The Ditto List (2 page)

“Remember your lines?” he continued.

Another seven nods.

“Answer ‘yes' unless I rub my nose,” he reminded. “Then answer ‘no.' Right?”

Seven nods.

“You'll do fine. Just stay here till I call you up. We'll probably be last, so relax. In an hour you'll be free from the biggest mistake of your life. Then you can go make another one just like it.”

Because he had already started sliding toward the center aisle he doubted they could hear the last, but he didn't care if they had. Recidivism in the domestic relations business was as rampant as in crime, and was far less excusable, since for a woman a year in a bad marriage was far worse than a year in jail.

D.T. walked to the bar of the court, nodding to the few lawyers he knew and liked, ignoring the rest, and read through the divorce court's calendar for the day—the Ditto List, Bobby E. Lee called it. As always, the table of civil strifes amused him:
Crater
v.
Crater; Winthrop
v.
Winthrop; Koleski
v.
Koleski, such
v.
such; so on
v.
so on; etc
. v.
etc
.

D.T.'s ladies were last on the Ditto List, as he knew they would be. Judge Hoskins was disgusted by D.T.'s practice and made no secret of it. On the contrary, the judge frequently made a prayer of his distaste, asking a higher power for deliverance from D.T. and settling for putting D.T. off as long as he could by relegating him to the bottom of the calendar, which meant D.T. would waste a lot of time waiting his turn, time for which he would not be compensated, monetarily or even otherwise, as the judge well knew. At times Judge Hoskins refused to call D.T.'s cases at all, explaining that enough was enough, that he would not have his weekend ruined by knowing participation in assembly-line justice.

Part of the reason for his enmity was that Judge Hoskins was Catholic, which meant that in his eyes D.T. made his living abetting sin. Another part was that the judge had never himself been married, and thus assumed divorce to be a blame-ridden event and wives to be the only conceivable source of it. Still another part was that the judge was an arrogant ass who mistakenly felt he was qualified to be sitting on the state supreme court rather than in the family law department of the southside division. All of which should have disqualified him from domestic matters if not the entire spectrum of jurisprudence, but which, despite numerous official and unofficial complaints to the judicial council, seemed to mean that Judge Hoskins would hear nothing
but
domestic matters until the day he died. Actually, D.T. had a degree of sympathy for the embattled jurist. D.T.'s practice depressed him too, at times, until he made himself remember that the assembly line was what, more than anything but John Marshall and the Bill of Rights, had made America great.

There were at least a dozen matters ahead of him on the Ditto List, so when D.T. heard Walter's gavel rap to proclaim the arrival of the judge he went out into the hall to wait. Attorneys and clients scurried past him on all sides, on their ways to courtrooms where fates other than divorce awaited them. D.T. paid them no mind. Other branches of the law no longer existed for him. He hadn't appeared in court on anything but a domestic case in years. He hadn't, in fact, had a client who wasn't a woman in the throes of a matrimonial earthquake in over eighteen months. This drift toward specialty—divorce work—and subspecialty—wronged wives—was accidental as far as D.T. could tell, the product of a series of good results and the word of mouth they fostered in the network of desperate women that operated, like a conjugal Resistance, in all areas of the city.

“Hey. D.T. Remember me?”

D.T. moved from under the hand that plucked at his shoulder like a shrike and looked back at its owner.

“Jerome. How the hell are you?”

“Great, D.T. How about you?”

“Adequate at best. What brings you down to the wild side? You're still with Bronwin, Kilt and Loftis, aren't you? The law of the rich and their many irritants?”

Jerome Fitzgerald smiled uneasily, patted his razor-cut, adjusted his horn-rims, and glanced quickly at the people milling within earshot. When he remembered he was nowhere he visibly relaxed.

Jerome's clothes betrayed his mind. His shirt was white and his shoes were shined, and his suit lay on him like a tan. A pristine inch of handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket, a campaign ribbon from a bloodless war. His glow was fluorescent; his posture martial. “My sister was in a fender-bender,” he explained. “Her trial starts today. I'm here to hold her hand.”

“Who's her lawyer?”

“Lester Farnholtz.”

“You'd be better off holding her pocketbook.”

