You're Just the Babysitter, Marcus — Part 2
March fourth, nine thirty, eleventh floor. Simone had a story ready for the mediator, and Marcus had brought the only record he owned.
At 6:10 on the morning of March fourth, Marcus Bell made two lunches and set them by the door.
Turkey for Nia. Peanut butter for Des, cut on the diagonal, because a square sandwich was a different sandwich.
He put the notebook in his work bag at 6:22.
He stood there a second after he did it.
Then he zipped the bag and went to get the boy up.
“Is today the day?” Nia asked at the table.
“Today’s the day.”
“Are you wearing that?”
“What’s wrong with this?”
“Nothing.” She ate some cereal. “It’s fine.”
He went upstairs and put on the other shirt.
When he came back down she was still at the table with her spoon in her hand.
“Dad.”
“Yeah.”
“If she wins.”
“Nia.”
“If she wins, do we still get Saturdays with you?”
He sat down across from her, because a question like that deserved a chair.
“Yes,” he said.
That was the only part of it he was sure of, so that was the part he said.
At 7:40, Rochelle drove, because Marcus’s hands were doing something he didn’t like.
“You eat?” she said.
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The heater made the noise it made. She turned it off.
“You bring it?”
He put his hand flat on the bag in his lap.
“I’m not going to open it,” he said.
Rochelle checked her mirror.
“Okay.”
“They’re her kids too, Ro.”
“I heard you.”
“I mean it.”
“I said okay.”
She took the exit and did not say the other thing she wanted to say, and he loved her for that the whole rest of the way downtown.
At 8:40, on the east side of the river, Gregory pulled into the parking deck and left the engine running.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You want me to come in?”
“You can’t.”
“Then I’ll be right out in the chairs.”
Simone checked her face in the visor mirror and closed it.
“Hey,” Gregory said. “Three years is a long time to keep a woman from her kids.”
She looked out her window at the concrete.
“It is,” she said.
The room on the eleventh floor had a long table and eight chairs and a window that didn’t open.
Harold Whitmore came in at 9:28 with a folder and set it down square with the edge of the table.
He was older than Marcus remembered.
“Mr. Bell.”
“Mr. Whitmore.”
“Sit anywhere. Folks always want to be told.”
He took out a pocket watch, looked at it, and put it away.
“Two minutes.”
Simone came in at 9:31 with a young attorney in a gray suit.
“Ms. Pruitt,” the attorney said, and gave Marcus a card he didn’t need.
Marcus had no card. He had a bus schedule in his coat pocket and a shift to make up on Saturday.
Harold put on his glasses.
“I’ll say the same thing I say every time. I don’t decide anything. I write down what the two of you can agree to, and I note where you can’t.”
He looked at each of them once.
“I had you both in this building three years ago. I remember it went quiet and reasonable. Let’s try for that again.”
At 9:52 Harold asked the question he asked everybody.
“The letter asked both parties for documentation of the parenting schedule as it currently occurs. Ms. Pruitt?”
“We have the decree and a summary of requested contact.”
“Mr. Bell?”
Marcus put his hand on the bag.
“I have something,” he said. “I’d rather not put it in.”
Harold’s face didn’t move.
“That’s your right.”
Across the table, Simone let her shoulders down about an inch.
Marcus saw her do it.
At 10:02 Ms. Pruitt read the petition and then Simone talked.
She was good at it. She had always been good at it.
“I’ve asked for them for three years. He schedules around me. He books things on my weekends and then acts surprised.”
“Give me an instance,” Harold said.
“There was a whole stretch last fall.”
“A date, if you have one.”
“I’d have to look.”
Harold wrote something short.
“Which school are they in?”
“The one off the parkway.”
“The name of it, if you have it.”
Simone smiled with about half her mouth.
“I’d have to look.”
Harold wrote something short.
He had not raised his voice once.
At 10:19 it came out of her the same way it came out on the mat in February.
“With all respect, he isn’t raising them. He’s just there.”
“Ma’am.”
“He’s the babysitter. He’s always been the babysitter.”
Ms. Pruitt put a hand on the table, not quite touching her client’s arm.
Harold set his pen down.
“What’s the difference,” he said, “between raising them and being there?”
Simone opened her mouth.
Nothing came out for a second, which for Simone was a long time.
