Authors: Sarah Bilston
“Jeanie, let me take you back to that day—the day you saw me with Lily,” Paul said, moving around the table and folding his arms lightly across his chest. “How far apart were we? What stood between you and me?”
“Oh, I see what you’re doing, and it won’t work—but, fine, all right. You were on the other side of the road. And there was traffic between us. But it stopped.”
“What kind of a day was it?”
“Sunny.”
“And was I on the bright or the shadowy side of the street?”
“The shadowy—but—”
“So the sun was in your eyes. Thank you. Now what did you see as we walked down the street?”
“I saw you stroking Lily’s bottom,” I said mutinously.
“As we walked down the street?”
“No—I mean, at first you were just walking. And then you reached out your hand, and put it round her waist, and then it sort of moved down. And you stopped walking.”
“Okay, so I put my hand around her waist, then moved it to her hip. Did you see stroking or touching? Did I move my hand and caress her?”
I thought this through for a moment, remembering the position of their bodies, the bright sunlight, the traffic and confusion, my distress—“I’m not actually sure,” I said doubtfully, at last. “I thought you did—but I could have been wrong about that. But I’m
not
wrong about—”
“Thank you. What did Lily do at this point?”
“At first she pulled away, and then she came back and slipped her hand inside your jacket.”
“Could you see what her hand was doing?”
“No, not exactly, but—”
“Why not?”
“Well, because it was inside the jacket, obviously—”
“Did I kiss her?”
“No, but—”
“Did I pull her toward me?”
“No, but—”
“So there was no actual sexual contact between us? You didn’t see anything happening except a hand placed on a hip, and another hand placed in a jacket?”
“No, but-”
“So what made you think the interaction was sexual? If there was no sexual contact?”
“It depends how you define ‘sexual,’ I suppose—”
“Yes, it does, doesn’t it? I quite agree,” Paul returned coolly. “Isn’t it possible, Jeanie, that you simply saw two people laughing and enjoying each other’s company? Two friends, who’ve known each other for a long time, who were sharing a joke?”
I tried to argue that there was very little possibility of an “innocent” explanation when hands were actually inside clothes, but Paul ignored me.
“I’m going to tell you what actually happened, Jeanie,” he went on, coming to stand in front of me. “Lily and I went out for lunch that day—
with Adjile
. I paid. Adjile and Lily tried to split the bill with me; I told them I wouldn’t take a cent, they’d given the four of us that wonderful day on the sea. Straight after our meal, Adjile went off downtown to see a friend, and I walked Lily back to their New York apartment. But the whole way there, Lily kept trying to slip a bill in my pocket. Just before you saw us, I realized she’d managed to stuff it into the back pocket of my trousers, so I tried to slip it back into her skirt pocket when she wasn’t looking. It had become a game. She noticed what I was doing, laughed, told me it wasn’t going to work, and put the bill into my inside jacket pocket, begging me to accept it this time. I asked her if it really mattered, and she told me it did, that she and Adjile felt—for reasons I won’t go into—that the debt was all on their side. So at that moment I said, fine, Lily, if you feel that way, I’ll accept the money. And we walked on. That was it.”
My throat felt very dry.
“Were we flirting a little bit?” he went on thoughtfully, “yes, I suppose we were. Would I have acted the same way if you were there, if Adjile had been there? Absolutely. Did I do anything I’m ashamed of, or that I think you have any right to be angry over? No, not at all. I think you saw something innocent and friendly, but turned it into evidence of a treacherous affair. Why? Because you’d already decided I was so lost to morality I would betray one of my best friends, a guy I’ve known for a decade. You thought I—that all lawyers, as far
as I can tell—are villains without souls, Jeanie, so you weren’t a bit surprised to ‘discover’ that I was also a liar and a cheat. The kind of person who exploits the system, and other people, for his own personal gain.”
Tom and Q were looking reprovingly at me. “You really think that about us?” Q clucked faintly, and Tom said something angry about the social value of lawyers and the imperative need for a legal system with “socially acclimated moral underpinnings.” I stared at their three accusing faces.
“Well,” I began desperately, and then looked to Paul hopefully, somehow expecting him to save me. I caught sight of his expression—ah. No help there, clearly.
