The Infinite Plan (51 page)

One of the most important decisions was to lighten some of the burdens I was carrying and to reorganize my office. It was impossible to change the character of my employees, but I could replace them; it wasn't my role to cure them of their vices, pay for their shortcomings, or solve their problems. Why did I invariably surround myself with alcoholics? Why did neurotic or weak people cling to me like lint? I needed to revise that aspect of my personality and defend my own interests. It cost more to run the office than it took in; I myself was responsible for the greater part of the income, but my billfold was always empty and almost all my credit cards had been canceled. My good friend Mike Tong had put in anguishing years trying to square the numbers, and Tina had warned me to the point of exhaustion that my associates not only neglected clients but sometimes handled cases privately, without entering them in the firm's accounts; they also charged me for personal expenses—telephones, restaurant bills, trips, even gifts for lovers. I didn't listen to her; I was too busy paddling around in my personal chaos. I thought that nothing could sink me, that I could always find a way to solve my problems; I had overcome other obstacles and would not be defeated by unpaid bills and fingers in the till—but finally the burden had become more than I could carry. For a long time I debated, feeling doubt and guilt, until Mike Tong, with the precision of his abacus, and Ming O'Brien, with her perseverance, helped me dismiss the parasites one by one and close the branches of the firm in other cities. I kept on Tina, Mike, and a young, intelligent, and loyal female associate; I rented space to a couple of other professionals to reduce the overhead and defray expenses. I learned then that work on a small scale was more profitable and more enjoyable; I held all the reins in my hand and could devote my time to the challenges of my profession rather than burn my energy dealing with an oppressive succession of insignificant complaints. I also had closer contact with my clients, which is what I like best about my work. At the same time, I was making changes in my personal life that paralleled those in the office; I rid myself of many superfluous belongings and habits that bothered me; I gave up the arrogance of Spanish cigars—in fact, stopped smoking altogether—and never tasted a drop of alcohol—the only way to put an end to my allergies. My little black book with its list of ladies got lost in the back of some drawer, and I've never come across it since. Because I had less money to spend, I had no choice but to scale down the way I lived, and the nights on the town became history. I was very busy with David and with my work, and I no longer had Timothy Duane to incite me to sin. That didn't mean I began to live like an anchorite; far from it: I suppose I will always be true to my nature as a bon vivant.

“Very
good
! If you don't get married again, in three years we will pay off your debts,” Mike Tong announced joyfully the first time our income surpassed our outlay.

That year I sold the house I owned at the beach and finally settled accounts with Shannon, who the minute she received the last check left town; she had no fixed plans but was eager to begin a new life as far away as possible. I visualized her traveling down the road until she vanished into thin air, the reverse of her arrival, not on foot this time but in a luxury automobile. Months later I saw her picture in a magazine, advertising cosmetics with an apple-bright smile; I had to look twice to recognize her; she looked much better than I remembered. I cut out the page and showed it to David, who pasted it on the wall of his room. He had a rather hazy image of his mother: a beautiful and cheerful creature who appeared from time to time to smother him with kisses and take him to the movies, a melodious voice on the telephone, and now a seductive face in an advertisement. With my help he had made a wooden chest for her birthday; he sent by mail drawings he had signed especially for her. For him, Shannon was the ethereal vision in fairy tales, a princess in blue jeans who whirled by from time to time like a merry breeze and then blew away. On any practical level, nevertheless, she didn't count for much; his mother was Daisy, who combed his hair with holy water to exorcise the demons and who was there when he opened his eyes every morning and when he closed them every night.

“I want to see my mother,” David told me one day.

“She went away and won't be back for a while. She misses you, but because of her work she lives in another city. She's a famous model.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don't know, but I'm sure she'll write soon.”

“She doesn't love me; that's why she went away.”

“She loves you very much, but life is very complicated, David. You won't see her for a while, that's all.”

“I think my mother died and you're not telling me the truth.”

“I give you my word of honor that it's the truth. Didn't you see her picture in the magazine?”

“Swear it.”

“I swear.”

“And swear you'll never marry again.”

“I can't do that, son. I told you, life is very complicated.”

