CHAPTER 23: "Mawwiage: Thy Scientific Name, Thy Scorched‑Earth Plague, is Misogyny"
From "The Saga of One F**ked Mother"
“Mawwiage: Thy Scientific Name, Thy Scorched‑Earth Plague, is Misogyny” is Chapter 23 of The Saga of One Fucked Mother. [This chapter is too long for a newsletter, so the next part will be posted next week.]
In this chapter, it’s Halloween time but Legion doesn’t have the time or energy for costumes or festivities for the boys, as she is engulfed with court tasks: forms to be filled out, documents to be submitted about the 12-year marriage and finances, and an essay about herself—well, herself as a mother and wife only. The “court” wasn’t interested in her doctoral and other achievements; those may even work against her—the first taste of the structural sexism and misogyny that undergirds Family Court…
Dealing with these divorce-related chores causes Legion “nausea and the desire to resist” these activities. She learns later it’s common for women to experience this nauseousness, to “want to puke”, when dealing with Family Court paperwork.
In the last chapter, Legion finds a divorce attorney and unknowingly enters the “mother-fucking” Family Court, in which her entire marriage and motherhood and self will be reduced to “the case”. In retrospect, she understands that Herry could easily take her kids from her because he can. Because a man just has to accuse a woman of being “nutty or slutty” (re: Anita Hill) and a judge, working within the “androcentric” system, will gladly bequeath him his “property”. Herry was licensed by the court to wreak his revenge, to “gut the bitch”, to “obliterate” Legion for having dared step out of line and asked him to work on his sex addiction so as to save their family.
Dr. Blue’s novel is based on her own experience of the Custody Crisis. It uniquely conveys how Family Court judges are “mother-fucking” women—a form of systemic oppression and violence directed at ex-wives—as protagonist Legion is systematically and methodically deprived of her children and money and reduced to “one fucked mother”.
Chapters are stand-alone interesting so you can begin reading anywhere. A Cast of Characters follows to help readers at any point [on the web page]. All published chapters are included in the Section: “Saga of One F**ked Mother” accessible on the top bar of the home page of Women’s Coalition News & Views. Sequential chapters are published every Wednesday and subscribers will find them in their inboxes, so make sure to subscribe if you haven’t yet!
TEASERS
When it is necessary to go rummaging and digging through the mounds of court documents or ‘important’ papers of our finances or purchases or ownership together, the nausea and the desire to resist this very activity swells up immediately right there in my solar plexus, in the gut of my belly’s inner being, each and every single time––all of these years later.
My separated and divorced girlfriends, since, have told me that they feel that very same feeling inside their very same anatomy. Performing this probe makes us all nearly instantly want to puke.
Mr. Jinx’s office would … serve instantly from now on as my voice to my husband… [M]y people’d get in touch with his people—and, voila, options would be bantered about and decisions made. As they were. They were, indeed.
CHAPTER 23
Mawwiage: Thy Scientific Name, Thy Scorched‑Earth Plague, is Misogyny
“Women have very little idea of how much … men hate them.” —The Female Eunuch, 1970, and Germaine Greer’s opening sentence, p 245, of the first chapter, “Loathing and Disgust,” in its Part IV entitled “Hate”
Costumes, I’m supposed to be thinking hard about costumes. And carving the perfect pumpkin into the perfect jack‑o'‑lantern. Thinking so hard, in fact, that I as the witchy mother of three very Samhain‑spirited youngsters had better’ve had solidly in mind by the date that Mr. Jinx and I had filed our initial response what were to be Mirzah, Jesse and Zane’s trick‑or‑treat outfits for 1988! Here Halloween was less than a week away, and I hadn’t a clue. Nor a stitch sewn. And not a pumpkin seed drying anywhere.
Most days I couldn’t think. At least not on anything purposefully focused at all. Quakers and others often, in meditation, actually strive for this state of blissful non‑consciousness, a nirvana to be intentionally and intently navigated. My cranium only held in it Mr. Jinx’s directives after such a fat, obtuse and slobbery man ‘with papers’ had banged on my door on that October’s 04th.
