A Theory of Relativity (39 page)

And Gordie did. He was a good boy then, and he’s a good boy now, Diane, and my boy, my boy loved Gordie.” Big Ray breathed carefully.

He could not get over the notion that his body was made of some fri-able material, like Diane’s hollow crystal cats. “Here’s what I’m saying. I want you to write to Gordie and to his folks and try to make amends.

I’m not saying we can ever make amends, or even that we’d do anything differently if we could. I want Keefer Kathryn to grow up a Nye.

But I also want to rest easy on my own conscience, Diane.”

“Lorraine McKenna would never allow—”

“And if you don’t write, when I get up out of this bed, I will.” Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 260

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The following night, she had brought him the letter she had begun to compose.

One early evening, Tim Upchurch glimpsed Lindsay and Gordon walking Keefer along Main Street. Each of them had hold of one of her hands—step, step, big swing. He’d been about to brake and wander over, when some unaccustomed reluctance brought him up short. He had just braked then, and watched. Step, swing. Step, swing. The baby’s hair was long and wavy, like Georgia’s. Lindsay’s gaze on Gordie was a sun. Tim saw his fist connect with his best friend’s perfect, big, white front teeth. He would have treated her so well. He would have fucking treated her like a princess. Tim watched them vanish around the corner by Hubble’s. They were a family. He had no place with them.

Out at the edge of the subdivision, the fire department was conducting a practice burn on one of Ryder’s ancient outbuildings, a corn crib, Tim believed. He thought he might motor out there, perhaps catch sight of that yummy mommy Alicia they’d run into up at Black Wolf.

Gordie evidently hadn’t taken the bait after that first night. It wouldn’t be the first time Tim had been in the position of scavenging Gordie’s leavings. But Gordie’s leavings were better than anyone else’s. There was that. And no thirty-plus woman would be interested in Tim for anything more meaningful than a night of energy. Well, what was so bad about that? One night of energy was something Tim could definitely get invested in.

Greg Katt waited like a man who knows he has two courtside tickets to a play-off game in his windbreaker pocket.

If he had ever felt more confident during the course of his professional life, he could not recall it. He rose every day at dawn and embraced his wife and kissed his little daughters, then jogged slowly, even through the blessing of a warm rain, and drove to work singing Aretha’s greatest hits. For this, the most-watched, most publicized and most heartfelt case he might ever argue, he could have felt no more game. No fear. Only daring.

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It would be a walk in the park.

They would go down. They would be rubble.

The amicus brief prepared by Rob Greenbaum and Patricia Roe, representing the Academy of Adoption Attorneys, built an elegant historical house with a door that opened wide to admit Gordon McKenna.

Excluding Gordon constituted a complete contradiction of all the other statutes that made up 48, the Children’s Code, which was one of the most thorough in the nation. Rob and Patty quoted from the section

“effects of adoption,” a scant two paragraphs from the now notorious 48.90. After adoption, the bond between the parent and child was to include “all the rights, duties and other legal consequences of the natural relation of child and parent.”

They bore down harder: Even before the amendment, had Ray and Georgia Nye been bad parents, whose rights had been terminated by law, Gordon would have been among the immediate family members entitled to immediate placement of his niece, with no waiting period.

How could common sense prescribe a different set of rules for an uncle whose sister’s rights had been tragically, through no fault of her own, terminated by death? How could common sense allow the same chapter that defined adoptees as exactly legal in status omit adoptees from the definition of “relative”? The brief examined other laws on the books: People called up for jury duty, for example, could not be related “by blood or marriage” to defendants or attorneys involved with a trial. No auto insurance policy could exclude from benefits persons related to the policy holder by “blood or marriage.” And so, was state law intended to prohibit families from getting car insurance for their adopted children? Could the prosecuting attorney’s sister, if she were adopted, get on a jury and help push along the con-viction her brother was trying for? Was that logical? In any universe?

Even the United States Supreme Court, in 1977, had given the opinion that “adoption, for example, is recognized as a legal equivalent of biological parenthood.” No statute should ever be construed to degrade common sense. The legislature, in the Children’s Code and in countless other instances, had clearly intended for adoptive children to be included in every possible definition of family. The omission had been Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 262

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oversight, that inclusion perhaps so obvious that it might not have occurred to the lawmakers at all.

