As I come through the door, Julia calls loudly, “You got a letter on the bow-wow case.” The six people in the waiting room all look up to see which lawyer on the floor refers to his clients in such a charming manner.
“Be right with you,” I say to my uncontested divorce client, a girl in her late teens who nudges the female next to her. The woman, her mother and witness, who will corroborate residency and grounds, rolls her eyes as if to say her daughter’s taste in men hasn’t improved.
“Any calls?” I ask, riffling through my message box as I examine the return address: Jason’s. Beneath it is a picture of Lassie.
Julia scowls as if I had asked her to disrobe.
“I just talked to you a half hour ago. Who do you think wants you so bad? At this rate you’re gonna want to get a car phone. Bracken probably has one, am I right?”
I motion to my client and her mother to come for ward, and I glance at Jason’s letter. Incredibly, there is a check for five hundred dollars made out to Wilma Chestnut. At the bottom is written: Return of Bernard Junior’s tuition. I can’t believe it. I feel like hugging the two women next to me. Jason has enclosed a short note:
“In a former life. Giddy Page, I have no doubt you were a Doberman. I have found these outwardly normal animals to be the only large-size canines in existence utterly devoid of the possibilities of metaphysical growth. Your regression, as reflected in your life’s work, is only natural. Very Sadly Yours, Jason Von Jason.”
“This is my mom, Mr. Page,” my client says, nodding at her mother, who is popping a pill into her mouth. My client’s husband began beating her on their wedding night and left her six months later for a prostitute just released from prison for manslaughter. Without her bruises, Arvetta Kennedy is pretty in a wormy, underfed sort of way, but her mother’s face shows the ravages of cigarette smoking and eighteen years of raising Arvetta.
“Kathy Harris, Mr. Page,” the older woman says.
“Arvetta is thinking of dismissing her complaint for divorce from that piece of shit. If you let her, I will make your life miserable. Do you hear me?”
Arvetta begins to sniffle.
“Aw, Mom, Bobby can really be neat a lot of me time.”
Everyone in the waiting room looks at me.
“Let’s talk about this in my office,” I say, glaring at Julia to keep her mouth shut at least until I am out of her presence.
I am back from the courthouse in half an hour. (Judge Rand was in one of his moods in which he violates the statutes and judicial canons and signs the divorce decree without a word of testimony: “You’re divorced; have a nice day.”) I call mrs. Chestnut with the good news.
“I’m sending you a check for five hundred dollars,” I say, feeling as if I had taken on Shell Oil and won.
There is a silence at the other end.
“I don’t think I should take the money,” she says sweetly.
“Bernard Junior can really try a person’s patience. Just lately, he’s forgetting to go to the bathroom outside, and he’s four years old!”
From behind my desk I look out the window and wonder if I could learn to be a truck driver.
“I’ve already put the check in the mail and closed your file,” I lie, holding up the check to see if it has been written in disappearing ink.
“You do whatever you want.”
mrs. Chestnut’s voice quivers with righteous indignation.
“Mr. Von Jason was a nice man! I think Bernard Junior misses him.”
Over lunch in the cafeteria downstairs I tell Dan about the last eighteen hours. Sucking on the meatless carcass of a chicken breast that is now so dry he can practically whistle a tune on it, he nods.
“So Chet is finally coming around? It’s about goddamn time.”
Trying not to watch Dan, I sip at my coffee. I have had so much caffeine today I could begin my own coffee plantation by pissing in my front yard.
“And after all this, he’ll probably drop dead in the middle of the trial.”
Dan finally wipes his mouth on his napkin.
“The ultimate sympathy plea,” he says with a grin.
“What a great way to go out.” He eyes the dessert section and begins to drum his fingers. He has promised Brenda to cut out sweets during the day. I know how Dan is going out. He pushes up from the table.
“Don’t wish for something too hard. You may get it. I’ll be right back.
Want some more coffee?”
“No, thanks,” I say, mulling over Dan’s remark. Do I really want this case so badly now that I’d wish death on somebody? Damn, am I that grotesque? Perhaps. Beginning with last night’s conversation with Sarah, the last twenty-four hours have seemed like one long ache.
