Ch 13 Part 2 – Bulldogs and Pinchers

Back to Chapter 13 part 1

Chapter Thirteen – Bulldogs and Pinchers  Part 2

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Martha – During your pregnancy, you read a lot of books; correct? I’m sure you attended Lamaze classes.  Did Ethan attend those with you?

                Ashley-He did.

Martha-Did you attend some birthing or parenting classes at the hospital?

                Ashley-Just the Lamaze classes.

Martha- There were no other classes?

                Ashley-No ma’am

Quick Martha, ask her again before the cock crows.  All of a sudden our Mondays at Memorial hospital watching films and learning child CPR never happened.  Maybe I should check if those makeshift-Kevorkian’s there after Katrina never had to assist the terminal with no electricity.

411

Martha- Isn’t it true that while you were pregnant Ethan read to you and the baby all the time?

Ashley-I read it was good for him to read to her.  There were occasions, but I would ask him and he had tired of it towards the end.

Martha-Did you send Ethan a Father’s Day card in 2004 on behalf of Penelope, where you wrote, “Thank you for reading to me every night?”

Ashley –If you have a card then maybe I did.  With Ethan I do a lot of positive reinforcement and encouragement.  I make it something he wants to strive for, so he can be a more involved father.

Martha – Do you recognize this as the Father’s Day card?  Would you read it for the court?

Ashley – This is a picture when she was in my stomach.  I wrote, “Dad, thank you for reading to me every night.  I really like the story about the moon.  Thank you for making Mommy take good care of me.  She’s great, but nobody looks out for me like you.  I feel safe with you.  I can’t wait to see you face to face.  I’m lucky you are my daddy.  I love you.  Penelope.

Martha – In 2005, did you send him a card and thank him on behalf of Penelope for things she loved: tours, ice cream, looking at fish eyes, watching football, cuddling.

                Ashley- I-

Martha- Yes?

                Ashley- I am sure I did.

Martha- Did you make up the fact that he participated with Penelope and cuddled with her?

                Ashley-No.

Martha – On the 2006 card, did you say that he’s a wonderful father?

                Ashley- I may have said that.

Martha-Did you tell him that you couldn’t have done any of this without him? That he was giving and loving?

                Ashley-It’s very possible that I said that, yes. 

Martha- Would you say that you and Ethan had a difficult time communicating while y’all were married?

                Ashley-Yes

Martha- Is it fair to say that Ethan tried very hard to get you to talk and you had a difficult time talking?

                Ashley- No, I was comfortable talking. 

Martha- Did you on numerous occasions give him as a gift or sentiment, a token that would be good for one hour of talking?

                Ashley-Yes

Martha-Why would you have to give him a token to talk to you for an hour?

Ashley-It would be on something I would want us to resolve, but he would just want to talk for an extensive period of time.  We had joked, that he was more female to talk about things a lot.  The tokens, there was a token for a back scratch, a token for-I mean, there was probably ten or, you know fifteen different tokens that I gave him.

Martha-Before you physically separated, you hadn’t ever told him you wanted a divorce, had you?

Ashley- No, we talked about it numerous occasions.  In my parent’s house we talked about so often that every time we got into an argument the D-word came up.  Repeatedly, I asked him to get counseling and get help and if he didn’t the ultimatum was always that this was not healthy for Penelope.  After we got in the house we would not be crying about it anymore.  We would just talk about like adults about what the consequences would be.  We talked about it on numerous occasions.

Bam, Bam, Bam, shots fired, insert machinegun fire sound.  The bullet lies were in panic mode to cover up the big lie.  In Ashley’s whole soliloquy she still managed to dodge uttering the word divorce.

Ashley wanted the world to believe super-mom, was also super-wife, that she had done everything in her power to “save” our marriage, to save me from myself and to rescue her daughter.  Jump on the grenade quick.  Penelope is safe from the boogie-daddy.  Token, what tokens let’s hide the real one in this ball pit of tokens.  There’s a, look over there for the “I’ll lick the toilet clean” token!” 

