Life Changes

Life Changes

Amy arrives at the courthouse a few minutes early. It is a typical autumn day in central Ohio. Partly sunny with an occasional bite in the air that managed to penetrate even windproof jackets. Amy zips her jacket up tight around her neck as she crosses the street. It is still a little before 8AM, yet the streets are not busy. The streets are rarely very busy in a town with a population of 25,000 people. Amy reaches in her purse for a Marlboro Light cigarette. She used to smoke Marlboro Reds but in an effort to quit, she has cut back to lights. She would love to stand outside and finish the whole pack of cigarettes, even with the occasional cold wind, rather than face what is waiting for her inside. Reluctantly, she checks in at the front window located just inside the door of the courthouse then walks through the narrow, creaky-floored hallway to the back of the small building. It smells like old, legal files. Within about five minutes, Amy’s public defender, Joan Mosley, approaches her.

“Good morning. How are you today?” asks Joan.

“Ah, I’ve been better,” Amy answers honestly.

Joan, sitting next to Amy on a bench, squeezes her hand and smiles. “You’ll do fine. I don’t want you to worry about a thing. You’ll only have about five minutes to speak to the judge when it’s your turn,” she explains.

Amy nods even though she wants to cry. She isn’t sure if she’s getting her kids back but she is sure that this fight is exhausting her.

A clerk steps outside a doorway in the very back of the courthouse and calls “Graham vs. Graham.” Joan escorts Amy into the room. It is the tiniest courtroom Amy has ever seen, although she’s not been in any outside of a jury duty setting. Ted and his new Mrs. take a seat at their table with attorney Scott Dinovo. Amy immediately thinks that Ted’s family is paying Dinovo because he’s one of the highest priced attorneys in town. Everybody knows who he is and he is personal friends with just about every judge in town.

They are given 15 minutes to argue their case. Each lawyer has a brief exchange with the judge. The judge then asks Amy to express to the court why she thinks she should be granted full custody.

         “Your honor, our youngest boy, Trevor, is very sensitive. It would be very damaging to upset his routine by forcing him to live with this woman he hardly knows,” she explains as she shoots a glance at Ted’s wife.

         “You are referring to the new Mrs. Graham present here in this court?” the judge asks.

         “Yes, sir. Taylor also has a routine. He does his homework right after dinner and then I help him study for a test and he just started t-ball last year. Their father works a lot and he would hardly ever be able to spend time with them. They should be spending time with one of their natural parents.”

         “Do you work?” asks the judge.

         “Yes, sir.”

         “And that’s outside the home?” Without waiting for a reply, he asks, “And you would require daycare while you are at work if you were to gain custody?”

         “My sister has agreed to look after Trevor for the days when he’s not in pre-school. She will also pick Taylor up from school before I get home from work,” Amy explained.

         “Is there any reason you think your ex-husband would be an un-fit parent?” he asks.

         “Well, I’m not saying he is cheating on Cindy but he had many extra-marital affairs during our marriage.” Amy explains.

         “That has no bearing on this matter. Your divorce is final and we are not here to argue issues from your past relationship. I repeat, is there any reason he currently  would be considered an unfit parent to your children, Ms. Graham?”

         She thinks about bringing up how Ted had wished her dead when she was pregnant with Trevor or how he would have explosive anger and push her around in front of the kids. Ted had lied during the divorce and claimed that Amy had also cheated on him with the neighbor. She is too concerned about what kind of lies he might conjure up this time if she were to air his dirty laundry a second time in court, so she thinks better of it and simply utters, “Besides his long hours away from home, no sir.”

         The judge asks Ted the same questions. He claims that Amy’s apartment is too small for her and two children because it only has two bedrooms. He says it’s also not in a safe neighborhood, citing crime rates in his neighborhood versus hers. And he blatantly lies about his hours, claiming he’s home by 3PM everyday from his family’s construction business. The judge even asks Cindy Graham if she had anything further to add. Smartly so, she kept her mouth shut for once.

