Read Online Kiss Mommy Goodbye by Joy Fielding - Free Book Online Page A

stood like that, I don’t think she moved, with a drink in her hand, nursing it and sniffing—she had a cold, and I remember her nose kept running. She always seemed to have a Kleenex in front of her face.”
    They’re going to take my children away from me because I used a Kleenex to wipe my nose? Donna wondered in disbelief. Kleenex user unfit to wipe her children’s noses! Damn them, she uttered into herself, she was the one who had gotten up at three in the morning to wipe their noses when they cried. (“Mommy, the nose, the nose,” Adam had always yelled at the slightest dribble.) She had wiped their noses and their tears and their glorious little round butts. But it was somehow wrong for her to wipe her own nose—even when she had a cold.
    But, of course that was the whole point. She had another cold. Victor had already mentioned her fondness for theaffliction. This was merely what they termed corroborative evidence. They weren’t going to damn her because she had used a Kleenex to wipe her nose, they were going to damn her because she had another cold.
    “I went over at one point to speak to her,” Danny Vogel continued, unaware of Donna’s silent interruption, “but the conversation was pretty much one-sided.”
    “Can you recall any of it?”
    “I told her she looked lovely.” He chuckled. “She agreed with me.”
    Now, it was crazy to agree, Donna thought.
    “Her voice was very husky. She seemed to be suffering from laryngitis, which she got quite frequently, and so I concluded it must be painful for her to talk, especially after I tried to ask her a few questions and she didn’t answer.”
    “What kind of questions?”
    Danny Vogel shrugged his shoulders. “I asked her about her son—Adam. How he was, if she was planning on sending him to nursery school. She didn’t answer. She just looked at me, I remember, and she looked almost—afraid—”
    “Afraid? Of what?”
    “I have no idea. She didn’t say anything.”
    “Your honor,” Donna’s lawyer, Mr. Stamler, said rising from his seat, “I fail to see the point of this witness’s testimony. If he is to be a character witness for Victor Cressy, that’s fine. Let him confine himself to that type of testimony, but so far anything he has had to say regarding Mrs. Cressy has been totally irrelevant. Because the lady failed to answer his questions to his satisfaction, Mr. Vogel seems to imply that there was something amiss in her behavior. Donna Cressy had a cold; she had laryngitis. Doesthat qualify as unbalanced behavior? Does that make her an unfit mother?”
    “If I may beg the court’s indulgence,” Ed Gerber interjected before the judge could speak. “We intend to prove the relevancy of this testimony immediately.” The judge looked appropriately skeptical, but allowed the lawyer to continue.
    Ed Gerber twisted his mouth unattractively, until the next question was formulated in his mind and ready to be spit out.
    “Did Mrs. Cressy’s subsequent behavior at the party do anything to, let us say, arouse your suspicion as to her state of mind?”
    “About halfway through the party,” Danny Vogel answered, choosing his words carefully, “there was a total transformation in her behavior. It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or Mrs. Hyde,” he added, laughing meekly at his joke. No one joined him, although Ed Gerber did smile. “One minute, she was sniffing and not talking to anyone and the next minute, she was yelling, and I mean yelling, in a perfectly clear voice, one that had absolutely no traces of a cold in it anywhere, and that’s how she was for the rest of the evening.” He paused, waiting for someone to object. No one did. Donna looked at the judge. His interest had been rekindled. He was listening intently.
    “Did anything happen that you were aware of to occasion this change?”
    “Donna was standing across from the bar—in the same position she’d been in since their arrival—when Victor walked over to her to