“Get together,” Mr. Jinx emphasized this although he had a completely blank‑like facial expression most difficult to read, “and down on paper now all of your assets and all of your debits, bills, people and places you owe and who owes you. Got educational debt outstanding yet? Yeah, that too. Taxes from previous years not yet paid? There’s the matter of the house you live in there on Othello. Only purchased a bit over a year ago, you say? Hhmmm. Well. That’ll have to be sold. So. Start looking for a realtor right away and get it listed. You’ll want to have it kept clean for showing then at the drop of a phone call. When the realtor rings you up, you see, you’ll want, ya’ know, to be able to just grab the kids and be gone so the people can come over and look at it right then. You’ll want to be sure and get this house sold just as soon as possible. Before we head to settlement would be best, of course, so you need to be on this right away. It’s in a great location though, what with it being right beside Brookside Forest like it is? Shouldn’t be much of a problem getting a fine buyer for it. Folks like your husband, ya’ know, professionals. Or … or, aahh, professors’ll want it, no doubt. I’m certain your husband’s attorney is telling him the same thing. What’ve’ya’ got in mind in the way of where you and the children’ll move to? Will you stay here? If here in Ames, then where here? Ya’ know, what type of housing?”
It was obvious. Soooo blatant. Mr. Jinx—right off and outright—did not even believe at all that I, let alone that the kids and I together, even deserved to stay living on Othello Drive and in that dwelling there. Herry’s house really, his bachelor pad. Physicians’ and professors’ ‘hood it is, ya’ know … a neighborhood reserved for the community’s pillars! Not suitable for some plain mama and her brood o’Boys. Not suitable for some plain mama no longer married to one of the town’s eminences. That was for sure! Even to Mr. Jinx, my attorney … my employee, this was obvious. Right off!
He went on, “Here’s the form you need to fill out. It’s the document on property and ownership of goods and materials, of assets, credits, debits and bills that we’ll be submitting to the court in ‘your case’ so it carries with it the weight of, well, like a sworn statement, a deposition like. Just so you know.”
“I don’t swear to things, Mr. Jinx,” I said quietly.
“What?!”
“I don’t swear on documents or take oaths either.” In that first office visit to my attorney, I had been trying so hard to hang on to some semblance of me, some bearing of who I, this actual and real person being told all of these things, really, really was. Surrounded there instead, I was, by all of the law books and the colossal and finely constrained binders, the leather and lemon smells, the so shiny office trinkets—each without one spot of dust on them, that is, the clear crystal and gold‑plated clock with no cord perfectly ticking out its exact time and the matching letter opener and the gilded frames of family portraits also matching, of course, the very, very well‑suited and shapely women in low, very, very tailored taupe pumps, not a run in a stocking to be seen on any one of them at any time, their coming in and out and handing Mr. Jinx blank documents as if right on cue or from his having buzzed for them at the precise moments of where he was in his explanations to me of the way of things to come. Which, of course, he had not done. They just seemed to know, these females, kind of robotic‑like, where Mr. Jinx chronologically was in the telling to me of this tale that was to become ‘my case’ and, so, at the appropriate times, these fembots filed in with all of the stuff they already knew at this particular time would be germane to it.
“Why not? We have to tell the truth here. That’s what I’m saying to you, Ms. True. Aahhh, Legion. May I call you Legion?” I nodded noting, of course, that I was already assenting to this familiarity—when, at the very first times of my being addressed by my new employee, the lawyer, I had not even been accorded the respect of the title of doctor, that is, of his first—or ever yet hence—referring to me as the Doctor True that I am. And was, then.
“This document means you swear it’s the truth to the best of your knowledge, Legion. All your accounts, what you own, all of your possessions, how much you think it’s all worth on today’s market, who your creditors are and how much you still owe them all. That’s what this form is. O, yes. Very important: You have to also tell on them when you came to own the stuff, not just how much it’s worth. It helps the court figure out what you had before you got married, what Dr. Edinsmaier himself had before that and what the two of you together acquired during the actual time of marriage to each other before this separation. This is highly important. It’ll help the court decide what should go with who then afterwards? See?”
