At night the supermarkets were open until late and she preferred
it then because it was emptier, free of the noise and bustle of crowds. She made
her way down the aisle in a loose tracksuit pants and jumper, almost no one
else around, trying to look like one of the locals instead of the tourist she was,
running away from home. Mindlessly she dropped a carton of milk and coffee into
her trolley under the glare of unnatural light that made her hands look as wrinkled
as a ripe prune. She had been living on caffeine lately and it had gotten her
so jumpy she felt like one of the addicts Ed represented in court. At the till
the cashier was idly painting her nails in a passion pink colour, her face
perfectly coloured in with blue eyeshadow and red lipstick, her hair in a bun. “At
this time of night,” Lucy thought. When she unpacked her groceries the young
woman nimbly looked up still chewing her gum and said, “This all for you?”
“This all for me yes,” Lucy replied in English.
The woman dragged each item across the counter and rang it
up one by one. She’d added fruit to her list. That was what she ate here daily
when she wasn’t at Lau Pa Sat, mangoes and papaya. On Lucy’s walk back home she
breathed in the night air. It was summer here and you’d sweat even when it was
dark out, especially while you were sleeping.
At her apartment she greeted the desk clerk and fumbled for
her keys before she got in the lift. She turned it in the lock three times
before the door clicked open. The neighbour’s cat was at her front door
entangling himself around her ankles, she picked him up and stroked his ginger
fur until he purred.
“You wanna keep me company, huh?” she said. “Good boy.”
The cat wriggled out of her arms and ran away.
Inside the flat was pitch dark and silent. She couldn’t even
hear the neighbours whose banter through the walls was often her only company. She
was getting accustomed to some faces and people greeted her when she went out but
she hadn’t really made any local friends. She searched for the light switch.
“Dinner for one,” she said aloud.
She had loved the dinner parties with Ed. Back home they
threw them often and he’d invite his office clan. Afterwards they’d sit in the
lounge talking politics like lawyers do, the women in cocktail dresses the men
suave in dinner jackets. It had been something to walk away from.
It was at the last dinner party they had that she had met
Marge. Robert had brought her as a hot date. She was a heavy built woman, tall
with broad square shoulders and a presence that didn’t leave. She was an author
who wrote racy novels and spent her days idling by the beach. She had the kind
of no nonsense attitude that might scare the meek hearted and she joked that a
woman like her needed all man to handle her. She was getting on in years and
she loved to brag about her age.
“Guess how old I am?” she cajoled at the dinner table.
Nobody wanted to answer because it might be embarrassing but
she was insistent, “No really, go ahead, guess?”
A few answers came hesitantly from around the table.
“48,” Sarah guessed.
“Not even close,” Marge smiled, “guess again,”
“54,” Peter said.
“Wrong! Wrong again,” Marge laughed, a heckle that flushed
her cheeks bright red.
“They don’t know, tell them,” Roger said putting his arm
around her shoulders.
“61!” She announced, “I’m retired a year ago, do I look it?
I’ve still got the thighs of 25 year old and a mindset to match”
“You don’t,” everyone around the table gasped.
Marge beamed.
“And you write books?”
“Racy books,” Marge smiled, “Damn straight! Greasy and I
make no apologies. A woman my age has earned her freedom. I’ve spent my entire
life travelling the world - by myself. Never needed a man or family near me
holding me down. I’m a woman unto the world.”
“I’d get lonely if I was away from my family forever,” Sarah
said.
“Loneliness is a state of mind. You can be lonely in the
middle of a large group of people, or by yourself on a desert island and have a
sense of perfect calm. Have you tried meditating?”
And that was what started it. The sense of loss she felt,
the buoying emptiness that started to rise from within and the unputdownable
instinct that she had to be doing more with her life because she was going to
die. That being Ed’s wife was not what her whole life should revolve around. She
had raised two children with him, but he had been at work for most of it. His
work at the law firm had always come first and nothing in her life had made her
more jealous. After a while being his wife, being the kids Mom, it made her
feel she wasn’t living for herself anymore. It was like after she got married
she became a ghost.
That night when Marge and Robert left with the other dinner
guests she asked Ed if he still loved her. “Why are you asking me this?” he
said, “It’s not because of that woman is it? Damn it Loos, she was flirting
with everyone at the table, it was embarrassing.”
