Better wit than wealth.
Jewish proverb
A top spinning on its point, around and around, a whirling blur. A dreidel out of season. Now wobbling, teetering for an impossible moment, then falling, clattering onto the table.
She picks it up, spins it again. And again and again and again.
She is still stunned by the suddenness of her firing, disoriented by the loss of her cases, the clients — the files halted mid-work, the half-finished thoughts, the half-framed pleadings all cut off instantly. The loss of her ongoing loop of talk with Nate, the familiarity of its rhythms. She misses it all. She even misses Louis, as if the person who had done this was a different entity, a manic spirit that had taken hold of him when his back was turned and then released him almost as quickly.
A sense of uselessness hovers over her, so easily redundant. Her cases? Perhaps without her around, they are having a raucous party — plaintiffs, defendants rising off the pages of their files, mingling together, brushing up against each other, their causes of action rumpled, their pleadings slurred.
What did you do? says Gus, alarmed. They are sitting around the table, and he has his gouty foot up on a chair, an ice pack wrapped around it. The dog is lying underneath the chair, having elderly dreams of chasing something, every so often her legs jerking.
Nothing. Nothing that would explain this.
There must have been something, says Rudy. He is boiling herbs to make a tonic, and the kitchen smells like stewed grass. Consumed by his health at the best of times — the fainting has seen to that — he has a shelf full of herbs and remedies. Something that she discovered as a child, taking out the small jars and bottles, running her fingers over them, reciting their names as if these alone might have some power — milk thistle, cat’s claw, gotu kola.
Now she realizes that Gus and Rudy are clinging to the idea that she is in the wrong, that she must have committed some lawyerly blunder, not because they think she is so careless, but because it would mean she could put it right. Without blame on her part, there is no solution. Only Malcolm is on her side, shameless Malcolm, someone who has been fired himself more than once. Secretly pleased she has joined these ranks, by the small vindication it offers him.
Not her fault, he says, pouring rye into a glass, circling the ice in it.
The others turn to glare at him. What does he know? Nothing, nothing at all.
Malcolm — always a liability, she thinks wryly.
Was he like Malcolm? she asked Gus once.
Who?
My father.
Gus looked as if he was about to strangle on his own tongue.
Maybe a little.
Now, as she looks around at them, she wants to say: you don’t understand. But she doesn’t understand herself. She sees the outlines of it, the overall shape — the conversation with Louis, the conversation with Owen — but the harshness of his response is still mystifying.
And if none of them understand, they all know this: they need her income. She has gone from being an unclaimed child, discarded by another life, to a source of support. The legacies of Gus and Malcolm — the house is swamped in liens and mortgages, several times they have come close to a forced sale.
Gus, inept, his half-baked schemes producing only debts, fretful creditors, writs of execution. And Malcolm? Always an erratic source of income, often contributing nothing, and now he is in a prolonged dry spell, his targets becoming less credulous. Too many skeptics, he says, as if this were a failing — a crisis of faith on the part of the easily fooled. His strategy is to generate a certain fondness for each of his marks in turn, offering them warmth, respect, solace — whatever his keen eye has seen they need, whatever they crave most. This fondness — half-genuine — means he almost admires their self-preservation, despite the effect on his money supply.
Rudy, though, Rudy is an illustrator, making elegant drawings for medical textbooks — blue lungs branched like root systems, unnaturally lustrous organs, sinews flowing down arms and legs. A good income once, but the field has overtaken him.
It’s all software now, he says.
No longer the same need for his fine pen nibs and coloured inks, his ability to draw a true line, the precision of his shading. Now he wrestles with pixels and vectors, mourning the loss of something he could touch with his flat fingertips, reduced to working part-time.
The mortgages, he thinks, a few days later, sitting up stiffly from waxing the kitchen floor, folding his cloth over.
The mortgages, thinks Gus, hammering a stake into the earth.
The mortgages, thinks Malcolm, looking up from the racing results.
All the thoughts circulating through the house, winding around chairs, under tables, over counters, up the staircase — all these thoughts have become one thought: the mortgages.