For a few days he was withdrawn and silent; he sat for hours in his window, staring at the sea, something unusual for a boy who was always in a vortex of activity and noise, but soon he was distracted by the excitement of getting ready for our vacation. I had promised we'd go camping together in the mountains, and take Oliver and buy a shotgun to hunt ducks. Shannon continued to be what she had always been for her son: a gentle mirage.

The accusation of malpractice fell from the sky at the end of that same year and seemed so preposterous that I wasn't in the least disturbed. It was brought by one of my former clients, someone my firm had represented several years before. He was an alcoholic. It had all begun when he was riding an interstate bus to Oregon; he'd had too much to drink and halfway there started raving about monsters chasing him. In this deranged state, he pulled a knife and attacked the other passengers; he wounded two and missed killing a third by a miracle: the blade slashed his throat millimeters from the jugular. With the help of a few brave passengers, the driver disarmed the attacker, made him get off the bus, and then sped to the nearest hospital, where he unloaded the victims, who were bleeding copiously. The police did not apprehend the assailant, who had gone into hiding, but four days later a truck picked him up along the highway. It was winter; his feet had been frostbitten and had to be amputated. When he got out of the hospital and dealt with his criminal case, he looked for someone to represent him in a suit against the bus company for having abandoned him in open country. My firm took the case; in those days, we took anyone who knocked at the door. Three knifed passengers are good reason to put the sonofabitch off my bus; it was his bad luck that he froze his feet while he was hiding from the police, but he got what he deserved, the bus driver said in his deposition. Despite the claimant's record, we were able to settle the case for a respectable sum because the bus company found it less trouble to make payment than to go to trial. Once the man spent that money, however, he went to several lawyers and finally found one who would initiate a case against me. I had no insurance, so if I lost, it was the ball game, but I never in my wildest dream imagined such a thing could happen—no jury in the world would find in the criminal's favor. Mike Tong didn't agree; he said that if the suit had been against the bus driver, the jury would stand firm; any one of them who put himself in the place of the passengers and the victims would vote against the plaintiff, but this guy was suing
me
.

“On one side they'll see a poor cripple on crutches, and on the other a lawyer wearing a silk tie. The jury will be against you, Mr. Reeves; people hate lawyers. Besides, you'll have to hire a defense attorney, and where will we get the money for that?” My accountant sighed. For once setting aside the respect with which he had always treated me, he took me by the arm, pulled me into his cubby, and confronted me with the unquestionable reality of the books.

Mike had it right. Three months later the jury decided that the bus driver should not have ejected the man from the bus and that my firm had been negligent on the client's behalf in settling with the bus company instead of going to trial. That verdict, which produced no little amazement in the legal world, was the crowning blow. For years I had been teetering on the edge of a precipice, but this was the final push. Unless I found Sir Francis Drake's treasure buried in my patio, I hadn't a prayer of paying the amount of the judgment. I joked about it, unbelieving, when I heard the verdict, but very quickly the gravity of what had happened left no room for jokes; in a matter of hours I must take drastic measures. I called in Tina and Mike. I thanked them for their long and loyal service and explained that I would have to declare bankruptcy and close the office, but I promised that if I could somehow start again in the future, there would always be a place for them. Tina burst into inconsolable weeping, but no glimmer of emotion crossed Mike's impassive Asiatic face. You can count on us, he said, and repaired to his burrow to work on his books.

Throughout the eternity of the trial, I was beside my defense lawyer, fighting fiercely over every detail; it was a time of terrible tension, but when it was over I accepted the verdict with a sangfroid I didn't know I possessed. I had the sensation of having lived through similar situations before; yet again I was on a dead-end street, as I had been so often in the barrio. I remembered all the times I had run home, trailed by Martínez's gang, sure that if they caught me they would kill me—but I was still alive. I had emerged unscathed from skirmishes in Vietnam where others had left their lives, and had survived that night on the mountain when all the dice were loaded against me. The beatings I had taken in school and the harsh lessons of the war had taught me to defend myself, to hang on. I knew I mustn't lose my head, or my sense of proportion; compared to past battles, this was just a blip; my life would go on. It passed through my mind that I might take up a different career; being a lawyer has its dark side. I questioned the validity of living my life with a sword in one hand, eating myself up with meaningless combativeness. I still ask myself that question but have no answer; I suppose I can't imagine a life without struggle.

