6

Heather and I flew into New Orleans just as the sun was going down. Through the window we could see the Mississippi River bathed in crimson. An hour later we were driving past the venue where I would be speaking the following day, the million-square-foot Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, with the glittering symbol of the French fleur-de-lis on the facade. I saw crowds of lawyer types streaming out of the place as we passed. Little did they know the fireworks I would soon be springing on the ABA.

As we stood in line in the lobby of the Hyatt to check in, Heather gave me a nudge. “So, when’ll you tell me about your speech tomorrow?”

I just smiled.

“Come on, this isn’t a state secret. I’m your daughter. Give me a hint. What’s the topic?”

I tried my best to dodge her questions artfully.

“Wow, Trevor,” she said with a smirk. “Anybody tell you that you’re emotionally closed?”

I ignored that one and booked us separate, adjoining rooms, and we parted in the hall to drop our bags.

Morgan Canterelle had promised that he would be in touch with me when I arrived in the city, but the desk had no message, and there was no voice mail from him on my cell phone, so I called his office. The receptionist transferred me to Kevin Sanders, who answered in a chipper voice and asked how my flight was.

“Good, thanks, but I was wondering if your boss might want to connect with me before my speech tomorrow.”

“I tell you what, Mr. Black, Mr. Canterelle isn’t in the office right now, but I will be sure and tell him you called.”

Figuring that the lawyer’s invitation to meet with me personally in New Orleans had merely been a courtesy, I thanked his clerk and forgot about it.

Heather and I took the elevator down for a quick dinner. As we ate, she was surprisingly chatty and had given up trying to pry into my upcoming ABA address. We drifted into a conversation about her master’s thesis. She described it as “Dealing with cultural and religious syncretism. Modern-day belief systems that have their roots in older practices and then get melded together.”

Then she quickly asked if I had ever been to New Orleans before.

I told her, “Long time ago. Last time was when I argued a criminal case before the Fifth Circuit, in the US Court of Appeals. Before that, I attended the ABA. And before that, a criminal case I handled in the local courthouse here in New Orleans. All of that was before Katrina hit, of course. That changed everything.”

She looked pensive. “What’s the legal term?”

“For what?”

“For hurricanes. Storms. Those kinds of natural disasters. One of my professors used it once.”

“I think you mean force majeure,” I said.

“Right, that’s it. What does it mean?”

“An unanticipated, extraordinary, devastating natural occurrence. ‘Act of God’ is what the old phrase used to be.”

“So, God brings destruction?”

“There’s a difference between allowing it and causing it. Nature, humanity —the whole earth is out of whack. Enter chaos. Whatever his reasons, God lets the world take its course sometimes.”

“And the devil? Do you believe he brings hurricanes?”

“He can. If God allows it.”

“So you think God has, like, this ultimate veto power over everything?”

“That’s a good way of looking at it.”

“Does he let the devil get away with murder? Like your voodoo case?”

I stopped eating. “I take it Ashley told you about it?”

“Just a few things. Sounds creepy.”

“Yes, very.”

“I suppose you’re not going to tell me why a New York policeman wants you to investigate a creepy murder of a government attorney in Washington?”

“Not yet. I’m still at the front end of that case. Wait till things get a bit clearer. Then I’ll tell you more.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Which one?”

“About whether you believe that God allows the devil to get away with murder.”

I took my time answering. Then, “It sounds like you’re blaming God for not stopping bad things from happening.”

It was her turn to take her time. Finally she said, “No, not every bad thing. Just some things.”

“Like?”

“Like Marilyn dying before I got a chance to even meet her. The only thing I know about my biological mother now is the one letter she wrote to me.”

“I’m sorry it happened that way.”

“She really said some nasty things about you in the letter.” Heather looked me in the eye when she said that.

“I’m sure some of them were true,” I said. “I made mistakes.”

“Like you demanding that she abort me?”

In a flash, everything seemed to change between us. One minute, a good dinner conversation that actually seemed to be opening up the relationship. Then, a minute later, I was teetering on a precipice. Please, God, I thought, help me through this. How could I tell my daughter that her mother —whom she never had a chance to meet and who had put her up for adoption and who lied to the adoption officials by telling them she didn’t know who the father was —had also lied in that letter to Heather, spinning a story that I was demanding she abort the pregnancy?

Heather was still waiting for a response. She cocked her head. “Well?”

I wanted a relationship with my daughter. Desperately. So much distance between us. The whole thing seemed daunting. Even so, I wasn’t about to bridge the gap by slandering her dead mother —even if she had lied about me in that letter. It was Marilyn who mentioned the abortion, not me. At the same time, though, I had played the part of the complicit coward. I had been willing to allow it. I had to live with that.

“The truth is,” I finally said, “I should have fought for you when I learned that Marilyn was pregnant. And I didn’t. And that was the terrible failure on my part.”

Heather stared at her water glass and then picked it up like she was going to drink from it but finally set it down. She rose to her feet instead. After thanking me for dinner, she said she was going to her room, abruptly ending our dinner conversation.

As I looked at the vacant chair across the table from me, I tried to put the whole thing in perspective. Fumbling for some practical, concrete signposts. But after failing at that, I managed to construct only one lackluster word of wisdom for myself.

No one had told me that the parenting journey would be this rough or that the rules of the road seemed to be written in Sanskrit.