Day 8 - International Women's Day

It’s here…International Women’s Day. Happy Women’s Day. In honor of the day, I have finished up the growing serialization of my New Woman story. It isn’t really all of it; I realized after getting started that this was too big for the forum I was working with. It still is, but I don’t want to keep on it all month, so I skipped to the end…don’t worry, I fill in enough that you can tell all the things you missed. Maybe someday I’ll fill in those missing chapters, turn this into a novella. But for now, I give you the ongoing exploration of the double standard that so often challenges women who find themselves in the legal system trying to deal with the landmines that litter the sexual landscape.

THE HEARING

 Amber was up early. Today was the day, hopefully the day she got her children back. She was at the house when Brad was served; he was home, because he had no job that day. He had spent most of the day following her around, goosing her, and trying to coax her to go to bed with him. Man, would he have gotten a surprise if she had accepted! He had become a bigger pest every day, and she was relieved when the doorbell rang.

Brad looked like a thundercloud when he slammed the door and returned to the living room. He fell into the easy chair and placed his feet on the coffee table with an enormous thunk that shook the neatly arranged books. He started to swear. “Bitch!” he yelled, over and over. “That bitch!” Amber ignored him; she was used to his moods, and he had learned he could say almost anything around her and get no reaction. It had done well by her; she had heard a lot of things he wouldn’t want his ex-wife to know.

She was at the courthouse before her lawyer. She settled into one of the benches lining the hallway and waited. She tried to read, but it wasn’t possible, not in her current state of anxiety and excitement. She was relieved when Melissa showed, and the two of them bent their heads together to plan strategy. She was glad she had decided not to use her original lawyer. Melissa actually seemed to be working on her behalf, not just marching in lockstep with the other lawyer and then holding out her hand for a fee.

“Are you ready?” Melissa gave her a long, probing look. “They’re going to do their best to tear you apart on the witness stand.”

Amber nodded; she was prepared for whatever they threw her. Melissa had spent hours yesterday grilling her, throwing out hard, nasty questions, and helping her prepare for the answers. It was exhausting, and Amber realized why they had done it. If she had been hit with a lot of that stuff cold, she might have had trouble getting through the day. She needed to know what to expect.

Brad stumbled in, looking like he had slept in his clothes. His hair was unbrushed, and he had spots of food on his tie. He stumbled as though he had a hangover. He sat on the bench opposite Amber and glared at her. She could see the word “bitch” forming around his mouth, but he never spoke. His lawyer arrived a few minutes later, and the two men disappeared. Amber relaxed.

“He’s a real…character”, Melissa said. She had spent hours with the material Amber had collected. “How…did you stay with him so long?”

Amber pointed to the picture Melissa was holding. It was a picture of Lucia and Mark.

“Oh.” That was all Melissa said, but it held a library worth of meaning.

Brad and his lawyer reappeared. It appeared the lawyer had made him do some sort of makeover. The rumpled suit was gone, replaced with a crisp, freshly pressed suit. The tie with the stain had been replaced with a pristine power tie. His hair was now combed, and he looked like he was awake and alert. Whatever the lawyer had said to him, it had worked. He had shaped up.

Amber had selected her own wardrobe with care that morning. She was dressed in a modest outfit that was attractive and business-like. Melissa had told her she looked just right for the purpose, and she hoped her lawyer knew what she was talking about. She was supposed to be the best in the business. But then, that was what she had been told about her original lawyer, and look what happened to her then. She turned away from Brad and chatted with Melissa, aware of his glare burning into her back. She heard when Marguerite arrived. Really? He brought his girlfriend to a custody hearing?

Marguerite was in a foul mood. She had been angry with Brad ever since Amber…Pamela…had contrived to let her know that Brad was hitting on his housekeeper, trying to get her into his bedroom. His Magpie had screamed down the house, giving him more vitriol than Amber had managed when she found out about his infidelity. Perhaps that was why he stayed with her, Amber thought. When he strayed, she screamed and cursed, and he knew he needed to straighten up, at least for a short time, to keep her from leaving. Amber had never made that sort of scene. When Marguerite had finished, she and Brad went to the bedroom, and the noises were testimony to their reconciliation. The children were terrified. They had been present for the entire screaming fit, even though Amber had tried to get them out of the room. Marguerite blocked the exit; they could not leave.

Now here she was, scowling and angry, but coming when he called. What did she see in him? They seemed like a totally mis-matched couple. But then, he and Amber had been a totally mis-matched couple, and they had stayed together for nearly a decade. It seemed easier to stay together than to break up. She realized now that she had been right about that. Breaking up had been devastating, though it wasn’t because she missed Brad.

