A Better Man (31 page)

It is 7:00 a.m. and Maya is still curled beneath the duvet in Gray’s spare room. When the twins creep in, as they do every morning, Maya pretends to be asleep. The creak of barnboard is followed by the soft thwack of bare feet, and for a moment she can hear them speak as if they are alone. It’s a little glimpse into their private toddler twin-world.

“She’s still asleep.”

Foster, incredulously: “
Still
?”

Isla: “Yes. I think so. I’m waking her up.”

Foster: “But what if she’s grumpy?”

Isla: “Don’t be a silly billy. She’s only grumpy if we wake her up when it’s dark. It’s morningtime. Yesterday she was nice.”

Foster: “Not as nice as Daddy.”

Isla: “Of course she’s just as nice. You just like Daddy better because he wrestles you. Mommies don’t wrestle so much.”

Foster (a tremble in his throat): “I do
not
like Daddy better. I just said he’s nicer when we wake him up.”

Isla: “But that’s the same thing, dum-dum.”

Foster: “Is not.”

Maya screws her eyes shut and hopes the eel working its way down her throat will slither away before their bickering works itself up into a full-blown squabble and she has to intervene. She feels a poke on her hip through the cover.

“If we don’t wake her up,” Isla says, “she might sleep forever.”

“Yes,” says Foster, “but then we won’t have to go to school.”

Maya is puzzled by this newfound resentment of “school.” Increasingly the twins want to be at home, where they can be alone together, whispering secrets in their private twinspeak. Since the split with Nick, she’s noticed a change in their bond. While they still bicker like an old married couple, there is a new anxiety underneath it, an unwillingness to be parted even to go to the bathroom or have a separate play date. It is as if they think that by binding together, they can fill in the empty space left by the split.

“Stop poking her!” Foster’s voice.

“I
wasn’t.
I was just checking to see if she’s awake.”

“If she was awake, she’d have woken up by now.”

Maya opens one eye theatrically, then growls deeply, like a mama bear stirring from her midwinter slumber. The children shriek with delight and jump back. Like sunglasses on a baby, it’s a joke that never gets old. They pounce on her in turn, wriggling like puppies, begging for tickles and then screaming for mercy when they come. Once this ball of giggling, flailing hysteria has worn itself out, all three of them sprawl back on the pillows, panting for breath and sighing with the half-awake delirium that comes from early morning exertion.

“Mommy,” Isla says as Maya listens to her daughter’s heartbeat return to normal.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

Isla composes herself. Raising her tiny, quivering chin, she pulls her pale curls out from under the collar of her nightgown. An oddly grown-up gesture that makes Maya’s heart clench tight like a fist.

“When are we going to see Daddy again?”

The eel slithers back up into her throat, but she keeps a close-lipped smile plastered to her face.

“I told you, sweetie—Daddy’s just gone on a little trip. He’ll come back soon and you can have a nice long visit then.”

Isla looks at Foster, then back at Maya. “But will we go and live at the old house once Daddy’s back again?”

“Maybe,” says Maya. “We’re just trying to decide who’s going to live where.”

“When will it be decided?” Foster says this with his arms crossed officiously across his chest. Unlike Isla, who is inclined to probe the dark corners of things, Foster wants to determine where he stands and move on. Maya reaches over and musses his curls.

“Today. We’ll decide everything today,” she says. “Now, who wants pancakes?”

It’s unsettling for Maya to be in the family courthouse as a client—a civilian in this soulless processing plant of human misery. The
interior, she has often thought, resembles a discount airline lounge without the brightly dressed tourists, airplane noise or anticipation of sun. The people here are an invariably desperate-looking bunch. Everybody’s life is hanging in the balance; everyone has the same lean, hunted look. These are people fighting over the two things humans are most willing to kill and die for: money and children.

Maya arrives half an hour early, as is her custom. She secures a private waiting room and makes sure to use the public washroom before the other side shows up—insurance against awkward pre-hearing run-ins. Only once she is secure in her territory, having removed her spring coat, reapplied her lipstick, smoothed her new dress and procured a weak coffee from the vending machine, can she truly begin to gird herself for the battle ahead.