(Footprints can no longer be tracked in melted snow.  Private conversations between a husband and a wife that actually occur can not be questioned by an outside party, let alone those that never existed.  I write these words not as a polemic to assuage my innocence or goodness neither to swindle or rile a captured audience, nor to defame my opposed in State proceedings, but to walk along this path inside myself. 

I invite you into a world passing internally.  As fact and fiction parade around your ear drums, in your own existence; I share the solace of conviction and revel in embracing how we stroll these promenades is the pinnacle.  The how is the gift or wound we grant ourselves.  So this State-sponsored stage of plaintiff versus defendant is not one against two, but one against oneself. 

Independent of the subtlety or depravity of the acquisition, truth sits evident to the individual.  The defendant is exclusively aware of his culpability and the intensity in which his defense is a ruse to mitigate repercussion or substantiate his acquittal.  These truths stand paramount in the stage, yet in the grandest of journeys bow to the intensity in which one goes about asserting these pleads.  So for the innocent to burn the city in which others must reside in order to prove his vantage point; he would commit a greater offense.  For the guilty to place suspicion on an innocent to escape conviction, he would commit the greatest of offense.

So as I write this story, question the inferences of my testimony, motivations, rationality and swirl the trials of your days, the courtrooms your brothers and sisters have set you to the witness stand to hold account.  The verdict is far secondary to the raw context held inside one’s individual temple of knowing one’s own how, and having this boom out exponentially into our collective.)

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Martha- Was Ethan happy at his job in Dallas?

                Ashley- Ethan loved his job at J.B.A. Group.

Martha- He was willing to give that job up to make you happy by moving to Nottoway?

                Ashley- Yes, that’s true.

Martha- Did you testify earlier that Ethan actually asked you to leave in December of 2008?

Ashley- Yes.  His words to me were, “If you want to leave this marriage, you can leave this house.”

Martha- Do you recall Ethan going with you to visit at least three different schools with you in Dallas?

                Ashley-No.

Martha- How is Penelope doing in school?

                Ashley-She is doing well.

Martha knew like a boxer how to sneak those little jabs in to Ashley’s pride to get some truth out in the open.  Anything just Ashley and I, Ashley could manipulate.  Public pride situations were Ashley’s vulnerability to reality.

Martha- On Penelope’s kindergarten at Pine, you and Ethan were able to discuss and come up with an acceptable decision for both of you?

Ashley-Yeah, up until February we even agreed on a visitation schedule and we hugged on it.  We never, I never, expected that we would be here in today.  We discussed that returning to Pine would be less traumatic on Penelope.

413

Next up was Penelope’s math teacher Linda Swanson.  Similar questions came out by Trunchbull as with Ms. Jones.  Linda at least said, “He showed me pictures of Penelope’s room at his house, and how much he loved Penelope, how important she was to him.  He broke down.  He was crying.  My heart went out to him.  I was crying too.”

Judge- Who is Mr. Ringer?

Trunchbull- He is an individual that had an interaction with Mr. Baker with respect to Fantasy Football, Judge.  Actually I was going to take Mr. Baker next.

Judge- Ok. It’s just twenty till twelve.  I guess we can break Mr. Baker up.  Does one of you have Ms. Bricksham’s deposition I can look over during lunch?

Trunchbull- Enter Exhibit 4

414

Trunchbull – All right, so you don’t have any immediate family in the Osceola Parish area; is that correct?

My daughter lives in the Osceola Parish area.

Trunchbull- Other than Penelope.

No

Trunchbull-Describe what kind of child Penelope is.

Penelope is an imaginative, energetic child.  She is intelligent and loving little girl.  She likes pink and dresses.  She likes to play and create her own little worlds with her little animals, to do art projects.  She likes to come up with make-believe names and have adventures.  Penelope is a well-adjusted and loving normal five year old.

Trunchbull-How would you describe your relationship?

We have always been close.  We are father and daughter.  There aren’t many relationships closer.

Trunchbull-Have you ever had any trouble dealing with Penelope?

No.

