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6 - The Apples of His Eye
“She’s friendly. Well, really, only with one of her sisters now.”
“What about her twin brother?”
“Not friendly. I don’t think she speaks to him at all.”
“And her mother?”
“Her mother died. She wasn’t well. She’d been institutionalized on and off. At one point she underwent electroconvulsive therapy and was on long-term antidepressant medication.”
“And her father?”
“Friendly,” he said quite buoyantly.
“That’s surprising. My interest is piqued.”
Hesitantly, he said, “Charlie Willow hadn’t talked to Denise in years... ever since she moved into her own apartment when we started going together.”
“Jealous, maybe?”
“Aah, I don’t know. I always thought of it as being possessive... possessive of his daughters.”
“And?” she asked, noting Bill rejected the more sexual overtones that “jealous”—at least to her—implied.
“And he knew how to carry a grudge. He’d carried his against Denise so far he hadn’t even talked to her at family functions. But then, at our wedding, he gave her away. Can you imagine?”
“How did that work out?”
“Well, in his own inimitable style, very quietly, Charlie said to her, ‘Your face is breaking out.’ Denise was speechless. Her face froze.”
“Oh, my god.”
“I guess I expected something weird to happen, and when it did, I couldn’t help but laugh... but it took Denise a few days before she could laugh about it.”
Bea could almost hear Bill wagging his head back and forth.
During those few days, Denise had remembered something that kept her from laughing about anything.
Her mom had called out, “C’mon, kids, let’s see if each of you can finish getting your own stuff packed before your father comes home.” The family was in the middle of moving from their life in the projects in Houghton’s Neck in Lynn.
All four of them—Denise, her twin brother Peter, and their older and younger sisters—scrambled at the reminder that the hour had come when their father, Charles Willow, the carpenter, would arrive home from work.
Madeline, the youngest, cried out, “Mom, Peter slugged me!”
Sheila said, “He’s always slugging one of us. Denise, he’s your twin. You’re supposed to know when he’s about to slug someone. Why don’t you stop him?”
Denise looked up from the box she was filling to give her sister a look. “What are you, crazy?”
Sheila laughed.
Paul said, “She won’t say anything to me ‘cuz she knows I’d slug her too.”
“You’re just like dad,” Denise said. “How did you get to be my twin, anyway? You disgust me.”
Her mother walked into the room.
“Watch that mouth, young lady. I just saw your father through the window. He’ll be here in a minute.”
Charles Willow walked in, roaring. “You kids not ready yet?”
The kids’ faces turned to stone. They could smell the beer on him already. His wife said, “Charlie, they’ll be all ready in just a few minutes.”
He backhanded her across the face. “Woman, you told me they’d be ready by the time I got home!” He looked at his youngest daughter and bellowed, “Madeline, c’mon over here and give me a big one.” Madeline was the current apple of his eye. Sheila and Denise had also been the apples of his eye; they had been replaced by a new apple when the next daughter came along.
Madeline ran to him and gave him a wet, smoochy kiss all over his cheek.
He grabbed her mouth, puckered it with his fingers, and laid one on her. “Luv ya, Kid,” he said as he patted her bottom.
She jumped up and wrapped her legs around him and gave him a hug.
Late that night, the Willow family had finished the move to their new house in Stoneham. It was a small ranch with small everything: a small living room, postage-stamp-sized bedrooms, and thin walls.
Charlie screamed, “Woman, if you didn’t spoil those kids so much, we could have been in here by nightfall!”
That was followed with what sounded like a lamp falling from a table.
In her bedroom, Denise put the pillow over her head and pretended she was asleep.
Later that night, the headboard of her parents’ bed was banging against the wall and her mother was saying,
“No, Charlie... no.” Then her father released his manhood.
Bill said, “Charlie Willow, the carpenter who could build beautiful houses, but left his own a mess. It couldn’t have been easy for her. That day she was wearing a little make-up. Generally she wore none. She’s very modest, you know.”
