Chapter 8
EDDIE HAD HAD NO INTENTION OF SPECIALIZING in divorce cases. He really had no idea of what sort of road his career would take. Sometimes he felt he should pursue a line that would get him, eventually, a cushy position in some corporation's legal lineup. Sometimes he daydreamed of the life as a trial lawyer, saving rich defendants in flashy murder trials.
But it was the case involving the Van Nessens that cemented his career in the divorce field. And a more un-likely case than he could even have dreamed up in a drunken moment.
Eddie probably got-and accepted-Elsie Van Nessen's divorce case because he wasn't knowledgeable about who the Van Nessens were. Oh, he'd heard the name, but he wasn't aware of the money and power behind it. Any other attorney in that city would have found an excuse to get out of taking Elsie as a client. Indeed, many had turned her down, giving one reason or another-and never the truthful reason.
Because plump, dyed-blonde Elsie Van Nessen was up against the prestige and pomp-and cash-of the family, all alone.
But Eddie didn't know all that. All he knew was that he'd gotten a phone call from a woman wondering if he was available to take a case. He said he'd squeeze it in, and asked her to drop in.
When he hung up, he smiled wryly to himself. Was he available? Hell, he had nothing else to do.
He found out later that Elsie had just been going through the. list of attorneys in the yellow pages of the phone book and had run down as far as his name-that's how he got her, or vice-versa.
Elsie came to the office that afternoon. Eddie had been expecting a client who was practically destitute. He was quite surprised to see in his doorway a woman practically swimming in fur and jewels. Some instinct told him immediately that these were the real thing, even if the woman did look-well, not cheap-but overdone the way a cheap or lower-class woman might. Her hair was dyed or bleached or whatever (Eddie didn't know) until it was almost white with just a touch of yellow. Against this halo effect was a face with far too much make-up on it. Enormous red lips and eye shadow that seemed layered on. False eyelashes that stood out an inch or more. A super-healthy pink stuff on her cheeks.
She sat down heavily and tiredly on the. chair he offered her. He wanted to go about this business in a routine and orderly manner, but Elsie said that it would be better if he came to the club that night to see her dance first, and then they could discuss the divorce.
Eddie should have refused to be so unprofessional and should have adamantly said no, but he was caught off-guard. This was a dancer? She had made enough by dancing to buy herself these jewels arid furs? Eddie was flabbergasted, and rather numbly he took down the name of the club and said he'd see her about ten.
Since Eddie was no night-clubber, he did not know where the club was, but assumed it must be a fairly swank place. Looking up the address, he was surprised to find it practically on the skid-row of the city, among a group of other such cheap joints.
Intrigued now but more wary, he drove down there that night. Outside the bar-club, she had called it, har-har-was a huge photograph of her in an abbreviated costume and with her name in huge type, Elsie Van Nessen. A star, yet! Eddie shook his head, wryly amused.
He stood at the bar nursing a bottle of beer until the show began, if it could be termed a show. The emcee came on, told a few raw jokes, then sat down at the piano. He played a tinkly, suggestive introduction, the pink lights came on, and then Elsie entered.
Eddie couldn't believe it. Was it a comedy act? If so, only he apparently thought of laughing. There was some good-natured yelling from the crowd, some whistling, stamping of feet, overloud applause. But no one hooted.
Elsie writhed around wearing a costume of green, shiny material somewhat like a one-piece bathing suit. She had on black-net stockings. In her hair was a large, high comb, giving a sort of Spanish look. Wrapped around her was. a boa that she moved to make it appear like a snake enveloping her.
She moved and tossed and kicked and made supposedly seductive poses. When she threw her leg in the air, about half of her fat, white backside showed, even if covered by the very loosely woven net stockings. When she leaned forward, it appeared that her plump white bosom would pop out of her bodice and cascade down to her waist.
It was difficult to take his eyes off this obscene performance that was passing for entertainment, but Eddie forced himself to watch the customers. No, they weren't making fun of her by snorting and laughing, but it was obvious that they had the same thoughts of her dancing-it was ridiculous. A fat slob up there making a spectacle of herself. Yet the place was crowded with people watching her intently. And not just the usual human garbage found in this type of dive noramlly, but lots of well-dressed couples and college-age couples on a lark.
