A Theory of Relativity (42 page)

“So Craig is equally committed to the long haul?”

“We both believe we know what’s best for her. We know that the love of two good parents, even if they’re not the ones God gave you originally, can heal a lot of hurt.”

“And you’re open to helping her come to terms with . . . her questions?”

“If she has any, yes.”

“What fun things do you two do together?”

“We try to have a standing date every other Saturday night. I have to say, Alexis is a wonderful baby-sitter. And she doesn’t charge too much.”

“I meant you and Keefer.”

“Oh, we play all day. We play beauty parlor. We play house, though with all this weight I’m trucking around, I can’t get down with her like I should. We play Barbies. I’m teaching Alexis to sew. We’ve made her some really cute Barbie outfits.”

“And you’re still working?”

“God willing, yes. Doctor, raising children is expensive. Not to mention the legal bills. And we’d like to get a bigger house down the line.”

“So, things seem to be going well.” Faith tried again, “Except you mentioned not feeling well?”

“Just my headaches. My aches all over, nothing so special, nothing I won’t survive.” Delia was a wall.

Faith took her leave feeling as she did when a run opened down the back of her stocking—irritated and exposed in a way that made no sense. She had learned to trust these instincts, but there was nothing here to see. Delia was clearly not sick enough to skip work. She was managing both girls well. Her mood seemed generally good. Perhaps Delia was simply one of those women, like Faith’s own Aunt Mary, who Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 281

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ate their way through crises and fasted their way through good times.

Not a particularly heart-healthy way to live, but crises would probably not be standard fare for the Cadys for too much longer.

A breeze had stiffened while she was inside, and as she stowed her tote bag in the backseat of her car, Faith noticed Alexis cheerfully hip-hopping her way out to the sunnier front porch, yellow earphones in place. Mad dogs and teenagers, Faith thought, as the wind snatched the loose pages of her notes and whipped them down and out through the gap of her open car door. She would be able to reconstruct, but wait . . .

the pages had been trapped in a window well, blown flat against one wall of the concrete box. Faith sprinted and captured her pages and was turning to leave when she heard Keefer scream. It was a baby’s angry wail, Faith ascertained quickly, coming from the open window just over Faith’s head. She made a mental inventory of the house’s plan, trying to keep her cool, as Keefer sobbed, “No, no! No wetty!” A jet of water. Delia’s voice, low, not precisely threatening, but stern, very stern.

“Mama said leave those buttons alone! And if you scream anymore, you’re going under the shower, Miss Priss. Do you hear me?” Okay.

What Faith was hearing was not a forthright abuse. She was hearing a fairly strict, Bible-bound Southern woman, probably suffering from a pounding headache, administering the threat of some fairly inappropriate discipline for a two-year-old. On the other hand, it was only a threat; Keefer was quieting down, Delia was making crooning noises.

The shower was shut off. Delia had not struck Keefer. Faith had herself been slapped, only once, in ninth grade, the time when Eve Bogert caught her smoking behind the pool building with Jennifer Adderly.

Faith knew good, perfectly adequate parents who spanked.

She would get into her car and leave. But she would make note. It would all go into the report.

But before she could close the door of her car, she looked up, drawn into the steady gaze of the teenager on the porch. Alexis shrugged.

“What’s with all that?” Faith asked her. This was not a great idea, buttonholing a kid.

“She doesn’t hit her,” Alex said.

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“Does she lose it like that?”

“More now. Her nerves are shot. That’s what my aunt says. Her nerves are shot.”

“Do you get afraid for Keefer?”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like her to yell at her for something like pulling the stupid flowers out of her hair.”

“So, this is fairly often?”

“No. Mom is usually pretty nice and peaceful. She’s got to have it her way. But she doesn’t lose it. It’s just since . . . she’s real sick from the baby.”

“From Keefer?”

“From the baby she’s going to have. She can’t take any of her medicine or anything. She’s like, her legs hurt all the time.”

“You knew your mom was pregnant.”

“I’ve just known for a couple of months. But it happened at like, Christmas, I guess, anyhow. They don’t exactly describe their sex life to me.”