“With whom, Mr. Jinx. The correct English grammar, Mr. Jinx, is, ‘… help the court decide what should go with whom.’ ” Only I sure as hell didn’t correct him. I am thinking, though, how much I’d’ve liked to be a big and hot enough shot to correct him. For sure.
Shit. I was not “seeing” a damned thing either. I was so angry and so hurt that I couldn’t even leave the kitchen table most mornings. “See?” Mr. Jinx had queried, not really expecting no for an answer. Not actually expecting any answer from me at all. After Mr. Jinx’s and my first conversation––as one‑sided as it had been. The very thought, just the thought alone, of my going into the Othello den and there looking around in its drawers and cases and envelopes and shoeboxes for god knows what in the way of papers and documents that was Herry’s fucked‑up ‘filing system’ for not only our family but throughout all of our 12‑plus legally wed years together gave me a nauseous feeling that was not ever to be assuaged. When it is necessary to go rummaging and digging through the mounds of court documents or ‘important’ papers of our finances or purchases or ownership together, the nausea and the desire to resist this very activity swells up immediately right there in my solar plexus, in the gut of my belly’s inner being, each and every single time––all of these years later. My separated and divorced girlfriends, since, have told me that they feel that very same feeling inside their very same anatomy. Performing this probe makes us all nearly instantly want to puke. We do it though, of course. Anyhow.
No costumes from out my hand and heart this year. Of my making there would be no Halloween this year. This year my breaking heart and bony hands were busying themselves with those dozen or so years’ worth of our lives together on the papers from that den. Eventually I waded through, then brought them all in bunches out to the kitchen table, the Boys in school.
O, wait! Flip/Reverse: Of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s making—of his ‘working’—there had never been a Truemaier Boys’ Halloween! And this year, that Edinsmaier ‘tradition’ among so, so many of the Slacker’s genre of ‘traditions’ was, again of course, certain to be continued.
I scribbled and put down on scraps figure after figure and divided and subtracted. Noooo need anymore was there for adding or for multiplying. Not in our lives no longer together. Not in our lives now coming fully apart! And sat. Mostly I sat.
And thought. Well, whatever it is that can be called ‘thinking’… This was so hard, I have to tell you. It was so hard, in fact, that I hadn’t even considered that there could be something worse than this ‘thinking’ procedure heading toward me. This was so bad in and of itself, how could there be anything more horrible coming into my future than this? Mehitable and AmTaham, my alleged parental protectors, should’ve long, long ago made it crystal clear to me, instead, that exactly the opposite of this solitude—of this Solitude of Self, Elizabeth Cady (Stanton) had so eloquently termed it—is. Is worse! Is, in reality … waaaay, way worse! Calista Flockhart’s character correctly declared on the televised New Year’s Day 2001 episode of Ally McBeal, “Maybe I will share my life with someone; maybe I won’t. But the Truth is: When I think back on my loneliest moments, there was usually someone sitting right there next to me.”
In addition, however, to the business‑like coldness and the icy stoniness of the calculating that was the mere mathematics of a 12‑year, modern American marriage, there was another form upon which I was to work before my next appointment with Mr. Jinx. This one was a kicker although for a seasoned essay test‑taker such as myself throughout all of veterinary medical classes and who had then routinely written a single essay answer that often came to a zillion pages in length, this assignment should’ve been a breeze: I was instructed by Attorney Jinx to write about my life.
O, but I needed, Mr. Jinx emphatically dictated to me, to be very clear on this particular essay: It should be about my life as a wife and as a mother. “Only throw in a little bit about the vet deal and the working outside the home thing. Enough of that only to show that you, ya’ know, … that you are certainly quite capable of being out in the workforce and making a livelihood.”
Truth be told: what Mr. Jinx wanted most to show ‘the court’ in ‘my case’ was how much of a fine and all‑attentive mother I was and o’course would, therefore, continue to be. ‘Specially since it’d be utterly evident to ‘the court’, wouldn’t it, ‘the case’ being a divorce case and all, that I must be––in the category known as wife––waaaay … less than? Mr. Jinx wanted me, in the essay, to be certain that I showed ‘the court’ that I was at the least a “good‑enough mother,” the term that that crone and long‑time feminist, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, calls us … us “mothers on trial.” Even though for the pillared professional as was Herry, I––also a professional … same as Herry I am thinking but in reality not at all so the same––I was obviously in no way a “good‑enough wife.”
