Two years before Reed came along, Terrence and Eleanor Rivers had a son named Oliver. When little Oliver Rivers was born, Terrence and Eleanor hired a weekday, live-in housekeeper/nanny named Amalia Vaccaro. Two years later, when Reed joined the family, a weekend nanny named Celeste was added to the payroll. Why did Terrence and Eleanor feel they needed so much assistance with their two young children, when Eleanor didn’t work outside the home? Well, according to Eleanor, it was because Terrence wanted his young wife to be able to “dote on their children” while also having plenty of time to “paint and nap, and read poetry,” and, basically, not have to worry about pesky things like cleaning toilets or making the family dinner, or anything else that might cause Eleanor a moment of worry or stress.
According to Terrence, however, he insisted on round-the-clock help for his “unstable and emotional” wife because he knew, from the start, she would make an “unfit mother, if she were left to handle the pressures of motherhood without a lot of help.”
Not so, Eleanor retorted in a deposition, pointing out that she’d grown up babysitting her younger sisters and her neighbors’ children. “I’ve always adored babies,” Eleanor insisted. “And I absolutely adored mine.” According to Eleanor, it was Terrence, not herself, who was the unfit parent. “Terrence never showed any genuine interest in being a true father to our boys,” Eleanor claimed. “He loves having a family for Christmas cards. But that’s about it.” Moreover, Eleanor claimed, the reason Terrence “insisted” on hiring their weekend nanny, Celeste, wasn’t because Eleanor needed her. But because Celeste was “young and beautiful, and Terrence wanted to get her into bed.”
But no matter what Eleanor argued in the divorce, it fell on deaf ears. At least, that was my impression when reading the documents—and all because of one tragic fact, which Terrence and his army of lawyers relentlessly hammered on: it was Eleanor who was home alone with her two young sons on the fateful Saturday when little Oliver Rivers drowned in his family’s backyard swimming pool.
On that day, the weekend nanny, Celeste, had called in sick, and Terrence was off playing golf. At least, according to Terrence. According to Eleanor, Terrence was off screwing Celeste, the “sick” weekend nanny, that fateful day. In the legal malpractice case, one of Eleanor’s biggest beefs with her own divorce lawyer was that she hadn’t tracked down Terrence’s actual whereabouts that day, either through hotel receipts or witnesses. Eleanor claimed Terrence was a liar and a cheater in the divorce—which, of course, isn’t a hard thing to believe, in retrospect, considering Terrence’s criminal conviction three years later. She argued proof of Terrence’s infidelity on that particular Saturday, and his lies about it in the divorce, would have debunked his entire case, all of which centered on Terrence being a devoted and exemplary husband and father—a pillar of the community. To Eleanor’s thinking, proving Terrence was an unfaithful husband and a liar under oath would have given her a fighting chance to retain the right to care for her son, Reed.
Personally, I’m not sure if Eleanor was right about any of that. I have to think, even if the judge had ruled Terrence was a liar and a cheater in relation to his wife, it wouldn’t have made him decide Terrence was an unfit parent. Otherwise, half the divorced people in the world would lose custody of their kids. But, either way, I felt bad for Eleanor while reading the malpractice case. It was undisputed she’d been alone with her two boys the day Oliver died, which was a tragedy, in itself—and one she was desperately trying to grapple with and explain. But, unfortunately, for Eleanor, that horrible tragedy was all the judge in the divorce case needed to know about, seven years later, to grant Terrence full legal and physical custody of Reed. What did Eleanor get? Once-weekly supervised visitations with her son, for two hours at a time.
Honestly, I have no idea if Oliver’s death was Eleanor’s “fault,” as Terrence claimed. Maybe it was. But I can’t help thinking children die tragically in swimming pools every day—sometimes, even in the presence of lifeguards. Sometimes, at a party, when a bunch of parents are standing nearby. Are all parents whose children slip silently underwater, never to rise again, de facto unfit parents to their surviving children, based on a few seconds of tragic inattention? And if so, are they still unfit parents, a full seven years after the tragedy?
I don’t pretend to have answers. I’m just saying, from what I just read, I feel like the judge in the divorce case believed Terrence’s version of events, hook, line, and sinker, without giving Eleanor’s version of events, and her desperate pleas for him to listen to her, a moment’s sincere consideration. And, in light of what we’ve since learned about Terrence, one of the world’s most notorious liars, I feel in my bones Eleanor was probably given a raw deal.
In Eleanor’s version of events, she had the stomach flu the day Oliver died and could barely keep her eyes open. Eleanor testified she “begged” and “pleaded” with her husband to stay home and help her with their children, since the weekend nanny, Celeste, had called in sick. “But Terrence told me to ‘suck it up, Buttercup,’” Eleanor testified in a deposition, an excerpt of which was attached to a motion in the malpractice case. “So that’s what I did. I put the boys down for their regular morning nap, the same as always, set an alarm so I’d wake up before them, the same as always, and then, I crawled into bed and crashed.”
Tragically, when Eleanor woke up and went to check on her boys, she found Reed still fast asleep in his crib... and Oliver nowhere to be found. She testified she looked high and low for her missing son, becoming increasingly panicked, and finally found him in an unthinkable spot. The poor woman described her desperate dive into the swimming pool. She testified about how she pulled Oliver from the water and tried frantically to resuscitate him... But it was too late. She testified, “I had no idea Oliver knew how to open the lock we’d put up high on the sliding door. He’d pulled up a chair to reach it. He’d never done that before!”
A week after Oliver’s death, Eleanor tried to commit suicide. She was hospitalized thereafter for a week, and, then, sent to a long-term “mental care” facility in Los Angeles for the better part of a year. While she was away, Terrence was Father of the Year, according to him. Although, according to Eleanor, it was Amalia, not Terrence, who cared for Reed during this period. But since nobody called Amalia as a witness in the divorce case—yet another grievance for Eleanor in the later malpractice lawsuit—the divorce judge, once again, sided with Terrence, even going so far as to praise him for being Reed’s “rock” during this time.
Poor Eleanor. She testified in the divorce, “I fully admit I wasn’t capable of caring for Reed during the first year after Olly’s death. But I knew Amalia was there for him, and that I needed to focus on getting better so I could get out and be a good mother to him. So that’s what I did. I got the help I needed. And then I came home and took care of my son for the next six years. I’m not a perfect mother, but who is? Judge, I want to be with my son. I want to be his mother. Please, please, let me do that.”
It wasn’t enough to convince the judge. Not when Terrence, a man regarded as a “pillar of the community” testified that Eleanor was “useless and non-functional” when she returned home from her year away, and then remained that way for the entirety of the six years preceding the divorce.