“If at all possible,” she would explain, “I try to take an approach so that a couple can get through a divorce and be able to start over again. They’re not going to destroy each other—they’re going to be able to go ahead and parent their children together when it’s over. I have joint custody myself and I tend to have a personal preference for that. At the same time, it’s very important that we all play by the rules, ethically and legally. If my clients need to have an aggressive defense, then I will defend them aggressively as long as it’s within the rules.”
For the wives—and husbands, for that matter—whom she represented, Ellen could be a fierce advocate. She believed in a fair distribution of family assets, and she was adept at finding those assets. She was not so much a feminist as a humanist.
One of Ellen’s most recent clients was a doctor trying to decide whether to file for a friendly divorce or take an aggressive approach. A very sad man, he was hoping to have joint custody of his two sons. Ellen had tried to help him find a place to live. But as it turned out, her client never went through a divorce at all. And Ellen was still reeling from the staggering fact that he had committed suicide. Although she had not discussed the tragedy with anyone but her significant other and no one else knew that he had come to see her, her client had been Dr. John Walker. The public records of Walker’s estate included a bill for her legal services.
Ellen had expected John Walker to be able to move along with his life after the initial pain of divorce. Through a physician acquaintance, he had found a house to rent, and he had paid ahead on the lease. He’d had utilities and a phone installed. And then, suddenly, he was dead—a suicide, in what originally seemed to be questionable circumstances. “I said to myself [about John Walker]—I still say to myself”—“‘There must be some logical explanation. This does not happen in real life.’” Ellen sighed.
She would pursue the results of the postmortem on Dr. John Walker and the subsequent evaluations of the drugs he had used and the order in which he had used them until, finally, there was a “logical explanation.” But Ellen had no idea that there was any connection between John Walker and the woman who had scheduled an appointment in the last week of September. The woman’s name was Dr. Debora Green.
Initially, Ellen Ryan was surprised by Dr. Green’s appearance. “I went to the lobby to see Deb Green,” Ellen said. “She looked kind of disheveled…. She had on a sweatshirt that was kind of dirty. Her hair was kind of messy.”
Clearly, Debora did not want to be in the office of a divorce attorney, and she was quite nervous. “I brought her back to my office,” Ellen said, “and she told me that her husband wanted a divorce. She also told me that she had been hanging out with a friend of hers for most of the summer—John Walker—whom she had gone to medical school with.”
Ellen was not sure what the relationship between Debora and John might have been. She was only mildly surprised that they knew each other; after all, they were both doctors. But then Debora went on to explain about the trip to South America; her husband, she said, had been “hanging out” with John Walker’s wife. She said that she and her husband had spent a lot of time during the past few months over at the Walkers’—as a family—and now John had ended up dead. “You know,” Debora confided, “he wasn’t suicidal.”
Ellen had been listening to Debora’s story without comment. Now, she fought to keep her expression bland. Was this woman before her implying that her husband had somehow been involved in John Walker’s death? Of all the attorneys Debora could have come to, why had she chosen Ellen—Walker’s attorney? She had been terribly upset by his suicide—if it was a suicide. It gave her chills to be listening to a woman who claimed she had been close to him during the days before his death.
“I could see that there was some kind of linkage,” Ellen recalled. “I didn’t understand it all then, and I cannot tell you what it was now. I know I will go to my deathbed and not understand, probably.”
Ellen saw another potential problem, beyond “Deb” Green’s connection to John Walker. (She would call her Deb almost from the beginning.) Debora said she and her husband, Michael, had been represented in the spring of 1995 by a lawyer Ellen knew—Norman Beal—to do some estate planning. At that time, their luxurious home in Canterbury Court had been transferred into a trust, the Debora Green Trust.