         The hearing ends quickly and the results are not in Amy’s favor. Ted wins custody because the judge thinks he has a more stable home. At least that’s the explanation Joan gives Amy after they are shuffled out of the room and made to wait for the judge’s final decision. More stable only because he’s married and his new wife does not work outside the home. That home wreaker is going to be raising Amy’s boys. Taylor and Trevor. Taylor is six and Trevor is soon to be four. Amy knows in her head that you’re not supposed to favor one child over another, but Trevor has a special place in her heart. He was born a month early and spent the next three and a half weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, “NICU” as it’s affectionately called. Amy had never heard of a “NICU” prior to Trevor’s arrival.

         Ted is of average height, average intelligence and really just an all around average guy. However, he has a chiseled, very masculine face and is very charming. He managed to get his way again in court today with that same charm he used to woo many women over the years. Taylor is a spitting image of Ted. Amy watched Ted talk his way out of numerous predicaments during their marriage. He could convince her of just about anything, that’s how blind her love was for him. These days, she sees right through every bit of his bullshit. She almost feels a little bad for Cindy, the new Mrs. Graham, because she still doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into. She will though. Give it time.

         Amy knew her chances of getting full custody were not great. This is a small town, Ted has one of the most expensive lawyers in town and he can charm a polar bear into buying a wet-suit. In addition to all that, Ted’s family owns a local construction business and he supports his current household as he did when he and Amy were married. The only thing Amy publicly has against him is his infidelities during their marriage; apparently viewed as insignificant to the welfare of the children by the court. On paper, Ted is everything every woman wants, the model husband and father and a loyal man that is part of a longstanding traditional family business. Whatever scandals people chatted about in private regarding the Grahams, no one dared admit in public or in the presence of one of the family. In reality, Ted is quite different that he appears on paper.

         Amy kicked Ted out when she learned of his affairs nearly fifteen months ago. Yes, more than one affair but the one still in progress at the time was the one with the new Mrs. Ted Graham. Ted moved in with the mistress, as was her official standing at the time. He drained their bank account leaving Amy in a house she couldn’t afford, with two kids, no car and no job. She had no choice but to leave the family home, find a job, find an apartment that she could afford and move the kids with her. That’s when the trouble started. When Ted found out that Amy was moving into an apartment close to her job, he showed up with the cops to take the boys from Amy at the family home the day before moving day. He told Amy that his kids were not going to grow up anywhere but right here where he was raised. Her work is in Cleveland and that’s a “real” city compared to Ted’s hometown, located about 25 miles outside the city. That happened about six months ago and Ted has had the children ever since with Amy having to fight every weekend to get to spend any time with them at all.

         Amy has an Associate’s degree in business. The grand plan was to go back to school to get her Master’s degree after both kids were in school full-time so that she and Ted could afford college tuition for both boys. Amy realizes now that she was completely under his spell back then. She did whatever he told her to do without exception. He was her knight in shining armor. She trusted him. She adored him. When she met him, he was the bright light that saved her from darkness that she always thought would one day consume her.

         Sitting at the bus stop, Amy recalls the day she brought Trevor home from the hospital. It was a hot, humid afternoon. He was so tiny. He seemed much more fragile than Taylor was when he came home. She remembers how careful she and Ted had been to always change their shirt after each outdoor smoke. They followed all the doctor’s orders to protect their new baby from anything that might irritate his underdeveloped lungs. He had stopped breathing in the NICU a couple of times during the past few weeks. The nurses told Amy that it was common for preemies to forget to breath. Amy wasn’t sure if that was a valid explanation or not, but she watched Trevor like a hawk. She watched his little chest move up and down while he slept, always afraid to close her own eyes. She wonders if he understands where his mommy is now and why she’s not tucking him in every night. Her heart physically hurts with the thought of it.

         On the bus and on her way to work, Amy’s phone vibrates in her purse. It’s her sister, Shelly.

“Hello?”

“Hey. How did it go?” Shelly asks.

“He won.”

“What!? Was that bitch with him?” she asks, referring to the new Mrs. Ted Graham.