Jennifer with a “J” is telling her friends, “I met this sad-sack lawyer last night who practically started bawling on the dance floor. I would have gone home with him but I was afraid I’d drown if he got on top of me.” How can I blame Velvetta, or whatever her name was, for wanting to go back to her husband? I’m just as pathetic.
I watch Dan take a piece of cherry pie. Out of the whole bunch, only Chet and Wynona seem to have it together.
How much simpler life would be if I had their faith. If I can believe my eyes, neither fears the freight train bearing down on Chet. Yet I could tell Wynona about the loneliness. No amount of faith will stop that.
No child, no matter how wonderful, is a substitute for a husband or wife. Not if you were both in love. And as hard as it is to think about Chet Bracken being in love, he clearly is. Maybe that’s why this case has been so hard on him. For the first time in his life he has things in perspective. Wynona. Trey. The little time he has left he can’t really concentrate on a trial. In fact, he is even thinking like a human being instead of like a lawyer.
That’s why it has been difficult for him to suspect Shane. How can I blame him? Chet still doesn’t want to believe that the man who has given him such peace may be a murderer, and it’s taken him this long to face that distinct possibility.
“What the hell,” Dan says, sliding the pie onto the table.
The crust appears an inch thick.
“I could’ve gotten ice cream on it.”
“A man of iron discipline,” I agree.
“I can easily see you in a monastic order, fasting for weeks at a time.
Your cheeks gaunt, your wispy body a perfectly flat line as you prostrate yourself against the cold stones of the abbey at four each morning. Toiling cheerfully for hours in the scorching sun. Your mind pure, unadulterated, your thoughts only of God and your fellow man.”
Dan digs into his pie.
“I’d probably become gay, all right,” he muses, putting a typical Bailey spin on the subject.
“Even as terrible as Brenda can be, I still get excited if we haven’t done it in a while.”
It. It’s been a while. Maybe it’s over for me. Women can obviously tell when you’re desperate. I used to dream of the day Rainey and I would make love, but now it’ll never happen.
“Good for you,” I say, meaning it. Who knows? Maybe Dan’s marriage isn’t as terrible as it seems. He probably makes it sound that way just to have something to talk about.
“What do you make of Leigh’s story about the nude video?” I ask. Dan has been curiously silent on the subject.
The last piece of pie disappears down his throat.
Three bites. And I thought Woogie ate fast.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he says, wiping his mouth with the greasy rag of a napkin that off and on has been wedged in his crotch.
“It sounds like one of those trial balloons politicians send up. She’s running scared. If she thought Shane had been in on it, you or Chet would have heard it long before now. As much as she might love her old man, she’s too young to take the rap for him. The last martyr even close to Leigh’s age was Joan of Arc. That kind of stuff is done best by people our age whose most exciting activity is collecting coupons for arch supports and Preparation H.”
I chuckle at the truth in Dan’s remark. Why would Leigh want to take a fall if she’s got her whole life in front of her? My problem in this case is that I don’t really know the client. As I lament this fact to Dan, a light bulb finally goes on in my head. Leigh’s sisters.
Why aren’t they here? Is there so much estrangement that they won’t even be here for their sister’s murder trial? Who was it who suggested I call one of them? If my memory gets any worse, I’ll need to start writing down my own name.
Upstairs, I thumb through my notes on the case and, for a change, find’ what I’m looking for-the names of the neighbors next door. I call and am told by Ann Wheeler that Mary Patricia has never married and lives in a small town in Rhode Island. I get the number and leave a message on her answering machine. She must be at work.
At three-thirty, as I am about to head west for Christian Life, Rainey calls and tells me that she has located Sarah.
“She’s okay,” she says.
“I’ve seen the place she’s staying in, and you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Where is it?” I ask, relieved but irritated at the same time. I’ll be the one to decide if I need to worry.
Her voice fall of sympathy, Rainey says, “I can’t tell you that. The price of seeing it was that I had to swear I wouldn’t tell you.”
I try to keep my voice calm, but I can’t.
“For God’s sake,” I yell, “this is my child we’re talking about, Rainey!”
