I didn’t know what time Mr. Bentley’s eye surgery was on Friday, but Mabel called a short prayer meeting in Shepherd’s Fold before Edesa’s Bible study for anyone who wanted to pray for “Mr. Harry.” As the small group gathered, I worked up the courage to say, “I could also use prayer for my custody hearing this afternoon” without offering any details—and was humbled when two of the women who’d lost custody of their own children when they were drugged out on the street spoke up and prayed for me.
“Rev’rend Liz” Handley, the former-director-now-board-member of Manna House, showed up to cover lunch prep in Estelle’s absence. I had to chuckle seeing her bustle around the kitchen, because Liz Handley and Estelle Williams were as different as chalk and cheese. Liz was short, white, and fairly round in the face, with blue eyes and short, steel-gray hair. Estelle was a large black woman, but tall and solid, her dark hair streaked with silver and usually piled in a bun on top of her head. But she could also wear it down and wavy—I suspected Mr. B liked it that way—very womanly.
Then again, those white hairnets and big white aprons had a way of swallowing everyone’s “distinctives” and turning them into look-alike kitchen blobs.
Whatever Liz was making smelled good, but I couldn’t stay for lunch because my custody hearing was scheduled for one o’clock at the Circuit Court of Cook County, which had its offices in the Richard J. Daley Center in the Loop, and Lee had told me to arrive early. My stomach was in such a knot, I didn’t think I could eat anyway.
Rather than hassle with parking, I took the Red Line, which had an El stop a mere two blocks from Daley Plaza. Passing in the shadow of the towering Picasso sculpture—which looked like a skinny iron horse head wearing two winglike ponytails to me—I merged with the stream of people flowing into the Daley Center and lining up at the security checkpoints. I tried not to stare, but the mix of humanity was eye-popping. Orthodox Jews with long beards and tassels hanging beneath their suit coats rubbed elbows with guys in dreadlocks and pants barely hanging on below their butts. Men in traditional suits and ties stood in line with ethnic women—Muslim?—wearing black head scarves that covered all but the face. What if somebody showed up swathed in a burka? A person could hide almost anything under that. Some people with ID tags were allowed to go through a special gate, avoiding the security check. Lucky them.
The rest of us inched forward. “Empty your pockets, put everything in the bin . . . Put all purses and bags on the moving belt . . . Sir, sir? You can’t take that pocketknife in . . . I don’t care if your granddaddy gave it to you, you can’t take it in . . . Well, I’m sorry. You’ll have to leave it in the sheriff ’s holding room or get out of line . . . Next!”
I made it through security and took the elevator to the eighth floor. I had to ask two different people where to find the room number Lee had given me, but I finally found it with ten minutes to spare. Peeking through the small square window in the door, I saw the back of Lee’s head. Relieved, I pulled the door open.
Lee Boyer stood up as I approached the table where he sat, giving my black skirt, black shell with an ivory embroidered cardigan, small earrings, and low heels a quick once-over and smiled his approval. “Glad you’re early. Philip isn’t here yet.” He pulled out a chair for me.
The smallish room helped my racing heart slow down. A desk for the judge, two small tables facing it for the respective parties and their lawyers, a few chairs behind them in two short rows. No jury box. Clearly a room for a hearing, not a trial.
Philip and his lawyer came into the room with one minute to spare. He didn’t look at me, just sat down at the other table, whispering to his lawyer. A door at the side of the room opened and a white woman entered, brown hair drawn back into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, reading glasses perched on her nose. A young male clerk scurried behind her and sat down with a transcription machine. That made six of us in the room. We started to stand—don’t they say, “All rise” or something?—but the judge waved us back into our seats. For a few moments she didn’t say anything, just studied some papers in a folder.
Finally she looked up. “I presume,” she said, looking at Lee, “you are representing Mrs. Gabrielle Fairbanks, concerning two petitions”—she glanced again at the folders—“one for unlawful eviction, the other for temporary custody of the couple’s two sons?”
Lee stood. “I am, Your Honor. Lee Boyer.” For the first time I noticed he was actually wearing a suit and tie. Well, slacks, sport coat, and tie.
“And Mr. Hoffman”—she eyed the other table—“you are representing Mr. Philip Fairbanks?”
Philip’s lawyer, a big man with wavy silver hair and a Florida tan, also stood. “Yes. Your Honor, my client would like to—”
The judge interrupted. “I will give you time to present your client’s wishes. But I haven’t said my piece. Sit down.” Mr. Hoffman sat.
The judge peered over her reading glasses in our direction. “Mr. Boyer. This is a custody hearing, yet you have asked that both petitions be considered simultaneously. Why?”
Lee had remained standing. “Thank you, Your Honor. The two petitions are relevant to each other. It is because of the unlawful eviction and subsequent disappearance of the couple’s two children that my client is requesting custody.”
The judge leaned back in her chair, took off her reading glasses, and chewed on one of the earpieces, looking not at me, but at Philip. It might have been only thirty seconds, but I felt as if I was holding my breath for thirty minutes. Finally . . . “Mr. Hoffman. What was your client thinking, locking his wife and her elderly mother out of the house—a luxury penthouse, I see—and skipping town with their sons without her knowledge?”
I smiled inwardly. Thank you, Judge! But Philip’s lawyer must have been prepared for the question because he stood, clearing his throat. “Your Honor, this is not an unusual happenstance when couples quarrel, though it is usually the wife who throws her husband out, along with his clothes and golf clubs, and no one thinks it strange that she has sent him packing. Just because in this case the roles were reversed”—he cleared his throat again, more for emphasis than anything else—“doesn’t make it any more heinous.”