At least a good‑enough mother despite the very real fact, though, that this year there were to be no costumes. Not from the workings of the Truemaier Boys’ mama. And, of course, costumes and things pumpkin‑related were not at all to be even expected from out the hand of, or just in part occupying let alone monopolizing, the mind of their Daddee Dearest, Dr. Herry Edinsmaier, either.
So. I estimated and wrote and calculated and formulated. I cooked and washed and chauffeured, then read the Boys stories, tried to make plausible‑enough excuses for this particular year’s absence of Samhain accoutrements and, finally, myself fell into bed and fitfully slept only to rise up once again and cook, chauffeur, estimate, write, calculate and formulate a little more. And retain a realtor.
* * * *
All of that but now, however, with a catch. Literally. Like that catch deep down in one’s throat. Mr. Jinx’s office would, as I’d initially been told, serve instantly from now on as my voice to my husband. My own voice, as it turns out and, further, was pointedly made so clear to me, hadn’t been working very well, my words and ideas not being heard nor heeded. So, therefore, it would not be a good idea at all for me to phone up Dr. Edinsmaier on this, the matter of the selling of the house. Or about any other matter actually. Instead, my people’d get in touch with his people—and, voila, options would be bantered about and decisions made. As they were. They were, indeed.
Mr. Jazzy Jinx and I met once more. Now this second time it most certainly was on Jinx’s agenda first and foremost, before taking into his hands at all the products of mine, to talk about money. His fee, his money, how much and when and what it’d take from me and now that I’d done all of this figuring, certainly I knew, didn’t I, just where I stood on this portion of the whole matter, the part about actually paying my newest employee, my attorney—to secure for me a legal divorce. Paying for a binding‑for‑all‑time action set down upon paper—this divorce—that I didn’t ever want happening to me or to my kids in the first place.
Before venturing terribly far into our dollars‑and‑cents conversation, I mentioned something to Mr. Jinx this subsequent visit that I, in hindsight, absolutely should not have brought forth at all. I thought in Iowa—and it is so—that there was time set aside by law for counseling. Counseling … of the therapy to a breaking‑down marital union, that type of ‘counseling’. Instead of … the lawyering kind.
Like a ‘time‑out’ sort of period. A cooling‑off time just in case ‘the case’ initiated was felt, a little later on down the pike, to be a huge mistake after all—one that with this interim, thinking‑it‑all‑over time, could be corrected. Before ‘the case’ proceeded any further. That after one party starts such an actionable legal petition for marriage dissolution, there is the option, if the responding party so desires, for marriage counseling. Something like three sessions. Whatever the hell that means. So that the legal action begun … could be undone … just in the nick of time. And the marriage—and its bonds—kept intact. And … ‘saved’. I told him, “I am thinking, Mr. Jinx, if ever there was a time needed for such a deal, well, now’d be it, not?”
“Hhmmm,” his forehead leaned into his left hand with that elbow propped carelessly across some of his leather, “technically, you’re correct,” he replied in a skeptic’s I‑wonder‑what‑she’s‑up‑to‑now mode. “So. Ya’ wanna have the three sessions of marriage counseling, do ya’?” Slovenly stated … in a slattern’s pattern of speech.
“Well, yeah. I think that that’d be in order since I’m not wanting any of this whole thing. Don’t you think so, too?” I queried my own legal counsel, not at all knowing at the time that Mr. Jinx himself’d be divorced in a half decade or so hence and, in becoming thus, would then so cavalierly be busting up a mother and a father of two teenage children. How could I then have known that my ‘counselor’ cared not one whit nor two hoots for preserving the two‑parent family either? Any such family. Let alone, his own one.
“It isn’t for me to say, Legion. You do have the right. That much is true.”
“Well, it works sometimes, doesn’t it?”
“JYeah. Riiiight,” without enthusiasm or eye contact. The entire extent of his purposefully dull‑witted, slacker reply received.