“I know that!” she shoots back.
“Don’t cut the one link you have to her right now. If I told you, and you went and got her, the next day she might be gone again and for good.”
I drum my fingers on my desk in frustration, knowing she is making perfect sense. I can’t lock Sarah up.
“Does the place she’s in have running water and electricity
Rainey can’t suppress a giggle.
“Relax. She’s not fighting off rats in an abandoned warehouse. It’s a very adequate apartment. The girl she’s staying with is an emancipated minor and very mature for her age. She’s got a job and pays her own way. Don’t try to crowd Sarah too much right now, okay?”
How mature can a kid under eighteen be? I know fifty-year-olds who don’t have any business living by themselves.
“Is it in a safe area of town?”
“Very,” Rainey Says, her voice reassuring.
“I even checked the refrigerator when she wasn’t looking. They have more food than you do. Granted, it’s mostly frozen pizzas and Cokes, but she’s not starving.”
For the first time in months, I feel profound gratitude to Rainey. Even though our relationship is strained to the breaking point right now, she is still coming through for me.
“I take it her roommate is Christian Life?”
“Oh, most definitely!” Rainey assures me.
“She’s a good kid.”
Not a boy, thank God. Rainey, thank goodness, can’t help her social-worker mode.
“Will you ask her to call me tonight?” I say, suddenly close to tears. At least she isn’t facing a murder charge.
“I already did,” she answers. “Try to be home about eight.”
I wipe my eyes, glad she can’t see me.
“Thanks.” For a moment I consider telling Rainey that Leigh has disappeared, but I’m already late now. I’ll have plenty to tell her later tonight.
“Try to remember,” Rainey advises, “that Christian Life is the most important thing in her life right now.
She feels you’re a threat to it.”
I want to protest that I haven’t prohibited Sarah from spending a single minute up there, but Rainey knows that. Intellectually, she must mean. But Sarah knows I don’t know enough science to stop a case of the hiccups. Still, I suppose I represent the kind of people who do.
“Why didn’t she stay,” I ask, looking at my watch, “and argue with me?”
Rainey says gently, “Because you don’t fight fair.
You use guilt, condescension, self-pity every emotion she’s never been able to deal with when you’re in the picture.”
Not to mention hitting her. Parents. We ought to be killed at our children’s birth to give them a chance.
“I hear you,” I say, but I probably don’t As Darryl Royal, the long-retired coach of the Texas Longhorns, used to say about his football team, “You dance with what brung you.” As I drive out to the Christian Life complex, I meditate on what “brung” me thirty years ago out of eastern Arkansas. When my sister and I got into trouble as children, invariably we would be called in for a lecture at the foot of my parents’ bed. Her Reader’s Digest condensed book lying on her chest, our mother would take off her glasses and sigh, “Children, how did I fail you? I’m so sorry. For you to be acting this way, I must have failed you in some way. Your father’s going to be so disappointed.”
Our part read: “No, Mother, you didn’t fail us. We’re just horrible children, and we feel so bad.” Did we? As I fight the five o’clock traffic, which begins earlier every year, I try to think back on how I felt, but it has been too long to recapture the precise feeling of shame that I had let them down in some unforgivable way. To Sarah’s credit, she has moved beyond that What was it she said? won’t let you guilt me! I wanted to turn her into a little me. Page amp; Page, attorneys at law. Fat chance. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if she lets me come to her wedding.p›
Shane’s office at Christian Life is big enough to put in a skating rink. If influence is measured by space, he’s ready to challenge Pat Robertson as head of the religious right. My office would fit nicely in the corner where he has a couch, a recliner, and a twenty-six-inch Sorry color television and VCR. It is to this area he leads me. Chet is already seated at the far end of the couch.
“You have to see what your competition’s doing, and these days they’re on almost twenty-four hours a day,” Shane rattles on nervously as I gawk at the TV.
Chet glares at me and looks down at his watch. I’m only ten minutes late.
“The traffic is murder out there,” I apologize. I sit on the couch nearest the TV, and by the strained look on chet’s face, I halfway expect him to tell me he has the video of Leigh and we’re all going to watch it together.
