A Theory of Relativity (28 page)

She had a wooden cigar box under her bench so her feet would not dangle above the floor.

On the night before she was to hear the case of Keefer Nye, Emily walked the lakeshore, checked three times on her peacefully snoozing five-year-old, and finally called her father. Emily’s father Arthur Say-Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 183

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ward was also a judge, a New Hampshire judge, which her mother, Peggy, insisted made him a judge with a grudge. Peggy often said her husband’s opinion was that jurisprudence should never have extended beyond the original thirteen colonies. Arthur’s advice was never offered unsought, but when offered, was accepted into his daughter’s cupped hands with reverence. Arthur’s axioms, Emily’s husband called them.

Her father listened without comment as Emily explained how the petitions had come bustling into her chambers the previous night, a full hour after Emily would normally have gone home, the petitions of both sets of grandparents to withdraw their requests for permanent guardianship. Then, the Cadys’ request for permanent guardianship and their motion to dismiss Gordon McKenna’s petition to adopt his sister’s child on grounds that Gordon—because he was an uncle to the child only by adoption—did not meet the standards of the section of Wisconsin law that allowed a streamlined adoption process for stepparents and immediate family members. After that, came the volley from Gordon’s lawyer, requesting a separate hearing on his petition for adoption and asking to bar the Cadys from the process altogether, because the Cadys were the ones who were not immediate family, but only second cousins to the child, and thus had no standing to object to anything at all. These on top of the Cadys’ earlier petition for guardianship and Gordon’s petition to adopt, which had followed the Cadys’ in a matter of days.

Everyone’s contentions turned on the fragile axis of little Keefer Nye. One little kid robbed of her parents—suddenly cast as a central symbol of survival for two families—propelled by the selfish and yet understandable hunger of her elders’ needs into a hornets’ nest of competing claims.

There was not a bad egg in the crate.

These families had been through so much trauma; everyone in the county, everyone in Wisconsin, for that matter, had heard something of the McKennas’ Sophoclean tragedies. They needed, at least, closure.

They needed finality, a place to start to start over.

She could give them that.

“I’m going to hear them all together, Father,” Emily said. “They’ll want to separate, but this thing needs to be brought under control.” Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 184

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“I think that is wise, Emily.”

Emily glanced through the hall arch at the briefcase she’d dropped beside her bed. The documents within seemed to shake and clamor, demanding she attend to their opposed urgencies.

“Consider what you’re being asked to consider, Emily,” her father cautioned her, after they’d traded assurances of the health of everyone under both their roofs and compared weather conditions in Wisconsin and New Hampshire. “Try to keep your vision trained on the issues right in front of you. You must, of course, be mindful of the circumstances that may proceed from your ruling, but those circumstances are not what you are being asked to predict or to control. Nor are the strong feelings of the families involved, however moving they are.” Her father always spoke for the record.

“And I know that you are not fearful of the possibility of being reversed—”

“I’m not fearful—”

“But it has crossed your mind.”

“Daddy, it would cross your mind in this circumstance, too.”

“It always crosses my mind, Emily. That’s what I was suggesting.

Mindful, but not fearful.”

Emily recalled, with a sigh, the old law-school joke about there being two courses of action in life, one right, one legal. Her father interrupted, “What might distress you as a human being must not distract you as a judge.”

“I know,” she said, “but I can’t help but think of how this family is going to suffer—”

“Do you want to run it past me?”

“I do, but I’m . . . I’m going to run it past Jamie, and I don’t think I have the strength to do it more than once.”

“You’ll do exactly what you need to do. I know that.” She and Jamie sat on their back deck, parkas thrown around their shoulders against the chill that fell fast these late fall nights, their mugs of coffee warming their hands as the hot strong contents went cold.

“Here’s what I’m going to say,” she replied. “I’m going to say that while this interpretation might not be one that I would have agreed with Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 185

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personally, the distinction between relatives by blood and by adoption is one that the legislature has made, and while I don’t know why the legislature made that distinction, it is there and I must abide by it.

