Ashbee & Son

On a Pullout in the Office

My office had a desk, a standing lamp, a small television, a light-brown dresser, and a couch. The couch pulled out to become a bed. And it was within that tiny room where I would stay for the week that followed. Ingrid wanted to get this thing moving immediately, the divorce. So, the settlement meetings commenced two days after I signed the papers. I hired a divorce lawyer named Kyle Kilpatrick. He was a tall, lanky middle-aged man that was pale as an apparition. He was also bald, and had not but a skirt of light-brown hair wrapping the base of the cue ball on top. Sometimes, when we were in a meeting, the fluorescent lighting in the conference room of Ingrid's lawyer's law firm would make the grease on his head shine like a diamond. He was cheap, too. Cheaper than most lawyers I'd researched. He wasn't highly rated. And that's how I secured him on such short notice. Ingrid's lawyer, some iron-pressed suit named Donohue who looked like he could be on The Bachelor, was a real bastard. She had him on stand-by for months. He demanded that I write a cheque for sixty thousand dollars, and that it be placed at the head of the table for us all to see. He told me that by the end of the week (as I said, she wanted this done quickly), that cheque would be in his client's pocket. Ingrid had obviously been discussing my finances with that ass-chinned, muscle-dummy. That was my savings. I'd been putting money into that account since I was sixteen when I got my first job working at a family-run burger joint on Locke Street in Hamilton. My lawyer, Kilpatrick, did what he needed to do. He presented my case: that Ingrid admitted to committing adultery. If she didn't admit to cheating, if she didn't decide to confess the other night, I would have had nothing to go on. She argued that I was mentally cruel to her and Charlie—neglectful. Donohue was expensive. I could tell. He was good. I don't know how Ingrid afforded him. In hindsight, I regretted not putting up the money for a better lawyer. Donohue frightened my guy. He would break out in a sweat when Donohue argued his case. Kilpatrick stumbled over his words when he argued mine. In the end, she got what she wanted. She got that cheque. The case of Charlie was wrapped up quickly. It was Ingrid's word against mine. And her word was that I neglected our boy. Donohue looked me dead in the eye and asked if that were true. And I had to tell him the truth. The camera was on, its red light beaming like a sniper. I was neglectful. I wasn't a good dad. I devolved into a sobbing mess, and hastily left the room. When I returned, the case was closed. Kilpatrick assured me that it all would play out the way it should. Three long meetings over the course of the week, and it was done. So much had happened, but there isn't much I can say. I was in a daze most of the time. I was in transit, hovering above the room. My mind tripped from memory to memory. One moment, Ingrid and I were in my old Silverado, heading west to Vancouver, driving with the windows down across the open prairies. It was endless with stalks of wheat and wild grasses. And it was all the eye could see until the earth curved on the horizon. We held each other's hands. And we breathed the sweet field, it's essence rushing on the wind—unobstructed, free. Her hair flapped about like a flag in a tempest. She smiled. Her lips formed the words "I love you." Then the image was distorted. Wet paint smeared. And then the next moment I would be yelling at Charlie to quit his crying. I was at the kitchen table, editing a manuscript. He was at the door, crying to go to the park.

"Mummy will take you!" I shouted.

"I hate you!" he shouted back.

I swallowed a glass of poison and went back to work.

I remember my lawyer saying that once the documents had been reviewed and notarized by a judge, it would take up to four months to be official. That was fine. I just wanted it all to be over. Ingrid won. As I said, she got what she wanted. She got everything that she wanted.

I spent some time just lying on the pullout. Half-mad. I was weightless. I waded a starry pool. Eyes burning. Red. Wet. Staring at the ceiling. Stop it. Edmund Ashbee. Edmund. Father. Ingrid mentioning him was the first that even a shadow of a memory of him had materialized in that house. I needed someone to call. I needed help. I had no one. I'd spent the week—which reached from the cool end of May to the warm start of June—thinking of whom I should call. Ingrid was going to take Charlie from me. She was going take everything else from me, too. We did not sign a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement. In our haste to marry, we forewent all rational thought. The bonds of our love would hold despite all appeals toward the contrary. Yeah, right. She made sure I was out of that house by the end of the week. She would visit me every night after she put our son to bed and remind me of it. And I would bite my fist and curse her name.