The rest of the day was like a strange reality show. It was both like and unlike courtroom shows on the television, and it wasn’t even much like the original hearing. Perhaps each judge had their own style, but Amber felt much more comfortable this time. The judge didn’t spend all his time glaring at her, but maintained a neutral manner from the beginning to the end. Her lawyer focused on her case, and was prepared for a major fight if need be. She had prepared pages upon pages of notes, and her brief was thorough and damning. She knew her stuff.

Brad had the same lawyer as before. Amber knew from experience that he was good. She also knew that he was brutal and ruthless. He knew how to twist an answer into the shape he wanted it by asking a follow up question that took it where it was never intended to go. This time, she was more prepared. She wouldn’t allow herself to be thrown by his questions, and would not lose her calm at any time. She had thought about taking a Xanax before she came, but stopped before she even asked her doctor for the prescription. Somehow Brad had ways of finding out about things like that, almost as though all the doctors in town were spying for him, and she didn’t think it would look good if it came out. She was on her own.

She performed well on the stand. Melissa’s preparations had done their job. Brad’s attorney tried to twist her into the pretzels he had made of her at the last hearing, but she remained straightforward and confident. She did not cry, nor did she lose her cool. She knew she was in a tight place. Melissa had explained to her that crying would make her look unstable, especially in the face of Brad’s accusations of instability, but not crying could have the effect of making her look cold. She tried to balance her confidence and calm with enough of her true emotion to let the judge know she genuinely cared about her children.

The attorneys kept her on the stand for over an hour. When they dismissed her, she felt her shoulders start to slump with exhaustion, but looked at Melissa and straightened. She could not show weakness. Brad glared at her as though he hated her, and Marguerite smirked. What did that smirk mean? Amber tried to figure out what was going on in the other woman’s head. She had learned over the weeks she had worked for Brad to read the other woman’s moods, but the woman was a mystery to her today. She was sure “Magpie” would just as soon the kids went away, but would she do anything toward that goal? Amber could only hope.

Brad tried his best to savage Amber while he was on the stand. He complained about her habits while she was his wife, but he sounded petulant and childish as he whined that she insisted on keeping the house tidy and wanted him to help. Why should he help, he asked. He was a breadwinner. Amber saw his attorney shake his head. It had already been established who won most of the bread in their family. Brad didn’t look good at that moment.

He complained that she had been a drinker, but was unable to produce any evidence to back that up. All of Amber’s friends were willing to testify, and some of them did, that Amber rarely drank, and then it was only a single glass of wine at a party or a celebration now and then. It was one of the things both Brad and Randy didn’t like about her. She wouldn’t drink with them. Now Brad, who drank heavily, was trying to paint his ex-wife as a falling down drunk, even as he was struggling with an obvious hangover himself.

He attacked her sex life. She had a man friend, he complained. It wouldn’t be good for his children to be in that house. Their mother had a morality problem. The judge sat forward at that. The evidence that Brad not only had a woman friend staying over when the children were there, sleeping with her in the middle of the day while the children were in the next room, was solid. Amber had never even introduced Randy to her children. They were taken from her before they got serious enough. She wasn’t sure they were serious enough now.

When Amber began to pull out the mountains of evidence she had collected over the past few weeks, Brad blanched. It was the first time he realized that his housekeeper had been a ringer. He still didn’t realize it was actually Amber; he accused her of having one of her friends play him for a fool. When the evidence arose that he had made passes at his housekeeper, and tried to get her into the bedroom for, as he put it, a little play time, the lawyer winced. It appeared Brad had not shared that information with his attorney.

The most damning was the before pictures of the house. The disaster that was Brad’s life was on full display in the pictures she had shot that first day working for him. She contrasted that with shots of their life together, when the children were clean and happy, the house was tidy but not sterile, and also of her own apartment, pleasant and warm, without garbage on the table where the children would eat their breakfast. She detailed some of the items she had pulled out from under his bed, items which included a half of a molded pizza and two cases of beer bottles. Since she had arrived to clean his house, all the rats had been trapped and gotten rid of, and there was no longer anything to attract them.

The tension grew as the day moved forward. Amber couldn’t read the judge’s face. Was he on her side? Or was he believing Brad? It was difficult to maintain her composure in the face of his studied neutrality, though she did find that better than the attitude of the last judge, the one who refused to listen to anything she had to say and instructed her that a woman should be a moral exemplar for her children. She had never been anything but; it was impossible for him to see that it was not morally questionable for a single woman to have a date now and then.