“I just wanna know,” she raised her voice. “After all we’ve
been through, the kids, my Mom, the breast cancer, if you still want to be my
husband. Really be my husband.”
Before he answered she said, “Don’t say yes automatically,
don’t. I want you to think about it. I want you to really think about it, and then
in a few days we can talk to each other.”
Did she really want to start a life again, by herself? Wild
how all of a sudden she felt so alone like there weren’t enough people in the
world who knew exactly where to find her, when she was the one who told him she
wanted to leave.
If Ed were here now he’d scoop her up in his arms and hold
her so close she could feel his breath against her skin, the vaguest aroma of
his aftershave staining her clothes. The pores of her flesh swelling as he
nuzzled into her chin, his bristled beard against her neck and he’d whisper
“You still feel like home Babygirl.” He knew she hated it when he didn’t shave
but he had this way of taking her pain and making it disappear.
But that wasn’t what she wanted anymore.
She chopped up the fruit she’d bought and drizzled it with a
light dressing, closed the refrigerator to sit down and write. By the time her
tea had gone cold she only had one paragraph. When she’d left he’d said he wanted
her to stay. He didn’t make it easy to leave. He said if she wanted her so
called freedom she was going to have to fight for it. It infuriated her that
some people got it so much easier and he was putting her through all this. They
had so much history together was what he said.
In that moment she felt like a fool being here, rooted to
nothing, belonging to no one, not really. Running away from what? What was she
leaving him for? Beyond the garden outside there was a scramble of noise
wafting in through the open windows. The locals. That noise was her only company
now. She had come for freedom, but what did that even mean? Maybe she was
wrong. Maybe it was time to go back home and give it a second chance. He said
he’d forgiven her, all she had to do was forgive him too. At the very least she
was going to have to go back to face the lawsuit.
_________________________
“You
wanna get an interdict to keep him away from her? Those laws are archaic and
you know it, no judge will enforce it,” Rob said as he hit the paddleball hard
against the wall. He was sweaty and panting as he ran for the ball that Ed had
just hit.
“It’s
written in law and I’m within my rights to launch an action.” Ed was out of
breath.
“Have you
tried talking to her?... Damn it, I missed that one,” he said as the ball
dribbled off the court and they ended their game. “You win for now, rematch.”
“She left
the country, to think,” Ed said as they made their way off the court and headed
to the showers, “but she's back now. She's convinced she's in love with him.” They
were in the locker room getting undressed and the other guys were asking how
the game went. When they were alone again Ed said, “If I can just keep them
apart, she’ll see it’s just an infatuation, I know it. We have 2 kids together
Rob. I don’t wanna lose my family.”
_________________________
“What do you mean he wants to interdict Peter?”
Harriet was in the garden in a wide-brimmed straw sunhat and oversized
sunglasses delighting in the sunshine. They were at her suburban home as she
pruned her rosebush babies and planted a new batch of St Joseph lillies at the
back of the lawn. “These will bloom come summer,” she said, “I want them near
the lemon trees for the scent.” They were her babies ever since Lucy, her only
daughter, had left home for college and then dropped out to marry Ed and start
a family of her own. According to Harriet, Lucy had not cared that she did not
much approve of Ed and she had wanted Lucy to turn him down in favour of one of
the Davison boys, whose mother was a friend of Harriet’s. Lucy did not let her mother
dictate her decisions and so Harriet for one had not been surprised by the
marriage falling apart, only surprised that it had taken so long. In this
regard, her orange garden gloves, much like her conscience as a mother were stained
in patches of soil and compost.
“Exactly what I said Mom, he’s applying for an
interdict to keep Peter and I apart?”
“But darling, can that be done? He hasn’t beaten you
or anything.”
“No Mom,” Lucy said sipping on a glass of cold
lemonade as she sat at the garden table watching Harriet prune. “Apparently it’s
some ancient law and Ed’s using it to hurt us. Alienation of affection or
something like that. As if the kids aren’t torn up enough already. This is so
typically selfish of him. Arrrgh!”
“What are you going to do?”
“The only thing I can do, fight it.”
“I don’t want to say I told you so.”