Jerome's smile undulated beneath his too-sharp nose. “Always with the joke, D.T. Just like in law school. It kept you off the law review, you know. That attitude.”

“I know, Jerome, and I thank God for this attitude every day of my life.”

“Come on, D.T.
Everyone
wanted to make law review.”

“Just let me say this about that, Jerome. We traveled in such different circles that yours was in fact a square.”

Having mistakenly assumed that time had pressed out the wrinkles in D.T.'s personality, Jerome looked for an exit of physical or conversational dimensions. “So what are you up to these days, D.T.?” he asked, lacking a semblance of interest in the answer.

“I specialize in the consequences of lust, Jerome.”

Jerome frowned. “Divorce?”

“Dissolution is its current sobriquet, my man, although like you I eschew it as a pulseless modernism. Dissolution, from the Latin
dissolutatus
, meaning
fed up
. How about you? You and Kathy still knee-deep in marital bliss?”

Impossibly, Jerome grew more funereal. “We split up three years ago, D.T.”

“Oh? That's too bad. I always liked Kathy. Who was her lawyer?”

“Well, I was, I guess. I mean, the
firm
sort of handled the whole thing. Made a nice arrangement for both of us.”

D.T. laughed. “How's she getting along on food stamps, Jerome?”

“Don't be ridiculous.” Jerome reset the already impeccable knot in his tie.

“She still in town? There's a remedy or two for that kind of ethical obtuseness that I'd like to apprise her of.”

“Now, D.T.,” Jerome said, and started to move away. But for some sudden reason D.T. wanted him to stay.

Jerome Fitzgerald had been one of the students he most despised in law school, one of those who had always known they wanted to be lawyers and had always known why—money and power and deductible vacations. No cause, no principle, no reformist zeal, just a respectably lucrative job. Less pressure than medicine, more fashionable than real estate or insurance, less risky than wildcatting or drug dealing. D.T. had once overheard a girl ask Jerome to name his favorite novel and movie and symphony. The novel was
The Robe;
the movie
Spartacus;
the symphony
The Grand Canyon Suite
. Yet Jerome provoked a certain fascination in D.T., an awe of his ignorance of doubt, of his seamless self-confidence, of his assessment of a scrambled world in such simple forms and rules that he could doubtlessly vote Republican, belong to the ABA, drive a car that cost as much as a house, and, in his racy moments, make snide remarks about divorce lawyers and liberal politicians and people who slept in doorways and ate free food.

“Hang on a minute, Jerome,” D.T. urged. “What else you been doing for the last twenty years? You made partner yet?”

“Of course.”

“What department?”

“Litigation.”

“Really? Don't see you down here in the trial courts much. Never, as a matter of fact.”

“Most of our work is in federal court.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Oh, antitrust. Commercial litigation. Securities fraud.”

“Yeah? Which side you on? The frauder or the fraudee? As if I didn't know.”

Jerome hitched up his slacks and searched again for a path that led away from where he was. “How many jury trials you had?” D.T. probed, conscious that he was close to pillory.

“I … I'm not sure. I don't keep count.”

“Come on, Jerome, How many?”

“Uh …”

“Five? Ten?”

“Well, none, actually. Most of our matters settle before trial, of course. All of them, actually. Protracted litigation is so … expensive.”

“Right, right,” D.T. agreed. “Expensive and scary, too. Right? I mean, there's always that chance the old jury foreman will stand up and look you right in the eye and say, ‘Jerome, my man. You fucking
lose
.' Right? I do a little litigation myself, as a matter of fact. Not federal, of course. No big deal. Just who gets the kids and who pays the rent and the orthodontist. So let's have lunch. Huh, Jerome?”

Jerome adjusted his tie again. “Sure, D.T. Next time you're uptown give me a call.”

“Next time I'm uptown I'll have taken a wrong turn,” D.T. said. “But I
am
eager to reminisce about the good old days. Like, remember that multiple-choice exam old Hardflood threw at us in estate tax?”

Jerome smiled and fingered the Coif medal that swung from his watch chain like a soggy sock. “God, yes. What a total incompetent.”