Trunchbull- Has she ever screamed trying to get away from you?

She has screamed in arguments where she is throwing a fit and she didn’t want to go in timeout within her mother’s presence, in my presence.  It is not directed towards anything but the fact that she is a normal five year old trying to learn where the boundaries are in life.

Trunchbull-Was there ever a struggle in Ashley’s parent’s house where you were trying to close the door and shove her into a bedroom and she was trying to get out of the bedroom?

I recall Ashley and me participating in trying to put Penelope in time out in Penelope’s bedroom.  Both Ashley and I were struggling to get Penelope to calm down.

Trunchbull-Were there ever struggles where Ashley was mowing the grass and Penelope would come outside and wave a white flag at her mother?

I recall what story you are trying to tell, which is a fabrication of what actually happened.

Trunchbull-What actually happened?

Ashley loves to cut her grass.  One Saturday Penelope and I were watching cartoons.  Penelope decided she wanted her mother as any normal five-year-old is bound to do on occasion.  I tried to talk to Penelope, “Mommy is busy right now.  She is cutting the grass.”  Penelope did not want to listen to that, so she went to the door and decided to go outside.  I calmly followed her.  Ashley was on the lawnmower unable to hear anything.

I told Penelope, “I’m going to get mommy’s attention,” so I waved to Ashley and Penelope calmed down.  I picked up a little stick on the ground and I said, “If you want Mommy’s attention just pick up a little stick and you can wave like Daddy and Mommy will come,” and Penelope calmed down.

That is what Ashley is referring to as the little white flag.  It was a creative distraction that I came up with to try to de-escalate the situation.  Ashley finished cutting the grass and Penelope and I went upstairs in her playroom.

Trunchbull- So since December 2008, is it your position, is it not, that you provided more care for Penelope than has her mother; is that what you are telling The Court?  In what way specifically?

Yes.  I provided more care for my daughter by being honest with her about my life and my role as a father.  I am not trying to put down on the type of mother Ashley is.  The fact is Penelope has two good parents, two people that love her.  The thought process that I was anything but a wonderful and loving father to Penelope is a fabrication of the truth, meant to meet Ashley’s own purposes.  There does not have to be a monster created or mutation of the truth here. 

Penelope has two loving parents who will take care of her and love her.  The dichotomy between the Ashley that I knew in my married life before December 15, 2008 and the reality that has transpired subsequent to that is the crux of why I feel I have provided more care, because I would never do that to my daughter.

Trunchbull-You would never do what, sir?

                Put her in a position to be away from one of her parents that much of the time.

Trunchbull-So you believe that because Ashley chose to divorce you that she somehow has not provided as much care for your daughter as you have?

No, ma’am.  That is not what I said.  I feel like the fact that Ashley is trying to deny Penelope the presence of one of her parent’s is detrimental to Penelope.

Trunchbull-Is that how you see what Ashley is doing? She’s trying to deny the presence of her father in Penelope’s life.  Is that what you think?

I feel like Ashley is trying to fabricate the reality of our marriage for her own means and that hurts Penelope.  I love Penelope and Ashley loves Penelope.  I think it is sad that we are all here sitting in a court today rather than settling this between adults with fifty-percent custody where Penelope has both of her parents able to support her in a commensurate measure throughout her life.

Trunchbull-Correct me if I am wrong, but your position is today and has always been that unless you get 50/50 we’re going to be in this courtroom, right?

No, I have tried to talk to Ashley about commensurate schedules where I had less than fifty percent custody, but more than she suggested.

Trunchbull- What is magic about this 50/50 during a twenty-eight period?

I feel that time represents opportunities to be in my daughter’s life.  There are little things I am going to miss, her smiles her joys, to share.  I want to be in Penelope’s life for every stage, kindergarten, elementary, junior high, high school, to one day walking her down the aisle.

Trunchbull-Why did you take the opportunity and what did you tell the teachers after orientation at Pine Montessori?