“Nor should they,” Faith said. She hesitated. Clouds were piling up over the lake, thick and threatening, and she had a long drive ahead.

“Well, Alex, you think your mom’s in the tub or whatever?”

“I think she’s putting Keefer down. Keefer takes a one o’clock nap.

Every day.”

“Well,” Faith said, “let me get around you there.” She raised her hand to knock at the door, to an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. This was the part where she would be as welcome as the plague. Faith was used to it. She was going to have to stomp a big hole in someone’s day. She was going to have to talk, and talk long and hard, with Delia about her state of health and her state of mind. About private things that would ordinarily be nobody’s business, especially a stranger’s. Unless that stranger, like Faith, held a big piece of the puzzle that would make up a child’s future, in her hands.

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“I am dismayed,” Judge Aaron Kid said, pausing not even for the grooming rituals of greeting Gordon now saw as requisite to all members of the legal species. “I am dismayed by the way this case has been tried in the media.”

He slid his reading glasses from his nose, folded them briskly, and pointed with them at the McKenna side of the aisle. “I am speaking of the media presence of your clients, Mr. Katt and Miz Kane and Mrs.

Hendrickson. The guardians of the child in question have not given any interviews, so far as I can tell, nor have they sought to curry editorial opinion. They have been engaged in the business of raising this child, or else they are inclined to be very private individuals, which, in this setting, is entirely helpful and appropriate.”

“But it is not quite true, Your Honor.” May Hendrickson, the McKennas’ attorney spoke up quietly. “In fact, the Cadys have given several interviews to local print media and to local television stations, and the child’s paternal grandfather has been filmed for similar media venues.”

“I am aware of that,” Kid rejoined, “but these are drops in an ocean of ink. Your clients have consistently sought out national and international media.”

“Excuse me, your honor, if I may point out,” May Hendrickson said, “those media have sought the McKennas. Your Honor, this only 283

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makes sense, since it is the McKennas’ interests that were abrogated in this case, so it was naturally assumed by the press that they would be the ones with a grievance to air.”

“Mrs. McKenna, have you at any time contacted the newspapers?” Judge Kid asked.

“I can answer that,” Greg Katt offered.

“I am asking Mrs. McKenna this question,” Kid replied, “and she is entirely capable of answering it. Mrs. McKenna, have you at any time contacted members of the press?”

“Yes,” said Lorraine, “months ago, at the beginning.”

“And of course, that set the ball rolling. I have been doing nothing this past weekend but reading the history of this case as revealed through the documents of extensive and innumerable court procedures, and one thing that has become clear to me is that the court-appointed psychologist and the guardian ad litem have been the sole voices of restraint in this process, consistently drawing the attention of the bickering, litigating adults back to the critical issue of what is best for this child.”

“With respect, Your Honor, may I speak to what may be an oversight?” May Hendrickson went on. “The guardian ad litem in the original action joined with Delia and Craig Cady by concurring on the initial ruling, that is, on Gordon McKenna’s absence of status as a blood relative. So we have to presume that the guardian was biased on the Cadys’

behalf. Indeed, she has been quoted in the press saying that the higher court’s ruling would have no effect on the ultimate disposition of this case. That bias, I would suggest, throws into question whether this particular guardian ad litem can serve the charge as the eyes and ears of the court in this case.”

“That may be so, and yet I see no reason why she cannot now fulfill that role. I’m looking at Victoria Linquist’s comments about the necessity for legislative clarification. She says she
does
believe this to be an important consequence subsequent to the original ruling. She’s not ignoring it. What we need for an effective conclusion is real cooperative effort among all parties to keep the emotional interests of the adults involved secondary to the needs of the child. And that also means the Theory[222-351] 6/5/01 12:11 PM Page 285

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privacy of this minor child. I think that was the guardian’s main concern.” May Hendrickson nodded, her shrug and the slight upward cast of her eyes negating the message of the nod.