“Money,” she said finally. “A house. A yard.”
“All right.”
“A future.”
“All right.”
“You keep saying all right like it means something.”
“It means I wrote it down.”
Marcus said one thing, and he said it to the table.
“I’m there at four o’clock.”
“That’s not parenting.”
“It’s most of it.”
At 10:22 she went one inch too far.
“And Nia won’t even talk to me now. She’s been coached. He’s had three years to work on that child.”
The room got very still.
Marcus unzipped the bag.
He took out a spiral notebook with a bent cover and a rubber band around it, and he laid it on the table in front of Harold, and he sat back down.
He didn’t say anything while he did it.
Ms. Pruitt looked at it.
Simone looked at it and then at the wall and then at it again.
“That’s a grocery list,” she said.
At 10:41, after he had read for eleven minutes without talking, Harold Whitmore stopped and asked his first question.
“Mr. Bell. How far back does this go?”
“March, three years ago.”
“Every scheduled Saturday?”
“Every one.”
Harold turned to the last twelve months and put his finger on the page and went down it.
The pen he was holding didn’t move.
“Scheduled visits in the last year, twenty-six.”
Nobody said anything.
“Attended, three.”
Ms. Pruitt stopped writing.
“Canceled the same day, fourteen.”
Simone put both hands in her lap.
“No call at all, nine.”
Harold turned another page.
“Ma’am, do you want to hear these?”
“No.”
“Then I won’t read the dates.”
He closed the notebook halfway, and then he stopped, and he opened it again.
He took off his glasses.
“I do want to ask about the last line.”
“What last line,” Ms. Pruitt said.
Harold turned the notebook around and slid it across the table so it faced her.
“Every entry has one.”
And he read one, slowly, in that flat courthouse voice of his.
May 20. 10:00 a.m.
No call. Nia waited on the step until 12:30.
Told Nia: Mom’s car wouldn’t start. She loves you.
He turned two pages and read another.
October 14. 10:00 a.m.
Canceled 9:52. Said work.
Told Nia and Des: Mom got called in. She’s proud of your report card.
He turned to the front.
December 24. 4:00 p.m.
Did not come. Phone off.
Told Des: Mom’s stuck in traffic somewhere. She got your drawing.
Harold set the notebook down.
“Mr. Bell. Is that in every one of them?”
Marcus looked at the window that didn’t open.
“She’s their mother,” he said.
Nobody moved for a while.
Ms. Pruitt read the open page again from where she sat, tilting her head, the way you read something you hope says a different thing the second time.
Simone was looking at her own hands.
“I was going to come,” she said.
Nobody answered her.
“The May one. I was in the car.”
Harold didn’t look up from the page.
“I got as far as the exit,” she said.
Marcus heard that and kept his eyes on the window, because if he looked at her he was going to say something he’d have to write down later.
Harold put his glasses back on and squared the notebook with the edge of the table, the way he had squared the folder.
“Ms. Pruitt,” he said. “I’m going to note this documentation in the file.”
“I understand.”
“You’ll want to sit with your client before we go any further.”
“I understand.”
“It contradicts the petition on its face, and I don’t believe I need to explain to you what that does to it.”
“You don’t.”
Harold checked the pocket watch.
“We’ll take twenty minutes.”
Marcus reached across and took the notebook back, and put the rubber band around it, and put it in the bag.
He did not look at Simone while he did it.
He had thought about this exact minute for three weeks, and now that it was here he found he didn’t want any part of it.
Harold stood and buttoned his jacket.
He waited until the attorney was out the door.
“Mr. Bell. I’ve sat in this room a long time. Most folks bring me what the other person did wrong.”
He picked up his folder.
“You’re the first one brought me what he told his children about it.”
At 11:06 Marcus came out into the waiting area and it was the chairs, the water cooler, the magazines from two years ago.
Rochelle was in the second chair with her coat still buttoned.
Gregory was three seats down from her, holding two coffees, one for a person who wasn’t there yet.
The glass door swung and Simone came through it with Ms. Pruitt behind her.
Marcus watched her cross that carpet.
She sat down beside Gregory and she didn’t take the coffee and she didn’t say anything at all.
Gregory looked at the side of her face for a long moment.
Then he set both cups on the little table and stood up.
And he started walking toward Marcus.
The story continues in Part 3.