Chapter 8 - The Severing of the Cord
The hearing was held in the district court in Grand Rapids on Tuesday morning.
The hallway of the fifth floor smelled of floor wax, wet wool, and the bitter, stale steam from the vending-machine coffee.
Eleanor sat on the long oak bench outside courtroom 5B, her hands clenched around the handles of a black vinyl pocketbook that looked twenty years old. She wasn't wearing the dusty-rose lace dress; she was wearing an old navy-blue sweater with pills under the arms and a pair of dark slacks that were salt-stained at the cuffs.
Beside her sat Bridget.
Bridget had no makeup on. Her hair was pulled back into an untidy knot with a plastic clip, and she was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt that belonged to her high school boyfriend—a boy who was now thirty and working on an oil rig in North Dakota. She didn't look twenty-four; she looked forty, her skin gray in the fluorescent light, her fingernails bitten down to the pink quick.
When Esther walked down the marble corridor with Ellis and Sarah Vance-DeJong, Eleanor didn't stand up. She leaned forward, her voice a sharp, whistling hiss that echoed off the terrazzo floor.
"You must be very proud of yourself, Esther May," Eleanor said.
Her voice was not loud, but it had that terrible, cold venom that only a mother who has chosen one child over another can produce.
"Your father’s in an orange jumpsuit like a common car thief," Eleanor said. "He hasn't had his blood pressure pills since Sunday morning. His ankles are swollen like hams. And you're walking around with that Holland lawyer like you're Lady Bountiful."
Esther stopped three feet from the bench.
She did not look at Bridget, who had pulled the hood of her sweatshirt down over her eyebrows. She looked at her mother.
The welt on Esther’s cheek was fading now, turning the color of an old mustard plaster, but the skin was still tender near the temple.
"He hit me, Mom," Esther said.
She didn't shout. She didn't whisper. She spoke with the simple, unanswerable clarity of an entry in an account book.
"He was angry!" Eleanor spat. "He was pushed! You pushed him, Esther! You’ve been pushing him since you were sixteen years old with your little lists and your little receipts! You think you’re better than us because you can add up a column of figures! You think because you went to that community college and got that desk job you don't belong to this family anymore!"
"I don't," Esther said.
Eleanor blinked. Her mouth stayed open for two seconds, her hands tightening on the vinyl bag until the fake leather creaked.
"What did you say?"
"I don't belong to this," Esther said. She reached into her wool coat and pulled out a small, brass ring with four keys on it: the key to the back door of the house in Rockford, the key to Arthur’s pole barn, the key to the tractor shed, and the small, flat key to the post office box behind the car wash.
She dropped them onto the oak bench between Eleanor and Bridget.
The brass made a cold, heavy *clatter* against the polished wood.
"The fuel oil account has been transferred to your name," Esther said. "The electric bill has been transferred to your name. The well-pump warranty is in the drawer by the sink. If the line freezes this winter, call the township. Don't call me."
"Esther!" Bridget wailed from under her hood, her face finally coming up, wet and mottled with red patches. "What about my car? They’re going to sell it at the auction! The tow yard wants seven hundred dollars to release it!"
Esther looked at her sister.
For twenty years, she had looked at this face and seen the little girl who had dropped her ice cream cone in the gravel, the little girl who had cried until Esther gave her her own cone, the little girl who had needed three tutors to get through ninth-grade algebra while Esther sat at the kitchen table doing Arthur’s tax returns.
Now, she saw nothing.
She saw an empty space behind two small, selfish eyes that had never once looked at another human being without wondering what could be taken from their pockets.
"You can walk, Bridget," Esther said. "It’s four miles from the house to the grocery store. It’ll do your ankles good."
The double doors of Courtroom 5B opened with a heavy, hydraulic sigh.
A court officer in a brown uniform stepped out, holding a clipboard. "Matter of Arthur Vance. Preliminary examination and bond review. All parties inside."
Arthur was brought through the side door by two bailiffs.
He was not wearing his dark charcoal suit. He was wearing the orange two-piece scrub uniform of the Kent County Correctional Facility, his wrists cuffed in front of him and secured to a chain around his waist. His hair was dry and wild, sticking up in gray tufts where he had slept on the canvas mattress, and his face was that dull, gray-yellow color of lard that has been left in a warm cupboard.
When he saw Esther sitting at the petitioner’s table beside Sarah, his eyes flared with that old, familiar rage—the look he gave the tractor when the starter solenoid clicked and died.
"Your Honor," Arthur began, his voice raspy from forty-eight hours of jail water, "this is an outrage. I’m a lifelong resident of Kent County. My family has farmed fifty acres in Sparta since—"
"Mr. Vance," Judge Post said, not looking up from his computer screen. "Be quiet."
The judge was sixty, had white hair cut very short, and wore silver-rimmed half-glasses. He didn't look like a man who cared about the history of the Vance family dairy herd.
"I have before me a motion for protective order filed by Sarah Vance-DeJong on behalf of Marin Vance," the judge said. "Attached are sixty-four pages of certified records from Old Kent Bank, three affidavits from St. Jude’s Senior Living, and a criminal complaint from the county prosecutor charging third-degree elder exploitation and misdemeanor battery."
The judge looked over his glasses at Arthur.
"The bond is set at twenty-five thousand dollars, cash or surety," Judge Post said. "No ten-percent provision. In addition, I am entering a permanent no-contact order between the defendant, Arthur Vance, and the protected parties: Marin Vance and Esther Vance-Miller."
Arthur’s hands jerked against the belly chain, the steel links rattling with a dry, sharp sound.
"Twenty-five thousand?" Arthur croaked. "Your Honor, that’s impossible! I don't have twenty-five hundred! We don't have that kind of money!"
May you like
"Then you will remain in the custody of the sheriff until your trial date in May, Mr. Vance," the judge said. He signed the blue order with a heavy black fountain pen, his hand moving with that swift, indifferent speed that belongs to the law. "Next case."
---