Usually, if an attorney has represented a client, the attorney does not go against that client in an adversarial situation later, unless the client waives his or her rights. Ellen would learn that Debora, without benefit of counsel, had waived her right not to have to face in the divorce action a lawyer who had once been her own attorney. Norman Beal (no relation to Mike’s sister’s husband) would be representing Mike in his divorce action against Debora. Ellen knew he was an ethical attorney, but he would, of course, have superior knowledge about the family finances since he had helped Mike and Debora plan their estate only months before.
Debora didn’t understand that Norman Beal’s representing Mike could be construed as a possible conflict of interest. Mike wanted to use Beal; he trusted him and they had a history. When Ellen would question this, Mike grew angry—although, in the future, theirs was to be a remarkably civilized business relationship. But in the beginning, Mike had allegedly threatened Debora, saying that if she didn’t agree to his using Norman Beal he would hire a “nut-cutter attorney” who could take everything she owned away from her. In the end, both Debora and Ellen were completely comfortable with Norman Beal representing Mike.
It was quickly apparent that Debora was completely unsophisticated about finances. “That put up a red flag for me in terms of how I was going to protect her,” Ellen said. And from the outset, she found Debora almost childlike. She didn’t seem aware that the house was in her name, in a trust. She dressed like a messy child and was often vague. She didn’t want a divorce and she didn’t know how to handle money. Ellen wasn’t aware of Debora’s recent trip to Menninger’s or that she had been out only a few days. She didn’t know that Debora had a drinking problem. And she certainly didn’t know about her new client’s ferocious temper. She was seeing an entirely different person from the one others had encountered. And it was apparent that this person was alone and lost. She needed help, and Ellen agreed to handle her divorce, including the financial settlement.
Johnson County, Kansas, has strict guidelines on spousal and child support, based on the husband’s (or wife’s) ability to pay. “I find the money,” Ellen explained confidently. And when she toted up what Mike was worth and submitted a figure based on the Johnson County guidelines, she fully expected a protest from Norman Beal.
Her knowledge of Mike’s alleged response came, however, from Debora. She called Ellen constantly, nervous and frightened, telling her attorney how furious Mike was, how he wasn’t going to pay support or look after her and the children. Debora kept asking, “What am I going to do?” Ellen felt sorry for her.
“Well, look, Deb,” she said soothingly, “he’s going to pay. They all do that in Johnson County when they see their guideline amounts. Don’t worry about it. Everybody’s going to adjust, and we’ll just kind of move on.”
In fact, Debora and Mike did seem to be adjusting and moving on. Debora was definitely bitter about the upcoming divorce and her husband’s affair with Celeste, but she was far less violent and profane. With Mike living in an apartment and Debora in the house on Canterbury Court, the children were spared any more family conflict. Mike hadn’t wanted any more pets. But now that he was gone, Debora adopted a greyhound through a program that found homes for racing dogs that were too old or too slow to compete and would otherwise be put down. She named the thin, nervous dog Russell.
The kids were back in school, Tim was playing soccer, and Debora was thrilled when Lissa won the role of Clara in the State Ballet of Missouri holiday production of The Nutcracker Suite. Kelly wasn’t left out; she would have a role as an angel. Although she was still “pre-ballet,” she was tall for her age and graceful,
and she followed directions perfectly.
Mike invited the children to spend weekends or portions of the weekends at his apartment, and sometimes they came. Tim and Lissa were still angry at him for leaving after he had promised to stay. And there were occasions when they called their mother to come and take them home. But Mike made a determined effort to be at Tim’s soccer matches and hockey games, to prove to his son that he did care about him, and that while he was divorcing their mother, he still wanted to be part of his children’s lives. Debora was, if not pleasant, at least civil to Mike when he came to the house. But he always refused anything to eat.
***
A week or so passed and Ellen was optimistic about Debora’s progress. She was dressing better, her hair was combed, she looked better all the way around, and she seemed to be getting a grip on her life. She told Ellen she had been so impressed with the Menninger Clinic that she planned to apply for a residency there, in psychiatry. She explained that she and Tim were very close—that she understood adolescent problems well and cared a great deal about teenagers. She had pretty much decided to become a psychiatrist specializing in counseling teenagers.