“Please don’t. I need emotional support not judgement
from my mother, none of the kids will talk to me. He’s got their heads
completely bamboozled.”
“More than I could get away with with you.”
“He’s blaming me, making them hate me. I went away to
think things through but I just,” Lucy broke down in tears, “I just couldn’t go
back to him. I don’t know what to do Mom. Peter and I are staying together and
now with the interdict looming…”
“Why don’t you move back here honey. There’s plenty of
room, you can arrange to have the kids over, just until all this settles down.”
Lucy dropped her head into her hands knowing that
would appease Ed and she could at least see the kids again while they were
going through this rough patch. She hated that he was ruling her life, but
right now he had all the cards in his favour and he was playing to win. If the
interdict was granted she and Peter would have to stay away from each other and
if that happened she felt positively sure that she was going to die the ghost
she became after she got married.
“You know honey, people talk as well, and you and Ed,
the hotshot lawyer, people are already making judgements.”
“Mom, please.”
“I’m just warning you, this is a small town and you
have to be ready for what might come.”
Harriet pulled at the finger ends of her gloves one by
one and pulled them off. “Oh honey,” she said, and went over to where Lucy sat
and hugged her, “How did you get into this, my sweet sweet child.”
__________________________
The judge was sombre in his black cloak, sitting on
the bench overseeing the courtroom. His gray hair and severe features made him
look stern and intimidating. Both Ed and Rob had appeared before him in the
past. Judge Michaels had a reputation for giving harsh judgements and not
entertaining frivolity.
Ed was a good enough lawyer to know he had to have a
friend bring his case and Rob was one of the best litigators at their firm. He wanted
that personal attachment and he counted him as a confidante and so wanted him
on board, even though this was an application and no litigation was expected. The
two had worked together at Rogers, Moore, and Saunders for over seven years and
had gotten to know each other’s style. One case they worked on together was the
Hailey matter that drew a ton of media attention when the State tried to deport
a group of refugees back to Somalia. Rob fought that case and won.
“Your worship,” Rob said, my client the applicant in
this matter seeks an order of court interdicting the respondent, one Peter
James from having any contact, whether in person or via other forms of
communication with the applicant’s wife.”
“And on what grounds do you bring this application?”
“Your worship, the applicant herein contends that all
the requirements for the issue of an interdict are present, he has a clear
right to protest the applicant’s behaviour towards his wife in terms of their
marriage, legally solemnised in accordance with the Marriage Act of 1961, there
is a well-founded fear that the respondents behaviour will cause damage to the
relationship with his wife and has already directly caused an alienation of affection,
and there is no other alternate remedy under the present circumstances. On the
basis of this, the applicant seeks a court order on the aforesaid terms.”
“What says the respondent?” the judge asked, and Rob
sat down and let the opposition, Ms Rene Phillips speak. “We challenge this
application your worship, on the grounds that the respondent has not enticed or
seduced the applicant’s wife, but what arose between them happened as a natural
consequence of their meeting, and on the grounds that an interdict cannot be
granted on the basis of alienation of affection as the law is premised on the
outdated Marriage Act where husbands had marital power over their wives and
this is no longer in line with current mores of society or with the Constitution.”
“In light of the papers filed, which I have read, my ruling is to grant an interim order pending interlocutory
proceedings where oral evidence will be called.”
Rob gasped and turned to Ed. “Oh fuck!” Rob whispered.
“I can’t believe his doing this.”
“He wants to call oral testimony. That means Lucy and
Peter are gonna have to take the stand.”
“And you too Ed, we’ll need your testimony to substantiate
our application.”
They stared at each other.
Sitting beside Ms Phillips was Peter, the person who was the cause of all the problems Lucy and Ed had been having. It was only the
second time Ed was in the same room with him, and yet he was responsible for ruining his life. Lucy had elected to stay away
from the proceedings unless she was called.
And called she was. They were all going to have a
chance to put their case.
________________________
Lucy and Ed’s daughter and son attended private schools
in different suburbs and Lucy still dropped them off and picked them up again in
the afternoons. It was during this routine that her daughter Peggy had been
very curt with Lucy and this had been the case since she went to Indonesia to
think, and when she came back she had moved out and was now living with her mother
Harriet. This had meant that Lucy had to drive from Harriet’s home to the house
where she used to live with Ed and the kids every morning, a practice for which
she got up extra early so she could be on time.