Brad also attacked her for working full time. The children, he explained, would be brought up by someone else, someone their mother would pay to watch them. Amber thought about those checks she collected from him each week to watch his children, even when he was home, and started to shoot him the finger. Melissa realized what she was thinking, and put her hand over Amber’s just in time. That would not be a good look, she whispered.

Marguerite was restless. It was evident she didn’t like being here, and she had barely contained her anger when Amber was explaining about her trysts with Brad in front of the children. When she was called to the stand, she strode forward as though into battle. Amber couldn’t believe they were calling her. If she told the truth, little that she could say would be in Brad’s favor.

Her testimony was short. She answered yes or no questions in a terse manner, agreeing that she was Brad’s fiancée, and that she just adored his children, the little dears. They were close, all of them, she said, but her delivery was so wooden it spoke more than her words. Yes, she acknowledge, Brad had teased the housekeeper, but the woman took it all too seriously. He was just in a good mood that day, and was playing a little game. A fight? Well, she was tired, and took it too seriously herself. He explained it to her, and she understood and forgave him.

Several other witnesses on each side spoke. Melissa had arranged for the children to visit a social worker, so they could talk without their father or mother present. She said that was always a risk, because the children could say the opposite of what Amber wanted them to say. Amber agreed to the visit, and the social worker testified on her behalf. The children, she said, wanted to live with their mother. And if they couldn’t live with their mother, they had said they wanted to live with their housekeeper, Pamela. Amber glowed. Her children loved her, even when she wasn’t her.

The other side called Randy to the stand, but it didn’t work well for them. Randy was brutally honest as a rule, and he talked about their relationship. He acknowledged that they had been intimate, but not until after the divorce. Amber wouldn’t hear of it, he said, even though he had tried hard to persuade her. She wouldn’t let him come around when the children were with her, either. He had seen her with her children. This surprised her. He had followed  her one day, curious about these children she loved so much. She was a good mother, he said. He wished he had had such a mother, he said. She was the most moral woman he had ever known, he said. Morality isn’t about whether you always follow a rigid rule about sexual conduct, but about how decent a human being you are, and how honest, and about not lying to yourself or others, he said. Amber saw a side of him she had never seen.

The hearing eventually came to an end. It was up to the judge now. He dismissed the court and said he would deliver his decision the next morning. Everyone filed out of the courtroom to get some rest from the exhausting day. Randy moved toward Amber, but didn’t touch her, both of them aware of Brad’s eyes on them. Amber could see Marguerite hovering, and she could hear the other woman attack before they were even out the door. She had not been happy about being put on the stand and having to say she loved those little monsters…he owed her big.

Randy treated Amber and Melissa to dinner and escorted Amber home. He waited at the door of her apartment, and she invited him to come in. He shook his head. “I don’t think that would be a great idea tonight. What if someone is…” He didn’t finish. He seemed concerned that his presence could jeopardize her case. “I really hope you win.” He kissed her and then was gone.

Amber didn’t sleep all night, and rose early the next morning. She wandered her apartment, unable to settle. She picked at her breakfast, and jumped when the phone rang, but it was just a wrong number. By the time she left for work, she had been up for hours.

The entire office was watching when she entered. Everyone wanted the news. She shrugged. She hadn’t heard. She tried to settle into her desk to work, but was conscious of all the eyes on her, and picked up her computer to go to the women’s room where she could have some peace. The phone on her desk shrilled just as she unplugged the cord.

Every head in the room turned toward her as she hung up. Randy appeared in the doorway of his office. The tension was thick enough to choke her. She hesitated. How to break the news? Everyone was so…anxious. So supportive. She paused and cleared her throat.

“That…was my attorney.”

No one spoke. She sensed a slight flutter as though her friends were moving toward her, perhaps to comfort her, offer her their shoulder. She put up her hand, and all motion stopped.

“We won.”

The entire office breathed out a collective sigh. A cheer that could be heard down the block rocked the building. Randy nearly collapsed in relief. Amber was surprised. He had really wanted her to win. At least he wasn’t like Marguerite, she thought. I imagine she’s one relieved magpie right now.

“I have custody. Brad has standard visitation, but has to promise he will not drink while the children are there, and he has to keep the house clean. Oh, and he will have to pay child support. I guess that means he’ll have to get a real job.”

Her exhaustion finally got the better of her as the tension that had kept her going released. She felt Randy race to catch her as she started to drop. He half carried her to the door, to her embarrassment and to the amusement of the rest of the office, and told her to take the rest of the day off. “You need to be ready for your children.”