“There will be no more of this,” Judge Kid said severely. “Formally, as of now, I am imposing an order to the effect that there will be no discussion with the press by any party to this action about any aspect of this action. There is no excuse for exposing a child’s private and very vulnerable world to such unfair scrutiny.” Mary Ellen Wentworth spoke up. “Your Honor, the guardian ad litem and I are very concerned that the constant rehashing by the press of every aspect of this case creates an inflammatory and prejudicial atmosphere in which to carry out a trial. The Cadys have made valiant efforts to shield this child, even while they have been entirely aware that their refusal to join this media frenzy may have had an adverse effect on them with respect to public opinion. So I would ask that you be very specific in your order to include disallowing interviews about anything that has taken place since the death of Keefer Kathryn’s parents, even if those interviews do not include the specifics of this litigation.”

“That seems reasonable,” Kid said. Unfolding first one leg, then the second, of his reading glasses, he carefully placed them halfway down the bridge of his nose. “Now, we have just spent fifteen or twenty valuable minutes here discussing a tertiary circumstance of this case, an unnecessary intrusion, no matter who brought it on, and that goes to underline my point, that it is a distraction.” He jutted his chin toward Cady, toward Greg Katt. “Is that understood?” The lawyers regarded their shoes, like mourners asked to join in a silent moment of prayer.

“Counsel? I can assure you that this court will not be affected, at least not favorably, by any amount of media criticism.”

“Yes, sir,” said Greg Katt, “though you must admit it was necessary, under the circumstances, regarding the deficit of the law as it was previously worded—”

“I am not describing the circumstances of the past, Mr. Katt, nor debating the merits or the demerits of a given law’s prior or current wording. I am referring to what will take place before this court here from this day forward.”

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Gordon had not included any of this in his calculus, he thought.

The magisterial world Gordon had concocted after the reversal had been a world in which objectivities would arrange themselves on either side of a median, not a gulf, but something more. . . . symbolically sum-mary, perhaps a table. The judge would sit at the head of this imaginary table. The judge would behave like a father who had to make decisions based on greater wisdom and experience; even painful consequences would be for the greater good. He would be kindly toward Craig and Delia, kindly (though maybe with a twinkle of approval) toward the McKennas. There would be a mopping up, a reductive setting on of seals, a paring of inconsequential concerns. What else could there be? If Gordon now was by both the spirit and now the letter of law her uncle, the Cadys’ prior claims were insubstantial as the cordite smell of smoke after fireworks. Something had happened, something stirring and triumphant.

Gordon listened to his lawyers and the Cadys’ lawyers comparing their calendars, setting up a schedule for motion deadlines, disclosure of witness lists . . . like soldiers in island caves without radio contact, preparing for the next battle, not realizing the war had ended months before.

A new trial? Of course, why not five more trials? Why not carry this on until Keefer had her own law degree? Gordon had wanted to scream with frustration. It was like having to listen patiently as his first college girlfriend told him why the pyramids at Giza were not just structures but great big magnets.

But if this situation had been so muddled by everyone who got the chance, simplicity would now seem absurd. Why should the judge pay attention to a higher court? Why should he be eager to make right the clear and present wrong done the McKennas? This judge was human, subject to the same petty currents of ego and loyalty all people felt toward others of their kind. This judge would have to pee on the tree, too, make his own mark.

Real things would have no force. The unseen and nonsensical would have force, like pyramid power had force for goofy people. They believed it; it didn’t matter that it didn’t exist. If people believed in a force, the force would be enough to crush him. He would be crushed by something he would never be able to see.

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Gordon remembered one breathlessly hot September night in Cocoa Beach when Ray, trying to cajole Gordon into coming out to the Sand Bar for margaritas instead of studying for an exam, had tried to explain to him the theory of relativity. He told Gordon how the great scientists in Denmark and Germany roamed together on seashores and in parks, using rocks and waves and the flight of birds overhead to ask each other their questions about reality and flux and time, and despite the amazing insights they came up with, scientists were still asking one another many of the same questions. Nothing, Ray told Gordon, was truly objectively measurable, because all things were made of particles and all particles were in a constant state of change.