Scenes from Family Court (-Adjacent): Dunkin Donuts Suite
I. One morning, three cops queued in front of me at Dunkin Donuts were ribbing each other gently (they were uniformed) about the usual guy kind of stuff. It was all very desultory. Two were middle-aged, the other a fresh-faced rookie. One of the older guys said something about needing to stop doing overtime because the wife was getting tired of it. Youngblood made a joke about him ending up in Family Court and the two older cops froze. Youngblood wore no wedding ring.
"Not funny," Older Cop #1 said. Quite emphatically.
Older Cop #2 just glared narrow-eyed at the youngster, too disgusted to speak.
"You will never see me in Family Court," #1 said. "Anywhere but there."
Both cops, I swear to you, shuddered at the very thought of the place, then turned their backs on the rookie, squeezing him behind them in the line.
The look on the youngster's face was pure confusion blushed bright red. Methinks he was very lucky they were all in uniform and in public.
II. The young father and daughter at the next table had been unremarkable in their ordinary cuteness. He teased her. She exulted in his attention. They looked much as my little girl and I must have; adults having coffee, vibrating cells righteously ignored for a precious few minutes. Kids carbo-loading and sugar-happy. So similar were we, in fact, I hadn’t even consciously registered their presence just a table over just minutes before. Not until a man’s ass protruding from the front passenger side window of a SUV in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot we shared caught my distracted eye.
Trying to look without looking – this was the suburbs; it was probably nothing – my impatience turned to watchfulness while my daughter took too long with her car seat, dragging out her Mommy-monopoly sans high maintenance brother. That’s when the man’s ass backed out of the window so I could realize we’d just shared adjoining tables. He surfaced empty-handed. So he hadn’t been pearl-diving for that lollipop or dropped toy as I’d assumed, knowing all too well the discarded dignity of parents with small children. So why'd he been half-in, half-out of the car?
Odd. Mid-thirties, careful haircut. Docker-ed professional on a day off. He was too old to be horsing around with beer buddies. Not at a Donut shop mid-afternoon in any event. And…where was the little girl my subconscious suddenly reminded my frontal lobes about?
The SUV began pulling away – my lethargic brain nudged me that it had been doing so the first time, too - and his upper body disappeared inside the window again. The driver had no choice but to stop or drive off with a human hanging from the window, like those old-time drive-in food trays. This time, I made no pretense of not looking. The man popped in and out, in and out, each time the car moved in the least. By this time, it was my daughter who was impatient to leave but I thought I might have a duty to perform.
I could see the car seat in back but not the child. The more this grim game of whack-a-mole went on though, the more I could see of the driver as the car inched laboriously for the exit. A grim-faced, thirty-something woman driver shaking her head mutely, relentlessly, her lips an ever-tightening pinch that looked painful. It was as if one word spoken would cost her a million dollars. I couldn’t hear them or see his expression, but he was clearly speaking and she was just as clearly refusing to turn her head in his direction, which must explain why her attempts to drive off were so tentative. She never burned rubber while he was outside the car, which I found odd because by then, I wanted him to do something overtly violent so I could call 911. Unless this was a child-napping, car-diving was not the answer. Maybe it was a child-napping. But which of them was the criminal? It had to be him. My own lips tightened into a remorseless thin line as tight as that woman driver’s.
I couldn’t whip out my cell fast enough. By the time I’d waded through the bramble of wet wipes, discarded toys and school announcements in my purse, the car had made its halting way off the lot, man-ass more often in than out of the window, and the bastard had the nerve to make his way on foot toward me. We’d shared adjoining tables and now parking spots, as it turned out, but I wasn’t going to budge. I made sure he saw me thumbing my cell and looking daggers at him. To my surprise, when he saw me watching, he smiled.
Son of a bitch.
No matter how I glared, he kept the same smile on his face, a smile so confusing I stopped after 9-1.
What the hell kind of smile was that from someone who would do such a thing with a child in the car, and who would smile in such a situation? I simply couldn’t figure that smile out. Grin never flagging, the man drove calmly away.
With my daughter whining now to get underway, I drove distractedly, trying to figure out what I’d just witnessed. That smile….
It wasn’t a shit-eating grin. He wasn’t gloating and he wasn’t embarrassed. Not a smug, insulting or threatening ‘whatcha gonna do about it, woman?’ smile. Not feigned nonchalance or mind your own business. Then I placed it.