She is in the kitchen, peeling blood oranges to make a salad, something to do, to make herself feel useful. The recipe is from Nate, and Rudy has already turned up his nose at it. Showy, this salad — the oranges, the torn red lettuce, the green-yellow of the avocados — but the dressing has walnut oil and coriander and she is not convinced that it will taste good. This is a recipe that does not require the oven, though — a finicky old gas hulk, the pilot light lit with a match. She pares the bitter pith off the orange segments, then cuts them away from their membranes. Fussy, time-consuming — this is why I don’t cook, she thinks — but then she remembers that time is something she has now in abundance, that she is surrounded by large quantities of time, lying in piles around her. So much time, it is merciless; if she had any more it might bury her, minutes, hours, days closing over her head. She bites into an orange piece absently, the tart-sweet juice filling her mouth.
Next the avocado — scraping out the flesh, chopping it into cubes, running her tongue over the knife afterwards. Then the dressing — grating the rind off a lime, adding honey, vinegar, salt, the walnut oil and coriander, shaking it up. She smells it, looks at it doubtfully, thinking about their mouths becoming dry and puckered. Gus, walking by the kitchen, a caulking tube in hand, sees her there and stops, surprised. More than surprised, disturbed that she is doing something as unusual as making food, that it has come to this — further evidence of disarray.
And she is in disarray, no doubt about it, certain assumptions — unknown even to herself before this — in shambles. That she is not the kind of person who gets fired. That Louis is not the kind of person who fires people, at least with so little cause. That the supply of fairness in the world is larger than this.
But perhaps fairness really is a scarce commodity, she thinks. She has never been under the illusion that it was widespread, but perhaps it is even scarcer than she thought. A finite quantity, rare as mineral dust. Tiny amounts, sprinkled here and there, and between them, a shortage, a fairness wasteland.
Still, no matter how wary she is, how little she expects, it never seems to be little enough to avoid being blindsided. And all her efforts to control the shape of things, to negotiate with happenstance — to appease it, to distract it, to deceive it — seem futile.
Ah, says Drozd.
You cannot possibly think these situations are comparable, she says. Even you could not be so deluded.
She shakes her head, attempting to shake him out of it. Go and bother someone else, she thinks.
A breathing space, says Nate. Enjoy it.
Advice he would be wholly incapable of following himself.
He has been nonplussed by her firing, too, although he tries to avoid any sign of it.
Dolce far niente, he says, something he picked up from an Italian cookbook. The sweetness of doing nothing.
Nothing. He thinks she should be revelling in this absence of routine, the lack of any need for getting up, for suiting up. At least for the moment, for a few days, she should be enjoying the idleness of it all, the release from the sheer effort of working. But she is not sure she is able to do this. Dolce far niente. Perhaps she will have to move to Italy as well — this nothingness might come more easily living in some sleepy town with white houses, clay tile roofs, eating bread and figs in the sun. Perhaps she will have to trade this piece of her life for one belonging to someone else.
···
She is watching him, watching his narrow house. This edition of Andrew Jarvis, the first one on the list. Sitting in the café across the street, she has become a lurker, an observer, someone waiting.
Or a stalker, she thinks ruefully.
Of course, she should knock on his door, introduce herself, behave in some suitable way. But this would be a morass of a conversation, one she is still far from sure she wants to have. Why did you leave? Why did you stay away? Who are you? Who am I to you? If anything.
Perhaps these questions are unanswerable, anyway.
Then why is she here? Some fitful, uneasy curiosity? Some impulse to complete an outline of herself? Or is she merely thumbing through a catalogue of possible lives, looking for one with a father in it for the purposes of comparison?
···
Show yourself, she says to him. She has been there for almost an hour and she is restless. It has never occurred to her how extraordinarily patient a shadower, a stalker has to be.
And then suddenly he is there, walking out the front door. Just like that.
He is not the right age, though. This is not him. This is a man in his twenties, blond stubble on his jaw, stocky. A son? A visitor? At least stalkers know who their quarry is.
But this man seems unlikely to be even a relative. The wrong shape to the face, the wrong colouring, all wrong, no trace of the man in the photograph. Not impossible — a son could have inherited other looks — but less likely.
There he goes, setting off down the sidewalk.
She is half-relieved, half-disappointed, spared — or deprived — for the moment.
But there are others, others to find, to watch.
The rest of the list, sitting in her pocket, turns into a handful of gravel.
