Stranglehold. Part 13

Cindy put the beer down and went to the wall phone and dialed.

It was only noon and Lydia wondered about Cindy having a beer that early in the day, but Cindy was being a sweetheart. She'd got Robert fed along with her daughter Gail and then got them out to school, let her sleep so that she'd only just got up, and said Lydia could stay with them as long as she liked. She knew she'd better get back to the house as soon as possible though. Hopefully this evening. She knew that much divorce law from her first one.

You needed to throw the man out and keep him out. You changed the locks and made an appointment with him to pick up his things and when he did, you made sure there was somebody around to watch him.

The son of a b.i.t.c.h.

The swelling had gone down a little in her face and Tylenol with codeine was keeping the pain at bay-though it made her slightly woozy. She guessed she wouldn't be operating any heavy machinery that day. Oh well. She still could barely see out of the right eye.

She sipped her coffee and picked at her cheese Danish and listened to Cindy on the telephone with Jean TarteIle. Happily-and unusually for Cindy-she was being very discreet about it. Not naming names. She just needed the lawyer "for a friend." Good girl, Cyn.

She didn't need the world to know.

How stupid she'd been.

She felt like an utter fool for not seeing something like this coming out of Arthur months and maybe years ago, when of course there had been clues and danger signs all along.

She felt furious with herself. Almost as mad as she was with him.

Cindy hung up the phone, smiling and waving a piece of paper.

"Okay. We got the number. Jeannie swears by the guy. You want me to call him?"

"No, I'll do it."

"Hey, I don't mind. Stay there and finish your Danish. Have some more coffee."

Actually she felt relieved. The lawyer might ask for details. And she didn't think she could stand providing them just yet.

Cindy was already dialing.

"What's his name?"

"Sansom. Owen Sansom."

The offices of Owen Dean Sansom, of Seymour, Sansom and Winter, Attorneys at Law, lay in a small relatively new professional building on a quiet tree-lined street a few blocks north of the central square.

Cindy drove her there and dropped her off, saying she'd be back in about an hour, she was just going to do some shopping, but not to hurry on her account. She'd wait.

An hour? she thought. It's going to take me over an hour? Well, of course it was.

She would have to go through everything. Not just last night but everything. The entire marriage. The entire mess she'd made of her life and of Robert's.

She dreaded it. She was actually shaking, dreading it.

She steeled herself and opened the door and stepped inside.

Two hours later she was finally beginning to relax with him and by then the interview was nearly over. Not that he was intimidating.

In fact she liked the look of Owen Sansom and she liked his steady calm in the face of her shame and anger. Cindy was right-he was a little bookish-looking, but she thought that might be all to the good. He didn't look like the kind of man who could be outfaced easily by another lawyer. Nor like the kind of man who was just another hired gun. Like maybe there was some integrity there behind the wire-frame gla.s.ses and an actual brain beneath the thinning hair.

"The main question is," he said, "will he contest it? What's your best guess on that?"

"My guess is that he won't. He's a very ... public man. Well-known in the community. I don't think he'd want anyone to know that he ... did what he did."

"What about custody? Is he going to fight you?"

"He'll want to see Robert, I'm sure of that. But no, I doubt it. For basically the same reasons. Plus if he thinks about it at all, he doesn't have the time for Robert. I think he'll just want visitation, some vacation time probably. Not custody."

"How do you feel about that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Allowing Arthur to see him. After what he did to you."

"He's never laid a hand on Robert, if that's what you mean. He's been a ... a pretty good father."

The words were hard to say. And she had to wonder, How could a man be two such different things at once? How was it possible?

"So you think that he's essentially incapable of violence toward your son?"

He was pressing hard on this. Leaning across the desk at her. It was making her nervous all over again.

"I ... yes, I think he is. I think it's women he doesn't like."

He gazed at her a moment longer, then settled back into his chair.

"Okay," he said. "Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go home right now and ..."

"... change the locks."

He smiled. "That's right. Change the locks. I'll phone him and see what lawyer he's using and we'll arrange for him to pick up his belongings at some time when Robert's away from the house, at school maybe. I don't want him seeing your son just yet. And probably, neither do you. Meantime you make duplicates, Xeroxes, of all his and your own accounts and records. We need to see exactly what he's worth and what we're looking at here. All right?"

She nodded. He looked at her. She felt that intensity from him for a moment again.

"You want to go after him for beating you, Mrs. Danse? We could do that. It's a felony. Believe me I'd be happy to help you throw him in jail for a while if that's what you'd like to do."

She'd already thought about this and talked it over with Cindy and by then she'd come to a decision. She wasn't sure it was the right decision, but she thought she'd still stick with it.

"No," she said. "I think it'd ruin him. At least in the restaurant business. And I don't want to do that. Because of Robert. I don't want Robert having a convicted felon for a father and getting grief about that every day after school. I also expect to send him to college someday. And I expect Arthur to help me pay for that. He owes us that much. And he can't do it if he has no business. I want to keep him in business, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. For Robert's sake."