D.T. laughed and slapped Jerome on the back. “You can say that again. And remember how often you looked over at my paper? Huh? At least a dozen times, as I recall. God, that was a scream, wasn't it? The way you cribbed your way through that one?”

“Hey. Wait a minute, D.T. I never.…”

D.T. turned his back and went inside the courtroom and sat in the row in front of his string of frightened ladies.

Judge Hoskins was especially snappy as he moved through the calendar, which meant things clipped along at just below Mach two. Witnesses and attorneys were cut off in mid-word. Judgments were uttered before requested. Silences were castigated. “
Blutz
v.
Blutz
,” Walter finally called, and looked at D.T. and grinned.

“Show time,” D.T. whispered to the women behind him, and then stood up. “Ready, Your Honor.”

He turned back to the row of women. “Mrs. Blutz? You're on. Relax and enjoy it. The court will set you free.”

He allowed the trembling woman to precede him down the aisle. When they reached the counsel table he whispered for her to leave her gum with him, a stunt she managed with a minimum of notoriety, then directed her to the witness chair to the right of Judge Hoskins' elevated throne. D.T. placed his pile of files on the counsel table and looked into the immaculate scowl of the Honorable Willard Hoskins, Judge of the Circuit Court.

“How many this morning, Jones?” Each word was dipped in what the judge would have called justifiable vitriol and what D.T. would have called unearned pomposity.

“Seven, Your Honor.”

“All defaults?”

“Yes.”

“No husbands popping out of the woodwork today, demanding jury trials? No children suddenly announcing a preference to live with Daddy in Tahiti? No last minute allegations of spousal abuse or incestuous assault?” The judge rolled his eyes and rubbed his nose.

“No, Your Honor.” D.T. bowed in chastened humility before the court's unchallengeable rectitude and rolled Jerlene Blutz' Double-mint into a ball and stuck it to the underside of the counsel table.

“You may begin.”

Begin he did. Questions of name, age, address, length of marriage, length of residence in the state and county, venue established, jurisdiction established, judicial system engaged. Then the high hard ones, in the language of a statute thought by the legislature and its advisors to be an advance in the sociolegal approach to crumbling domesticity—“Have you and your husband experienced irreconcilable differences during your marriage, Mrs. Blutz?” Why yes, that's just what we've experienced, Mr. Jones; irreconcilable differences. A whole mess of them, too. Just that kind. “And have these irreconcilable differences led to the irremediable breakdown of your marriage, Mrs. Blutz?” You took the words right out of my mouth, Mr. Jones. That's just what they led to, the what-you-call-it breakdown. Bang. “Petition for interlocutory decree of dissolution granted. Next case.”

Five more times D.T. observed the ritual, and the staging and the script were flawless. “And have you and your husband experienced irreconcilable differences, Mrs. Rodriguez?”

“What is that? I no understand.”

“Have you and your husband had problems? Arguments?”

“Fight? You mean do we fight?”

“Yes.”

“
Si
. We fight. It José's fault. Tequila make him loco.”

D.T. began to sweat. “Fault is not at issue here, Mrs. Rodriguez, as we discussed. Now, have these differences with your husband led to the irremediable breakdown of your marriage?”

“The furnace is what break down. Is that what you mean? The furnace break down and so I no pay the rent and the landlord he come put a paper in the door that say we got to leave by Sunday and I talk to woman at the neighborhood center by the laundromat and she send me to Legal Aid and they tell me to come here today and so here I am and I say we no leave. Huh? Is this when I say that?
We no leave!
”

“Mr. Jones.”

The judge's voice awakened the dead and deeply buried. “Unless I miss my guess the young lady is here to defend an unlawful detainer action, not to petition for the dissolution of her marriage to the excitable José. There is undoubtedly another Rodriguez in the building, detailing her marital woes in response to questions about the furnace. Perhaps if you
interviewed
your clients, Mr. Jones, these travesties would not occur. I suggest you give it a try. In the meantime, I suggest you point
this
Mrs. Rodriguez in the right direction. I also suggest, no,
advise
, that if this happens again in
my
courtroom you will immediately be jailed for contempt and the bar association will be notified of the way in which you conduct your practice. Such as it is. Court is adjourned.”