“If people don’t agree with the laws their representatives have made—”

“They should address their legislators to change them,” her husband completed the thought for her.

“Yes, and then I am going to go straight ahead, and do what I can to see that this child has . . . there’s no point in prolonging these things, Jamie, beyond the limits of fairness. The issue is not whether every adult with an interest gets a chance to be heard down to the last phrase and clause—”

“It’s not going to be that simple. To be heard. They’re going to go nuclear—”

“Not for long they won’t,” Emily said sharply. “Not in my courtroom.”

“I know,” Jamie said, pulling her head down onto his shoulder. “No one would want to be the one to do this, Em, but you are the one to do it, if that’s any comfort.”

“It isn’t.”

“You’re going to catch hell.”

“I know.”

“That doesn’t change anything.”

“It doesn’t change anything.”

They sat up late, watching the moon veil and then reveal its sump-tuous golden face. Emily drank all of her coffee plus a second cup, and still slept as though she’d downed six shots of tequila instead.

The next morning, the benches along the marbled hall of the Trempeauleau County Courthouse filled like church pews at the peal of Sunday matins. Everyone except his family and the Nyes, Gordon thought, looked bedraggled and sad. He spotted a guy he’d gone to high school with, a hotshot halfback on their team; he wore a flannel shirt over a tee that read “Cat’s Claw Ammo,” and his Fu mustache was stained brown at the corners of his lips. When he caught sight of Gordon, he touched the brim of his ball cap and then gathered up one of the skinny little Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 186

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girl children who swarmed all over him, who all appeared to be the same age, all wearing bright, sleeveless summer dresses, though it was nearly Thanksgiving, and Gordon had welcomed the chance, that cold morning, to put his suit jacket on for the ride. Someone, Gordon thought, had once said—who was it? Thoreau?—to beware occasions that required new clothes. He had worn a suit more often in the past six months than in the previous twenty years of his life combined. Today was just trying, wrangling. He looked forward in time to the day he would be back here, to formally become a father. Katt said soon. Breezy Cindy had approved his home study. All was in order. How would that day be? In a suit again, or maybe not. He and Keefer weren’t the suit type. But Lindsay would be here, for sure. His cousins, his aunts and uncles. He imagined that this moment, formally adopting Keefer, would be how a man would feel on the day he married someone he already knew very well, like Lindsay; though an official seal would be imprinted on something that already existed, the thing itself would saunter along as it had before, comfortable, unchanged. Gordon felt a surge of longing for Lindsay, who’d taken the day off and was at his place with his aunt Nora and Bradie, cooking frantically for lack of anything better to do.

He saw that Big Ray, huddled on a bench down the hall in front of another courtroom, was only wearing a golf shirt. It would be hard to imagine Ray being able to find a sport coat around here that would fit.

The guy had put on so much weight, and it was the kind of heft that didn’t sit well, straining against his shirt and pants as if his clothing hadn’t had a chance to catch up. Diane paced in front of a bank of windows at the far end of the hall, with Delia Cady and, Gordon assumed, a gaggle of suits who were their lawyers. Craig was closely examining the wall. The kid Alexis, who seemed to have grown into a real young woman over the summer, suddenly waved to him. He waved back.

When the McKennas’ own legal troops arrived, there were introductions all around to Stacey Kane, the adoption expert from Madison, a willowy blonde with peek-a-boo hair. She was all angles and gestures, strung so tight Gordon thought that if the hall were quiet, he would hear a tone, like the thrum from a struck tuning fork. Katt explained Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 187

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that Stacey had, by good fortune, been freed up this morning to lend her powerful voice, one of long experience with adoption and the meaning of adoption in families. They would need her. “This is not going to be a slam-dunk,” he told the McKennas, “but we are going to come out of here just fine.”

His parents’ new lawyer, a pleasant-faced older woman called May Hendrickson, bustled from the elevator; she’d been downstairs filing her request that his parents’ guardianship be set aside to make way for Gordon. The Nyes, she said, without preamble, had done the same thing. Then, to Gordon’s surprise, she marched up, shook his hand, and then hugged him.