What was all this? Eddie wondered, finishing his beer as Elsie finished her dance to a roar of applause. She came out to do a little encore, and raffishly started to take down one side of the green outfit, to expose a breast, just before she exited again into the curtains on one side of the tiny stage.
Eddie made his way back to her dressing room, which was a small cubicle made by putting up a few temporary walls in a corner of an old storeroom.
Elsie eagerly asked if he'd seen her perform.
He said yes, and she didn't even wait for any kind of praise, she just was almost pathetically girlish in delight that she was in show business. She apologized that she couldn't go somewhere to talk to him, but she had more shows to give tonight. During her days, she had to rest up to be able to give her all to the audiences that paid to see her.
From what she told him that evening and from what he was then able to gather from other sources, Eddie realized why other lawyers had turned down her case. She was fighting the Van Nessen millions, and the lawyers wanted to stay on the good side of that power bloc in this community.
It was actually such a ridiculous case! But at the moment it was happening, even Eddie couldn't be much amused by it. He was too involved. It was only after it was all over and behind him that he could pause to laugh.
Actually, it was the name that was involved in the case, much to Eddie's surprise. He would have surmised from a surface glance at the matter that maybe this young pot of flesh was a gold-digger out to squeeze a fortune from her husband and his family. She did, to be sure, want a goodly alimony, but this wasn't the basic trouble between the two factions.
As a girl, Elsie had been one of those well-rounded-not yet fat-persons who is shy but good-natured. She had a pink aura of charm and graciousness about her. As a young bride, she was probably deliciously tasty and accommodating in bed-especially on a cold night, as the wits used to put it.
The years went by and Elsie put on weight, but she still had a bubbly, good-natured charm. Her rather commonplace, staid husband didn't mind; all he expected, really, of a wife was that she know her place-which was to be unobtrusive, and not call public attention to herself unduly, especially in any unseemly way.
What no one had even guessed was that Elsie had :a need for attention and adulation. It was built-in, but it had never had a chance to express itself.
In her late twenties, Elsie had very little to occupy her time. Much to her disappointment, she was childless and the doctors told her she'd remain that way. So with all their money, she couldn't have what she wanted that way.
Furthermore, it didn't appear as if she could have become pregnant anyway, due to the infrequency of her sex life with her husbnad. And she knew it wasn't just because she was old-hat to him or plump-she realized, that she had a husband who had very early in his life become lethargic toward sex and most everything else. Elizabeth Taylor could have walked stark naked into his bedroom and her husband, with his slow-moving Van Nessen blood, would wonder what this stranger was doing intruding in his house.
So in her late twenties, Elsie began taking ballet lessons from a high-class school that catered mostly to the children of the rich, but which had evening classes for their mothers who wanted to keep in trim. That was Elsie's excuse-she wanted to keep her weight down, and this was better than plain exercise.
But inside this increasingly-fat woman there was a dancer trying to force her way out.
She wanted-needed-attention from others. Once at a cocktail party, she had a bit too much to drink and she got up to dance. She whirled around in the big, wide skirt she was wearing, showing the white of her fat thighs above the bands of her nylons, which cut into her legs. Some of the guests were horrified, but others got into the spirit of her dancing and applauded and even whistled.
Her husband had been horrified and barely spoke to her for a week, and then broke the silence to say how humiliated he was. His wife drunk! This hurt Elsie. Yes, she had been drinking, but she didn't do what she did just because she was drunk. And she wanted him to know and understand this-that she wanted to dance because she wanted to dance, that she hadn't just let herself go because of liquor. But he understood that even less than he could understand anyone with the Van Nessen name getting so drunk in the first place.
Their relationship then got even worse-on their own social level, for it couldn't have gotten any worse on an intimate, bedroom level. She might even have felt better about their lack of sex if she had discovered that her husband had a mistress-at least that would have been some excuse. But she knew he didn't. He-and it-seemed to have just dried up.
She didn't mind. She lived only for this incipient career she dreamed was right over the horizon, when she'd dance for crowds which would be amazed at her skill and grace. As for the practical matter, of living, she had a little money of her own and needn't go crawling back to any narrow-minded, scared-of-his-shadow Van Nessen for bare survival money.
