent doesn’t even know I’m coming, you see. I’m going to try to persuade Emmie Cormier, the young mother, to talk more about her life with her ex. The beatings, the violence, and so on. I want to see if she can inspire Kent’s sympathy so he’ll take her on as a client and help her keep custody of her kid. I want to see if I can help change his views about her.”
“But why? I mean, why are you getting involved?”
“Because she can’t pay him,” I told my sister, pushing open the door to the busy saloon. “And—” ruefully—“you know, Jeanie, I just can’t bear to stand by and watch a young mom lose her kid.”
I saw Kent immediately, slumped on a stool at the far end of the
bar, staring ruminatively into the depths of a double whisky. Above him a game of baseball blared on a huge TV screen suspended on the wall, a wiry pitcher preparing to throw at a batter whose mountainous neck began an inch above his ears. Kent was clearly utterly unconscious of the action—of the batter uncoiling into one swift pump, the sharp crack, the ball flying high, high, high into a forest of outstretched arms. In repose, the old lawyer’s face looked older than normal, the lines around his face more sharply etched. The corners of his mouth were pulled down, and his cheeks looked gray and papery. I noticed (as I slid onto a stool beside him) that a nerve was twitching repeatedly in his eyelid.
He looked at me. “Huh. You here?”
“Well, yes. I thought I would. I—uh—came for a drink with my sister. Can we join you?”
He acknowledged my question and Jeanie’s hovering presence with a neutral nod. “I guess we’ll need a booth, then,” he said, stretching out his limbs awkwardly.
He led the way to one of the bright red faux-leather booths lining the wall, beneath posters of sports stars and framed match tickets. As we were arranging ourselves along the benches, Emmie herself appeared in the doorway. She looked nervous and high-strung. She was wearing a cropped white top that showed too much bone, and a skinny faded jeans skirt from which too-lean, too-straight legs protruded. Her pale blond hair, in need of cutting, was loose about her face.
Emmie’s expression, when she caught sight of me, was bewildered. She folded herself into the remaining seat with arms and legs that seemed all angles. She said nothing until after she had ordered herself a beer from the diminutive, curly-haired waitress, then stared me full in the face. “Who are you?” she asked, her eyes narrowing slightly. “You look sort of familiar—”
I opened my mouth to explain, but Kent got there first. “Pretty much the best friend you’ll ever have, so quit the tone, all right?” he interjected belligerently. I blinked; Emmie flushed.
“Mr. Tyler, now don’t be hasty, I just thought—” she began uncomfortably, but Kent waved his hand impatiently in the air.
“Shut up. This here is Quinn, a young friend of mine, and over here is her sister. From England. That’s all you need to know. Now I want you to get on with it. Your story, I mean. Start with the background.”
Jeanie and I exchanged baffled glances. Emmie shrugged, and took a quick slug of her beer.
“I…” She paused, and briefly shaded her eyes with her right hand. “I don’t know what you want to know, exactly. Ryan—that’s my ex—he says he’s going to—he’s going to take Paulie away from me,” she said at last, her voice so low we had to strain to hear her above the noise and another explosion of jubilation on the enormous television monitor above us. “My little boy.”
“And?”
“He says Paulie will be better off with him. He says everybody knows it. He says there’s no point in fighting it, not since I lost my job. He says he’ll tell everyone I’m an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a—”
There was a long pause. Kent, head cocked on one side, watching her, prompted her again. “A—?”
“A—you know, a whore,” she finished at last, with visible reluctance. “He has—” (she looked down at the table) “he has some photos,” she continued stiffly. “From a few years back. It was a stupid thing, down in a basement, this girl hooked me up with a photographer to earn money. Before I was married, I was kind of desperate. I’d lost—my little girl, my first baby, she died of—” (she gulped) “crib death. Woke up one morning, realized I’d slept through for the first time in months and—there she was. I went crazy for a while after that, missing Angela so bad, my Angel; people saying it was my fault, I shouldn’t have got knocked up in the first place. You know how folks can be. Well, I went and got myself into real bad credit card debt.”