“O. Aahhh. Okay then. How is this arranged? You set that up, too, do you?”
“Well, I do. For the first visit, that is. I just need names of people you want, names suggested by the county. But. After that one time, why, then the other two are at the discretion of the counselor and the two parties.”
“Ya’ mean as to whether or not they even happen at all?”
“Yup, that’s what I mean.”
“Okay then. I’ll give you times that are best for me; how’d that be?”
“Fine. Whatever.” Even less enthusiasm than previously—if that were at all possible to describe.
“And where do I learn the names of these marriage counselors or their agencies?”
“We maintain a list.” Mr. Jinx was becoming, now, more and more impatient it appeared to me. Apparently we hadn’t spoken sufficiently enough to his satisfaction about his money issue, and he was so wanting to get the discussion back onto the track of that.
“Is there anyone in particular on it,” I asked hopefully—and, as it so turned out, … stupidly, “that you’d recommend?”
“On the list you mean? I do not do that. I do not recommend on marriage therapists. No.”
“O,” is all I said out loud; I even nodded slowly. To myself I am thinking, “Whoa! One is sure the hell out here in right field all by yourself alone on this matter of, of … trying to mend a marriage headed south, isn’t one?” What a piece of profound prophecy 1988’s Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Right Field” certainly was in more metaphors than just my marriage, I am thinking! Right there in those leatherbacks of Mr. Jinx’s so foxy office decor. “Breaking a mawwiage up’s no problem. Ya’ve got all the counseling ‘help’ in the world with which to do that. ‘Cept for maybe not all of the money that it takes to get divorced, though. But keeping two people together? Ha! Not likely. Not at all likely … was the real and true sense oozing out all over from that second encounter with my legal counselor, Lawyer Jazzy Jinx.
“Playing right field can be lonely and dull. Playing right field, it’s easy you know; you can be awkward, you can be slow … I don’t know the inning; I’ve forgotten the score. That I'd make a fantastic catch on the run. And not lose the ball in the sun.”
No. Not so for us though. We were not only going to drop the ball; we were flat out losing it, too. And it was so, so dark. There wasn’t even to be any sun, to be any sunshine … for the Truemaier Boys or their mama, Dr. Legion True.
* * * *
How it was that we, Herry and I, actually came to have appointed for us both a realtor and a marriage counselor I cannot even now recall. Once Mr. Jinx got down to the business of talking about his bucks which, rest assured, he most certainly did remember to get done, all that I can remember from the next month and more was a blaze, a flurry of phone calls and visits and appointments here and there and all over and almost none of them at … “times best for me.” They didn’t need to be, Dr. Edinsmaier and these other scheduling folks felt, since, of course, I didn’t ‘work’ so therefore I could meet with the therapist, the realtor, the Good and Wonderful Doctor and now ex‑to‑be, the lawyer … just whenever, couldn’t I?
Madonna had sold homes for years. Years and years. She was your mama’s madonna. Not the singer‑actress type who had three years earlier back in Kansas with her busty bosom and her bottled blondeness, snared away from Herry’s so willing and open hand a thousand of his—and my—‘earnest money’‑down bucks in just four hours’ time flat. I actually did not mind meeting with Madonna; and I certainly did not mind unloading that house, that particular building at all. That bachelor pad was Herry’s anyhow; it had never, never been mine nor a family home for three growing boys. I do not recall even one time Slacker‑Daddee Edinsmaier trudging the 70‑plus steps from the kitchen down to the machines along the south wall of its basement to do even one load of laundry the whole time we lived there. Madonna was most accommodating, very helpful, very sympathetic; and while I full‑well understood that she wasn’t in this deal for charitable purposes, I truly never got the feeling from her that I was being sold a raw bill of goods about anything.
