George Higgins - A change of gravity

For some reason of random malevolence, those days for Hilliard were also a season of especially fierce battles on the Hill. Hilliard summarized it as a period of 'hand-to-hand politics, but I was grateful for it. The war in the House was child's play, comic relief, compared to the one that was going on in my private life."

At last angry enough to file Hilliard was impressed, describing her admiringly to Merrion as 'madder than a hornet' Mercy categorically refused sound advice from her lawyer, Geoffrey Cohen, to cite 'cruel and abusive treatment' as her seemly choice of grounds for seeking the divorce. "No, Mister Cohen," she said, deferring acceptance of his invitation to address him as "Geoff until she was certain that he fully understood whose wishes were to govern their dealings, "I've already spent far too many years of my life living in the land of make-believe.

I'm going to spend the rest in the real world, calling things by their right names. Adultery's the reason I told him to get out. Separation hasn't changed it. Adultery's the reason that I'm going to give the judge."

Geoffrey Cohen liked to describe the four-lawyer practice that he ran from the second floor of the restored two-story white-shuttered brick building he owned on North Main Street in South Hadley as 'just an ordinary, quiet little country law firm with a rather boring probate practice' leaving it to clients and their chastened former spouses to promote his reputation as one of the most relentless advocates anyone could ever hope to find to extract money and exact revenge, 'which in most cases where you represent the wife amounts to the same thing."

He deliberately did not look the part. He kept his chestnut-brown beard carefully trimmed van Dyke style, and with studied nonchalance subtly adapted the New England college-town uniform: good tweeds (lapels rolled, not pressed) and flannels (never baggy, rumpled or frayed, always sharply creased), with lightly starched (custom) shirts, striped or neatly patterned ties woven of heavy gauge silk, and highly polished leathers. This made it possible for him to commute with faultless ease among his appearances in the courthouses; his regular engagements as adjunct professor and guest lecturer on regional colonial history at the several colleges in the area; and his performance as the cellist of the Sebastian Quartet of Amherst, giving evening concerts of music of the Renaissance in the tidy small Congregational and Unitarian-Universalist churches of Western Massachusetts. "It really would be more discreet, you know, if you did it the way I'm suggesting," he demurred, not giving up, when Mercy first wearily rejected his suggested neutral phrasing of the divorce libel.

"I'm sure it would be," she said. "But I still want to do it my way. I don't have much appetite for discretion these days. Dan's discretion's what enabled him to make a plain fool out of me all these years, and my sense of propriety, along with my cowardice, enabled me to help him do it. It was supposed to make me feel good, but it hasn't, so now I've reached the point where I want to try something else. I want to go ahead and tell the actual truth, see how that makes me feel."

"Yes, but this would be judicious discretion," Cohen murmured. "In court you can gain valuable brownie-points for it. Voluntary self-restraint. When you have this kind of case: parties well-known; the name is familiar, prominent, even; judges get nervous. They get jittery before anyone utters a word in court. They see potential for big trouble in a case like this. So some obvious self-restraint can pay big dividends. If they see you're doing everything you can to make it as quick and painless as possible for everyone else who doesn't necessarily want to be involved but has to be, they appreciate it."

"Cruel and abusive' was the customary summarizing euphemism collusively employed in those days, before 'irretrievable breakdown' or 'irreconcilable differences' were officially recognized as serviceably sufficient grounds for legal, collusive termination of marriage. It indicated that each of the parties had become completely fed up with the other one, usually with more than adequate reason on both sides.

"C and A-T' meant there would be minimal public indignity. In fifteen minutes or less the wife and a relative or friend could provide all of the evidence needed. The wife would be sworn to tell the truth. She would duly falsely say that her husband had once thrown an ashtray at her, missing her by several feet but frightening her and causing her to become sad, so that she had cried. The corroborating witness would testify that while she had not observed the actual trajectory of the ashtray, the wife had called her immediately after the incident and between sobs told her that the husband had thrown an ashtray at her.

The defense would waive cross-examination. The court would accept the plaintiffs evidence as prima facie proof that the marriage should be dissolved. The defense would not offer any evidence. The prima facie proof would become conclusive.

To insure that everything would go smoothly and the bland but arrant falsehoods would go uncontradicted by the husband, his counsel would have strongly advised him that since his presence would add little to the charade, everyone would be more comfortable if he did not attend it. Consequently he would be nowhere near the courthouse the day the case was heard, thus avoiding even the possibility that he would become noisily incensed upon hearing practical lies told about him in a good cause which he supported when calm and throw some kind of a fit, disrupting arrangements.

"So, why do that, drag it all out in the open?" Cohen said soothingly to Mercy. "The sentiment's already solidly in your favor. Everyone already knows why you're making it official now, why you threw the guy out. It's not as though you really need to spread the dirty linen on the public record for everyone to know how he's mistreated you.

"The judges feel ever so much more comfortable when you leave that stuff out, so they don't have to see themselves as somehow getting involved in the messy business. It's almost as though they seem to think that when sexual misconduct's alleged, their fingers get sticky, too, handling the case. They're kindlier toward plaintiffs who spare the sexual details. Especially when they can imagine very well indeed, as you can bet they do in your case, all the juicy things you could've said, but didn't. How thoughtful and discreet you are. It makes you look good."

"Mister Cohen," Mercy said. "As my dear husband likes to say: "Spare me all that stuff," only stuffs not what he calls it. What you're telling me is that if I downplay to my judge why I put him out, you'll make brownie-points with all the judges because they're scared of my big bad husband. They think he'll bury their next pay-increase bill if any one of them does anything that makes him mad. But here you come now, looking out for them: You persuaded his wife to be good.

"Danny's always said you're one slick little bugger." When he heard the adjective slick Cohen wrongly jumped to the conclusion that Mercy was sanitizing Hilliard's characterization for his benefit, and that bugger had not been the noun that Hilliard had used. Cohen began to feel a bit of bloodlust for the fray. "That's the reason I'm hiring you. But so you'll be slick for me, not on me. So, forget it. I wont play nice. If they're too dainty to read the word adultery on a piece of paper, they should try being the innocent victim. Try living with the reality of it for a while. See how it makes them feel, having people pity them; laughing at them behind their backs when they go down the street. Or else find another line of work.

"No, now it's Danny's turn. Let's see how he runs for reelection with his behavior out in public. If this doesn't get him at least a Republican opponent, if not a primary challenge, then we'll know the opportunists must've become extinct. "How can you believe this guy?