Both are dressed in dark blue suits I’d be proud to be buried in.
“Have you heard anything from Leigh?” I ask Chet, gathering from his expression he has not.
“Shane,” he says, ignoring me, “this is as hard as anything I’ve ever had to do, but Gideon has made me realize that I’m obligated to ask you some questions about your whereabouts during the time Art was murdered.”
Shane folds his arms across his chest and gives Chet a hard stare.
“You’re not serious.”
Chet goes totally rigid and his head seems to disappear inside his shirt. He swallows hard and continues, “Where were you between nine-thirty and eleven-thirty the day your son-in-law was murdered?”
Shane’s voice rises in anger.
“You actually think I’d commit murder, Chet?”
I look at Chet, who, in all the hours I’ve watched him, has never appeared out of control even for an instant For the first time he seems close. His eyes blink rapidly, and he stammers, “Answer my question, damn it.”
As if he does understand what Chet is going through, Shane seems to relax. His features soften, and he smiles at him.
“It’s okay.” He clears his throat and, trying to sound casual, says, “As best I can remember, I think I was here in the office all the time.”
I have never really felt sorry for Chet until this moment He places his hand over his mouth as if he is about to utter something unspeakable. Finally, he mumbles through his fingers, “One of the secretaries who used to work for you says that you left the office during that period and came back right before Leigh called to say Art had been shot.”
Shane places his right ankle across his left thigh and says easily, “It’s possible I did go out. We had a missionary from Guatemala at the church that day. I don’t know. It’s like trying to remember what you were doing before Kennedy was killed. You remember what you were doing when you heard the news, but not what you ate for breakfast that day. I could have gone a dozen places within a hundred yards of my office.”
I wonder if I am supposed to be taking notes. This is weak. Chet said the secretary told him that Shane said he was going over to his house for a while. I glance at Chet, but he is examining his hands. I ask, “Do you’re call seeing anybody or talking to anybody during that time other than the women in the office?”
Shane squinches his eyes and studies the ceiling for a long moment.
“Not offhand,” he says finally, fixing his gaze on Chet.
“You’re not going to claim in court,” he asks, his voice too loud, “that I shot Art, are you?”
Chet, now slumped against the back of the couch, seems listless and broken. He spreads his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.
“I may not have a choice,” he says dully.
“Now, wait just a minute!” Shane almost shouts, leaning forward over his knees.
“This is absurd! No jury will believe for a second that I killed my own sonin-law. As horrible a man as he turned out to be, murder never once crossed my mind. I admit I talked to Leigh about divorcing him, which may sound hypocritical as many times as I’ve preached on the value of couples staying together, but that’s as far as I went.”
I look past Norman to the large desk that sits in front of the two windows in his office.
“Your daughter loved the man,” I say, knowing I am baiting him.
“She didn’t want a divorce.”
“He was murdering her soul!” Shane retorts angrily.
“Leigh was a precious vessel of God’s love before she met Art.”
I glance at Chet to see how he is taking these re marks. The back of his right hand obscures his face. His eyes, an almost colorless light blue, show no emotion. I am struck by Norman’s use of the term “murdering her soul.” If he were on trial, instead of his daughter, before a jury of Christian Lifers, he might argue justifiable homicide. A father defending his child against a deadly attacker. What person would convict a man who used force to save his daughter? In Norman’s mind, Leigh’s soul is worth more than her body. It would be far easier to defend Norman than his daughter.
“You saw that Art was destroying Leigh, didn’t you?” I ask, believing I understand for the first time that, given Norman’s worldview, murder was the only possible solution. What was it they said about Vietnam?
We had to destroy the country to save it. In Norman’s mind, once the corruption started, there was no end to it. The pull of the world is too strong. Look what happened to his other daughters while he stood by. Once you leave, you almost never go back. The world is too seductive. When Norman doesn’t respond, I ask him a question I know he will answer.
“What did you tell Leigh about Art’s death?”
Shane says in a voice so detached and automatic I know he has thought it a hundred times since the day Art died, “That he got what he deserved. I won’t deny that.”
Biblical phrases like “reap what you sow” come into my mind. Even if he didn’t kill Art, he wished him dead.