Bea was impressed. Not many men notice their brides’ special efforts to look their best on their wedding day. They usually were looking forward to a later time of that day.
“She had shoulder-length hair, I remember.” Bill’s voice became quieter and his speech slower. “It was brushed back. She actually looked quite pretty.”
Bea interrupted his daydream. “Is Charlie on the wagon now?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” Bill said, regaining his animation. “You know, that’s added to my concerns - his being over to our house quite often now.”
“How do you know that?”
“Oh, Chloe, Denise, neighbors, relatives I bump into.”
“Did he ever abuse Denise?”
“I don’t know. I do, though, have a vague memory of Denise telling me about a cousin being sexually abused by someone in her family. But that was ten, fifteen years ago. No one talked about sex abuse then, so I never asked her the details. I wish I had.” He sighed.
“Did you believe her? That she was talking about her cousin and not about herself?’
“I never really thought about it until all this started, but if she was abused and it was Charlie who did it, I don’t want him near Chloe.”
7 - The Unimaginable Is Routine
The room was small and confining even under ordinary circumstances. With Bill and his daughter Chloe in it, Heather Bruce’s office at Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty of Children had no room left for air. Heather was to monitor Bill’s weekly visits with Chloe, to make sure he didn’t sexually abuse or harass her when they were together.
Chloe brought a stuffed bee Bill had given her as a present.
“The mosquito bit you, Daddy.” Chloe laughed as she ran around the metal desk in the middle of the room.
“Oooh, that hurts!” She leapt out from under the table and ran around him, buzzing still, and touched him. Squealing with excitement, she continued pretending. “Bzzz, the bee stung you, Daddy.” Bill laughed and kept up the pretense.
“Bzzz, bzzz, bzzzzzzz,” she swooped again and again with the stuffed bee toward him. “Gotcha.”
“You bad bee,” Bill said playfully.
Tiring of the game, Chloe suddenly became Wonder Woman and began speaking in a loud, commanding voice. Because she didn’t usually speak in such tones, Bill thought she was anxious.
His visitation time up, Bill stroked her arm and kissed her on top of the head. As he did this, his powerlessness gnawed at him again. He knew he couldn’t help her with whatever her problem was that day. He’d come to expect the pain at the end of the visits.
Later, as Heather was writing in her progress notes, Father presents as passive, the phone rang.
“Hello, Heather,” the voice said.
“Oh, hello, Denise,” Heather said. “What’s on your mind today?”
“I spoke to Chloe after we got home from the visit at your office. She told me her father whispered something to her while you were on the phone.”
“I don’t remember. It’s possible I’d taken a phone call. If I did, though, it couldn’t have been longer than two minutes or so. I don’t generally stay on the phone during a supervised visit.”
“Heather, you must be careful with him. You know how manipulative he is.”
“What did he whisper?”
“He asked if Chloe knew why I wouldn’t let him see her.”
“Well, I never heard that. “Did she say what she answered him?”
“No... no, she didn’t. She couldn’t remember.” There was a note of anxiety, perhaps even anger, in Denise’s voice. “I’m upset, Heather. I am. I really am.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well, tell him at the next visit that there is a no-whispering rule. There’s to be no whispering between them.”
Accustomed to believing, without question, the mothers of her clients, Heather reassured Denise. “Okay, I’ll tell him when he gets here.”
8 - Money Makes the World Go ‘Round
“Mel, welcome aboard. So anxious to pick up your usual third, you were willing to brave rush-hour traffic?”
“Bea, bills don’t care about debtors slogging through a five o’clock parking lot. Anyway, I have a dinner at six at the psych association.”
“Well, here’s your check. Highway robbery, Melly. The last three cases you gave me were dogs.”
“What do you mean, dogs? You won them, didn’t you?”