“Of course. And his attorney that his mommy paid for,” Amy responds, sure that Ted could not afford Scott Dinovo. Dinovo has a well known reputation around town and is a member of the “good ol’ boys network” that Ted and his family embody.

“I knew I should have gone with you today,” replies Shelly.

“No, that would have made things worse. The bitch would have said something to piss you off and then there would have been an all out brawl right there in the courthouse. They woulda loved that.”

“Yeah, right. Well, I hate to do this to you today, of all days but...”

“What now?”

“The car got repossessed today,” said Shelly as she waits for Amy’s response.

“Great, Shell. So, now what? I have to pay for that too? I can’t afford this shit,” Amy says in a weak yet angry tone.

“I know. I can’t either. If I could afford it, I would still have it.”

“I gotta go,” Amy hangs up.

She thinks to herself, “Why would I ever cosign a loan for her?” Then she remembers that she was married to Ted at the time. She was still living in fantasy land two years ago. Shelly has a live-in boyfriend who doesn’t help her pay any bills. Amy always helps Shelly, regardless of either one’s relationship status. Even though Amy is younger than Shelly by almost three years, she still is the one that Shelly relies on. Amy keeps telling herself that it’s only money but she just can’t shake off her irritation just yet. 

         Sitting on the bus, almost to work, trying to keep her mind off Shelly’s news, she remembers how things were with Ted. Ted would have never let her get her car repossessed. Ted took care of all the finances. Amy stayed at home and raised the boys and kept the house. She liked it that way. She loved having her responsibilities around the house and not having to worry about money. Not worrying about earning it, spending it, how much to spend, what needed paid first, etc. She was safe and secure in the fact that Ted would always take care of her and the boys. After all, he was her white knight.

It was a tremendous shock when she found out he was fucking his secretary. Not only was he fucking her but she then filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against him. Amy was mortified. Ted’s family attorney made the lawsuit go away. Amy didn’t ask too many questions and she believed Ted’s explanation of his innocence. Throughout the whole ordeal, she had only been concerned about her boys. “How dare he take them from me now. That son of a bitch,” Amy thinks to herself.

She remembered the day Ted came home and said he wanted a divorce. More embarrassment. In a town this size, everybody knows your business so she couldn’t go anywhere without feeling like everyone was looking at her. Of course, the upside to a town this size is that she slowly became aware of all the other affairs when word spread around town of their split because everyone knows your business.

         Amy gets a feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of Ted and all his lies. It starts in her stomach and rolls through her body to her arms and legs. Her heart rate increases and she leans her head back and starts taking deep breaths. Finally, she gets off the bus and walks into work. The fire still in her belly.

         Amy manages a smile as she passes the security guard behind the front desk on her way to her cubicle. She waves her card in front of a device that beeps and then slides two little half pieces of glass apart, wide enough for her to walk through. When she reaches her cubicle, she takes off her coat and hangs it in her locker/filing cabinet.

         She has stacks of paper around her desk in an organized mess, as she likes to call it. There is also a plain, black coffee mug, pictures of her boys and some old newspapers. She has seen some cubes that looked like what she thought the occupant’s living rooms might look like. They have knitting, pictures, magazines, food, drink and she even saw one with a tiny little television with headphones.

         She sits down in her ergonomic, black desk chair. The chair, another of the new purchases meant to modernize the office space and make employees happier. The flimsy chair is surprisingly comfortable. It’s 10:30AM and Amy begins sifting through emails. There’s a meeting invitation for 2PM with her boss and her boss’s boss. She accepts the meeting and assumes it is to catch her up on what she missed in this morning’s meetings. Based on that assumption, she works right through lunch on getting each of her projects updated and documentation prepared on each so that she can brief her superiors.

         Amy is a quality assurance analyst at a mid-sized insurance company. She is responsible for managing several ongoing projects. She writes requirements, tests the new updates and coordinates deployment of those updates to the entire company that encompasses eight states. The job is really a two or maybe three person job. She’s just grateful to have a job after spending nearly seven years out of the workforce being a wife and mother. Life is unpredictable and so here she sits. A divorced, mother of two that just lost custody of her two boys, just got her credit shot to hell because of her sister and is about to walk into yet another bit of bad news today from her bosses.