In the information that was sent to me about the witnesses in this trial, Ashley wrote that there were negative thoughts about me from two of the teachers that were there.  I had no idea where those comments could have come from; if Ashley was just making them out of thin air; or if those teachers had actually thought something negative about me.  I asked Ms. Bricksham if I could meet her with the other two teachers that were here today.  I did not ask to meet with any of the other teachers.

I asked to have the opportunity to talk with them for maybe ten minutes after the orientation was completed.  All the children were gone.  I left it up to them.  I did not mention what Ashley sent or put down on Ashley in any way.

I told them: I love Penelope with all my heart.  If you have any questions or concerns about me as a father or about Penelope’s life with me, please ask. 

I also had concerns because Penelope has been through this process.  She is living in two different homes.  It is a process any child at any age is going to have to emotionally learn and can be difficult.  I wanted their input.

Trunchbull-Why did you bring the pictures?

For the meeting. I asked them, “If you would like to look at these you can.  If you do not want to look at them, or you do not want to get involved in this, that’s ok.”  I would have never had that meeting if Ashley would not have introduced them into this process.  I do not feel that their role here today is anything, but to corroborate what Ashley is purporting me to be under a false pretense.

Trunchbull-Did you make a statement about child support?

If child support came up it was a question of: I don’t understand why this is going on where this schedule that we have is so stiff in Ashley’s mind.  I don’t know if it is for child support.  I don’t know why.  All I know is, I love my daughter.  I am here today to stand up for Penelope and her relationship with her father.

Trunchbull-Did you testify in your interrogatories that, “Ashley just wants to reduce the guilt she feels having abandoned our family;” is that your position today?

I think part of Ashley’s inability or reluctance to discuss what actually happened in our marriage in an honest and heart-felt manner is part of trying to come across as a Supermom or Mother of the Year and put down on me to push her self up as part of a band aid for that guilt.

Trunchbull-Now there has been a lot of discussion here today about your playing a game of Magic?

                For some reason.

Trunchbull- Do you recognize these pictures, Exhibit 5?

Trunchbull handed me website blown-up photos of the most evil dragon, zombie, demigod of revenge monsters in comic gaming art she could muster, trying to represent this as the Rater-R stuff I exposed Penelope to.  She asked me thirty-nine questions on Magic the Gathering and eleven more on fantasy football. 

We bypassed Mr. Joseph Ringer’s testimony with my email copies being submitted into evidence.  I found some solace that Joseph had to drive up to Nottoway from New Orleans for five hours of sitting around doing nothing, just to fuck with me.  I had actual attendance records from the internet on the Friday Magic.  Ashley and her lawyer were astonished that I participated in Magic less than thirty days in every year back to 2006.  Thank you, Al Gore.

415

Lacey was next.  Her spell was cast in a poof-poof boppity-boop Fairy Godmother cloud.  I was a disinterested depressed and angry man.  I was an apocalyptic crazy in an Armageddon atmosphere after hurricane Katrina. 

Lacey got her last drips of venom out as my mother-in-law while she still had legal jurisdiction.  Lacey discussed how Hilton would sit at home drinking a cocktail on her Girls Nights out with Ashley and Penelope, but I was always at whatever Magic was.  According to Lacey, I never attended their outings, not once.

Trunchbull –Did you ever see Ethan get down on the floor and play with Penelope?  Did he spend time with her on a daily basis?

                Lacey-Not much, not much.

Trunchbull- Describe Ethan’s demeanor with Penelope?

Lacey-Rigid, strict, not compassionate at all, very demanding on her.  Ethan would get frustrated and it would turn into incredible, incredible fights.

Lacey testified that I got mad at Penelope because Penelope did not learn how to swim.  Oma was teaching Penelope to use a flotation noodle.  I tried to work with Penelope to put her face in the water.  I guess being a swim coach, a lifeguard and teaching at least thirty kids to swim when I was in high school was trumped by a smoking grandmother who saw through my mal intent.  The idea that Lacey or Ashley could ever sabotage Penelope’s development with their impeccable decision-trees was sacrilege.  (Yes, incredible Lacey, incredible.  Where is Ernie K-Doe when you need him?)