···
That evening. Gus is working in the garden, a faded green shirt, a bulbous nose, a cigarette behind his ear. His domain, a place where he rules supreme — Rudy and Malcolm have no interest in it. Although he is a negligent ruler, absent-minded, ignoring it for weeks while leaves shrivel, vines begin choking other plants. Then he goes out, trowel in hand, and submerges himself in it for an hour or two, cutting back creepers, tying up monkshood, watering it all with a leaky hose. Surprisingly, flowers emerge from this neglect — tough flowers, like hellebore, stonecrop, phlox.
The evening light is lingering now, spring well on its way. She starts to weed in a desultory way near where Gus is working.
Here, in this place, he is someone else — a seeder, a buncher, a lopper, bringing unlikely beauty into being, at least for a day or two, a week or two. She often helps him like this, has worked beside him from her first week in the house, digging in the loamy soil with a spoon. A refuge for her, a child of the city, or at least its lower levels — urns filled with cigarette butts, newspaper boxes with scrawls on their windows, cats crouching underneath parked cars. As a six-year-old, she filled up teacups with water and dirt, while he spread mulch or dug bone meal into the earth. Once, she caught him looking at her speculatively, as if he were wondering whether she might need an application of bone meal as well.
At the moment, this place is a tangle of bleached grass, the dried skeletons of last year’s plants, patches of yellow trout lilies, windflowers migrating across the ground in untidy blue swaths. One of the vines has overtaken the fence, climbing up a pole to the overhead wires, winding along them, sending out runners hanging down — a towering green curtain.
They work in silence for a few minutes in the amber light, the earth on her hands smelling like iron, like leaf mould. A starling is calling seet, seet from a tree.
A breathing space. A pause in an unbroken line of jobs and school, scarcely a gap in all that time. Could this be a respite of sorts, a temporary truce with her own chronology?
No. She simply feels stranded, adrift. A breathing space, yes, but an unnecessary one. An unwanted one.
Although she must remember — must keep firmly in mind — that her job was not without its problems.
You’re going to have to cobble together something that works.
Did he doubt her ability to do this, was there more than one reason he fired her? But what did he expect? That she would be able to fix all the gaps in the case, produce some new doctrine that would take care of its weaknesses? The doctrine of insufficient evidence. The rule of shaky inferences. The principle of close enough.
This case, she had said to Nate the week before. All these people — teachers, journalists, peasants, the torture, the killings. So many of them Jewish.
Not the ever-popular chosen people, he said.
I really do need a second opinion, another set of eyes.
An hour, he said, relenting. I can give you an hour.
He started in on the box, pulling out documents, skimming rapidly, intense, absorbed. From time to time he passed his hand over his bare head — a habit, as if he were looking for his hair. The hour elongated, then stretched into two, three while she worked on other cases.
Finally, he shoved a document back into the box, grimacing.
Not strong enough? she said.
Not nearly strong enough. If the rest of it is like what I’ve seen. Not nearly strong enough, even on the balance of probabilities.
The balance of probabilities. The legal test in the case, at least at this level, at this stage of the proceedings. A soupy test, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but a lower threshold. Which side, which claim was more likely to be true? Which claim was more probable than not? An attempt to round up disorderly facts, to organize the intuitions of judges.
It reminds her of one of Gus’s schemes, though. The balance of probabilities. She imagines him stacking up a number of probabilities, making a teetering pile of them. Then adding more, one by one, until some point, the precise point, the balance point. Right before the pile falls over.
Now, she thinks: perhaps I’m better off without these cases, without this case.
No, no, say the spiders, aghast. Don’t say that.
Two women are carrying on a conversation in the garden a few houses over, and one of them laughs, a brittle laugh. The light is fading now, dusk is beginning to gather.
One consolation: if she is off this case, she is less likely to be killed by a bomb. This thought not as cheering as it might be, though, since the others are still on the case, still in the building. Nate rubbing his head, Louis and his books, Isabel holding up her hands — her refuge now something of an illusion.
She hears a small rustle and looks up. A tortoiseshell cat, an interloper, is picking its way around the snowdrops. It sniffs disdainfully at a clump of them, keeps on prowling. Then it jumps onto the garden chair and turns its head towards her for a second, and she has a glimpse of brilliant yellow eyes.