It was one such morning that Peggy’s teacher Mrs
Josephs had come up to Lucy to find out if everything was ok at home. The teacher
was a middle-aged woman who was thick around her middle and she wore her hair
short as a boy, with plastic-rimmed spectacles and wide-legged pants.
Lucy had felt ambushed by Mrs Josephs questions
especially when Mrs Josephs had told Lucy that Peggy was depressed and that she
wanted to make sure she was getting the right attention from her parents. She did
not want to tell Mrs Josephs that she had left her husband and he was contesting
the divorce as she didn’t think it was Mrs Josephs business to know that much
about their personal life.
“I thank you for your concern,” Lucy said, “please
tell me the behaviours you noticed and her father and I will deal with it privately.”
Mrs Josephs had then said that Peggy had slacked on her
homework and become difficult to manage in class. She was only nine but she had
been in fights with other students and was generally acting out. Mrs Josephs
told Lucy that Peggy had sworn at a boy in class and called him a name which
Mrs Josephs didn’t want to repeat. A name that had to do with sexuality.
On the drive taking the kids home that day Lucy asked
them, and it was not the first time she asked, if they were doing ok, but she
knew that they were not. They had been different with her since she left and
she knew this to be because their father was filling their heads with his own
version of events. She had tried to talk to them before but they had just shut
down so today instead of going home Lucy drove to the ice-cream shop so they
could sit down and talk.
With waffles and pistachio and mint cones they sat
down at a table and avoided each other’s eyes while eating.
Eventually to break the silence Lucy said, “Do you
know why I want to leave?” she asked, and Peggy and Sean didn’t answer at first,
they just ate their waffles, but she asked them again and Peggy blurted out, “Dad
says because you’re a selfish bitch and you don’t want to love us anymore.”
Lucy’s heart sank and all she wanted to do was make
them see how lonely she had been in that marriage, how she loved them but she
had to live for herself too, how she couldn’t sacrifice a chance at happiness,
how she had felt this way for many years and meeting Peter was just the final
nail in the coffin. How she still wanted them to be happy and love them. She searched
for the words and all she could find was that she loved them and she wanted
them all to be happy and free.
“You’re hurting Dad,” Peggy said, and her son echoed, “you’re
breaking up our family.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” she said. “This might
be difficult to go through now, but you’ll see in the end it’ll be the right
decision. Sometimes things hurt when we do them but later we can tell it was
the right thing.”
On the drive home that day Lucy felt low and at fault
and selfish, but she still couldn’t picture herself living her life with Ed
anymore. Too much had happened and she had tried. She typed into Grok, “Child
psychologists in Longview” and it popped up a list of names. When she got home
she chose one and made an appointment for the kids to start going to therapy.”
_____________________________
The street outside was dark with only a few lights
from houses beyond drawn curtains casting yellow glimmering shadows in the
distance. A man was walking his dog and the dog ran ahead of him as the man
stuck his hands into the pockets of his jacket to keep them warm. A car drove
past and Ed, sitting in a parked car under a tree eating a burger heard the feint
sound of music as the car whizzed down the road. Aside from this the road was
quiet and Ed, with the radio on softly, was all alone. He did not know what had
brought him out here, only that he had gotten a sudden urge in the middle of
the night to know exactly where Lucy was and see exactly what she was doing. This
was silly, because parked outside Harriet’s house he could not even see her,
only that the house was already dark. Lucy had always been an early sleeper,
but these days he was starting to feel that he did not know her anymore, that
the woman he was fighting so hard to keep had become a stranger to him. He could
not say precisely when he had started to feel this way, but the woman he had
married had loved him dearly and had wanted a family with him and Ed was not
sure when or how this had all changed without him even noticing it until it was
already too late. Perhaps it was his fault for working so much but he had not
thought it would come to this.
A light in the house went on and Ed’s heart had a
sudden surge of adrenalin as he sunk down in his seat to avoid being seen. He felt
like a criminal and the truth was that he had considered hiring a private
detective to watch Lucy, just to make sure that while the interim order was in
place she didn’t try to see Peter, whom she had been living with when she got
back from Indonesia. He strained his eyes to see across the road and from out
of the house he saw a figure, a woman, Lucy, dressed in jeans and a blouse and wearing
a cap. Ed’s attention went on alert as he saw Lucy get into her car, reverse
out of the driveway, and drive off. Instinctively Ed softened the radio and
turned his car on. He had a sombre hunch where she was going and if he was
right, they were violating a court order and he was going to be there to prove
it.
