THE NEXT MORNING, I bypassed the new batch of Texas newspapers my mother had spread out on the kitchen counter, with their Society Section headlines about the continued slew of other balls in cities across the state. Though even I couldn’t miss words like “Fabulous” and “Dazzling” she had circled with a red Sharpie. As if I needed her to remind me that our ball was just around the corner and all of Texas would be watching us as well.
I drove to court myself because I wanted to get there early. If my family had been the best entertainment in town before Martin Pender’s sordid testimony, I realized we were fast becoming recognized on the world stage when I arrived to a Court TV news crew setting up in the parking lot.
But not even that could dampen my foolish pride in retrieving Morgan’s dress, even if we had resorted to idiotic tactics. Now I needed to find my footing in this Texas courtroom.
Inside, I took in the dark wood paneling, the marble floors, telling myself I could do this. By the time the gallery started to squeeze in so tight I didn’t know how they could breathe, I had done everything from visualizing to affirming that I would find a way to make the judge believe my mother hadn’t committed adultery.
Nerves threatened to get the better of me, however, since the fact was I had written out copious notes the night before, detailed questions, an entire course of action to take in the courtroom that day. But at the end of the night I had known my plan would get me nowhere. There was something I was missing, something needed in order to make magic. And I hadn’t a clue what it was.
Jack walked in, and I would be lying to say I wasn’t surprised when I saw Racine on his arm. He directed her to the front row where she kissed him.
“Carlisle,” he greeted me crisply, no dark brooding looks, not even a teasing smile.
“Jack,” I responded coolly.
Our clients pushed their way to the front of the crowd, Vincent helping my mother.
“Thank you, Vin,” she said, meeting his eyes.
Jack and I both stared. We couldn’t imagine how after yesterday’s testimony Vincent could be speaking to her.
“Glad to help, Ridgely,” he said solicitously, “since not everyone around here knows how to be a gentleman.”
She briefly smiled her gratitude, touched his forearm, and came to sit beside me.
“Miss Cushing,” Judge Melton intoned after formalities were dealt with.
My turn.
I took a deep breath, then stood.
“Thank you, Your Honor. I call Martin Pender back to the stand.”
“You are aware that you are still under oath?” the bailiff asked the man.
“Yes,” he stated curtly.
I walked to the stand. “Mr. Pender,” I began, and even I could hear the hesitancy in my voice.
“Yes?” Pender said.
I felt frozen. Hello, wake up. No time like the present to get your act together.
But reprimanding myself didn’t work.
“Miss Cushing?” the judge said. “We’re waiting.”
“Of course.” I nodded. “Mr. Pender, please state your name.”
Jack stood, raising his arms to his sides, palms up. “Your Honor, we’ve been over this.”
My heart raced fast enough to send off warning bells in an ICU. “But he didn’t say his full name,” I explained. Like this mattered. Though somehow I was certain it did.
“Fine. Continue, Miss Cushing.”
“Sir, your name?”
“Martin Pender.”
“Don’t you have a middle name?”
“Oh, ah. Yes. Of course. Wilbur. Yes, Martin Wilbur Pender.”
The gallery looked on, their brows creased with a mixture of impatience and disdain, ready for more titillating testimony. My palms started to sweat, but my mother hadn’t had an affair with this man, I was sure. There had to be a way to make the judge believe it. But nothing came to me.
“Thank you, Mr. Pender.”
I hesitated.
“Is that it?” the witness asked.
When I didn’t say anything, he started to stand.
“Where were you born?” I blurted.
He stopped halfway out of the chair.
“Sit down, Mr. Pender,” the judge instructed.
The man resumed his seat angrily. But sweat had broken out on his upper lip. “I said everything I had to say yesterday. I had an affair with Ridgely Ogden. That’s the only reason I’m here.”
Judge Melton leaned toward him. “Mr. Pender. Answer the question.”
“Fine,” Pender said. “I was born in the United States.”
“Where in the U.S.?” I persisted.
His eyes narrowed. “San Antonio.”
“What hospital?”
“Objection,” Jack said, tired and bored. “Relevancy?”
“Miss Cushing, I have to agree with Mr. Blair. I can’t imagine what this has to do with anything.”
“Sorry, Your Honor,” I said, my hands visibly shaking.
“Counselor,” the judge asked, eyeing me, “are you all right?”
I smiled wryly. “I’m fine, sir. I was up all night working on this and you’ve probably heard I’m also in charge of this year’s debutante ball. I’ve got bags under my eyes to prove it.”
The gallery chuckled. Even Pender smiled, clearly relieved to see how ineffectual I was. At the sight, my brain went still. Something was wrong, but my mind couldn’t bring the answer to the surface. Then it hit me.
I didn’t have time to think things through. But hadn’t this judge established a certain leniency he couldn’t deny?
Not knowing if there would be water in the pool, I dove in headfirst. “Your Honor, did you hear the joke about the Aggie who went to the doctor’s office cut up and bruised?”
The judge blinked, as did everyone else.
“You know,” I hurried on, “the one where the doctor asks the Aggie what happened to him, and the Aggie says, ‘Well, I was in this horse race and I fell off my horse. And then the horse started jumping up and down on top of me.’”
The judge smiled, just as I had gambled he would. He was a University of Texas Longhorn. Undergrad, graduate, and UT Law School. The sort of man who couldn’t resist a Texas A & M Aggie joke regardless of where he was.
Jack leaped up. “Your Honor?”
Melton held his hand up. “Mr. Blair, a little humor never hurt anyone.”
Jack was incensed.
But just as Jack had the day before, I rushed on in case the judge changed his mind. “So the doctor looks him over and says, ‘That must have been terrible!’ and the Aggie replies, ‘I know. I could have been killed if the Wal-Mart man hadn’t unplugged the machine.’”