Lorraine murmured, glancing at the Nyes, “They can’t really mean that thing about Gordon having no standing.”

“They’re grasping at straws,” Katt told her, “They’re nitpicking at some outmoded language.”

“It’s based on something that was clearly not what the legislature intended and which has never been used to deny any person who was adopted any part of their rights as a full family member,” Stacey Cane said, without stopping to draw breath, “and it also just doesn’t make any sense. The law is made for people, people aren’t made to fit the law.” The draggled people were filing into the other courtroom. His old high-school acquaintance saluted as he passed. Then the hall was so still Gordon could hear the harsh caw of a crow outside. Since Diane’s explosive visit, almost eight weeks ago, no member of the Nye family—

except Alex, just now—had exchanged a single word with a member of the McKenna family. Even Nora, who’d taken on the role of the pneu-matic tube designated to physically carry Keefer to the car when the Cadys came to pick her up, had learned to bite her ever-ready tongue.

Details of Keefer’s preferences and needs were relayed in terse notes from Lorraine and went unanswered by Craig and Delia. The wacky duel of motions hadn’t helped. The very temperature in the corridor seemed to be dropping. What were they waiting for, Gordon wondered? And then the guardian ad litem, Keefer’s very own suit, showed up and smiled and nodded at all of them; Gordon had forgotten her name. He could not help thinking that not even one full season ago, all Theory[113-221] 6/5/01 11:59 AM Page 188

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these same people had fallen into one another’s arms, all flaws acquitted in the press of bereavement.

“Where is Miss Keefer?” Katt asked, breaking the silence.

“Home with Nora, her auntie Nora,” Lorraine said.

“Good,” Katt nodded, but his gaze coasted past them, at Faith Bogert, the psychologist, who strode briskly past, saying, “Good morning, all,” and motioning for the attention of the guardian ad litem.

There was a sudden shuffle and clack at the top of the stairs and Upchurch, in his maroon Trempeauleau County Public Works shirt, appeared. Gordon’s first thought was that something was wrong, that something had happened to Keefer.

“Are you okay?” Tim asked Gordon.

“I’m okay.”

“I could stay, but I’m guessing they won’t let me in.”

“Tim,” Mark McKenna took hold of Upchurch’s shoulder and hand, in a warm, brief parody of a wrestle, “Tim, I’m glad you’re here.” The bailiff pushed open the doors. Lorraine took Gordon’s hand.

“How long will this take?” Upchurch whispered.

“Not so long, I guess,” Gordon said.

“Gordo?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I got your back.”

Gordon, who could not speak, nodded and made a thumbs-up. It was beginning.

She was a tiny woman, the judge, doll-like in her voluminous robes. And as she nodded at all of them, Gordon saw her catch her lower lip in her teeth for a moment. Something deep in the fiber of his nerves crawled along the back of his scalp.

The clerk read, “Case 0886896, in the interest of Keefer Nye.

Appearances?”

They all spoke up in turn: “Appearing are Raymond Nye, Senior, and Diane Nye personally and by attorneys George Liotis and Benjamin Malone.”

“May Hendrickson here, appearing on behalf of Mark and Lorraine McKenna. The McKennas are present.”

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“Gordon McKenna appears in person by Stacey Kane and Gregory Katt, attorneys.”

“Mary Ellen Wentworth appearing on behalf of Delia and Craig Cady, who are here in person.”

Victoria Linquist, the guardian ad litem, and Faith Bogert.

“All right, we’re all here,” Judge Sayward began, her voice as small and unassuming as her looks. “And we have a bundle of various petitions to consider. In fact”—she pulled out a pair of reading glasses—

”just this morning there has been filed with this court a stipulation from Mark and Lorraine McKenna and Diane and Raymond Nye that their petitions for guardianship be withdrawn and dismissed. Is this correct?”

“It is, Judge,” George Liotis said softly.

“And there is the petition of Lorraine and Mark McKenna for temporary guardianship to be continued, with the same provisions for visitation by both sets of grandparents, during the interim until the final decision is made in this matter,” added May Hendrickson.