The Mt. Monadnock Blues Read online

  “What if we just went for it? Said hey I’m gay but I really love the kids and I’m putting them into public school in Boston and that Jill and Monty wanted it that way and the kids do too. Is that a case we can make?”

  “I hope so, since it may be our entire case.”

  “What, then? Are you saying I should promise to leave the city? Move to New Hampshire?”

  “Look, I can tell you that judges like to keep children wherever they are. But I can’t say whether you can survive a winter in New Hampshire without bouts of depression, or suicidal impulses.”

  “Nervous breakdowns,” he added—less frivolously, more pointedly than she knew.

  “I’m sure it happens,” was all she said.

  That night, Tim fulfilled a longstanding promise by taking Billy and Cindy to the top of the Pru. Billy was quiet and Tim (processing Barnes) a little distant, while Cindy jabbered merrily about her new friend Lakeesha (who could touch her nose with her tongue) and dogspotted. She logged a collie with a nose like a sharpened pencil and one of those muscled Jack Russell terriers, dogs that were small enough to fit in your mailbox yet felt fully empowered to rule the world.

  Then, as they got to the Rotunda and were paying their way in, Cindy said, “Mom hates really tall buildings.”

  “She did?” said Tim, changing tenses, present to past. “I thought you guys went up the Empire State Building last year.”

  “Not Mom. Mom stayed in the car.”

  “Elevators is what she hated,” said Billy, speaking definitively, as he always did.

  “True,” said Tim, for Jill did mistrust elevators. She would go on about frayed cables and plummeting in free fall. Somehow he could smile at the memory, and by the time they started moving around the panorama, he was exhilarated.

  “Look!” he said, pressing close to the glass.

  “What is it?” asked Cindy, bouncing to improve her view.

  “It’s everything. There’s the river, and there’s the ocean. That’s the airport. Maybe we can see our house—over that way, in that row of brick buildings.…”

  “Hey, they all have little porches on the roof.”

  “A lot of them do.”

  “Whoa,” said Billy. “Check it out. There’s people naked on that one. See ‘em, Simp?”

  “You could be right,” said Tim, for certainly Billy was right. Sprawled on a roof deck visible only from airplanes and skyscrapers, they were not just naked, they were moving toward consummation. “Who wants a Coke?”

  “Not now, Unk, they’re going to do it.”

  Tim grabbed Cindy’s hand and pulled against a mulish resistance. “Stay, Simp,” said Billy, pulling from the other side. “Unk, give a quarter for the telescope.”

  “Get away from there, you little voyeur.”

  “No way. They’re doing it.”

  “What’s a voyeur?” asked Cindy, rhyming it with lawyer.

  “They are not doing it, they’re just hugging. Now come with me or I’m taking you home.”

  Tim didn’t mind them sneaking back a minute later. A parent’s job was to maintain certain pretenses—that life was safe, and bland, and innocent—it was not to put kids in jail. Surely a kid who sought to observe the world’s workings was a healthy, normal kid. He and Jill had watched together (through the dusty window of a curing shed, voyeurs most assuredly) as a black couple made grunting love. They found it very strange—and funny, that the lovers kept so much clothing on—but they watched, and Jill, at least, turned out healthy and normal.

  Far below, taxicabs dominated Boylston Street, floating through Copley Square like a school of slow tropical fish. For a while the streetlights went off-on-off-on, right at the margin of their sensors. Then the streets bloomed and the sky darkened, as though light was being siphoned down.

  Surveying this peaceful diorama, Tim surged with a general joy. It thrilled him to see the kids so spunky, so confident here in the city, but the thrill went beyond such reasons, spreading through him like a headful of wine on a cold night. First the nervous breakdown, and now this new euphoria!

  Or was it part of the breakdown, a second episode? The word epiphany came into his mind: a word he encountered in college, had never used (or encountered) since then. Wasn’t this an epiphany?

  Tim was political only in the broadest sense. Help the needy, deplore all prejudice, abortion if you wanted it, affirmative action if you needed it. He did not meet in meetings or demonstrate at demonstrations, and he sometimes forgot to vote. Peter Weissberg, who solicited for the Salvadorans, the Nicaraguans, for every oppressed people (running off Xeroxed flyers by the hour) had shamed him many times.