It was a dazed smile. An amazed smile. He'd shocked himself with his own behavior; I doubt I'd even registered to him.
Joe Average couldn’t believe what he had just done. Had anyone ever told him he was capable of such a thing -- dangerously, ignominously waggling his ass out of a moving car window for long minutes with his child inside -- he’d have thought them an idiot.
The guy had no idea that he was capable of something that had to be bizarrely out of character for him – why hoist yourself through the window of a moving vehicle with your kid in the car seat? Even without the kid! I’m betting this was something of which he’d never believed himself capable. Something that only one phenomenon could cause: divorce drama.
I knew then that that was what I'd just seen. And I knew there was no way to know who was at fault though everyone would have a sanctimonious, uninformed opinion - feminists, misogynists, the father's rights brigade, judges, attorneys, CPS workers and court-appointed law guardians. Most of all, smug, no-knothing John Q. "won't someone please think of the children?" Public. A smug opinion just like the one I'd had - borderline-violent non-custodial Dad trying to force himself on a long-suffering ex - until I saw the look on his face. A look I know I've had on my own in the past seven Family Court years when I'd just done something of which I'd have never believed myself possible. Something that only the hell of divorce could have made possible in both us and millions of fellow sufferers.
Now, instead of that evil eye and uninformed condemnation -- and even if he'd been in the wrong in that moment -- I wished I’d caught his eye sympathetically over our car roofs and said, “Divorce sucks, doesn’t it?”
Scenes from Family Court: Meeting in the Ladies Room
If you'd like to donate
When Family Court Happens to "Good" People: Good Litigants vs. Good Parents
Wanna know what "life" in Family Court is like, what it requires of you? Check this out.
It's about accidentally 'pocket dialing' your ex and what a 'bonanza' it can be for winning in court. It's profferred by HuffPo's 'divorce' vertical, a section I read faithfully and by which I am just as faithfully appalled:
"My client, Cindi, came in last week and told me that her ex-husband pocket dialed her when he was having an intense conversation with his new girlfriend about where they should live -- whether they would move in to her place or his, or somewhere neutral, as well as how they would deal with his kids (should they get a place with three bedrooms, for instance, so each of his sons could have their own room).
Rather than letting her ex know she was on the other end of the phone, she slyly listened to the entire conversation, hoping to hear something incriminating. Luckily for him, she didn't. Nor did she hear anything romantic, which might have been too much for her to bear.
One man told me he heard his ex-wife being abusive to their children and, while he wasn't able to use the information in court since he hadn't recorded it, he was able to use it as leverage with her. He let her know that he would be checking in with the kids about how often she was "losing it" with them and, if there was a next time, he would be recording the call."
I just wrote, and deleted, 500 hundred words about what a filth-fest the "successful" Family court litigant must so happily engage in. But if you needed that analysis....you're the good litigant and the bad parent.
re: Call Someone Else
The Absurdities of Poverty: Call Someone Else
When
you're in my situation, you're always applying for stuff. Jobs and welfare
stuff. When you get to where I am, it's much more welfare stuff than job stuff.
As I said, were I hired somewhere today, unless it paid in advance...wouldn't
make much difference.
So, my purse bristles
with much-Xeroxed hand-outs. Fat, stapled packets of front-and-back page lists
of places, many of which sound perfect for my situation. Having made the daring,
fraught decision to spend the precious six hours while the kids are in school
this way (rather than writing, job-applying, or Family Court-preparing), you
track down some organization that, say, provides single moms with housing. Even
though the place is called Housing for Unemployed Single Moms Named Debra Who
Are In Immediate Danger of Homelessness While Being Held Hostage in Family
Court, say, they will be flabbergasted that you called them.
One woman only returned
my voicemail to demand to know who’d given me ‘her’ number. It was a County
Office specifically charged with the housing I was looking for but she acted
like a bouncer who’d found a bum panhandling in the VIP section at New York’s
fanciest velvet-rope club. After I explained that ‘she’ was specifically listed
on a hand-out I’d gotten from my kids’ school’s social worker, she was too
offended to speak for a moment. But just a moment: talking was something, it
turned out, she just loved to do. God save us all from power-tripping gummint
employees. (But as I said, I’ve only been disrespected twice by such folks. Most
are both humane and professional.)
Then, condescendingly
and clearly enraptured with the sound of her own voice, she began to lecture me
on how unbelievably wrong I’d been to have called ‘her’. She explained what
they actually did – which was pretty much what I needed -- but used so much
jargon, that I tried to interject with a question.