416

Hilton batted clean up for Ashley.  Construction-Hilton talked about doorways.  Hilton recounted how I slammed the door in his face one night when he was coming upstairs.   Penelope was screaming with Ashley and me in the upper room.  Hilton painted by number and contrasted happy-perky Ashley to quiet-withdrawn Ethan. 

One night in the Dominican Republic coming back from the bar, Hilton heard Penelope crying through the third-world walls for bedtime.  Hilton swore he could, “boom” cure Penelope’s cries with his miraculous touch, but bastard Ethan refused to open the door.  Hilton burst out an event where Ashley and Lacey went shopping and Hilton refused to allow Penelope to ever be left alone in my care again.  I had imprisoned Penelope screaming behind the upstairs doorway.  “Ashley took care of Penelope period.”  (No one needs to look behind this door.  Just keep your emerald glasses on Scarecrow.)

417

No one ever asked, “What is it like for a four-year-old to live in four different houses in her first four years?  What is it like to go through Katrina as a one-year-old?  What is it like to have a mother that never lets up, that was always doting in every conceivable second of time, with a maternal grandmother on the left wing and a grandfather on the right?  What is it like to be Penelope? 

Is Penelope permitted to have a natural temper or is this foreign expression of frustration so un-Hingle it must be Baker-bred?  What is it like to never be allowed to express any emotion other than plastic-painted amplified joy in front of her entire maternal genome?

How can a father have a place when three people are pushing him out the way and a child is taught to mandate mom?  Mommy never says no.  Oh, just Montessori redirect.  What do you do when the answer is no?  McDonalds drive-through, appeasement pyrrhic victories only work so many times, Oma.  Why do I have to be the bad guy; because I love Penelope enough to take the bullet.

418

I always struggled with speaking up for myself, with making friends, with feeling like anybody ever wanted to hear what I had to say or to be around me.  I was a simple imperfect a bit anti-social man trying to live in my triad of a family.  I never wanted to be on Hilton’s turf, but I lived behind enemy lines for Ashley. 

They basically called me an aloof distant stitched-shut tongue freak of an in-law.  When did the Hingle’s ever contemplate my distance was a preventative measure to avoid disrupting Hilton’s castle-dynamic?  When could I ever say anything about anything to Ashley’s parents?  When could I ever tell them to back off when my own wife preferred them over me in all respects absent penile insertion? 

Who ever saw Penelope and me playing by ourselves?  The majority of one-on-one time I had with Penelope was when everyone else was busy.  If Ashley was working, Hilton was off drinking and Lacey was off smoking or playing video poker; that is when Penelope had our daddy-daughter moments curled on the floor next to storage boxes and inch-long safari animal figurines.  This was our universe, with voices no one bothered to listen to in that courtroom.

All I could have done was told Ashley, “Fuck this porch.  It is too expensive.  We have to raise the slab, extend the roofline, build a separate garage and stretch this whole house to accommodate the porch.  The porch is a ridiculous extravagance that is prompting us to live with your fucked-up dictator father and spiteful Cinderella step-mom PHD in passive-aggressive behavior mother.  Penelope is not your baby doll.  You have to give her some independence and also allow me to have a place in her life and step four-hundred steps back, because you are smothering her and alienating me.”

Maybe, maybe if I had uttered those words in some form in a more tactful tone years ago, maybe I would have had a chance, but I was too weak and misguided that Ashley loved me.  Ashley wanted a life with Nottoway, not me.

419

My mother, Sara was first up for my defense.  For the first time, I heard biased words of honest kindness. 

Martha-Describe the manner Ethan interacted with Penelope as an infant?

Sara-Ethan would do whatever was developmentally appropriate to take care of his daughter.  Ethan was very aware of developmental expectations.

Martha-Did you ever see Ethan lose his temper with Penelope?  Did anything Ethan ever do as a parent ever give you a pause for concern?

                Sara-No.

Martha-How did Ashley describe Ethan’s parenting?