But things went badly for the great career she envisioned. She couldn't get a job. In fact, most of the men she had to see about working were distressed that she'd evjBn seek employment as a dancer, or they laughed. K couple of them wanted to know if she did a comedy routine and one suggested she try to get into a burlesque act he'd heard of which used fat women and called itself The Beef Trust or something like that. it was discouraging, but somehow Elsie was determined in spite of these petty disappointments. She knew that most stars had had years of anguish and set-backs before making it big.
Her husband had made a few attempts to get her back to their home, but when he came to reason with her, he mostly acted irritated about her independent actions and tried to bully her back into the Van Nessen corral.
Things would have remained at this standoff-with the pair separated but not divorced-except that Elsie finally got a job. This brought about legal action on the part of her husband. It was because Elsie got star billing in her act at that very bowery bar in which Eddie had seen her.
The bar manager didn't hurry things, but he slowly felt out the ground about Elsie's amibtions, the family, the whole bit. When he had definitely established that she wanted to be an entertainer and she was truthfully a member of the distinguished local family, he signed her to a contract that made her his headliner. And it gave him the right to use her name and photograph in his advertisements.
It was a thunder stroke for the Van Nessens to open their newspapers the next Sunday to see a huge display advertisement that announced that Elsie Van Nessen would dance nightly at the club which was on a neon street of bars, the hangouts of drunks and drug addicts and prostitutes and homos.
If they went down to peer incredulously at how low a place it was, there in front was a huge, garishly colored photo of Elsie in her daring dancing costume. And again the Van Nessen name.
The newspapers of the city were leary of offending the Van Nessens by making a big play of the story of one of the Van Nessen wives shaking her hips for the amusement of bar-flies, but one of the columnists made brief mention of the affair. He couldn't very well just ignore the story, since it seemed everybody in town had heard of it and were gossiping about it.
The Van Nessens were in a tizzy. They stood for Money and the Establishment, for Banks and Churches, for Respectability ... and here was their name being bandied about in this ludicruous way.
They thought of trying to get some court to get a restraining order making it illegal for the name to be used in the ads. But that wasn't possible: Elsie was-God forbid-a Van Nessen.
One of them made a discreet trip down to see the bar manager, but he scorned their suggestion that Elsie be relieved of her job. She was bringing in the customers, that was all there was to it. He was not frightened by the prestige of the Van Nessens-not a bit. He told himself later that, hell, with all their money, they shoulda hired a couple of strong-arm guys to rough him up-that would have changed his mind. But this crap about it hurting their name-who cared?
The only thing to do then, counseled the wise old legal firm that handled the Van Nessen affairs, was for Elsie to be divorced. The case would be brought up before a judge who would make it a provision that she not retain her married name. That wouldn't be difficult-all the judges around were friends of the Van Nessens or had political obligations to them.
So Elsie's husband filed for divorce. His case actually was fairly strong, from any point of view. Elsie had been the one to leave her husband's bed and board. He had made several efforts to get her back to her home ... and to her senses, as he had put it. So it appeared that, legally she had deserted him and he had made all the efforts legally necessary to show that it was not that he hadn't tried to reconcile.
Because of all these factors, Elsie had trouble getting a lawyer. Many didn't wish to tangle with the Van Nessens-they wanted, rather, to be on their side. Furthermore, it appeared that there wouldn't be any money on Elsie's side. She had a little, but nothing sensational.
That was another factor that other lawyers took into consideration about the Van Nessens-they could be very cheap. In this case, they had decided that Elsie should be financially punished for bringing this scandal on the family. Instead of a generous alimony or settlement, they decided on little or nothing for her. But then, they were stingy; if they hadn't been, they could have solved the matter of at least the bar owner by just bribing him to fire Elsie. In this attempt now-at not giving Elsie a living alimony-they had made a huge mistake. For when Eddie decided to take the case-which he did because he needed the work-he had determined that he would make the husband appear in a bad light by this gesture of ill-will; he with his millions not wanting to give his wife a dollar or two.
But it was Elsie's own idea that turned out to be the really sensational one of the divorce case. And Eddie later got the credit for it, although he had fought it ever since she had first mentioned it: she would dance in court.