She stands up from where she is weeding, stretches, and begins wandering around, pulling up some twitchgrass, some seed husks turned to paper. A sulphur butterfly lights on a twig and pauses, moving its damp wings.
Has Rudy said anything? says Gus abruptly, his thick fingers hooked in the pruners.
About what?
Nothing, he says quickly. A bit of news, that’s all.
News? Rudy never has news. Malcolm, yes — usually another scam. Listen to this, he says, as he describes his latest plan just this side of the law, or so he hopes, without caring enough to find out. Fireproof, he says. Gus, yes, occasionally he has news, another bankruptcy, reported unwillingly, his face shut down. Rudy, no.
What news? she says, reaching for the trowel.
I’ll let him tell you.
There is no point in pushing him, he is as stubborn as paint.
She yanks a weed out viciously, taking a crocus with it.
A shout — a child in the distance — and in one silky motion the cat leaps onto the fence and disappears on the other side, its ginger-and-brown tail the last to vanish.
She turns to go inside, rubbing her hands together to brush off the coarse dirt.
The sweetness of doing nothing. On the way in, she kicks over a garden chair.
···
They grind the poppy seeds until they are powdery, then add the butter, vanilla, honey, eggs. This is the filling for the dough, a floury lump on the cutting board. The girl is sitting next to it on the counter, kicking her heels, once in a while poking at it tentatively.
Outside, the day is dark and wet, the rain coming down in grey needles, but the kitchen is warm with light, all the brighter against the gloom of the windows.
Purim. The Festival of Lots.
Lots? says the girl, shaking her head of dark curls.
Haman drew lots — sticks — to decide which day to kill the Jews of Persia, says her aunt.
Haman? says the girl.
The vizier to King Ahasuerus. Now whirl your grager to blot out his name.
The girl whirls her noisemaker, delighted by the clamour, by this idea that a name — a person? — could be wiped out by noise.
Her aunt puts her hands over her ears, and then sits down heavily, holding her lower back.
Some advice for free, she says. Don’t get into a fight with your kidneys.
Why? says the six-year-old.
They’re bandits, says her aunt.
She takes a sip of cold coffee and stands up again, pulling a rolling pin out of a drawer. She dusts the cutting board with flour and then scoops up the ball of dough, flattens it onto the board. Now she is rolling it, first one way, then another, the dough spreading out as she gently pulls it and rolls, pinches it and rolls, pats it and rolls.
Here, she says to the girl, handing her a drinking glass. Cut out some circles.
This is harder than it looks, not all the edges separate cleanly enough — press harder — and a few end up stretched and torn as the child tries to pull the scraps around them free. But soon they have twenty-three circles, and they add a spoonful of poppyseed filling to each one, folding the sides up into a triangle shape. Hamantaschen. Into the oven, set the timer.
When they’re done, we’ll take some over to Marvin and Ida.
Now they wash the dishes, the girl standing on a footstool, hands in the soapy water, an apron wrapped several times around her small body. Then the drying with the dishtowel, the wiping of the counter and waiting, as the kitchen slowly fills up with the spicy-brown smell of the baking.
Why did he want to kill the Jews? says the girl. Haman.
Who knows?
Did he kill them? All of them?
Does it look like it? says her aunt, gesturing to the two of them with the dishtowel. We had Esther. She outwitted Haman — whirl your grager. She talked the king into protecting the Jews. She was a real talker.
She opens the oven door to check the edges of the hamantaschen, letting out a cloud of fragrant heat.
That Esther, she says. She was something.
Why did he want to kill the Jews? says the girl again, eating a shred of raw dough. Can he kill us?
She is starting to sound alarmed, her face is screwed up a little.
No, no, you’re safe now. Nobody can kill you now.
Where is Esther? says the girl, thinking that it would be good to know, just in case.
Long gone, says the aunt. But you’re still safe.
The girl looks at her doubtfully.
The timer dings.
···
Apologize, says Nate.
They are sitting up on the bluffs, white sandstone cliffs beside the lake, three hundred feet high. Danger: Bluffs unstable, says the sign, the chalky walls prone to rockslides. But they are sitting back from the edge, they are drinking wine and eating cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto. A necessary precaution, says Nate. If it was up to you, we would be eating soda crackers.
