Five year "marriage". Seven years now, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, in Family Court. Me, end of rope.  

Very early on, my ex's first (of six? now) attorney(s) entered the Ladies' as I was drying my hands and preparing to leave.

Our eyes met in the mirror and we both froze. In a flash, she regrouped and marched on into a stall, face once again serene.  Presumably, years of doing what she does for money gives one nerves of steel.  I don't imagine I could successfully pee, let alone drop my drawers, in the presence of one of my...whatever I am to her. But then. That's me. Perhaps that's why she's not all but homeless and I am.

Anyway.

I debated my options -- this being a woman I'd actually dreamed of slowly beating to death with a nail-studded baseball bat -- then just finished drying my hands. If you learn nothing else in Family Court, it's that anything you do, besides abject surrender, will only makes things worse. So I just dry my hands. 

Almost immediately a Law Guardian -- they're court appointed to represent litigants' kids -- follows her in. Quite clearly, she'd seen "Susie" enter and followed her in specifically to catch up with her. Only a few seconds have gone by, pregnant as they were.  

This is what the sworn protector and defender of helpless children caught up in their parents' Family Court battles followed "Susie" to ask. This is how attorneys -- ok some attorneys-- who make their living in Family Court greet each other, verbatim:

"So Susie! Ya makin' lotsa money!?"

I think it was the 'you go girl!" fan-girl adulation in her voice that stopped me short. And that it wasn't really a question. It was a girlfriend's request for a vicarious thrill:  oh how she clearly wished she had the gumption to make 'real' money in private practice, rather than just staring at the clock til retirement and doing nothing to protect her charges.

Now, I've no doubt redecorated this in my mind, but I experienced her voice as a gun moll's from a 20's gangster movie. Imagine Leslie Anne Warren in Victor, Victoria.

As I fight to keep a roof over our heads, I hear her in my mind all the time:

Ya makin' lotsa money!?

Ya makin' lotsa money!?

Ya makin' lotsa money!?

Ya makin' lotsa money!?

Again, all this takes place in seconds.

I hear "Susie's" indrawn, 'oh shit' breath from the stall.  Ah. So not completely devoid of human emotion after all. Also, there was that time she looked a tad uncomfortable accusing my mother of being insane. When my mother was in the court room. Not that it stopped her.

But I digress.

I only have a split second to decide. I decide to go for it. It's not as if Susie could work any harder to destroy me, right?:

Is that...woman "makin lotsa money!?"

"Yeah," I say. "And all of it offa me."

And then I left them to whatever conversations girlfriends such as they have in the Ladies'.