After she finishes dressing, she throws up her breakfast. She brushes her teeth and drinks a bottle of seltzer and reapplies her lipstick. Renee said that after the judge makes his decision, everything moves quickly. Harriet will stay home with Susanna while Gust attends the hearing, but Frida might be able to see Harriet tonight or tomorrow.
A good second visit was supposed to cancel out the bite, and a bite plus a nosebleed will require a leap of faith by the judge, and judges are not predisposed to leaping, but Renee said they can still win. She didn’t want to be crass about it, but the judge probably won’t see Frida as a person of color. She isn’t Black or brown. She’s not Vietnamese or Cambodian. She’s not poor. Most of the judges are white, and white judges tend to give white mothers the benefit of the doubt, and Frida is pale enough.
She takes a car to Center City, where Renee and Gust are waiting for her in the lobby of the family court building, a new glass-and-steel construction that takes up half a city block, just past city hall and Dilworth Park, across the street from the fancy hotel Le Méridien.
They put their purses and wallets and phones through the scanner. They pass through the metal detector. She wishes Gust hadn’t worn a suit. She hasn’t seen him in a suit since their wedding, and today his beauty is distracting.
He looks tired though. She asks him how Harriet slept, how she behaved this morning, if they explained to her that today is important, that time-out will soon be over.
“I would have,” Gust says. “But Janine told us not to promise anything.”
Renee tells Frida to be quiet. It’s not safe to talk here. On the elevator, they’re shoulder to shoulder with weary state workers and unhappy parents. Gust tries to catch Frida’s eye. She tries to remember where she is and why she’s here, that she can’t ask him for a hug no matter how badly she needs one. Renee was appalled that Gust held her hand in divorce court. Hand-holding clearly made him feel better and Frida feel worse, so why do it? Renee asked. Why absolve him?
The elevator opens on the fourth floor. Ms. Torres is waiting at the checkin desk. Frida signs in with her fingerprint. There are four courtrooms, each with its own waiting area, as well as smaller rooms next to each courtroom where lawyers and clients can meet in private. There are plastic display cases with pamphlets for counseling services, employment services, benefit offices, shelters. The floor has the feel of a high-end hospital, polished but grimy, with sorrow baked into the walls. There’s morning light streaming in from a bank of windows, rows of orange bucket chairs bolted to the floor, televisions everywhere, all showing the home and garden network.
As far as Frida can tell, she’s the only Asian. Gust is the only white man in a suit who isn’t a lawyer. The televisions are showing a bathroom makeover program. A couple in California wants to add a Jacuzzi to their master bath.
Frida and Gust choose seats in the last row. The social worker and Renee sit on either side of them. Frida thanks Gust for taking the day off. She wants to ask for extra time with Harriet. They could switch holidays. Gust can let her have Harriet for Thanksgiving instead of Christmas, or maybe, in light of the last two months, he can let her have both.
On the screens above them, there are episodes about a landscaping project in New Mexico, a pool house at a Connecticut estate, commercials for erectile dysfunction remedies and homeowner’s insurance and immersion blenders, a variety of pain medications whose side effects include death.
She watches workers in the hotel across the street changing linens. As the morning passes, the rows fill. Parents are told to lower their voices. More social workers appear, more lawyers. Some parents seem to be meeting their lawyers for the first time. Some children climb over the seats, first talking to their mother, then their father. Their parents sit in separate rows.
Every hour, Frida goes to the bathroom to wash her hands and apply more powder to her forehead. She can’t stop sweating. She feels certain she’s developing an ulcer. Renee sometimes follows her into the bathroom and tells her to come back. They go across the street for lunch, eat greasy sandwiches that upset her stomach more.
The court-appointed child psychologist arrives. Ms. Goldberg is a pregnant white woman in her forties with a blonde pageboy haircut and a serene, perfectly oval face, like a Modigliani. She greets Frida warmly, saying how pleased she is to finally meet her.
“Harriet is a special one,” she says.
Ms. Goldberg takes a seat in Frida and Gust’s row, as do the state’s attorneys. Frida regrets not letting her parents fly in. Renee didn’t want them at the hearing. She plans to work the single-mother angle. The judge doesn’t need to know that Frida has resources, that she could have asked her parents to pay for day care, that she could have asked them to help her with rent so she only had to work part-time.