“Let me finish,” she seethed.
Oh, I realized. This isn’t
about me and the kids. This is about her.
So, knowing it was
pointless, I said not another word while she dazzled me with her brilliance
about her own job, clearly amazed that I didn’t understand her world. While she
talked, I prepared one of my trademarked, cutting ripostes. Then I thought
about the guy at the gas station that morning who’d cursed out the smiling
cashier for asking how his day was going. He reminded me far, far too much of
myself. I thought about how increasingly
snippy I’d been with the low level service workers on the front lines of our
shaky economy. He’d made me realize that
dignity, what little remains for me, must be preserved.
So I said not another
word, for my dignity’s sake, but also because I was trying not to cry. No
housing here.
I’d been told her
organization was perfect for us, given my son’s special needs. Whether it truly
was or wasn’t, I’d never get past this particular gatekeeper. I wanted to hang up.
I didn’t. I wouldn’t let myself. When her ten minute, pointless lecture about
why I shouldn’t have called ‘her’ ended – of course with the de rigeur list of
all the other places I should call, I
responded with seven words. Seven words, which I forced myself to utter with sincerity,
that turned out to be perfect for such as she and all the others, however
humane, who can’t help me: “Thank you.
Have a nice day. Goodbye.” And rang off.
I wrote down not a one of the numbers she’d rattled off. Why bother?
Surely, I already have them and have likely already been turned down. With more pointless lists of numbers to call.
But, first, someone has
to actually answer the phone. Bless their hearts at all these overworked places
in our current economic meltdown, but Lord just try to get an actual human on
the phone! If you’re lucky, you’ll eventually
be able to leave a voicemail. You will also likely get to sweat bullets, while
you’re going through all the menus, because one of the places you left
voicemail with last week or the week before will pop up in your Call Waiting. Never
fails and Oh! the dilemma of that one. If you switch over, you’ve wasted your
time on this call because, when you
switch back, you will have been
disconnected. Answer or don’t answer the second call, they’re likely just calling
to tell you they can’t help you, and wanting to know why you called them. Then, they’ll give you a long list
of other phone numbers to call.
So, you decide not to
switch over. You leave your voicemail, explaining your situation in all the
details we poor know to provide. Then you get to spend a week or so waiting for
a callback, which will come as you’re working you way down the latest list. God
help you if you miss the callback, because you’ll then have to start all over
again. Rarely will the voicemail tell you if you’ve been approved, or even
allowed to apply. Just that your call
was returned.
But before you can even leave
the all important voicemail, the one that gets you in the queue to be in the
next queue to might lead to an Intake interview, you'll be pressing 4 for this
and 6 for that all day long. Being down south now, at least I can amuse myself
enjoying the marvelous accents on display here. I’d somehow thought TV shows
and movies were exaggerating.
But back to the calls. My
favorite is when you go through all the menus, find the right one, then get
what I call The Okey Doke, or The Loop: "press 4 if you'd like to
remain living indoors for the next week or so, Debra." You press 4. You
hear: "Thank you for calling Housing for Unemployed Single Moms Named
Debra Who are in Immediate Danger of Homelessness While Being Held Hostage in
Family Court. Please listen to the following options as our menu has
changed."
Now you’re in The Loop. You
try to escape, but you rarely do. All the other bums have overwhelmed the
lines. Pressing Other Options just leads you back to #4, the one you need. But
then you just go back to the main number, never able to leave that voicemail.
All you can do is hang
up, pencil them in for another time, hope the logjam of folks like you has
eased when you do so, and try the next number on one of your many print outs. Because
social services pretty much comes down to tired, impotent, underpaid civil
servants telling folks like me to Call Someone Else. “I’m sorry we can’t help
you, but have you tried X organization? Here’s their phone number. And here’s Y’s
and Z’s.”
Then, having gone
through the above ring-around-the-rosie, X, Y and Z just give you more phone
numbers of places that can’t help you.
If one more person hands
me another list, I just may scream.
Then, I’ll do as I’m
told. I’ll Call Someone Else.
The Absurdities of Poverty
Acquisition Strategy for FINOs
no matter the lengths to which my friend-of-40-years-Skippy went, without a job, with two kids to raise alone, and my never ending Family Court drama, I'm just as destitute as I ever was. Moreso,