A child’s joke, but one that broke up the courtroom, at least everyone who wasn’t an Aggie. And Martin Pender wasn’t an Aggie. He chuckled with the rest of them.
“Okay, enough, Miss Cushing,” the judge said, amused.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” I rushed on, trying to sound contrite. But my heart raced, this time with stunned amazement.
I hadn’t looked closely enough to see the truth, hadn’t seen what was right before my very eyes. I had fooled myself into believing that being smart alone made me strong when in truth there was a whole lot more to it than that. In Boston I could construct a life that made me feel strong. But to be truly powerful, I had to be able to succeed no matter where I was—no matter what the obstacles.
“Mr. Pender, what hospital were you born in?”
“Your Honor, not again,” Jack complained.
“I have a point, Your Honor.”
“You better get there,” the judge warned, but he still had the ghost of a smile on his face.
“The hospital, Mr. Pender?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Really? With as much time as you’ve spent in San Antonio, seems like you would know the name of the hospital where you were born. But okay, so you don’t.”
He settled back, but he looked wary.
“Do you do business in Mexico?”
“No! I do not!”
“Doctor Pender?”
“What?” he snapped.
I sucked in my breath, and the judge’s eyes narrowed. I had hit pay dirt, I had the answer. I knew he was a doctor.
But no sooner did elation rush through me, than it evaporated with the realization of what I was about to do to my mother if I continued to show the court what kind of doctor this man really was.
The court buzzed with speculation. I stared at the man with his pink-tinged, newly glossy skin, the hint of pinpricks around his eyes, the plumped-out laugh lines around his mouth, and the frozen face that didn’t move even when he laughed. This was my mother’s secret for looking so significantly younger than her years. Not her good genes, not great moisturizers as she claimed. Not even a dedicated cleaning regime that she boasted about with not a little holier-than-thou superiority. Rather it was because of this man and what I was sure were his treatments: illegal human growth hormones, antiaging therapies, placenta gels, and the alphabet soups of hormone supplements. I figured she dabbled in them all since even I knew no one went for Botox once a week.
Turning around, I met my mother’s eye. Now that I was here, on the verge of disproving the affair, I couldn’t say the words and give my mother away. I knew her entire identity was based on her beauty, the beauty she didn’t entirely believe. It was something she wrapped around herself so tightly that she would take the risk of people thinking she’d had an affair and potentially losing a good deal of her net worth rather than admit her famed beauty was manufactured.
She sat in the courtroom, her society peers sitting behind her, terror in her eyes.
It is no exaggeration to say that I couldn’t breathe. My head swam, and I had to steady myself on the table.
“Miss Cushing,” the judge asked, “are you all right?”
“Your Honor,” I managed, “I need a recess.”
I must have looked as bad as I felt because the man’s brow furrowed with what I knew was genuine concern. “Thirty minutes,” he declared, then banged the gavel.
“Carlisle,” my mother snapped.
But I didn’t respond. I didn’t bother with files or my purse, or anything else. I walked with as much calm as I could down the center aisle, then started running as soon as I burst out the doors. I had no idea where I was going, couldn’t get my brain to work cohesively enough to think beyond the reality that my mother was manipulating me once again. “Just one more time. Pull out that red cape and find a way to fix this.” Prove she wasn’t having an affair and don’t let anyone know that her perfect beauty was as fake as the plastic trees she disdained that people put up for Christmas.
I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until someone stopped me. Whirling around, I expected to find my mother. But it was Jack.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
It wasn’t the question of the impatient, ruthless opposing counsel who didn’t like me. It was concern from the Jack I had known years ago. And for reasons I couldn’t get my head around, I felt tears burn in my eyes until I gasped.
At some edge of consciousness, I knew that people were beginning to notice. Jack must have noticed as well, because he did his infamous cursing thing, glanced around, cursed again, then dragged me through the first door we came to. I didn’t know where he was taking me until I saw the men’s urinal with an unfortunate and completely startled man standing in front of it.
“Out,” Jack commanded.
It didn’t take more than that before said man zipped up and dashed out. I was so thankful he was gone that I swallowed back the knee-jerk reaction to tell him to wash his hands.
As soon as we were alone, Jack slid the bolt home on the door.
“What’s wrong, Carlisle?” he asked.
Yet again, it was the way he went all gentle and concerned that undid me entirely. Tears turned into out-and-out crying.
At first he paced, cursing again, muttering something about real pains in the ass, then he stopped and forced me to look at him. “What is it?”
“She’ll never change,” I managed.
“Who?”
“Deep down I think I always hoped things would be different between us. That we could have a real relationship.”
“Who, Carlisle?”
I couldn’t tell him what I knew about my mother given his position as opposing counsel. I wasn’t that far gone. But emotion rode me hard, like an angry bull finally let out of the gate.
“I’m tired,” I choked out, surprising both of us. But standing in the men’s room with Jack, the truth hit me in the gut. “I’m tired of trying to figure out who my mother really is. Tired of trying to get her to accept me for who I am. Tired of always disappointing her by not caring about being fabulous, or putting myself together, about dances or even boyfriends.”
I knew it sounded like I was feeling sorry for myself, but excuse me, I was. “I’m tired…”
The words trailed off because I couldn’t say more, not to him, not to anyone, because I could never say out loud that my mother was selfish and shallow and needy in a way that no matter how hard anyone tried, nothing would be enough for her.
The realization hit me like light flooding a dark room, making me squint against the pain. And right then, I didn’t care if my mother won or lost. I just wanted out.
“I’m tired of being safe,” I whispered.
He stared at me without a word, until finally he whispered, “Fuck,” then pulled me to him.