“I sure did, but at a helluva price. You’re the only one who made money. I get paid for maybe half of my work if I’m lucky, give you a third of the net as it’s collected, and then I have to wait for the other half of what I billed until hell freezes over.”
Mel didn’t react, audibly or otherwise.
“Melly, it’s like a deferred salary. It’s rough. My monthly nut is too high for that kind of shtick. Before I moved to the tug, I had to make 9 grand a month to break even, but my monthly nut is still excessive.”
Bea had a dilemma. The cases Melvin Kanter gave her were rejects. He himself didn’t try cases. He was an ambulance-chaser who’d had to change the thrust of his practice when “no-fault” came in. Now, he advised a few boards of directors for professional associations and represented their members in real estate closings and other matters that didn’t require him to go before a judge. It must have been years since he was in a courtroom.
If an association’s member was sued for malpractice by one of his or her clients, the member could count on Mel Kanter to get it settled quietly and quickly and to save the member’s professional license to boot. Mel was a master at negotiation. He had learned well how to twist the arms of insurance adjusters.
If Mel couldn’t settle the case, he’d refer it to a litigator who was willing to pay him a referral fee. On occasion, an association member referred a client to Mel. He couldn’t take the case because of a potential conflict of interest that would arise were the client to sue the doctor down the road. So he’d refer those cases to other lawyers as well.
The fast-and-easy money cases, Mel gave to his buddies who had their plumbing on the outside. The long-and-hard and slow-money cases, the rejects, to Bea.
She turned out to be his secret weapon, winning every case he gave her. He was able to put one of his kids through graduate school on the referral fees Bea paid him. She regularly gave him copies of each bill she sent to clients referred by him and of each check she received from them.
In contrast, he never gave her an accounting for those clients she referred to him. Instead, he’d throw her a few dollars every once in a while.
Although ten years younger than Bea, Mel had been in the business twenty-five years longer than she, and told her his deal was the “usual” one to which all the guys adhered. Bea had since learned that “usual” wasn’t as he had contended. And he’d promised to mentor her. What a joke. Don’t get mad, get even. She had thought of a way to restructure their arrangement, but she had to wait for the proper time to do it. Be patient, she told herself.
He had done a real con job on her. How had it happened? It wasn’t because she’d been relatively new in the law business when she’d made the deal with him. She’d been the eldest student—the grandmother—of her class. She might have been too eager to meet stimulating and intelligent colleagues; she might even have been idealistic. But she wasn’t a naif; she was a survivor.
It happened because it was the first time in a long while that Bea—who’d become a loner—had let her guard down, thinking she’d earned Mel’s respect and he’d treat her the same as one of the guys. He didn’t, and she was surprised.
She wouldn’t take any more shit cases from Mel. If she took any of his referrals, there’d have to be a restructuring.
Up to then, Mel had always suggested a solution to prevent a potential shortfall of payment of fees—which is probably why Bea had continued to do business with him, to learn—but all too often, the quick fix was one that would put only Bea, not Mel, at risk.
“Don’t worry,” Mel said with confidence, “you’ll get paid.” So Bea took the cases. And she did get paid... several years later.
“By the way,” Mel said, “make sure Abernathy shaves his moustache. Everyone believes men with facial hair are more likely to be pedophiles.”
“Great,” Bea said. Just what she needed to hear. “I don’t suppose you know where you heard or read that.”
“Trust me. Just have him shave it off.”
When Bill’s check and the signed agreement arrived, with them had come several articles on chlamydia, copies of his prior counsel’s file, and a few handwritten notes. Bea had deducted anticipated expenses from the money and ultimately had taken a bit off the top from the check she’d just given Mel.
She also began spending Bill’s money: by having subpoenas served on a few doctors and a handful of professionals in the new sex-abuse industry. Some would be witnesses, some would not. She corrected inadequacies in the original documents prepared and filed in court by Bill’s prior counsel, James Phinney, and then filed the new ones. Under ordinary circumstances, Bill’s wish list would be pretty standard—to split the marital assets—but this wouldn’t be an ordinary divorce.