“Since you love your daughter so much,” I say quickly before Chet can protest, “you won’t object if Chet suggests to the jury that others, including yourself, may have had a possible motive for murdering her husband.”
Like a wounded animal, Shane roars, “You do what you have to do, but I didn’t kill him!”
Remembering Chet’s instructions to let him do the talking, I look over at him to see if I’m in trouble. This was his speech as far as I am concerned, but from what I’ve seen so far, he wasn’t going to make it. He sits quietly, staring at Shane as if he is evaluating his sincerity.
Finally, he says quietly to him, “It could ruin you.”
Shane, now barely seated, yells at him, “You don’t believe me, do you?”
Abruptly, Chet stands and heads for the door, leaving me and Shane looking at each other. I scramble to my feet and chase after him while Shane hollers futilely, “Chet!”
Out in the parking lot, his face ashen, Chet tells me shakily, “I’m going home.”
Hunched over as he unlocks the Mercedes, he looks shockingly old, defeated.
“Let me argue the case!” I demand.
“I can do it! You shouldn’t have to do this!”
“I’ll do it,” he says, almost under his breath as he arranges himself in the car. He drives away, mumbling something to himself.
Back home, waiting for Sarah to call, I open a beer, heat up some cheese dip, open a bag of potato chips, and sit in the kitchen looking out the window at the gathering darkness. Woogie’s bowl is still half full from last night.
“Depressed, huh?” I ask him as he stretches out on the linoleum by the window.
“We’ll hear from her tonight.” I hope.
Ignoring me, he places his muzzle between his paws flat on the dirty surface. I break off a chip in the thick yellow sludge that is congealing before my eyes. I couldn’t penetrate this goo if I were eating brickbats.
Too tired to cook, I drink and think about Shane Nor man. Do what you have to do, he said. What would I have said if it were Sarah who was charged and I was innocent? I don’t have as much to lose as Shane Nor man. His life requires that his inner and outer selves match up in a way mine do not. Yet, for all I know, preachers carry guilt inside them like everyone else, and it is only their flock that assumes that hypocrisy bur dens their consciences more than the rest of us. Do I believe he is innocent? I sip at my beer. I don’t know. I still have problems getting past the taboo of believing a minister would kill another human being. Yet, historically, the church has been as bloodthirsty as the rest of society, if not more so. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of Jews, religious zealots on both sides during the Civil War, white-supremacist religious groups, all stand as monuments to a barely restrained ecclesiastical violence. I think of the hatred I see in some of the faces of those people who oppose abortion on religious grounds. If that is Christian love in their faces, give me a secular humanist anytime. It is the look on Chet’s face that convinces me that Norman is lying.
I get out a legal pad and begin to think about what should be in an opening argument.
At nine Sarah calls, but it is not a satisfactory conversation. My supply of restraint is wearing thin, and the alcohol doesn’t help.
“When do you think you’ll be coming home?” I ask, unable to wait her out even a few seconds.
“I don’t know. Dad,” she says, not bothering to conceal her own irritation.
“I have to decide on what terms I want to live in the world.”
What utter crap! I can’t talk any further without exploding
“I’m going to bed,” I say shortly, and hang up, furious at everybody I’ve ever known connected with religion. It is not as if Sarah had been forced to live in some brothel. She has had it pretty damn easy. Like about ninety-nine percent of the kids I know, she’s spoiled rotten.
I call Rainey and unload my feelings on her.
“I sup pose it’s just a matter of time before she will begin quoting the Bible to the effect that she has no mother or father except Christian Life. What about family values?” I complain.
“Don’t these so-called families have anybody in them with any sense?”
“They are talking to her,” Rainey says, sounding a little shaken for the first time.
“They don’t force anyone to do anything.”
“Well, I’m gonna go to the Prosecutor’s Office when this trial is over,” I yell at her, “and charge somebody with kidnapping.”
“Which will guarantee that she won’t talk to you for years,” Rainey says right back.
“Life is too short for that kind of resentment.”
“Well, it’s not getting any longer this way,” I reply stubbornly. Miserable, I hang up and go to bed.