He Thought Tuesdays Were Pottery, Now He Begs Me Home novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Pro Se
Joss argues her own divorce, Bennett learns she is a lawyer, and he kneels on the courthouse steps until his mother collapses and he begs Joss to do something.
My husband found out I was a lawyer a few minutes before the judge made me his ex-wife.
It was a Tuesday morning in October, in Courtroom 14, with the radiators clanking under the windows.
I sat at the petitioner's table alone.
Bennett sat across the aisle beside his mother's attorney, in the charcoal suit I had picked up from the cleaners on Friday.
His mother sat in the first row behind him, in pearls and pale gray.
She wore pale gray and her good pearls.
The decree lay open in front of the judge.
Every page had my initials except the last.
The cheap work phone buzzed once in my coat pocket, and I let it buzz.
Three weeks earlier, at his mother's sixty-fourth birthday dinner, Bennett had told thirty guests that I'd never finished anything I started.
He laughed when he said it.
I had finished more that year than he knew.
I had never told him, because in five years he had never once asked.
So I filed.
Now his attorney stood and buttoned his jacket.
"Your Honor, before the court signs, we want it noted that Mrs. Hetherington is waiving a substantial settlement."
"I see that," the judge said.
"Mrs. Hetherington has not worked in five years. She has no income, no profession and no counsel. We're concerned that she doesn't understand what she is giving up."
Behind him, Rosalyn Hetherington touched her pearls.
That morning she had carried my umbrella in from the car, because I'd left it on the seat.
Three million dollars had come with a confidentiality clause, delivered to Dess's apartment in a cream envelope.
I had struck the clause, struck the money and struck the house.
I wanted my name and my own door key.
I wanted nothing in that decree that Rosalyn Hetherington could point to later and say she paid for.
I stood up.
"Your Honor, I'm representing myself, and I understand exactly what I'm giving up."
The judge looked at me over her glasses.
"Mrs. Hetherington, I'm required to ask whether you've had the advice of counsel."
"I am counsel, Your Honor. Joss Tarrant, admitted to the Ohio bar fourteen months ago."
The room went quiet.
Bennett turned his whole head and looked at me.
It was the first time he had looked at me all morning.
"That's not funny," he said.
"Mr. Hetherington," the judge said.
"She takes pottery." His voice rose. "Tuesdays and Thursdays. She makes bowls."
The court reporter coughed into her sleeve.
"Cleveland-Marshall, evening division," I told the judge. "Four years. I'm happy to file the certificate."
The judge looked at his attorney.
"Counsel, I believe Ms. Tarrant understands her position."
She signed.
The clock above the door said 9:42.
I put the cap on my pen and walked out of the courtroom with my coat over my arm and nothing else in my hands.
The wind off Lake Erie hit me on the courthouse steps, cold and clean.
I was halfway down the first flight when I heard him running.
"Joss. Joss, wait."
He caught my sleeve, then let go.
His reading glasses were pushed up in his hair, and he'd forgotten them.
"A lawyer," Bennett said. "Since when?"
"Since the first night I told you I was going to pottery."
"You let me think-"
"I let you think what you already thought," I said.
He stared at me.
People were slowing on the steps now, a courthouse clerk with a coffee, two reporters from the lobby, a man in a delivery uniform.
Bennett didn't see them.
Then he did something I had never seen him do in five years.
He went down on his knees on the cold granite, in his good suit, in front of everyone.
"I didn't know," he said. "Whatever I did, tell me. I'll fix it."
"Bennett, get up."
"Come home. I'll give you anything. The legal department, the house, a seat on the board. Name it."
"You're offering me a job," I said.
"I'm offering you everything."
"Get up, Bennett."
That was Rosalyn, from the top of the steps.
She came down slowly, one gloved hand on the rail.
"You are making a spectacle of yourself over a girl who lied to you for five years."
"She never lied," Bennett said, without looking away from me. "I never asked."
It was the truest thing he'd said in half a decade, and I was too tired to enjoy it.
"I'm not coming home," I said.
"Joss-"
"I'm not coming home."
Behind him, Rosalyn opened her mouth to answer.
Nothing came out.
Her hand left the railing and went flat against her pearls.
Her face went gray.
She took one step down, and her knees folded, and she went down the granite steps in a long, quiet slide.
The man in the delivery uniform shouted.
Bennett scrambled up and caught her too late.
He knelt on the stone with his mother's head on his arm and her eyes open on nothing.
He looked up at me, white to the lips.
"Joss," he said. "Do something."
I dropped my coat on the step.
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