“But you said you were screwing her!” I blurted suddenly. “You actually admitted it.”
To my astonishment, Paul began to laugh. “Oh Jeanie! I couldn’t think what you were talking about, so I assumed you’d seen me with Martha Lundquist (a judge who happens to live in Brooklyn Heights) that day. We met for coffee. I was feeling guilty about it, so my mind jumped immediately to our meeting. I am ‘screwing’ her, I’m afraid. I’m trying to get planning permission for a drug rehab facility in her neighborhood, but I’ve told her it’s going to be an educational institution. She knows the purchaser is a client of mine, she asked to meet with me because she’s worried about property prices, and I—well, I obfuscated the facts, shall we say.”
Suddenly, I realized we were alone, although I had no idea where Q and Tom had gone, or when they went. Somewhere upstairs I heard a short yell from Samuel, followed by hush, as if a breast or a pacifier had been shoved hastily into his mouth. Outside the wind stirred in the drying autumn leaves; the cold sea cast glass and shells at the shore.
“Words are—” I stopped, and flushed. “When did you realize I’d got it all—er—wrong?”
“About twelve hours after I put the phone down.”
“Really?” I was aghast. “Why didn’t you try to explain?”
“It had something to do with being told I was repulsive, I think.”
“Oh. Did I say that?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
“Jeanie, maybe it was silly, but I’m not used—I’ll be honest—to being spoken to like that. And when you launched into your attack, I thought to myself, who needs this? I certainly don’t need some woman who comes snooping after me—”
“I
wasn’t
snooping—”
“Well, whatever you want to call it, then, ‘observing in secret,’ if you prefer—I don’t need that, and I don’t need someone who jumps to the worst possible conclusions about me at the drop of a hat. Particularly not when she comes from England, and when visiting her is going to involve ratcheting up serious frequent flyer miles—”
“You were thinking like that? About coming to see me? At that point?” I was astounded.
“I
was,
until you told me—let me see if I have this right—that I ‘disgusted you,’ that you wished my hands had never touched your body.”
I stared at his hands. I really, really wished, at that moment, that they were on my body.
“Dave’s got a new girlfriend, she’s called Ellen,” I babbled suddenly. “She’s three times as buxom as me, and four times as pretty, and she is understanding and very loving, and I bet she never,
ever
jumps to conclusions.”
He cocked an eye at me. “And does this bother you? That Dave is with Ellen, I mean?”
“No.”
I was emphatic. But I couldn’t say anything else. My lips were somehow sealed closed. I looked up at him, appealingly.
Paul reached out a hand and pulled me up to him. “Jeanie, you’ve got to say something. Frankly, I’ve gone out on a limb here,” he
added. “I’ve driven three hours to see this English girl who’s done nothing but yell at me, who’s accused me of every kind of evil. I’ve come to see her because it turned out I
couldn’t
forget her, because it turned out that I—God only knows why—want her in my life. I don’t know what that means yet. But I do know I don’t want to let her—let you—slip through my fingers. Now tell me what
you
think.”
“It is—possible,” I said haltingly, “that I—”
“That you—” he prompted, leaning fractionally closer toward me.
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you—”
“Uh-huh—”
“Do I
really
have to say it?”
“Absolutely—”
In a big, hurried gasp now—“that I care about you, and that I’m sorry…”
Somewhere in Old Saybrook, Sue-Ellen cheered.
Q
K
ent was off the wagon for a full three weeks, during which time Tom more or less took over the firm. On one of Kent’s better afternoons, we shifted him back to his tiny house on the edge of Cheasford; over the course of the next few days, we
watched him seesaw in and out of sobriety. For much of the time he was in a pathetic state, and we were frantic with worry about him, not least because the stairs in his house were hellishly narrow. We tried hiding every bottle we could find in the house, but he seemed to have an almost endless stock of concealed spirits in rafters, under beds, in the basement. Tom threatened him with hospitalization repeatedly.
Then, one day, we arrived to find a short, quiet Asian woman in a pale green pinafore with the words
OCEAN VIEW CLEANERS
on her breast pocket standing beside him, helping him dress. There was a pot of green tea on the desk, and periodically—in response to gentle chiding from her—he sipped at it, and from a glass of iced water. His eyes were still bloodshot, but his hair was combed and his face was fresh-scrubbed. The windows of the house were open, and the fuggy yellow air was pouring out. Warm autumn sunlight rippled across the floor.