If anyone thought it odd that a woman who was not yet a month past her own voluntary commitment for mental illness should be considering a residency in psychiatry, no one said so. Three months earlier, Debora had told Celeste Walker that she planned to start a practice in family medicine. Of course, she had already been an ER physician and an oncologist.
There was still much that Ellen did not know about Debora, but she was confident that she was pulling out of her despondency. She was especially concerned that Debora’s children were faring well. No one had mentioned “one word” to her about any conceivable danger to them. “That’s significant,” Ellen said, “because I am one of the few lawyers in the metropolitan area who has included in their retainer agreement the right to withdraw from any divorce case if I think things are not being done in the best interest of the child.”
Because of her background in social work, Ellen knew exactly what steps to take to get a child out of an injurious home environment immediately if the need arose. She never had reason to think that Tim, Lissa, and Kelly were in a precarious situation. Her own children, who were approximately the same age, liked Debora, who often called Ellen at home. It was also clear that Tim’s friends were devoted to his mother—that she was a mom who always showed up for soccer, hockey, and school projects. Kids were welcome in her home, and she didn’t fuss at them for making a mess. An immaculate house didn’t matter to her.
“Deb had gone from being real angry and bitter and scared she could never start over again,” Ellen said, “to talking about joint custody. She wanted to do her residency at Menninger’s, a week-on-week-off program. She wanted Mike to share the kids, but she didn’t think he would. Deb said he only had a two-bedroom apartment and ‘He won’t help me with the kids—he’s never helped me with the kids.’”
Ellen reassured her, saying that more often than not people change after divorce, and they do want to spend time with their children. And she was right. Mike was asking for joint custody and was looking forward to it. Debora was vehement, however, when she told Ellen that Tim hated his father and would never live with him. “But that’s part of the process,” Ellen said later. “At the beginning of every divorce, people are very polarized, so you have to take things with a grain of salt.”
As for Mike, he believed that his children were doing well with Debora in her post-Menninger’s state of mind. He had lived through seventeen years of histrionics, insults, tantrums, sullen silences, and accusations. But Debora had always been a caring mother, except for her verbal assaults in front of the children and the last days of her drunken near comas, when they had looked after her. Mike felt hopeful that things were going to be all right. He believed that she might try to harm him again—he had betrayed her, at least in her opinion—but he had no reason to doubt her love for their children.
In truth, Debora lived through her children, far more than most women do; she had always been proud of their accomplishments, their activities, their physical beauty, and their soaring IQ’s. They were the friends she didn’t have; they were her excuse for giving up her medical practice. They provided the love and acceptance that she seemed unable to receive in sufficient quantity from anyone else. She did not see her parents often, her sister lived far away and had different interests, and her husband was in love with another woman. That was why she spent so much time with her children. She vowed that Lissa and Kelly would grow up to be BOTARs despite the divorce. Debora was ecstatic about Lissa’s starring role in the upcoming Christmas ballet. And Tim, the child who looked so much like her and who had inherited her brains, would be her protector.
Meanwhile, Mike was struggling to regain his strength and put his life back in order. He had come so close to dying, and he was still very thin. In the second and third weeks of October, he tentatively went back to his practice, working short hours with limited activity and not taking calls. Although he was feeling better and putting on a little weight, his recovery from whatever his illness had been—tropical sprue or typhoid fever or ricin poisoning—was very slow. He hadn’t really worked since August 18; now he hoped to ease back into his practice. Perhaps he would be able to handle full-time work by the first of November.
Ellen Ryan was trying hard to help Debora grow stronger and more independent. She knew now about Debora’s short stay at Menninger’s, but she didn’t know any details. “I had no communication with Deb’s psychiatrist and knew none of her previous history, because that was confidential information. I was working only with the information I was able to pick up. Deb still looked a little bit rumpled but she was getting ‘put together.’ She was on meds, she had regular psychiatric care. She seemed to be doing well—except that they were fighting about the money.”