The sun is low in the sky, a sky made soft and smoky by pollution. A horizon full of pink-gold light, towers of clouds reaching towards the atmosphere. Farther down, the sun has laid a watery path across the middle of the lake, a path that seems to lead right into the sun itself. Not Der Blaue Reiter, she thinks idly. Something neoclassical. Maybe August Becker.
He really does seem to feel betrayed, says Nate, so an apology might help. And maybe this has been a cooling off period.
Who would have guessed that someone so self-possessed, so confident, would be so sensitive? she says. Does he seem cooler now?
No, he admits. He seems irritable.
He had another one of those misplaced moments, he adds, almost casually. He looked like he was dropped into the wrong spot without any warning.
They have avoided talking about this much, they want him — they need him — to be intact, undamaged, in good working order. They cannot afford to have him lose his place, cannot afford to think that these are anything more than momentary lapses — the symptoms of a low-grade fever perhaps, or a particularly rough flu. Symptoms that will disappear as quickly as they began. Twice now, though — this is not a good sign, this is difficult to ignore.
Could it be some kind of concussion? she says.
They consider this, ticking through what they know: he doesn’t play sports, he has said nothing about an injury, nothing about a fall, an accident.
Not much of a silent sufferer, either, says Nate — we would have heard about it if he had been hit somehow.
The only thing likely to hit him is a book, she says. For a second, she can see his books falling from their shelves, raining down around him, his arms raised to ward off the blows.
The symptoms: almost none. No sweating, no paralysis, no sagging on one side of the face. Whatever this is, these moments when time seems to abandon him, it must be a quiet condition.
Even now, though, they avoid talking about other possibilities, more lethal problems of the mind. Tumours hiding among white fibres. Aneurisms ballooning out of artery walls. Things that might cause dislocation, confusion, that might turn memory into lace. No, too early to be talking — even thinking — about them. Only two incidents.
Although these are only the ones they know about, the ones that they have seen.
Do you think his wife knows? says Nate.
Carla — effervescent, her red hair a constant surprise, her fingers stained with oil paints. But this is more than high spirits, this effervescence is a strategy; she uses it to shape the atmosphere around her, to keep it at a breezy tone and pitch. Alert to small shifts in Louis’s moods, she would have noticed something like this. Although only if one of these moments had occurred when she was around.
Would he have told her? she says.
No, they both think.
She takes another piece of cantaloupe, the taste of the melon, the salty, fatty ham together in her mouth.
Another possibility, something even more disturbing. The possibility that Louis is not the problem, that some gap in his grey matter has opened up a rare view of things. A view of sudden shifts in existence that are truly occurring, some fluidity normally hidden from sight.
Einstein, she says to Nate. He argued that the distinction between past, present, and future was only a stubborn illusion.
Well, I’m in favour of it, anyway, says Nate.
She swallows some wine.
What about that apology? he says.
She will need to work up to it, or perhaps work her way down to it. Even the idea produces a spurt of uncomfortable pride. Perhaps this was her problem, she had not been deferential enough.
The cloud towers are drifting into mauve and grey ribbons, edges glowing from the sinking sun.
Nate is talking about another one of his cases, a man who tried to rob small stores using unusual weapons — a lamp, a vase, a broom.
They gave him money because he was waving around a lamp? she says. Perhaps I should see what I can do with a toaster.
He was also six foot four and yelling.
Your NKVD case is going forward, too, he adds, giving her a quick glance.
She straightens up.
Owen says the new deputy minister is more interested in the case. They really think there’s more to it. And the same MP is still harassing the Minister. Although they don’t want to pay for another lawyer to get up to speed, so this might be the moment to go in and grovel to Louis.
She realizes that Nate has neglected to tell them that he had been through part of the file as well, and she feels a rush of fondness towards him, unexpected, unwelcome. Without any warning at all, he seems suddenly — startlingly — endearing.
Nate, she says to herself. Remember who this is. Remember that he is missing some of the ingredients of humanship. Remember that his moments of kindness can be quickly extinguished by that ticking ambition.
He is already too many things to her. A foothold — his rubbery sarcasm. A thought process — that nimble mind. A critic, even a stern critic, mostly of others, sometimes of himself or her. Exasperating, disarming.