She is asking for half of all the family assets. She will not accept anything less, and she will not be tricked by creative accounting or offshore shenanigans. Given Nick’s track record, she and Allison are alerting the judge to the possibility of both. She could have frozen his assets until the deal was done, but something made her stop just short of this. Maybe the new face Nick showed her was just a little bit real? The thought nags at her like a faint but persistent pain. Certainly his buggering off to Africa to find himself—a move she sees as an extended version of his selfish Saturday morning bike rides—is not a great sign. But she pushes the uncertainty from her mind and reads over the twenty-six-page statement of claim. Her proposal is that she keep the house, which is paid off, and Nick take everything else—a clean division of assets that will leave them both well taken care of. She also wants full custody of the twins, which
means increased child support. She knows Nick will disagree.
He always was all about the money,
she reminds herself. Girding.

Ahead of Maya in the court registration line is a young mother in a hooded sweatshirt who is hand-feeding Cheezies to a small boy in a stroller. He is a tall toddler—too big for a pushchair, really, and balking at the confinement. His mother tries desperately to calm him, but the approaching tantrum is inevitable, like storm clouds rolling over the hills. The boy, whose sweaty-looking ski jacket is covered in sticky doughnut crumbs and sprinkles, arches his back into the stroller, then pitches himself forward until the whole apparatus shakes and threatens to tip. “Stay
still
!” says his mother, smacking the stroller handle with frustration. She touches her hair, which has been pulled into a tight but slightly crooked French braid, and looks around the room, possibly for her lawyer. Maya can see she is suddenly self-conscious—perhaps she feels guilty for shouting at the child she is fighting for.

Maya has a stack of work files to go through but finds she can’t open them. Instead she stares around the place as if she hasn’t been here a hundred times before. The blue vinyl bench seating, the worn industrial carpet, the windowless walls covered in corkboard stabbed with stern or threatening notices. “ARE YOU ENTITLED TO A MEDIATOR? FIND OUT NOW! PLEASE BE ADVISED WE HAVE A ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICY ON STAFF ABUSE. MAXIMUM FINE: $2,500.”

Maya reaches the front of the line and gives the clerk her name.

“Wakefield vs. Wakefield,” the clerk says.

Maya nods, trying to effect a professional air, as though she’s the lawyer on the case rather than the client.

The clerk shuffles her papers, a gnarled ballpoint pen clamped in her jaw. “Courtroom 24. 11:30.”

She hands over a slip of paper that Maya doesn’t bother to look at. Instead, she goes straight back to her private waiting room and is relieved to find Allison there, sitting primly with a large accordion file on her lap, scrolling through her email.

As Gray’s favourite associate, Allison has been giving Maya’s case extra-special treatment. Officially she knows nothing of the relationship between her client/colleague and her boss—they have never spoken of anything romantic at the office—but Maya realizes that people must be talking. Especially after the assault. A few of her colleagues said they were sorry, but most looked at her with wary eyes, as though she were the one who’d thrown the punch, not Nick.

Allison stands up and takes Maya’s hand, half shaking and half squeezing it. “How
are
you?” she says, looking at Maya deeply and directly in a way that makes her want to cover her face in shame. Allison is twenty-six and wears her glossy brown hair in a long serpent-like side braid. Maya finds this somehow unsettling, though she can’t put her finger on why.

“Fine,” she says, a little more coolly than she intends. “Now, what do we need to go over before court?”

Allison takes out the statement of claim and reads it to Maya point by point. At this stage, Maya feels she could recite the document verbatim. When they finish, Allison leans back into the bench and scratches her neck thoughtfully, eyes still fixed on the open file.

“I don’t think we’re going to have a problem with the custody
demands,” she says. “It’s just whether he wants to be fair about the money.”

“Has his lawyer given you any indication of his position?” asks Maya, not for the first time.

Allison shakes her head bleakly. “No, it’s really strange. In fact, I’m not even one hundred percent sure he has a lawyer. He didn’t submit a statement of counter-claim to court in advance either, which is odd. I think you should brace yourself.”