He’d focused on the specifics. And in his brief, he dismembered the whiny preoccupations of Wentworth and the guardian ad litem. Wentworth lovingly recounted the history of the Cadys with Ray and Georgia in Florida, how they’d planned to buy a duplex and live side by side forever, that they had specifically, in naming the Cadys godparents, “a role to which Craig and Delia gave utmost allegiance,” actually conferred on them the traditional role of godparents as prospective guardians.

Wentworth attacked the McKennas, claiming that “little K.K.” had been sheltered by the Cadys from the “firestorm” of national publicity

“orchestrated” by L. M. and her unnatural obsession with her “adoptive” grandchild. Wentworth condemned Gordon’s attempt to “tacti-cally outmaneuver” her clients using the expedited adoption procedure and concluded smugly that this “presumed advantage” had blown up in Gordon’s face. In a footnote, Wentworth prissily noted that Judge Sayward had rebuked Gordon’s team throughout the hearing for trying to one-up the Cadys instead of considering the best interests of little K. K.

And though the best interests of Keefer would be served, Katt went on with exultation, when they first reviewed their documents during dis-covery, that was not at all the point for which they had been summoned in the first place, at all! Gordon had never even been given the chance to present his side of that very issue in a court of law, since the court had ruled that Gordon had no standing to petition to adopt his niece. And why should Gordon have not attempted to use every advantage?

Katt addressed that. It was ludicrous. He was the child’s
uncle,
now by indubitably signed law even a moron like Wentworth could not mis-interpret. “Gordon was the sole surviving sibling of Georgia, Keefer’s mother, and his deceased sister’s dying wish was for Gordon to care for her child,” Katt wrote. To deprive Gordon of any part of his status as Keefer’s only maternal uncle was to deprive Keefer of her very heritage.

Dr. Bogert’s recommendation of the Cadys was based solely on the bias that sprang from every section of her report, the psychologist’s belief that a female child of tender years should have a mother. It was not Gordon’s—Katt quoted—“loving and positive” relationship with Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 263

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Keefer that she doubted, but his inability, as a single male, to cope with the developmental needs of a female child. And yet, Katt reminded the court, the Wisconsin legislature had specifically noted that “any unmarried adult,” not merely a woman, might adopt a minor child.

“The only issue before this court is to determine whether Gordon, adopted as a baby, has the legal standing,” Katt had written, “under Wisconsin Statute 48.90, to petition for the adoption of his niece.

Should an ‘adopted’ uncle be denied the same opportunity a ‘natural’

uncle would certainly be afforded?”

The only reason Gordon had not moved sooner to adopt Keefer was so as not to seem to interfere in the venue dispute by both sets of grandparents. His hesitation was prompted by family loyalty, not by indecision or by reluctance. Resoundingly, Katt had, in his final brief, sliced away at their feeble assertion that the adoption statute intentionally discriminated against adopted relatives in “procedural” matters of law, though not “substantive rights.”

No court in the land, certainly not the courts of the state of Wisconsin, had ever upheld that it was “appropriate to discriminate against an adopted person, provided that the discrimination is limited to legal procedure.”

Show him one example, he dared them between the lines.

Wait and hope, Mary Ellen Wentworth comforted her clients, when they phoned her, Delia especially distraught over the Tom Brokaw show. Every day that Keefer Kathryn lived in their home was a good day, a day for their side, she advised. Whether or not Judge Sayward’s decision was overturned, whether or not a new trial went forward with Gordon able to present his petition, Keefer was growing older and more bonded to her mother, father, and sister. With the passage of each new day, any judge would be become less disposed to interrupt her healthy adjustment. Don’t worry, Mary Ellen told them. The delay actually works for us. Nothing will ever overrule the child’s best interests.

Mary Ellen’s brief did not reflect the rancor she felt toward that fanatic witch, Lorraine McKenna, whose self-seeking fervor had forced them all through the hoops of a three-ring media circus. The McKennas Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 264

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might win, but they would not prevail. She and Victoria Linquist were utterly in sync, equally propelled by determination and disgust.