                Sara-That they were co-parenting; they were a team in caring and discipline.

Martha- How would you describe Ethan’s overall interaction with Penelope?

Sara-Ethan understands children and he specifically understands his daughter.  He has a history of understanding children.  He was a swim team coach and instructor with children as young as four.  Ethan uses everyday experiences to show and teach Penelope.

My father Timothy followed his wife.  My father testified about our relationship, about Penelope’s room at the rental house appearing girly enough to satiate the court and about how I cooked for our family. 

420

Martha called me up to the stand for her go-round.  In answering questions from my attorney, I recapped a day in the life of single-dad Ethan off to school and off to bed.  I retold Ashley and me’s trip to visit the three-little-pig preschools of North Dallas: the highchair and diaper chain-style school, the super preppy high-dollar one with the built-in pirate ship and the down to earth Montessori school we picked.  As I mentioned the pirate ship, I saw Ashley’s face undulate a wave of recognition across her surface.  I spotted Hilton’s crucifix hung colder in golden chord buoy around Ashley’s neck.  I uttered, “Yeah, you remember, huh?” aloud to the court. 

In between the testimony I stared down at my left hand.  All this not knowing wrapped in the specter ghost-lit linings.  What-if I would effectively lose Penelope to only see her four or five days a month?  Some men die from a pinched feeding tube in a hospital shift change.  Others are shot in public.  Not knowing if Penelope would grow up with this false image of me, left me contemplative. 

421

In the end I think my attorney realized less was more.  I was nervous based on what was at stake, but I thought Ashley went so over the top with desperate attempts talking about Magic Cards, fantasy football, and make-believe strife it did not take much to make her psychologically ill stratagem seem desperate. 

I remained, still standing.  I was just a father, one man playing pacifist.  I was no Columbine, grounded in front of a Tieneman tank, silent viewing Dylan Klebold.  I was just a Gen-Exer dad waiting for a judge’s words combating a do-it-all omni-gender wife.  Hyperbole aside, this was my life, the arbiter’s decree in the balance that principles would still matter to me on some level, that bitter would not completely pollute like a cancerous virus. 

In all of Ashley’s spider-web black-widow conjecture, a simple love could guide my dingy away from her river bank into these decades to come American world to explore with Penelope.  I would have sight of land after crossing this Atlantic.  I had some ground in a genuine truth moored to God, to know love in at least one reciprocal form.  I had a temporal anchor from five until Penelope’s own ship was commissioned and stocked.

Did I do enough?  The pictures sat in my rolling former Andersen audit trunk as unused cannonballs.  I wrote on a pad and passed the interrogative under Martha’s purview, right before we rested our defense, “What about the pictures?”  Martha said, “I don’t think we need them.”

How many hits does it take to sink the aircraft carrier in battleship?  I know mine only took two; a daughter and a father.  We were agile in a shroud of what we knew in our hearts.  I knew what Ashley knew and shrouded like a red queen croquet rulebook. 

I knew inside, yet sometimes Columbine still happens, the tank still roles and a kid is lying red-blood-faced in a high school cafeteria with no table where he fits and sometimes daughters do not really get to say goodbye to the life they assumed they would have with their parents.

422

Judge Wolfe – After hearing the eight witnesses, nine exhibits, and reviewed Article 134 of the Louisiana Civil Code, one through twelve, I think we should extend the time with the father.  The parties will have joint custody of the child.  Domiciliary parent will be Ms. Baker.  No child support or spousal support will be paid by either party, Ms. Baker having testified as such.  Medical insurance will be paid by Mr. Baker.

I was not reduced to crumbs.  I actually got one extra day a Wednesday night to Thursday at four p.m. added to the short week.  I had six, Ashley eight in each fortnight.  Maybe it was not the marginal day to swing some forty-five percent computation, but it was mine.  My little nut for the winter, my kernel of maybe I was not domiciliary, maybe I did not have a Nottoway safety net, but somebody heard me.  Somebody saw me and said keep on standing. 

Continue to Chapter 14 part 1