  It was not outrage that Tim lacked. He was a famous fulminator, forever up in arms at the inanities of a debased culture. His sputtering diatribes were so common that friends performed perfect impressions of Tim Fulminating: about junk mail, about advertising, about “deodorant as a way of life,” in his most familiar shorthand. His barbs could be off-putting, until redeemed by that drawl of amaze in which he delivered them.

  The tone of innocence dismayed. Custody’s Last Stand, he had labeled the folder stuffed with the advertisements for himself he had gathered for Barnes.

  Innocence, and reverence, for Tim was forever charmed by the incredible mundane fact of life itself and by all its most casual manifestations. Those two lithe souls fucking on the roof, the yellow taxis gliding toward the theater district, the South Church newsstand which opened every morning before six with fresh newspapers from dozens of cities.

  The wonders of the world were not only abroad in sinking Mediterranean lands, they were contained in the molecules that bound us and gave us “life” inside our skins. Life itself was the miracle, and it was a gift so splendid it made protest feel ill-mannered. Who could complain when it was possible to stand in the sky (for, Prudential Building or not, were they not standing in the middle of the very air?) and possible to breathe and to eat breakfast?

  And yes, to have sex. Surely sex was one of the good things. Did anyone disagree? Who, Jerry Falwell?

  The epiphany was turning weird, with Falwell in it, but it was compelling nevertheless. Everything glowed; nothing was unbeautiful. Tim watched a well-dressed woman chewing green gum openmouthed and could only smile at her enjoyment. When Billy knelt down to put Cindy on his shoulders (“Look, Simp, the Red Sox are home, they’re playing right now”), he brimmed with love for these two children. Love for Jill and for Erica too. Definitely.

  “Unk?” said Cindy, as they were strolling home, hand in hand while Billy zigged and zagged ahead of them.

  “Cynthia?” He still felt high, yet at the same time very grounded. His epiphany had closed all distances.

  “I have a question.”

  “Yes, Cynthia.”

  “When school starts? Will you have to drive all the way to Boston every day?”

  “You don’t need to worry about stuff like that, sweetheart.”

  “But will you? Billy says it costs eight dollars a day.”

  “Forty dollars a week without counting oil,” said Billy over his shoulder.

  “Or depreciation,” Tim laughed, but Billy had zigzagged out of earshot.

  “And also, Unk?”

  “Yes, Cynthia?”

  “Can we maybe go back-to-school shopping on Saturday? I know it’s early, but there’s a huge sale at Maurice The Pants Man.”

  “Maurice is having a sale? What does he sell?”

  “He sells pants, and you know it.”

  “Now I do. Say, that isn’t why they call him—”

  “Unk.”

  She had stopped to place hands on hips in mock petulance.

  “It is why, isn’t it? The Pants Man.”

  Tim drove past a field so steeply tilted it threatened to spin upside down like a Ferris wheel. For a while the mountain stayed with him. There was marshland—and then Monadnock. There was forest, and then another version of Monadnock, reconfigured.

  Finally the moun
tain was behind him and he came through a more despoiled area, past a trailertown and self-storage bunkers set back on broken macadam. He was close to Keene now, but his nerves held steady until he came rolling down Main Street, a boulevard so wide and ample it seemed to have been designed for a much larger city. Now, suddenly, a vice closed on Tim’s head; now his mouth was dry as cotton.

  When he saw the rotary and the vest-pocket park (complete with bandshell, monument, and fountain) he knew he had reached his destination. His destiny. The words COURT HOUSE were carved on a frieze above the Gothic stonework entry; below the arch stood Earl and Erica, dressed for success. Earl in a creamcolored suit, Ric in heels and pearls.

  Tim had planned on arriving early, but Earl looked as though he had slept inside the COURT HOUSE and stepped outside to greet the day. Deeply at his ease, he might have been the mayor, perched grandly on his portico. Tim slant-parked, and watched a second man, also in a creamcolored suit, come bounding up the granite steps. As they shifted briefcases to shake hands, Tim knew this must be Earl’s liar. Or else his twin! Same suit, same height, same hair. Earl and Merle!