“Hi Amy. How are you?” asks Belinda, Amy’s boss.

“I’m doing well, I suppose,” Amy smiles at Belinda and John Crass, Belinda’s boss.

“Thank you for meeting with us today, Amy. We both realize how extremely busy you have been lately. And let me just say how much we appreciate your work,” explains John.

“I brought print outs of the current status on all our projects,” Amy said as she hands them each a copy. They exchange glances as they half-heartedly peruse the documents.

“Amy, as you know, we’ve been experiencing some losses lately due to the hurricanes. That combined with the economic climate…” Belinda explains as Amy cut her off.

“So, you’re letting me go?” she directly asks.

“Not permanently. We really don’t want to lose you. You are a valuable asset to this department, Amy.” John explains. “But we are going to lay you off for a bit. Until the economy turns around and we have the budget to start bringing people back.”

John and Belinda exchange awkward glances, both look down at the conference table and smile those I’m so sorry and this is so awkward half-smiles, what Amy had referred to as a “pleasant face.” “Pleasant faces” are only used in unpleasant situations.

“I’m sorry. You can finish out the end of the day today or you can go ahead and go home early if you want. We will pay you through the end of the day,” Belinda explains, still wearing her “pleasant face.”

Amy stood, put on her own “pleasant face” and strode out of the room after addressing them both with a quite “thank you”, fighting back tears that have been struggling to come out all day.

         Amy is now a divorced mother of two who just lost custody of her two boys, got her credit shot to hell and just lost her job. She gathers her things from her desk and walks out through the same half-assed security gate she entered through without uttering another word to anyone and without exchanging the slightest of pleasantries.

Her legs carry her out of the building and back to the bus stop but her body feels disconnected from her brain. When humans suffer a tragedy, they often don’t remember it because the brain has a sort of automatic shut off switch for things that are too much to handle. Amy’s brain is in the process of a traumatic shutdown. She’s been here before. She’s facing that familiar brick wall in her mind. She cannot get around it. She cannot get over it. She cannot walk around it because it seems to go on for miles in either direction. She cannot turn around because backwards takes her back through the events of her day. She runs at the wall in her head, kicks it, hits it, spits on it and cusses at it. She remembers that she beat the wall before, but she doesn’t remember how. Before she met Ted, Amy was hospitalized. She doesn’t remember why but she remembers feeling boxed in by four brick walls around that time.

Amy battles this wall for the entire bus ride home. At one stop away from her apartment, she looks down and sees an envelope between the wall of the bus and the seat. It doesn’t have a name or address on it, just a blank envelope. It feels thick and she becomes curious enough to peek inside. She quickly closes the envelope and looks around to see if anyone is watching. Because it is the middle of the afternoon, there are only a handful of people on the bus and they are spread out so that everyone is at least three rows apart. She stuffs the envelope in her purse.

         Amy is suspiciously looking all around and behind her as she walks the block and a half to her apartment from the bus stop. Once inside the safety of her apartment, she empties the contents of the envelope onto her kitchen table. There are ten one hundred dollar bills and a handwritten note. The note is dated today and is addressed to “Dear Nobody.” It’s a suicide note. Amy is frozen. She feels the one long, brick wall in her head begin wrapping itself around her brain, the pressure is starting and she experiences some tightness in her chest.

         The note is signed “Goodbye, William.” Between the salutation and the signature is a slightly incoherent, painful story of a life. William thanks his family for raising him but says he never felt loved by them. The note explains feeling different and not able to relate to either his mother or father. It acknowledges a great love and respect for his parents, regardless of the disconnect. He thanks his therapist for attempting to make a connection and help the unhelpable. Dr. Hillary is the only other name besides William’s.

