Do Not Pass Go

"Let's just bottom line this," I said speaking slowly and firmly. "Unless you want to hire nannies or farm them out to boarding schools, there's no way for you take the kids. Either way though I'm moving to St. Paul. So decide what you want to do."

It would have been nice to have gotten a reaction out of her, but I really hadn't expected one.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to get any reading done in here, so I'll just read in the den for a little while." Sadly, I was still looking at her face, hoping for one look of genuine concern. "By the way, I think your mother's been trying to call you on your cell phone."

***

I fell asleep on the couch. Though I woke up at 6 AM, Jessie had already left for work. Actually looking at our unruffled bed, it was more likely that she had never slept there to begin with. With three kids to get to school there wasn't time to spend a lot of time thinking about that.

Tate didn't make it into his office until late, well 10 AM his time, but it was 11 AM for me. I wanted to get started on everything, but until Tate officially told me that I had a job, there was no way I was going to disrupt my kids lives. After that I started to check out movers. My cell phone rang off and on all morning, but it wasn't like I had any desire to talk to Barbara.

When my mother-in-law showed up at my door, there was no avoiding her.

"It's not right for you or the kids..." Barb choked out white faced.

"Could we talk about this another time? This is pretty far down the list of things to worry about."

"I don't mean last night." She reached out her hand, but didn't lay it on my arm when she saw me glaring at her. "I meant this morning."

"What the hell?"

"I told her that I wouldn't help take care of the kids and if I had to go in front of a court I would tell the truth."

"Why would I..."

"Jessica went to the bank as soon as it opened."

After that I stopped hearing. Before this it had seemed like a nightmare, but it had been lucid, like I had some control. From that point on it was an avalanche. The kids went berserk at the news almost as unhappy about the divorce as the idea that they were headed to St. Paul. Jenna even left to stay with her mom at Barb's house. Traci just seemed to scream at me. Tommy, well, Tommy was just withdrawn and depressed. This was before I had to leave for St. Paul to start my new job.

Forget taking the kids, my wife had her lawyer bar me from doing that until custody had been determined and of course she dragged that out for months. But while the divorce proceedings were merely interminable, the custody hearing was a long, drawn-out blood letting.

Maybe I should have stayed in Virginia until the custody was worked out. Looking back on it, of course I should have, but back then it seemed that my getting custody would be a no-brainer. Also every interaction I had with Jessica, Barbara or the kids became an armed encounter. Maybe I should have told them about Jessica's cheating. I don't know. It was like Jenna, Traci and Tommy had become different people. They hated the divorce and they hated St. Paul and they hated the idea of losing all their friends.

Oh yeah and they hated me.

Hating me, it became easier to love their mom. I understood Tommy being fooled, but I was sad that Jenna and Traci had bought into the role their mother was playing. Still in a way I understood. After all my love was common, but even a morsel of affection from Jessica was precious.

Pleading with Tate for more time, I put off the move to St. Paul for another month and a half being able to take care of some work by telecommuting. But six weeks in the job was going to disappear and by then I had just been beaten down. My children and mother-in-law hated me -- though for now, all Barb kept talking about was my over-reacting -- and my wife told me I was mistaken about her cheating on me or that in any case I couldn't prove it.

I had been worn down. Staying in the house was an endurance contest. But it wasn't a fair fight. Every day my kids begged me to stay, pleaded with me not to do this. Breaking down I started to tell Jenna about what her mother had done, but she refused to listen. It only made her angrier at me. That was when she swore she would never talk to me again.

Saying I was broken down is just an excuse. Leaving was an act of cowardice. I know that, but it was hard to realize that at the time.

In St. Paul my sister Billie took me in. Suddenly I went from being the evil father to the loving uncle to John and Allie. It's hard to go back to a place where you're hated when you're suddenly surrounded by people who love you.

Having left, the kids had dug in. They swore they wouldn't talk to me until I agreed to come home for good. By the time we saw a judge in the formal custody hearing, it was a case of abandonment. I was an absent, hated parent and my wife, at least on paper, was a full-time, devoted mommy. I wanted to scream when the president of my wife's university made a declaration to the court that Jessica had changed her schedule and now was only working 20 hours in the lab.

Jenna broke her vow not to talk to me. Well, kind of. She was sworn in and testified that she desperately wanted to stay with her mom. When, after swearing on a bible to tell the truth, Barbara stood before the judge extolling her daughter's virtues, it was like the world had turned inside out.

But even my being an unloving, absentee father was not enough., so Jessica's lawyer submitted records to the court proving my mental instability.