He nodded. "That's practical. And I understand your feelings. But if you don't mind my saying so, he did beat you, Mrs. Danse. So we've still got yet another wife-beater walking around free out there. You sure you want that?"

In a way she thought it was unfair of him. She felt suddenly close to crying. No, she didn't want that. Dammit, she didn't want that at all! What she wanted was to see him punished, put away for as long as the law would allow.

But she couldn't have both. She couldn't have a good strong hold on Robert's future-and maybe even on his sanity, which seemed fragile enough-and still see Arthur hurt too. The two couldn't coexist in the real world and the real world was what she lived in so she'd chosen.

It was having to choose in the first place that made her want to cry. Dammit, it wasn't fair.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's what I've decided. Robert has to come first."

He nodded again. "As I say, I understand. Honestly."

"Besides," she said. Her voice sounded bitter in her ears. She didn't care. "I'm sure Arthur's all very remorseful by now. For whatever good it does anybody. Which is no good. Whenever he loses his temper he's always wonderfully remorseful afterwards."

He looked at her.

"I'm not going to press you, Mrs. Danse. Believe me. I guess that was just my point, though, unfortunately."

"What was?"

"That one word. The word you just used."

He leaned back in the chair.

"Always," he said.

Thirteen.

Visitation

January 1995 It took until two weeks after Christmas for the divorce to come through, not because Arthur was contesting anything but because the wheels of justice nearly stopped turning entirely that time of year.

The terms were fine as far as she was concerned. She hadn't asked for support beyond however long it took her to get back to work again, just as she hadn't in her first marriage. But the child support was generous and she had little doubt that he'd comply with the order.

If Arthur cared for anyone it was his parents and his son.

At Christmas, Arthur had always gone overboard on presents but this year it bordered on the ridiculous. A new four-speed bike. A basketball hoop and net. Rollerblades. A Sega Genesis Game Gear and six game cartridges at about forty dollars apiece. A TV set for Robert's room to play them on.

If he was trying to buy her son's affection, Arthur was at least going about it in a big way. The only thing she hadn't much cared for was having to send Robert over on Christmas Day to collect all this stuff. It was their day, she thought, mother and son, in the only home he'd known all his life. Arthur was intruding on that.

But the settlement naturally included visitation-one overnight a week and one weekend a month and a reasonable split on the holidays. So Robert sat around his father's Christmas tree in his newly rented house for the afternoon, opening presents with Ruth and Harry. So what. Lydia had him Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. The important times. She guessed she could live with that. She guessed she'd have to.

She'd gotten the house and furniture and sufficient funds to buy a new car. She'd been meaning to buy one in better shape than hers for a long time anyway.

"What we have here, though," she was saying to Barb on the telephone a few weeks later, "is a funny kind of situation."

"How so?"

"Well, half the time he doesn't seem to want to go visit Arthur. Christmas was really an exception."

"Robert?"

"I know. He's always been crazy about his father. But I don't think that's true anymore. It sure isn't lately. You know what he said to me when the papers came through? He smiled and said, 'Mom? Are we divorced now?' Can you believe that?"

"So what are you doing?"

"If it were up to me I'd let him do whatever he wants to do. Stay home if he feels like it. But you know Arthur, he's going to insist upon his rights."

"Is he still doing that weird knee-chest thing?"

She sighed. "Sometimes. Yeah, I'm afraid he is."

"And...the other?"

"That too. And the stuttering and the nightmares and all the rest of it. Nothing's changed."

"Well, it might be the divorce. He might just be mad at Arthur for breaking up the family. I know it happens with a lot of kids. Or maybe there's just n.o.body around to play with over at Arthur's place."

"He complains about that. All the kids that live around there are older."

"Maybe that's the problem, then."

"Maybe, I don't know. All I know is I feel terrible having to send him over there when he doesn't feel like going just because the court says I've got to. I mean, Robert should have some say in this too."

"Kids never get say. Kids are still pretty much property. You know that."

"I know. But every time it happens I feel like I'm kicking the family dog or something. I feel like s.h.i.t."

She heard a car pull up into the driveway.

"That's Arthur, Barb. I gotta go."

"Okay. Phone me."

"I will."

She hung up and called upstairs.

"Robert! Your father's here."

Arthur walked in wearing the blond shearling jacket she'd given him for Christmas the year before. Maybe it was supposed to be a reminder to her, some kind of reproach. That no gifts had pa.s.sed between them this year or ever would again. She didn't know and didn't want to know.

He was kicking the snow off his boots on the lip of the doorstep, and when he finished that he turned around and she saw that he was also wearing a pistol in a cowboy-style tooled leather holster on his belt.

"What the h.e.l.l is that for, Arthur?"