June third, the anniversary of the accident at Lost Tribe Creek Bridge, was the last day of school, which ended for the term at noon. After lunch, Nora and Lorraine cut a double armload of lilacs from Nora’s yard and bought a couple orchid stems at Every Blooming Thing and drove to the bridge, where they leaned together over the shining seg-ment of repaired railing and dropped the stems, one by one, into the gossipy current of the stream. A breeze came up, and kept blowing the flowers back into their faces, out onto the shoulder of the road, once onto the highway. The two women ran to recover them. “That’s Georgia,” Nora laughed, “she always wanted to get things stirred up.” Even Lorraine had managed a fragile smile by the time Greg Katt drove up in his car, slammed on the brakes and staggered toward them.

Tears were streaming down his face.

“Better go home and stock up on gummy bears, Grandma,” he said.

“I think you’re going to have a little girl running around soon.” The Court of Appeals had reversed Judge Sayward’s decision, on a vote of two to one. A new hearing must take place. It was, as Nora later said, a whole new ball game.

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Nothing would ever make them forget that interval, when there was glory.

They accepted congratulations as though they’d purchased the winning lotto ticket, then misplaced it, then found it in the pocket of a shirt destined for the Goodwill. Lorraine felt eyes approve her passage through the stalls at the outdoor produce market on Fidelis Hill, through the library, up the steps of the municipal pool building, where, after a year’s sloth, she’d begun taking a water aerobics class with Karen and Natalie. This, she thought, must be what it is like to be a movie star, the bath of approbation—first startled silences, then small murmurs of recognition.

Yes, she thought, as she nodded in receipt of the smiles, we are the ones you recognize from the news.

We are the ones who won. We are the good guys.

There would be a new judge, probably Aaron Kid.

Greg further told them that he would henceforth tremble at the mere mention of Judge Sayward’s name. Getting a judge spanked, no matter how resolutely impersonal both parties endeavored to behave, was playing with matches. Interviewed for ABC, Katt told Lorraine, he’d tried to be as gracious as David might have been, bending over backward to give all the credit to the design of the slingshot. Had this ruling not been provoked by the McKennas’ tragedy, it would inevitably 265

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have arisen from another family’s loss. That Gordon would now have the status to be heard was no recompense for that loss, but did offer the balm of justice, the rare sense of having been at law for a reason beyond profit or punishment.

In the town at large, the victory spread like water under a door, mouth to phone, desk to desk, fence to rolled-down car window. For years afterward, people would tell new acquaintances how it had been that night with a kind of swagger not quite that reserved for low brushes with celebrities or being an eyewitness at historical tragedies, but close enough for a town of three thousand, north of Stevens Point.

Heard of the blood-relative case? The one that was on
60 Minutes
? Actually, they said, we know that guy. They’d seen him with the little girl, in the soap store. One of their boys took science in his class. The grandpa was that guy who used to talk about deer and bird feeders on the radio?

Remember him? And they had that golf outing, too. Andy North came, yeah, that was right, because the baby’s father was a big-time golfer.

Semipro. They would remember running into Mark or Lorraine or Gordon at the Dairymaid the day after or the week after the Court of Appeals sent down word. You know, they’d say, it was the art teacher’s son. The Supreme Court said, in the decision, that her son was as good as any other kid and no one dared say otherwise. Yes, it was the Supreme Court, the telephone versions reported to daughters whose husbands had been transferred to Seattle or San Antonio.

Were you there, people asked each other, referring to the Friday night party, which started with a few hamburgers grilling on the McKennas’ front lawn and drifted out over to encompass the Dwors’s house and the street until it seemed that all the fireflies in Trempeauleau County had birthed multitudes in front of the house on Cleveland Street. Was it true, a few people who had been out of town asked, that couples waltzed in the cemetery, like black-cut paper dolls against a stainless sky? Did anyone get in trouble for that? Who was the guy who showed up with a violin? The husband of that wild girl, the sheriff’s daughter? You had to be there to understand how it was, others would say, because it was as if a party began without an invitation sent or a phone call made, a gathering that seemed reconstituted from long Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 267