Storytelling in the Round: A Family Lawyer’s Perspective

Storytelling in the Round: A Family Lawyer’s Perspective

I practice family law, which means I’ve spent many hours and days in courtrooms listening, closely, to people tell different versions of the same events. Sometimes someone is objectively lying: no, Dad did not take the kid to the doctor’s, because the medical records show that Mom was the one at the appointment. But other times, more common times actually, the portrait that emerges about a particular event in dispute ends up painted in distinct shades of grey: Wife testifies she contributed to Husband’s earning power by taking on the lion’s share of childcare and household responsibilities during the marriage, and Husband says no, they moved twice for Wife’s education and employment, putting his career on the back burner so she could pursue hers. Who is right? Is there one truth? Maybe not. There are narratives people create about their lives which include objective facts but are colored by distinctly subjective markers.

I also have lived for decades in the same closely knit neighborhood in Philadelphia, where people stay put for a long time, raise their kids together, and constantly run into each other at the playground, the coffee shop, the food co-op, the bookstore, you name it. If you have ever lived in a neighborhood like this you know what else they do: they talk about their neighbors. And, surprise surprise, they often tell each other different stories about the same events. Not because anyone is lying, but because people have their own takes on why the weird guy down the street got fired from his teaching job or why the beautiful couple next door are suddenly getting divorced. Just like in the crucible of the courtroom but with lower stakes, who is right? Is there one truth? 

I am firmly convinced that there is not. From what I have seen in the courtroom and the coffee shop,  people develop different narratives to explain events in their own lives and the lives of others, and those narratives are often sincerely believed. And, sometimes, they do actually just lie – the objective type of lying. It was that complex and fascinating stew of human experience that I wanted to unpack and explore in my first novel, Every Other Weekend. 

My goal was to tell a story about the end of a marriage, and the wide circle of fallout from that event, from the perspectives of all the people involved, and also not-so-involved, i.e. those on the outside looking in. For some reason I’m still not sure of, the natural starting point that came to me was the first-person voice of the husband/father, whom I named Jake. Jake, a charming guy used to skating through life on the surface, turned out to be quite the unreliable narrator. As other voices come in, which include  Jake’s wife, Lisa, their twelve and eight-year-old daughters, Jake’s divorce lawyer, the divorce lawyer’s teenage daughter, the family court judge who presides over their custody case, Jake’s millennial polyamorous girlfriend, and even Pinky the family dog, the story as Jake initially tells it morphs and shifts. That’s the inner circle.

Then there’s the outer circle of people affected by the role each of the primary characters plays in the divorce: the divorce lawyer’s husband who thinks his wife is too wrapped up in the case; the judge’s law clerk who tells the judge how she thinks the judge should rule based on her experiences as a single parent; Jake’s girlfriend’s husband, who struggles to live up to his polyamory ideals; and even, yes, I couldn’t help myself, the divorce lawyer’s dog who meets Pinky at the dog park. 

And finally, for the full 360 view, there’s that farthest circle, the players who just hear about the demise of the golden couple’s marriage. In a series of Greek choruses sprinkled throughout the novel, they gossip, dissect and weigh in on the events surrounding Jake and Lisa’s divorce: Jake’s band-mates, the teenage friends of the divorce lawyer’s daughter, the middle-school moms sipping lattes at the coffee shop, the yogis getting up from savasana at the yoga studio.  

While I wanted Every Other Weekend to bring home the idea that there is no one truth about many important events in people’s lives, I found that this ambiguity didn’t sit well with some early readers. There’s a scene in the book involving two characters and some pretty bad behavior, which is subsequently thought about internally by those characters, and later discussed with others, in very different ways. When the readers asked me what actually happened, I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t say which character was telling the truth because I hadn’t started from the idea of a specific objective encounter which the players involved would then mischaracterize. 

Instead, I first wrote about the event wholly from the perspective of one character—there was no Platonic version of it floating in my head. Later, I wrote scenes where the other character involved describes the event differently.  And references to this event come back later in the novel, morphing a bit again in the telling, as the revised versions serve the characters in those moments. From where I sit, these disparate versions all have validity. I love that readers have different takes – just like judges in courtrooms – on what “really” happened. Fortunately, in this case, I’m not the judge.

MARGARET KLAW is a writer, lawyer and founding partner of BKW Family Law, an all-women law firm in Philadelphia. Named a Preeminent Woman Lawyer by Martindale-Hubbell, she has been recognized by Best Lawyers in America and designated a Pennsylvania “Super Lawyer” in the area of family law. Starting with day-in-the-life vignettes about practicing family law published in HuffPost, she has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time and Salon, and is the author of “Keeping it Civil: The Case of the Pre-nup and the Porsche & Other True Accounts from the Files of a Family Lawyer” (Algonquin Books, 2013). “Every Other Weekend” is her first work of fiction. Find out more about Margaret at her website.

EVERY OTHER WEEKEND

Forty-ish hipster dad Jake is happily settled down in the politically progressive, urban, and notably self-satisfied community of Greenwood, working at his not-so-interesting job, playing guitar with his band, and enjoying domestic life with his beautiful and accomplished wife Lisa, their two charming daughters, and the beloved family dog.

When Lisa rocks Jake’s world by telling him she wants a divorce, their story unfolds from multiple points of view including those of other family members, Jake’s self-absorbed divorce lawyer, the cranky family court judge who presides over his custody case, his polyamorous millennial girlfriend, and the eighteen-year-old babysitter who also happens to be his lawyer’s daughter. Throughout Greenwood, in the coffee shop, the yoga studio, and the basketball court, lives intersect. Choruses of friends and neighbors gossip, dissect, and weigh in. A surprise witness upends Jake’s custody trial. Things are not always as they seem, and there is no one truth about a marriage.

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