“He stupid old man,” the woman offered disapprovingly, nodding at Kent as he tried to do up his shoelaces. Kent rolled his eyes.
“Whatever, whatever,” he said, but there was a hint of shame in his voice. And then, “How’ve you two been getting on, then?” He looked over at us from under his bushy, white-black eyebrows, then nodded impatiently at the door to the woman. Giving him a look that clearly said, I’ll come and go in my own good time, mister, she moved with measured pace to the stairs.
We’d told him nothing about Emmie’s case; there seemed little point, and, in fact, for most of the three-week stretch, any reference to the business of the firm made him terribly, desperately anxious—which prompted more drinking. Now, therefore, we observed him cautiously. “Do you really want to know?” I asked at last.
Kent coughed. “’Course I do. Assuming—” he paused, and the faintest hint of anxiety flittered through his eyes again—“assuming you’re taking over the firm now. For good. Right?”
Tom laughed, and eased him into a chair. “Yes, I think we’re tak
ing over the firm, Kent; don’t worry. We’re going to give this a real shot. Q officially resigned from Schuster on Friday. And I, as a matter of fact, have already taken the Connecticut bar exam; a date came up, I saw the opportunity, and took it. Q will do the same this winter. So we just need to come to final terms about the transfer.”
The old man closed his eyes briefly. “Right. Good. And—the—er—rent on the offices, I’m just wondering…”
“—Is all paid up.”
“Ah. Glad to hear you’re not—ah—falling behind.”
“We’re obviously insane, Kent, but—somehow, this life seems to suit us,” I contributed, touching my fingers to the rope cable veins on the back of his hand. “Samuel’s happier, I’m happier, Tom’s happier. We like it here. We’ve even started looking at houses. And if we’re not happy a year from now—well, I guess we’ll sell the firm ourselves, and move on.”
Kent pulled himself up, looking for a second his old cantankerous self, then thought better of it, and shrugged. “All right. That works. I can live with that. So—come on then, I can see you’ve got something else to tell me: how have you managed to wrap up young Emmie Cormier and that piece-o’shit husband of hers?”
So we told him the story, from our meeting with Driscoll to the revelations at Emmie’s, and the medical malpractice suit that was now substantially prepared and simply awaiting his signature.
“Pretty good work,” he said, when the story was told. He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Pretty good work.”
And then, face cracking into a smile as he poured himself a thumping big glass of tea, “I
knew
you could do it! I just
knew
it! That Judge Ackerman, what does he know? I showed him!” he crowed. “He was laughing at me, saying I didn’t know what was best for my firm. Did you hear him? Said I was losing my touch! Other people said the same thing—what, you think I didn’t know that? I heard them, in the market, the liquor store, the diner. Over their pancakes. Kenton Tyler’s all washed up, they said; he wouldn’t know a piece of
evidence if it was covered in blood and fingerprints.
I
heard them! Well, people won’t be able to talk about my judgment after this, no way! We’ve tied up Phil Reid nice and tight, there’s going to be a lot of press about this.
Everyone’s
going to be talking about me. About us. About—the name’s already over the door, you know—
Kenton Tyler’s Associates
…”
Q
S
amuel has just turned eight months old.
Yesterday, flakes of snow whirled in the bare branches of the maples, and settled for an instant on the black-green needles of the pines. We lit a fire in the stone fireplace, and the scent of wood smoke lingered in the garden all day.
My little son will never be a Renaissance cherub, all chub and easygoing smiles, that’s clear enough. He is determined, and cautious at the same time; fascinated by details, yet quickly overwhelmed. He can sit and stare at a piece of lint on the floor for hours. Five minutes of TV sends him into a howling meltdown.
But I’ve stopped asking him to rake small objects with his fist to check his hand-eye coordination, I’m too busy fretting he’ll shove them all down his throat and choke. I’ve stopped worrying whether
he can see a moving pencil, I’m too busy worrying I can’t see
him,
as he nimbly evades my grasp and hares at breakneck speed—legs and hands moving like tiny pistons—across the carpet into the other room.