The train surges, and lights flicker. The car goes scary dark like the tunnel outside, then the lights come back on again.
2.
“Just a little?” I ask.
Kelly Payne shrugs painfully. I see her eyes fill.
“Sorry, dumb question,” I say, wishing I could find the right words. I’d had hopes that today would help her.
She forces that straining-to-seem-happy look that breaks my heart. “No…not dumb,” she sighs. “I loved the show. It was coming out of the theater that sucked, feeling reality hit again.”
“Reality, what a concept,” I mutter.
“And Madame Tussauds after?” Her hands crunch the team’s printed program. “I hated it! Those figures are all dead.”
“They’re wax.”
“The Adriana Lima figure looked really dead. That place is depressing!” Kelly glances out at the speeding tunnel; then sees in the glass, like a veil hung before the ancient, blackened stones, her own reflection with dark-circled eyes.
She looks back, and starts tearing at the team’s program. It’s on blue paper with the word “CONGRATULATIONS” at the top. They won the Connecticut State Championship, and the day was a gift from the town. (What special kids we have!) The program, listing train schedules and the Broadway show Aladdin and other stops, appeared in the local newspaper.
Shredded blue bits drift from Kelly’s fingers to the floor. My eyes stay on them, knowing what it is to feel heartbreak.
Across from us, her best friend Jordan Clark groans and leans to pick them up. “Jeez, Kell, mess! Do you know what you’re doing?”
“No.” Kelly stares down at the blue bits. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
I fear those words will haunt me.
But for now I just sigh, feeling exhausted from the heat and stress of the day. School ended on Wednesday; today is an unseasonably hot, early June Friday, and running around Manhattan ever is not my idea of fun. I speak from experience. So what am I doing here?
We have a head coach and two other assistant coaches, making four of us. (“Once a trackie always a trackie” we smile, and try to keep the weight off.) We pinch hit for each other because none of us has much spare time, but Kelly’s mother asked me to do today. “For, you know, support and…watch her,” Terry Payne said tearfully over the phone. My desk in my little bungalow was piled with work and briefs and appointments, but I said sure.
Jordan is stuffing the torn blue bits into a paper bag. “Depression sucks,” she tells her friend feelingly. “Just try to hang on, okay?”
They’re sixteen. I listen to them discuss how to hang on.
Kelly is the only child of a divorcing couple. I represent her mother. As if adolescence isn’t hard enough, she feels lost and grieving and angry…only she doesn’t know who to be maddest at: her philandering father or her difficult mother. For months she continued to live with Terry Payne in what had been their family home. Terry loves her, but they fought a lot. Five nights ago Kelly stormed tearfully out and into Jordan’s home. Terry gave reluctant permission, and the Clarks were welcoming. Jordan’s had her problems too. There was optimism that the pair would help each other.
“…because your parents are nuts,” Jordan is saying, squeezing Kelly’s hand, her long dark ponytail falling forward. “You gotta save you.”
I give another helpless sigh, search for words to intervene, and come up empty. Give them a few minutes for this.
My background is really in criminal law, five years of it in Manhattan. Three years of assistant D.A. work started to get soul-crushing and dangerous - one angry relative pulled a gun on me – so after two more years with a criminal defense firm – less real violence, several falsely accused clients - I hit the books and switched to this, a different kind of heartache. Probably not the best choice for someone getting over gut-wrenching loss…
I am reminded of soft, loving eyes, of Ted, and tears sting. Since my own parents’ divorce, I’d been sad for years until he buoyed me, made me believe in happiness again. Images come at me, too fast to handle. Ted’s death mixed with close-ups of my mom and even long-ago flashes of my father. Happy times. Birthdays and pony rides and memories that explode when your dad walks out…
Stop.
Deep breaths. Look out at the flickering black tunnel…
Divorce law is the most emotionally laden part of the law; you get drawn into families’ worst pain. “Worse than dying,” one client said. Conflict between parents