Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [171]
“Your Honor, I do not mean to suggest that the specific room in which Albertine and Telesphore Bolduc reside is so indecent, but as a member of the Franco-American community, Pierre Francis Haskell will grow up in this environment. Moreover, he will emerge into adulthood, if he makes it into adulthood, with no place else to go except back to the mills. He will have no education to speak of, no other skills except the one he has learned at the looms. Is the state prepared to sentence Pierre Haskell to such a life? For make no mistake: To grant custody to Albertine and Telesphore Bolduc is to give the boy a life sentence of missed opportunities and poverty.”
Olympia glances over at the respondents’ table. Sears has his hand on Albertine’s arm, as if to restrain her. Telesphore mutters angrily, “Non, non, non.”
“Your Honor,” says Tucker, “both women in question here today stand to either suffer terribly or have great joy as a result of your decision. But as my colleague Mr. Addison Sears himself said before the court, we cannot care about the joy or suffering of the mother. We must care first and, if necessary, only about the welfare of the child. And there can be no question but that the boy will be better served by being remanded to the custody of Olympia Biddeford, who guarantees, by her own example, the boy’s education, his financial security, and very likely his higher education as well. We are speaking here today of making either a future millworker or of making a doctor or a professor or even a judge. To take these opportunities away from the boy is nothing short of a crime.”
Tucker pauses.
“Your Honor, Olympia Biddeford was herself a child when she discovered she was with child. Since that day, she has conducted herself in a manner any Christian woman might envy and aspire to: She has secured a higher education, she lives a clean and sober life, and she uses wisely the advantages given to her by dint of her birth, namely, good descent and respectable fortune. I do not think any of us here today doubts for one minute that she will be a good mother to the boy.”
At the lectern, Tucker gathers his notes together.
“The court is entrusted with the decision of a great question of morals as well as law: To whom belongs the custody of the child?”
Tucker looks pointedly at Judge Littlefield and then slowly turns to Olympia. He holds her gaze for what seems a long minute.
“Let us restore a child to his rightful mother,” he says.
Judgment to be read tomorrow three o’clock. Will collect you eleven o’clock for meal. Courage. Tucker.
She slips the yellow telegram into the pocket of her dress. Closing the back door, she watches as the lithe telegraph boy sprints out onto the road with his tip. She walks directly into the butler’s pantry and pours herself a drink to steady her nerves, which is not like her. For what occasion did she purchase this bottle of whiskey? she wonders. The decanter is old, cut-glass, her mother’s mother’s. Drink in hand, she moves into the front room and stands at the windows. The dying sun turns the water teal, a color nearly leached in the next instant. She sets her glass on the windowsill and unpins her hair, holding it in great handfuls in front of her.
A judgment has been rendered. Her fate is sealed, and she does not know what it is. She is surprised at how quickly the waiting is over. Tucker said it would take at least a week for Littlefield to arrive at an opinion, but it has been only four days. She is not prepared for this.
She sits in her Windsor chair