I reached out and took her hand almost without thinking; she
seemed so young. “Well, I guess I must have told Ryan about the photos.” Emmie smiled a tiny, wan smile. “Now he’s tracked them down. He said—he said he’ll show the court. He says I’ll lose Paulie for good. I don’t even know—Christ—I don’t even know why he
wants
Paulie, except—he wants everything, I guess. And his mother said he should take Paulie away from me, “cause she’s always hated me. She used to say bad stuff about my Angel. But I won’t let it happen, Mr. Tyler,” she continued, with sudden and unexpected force, banging her bottle down on the table until the beer fizzed and bubbled in a golden froth all over her hands. “I won’t let him take my son away from me. I’ll—I’ll tear his heart out first! I’ll rip him to
pieces
if he even
touches
my little boy!” Her lip trembled; a large tear slipped down her face.
Kent shushed her disapprovingly, peering theatrically over his shoulder. “Give it a break, Emmie, okay? Think about how you’ll sound in front of a court!” But I found myself imagining how I would feel if someone tried to take Samuel from
my
arms. I’d kill them.
Kent was still looking around, muttering peevishly about “death threats,” and how “judges don’t take kindly to them, young lady,” when I leaned over the table. “Emmie, I’ve got a baby myself,” I told her. “I think I know—a little bit—how you feel. He’s called Samuel. He’s a couple of months old.”
“Really? Who’s got him now?”
“My husband. You?”
“Grandfather. You nursing, then?” (A quick, evaluative look at my figure.)
“Yes. Did you?”
“Uh-huh. Although I—”
“Okay, okay ladies.” Kent was irritable. “Jeez! Let’s get back to the point, okay? Keep to the subject. Now let me get this straight, Emmie. Are you saying Ryan beat you?”
Emmie became instantly interested in a piece of skin at the base of her thumbnail. “Uh-huh. Sometimes. When I—when I forgot
stuff, y’know. Or—when I was late.” She shoved her thumb oddly upside down in her mouth and started to chew; we could hear the little click of her nail flicking backward and forward over her teeth.
“You reported him to the police, right?” pressed Kent.
Self-consciousness flickered in her eyes. “The nurses begged me to, of course, the one time I ended up in the hospital—overnight, I mean. That was the time he broke two ribs, blew out my knee, smashed in my nose, gave me
this”
(pointing at her face). “I was a
mess”
(she sounded almost, appallingly, proud). “But I didn’t press charges. There was no point. Lieutenant Driscoll was at school with Ryan, they go drinking most Friday nights at O’Rourke’s. You think I’m going to tell
him
about it? And Ryan—like he always said to me,
he’s
the kind of man people believe. I’m the kind of girl they don’t. That’s just the way it is.”
She finished off her beer with the air of one who had communicated a deep truth about life.
Jeanie was watching her. “Did your family ever see the bruises?” she asked suddenly.
Emmie shrugged. She was now picking the foil off her beer bottle. “My dad saw them all the time, he used to come by and help me with stuff around the house when Ryan was at work,” she answered. “He got himself killed in a motorbike wreck on Route 1 a year ago,” she added evenly, “so I guess that won’t help us a whole lot. Besides, he got so damn mad at Ryan about the beating he used to get in fistfights with him all the time. Driscoll was out at our house at least once a month, and usually wrote up the report to make Ryan come out looking good. So I don’t think Dad’s word would’ve counted for much in court. If that’s what you’re asking.”
“And your grandfather?” prompted Jeanie.
“He don’t see what he don’t want to see,” Emmie explained. “He likes Ryan, actually, ’cause Ryan fixes him a free breakfast every Sunday. The way to Gramps’ heart is through his stomach, Ryan knows that. Basically Gramps thinks I should just quit the whole
thing and settle down with Ryan again, although he’s loyal to his own blood too; he won’t stop me from leaving, he just won’t help me either.”