Of course, since it was his house, Dr. Edinsmaier or Mr. Shindy Scheisser, Herry’s scalding attorney, really had not cared to wait for my opinion on matters pertaining to its sale anyhow. When Madonna had need of answers to any real estate matters, they just went ahead to her with whatever the hell they pleased, no consulting ‘the girl’s’ Attorney Jinx first. I hardly cared though. Realty and I, in my lifetime, had rarely mixed before, not until that early morning when Herry, already here in Ames, telephoned me still back in Kansas and wanted to know how much money I might have stashed some place that he didn’t know about. This he needed to know he brazenly stated to me over the wire because he wanted to put a sizeable payment down on the Othello property—albeit that Jesse, Zane, Mirzah and I, spouse though I be but in Herry’s brain just another ‘child’, a recalcitrant cunty one—albeit that all of us … hadn’t even seen it yet.
Now—with the selling of it, this procedural deal was merely a flip‑flop reversion of the process Herry’d gone through when buying it up in the first place, I guess. There was one offer that I remember Herry utterly turning down, Madonna telling me that Dr. Edinsmaier said it was far too low, $8,000 less than his posted price at the time.
Curious it is to me now that I cannot even remember what Dr. Edinsmaier, Lawyer Scheisser and Realtor Madonna settled on as an initial asking price for that Othello property. I remember that Husband Herry and I were to have paid for a home, any home in Ames, between $65,000 and $85,000 with $90,000 being the absolute top, highest price we could go, that that had been the ceiling upon which we had agreed. Apparently the pact that he’d made with me regarding that house‑buying sum went the very same way of any of his other marital agreements and vows and promises made to me when Herry had—right off then—first come alone to Ames back around early July 1987—particularly when he, then, had met up in alcoholics anonymous with that low‑life agent, Jim Cornball, and had so easily dropped $112,500 for these Othello Drive digs upside Brookside’s forest like the high‑dollar physician Herod thought he deserved to be and was, therefore, entitled to pitch!
But what we were asking to get back out of that bachelor pad? I simply can’t recall. Madonna did tell me that it was standard practice in divorce sales to have a cleaning service come in when it was finally sold and after we, “the divorced family,” were all moved out of it––before the formal closure on the property. This cost, to include all carpets steamed and windows gleamed, would be around $500 for one to two days’ service of two women (… of course …) to bring the place up to total readiness.
I knew that much! After all, it was I who had always cleaned and cleaned and scrubbed and secured back for us all out of every prior landlord our family had had just about that exact amount every single time our five‑member posse moved from place to place around the countryside. Twelve times—in Zane’s first decade of life. I knew what a thorough cleansing was worth; I had earned back every single, mother‑fucking cent out of every solitary security deposit that we had ever coughed up. Alone I had. And, of course, without—those dozen times—one word of thanks to me from Taker Edinsmaier. Not ever. Not even one “Thank you, Legion!”
Now, however, I was very willing to not do it myself. To not do any of it myself. It was so relieving to hear Madonna say that hiring out for this was routine in such transactions. I had an out; I would not be stuck with this prostituting, slave‑laboring, charwoman duty one last mother‑fucking time. And for what was his house, no less. Dr. Edinsmaier had had us all moved, I was figuring, a total of a dozen times, that’s 12 times, during Zane’s first decade of life. Throughout most of these moves and years then, of course, there were also two more boys needing to be moved and cleaned up after as well. But just thinking on Zane alone, 12 times in those first ten years of his entire life! Why, that averaged more than twice a year for him! Then, too, his brothers! And for me. Me, this moving family’s own personal slave who worked for free—except that I counted as fee for my services all of our various landlords’ return back to Herry. To Herry, of course. To Head of the Household Herry, of course. Counted as fee for my slavery services our landlords’ return back—every single time we moved—of the entire security deposit amounts.
Our most immediate past move from Kansas to Iowa had been the hardest and the saddest one for me. Not only was there the restructuring that had permeated my professional department at the university there and eliminated my veterinary diagnostic bacteriologist position, one that I wholly adored; but Aprovechar Herry had come on to Ames alone in July 1987, and had not only purchased this behemoth of a bachelor pad for himself by himself without consulting me and the Boys, but he had also left me there in Manhattan with absolutely all of the Boys’ summer activities including Jesse’s and Zane’s junior zoo‑keeping and the complete packing and cleaning‑up operations. Again.