It was a load of shit, but there it stood before the judge. And caught flat footed there was nothing to do, but try to explain it in my testimony.

While I was in college my father had a massive heart attack during a screaming match over the Christmas holidays. Jessica and my friends made me go to the school's counseling services... and somewhere there had been an admitting form that some physician-crat had made some note that said "...history of depression and suicidal thoughts?" As if being sad when my mother died or saying that as a six year old I had felt so sad then I just wanted to lay down and die was an attempt at suicide.

But the judge didn't even look like he was listening to my explanation. The fact that someone somewhere had written down "history of depression and suicidal" was enough for him.

Jessica's lawyer asked for a ten minute recess just before the judge was going to make his custody ruling. God, it was like being in a small town and everyone in the court knowing which way things were going to go before the first word had been said. The fix had been in from the start and now being ushered into an armpit of a meeting room everything was coming to a close.

Before going in I had to walk by my children. Jessica glared at me while Traci and Tommy looked desperately unhappy.

It took a moment for us to get settled once we got in the room. After turning for a second nod at my counsel, Jessica's lawyer, a petite florid little man in an Italian suit, smiled. "I think we all know which way the judge is going to rule, don't we?"

What was I feeling? Legal and social claustrophobia. Only my sister and her family supported me now, but they were far away from me now. Even my lawyer seemed unsympathetic, perhaps hoping for a joint agreement between the parties to avoid the record of a humiliating defeat.

I looked at Jessica's lawyer. "No, question you've done a masterful job. If I were the judge, even I would rule against my getting custody."

The florid man's smile became icy. "You wish it was just full custody. We're going to ask the judge to bar any visitation or if there has to be to make it limited and supervised."

I looked at my lawyer and found her avoiding my gaze.

"If you agree to return to the home and the marriage resumes we'll settle for primary custody. Assuming you act in good faith this whole matter is moot in any case."

There it was. All or nothing. My wife had turned our children into tools to bring me back into the fold and protect the precious order in her life.

I leaned over and whispered into my lawyer's ear. "It's a tough decision, wouldn't you say..."

The woman just nodded, but her expression transformed as I continued.

"Tough to figure out whether you are incompetent or if you were bought off."

Maybe it was melodramatic, but my anger had to go somewhere and my lawyer, whether intentionally or not, had offered me up as a sacrificial lamb.

Seeing that I was coming to a decision, Jessica looked over at me and gave me what passed for her as a genuine smile. "This would be the best for everybody, Peter. Just come home and everything is forgiven."

I nodded. "Jessie, you are nothing if not consistent." I smiled at Jessica and her legal shark and got up and motioned for my lawyer to follow me. "Okay, bring on the executioner."

Despite my words, I still clung on to hope.

It's nice to believe in fairytales, but in real life there are no magic pumpkins or itinerant fairies. The truth is Cinderella would have died a spinster after being worked to death in one of her stepsisters' homes.

The judge gave Jessica a polite smile as she entered the court and gazed fiercely at me. He had it easy. Add mentally unstable and a possible danger to self and others to the laundry list of my supposed shortcomings as a father and it was all over. As I found out later, even in a fair fight I wouldn't have had much of a chance in the hands of this 73-year-old southern gentleman who believed a father should get custody only if the mother was in a persistent vegetative state.

As the judge put it, my wife got "Full and Total Custody." Though after considering for a second and expressing serious reservations, he allowed me limited supervised visitation at my wife's convenience.

***

It's been four months since the custody hearing and I'm at the airport headed for a taxi to take me to my first supervised visitation. To start I have two hours to spend with my kids. Two hours and I don't know if Jenna will be there or if Traci and Tommy will speak to me.

I've got myself up for this. Maybe it seems like nothing to people who can see or speak to their children anytime they want, but two hours with my kids are gold. Afterward I'll go back to my motel and do some work before getting up early tomorrow and taking a morning flight back to St. Paul.

This is my life and, no matter how you see it, it really isn't so terrible. The avalanche is over. As bad as it was, I'm digging out. Step one is to see my kids again and do everything I can for them to get over the divorce. Step two is to get the court to give me unsupervised visitation. Step three is to get a new custody hearing.

Today is the start of step one.

More than hope, I have patience on my side. There's only so long that Jessie can pretend to be the devoted, loving mother. And I'll be ready for that mentally unstable bullshit in the next hearing. Most importantly of all -- unless God truly hates me -- the next family court judge won't be a relic of the Confederacy. Well, at least I won't get that one; he died about two weeks ago, my guess choking to death on the ice in his mint julep.