         Amy goes to her computer and types in “Dr. Hillary + therapist + Ohio.” She glances at the clock in the lower right portion of the screen. It’s not even 3PM. She buries her face in her hands, takes a deep breath, paces around the room for a few minutes then returns to the screen and punches the first phone number from the first Dr. Hillary in the results on the laptop screen. She immediately hangs up. “What do I say? I am going to sound like a lunatic,” she thinks to herself. She dials again anyway.

         “Dr. Hillary’s office, how may I help you?”

         “Uh…is Dr. Hillary as shrink?” Amy asks.

         “Dr. Hillary is a licensed psychiatrist. Would you like to make an appointment?” asks the voice on the other end of the phone, hesitantly.

         “No, well…I found a note on the bus. It appears to be a suicide note. I know this must sound really strange. But, the letter mentions a Dr. Hillary and thanks him. And it’s signed “William.” Do you have a patient named William?” Amy babbles into the phone.

         “Hold on one moment please?”

         Amy agrees and the voice comes back on the line in about twenty seconds, “Can I get your name and number so I can have Dr. Hillary return your call? He’s with a patient right now.”

         Amy provides her phone number and then hangs up. She looks at the search results and wonders if she should keep calling. She decides to wait for the return phone call.

The money is tempting. She might be able to pay a lawyer to go back to court with that thousand dollars. She decides she will continue to make at least two more calls before 3:30PM and then she will give up. But how long to wait for a response? Two weeks. If after two weeks, no one has claimed the money or the note, the cash is hers.

         At 3:08PM Amy’s phone rings.

         “Hello?”

         “Amy?” asks a deep, soothing Man’s voice.

         “Yes. Is this Dr. Hillary?”

         “Yes. You found a note from one of my patients?”

         “Yes. Well, I think so. It’s a suicide note. The note thanks you for trying to help him even though he says he’s unhealpable. His name is William,” Amy explains.

         “William? Is there any other information in the note?”

         “Uh…” Amy scrambles to retrieve the note to read portions to the doctor. “He says that you gave it a good effort for the past five years, but five years is too long. He says his family didn’t love him. He says the only thing he will truly miss is the smell of his neighbor’s cooking on Sundays and that it made him feel like home. He says…”

         “It is signed, William? No last name? Where was the bus when you found the note?” The doctor is asking questions now about things that Amy can tell are expecting a specific answer.

         “Uh…I got on at 8th and Mohawk.”

         “Can you meet me there and bring the note?” asks Dr. Hillary.

         “Yeah, I guess. There’s one more thing. There was a thousand dollars in the envelope too,” Amy explains.

         “Now? Can you come now?” The doctor has a real urgency in his voice now.

         Amy agrees. Dr. Hillary has the same authoritative tone as Ted’s used to have, forcing Amy to walk out the door even though she wasn’t sure she need to or wanted to. She gathers the money and the note and stuffs it back in the envelope and into her purse. Out the door she goes. Going backwards; taking the bus ride she takes every morning to work. Except this time, she is taking it in the middle of the afternoon when most people are headed home. Again her legs carry her but her mind is elsewhere, racing, because the wall has moved back a few feet, giving her room to think again.

         A tall man with dark hair and a touch of gray on either temple wearing a dark grey suit approaches her the moment she steps off the bus. “Amy?” he inquires.

         She recognizes the voice instantly and nods. He grabs her hand and runs across the street. Amy feels a bit under-dressed next to the doctor. Her long, auburn hair is wind-blown and she is thankful for court for the first time today because she is dressed slightly better than her normal workday attire. She is undeniably grateful that she is wearing sensible shoes because running though downtown would be much more difficult in heels.

         “Bill lives two blocks from here. Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of our patient-therapist relationship. He considers himself to be unhelpable. A word he uses in all our sessions,” Dr. Hillary explains as they jog the two blocks. “He also doesn’t believe there is any good left in the world, which is why I think he tempted you with the money.”
         
Amy wonders if he was breaking patient confidentiality right now. Then she figures that some confidentiality might get thrown out the window in a situation like this. They approach a large, Victorian-style, brick home with a green door. The landscaping is well-groomed and the yard is a lush green with several well cared-for flower beds.