All that Herry had done was board a Greyhound to Manhattan in early August, rent a Ryder there and assist the four of us to load it up. To load it up—from entirely—out of only the garage, that is. I had myself, again alone or with Zane’s aid with the television, moved and stacked all of the boxes and almost all of the furniture, including the sofa and the easy chairs, all of the bookcases, the portable dishwasher, the coat hutch and that TV out into the double garage so that with only a couple of planks and about three hours’ effort is all—why, Herry was all packed up solid and ready to drive. Except for the Boys’ and my 1939 piano whose special moving dolly I had already leased and had readied to strap onto the console and the clothes washer and dryer, also with a rented hand trolley waiting, Dr. Edinsmaier arrived in and was trucking out of town totally loaded and trussed … the very same day.
Husband Herod Edinsmaier never said to me, “Thank you, Legion.” Not one word of thanks. Without so much as scrubbing one square foot of flooring, let alone, cleansing a bathroom’s toilet bowl anywhere we’d ever lived! the Good and Wonderful Doctor Edinsmaier just swung himself up into that Ryder saddle and, in mighty fine, flinging flourish as always his fashion, rode east and north on out of Manhattan.
Now, the next house, the Othello Drive property, we had lived in two summers. Both had been sad and hopeless ones, the first so shortened by the move and, then, only to be ended, effectively, just after our arriving in Ames by the horrible, mutilating death of Zane’s lovely laprine, Sylvan. And the second summer? Well, it was likewise curtailed by the maiming of our family and the Boys themselves because of the dying of our family’s … mawwiage.
* * * *
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Dr. Legion True: One Fucked Mother
Dr. Herod (Herry) Edinsmaier: Legion’s husband/Sperm Source [“re: I am snide” backwards]
Zane Truemaier: Legion’s son
Mirzah Truemaier: Legion’s son
Jesse Truemaier: Legion’s son
AmTaham True: Legion’s father [Mahatma backwards]
Mehitable True: Legion’s mother [Me hit-able—i.e. she was abusive]
Ardys and Endys: Legion’s sisters [names backwards]
Sterling: Legion’s brother [her mother’s planned name of next son (who never came)]
Mi Sprision O'Revinnoco: Herry’s sister [misprision: concealing knowledge of treason/O'Revinnoco = O'Connivero backwards]
Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier: Legion’s father-in-law [juggernaut; aut = 0; misein = “to hate (misogyny)”]
Detanimod Edinsmaier: Legion’s mother-in-law [dominated backwards]
Fannie Issicran McLive: fawning enabler of ex [narcissi(st) and Mc(Evil) backwards]
Legion’s Friends: Margaret, Mona, Yanira, Stormy, Lynda, László, Jane, Kincaid, Joseph, Sheryl
Legion’s Best Friends: Ms Grace and Dr Lionel Portia
Wende: = Legion's friend after divorce [committed suicide due to Custody Crisis]
Jim Cornball: Herry’s acquaintance from AA and realtor
Loser Lorn: Insurance agent referred by Cornball
Judge Harley Butcher: Family Court judge
Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor: Family Court judge
Judge Barry Crowrook: Appellate Court judge
Judge Pansy Shawshank: Appellate Court judge
Jazzy Jinx: Legion’s Family Court lawyer who sold her out
Shindy Scheisser: Herry’s lawyer [shindy = noisy; scheisser = German for shithead]
Li Zhang: Herry’s Aussie affair
Dr Freddie Goldstein & Ella: Herry’s colleague and wife
Mick: = Herry's acquaintance from high school; best man [not in Herry’s life after that as he had no true friends]
Varry Wussamai: Herry's AA sponsor (not a real friend) [I am a wuss backwards]
David Humes: nursing student; classmate of Legion's, y1968 - y1971, New York City
Edmund Silver: Legion's boyfriend pre-Herry
Braemore St: where Legion and her family lived, y1983 - y1986
Havencourt condominium: Legion's Ames apartment; after separation
Zephyr: tabby cat of Zane's, Mirzah's, Jesse's [pronounced “Zay – fear”]
Author: Dr. Blue, aka Ofherod, BSN, DVM, PhD = Commander Edinsmaier's Handmaid (Commander reiamsnidE's Handmaid)
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