The Ditto List (13 page)

D.T. went into the kitchen and made Bananas Foster, his single confectionary accomplishment. Lucinda hurried back and forth between the kitchen and the deck, enthralled by what she saw from each location. When they'd finished eating she embarrassed him with praise. Then D.T. persuaded her to take an aspirin. After he persuaded her to go to bed he got a pillow and a blanket for her, then went back to his room and tried and failed to sleep.

When he checked on her an hour later she was wide awake, staring at the heavens as though the stars were sonnets. She had pulled the sheet from the rail and wrapped herself within it. Beneath its dingy drape she was naked and unselfconscious, as though she could not possibly arouse him. As a result, his loins wriggled warmly, thrilling and disgusting him. When she saw him looking at her she smiled. “It's so pretty,” she said. “I could stay here till I die.”

Abashed, D.T. asked if she needed anything else. She said she didn't. Then she thanked him once again. He went to bed and slept and didn't wake till morning, more protected than protector, temporarily cured of every single thing that ailed him.

SIX

I' Lucinda Finders, hereby swear and affirm that,

I am over the age of eighteen and have been a resident of this State and County for more than six months. I am the Petitioner in the above-entitled cause, and I make this declaration in support of the motion for temporary restraining order which is served and filed herewith.

On December 24, 1982, I married the Respondent herein, Delbert Wesley Finders. I am pregnant by Delbert, and am expecting our child in November of this year. I am seeking a dissolution of our marriage on the ground that irreconcilable differences have arisen between us, which have led to the irremediable breakdown of our marriage. I am also requesting exclusive custody of our child, plus child support in the amount of three hundred dollars ($300.00) per month. I wish no alimony.

Because of his past behavior toward me, I fear that if Delbert Wesley Finders is not restrained by this Court, he may inflict serious bodily harm upon me and upon my unborn child. Delbert Wesley Finders has struck me many times over the course of our marriage, beginning with the day after our wedding when he broke my little finger by biting it almost clear through. At other times he has punched me, and pushed me down. Once he held my head under water when I was in the bathtub till I almost drowned. Another time he held my hand over a candle till it began to burn and stink. I still have a scar from that time, plus I have three scars on my face from being hit by Del. Every time he hit me it was because of something he imagined I did, not something I really and truly did do. Also, every time he hit me he had been drinking.

When I told Delbert Wesley Finders I was going to leave him and file for divorce, he threatened to kill me if I went through with it. Two nights ago he came to the house where I was staying. He was very drunk and he hit me and broke my nose and again threatened to kill me if I didn't drop the divorce case. He only stopped hitting me because he thought the cops were coming.

Delbert Wesley Finders is an expert hunter and owns at least three guns—a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. He practices shooting a lot. I have seen him kill a rabbit from so far away you could hardly see it. He also owns a bunch of knives, and carries one on his belt almost all the time. He gets in fights a lot and is very strong. I have never seen any man get the best of Delbert Wesley Finders in a fight, and I have seen many of them hurt very bad by going up against Del, even with chains or knives. Because of this I believe Del is very capable of hurting me and my unborn baby, and I believe he will hurt us again if we keep on with this case. I would like this court to order Del to stay away from me and the baby until this case is finished.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.

Lucinda Finders

Petitioner

Law Office of D. T. Jones

by

Attorney for Petitioner

I, Mareth Hartwell Stone, hereby swear and affirm that,

I am over the age of eighteen and have been a resident of this State and County for more than six months. I am the Respondent in the above-entitled cause. I make this declaration in support of the motion for temporary restraining order and for temporary support which is served and filed herewith.

On August 27, 1983, my husband, Charles Rawson Stone, served me with a Summons and Petition (Dissolution) in the above-entitled cause. Prior to that time, I had no notice, formal or informal, that Petitioner contemplated proceedings to terminate our marriage.

On that same day, after receipt of said documents, I visited various banks and financial institutions in the city and discovered the following:

1. Petitioner had withdrawn all funds from our joint checking account, in an approximate amount of five thousand dollars ($5,000.00), all of which is the marital property of the parties, and transferred said funds to an unknown location.

2. Petitioner withdrew all funds from our two joint savings accounts, in an approximate aggregate amount of thirty thousand dollars ($30,000.00), all of which is the marital property of the parties, and transferred said funds to an unknown location.

3. Petitioner removed the entire contents of our joint safe deposit box, including many items of value such as jewelry, gold coins, stocks and bonds, of a value well in excess of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000.00), all of which is the marital property of the parties, and transferred said items to an unknown location.

4. Petitioner removed, at some time prior to the morning of August 27, 1982, certain objects of art and other things of value from the marital home, of an aggregate value well in excess of fifty thousand dollars ($50,000.00), all of which is the marital property of the parties, and transferred said items to an unknown location.

I am informed and believe that Petitioner has appropriated and concealed additional items of marital property and, unless restrained by the Court, will appropriate and conceal many additional items of said property, all to my present and future jeopardy. I am informed and believe that the marital estate of the parties is in excess of one million dollars. By his acts, Petitioner has deprived me of access to any such property with the exception of the marital home which I still occupy, to my great financial jeopardy. I believe Petitioner has taken these steps to punish me for some reason unknown to me, and that unless restrained by this Court I believe Petitioner will attempt to punish me further. I believe Petitioner may take steps to remove our two children from my custody, not in their best interest but only as a further means to punish me for my unknown and nonexistent transgressions. I believe such conduct would be extremely harmful and frightening to the children, and that Petitioner should be ordered to stay away from the children and myself until an order for reasonable and restricted visitation can be entered by this Court.

I declare under penalty of perjury the foregoing is true and correct.