Dr. Hillary dashes up the stairs, dragging Amy, to the front door. A handsome, blue-eyed, stalky, middle-aged man opens the door. William appears to be a health conscious, physically fit, “normal” guy.

“Dr. Hillary?” William seems genuinely surprised and steps aside, motioning for us to enter. The inside of his home is entirely different from the outside appearance. It reminds Amy of the rooms in the homes of those shown on one of her favorite television shows about hoarders. Only William’s place is not yet to the level where he needs an intervention from the show, but he is on his way. Amy begins to wonder if William recently suffered a loss or if he had a traumatic childhood. There is usually a psychological reason why the hoarder begins hoarding. The show always includes a visit with a shrink to get to the root of the problem. Family that has been away for years, often return to help the hoarder cleanup. Amy wonders how long it’s been since William has seen his family.

“Bill, I’d like you to meet Amy. Amy found a letter on the bus. She read it and she called my office. Amy, can I please have the letter?” asks Dr. Hillary.

Amy hands Dr. Hillary the letter from her purse, feeling very uncomfortable in this situation and regretting that she let another man talk her into something she wasn’t sure she wanted to do in the first place. Bill keeps looking back and forth at them and Amy senses that he wants to flee or say something, she’s not sure which. Dr. Hillary reads the note out loud. He then turns to Amy and says to William, “This woman doesn’t know you. You don’t know her. Yet, she read this and she found me and called me. She did all for some man she doesn’t know. What do you think of that, Bill?”

“Why?” William asks Amy. “Why wouldn’t you just keep the money and throw the note away?”

Amy feels her eyes moisten although she isn’t sure why. She’s still not sure if this is some kind of test or trick.  “I don’t know why. It was the right thing to do, I guess. I couldn’t read your note and ignore it. I decided to try at least three phone numbers.”

“I didn’t think there was anyone like you in the world. Why would you care about a stranger so much that you would take the time out of your day to help me?” William begs.

“Why did you leave the note on the bus?” Amy asks William.

“I dropped it.”

“No, it was sealed and in plain site. You wanted somebody to read it. You were hoping for it.”

William shakes his head. He wants to know that good exists in the world, yet he doesn’t recognize it when he sees it.

“Do you really want to die?” asks Amy.

“When I wrote the note, yes.”

“And now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Did you try?” Amy presses.

“Not yet. I have my room cleaned and the pills by the bed. Was waiting for bed time. Figured it might look more accidental. You know, for insurance purposes,” he explains.

Dr. Hillary calls an ambulance to take William to a psychiatric facility where he will get the help he needs. When William is gone, Amy turns to Dr. Hillary and says, “I wanted to die today too. I lost my reason…”

“Come by my office tomorrow at 6:00PM,” he answers without hesitation.

“But, I don’t know…I mean, what do you cost? I just lost my job today. I lost my whole life today.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll work something out. And, you saved a life today. Remember that.”

         Nearly six months after meeting Dr. Hillary, Amy sees a familiar face in the hallway of Dr. Hillary’s office building as she is arriving for her Wednesday afternoon appointment.

         “Amy?” he asks.

         “William?”

         “Amy,” he smiles. More than a “pleasant face” smile. There is something more genuine in it. There is a long pause and a long, non-verbal conversation takes place with their eyes. Amy is not sure if she should hug him or weep. She does both.

         “Would you join me for coffee Saturday morning? At the Starbucks on 3rd at say, 9AM?” he asks.

         Amy accepts, because she’s in a very good mood today, because she actually wants to know this guy William and mostly because she cannot look away from his mesmerizing, baby blue eyes. There is something special in those eyes. She knew it the first time she saw them when they opened that green door that Autumn day.

         “Don’t like your life, just wait a minute, it will change,” she thinks to herself as she enters Dr. Hillary’s office to discuss her new consulting job and the letter she got in the mail today regarding her new custody court date set for next month.