The Van Nessen lawyers had put in a statement about Elsie's odd behavior and "vulgar dancing" in the skid-row saloon. This incensed Elsie more than anything else that had been charged against her. After all, she had deserted her husband and left his damned bed and board. But to say she was a cheap, vulgar dancer! Hell, she was an artiste! And she'd show this to the world-or at least the judge.
Eddie did his level best to dissuade her, but she was adamant.
He had a few points of his own to make on her behalf in court. For example, when the case finally came up before the judge, and there had been much testimony about her odd behavior and desertion, Elise herself got on the stand.
EDDIE: Mrs. Van Nessen, you were a faithful wife?
ELSIE: Oh, yes.
EDDIE: We realize it is not our concern here-none of our business really-but you were what we call a "good girl" before you were married?
ELSIE: Yes.
EDDIE: No one has ever challenged your virtue? ELSIE: Challenged it?
(There was a little light snickering in the court at this point, but the judge just frowned. He was interested in the testimony anyway, and wondered where it was leading.)
EDDIE: I mean, no one could accuse you of being a lady of little virtue.
ELSIE: I should hope not.
EDDIE: Is it not a fact that you have had relations only with your husband in your entire life? ELSIE: That is correct.
EDDIE: Now, Mrs. Van Nessen, you are a normal woman.
ELSIE: Of course!
EDDIE: You have normal appetites and desires, of a normal married lady. Tell me, Mrs. Van Nessen, you shared a house and a bedroom with Mr. Van Nessen.
ELSIE: Yes.
EDDIE: You were never in any way disloyal or unfaithful to your husband. ELSIE: Oh, no.
EDDIE: What does a wife have the right to demand of a husband, Mrs. Van Nessen? A shelter, food? ELSIE: Yes. EDDIE: Love? ELSIE: Yes.
EDDIE: We will not try to speculate about the aspect of love which is termed affection, since that is a subjective thing and can't be accurately counted or measured. But of the more objective, physical aspect of love ... Mrs. Van Nessen, did you ever deny your husband?
ELSIE: What? Oh, you mean...? No, I didn't.
EDDIE: Now isn't it true, Mrs. Van Nessen, that there was really little opportunity to deny your husband his marital rights because he-didn't demand them very often?
ELSIE: That's right.
EDDIE: Did you ever feel neglected, Mrs. Van Nessen?
ELSIE: Well-I-I-I....
EDDIE: The court, I'm sure, hates to embarrass you as much as I hate to do so, but we must know. You have been charged with deserting this loving and eager husband who wanted you back. Now, the lack of physical affection has been established in certain cases as reasonable grounds of desertion. You are a healthy young woman, you have certain normal drives, you expect-well-that marriage will give you an outlet for them. Right? ELSIE: I guess so.
EDDIE: You know so, Mrs. Van Nessen, but we understand your embarrassment about this. We certainly would not bring all of this forward except we must clear your reputation of this charge that you willfully left your husband's bed on a whim. All right then: normal physical needs, we all agree. Were they being fulfilled? That's the question at this point. In the year prior to your leaving your husband's bed and board-as the legal terminology is-could you give us some idea of the frequency of your relations?
(If the judge is anxious to learn where this questioning was going, the spectators are pantingly eager, their mouths literally watering.)
ELSIE: In the year before?
EDDIE:. Yes.
ELSIE: There's no need to guess-it was once. (A hushed giggle runs through the courtroom. The judge looks sternly at the people on the benches.) EDDIE: Once? ELSIE: That's correct? EDDIE: You're sure?
ELSIE: How could you forget a thing like that?
(Laughter from the spectators. The judge finally raps his gavel for the first time. He is annoyed, but also amused.)
EDDIE: Now this is a subjective matter, and a very delicate one, Mrs. Van Nessen. Was it-shall we say-satisfactory for you?
ELSIE: Well-I ... I don't like to say anything. He is older, you know.
This testimony shattered the opposition for the moment. Who could blame a prime, healthy hunk of womanhood like Elsie Van Nessen for leaving a man who not only couldn't give her what every woman needs, but wasn't even trying?
If that established that her husband was impotent for all practical purposes, her dance was the thing that really swung the case in her favor. And Eddie got the credit for it, which established him as an ingenous lawyer who specialized in divorce; neither of which facts-ingenous or divorce lawyer-was true at that time, in that case.