The judge leaned forward. “Says who? Mrs. Fairbanks has a right to be in her own home. If Mr. Fairbanks doesn’t want to live with his wife, he can move out.”
I cast an anxious glance upward at Lee. I didn’t want to move back into the penthouse! He gave me a subtle signal with his hand to be patient. Philip and his lawyer were rapidly conferring. Finally Mr. Hoffman straightened up. “Your Honor, may my client speak in his behalf ?”
The judge shrugged. “Of course.” But she said it in the tone that P.J. used when he said, “Whatever.”
Philip stood up. Even as I tensed, dreading what he might say, I realized he seemed . . . vulnerable somehow. As usual, his handsome features were easy on the eyes, his clothes—slacks, open-necked silk shirt, summer-weight suit coat—just right. I couldn’t put my finger on it—the way his eye twitched? the new stress lines in his face?—but he didn’t seem his usual relaxed, confident self. “Uh, Your Honor, I know what it looks like from the outside. But the situation in our home had become untenable. My wife brought her mother and a dog into the home without consulting me, which overcrowded our space. She also took a job that prevented her from caring for our sons during their summer vacation, and otherwise burdened the household with her unwise choices. I know what I did was drastic, but I did it to make a point. Something had to change.”
He sounded so reasonable, so persuasive, I felt like crawling under the table. He made me sound like a totally unfit wife and mother.
The judge frowned. “But block her credit cards? Cancel her cell phone? I understand from what it says here”—she waved the petition—“that you left her virtually destitute with no means of support, and she ended up in a homeless shelter. A homeless shelter, Mr. Fairbanks.”
Philip swallowed. He looked uncomfortable. “She is employed at that shelter, Your Honor. It was natural that that was the first place she turned.”
The judge shook her head. Clearly she wasn’t buying it. “Thank you, Mr. Fairbanks. I’m sure you think you had your reasons. But I am ruling in favor of the petitioner that she has been unlawfully removed from her home and may return immediately.”
I scribbled a furious note for Lee. No!
Lee spoke up. “Your Honor, my client has since been able to find alternative and adequate housing for herself and her children, and has no desire to return to her former place of residence. We are requesting a financial settlement instead to help cover her alternative housing expenses.”
I was watching Philip. He seemed to flinch.
The judge considered. “Hm. Do you have a statement of expenses?”
“We do.” Lee strode forward with a financial statement that included my meager salary and monthly rent for the apartment in the six-flat. The judge looked it over.
“Your Honor!” protested Mr. Hoffman. “Mrs. Fairbanks has recently come into a family inheritance that is allowing her to purchase the whole building! I hardly think she needs financial assistance—”
The judge glanced up at Lee, who was still standing by her desk. “Is this true?”
Lee nodded. “Yes. We have included that on the financial statement . . . there, on the bottom. However, Mrs. Fairbanks is still currently renting, and legally, her family inheritance—which she knew nothing about at the time of her unlawful eviction— has nothing to do with this case. The fact is, Philip Fairbanks unlawfully removed his wife from her place of residence, and in lieu of returning to that residence, she deserves financial assistance to maintain an alternative residence for herself and her children.”
Lee returned to our table. I smiled at him. Good job. I’d managed to get by, even without Mom’s life insurance, but it was the principle of the thing, wasn’t it?
The judge studied the sheet of paper she’d been given. Finally she said, “I agree. I will decide the financial amount after we deal with the custody petition, since this case involves residence for the children.” She took up a second folder. “I understand Mr. and Mrs. Fairbanks have worked out a mutual agreement that their two children”—she consulted the folder—“Philip, Jr., age fourteen, and Paul, age twelve, should reside primarily with their mother with weekly overnight visitation with their father. Is this correct?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Both lawyers spoke together, like Siamese twins. But Mr. Hoffman plowed on. “Which puzzles my client,” he said, “why a Petition for Temporary Custody is necessary. He has agreed to his wife’s wishes in this matter and the boys are currently living with their mother with weekend visits to their father.”
“But as you can see, Your Honor,” Lee countered, “at the time that Mrs. Fairbanks was unlawfully evicted from their home, her husband disappeared with the children, their whereabouts unknown to their mother. It is against the possibility of that occurrence happening again that my client is requesting temporary custody.”
Mr. Hoffman threw out his hands. “My client simply took the boys to their grandparents, where, I might add, they had been staying previously when Mr. and Mrs. Fairbanks first moved to Chicago in order to finish out their school year. Mrs. Fairbanks was not prohibited from communicating with her sons at any time.”
Sudden tears threatened to undo me. The fear and desperation I’d felt when I didn’t know where they were in that first twenty-four hours rose to the surface like boils about to pop. Sensing I might break down, Lee laid a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Breathe, Gabby . . . breathe.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Philip conferring with his lawyer. Was he going to bring up me leaving P.J. in the school parking lot? After a long minute, Mr. Hoffman straightened. “Your Honor, my client agrees to ‘no contest’ to the custody petition— provided that the financial settlement for the, uh, ‘unlawful eviction’ is waived.”
The judge shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. But I motioned to Lee. “Tell the judge we accept!” I whispered. “I don’t want his money. I want custody. Do it!”
“But, Gabby—”
“Just do it, Lee!”