“Why?”

“Well, who knows what he’s planning to spring on us.”

An icy finger runs down Maya’s spine. She blinks and shakes her head, as if to startle away a fly.
Focus.
“Let’s hope he’s just disorganized,” she says. Though somehow, knowing Nick, she doubts it.

Two hours later, their case is announced over the PA and Maya and Allison enter the courtroom. They take their seats on the wooden benches at the front on the left side. The windowless room has a low-tiled ceiling and a carpet that matches the mood—a dull and soul-sucking beige. Several clerks and security guards mill about. On the other side of the room, sitting alone, eyes firmly fixed on his smartphone, is a middle-aged bald man in a navy suit. Maya recognizes him as a senior partner from a competing firm. A stone-cold killer famed for being the divorce lawyer of one of the country’s most powerful media barons. This must be Nick’s man. But where is Nick?

Maya switches off her phone and sits on her hands. Everyone
stands as the Honourable Mr. Justice Juan Hernandez enters, blinking around the courtroom through a pair of bifocals. He looks about sixty, short and portly. Maya has never been before him, but she has heard he is divorced himself. Never a good sign, since he may harbour lingering bitterness toward ex-wives. Allison looks up from her files and gives her client a pointed, if not terribly convincing, look that says,
It’ll all be fine.
She grips the bench and feels the carpet sway beneath her.

The judge flips through the papers in front of him, then pushes them aside with undisguised impatience. He takes off his bifocals and looks at Nick’s lawyer.

“I have read the statement from the claimant but have nothing from the respondent. Is your client planning to grace us with his presence today?”

“He’s otherwise engaged,” says the lawyer. “But he has read Ms. Wakefield’s claim and drafted his response to be presented to the court by me.”

The judge coughs, clearly annoyed. “So he was too busy to attend his own divorce hearing?”

The lawyer stands and buttons his suit jacket. In his right hand is a sheet of paper. “I think you’ll understand his position once you read this. May I approach the bench?”

Judge Hernandez nods his assent and replaces his spectacles, shoving the frame back up his nose with a short sausage finger. The court is silent as he reads the proffered document. Finally, he turns the paper over and, finding nothing on the opposite side, sighs heavily. He takes a sip from the steaming mug on his desk and then directs his gaze at Maya.

“Mrs. Wakefield,” he says, “I think you will be very surprised
at the nature of your husband’s response to your statement of claim. Are you happy for me to read it out before the court, or would you like a moment to look at it privately?”

Allison turns to Maya and whispers in her ear. “Do you want a minute?” she says.

Maya realizes she must look dazed. When she stands up to address the judge, her legs feel boneless. “I’m fine. Please go ahead.” Somehow this seems better than reading it silently while the entire courtroom watches.

“All right, then,” says the judge. He clears his throat in an almost theatrical way before reading out the note in a colourless monotone.

“‘In response to my wife’s statement of claim, I would like to grant Maya all our family assets both hard and soft, including all jointly owned real estate, art and furniture. Now that our marriage is over, I have no further use for them. With her permission, I will retain my portion of my commercial production business, my car and twenty-five thousand dollars cash so I can put down a deposit on and furnish a small apartment. I’m also happy to meet her demands for ongoing support. I would, however, ask to retain shared custody of our children, Isla and Foster. I am not proposing that they live with me half the time, but I would like to make myself available for regular child care (in addition to their nanny, Velma) during the week when Maya is busy with work. Additionally, I would like to have them for sleepovers every other weekend and some holidays, once I have set up a new home.

“‘I would also like to apologize to Maya, while she is still my wife, for my deceptive, erratic and at times confounding behaviour over the past year and longer. I am aware of my failings as
a husband and father. I know that I have behaved badly, and for that I am now paying a heavy price. I want, more than anything I can think of, to ensure that things are as equitable as they can be between us. I may not be able to keep my family physically and emotionally intact, but at the very least I can keep them financially whole. I would ask the court—and Maya—to accept my wishes for a financial settlement in her favour without question. The time for fighting is over. Yours very sincerely, Nicholas Wakefield.’”