__________________
The streets were busy but he managed to stay well
enough behind her that he could follow her and she not recognise his car. At a
robot he nearly lost her but he caught up again where she had stopped at the
garage to get petrol. A car attendant in blue overalls was humming a song as he
washed her car windows under the bright lights amid the darkened streets,
dragging a yellow rag across it. Ed could hear the radio playing loudly for the
night staff. It was a new pop song that Ed didn’t know the words to but he
tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and bobbed his head. He watched
Lucy go into the all night deli and she came out five minutes later with a
coffee, still wearing the cap, he waited quietly nearby and then followed her
again. They drove like this for twenty minutes. He checked his watch. When Lucy
turned off the highway a dark dense feeling in the pit of his stomach told him
where she was going, and he was right.
______________________
Ed parked across the road again, this time as Lucy got
out of her car and went into the gallery. She stood at the door for a few
seconds, wrapping her knuckles against the window, the upstairs light was on and
now the downstairs light went on too and Peter opened the door. The two hugged
and gave each other a passionate kiss, then they went inside and the door
closed. Right in Ed’s face.
Ed’s blood bubbled fierce with fury. How could Lucy do
this? She didn’t even care that she was breaking the law. Ed was distracted and
wasn’t sure if he should go inside himself. He knocked his fist against the steering
wheel with a great force and the hooter honked, although he did not mean for it
to. It startled him and then he saw the gallery curtain move from the window
and Peter peered out. Ed ducked low until the face disappeared. He wondered
what they were talking about. The lawsuit? Him? The kids? Or none of them,
maybe they were just talking about themselves. It seemed that was all they
thought of.
Ed picked up his cellphone and rang Morris, his
contact at the police station. Morris had been in the police force for over 20
years and he’d investigated a number of cases that Ed tried back when he was still
a prosecutor. Ed joked he could count the number of times he saw him without a
doughnut in his hand. “I’ve got to report a crime buddy,” Ed said, “can you get
a squad car out to Peter Michaels gallery in the centre of town. It’s Lucy and
that, that, artist she’s fucking around with. Get down here and arrest them.”
_______________________
Ed waited there until the squad car came, still
ducking down and he watched from across the road how the officer knocked on the
door and when Peter opened shirtless he could hear his protests as they cuffed
him and Lucy and threw them both in the back of the police van. At court Peter had told him to sit down and shut up and now he thought No Peter, you sit down and shut up. Ed knew he was
being malicious but he couldn’t help but be enthralled at the satisfaction of
watching the squad car drive away.
_____________________
At home Ed had the kids and when he got in he walked
up the stairs and straight to their rooms to check on them. Lucy was in a cell
by now, he knew this and he didn’t feel sorry for her. No doubt her mother
would bail her out. She had brought this into their lives, she had disrupted
everything. He was no innocent, he knew this, he’d been a workaholic most of
the marriage and it wasn’t like he hadn’t had his share of distractions, but
this. What she had done to their family was unforgiveable.
The kids’ lights were out and they were safe beneath
their blankets as he stood in the doorway, staring at them so peacefully
asleep. The light from outside the window cast shadows against their faces. It hurt
him that what they must be feeling having their family ripped apart, it’s not
what he wanted. They deserved to have their parents together, they deserved to
have their Mom and Dad loving each other.
That she had broken the interim court order just so
she could see that loser was embarrassing. He was an artist of sorts who had
led a hippie life with no structure and no consistency. Ed didn’t respect that.
She’d met him when she went for art classes, sketching nude models every
Wednesday night for two hours, and then one thing had led to another. When she
told him she blamed him. Said that she hadn’t felt seen in years. That he was always
somewhere else even if it was only mentally. An electric wave of regret rippled
across Ed’s chest.
“Dad,” Peggy said, opening her eyes, “is that you?”
“It’s me pumpkin, go back to sleep.”
“Is everything ok? Why are you standing there?”
