593 Riverside Drive - 22. Chapter 22

“That was brutal,” my father almost apologized.

“Yes,” Ella said. “It made me not want to eat any lunch.”

“And then you had to go back into the courtroom,” Mama reminded us.

“Were you still being cross-examined?” Essie asked. “You’d think Benno Lewinson would have run out of questions.”

“No,” Herbert jibed. “He has Joe’s determination with the same lack of results.”

My father ignored that.

“How many answers does he need?” Howard asked. He and Lewis had joined us for dinner. “Hasn’t he established his case?”

It seems Lewis had the same thoughts. “And the details,” he added. “They’re embarrassing.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard worse,” Herbert quipped.

“I wasn’t thinking about myself,” Lewis defended. “I was concerned about Ella.”

“Which is where I began,” my father pointed out. “Lewinson is simply rude.”

“And he wanders,” I added. “Repeatedly.”

“If he’s doing that to confuse me,” Ella advised, “he hasn’t.”

“Yes. You’ve calmly repeated the facts,” my mother complimented.

“Even if I have to say them four times,” Ella teased. “It’s like what Alberta says about teaching the third grade.”

“Except Lewinson’s an adult,” Howard objected.

“Earning a respectable living,” Lewis complained.

“It’s not that he’s a bad lawyer,” I maintained. “He has his intentions, and he’s clobbering his way towards them. But he can’t be impressing Judge Crain – and there’s no other jury.”

“Unfortunately, as we know from other trials,” Lewis reasoned, “the best lawyer – the most skilled and subtle – doesn’t always prevail.”

“You described Lewinson perfectly, Ethel,” Herbert went on, laughing. “‘Clobbering.’ He’s a beaver.”

“At least, he’s not rat,” I joked back.

Lewis moved on. “I showed my father the transcripts from yesterday,” he told us. “Before I took the carbon copy to Dr. Guildersleeve, as you asked. Dad likes Steuer's approach, but thinks Lewinson seems untrained.”

“Dr. Gildersleeve said something interesting, too,” I remembered. “She said Benno Lewinson must be a criminal lawyer, because he has that manner of approach. Then she added, ‘But there needs to be respect for even the most obviously guilty defendant – or else our judicial system dissolves. And your aunt is far from being a criminal.’”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” Howard admitted. “But then you and Lewis have seen so many trials.”

“I hadn’t considered it, either.” I turned to Lewis. “Had you?”

“Not really. Though this is the first divorce trial I’ve followed this closely, and I’m just reading what Ella and Lewinson have to say. I can’t see them, so I’m losing any emotion. But my father warned me that these trials can get surprisingly impolite, and that seems to be happening here.”

“I guess none of us know what to expect,” Ella confessed, “even Max. Though he’s assured me he’s seen much worse. But he may have said that to keep me calm.”

“What could be worse?” my mother questioned.

“The ones that are trying to prove infidelity,” Ella related. “Real or pretended. At least, that’s what Max said. And he insisted that we’re being astonishingly polite.”

“Polite?” Herbert exclaimed. “Not in my drawing room.”

“Why would anyone want to be a divorce lawyer?” Essie soon wondered. “It’s like collecting the trash.”

“Maybe they do it to help people like me,” Ella said smiling. “Without Max, I’d be lost.”