9 - Monkey See, Monkey Do
“Daddy, I’m slipping off your whole clothes,” Chloe said as she tried pulling off Bill’s jacket while he was sitting on the floor of Heather’s office.
“But I need my clothes.”
“They got thrown away.” Bill got the message loud and clear. Denise had thrown his clothes away and Chloe, aping Mom, wanted to throw away the clothes he had on too.
“I need kisses, too, sometimes,” he said, pointing to his cheek, hoping she’d kiss it. And she did.
Heather didn’t interrupt them, and he hugged his daughter when he said goodbye.
When Bill entered Heather’s office for his next visit, Chloe hadn’t yet arrived.
“Bill, don’t point to your cheek and gesture that Chloe kiss it. Ask her if she’d like to kiss you on the cheek rather than merely point to it. You understand, it would be healthier for Chloe if you gave her a choice of what to do?”
“Sure.” He grimly acquiesced, biting his tongue and closing his eyes.
Heather didn’t seem to notice; instead she threw out still another so-called request: “Would you agree not to whisper to Chloe that you cry at night?”
When he arrived for the following visit, Heather admonished him again. “Bill, you’re confusing Chloe by telling her you’ll take her to Florida and India someday.”
“Heather, my boss is from India. He’s invited me to meet his family there. What’s so wrong with telling her that someday maybe we’ll go to India? It’s only wishful thinking or dreaming out loud that she and I can do something together outside this one small room.”
Heather’s orders were to appease Denise. But for Denise’s demand to have Bill’s visits be supervised, Heather’s boss would have one less paying client. That Daddy paid for each session was of no consequence to the community center. He’d have to answer to the court if he or his insurance provider didn’t pay up. So she silenced him with a look. He sighed and dropped the question.
10 - Not a Shoulder to Cry On
“Bea, sorry to bother you, but I forgot to ask whether you can change the visitation from supervised to unsupervised.”
“Well, that’s the system’s way of insuring nothing becomes a story on the front page of the Globe or the Herald.”
“It’s intrusive, Bea. And it’s offensive. It’s offensive that an outsider can get between my daughter and me. It’s also not normal.” He stopped to take a breath before continuing his rant. “It’s ridiculous that I can’t take Chloe to the Y or to the beach or to McDonald’s or to the children’s museum or to dancing lessons.”
Fortunately for Bea, he couldn’t see her grimace. She didn’t want to become emotionally involved in her clients’ lives. Hers was not a shoulder to cry on. Her job was to look for the holes and the handles: the holes in everyone’s story and the handles to sell her clients’ stories to whoever had to buy them.
“Bea, there’s a limit to what we can play in one small room. I’m sure Denise grills Chloe at home about what goes on during the visits, and then complains to Heather because Chloe and I can do and say something at one visit, and at the next, Heather tells me I shouldn’t do that again.
“I’ve had it. The microscopic listening. I don’t know how much more I can take. As it is, I’m on the edge of tears during the visitations. I’m tense before the visits and down afterwards. I’m angry at Denise all the time.”
When Bea didn’t respond, he blew on through in frustration. “I have friends who’d be more than willing to come with me and Chloe to these places....”
Bea was well aware how demeaning “supervised visits” were, and so were the family courts. Bill had been subjected to them ever since Phinney had represented him. She’d have to wait until she had some dramatic event to present to the court as a reason for changing the old order.
“Bill, I’ll give it a shot, but not right now. We already have battles on several fronts.”
11 - Through a Looking Glass
In yet another small room, during a therapy session with Roberta Leavitt, Chloe moved a game piece around a board. When the piece fell on Red, she picked a Red card. The card said “You’re looking through a window. What do you see?”
Leavitt, a social worker assigned to help Chloe overcome anxieties caused—allegedly—by sexual abuse, helped her read the card.