  Then he saw Dee Barnes. Her no-nonsense navy blue suit cleaved the creamcolored twins and sped down Main Street at a pace that undoubtedly marked her as an invading force, an urbanite. Barnes could motor. When Tim finally caught up to her, he could feel her engine idling high. Her energy. “I’m in battle mode, I guess,” she gave as an explanation.

  “I hope I’m not still the enemy.” Barnes smiled for him, did not reply. Behind her, in the window of a shop called Miranda’s Verandah, Tim noticed a shimmering silver gown draped on a bubblegum colored manikin. “Where are you going?”

  “There’s a diner, I gather. We’ve got half an hour.”

  “You can eat? I am a complete nervous wreck.”

  “I see that.”

  “But I could keep you company.”

  “Lucky me.”

  The diner, called Lindy’s, was an aluminum lunchcar set adrift smack in the middle of a parking lot opposite the Greyhound depot. Tim followed his attorney inside to the counter, where he ordered a cup of tea just to hold onto it. Barnes ordered the Trucker’s Special, an atomic bomb of cholesterol sufficient to kill every middle-aged man in the county, and rinsed it down with what might have been a gallon of jet black coffee.

  “They have us scheduled for the entire morning session,” she said, once her plate was empty. “There’s literally nothing else on the docket, and nothing scheduled for the afternoon.”

  “What are you saying? Is that good or bad?”

  “It’s telling me they plan to wrap this up in one day. Save the state some money.”

  “You don’t mean I could walk in there and just lose. Over and out? What about the guardian ad litem and all that?”

  “Why don’t we walk in there and just take a look around, for starters. Get you acclimated. It wouldn’t hurt with the winning and losing if you could settle down and start looking custodial.”

  “Custodial?” he said, buoyed up, mistaking her pique for renewed support. “Hell, I’ll start looking Presidential.”

  But back on the granite steps, Tim looked queasy. A courthouse was intimidating simply because it was a courthouse, it didn’t have to do anything else. Yet it did. The metal detector detected Tim and went into air-raid mode, as though he was packing iron on both hips. All he was packing was his zipper. Coins, keys, even his ballpoint pen had gone through in a basket.

  “True story,” he would swear to Karl that night. “A five-alarm nightmare and it turns out to be my fly.” But how could the morose guard, pokerfaced upon his stool, not know this would happen, when it must happen to every soul passing through his supersensitive electronic portal? It seemed that Cheshire County did not want you getting acclimated, it wanted you back on your heels from the get-go.

  The second floor was hushed, virtually deserted. Barnes walked him like a condemned prisoner down the long corridor toward a pair of massive doors, beyond which lay the Probate Court. Entering this inner sanctum, Tim fully expected to behold the chopping block and the guillotine.

  It was just a big room, and empty apart from Earl, Merle, and Ric, who sat at a table near the front. The space mixed tackiness and grandeur in roughly equal proportions: the majestic fourteen-foot ceiling clad with cardboard tiles, the half-walls panelled with stained veneer and moulded with cheesy clamshell.

  Suddenly the scene came to life. A bailiff proclaimed “All rise!” as though hundreds of extras were waiting in the wings. Then, with the command to rise still hanging in the air, the judge came hustling in, almost at a trot, and countermanded it. “Please, please do sit down.” So they sat, all five of them, at matching bare wooden tables. But his presence had charged the room with electricity. Everything pulsated; static abounded.

  He was a youthful sixty, with gray hair clipped close at the ears and an olive complexion that went well with his black robe. Something of the medieval cleric in his look. Gold wire-rimmed glasses rested halfway down his small beaked nose, and though Tim would feel a constant urge to nudge them higher, the judge never did.

  “Good morning, Attorney Barnes. I believe you have not appeared before me.”

  “No, your Honor.”

  “She has not had the honor, your Honor,” said Merle, apparently a comedian.

