Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘Divorces and family bloodlettings aren’t my bag,’ I tell him.

‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Still, you coulda stayed a little more neutral.’

‘Did you want me to sit in the center aisle?’ I say.

He laughs a little too much, then gives me a look, the kind of tight smile I’ve seen on some men just before they call someone out of earshot an asshole.

As I look in the distance, Jack’s son, Danny, is on a bench against the far wall studying his mother with her lawyer. He is lost in this setting, looking a little like the cartoon caricatures of Ichabod from Sleepy Hollow . For all of his six-foot size he has yet to grow into his ears. He lives for sports, mostly baseball and basketball, watching and playing and fills a hollow leg with six meals a day.

His sister, Julie, is standing a few feet away from him, waiting for an opening to approach her mother.

Julie would not be here except that her mother has forced her to attend. The girl wanted to stay home with her friends, party and frolic as if nothing had happened. Laurel thinks she is spoiled. I think it is Julie’s own defense mechanism.

‘It’s okay,’ Jack tells me. ‘I suppose you gotta do what you gotta do.’

‘You mean my presence here, with Laurel?’

‘Yeah.’

‘This is a labor of love,’ I tell him.

He nods he comprehends this, forming his own favorable interpretation. But Jack doesn’t get my meaning, that this has only partly to do with family ties, the fact that Nikki and Laurel were sisters. I stand up for Laurel and the kids now, in the opposite corner from this man, for the same reason I might run over a rattlesnake on the hot pavement in front of my home.

‘I understand,’ he says. ‘Families. It’s the thing about blood and water.’

I’m thinking sharks. He’s thinking family ties. Jack is giving me absolution, his forgiveness for my bad taste in siding with my sister-in-law. All the while he’s doing a number from Busby Berkeley, up on his toes.

He offers his condolences for Nikki. I don’t remember him at the funeral. I tell him this.

A few awkward starts and he makes amends. ‘I didn’t know if I’d be welcome,’ he says.

I make a face, leaving him to wonder.

He asks after Sarah. I tell him she is fine.

To our right, Melanie emerges from the ladies’ room as if on cue. I wonder if she’s been listening through the lavatory’s louvered outer door. She comes up and does her own straight routine next to her husband’s soft-shoe.

‘Did you meet my wife?’ he says.

I look over at Laurel. I’m not sure this is the right time.

Still, Jack makes the introduction. I nod and smile. She gives me a look like a store clerk wondering if I’ve shoplifted.

She stands silent for several seconds as we pass idle chatter, then finally looks at Jack and says: ‘Did you ask him?’ To Melanie the shortest distance between two points is a direct assault.

‘Gimme time.’ A look from Vega at his young wife. This does not put her off.

‘Jack’s got something to talk to you about,’ she says.

He coughs, clears his throat, smiles at me as if to say, ‘Pushy women.’ Jack’s prance-in-place seems to move to a canter.

‘We’re wondering,’ he says. He looks over at Melanie. ‘We’re wondering if maybe you could talk to her?’ He nods toward Laurel across the corridor.

I give him a look, a question mark.

‘Maybe talk some reason to her. This stuff is really hurting the kids,’ he says. He’s talking about the verbal bloodshed in the courtroom.

‘What the hell does she want, anyway?’ he says.

I am dumbfounded by this tactless frontal assault.

‘Well, you know I could never read her,’ he tells me. ‘Maybe that’s why our marriage failed. Lack of communication,’ he says.

That and Jack’s dozen mistresses.

‘Why don’t you read her pleadings?’ I tell him. ‘I think it’s all pretty clear. She wants the kids,’ I say.

‘Sure,’ he tells me. ‘But you know what I mean? What does she really want?’

I am looking at him, unsure that even he is this dense. The confirmation is written in his eyes. Jack’s looking for some crass financial bottom line, the price to buy his own children from their mother. For the first time I wonder if maybe Jack has doubts about his case.

‘You think she wants something else?’ I’m incredulous.

‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Talk to her. She’ll listen to you. We’re reasonable people,’ he says.

I shake my head, not the kind of gesture that says no, but a show of disbelief. ‘You want me to spell it for you. Laurel wants one thing — the kids.’ I say this louder so that maybe half the people in the hallway can hear it. But Jack is impervious to embarrassment and relentless when he wants something.

‘She’s not capable of dealing with them,’ he tells me. ‘Hell, I’ve offered her the summers.’ He looks at Melanie and they both nod like this is a deal. Six weeks during the summer, a week at Christmas.

‘I’ll even fly the kids out and back.’ He lays this added treat on like the clincher on closure at an auto sale. Melanie’s nodding at his side, batting her eyes as if to emphasize the weighty value of this offer.

‘Not exactly like having the kids, is it, Jack?’ I look at him.

‘Well, how the hell do you think I feel? They’re my kids too,’ he says.

‘Laurel’s not taking them out of the state,’ I remind him.

‘What do you want me to do? I gotta make a living.’ Jack makes it sound like tassel-loafered lobbying is a blue-collar job.

‘Besides, the kids are getting older,’ says Melanie. ‘Danny’s starting to get into trouble. The boy’s picked up with the wrong crowd,’ she tells me. ‘We think we could do a better job.’

‘I didn’t know you were so maternal,’ I say.

She gives me a look, straightens her skirt with flattened palms on curving hips, as if to say, ‘What do you think this body is for?’

Jack steps in before his wife can get into it with me.

‘Did you see the police report?’ he says. ‘On Danny?’

‘I’ve seen it. What can I say? Kids get in trouble,’ I tell him.

‘Come on, Paul.’ He gives me a hearty smile, then gets personal. He puts one hand on my shoulder — something from the male fraternity.

‘You and I,’ he says, ‘we know the realities. Laurel lives in a dream world. The woman’s had a sheltered life.’ He makes it sound like he was slaving in the vineyard through their marriage while Laurel was eating bonbons.

‘That was fine when she was growing up and her father was paying the bills, when we were living together and I was supporting her.’

‘And there are some,’ I say, ‘who might argue that she was raising three children back then.’

Jack ignores this, but the smile fades and his tone becomes more earnest. ‘She can’t take care of Danny and Julie the way we can, and she knows it. You and I know it. Hell, if there’s problems, we can give them the proper counseling by professionals, put ’em in private schools. Can she afford that?’

‘Maybe you should tell the court to increase your spousal and child support,’ I say.

He looks at me dead in the eyes. ‘I thought maybe we could talk reason,’ he says. ‘This is your niece and nephew who are in trouble,’ he tells me.

‘And I feel for them,’ I say. ‘They are now children from a broken family, with all of the attendant problems.’ I dump it, the divorce and all of its progeny, back in his lap.

Melanie gives me a look, something defensive, like maybe the subject is shifting to the question of home-wrecking.

‘You sound like some touchie-feelie therapist,’ he says. Suddenly the touted professional counseling he could give the kids sounds like a labor performed by quacks.