“I see a little girl writing a book about her own family, which has two parents,” Chloe said. “One parent is bad and has to leave the home so the little girl will be safe. One parent is good and stays.”
Then her back straightened and she added, “I’m going to write a book about my family. My parents aren’t married anymore. Bill hurt and pushed me and made me feel very disappointed. This is why he doesn’t live with me.”
She fidgeted for a while, looked down, then suddenly piped up. “My mother protects me very well. Bill is probably feeling angry that I’ll be talking to a judge.”
Bill would have to pay $45 to the Salem Woods Family & Community Center, SWFCC, for this session, in addition to paying around $300 a week for child and spousal support.
12—Cover Ass!
Getting Bill’s machine, she spoke quickly, “Bea here. I left a message for Detective Cooper to introduce myself and find out what he wanted, but he hasn’t called back yet. If he phones you again, do not return his call. I’ve subpoenaed him to deposition. I want to get him on the record. Give me a ring when you get in.”
Within minutes, the phone rang. “Boy, that was fast. Bill, would you be willing to take a lie detector test?”
“Sure. Anything. I’ll do anything if you think it’ll help.”
“Frankly I can guarantee nothing. Police use them. Some employers use them. But they’re not admissible in court. I’d just like to have it in case I have an opportunity to use it outside of court. You never know, it might come in handy.”
Bea wanted to see the results to cover her own ass, especially since she was seeking custody for him, but she wasn’t about to tell him that. She wanted to believe Bill, but wouldn’t know whether she was hearing the full story until after she’d worked the case with him awhile. If then.
13 - Hornets Aflight
The deposition subpoenas stirred the hornets. Lawyers buzzed angrily whenever Bea picked up the phone: Ruth Stanton’s lawyer, the lawyer for the DSS social worker, the lawyer for two MSPCC social workers.
All droned privilege and confidentiality. Dr. Matthews, Chloe’s pediatrician, didn’t bother with a lawyer. He called Bea directly.
“What’s the idea of serving me with this subpoena?” he yelled. “It’s frivolous!”
Bea’s antennae went up on that one: a doctor wouldn’t normally use that word unless he’d been sued before. “Dr. Matthews, there is nothing frivolous about that subpoena. A serious accusation has been made against my client. I must see the child’s medical records.”
“Well, I’m not going to waste any time at any deposition.”
“You may not have to. It depends on what the medical records show. Just certify they are true and accurate and send them to me in the meantime.”
“‘You may not have to’ is not good enough. I’m not going to be deposed! If you bother me again, I’m going to report you to the Bar!” Bea jumped when Matthews slammed down the phone.
14 - An Opera
“Hold me, will you please?”
“Sure.”
Her personal judge, the returnee from her vintage years, put his arm around Bea’s shoulders as she joined him on the plump couch in the salon, which he had furnished with Safari decor: a Thai elephant table, a sleek mahogany gazelle, monkeys of all sizes hanging from planters.
The couch itself was swamped by pillows on which butterflies frolicked amongst earth-bound flora, frogs rode water-lily pads, and tigers encircled and climbed tree trunks. It was not quite the safari they had planned years ago, but it was a stage of dreams.
“Damn those doctors. They think they’re gods.”
“What happened?”
“Really? You won’t tell me I’m talking too much?”
“No. Promise. Go ahead, tell me.”
Surprised and somewhat pleased by his unusual display of interest, she told him.
“If Matthews wanted merely to avoid the inconvenience of being deposed, his reaction seemed out of proportion.”
“He’s just trying to scare you off.”
“But why his anxiety? Did he document some suspicions? Even if his suspicions prove false, he’s got full immunity from any lawsuit.”
“My love, don’t get your dander up so. You know the law has to protect all of them—psychologists, social workers, rape counselors, teachers—all of them who must file reports of suspected abuse.”