  “Mr. Giddings here has done so many times. Rest assured he is hardly apt to fool me on account of that circumstance.”

  “So assured, your Honor.”

  The judge offered something half nod and half bow, then formed his closest semblance of a smile. This was a faintly etched crease at the corners of his mouth, which he then would erase with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. When the two digits came away, the creases had gone with them.

  “With your permission, I would like to place all parties under oath and simply leave you all right where you are while we chat about this tragic situation. Attorney Barnes, this may strike you as unusual?”

  “Unusually sensible, your Honor.”

  “Mr. Giddings?”

  Mr. Giddings—Merle—nodded assent, yet attaching a delicate frown which may have been intended to convey serious ratiocination, or may have represented notice of a differential in titles employed by the judge. He was Mister; she was Attorney. Meanwhile, a stenographer had materialized and sat expressionless at a corner table. The bailiff, with something—egg?—on his blue blazer, sat expressionless in the corner opposite.

  “I am Judge Enneguess, should you have need to complain about me to anyone. Two n’s and two s’es, anyone’s guess why. Mr. Giddings, you can go first. You have brought this Petition before the court. Tell me about it.”

  “Very good. It is fairly clear cut, and the gist of it is laid out in our memorandum. My clients are extremely happy to be able to offer these youngsters a safe haven in the bosom of their family home. They come before the court with loving hearts.”

  “I am going to guess that Mr. Bannon does the same?”

  Barnes shrugged (not too urbanely, Tim hoped) to indicate as much was obvious and that Merle’s initial offering was your basic crock of shit. They waited for Merle to continue with his presentation, but Merle was done. He was sitting down.

  “A question or two?” said Enneguess, bringing him back up. “The Petition trumpets the importance of continuity in the school district, whereas the Opposition alleges petitioners intend sending the minor children off to boarding school. What light can you throw on this apparent contradiction, Mr. Giddings?”

  “Without prejudice, your Honor, a good boarding school is not necessarily a hardship. And surely it is not against the law.”

  “I recall the law, and I agree it is not. It does, however, rattle up against this other point. And the question of continuity does interest me.”

  “If I may?” said Barnes.

  “You may, in a moment. Mr. Giddings?”

  “I should stress that my clients have made no such plan. That was just me thinking
out loud, on my own.”

  “Oh, don’t do that, Mr. Giddings, or we’ll soon be onto the Red Sox’ bullpen woes.”

  “This is an early and confusing time for all concerned, your Honor. It seemed only responsible to retain some flexibility—”

  “Fine, though again, that position does differ from the position taken in your own Petition. Attorney Barnes, you had something?”

  “Yes, I was going to suggest we resolve the contradiction by stipulating that the boarding school option be eliminated. But now that I see the need for flexibility—”

  “Would you be willing to so stipulate, Mr. Giddings?”

  “I would have to ask my clients.”

  “I can ask them. They are right here.”

  “I would like to explain the ramifications, your Honor.”

  “At the first recess, then. Meanwhile, here’s one for you, Attorney Barnes. We’re just chatting here, you see. Can you tell me the significance of this wedding ceremony in—yes, in Maryland.”

  “We believe it goes to integrity, your Honor. To honesty. The Sandersons have made a rather serious misrepresentation—sometimes called a lie—and have maintained it over many years. To family, to friends, to the society at large.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “With all due respect, I do not see perhaps here. I see a willful misrepresentation of fact and can not help wondering how these same facts have been represented to the Internal Revenue Service, for example.”

  Judge Enneguess cocked an eye in Merle’s direction and Merle brushed the matter away with a curt wave of the hand. “This is just a detail, your Honor, and in fact the tax status is one reason my clients have long intended to see to formal marriage.”

  “Then why,” said Barnes, “the secrecy about their effort to set matters right?”

  “No secrecy. Several close friends can testify they received postcards from Gideon Township.”

  “Did Erica’s mother receive a card?”

  “I see your point, Attorney Barnes,” said the judge, “but it does seem that the ten years’ relationship, combined with this renewal of vows, makes a solid enough statement of union. No?”