“Everything’s gonna be ok sweetheart, I promise, go
back to sleep. Love you.”
“Love you, Dad,” Peggy said and closed her eyes
wriggling her small body under the duvet.
Ed closed the door and went downstairs to his study to
pour himself over his litigation files but he couldn’t concentrate. In his body
he was going back to his childhood and how his mother had been with his father.
Ed had not grown up in a stable family, his father had been a man who drank too
much and when he got like that he’d take it out on them. Ed remembered cowering
in his bedroom when fights broke out and sometimes staving his father off to
protect his mother from his fits of rage. This continued until his mother built
up enough courage to pack him and his brother up one night and run away to live
at his uncle’s house where they stayed in a back garden cottage. After that
night they never went back home and they lived in different apartments from
time to time until after high school when he left home for college. His younger
brother was only younger by two years and he got a job to help pay Ed’s
tuition. He shivered thinking of the old times and knew that against all odds
he wanted a stable home for his family. That was why he worked so hard. That
was why he was fighting this with this archaic law that would probably get
overturned but would buy him some time to make Lucy see sense. Ed picked up the
phone and called someone who would understand. He called his mother.
___________________
“What the hell do you think you’re doing to my life?”
It was Lucy and she was at Ed’s office screaming at the top of her voice. She’d
stormed in right past the receptionist who couldn’t stop her in time and broken
up a meeting he was in. She was livid that she had spent the night in prison
and her mother had to bail her and Peter out. “I swear Ed, I’ve tried to be
patient because part of it’s my fault, but I’ve had it. Are you following me
now, is that what we’ve come to?”
“Close the door,” he said and got up to close the
door. “You want everyone to hear you?”
“Aren’t they all already working on our case?”
He stood against the door and lowered his voice. “You
couldn’t wait could you, you just had to see him, it was that urgent. Damnit
Lucy can you just see this for what it is, a crazy infatuation that’s gone too
far and caused too much damage.” Ed walked back to his desk. “Do I really have
to stand here and tell you to think about your kids. Are you that selfish?”
“Me? Selfish? That’s a laugh coming from you. You know
damn well what our marriage was like. If I see you three nights a week I’m
lucky. All I’ve been living for is those kids and you know what, it’s not
enough. I need to feel like I’m still alive. I need love too Ed and when I needed
it from you you just weren’t there and you know it.”
“You know what my family was like. You know how much I
want a stable family. I’ve been doing this,” he pointed around at the office, “for
us.”
“I never asked for this,” Lucy said, “I asked for you.”
Her heart sank and she let her guard down a bit.
“It’s too late Ed. It’s over. There’s no going back
now. When I testify in court tomorrow I’m going to tell that judge that Peter
didn’t lure me away, he saved me from an empty life that looked perfect from
the outside but had nothing to hold onto on the inside. That I was just going
through the motions like an electronically engineered corpse. I’m gonna tell
him Peter didn’t seduce him, but that I’d lost my marriage a long time before
him. And my lawyer’s gonna get up there and tell the judge that this law is
archaic and it can’t be applied to my life just to keep me trapped in a
marriage that hasn’t been what is should be and hold me to a promise to stay when
I’m not happy anymore.
“I’m gonna fight you every step of the way.”
“No, Ed, it’s too late for us. What you need to do is
stop blaming Peter because it is.”
There was a knock at the door and Ed’s secretary
opened and stuck her head in. “There’s an important call for you on Line 2, it’s
about the Solomon’s foreclosure.”
“We’re done here,” Lucy said, “I’m leaving,” and she turned
toward the door and left.
Ed took the call and tried to sound in control, but
the truth was that inside he was shattered. And he wasn’t going to drop the application. He
would see Peter in court.