One unusual feature of Ellen’s practice was the CPA on staff—“to help me track the money, to help me figure out settlements and taxes. I have a lot of women like Deb who can’t even sit down and think about putting together their discovery [the part of litigation when each side must reveal pertinent facts]. I can do that for them. At the same time, we work to get them able to stand on their own two feet.”
Debora had absolutely no idea how much she was spending in a week, and Ellen’s CPA planned to go to the Canterbury Court house to try to establish what Debora would need in the way of support. Debora didn’t know what she owned, what Mike owned, or what their expenses were. Someone had always paid the bills, and since Mike had gone into practice, she had always had enough money to buy everything she wanted for the children, the house, and herself. Now her divorce attorney and her CPA were trying to help her start to focus on budgeting, to envision what her life was going to be like down the line.
“Deb was doing great with that. No problem. And we were trying to figure out what was in the marital estate—Deb had no idea about that either.
“It wasn’t because she was a woman,” Ellen hastened to add. “I’ve represented men with wonderful jobs and incredibly high IQ’s who don’t know how much their mortgage is or how much groceries cost I can do that in my office without shaming them or embarrassing them.”
On October 19, 1995, Ellen’s CPA sat at the dining room table with Debora, working on the concept of budgeting. “Deb made little stacks of bills. ‘This is a mortgage. This is insurance….’ That’s how we kind of start,” Ellen said, recalling the many wealthy women she had taught to manage their own finances.
Ellen’s CPA reported that Debora seemed in very good spirits and appeared to understand that from now on, she would have to figure out her own bills and plan ahead to pay them. She had even talked enthusiastically about her planned residency in adolescent psychiatry.
In fact, everything seemed to be going well. But there were aspects of Debora’s life that Ellen knew nothing about. She had never smelled alcohol on her client’s breath. She was unaware that drinking had ever bee
n a problem. And she still had no clue about the vitriolic fury Debora was capable of. To Ellen, her client was a frightened, incompetent, childlike woman who was doing her best to start a new life. Although she knew Debora had to be very intelligent to get through med school, she had no idea how truly brilliant she was. Ellen would have been shocked to see a picture of a young, slender, vibrant, smiling Debora.
The woman Ellen saw so frequently those first weeks of October was overweight, poorly dressed, and had an unflattering haircut. She spent all her time with her children or wrapped up in a book. Ellen felt sorry for Debora and vowed to help her find a happier way to live. What was going on behind Debora’s façade of an unattractive, abandoned, anxious child was a secret, a secret so completely masked that Ellen did not even realize it existed.
15
October is an enchanting time in the Midwest. The humid, baking summer dwindles and nights are cooler. The leaves turn and the air smells sweetly acrid as they are burned. Planting season is over and the petunias and geraniums grow straggly and wilted, while the sunflowers bend their heads and go to seed for next year.
Debora had told Ellen and the CPA that she was willing to take over her own life, and they believed her. Ellen felt confident enough that Debora was going to make it through her divorce in good shape that she went to Vermont for a week’s vacation in mid-October. She was unaware of ominous signs in the house on Canterbury Court.
Mike, however, saw that Debora was beginning to deteriorate. Although he had never seen her as intoxicated as on the night Officer Shipps took her to the emergency room, she was drinking again.
And her old anger was bubbling to the surface. It didn’t matter that she had a lawyer fighting for her rights and that she could expect a most comfortable income while she pursued another specialty. It didn’t matter that Mike was helping her by often taking the children on weekends. Debora simply could not deal with the fact that her husband was involved with Celeste Walker. She had mentioned their affair to Ellen in an oddly old-fashioned way: “There’s another woman who’s set her cap for my husband.” But she had said this almost casually, even with humor, and Ellen did not read the fury beneath the words.