“Oh, I know, on some level I know, but the law also encourages—no, the law forces—them to report even when it’s not reasonable to suspect sexual abuse. Report or be fined. Report and protect your ass. Report and don’t think. Don’t worry that you might be turning a family’s life topsy-turvy.”
“My luv.” Hugh bent and kissed her forehead sweetly. He was good at sweetness. It was his forte.
Then it dawned on her. “Well, if all he wanted was money for his time, he should merely have said so.” His lawyer could ask the court to order Bea to pay him for having to quash the subpoena if it was frivolous.
Hugh removed his hand from around her shoulders and nudged her head down to his shoulder. She picked her legs up and put them on the sofa, knocking off a few pillows as she did so, and nuzzled into him.
“He could have handled it decently.” She calmed down and finally waved aside Matthews’ threat. She’d deal with him if he didn’t send the documents she wanted.
“We all get anxious about money, Dear. It’s what makes the world go ‘round.”
“Money can’t be the reason for DSS’s foot-dragging. They had 10 days to investigate the 51A report of child abuse and generate their own report, the 51B.”
She began to get herself upset again. “That damn 51B has to be sitting right in the file. It probably only rubber-stamps the 51A’s accusation of abuse anyway, but Bill is entitled to see both of them.”
“Didn’t he appeal the DSS decision administratively?”
“How could he appeal what he didn’t know about?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Hugh said. “You know the court will say he should’ve known the 51B would’ve been generated and therefore he had constructive notice of it—”
“Damn constructive notice. It assumes you know something when you don’t.” She writhed against him. Deftly, he opened the first two buttons of her deep rose, conveniently V-necked blouse and reached in. His fingers slowly strummed a nipple. In keeping with that rhythm, she lost focus but kept on talking, hoping to burrow into his brain.
“DSS denied that an appeal had been filed and I couldn’t find a copy of a notice of appeal in Phinney’s file. So I have to assume he let the DSS finding go by unchallenged.” Her nipple began to fill and reach out to meet his fingers.
“He’s out of luck then,” Hugh said as his other hand began strumming the nipple’s twin.
“Oh, God,” she said.
Hugh couldn’t know whether she invoked a high power because of his touch or because she was still on her rant.
“The 51A and B reports are probably already at the DA’s office, the police, and probably with Denise and her lawyer.” A warmth was traveling to her groin. “He’s going to have to fight the expensive fight.”
“You’ll get rich, my dear.”
It was still traveling. “He’ll never get reimbursed for his expenses,” she forced herself to say.
“Nigh to impossible. Can’t saddle the State, Love; it’s already financially strapped.”
“I’ll have to get court orders to enforce the subpoenas.”
“Right, right.” He continued strumming and ever so gently kneading her breasts.
“I’ll have to show that Chloe’s welfare is more important than Denise’s relationship with any social worker or therapist or rape counselor.”
“Yes, you will.” He kissed her forehead and her ear.
She shut up. The remembrance of a lover who was the best ear kisser she knew quickened her. The muscles of the corners of her mouth contracted and pulled its edges into a smile. Her nipples were rigid. Her hips rose... and just before they crested atop the first wave of the awakened juices inside her, the last thought was that Denise would need to do no more than restate whatever she’d told the workers. She would be almost to the finish line before the starting gun fired.
Incapable of speech, she couldn’t tell Hugh that. Her eyes closed, Hugh continued strumming, her groin was fully involved, she began moaning, the forward and back motion of her undulating hips changed to forward, right, back, left, as if there were waves being created by motorboats circling rapidly within her. Her moans became openly vocular.
Hugh unzipped, propped her head on one of the fantasia of pillows, kneeled atop a few already on the floor, and conjoined himself with the opera of the moment.
Sex had always been her narcotic. He knew that.
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Look for Part 3 her online - 3 chapters will be published weekly - Johnson's book, in hard cover and Kindle, are available at Amazon along with much of her other work.