Mareth Hartwell Stone

Respondent

Law Office of D. T. Jones

by

Attorney for Respondent

D.T. flicked the rewind button on his dictating machine and listened to the whir that marked the completion of the morning's work, then ejected the cassette and tossed it into his Out Box on top of the rough draft forms and executed blank copies which, when filled in by Bobby E. Lee on Monday morning, would be filed and served and would send Mareth Stone and Lucinda Finders on their way to join the 40 percent of married women who had been judicially severed from their mates.

D.T. enjoyed the office on Saturdays, at least on those days he was not so horny he longed to be home watching
Soul Train
. The phones were still and the courts were closed and the clients were drowning their troubles in
Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner
or the hair of the dog. Alone at his desk, surrounded by tiers of tomes that contained all the law that had ever been uttered by the courts of the nation, D.T. felt part of an important continuum: the Ditto List of Time.

He could almost hear the old cases talk to him—the arguments, pleas, and judgments of the ages—all up there on the shelves, waiting to assist him, whispering. Once in a while he took down a volume just for fun and read a favorite hallmark. Maybe
Willan
v.
Willan
—the wife who pulled the hair and tugged the ears and shook the beard and kicked the legs of her crippled husband, day and night, swearing and pestering, all to make him screw her. Held by the court: since the husband always submitted to her demands, no matter how reluctantly, he had condoned the wife's behavior and no legal grounds for divorce existed. Or
Devine
v.
Devine
, action by a wife against her mother-in-law to enjoin and restrain her from interfering with the marital relations of the wife and the defendant's son. Held by the court: case dismissed because the requested injunction prohibiting the mother-in-law from communicating with her son would be impossible to enforce. Or
Pavlicic
v.
Vogtsberger
, in which a seventy-six-year-old man whose “bankbook became Sara Jane's favorite literature” sued the twenty-six-year-old Sara Jane for the return of the money and property he had lavished on her in expectation that she would become his bride. Held by the court: “To allow Sara Jane to retain the money and property which she got from George by dangling before him the grapes of matrimony which she never intended to let him pluck would be to place a premium on trickery, cunning and duplicitous dealing.” Or perhaps his favorite,
McGuire
v.
McGuire
, wife of sixty-six suing husband of eighty for support and maintenance. The court finds the following facts established: wife worked in the fields, did outside chores, cooked and attended to household duties for over thirty years. Husband had given her no money for the last four years and had not taken her to the picture show for twelve. They belonged to no organizations. The house had no bathroom or inside toilet, and no kitchen sink. The furnace didn't work and the car didn't run and the husband refused to remedy any of it despite his wealth. Held by the court: since the parties were not living apart the husband was supporting his wife in the legal sense and the purpose of the marriage relation was being carried out.

As he sipped his coffee, D.T. thought of how reluctant Lucinda Finders had been to elaborate on her months of fear and furor with Del as the two of them had shared some underdone scrambled eggs and overdone toast at breakfast that morning. She had awakened before him, and showered and dressed. When he went to the deck to check on her, she was sitting stiff-backed and -legged, staring at the industrial expanse that spread away from her like a tattered doormat on a rainy day. “You can hear birds,” she said when she saw him.

Hair tousled, flesh puffy a bit from sleep and a lot from the assault of the previous night, Lucinda had provided a catalogue of Del's abuses only because he had insisted to the point of inquisition that she do so. When she had finished, he dutifully warned her that Del would be incensed when he saw the divorce papers, told her that serving Del with a restraining order was indispensable to her safety, and explained the legal and practical obstacles to an absolute warrant of her welfare. “There's not much to stop him from doing what he wants to do,” was how he'd put it. Yet she had urged him to go ahead. Despite the fright; despite the wounds.

But now he had become reluctant. What if Del exploded again when served with process? What if he came after them, tracked them down, threatened them with harm if the divorce wasn't stopped? What if he himself had to live for weeks as frightened as he had been the night before, as his car was reeling down a dreary road?

But what was the alternative? From the minute Lucinda entered his office it had become impossible to guarantee her safety or his own detachment from her fate. He could only guarantee her status, establish her legal right to keep Delbert at bay. He laughed. The law was such a shell—the hospitals were filled with women possessed of just that right. D.T. frowned and put Lucinda's papers on top of the pile, for Bobby E. Lee to do first thing, then turned to Mareth Stone's ghost-written statement.

She had suffered a less physical but no less brutal blow as she had discovered item after item that her husband had purloined prior to announcing his intent to end the marriage. As she had listed the missing treasures over the phone, D.T. began to wonder what she had done to provoke his ambush. Her affair, perhaps, but the reaction seemed extreme. To nail it down, he would have to take a deposition from Chas Stone. A grilling, under oath, officially sanctioned. D.T. leaned back and began to plot its outline—questions, answers, objections, quarrels with opposing counsel. A cross-examination, one of the best things he did besides worry.

His imaginary inquiry ended only when the phone rang. “Mr. Jones? This is Ida Casting.” D.T. suppressed an oath.

Ida Casting was a client of some three years past. A world-class egoist. Fifty-plus. Grotesquely overweight. Unilaterally emotional. Devout to the point of madness. Totally mystified by the hand that God and her husband had dealt her. Personification of his Third Principle of Modern Matrimony—that on the wedding day the bride is always more beautiful than the groom, and twenty years later the situation is always reversed. D.T. asked Mrs. Casting what he could do for her.

“Carl has missed the last three payments, Mr. Jones. My letters are returned as moved, no forwarding. I
told
you this would happen after he missed the first one, but you advised me to wait.
Now
look.”

“Take it easy, Mrs. Casting. Where was Carl living when you heard from him last?”

“San Diego. He went down there with that … that
tramp
. He claimed he had a job with the Navy.”