On Sunday I was resigned to closing the firm. Among other alternatives, I contemplated the possibility of going to some Latin American country; I have very strong ties with that part of the world and like speaking Spanish. I also thought of moving to a small town, where life was simpler, where I could do something for people and be part of a community, as I had been in the village in Vietnam; after some thought, however, that seemed a kind of flight. Carmen and Ming are right: no matter how far you run, you're always in the same skin. I also thought about moving to the country. The week David and I spent camping, with little to do but hunt ducks and fish, with no company but the dog, were very important for me and showed me an unexpected side of my character. In the solitude of the countryside, I recaptured the silence of my childhood, the silence the soul finds in the peace of nature, silence I had lost when my father fell ill and we had to stay in the city. From then on, my life had been marred by noise, far too much noise, and I had grown so accustomed to the incessant racket in my head that I had forgotten the blessing of true silence. The experience of sleeping on the ground with only the stars for light brought back the one truly happy period in my life: traveling with my family in our truck. I regressed to my first memory of happiness, myself at four, urinating on a hilltop beneath the orange-streaked dome of a magnificent sky at dusk. To measure the infinite vastness of the space I had regained, I shouted my name there beside the lake, and the echo from the mountains returned it to me, purified. Those days in the open air were also enormously beneficial to David. His accelerated nervous system seemed to slow to a more normal pace; we did not have a single argument, he returned to school in good humor, and two months went by without a kicking fit. We'd be much better off if we left this life where pressures can mount to such an unbearable pitch, but the truth is I still can't see myself as a farmer or forest ranger; why fool myself? Maybe later . . . maybe never. I like people, I need to feel I'm of some use to others, I don't think I'd last very long tucked away like a hermit. Did you know that it was in that wild country I learned about you? Carmen had given me your second novel, and I read it during that vacation, never imagining that one day I would meet you and make this long confession. How could I suspect then that together we would go back to the barrio where I grew up? In more than four decades it had never crossed my mind to go back; if you hadn't insisted, I would never have seen the cottage again, in ruins but still standing, or the willow tree, still vigorous despite neglect and the garbage dump that had built up around it. If you hadn't taken me, I would never have found the weathered sign of
The Infinite Plan
that was lying there waiting for me, paint peeling, wood worm-eaten, but with its eloquence intact. Look how far I've come to reach this point and find there is no infinite plan, just the strife of living, I told you that day. Maybe, you answered, maybe everyone carries a plan inside, but it's a faded map that's hard to read and that's why we wander around so and sometimes get lost.

I accepted the fact that the house and the car, the only two things I owned in the world, were gone; I owed money on everything else, and we'd have to see how to manage that. In the end, that would be a problem for the auditors and lawyers; they'd be there Monday to pounce on the spoils like piranhas. The idea made me boil with rage, but it didn't frighten me. I've earned my own living since I was seven, doing all kinds of jobs, and I'm convinced I'll always find a way to make it. I was worried about the people who worked for me, though. They're my true family, but I felt sure that Mike and Tina could find another job without much difficulty, and that Carmen would take Daisy, because Doña Inmaculada is getting too old to take care of that house by herself. That night I dropped in on Timothy and Ming to tell them what was happening. Six months earlier I had finished my therapy, and now Ming and I were excellent friends, not just because of the long relationship cultivated in her office but because she was living with Tim, who was a different person ever since she walked in and set his life in order with her wisdom. Ming, it turned out, was an excellent balm for my tormented friend. During the five years of my painful self-exploration, I had come full circle, and when I finally reached the place where I had begun, Ming declared that I didn't need her help anymore. She told me I was beginning the most important part of my treatment, the part I had to do alone, that I was like an invalid who had been taught how to walk again but would regain his equilibrium and strength only with laborious practice, step after step. With much patience on her part and effort on mine, we had cleared away the volcanic confusion that had clouded the first half of my destiny. Holding her hand, I had entered the room of the badly built and unfinished machines my father had always talked about, and gradually imposed some order. I had thrown away unnecessary parts, welded pieces together, reshaped imperfections, and finished what had been left unfinished. There was still a lot to clean out, but I could do it alone. I knew that my journey through this world would always resemble a surreal tapestry, imperfect for the many loose threads, but at least now I could see the design.