We asked a few more questions about the details of her married life with Ryan, and her divorce (which had been handled by a young, newly qualified lawyer from Yale, whom she’d been put in touch with by Legal Aid. He had now left the state “for something big in Chicago, I heard.”).
“I’ve got to get back; Paulie’s been waking up about this time recently, he hates it when I’m out,” she finished, tugging her skirt over her skinny hips as she stood up. Then she looked down at us. “Legal Aid isn’t going to help me,” she said, hazel eyes huge in her face. “In case you’re wondering. I spoke with them already. They said they’ve got to do the divorce, because of the state, I guess. But custody disputes is different. If you can’t help me, I’m going to lose my son.” Her eyes felt out mine. And then, to Kent, blushing a little: “You’ll call me, right?” He nodded briefly, and raised his bottle to her as she flitted like a restless, awkward little ghost out of the bright, bustling bar.
Kent’s eyes were fixed on mine. There was a long silence while I debated my move.
“So what do you think?” he asked suddenly.
I stared. “You mean about whether she’s telling the truth? I think—”
Kent clicked his tongue impatiently. “Of course she’s telling the truth,” he interrupted. “Jeez! That’s obvious. I’m talking about
you,
my dear.”
I glanced down, astonished, as I felt Jeanie’s fingers pinching my hand. “What the—?”
“Q—” Jeanie was laughing—“you are
such
an idiot!”
“I am?”
“Sweetheart, this is not about you twisting Kent’s arm. Haven’t you got it yet? This whole thing?
He’s
twisting
yours…”
Q
W
e packed the bags, cleaned the house, spent as much time as we could handle with Dave, and gave Jeanie a kiss. Then we got Samuel’s car seat ready, complete with beguiling toys to help him pass the time on our trip to the city. We entered the car in quite good spirits.
F
our hours later, we felt rather differently.
I’m never driving
anywhere
ever again with him,
I told Tom, slamming the car door outside our apartment, Samuel hysterical and retching in my arms. It looked as if full-scale world war had broken out in the backseat.
In between Samuel’s screaming fits, Tom and I had a circular conversation on the journey about whether to try a nanny after all rather than daycare. “You could do with the extra help around the house, you don’t cope so well with the crying, I think you need more domestic support,” Tom said fretfully, and I lost it, and shouted at him, because he didn’t seem to understand he’d just weighed up my motherhood and found it wanting. And anyway, nannies are expensive in Manhattan. If Tom lost his job…
But it wasn’t just about the money. What I couldn’t quite bring myself to say to Tom in the car was that, in my mind, a nanny was
either a horrible know-it-all Mary Poppins who’d do everything better than I and make our child love
her
best while making
me
feel hideously inadequate, or an organ-thieving axe-wielding murderer who would appear sweet and trustworthy and then kidnap/slaughter/ sell Samuel the second our backs were turned. Often, she was both. Tom tried suggesting we hire an au pair—“quite a bit cheaper”—but I couldn’t figure out how an eighteen-year-old was going to cope with a screaming Samuel given that he sent me, a career woman in her late twenties, to the brink of insanity. At least I knew I wasn’t going to throw him down the stairs in a fit of pique. (I was nearly sure I knew this.)
The next morning, Tom went out for brunch with someone from work, so I was left on my own with Samuel. We went to the Met first, and after examining Ingres’s solid beauties we moved upstairs to the flourish and gay chaos of the late Renaissance. It was full of paintings of delighted mothers and fat, giggling children. Samuel goggled owlishly at them for ten minutes, then began to complain. Old ladies and gentlemen, out for their morning constitutional, pulled away and stared reproachfully at us; “It really isn’t a place for children,” I heard one of them murmur discreetly into her guide. Her companion, a dapper little man in a waistcoat with huge, rheumy eyes, nodded sadly. I ran downstairs to the medieval galleries, where I felt much more at home. The babies were all long and lean and tortured-looking, and the mothers were wailing.