__________________
“This is a tragedy your worship,” his lawyer began, “a
tragedy of a family that got ripped apart, children who are being torn from
their mother, a husband who loves his wife, who has dedicated his life to them,
being indignified by repeated acts of adultery being committed right in his
face. An indignity which he is continuing to endure. The family unit is the
building block of society your worship, and we should be asking ourselves if
this kind of behaviour should go unchecked. Legally, the first issue to be
clarified is the delict committed against the applicant. Time and time again
the respondent has committed acts of adultery with the applicant’s wife, adultery
which will continue to be committed again and again in the future. The respondent
will show that the applicant’s wife was enticed away from him, alienating her
affections and without court intervention this will continue to go on. The applicant
will show that his wife was induced into leaving him. That they were a happy
family with two children until she was coaxed away by the respondent and was
talked over by him, the acts of enticement proven by incidents his wife relayed
to him. Your worship, the applicant calls upon the court to send a message, to intervene
to save this marriage and restore to the children their mother and the happy
home they were raised in. That the sanctity of the family unit should be
heralded as the cornerstone of society’s foundations and that adulterers will
be penalised for their actions and disregard for basic human dignity. Modernity
and evolution of the law should not erase this.”
The lawyer sat down and turned to look at Ed, who was
sombre in his seat.
“Your worship, the opposing attorney began, standing
up and walking towards the judge’s bench, the applicant is right about one
thing, this is a tragedy, but the tragedy is not that the applicant’s wife was
coaxed away, the tragedy is that their family broke down irretrievably before
the respondent met the applicant’s wife and that she was trapped in a life that
didn’t fulfil her. The tragedy your worship is that the respondent met a woman
who made a decision in her youth which she later regretted but was being forced
to live by. The tragedy your worship is that the respondent is being blamed for
the shortcomings of the applicant in the life he built with his wife. The truth
your worship is the real tragedy. That the applicant met a broken woman who was
desperately in need of love, and if a family unit is the cornerstone of society
then it must be a happy family, not the appearance of a family simply going
through the motions. The real root of society your worship is the individual
and without individual freedom being guaranteed societal freedom can never be
guaranteed either. Your worship the respondent denies enticing the applicant’s
wife away from him and the stories that the applicant cites in his papers
amount to no more than hearsay. The respondent avers that the marriage had
already irretrievably broken down when he met the applicant’s wife. He knew
this from what the applicant’s wife relayed to him. When she met him she told
him she was down, that she couldn’t go on the way things were. The respondent
avers the applicant’s remedy is divorce not interdict. The law has long steered
clear of the husband’s marital power over his wife and an order preventing
adultery cannot be granted as being within the ambit of the court. The testimony
will prove that what happened between them occurred from a natural affection
that flowed without enticement or coaxing and that his wife was more than a
willing participant and in fact instigated the affair.
__________________
That afternoon Ed went for a walk, he felt like being
alone to clear his head and he walked from the courthouse, crossing the road
into the park across the way. At the park he noticed couples holding hands, strolling,
clinging to each other. Couples seemed to favour taking walks in parks and he
seemed to see them everywhere he looked. He was at the pond now and there was a
young couple feeding the ducks. Ed sat down on the wooden bench to watch them
and saw how intimately they looked at each other. Like they had their own
language and were in their own world. The man bent in and kissed the woman on
her forehead and then they walked on, disappearing into the pathway behind a
row of trees. The ducks were gobbling up little pieces of bread they’d left
behind.
Ed for the first time since the lawsuit questioned if
he was doing the right thing. He wanted Lucy to stay, more than he needed to
breathe. But maybe he was the one being selfish. That had never occurred to him
before. That wanting to make someone stay put was cruel when they were telling
you they wanted to be free. From the start he’d seen Peter as the villain, but
for the first time he wondered if that was who he was. To them he would be. He wanted
to ruin all their perfect plans.
Another couple walked past him. An elderly couple with
gray hair holding hands. That wasn’t going to be him and Lucy, he felt that
now, they had started out together in life, built a family, but they weren’t
going to be that old couple madly in love. It was true that he’d worked too much.
That he hadn’t spent enough time. But he didn’t think she’d leave him. He didn’t
think it would come to this. He thought he’d go home later, ask the kids if
they wanted to see their Mom, maybe call his brother see how he was doing. What
would he tell his family, Mom I’ve failed my marriage while I thought I was doing
everything to keep it together. Should he call off the lawsuit, give in. Maybe
then she’d come to her senses and give them another chance. Two kids and 14
years deserved another chance didn’t it?
Ed straightened his shirt and walked back to the
office. This afternoon before he went home he would have to decide if he wanted
to call off the lawsuit or not. It seemed that the threat of it was all that
was left of their relationship. At the very least, he had to come to terms with
that much.
___________________