But these are known quantities — habits of his, things that are familiar. Things she has even adopted, not as her own, rather as shared operations, joint labours. Adding anything else into this mix — especially something unpredictable — would be a form of lunacy. This is a man who bounds along the surface of his life, who avoids getting wet at all costs.
Although perhaps he is becoming better at this business of being a person. She looks at his eyes now, greyish-blue, clever, warm. The colour of iron, of rain. And he can be utterly disarming, a brother-in-arms.
No. This is not something to pursue, or even to acknowledge. This is something to be ignored, to be kept at a distance. She is simply at loose ends, her emotions scrambled by the firing, she is deluding herself.
This is nothing, anyway. A humming, a surge of bass notes. Something that can be pushed aside.
He gestures towards the bottle of wine in her hand, and she pours some into his glass, watching him as he leans back and takes a swallow, his throat exposed. She feels an urge to stroke his windpipe, to trace the lines of his collarbone. The bone most frequently broken, Rudy said once — he reads the text that goes with his illustrations. No need for it to be hit dead on — it can be broken by falling on a shoulder, a hand, the impact travelling back.
Ignore this. Stifle this.
Why?
Because she knows him, he is too fitful, too haphazard with people — they swim in and out of his focus. Because it might ruin their friendship, even their working relationship — if they ever have one again. Because he is entirely plausible, entirely convincing, until the ruthless side of him turns up, like a prankster of some kind. Even then, it seems like an aberration, an exception, too easy to explain away. Until the next time.
All good reasons. Very good reasons.
This is nothing, anyway.
···
She wakes up suddenly, her mind still crowded with pieces of dreams. She tries to catch hold of them, to hang on to them, but they evaporate too quickly, vanishing around corners before she can see what they are. This makes her feel a little lost, as if these scraps are small parts of herself that are disappearing — strange, fine parts that are too fleeting to survive.
But Nate’s breath is on her shoulder, his warmth beside her — he seems unusually real, even in his sleep the pores on his skin, his shoulder muscles stand out. Perhaps she can borrow pieces of his dreams, perhaps they are hardier than hers, less likely to dissolve so quickly. How will she know if they are worth borrowing, though? What if they are bad dreams, what if they are ugly, threadbare?
She rolls over.
No. His dreams would be like him. Last night — a dry sweetness in the palms of his hands, his fingertips, his lips — something that seemed to expand, to rise and fall. His eyes hazy, as he touched and stroked her skin, exploring the hollows and bones of her body, sliding between her legs. Then his face twisted with urgency, as he pushed himself inside her, as she clutched his back, so many sensations at once, all exquisitely different, the rhythm of his movements making her gasp and arch.
Afterwards, she fell asleep suddenly, dropping into a quiet stream of darkness.
And now?
She looks around. His place is crowded with things, even the air seems full — traces of his cooking, garlic, blackened peppers. He is a collector, an accumulator of odds and ends — objects, clues, beliefs. A sepia photograph of elderly twins. A figurine of three mice riding a giant white radish. A quirky theory of combustion.
Look, he will say, showing her a wind-up ostrich stalking around in a circle.
She has wondered — even before this — if she is part of this collection, lurching around on wind-up feet. But she swipes away the thought each time. If it isn’t entirely untrue, it is untrue enough.
And now, she thinks, now for the hazards. The possibility that this delicate, tentative web between them will evaporate, that they will stumble over unlovely things about each other, that they will fall down holes of yearning and misunderstanding. That they will find quarrelling more appealing, more satisfying than peace. That there will be a host of injuries, large and small.
But these things seem remote now, at a great distance. Instead, she is filled with a soft euphoria, she is saturated with him, with a curious delight in him.
Nate, she says to herself again, to remind herself. Nate.
But he has already become someone else.
Perhaps she can get a clearer image, not of him, but of this thing between them instead, its edges, its furrows and folds. Something distinctive, unmistakable, spelled out by their arms and legs.
But this, too, is formless, this tender fog, impossible to grasp. If she waits awhile, it will take on shape, its contours will be revealed. In the meantime, its shapelessness is tranquil, mesmerizing.
···
Surely her exile will not be permanent. Surely Louis is trying to teach her a lesson. Of course he will relent.
No sign of it, says Nate wearily. He has spoken to Louis again, urging him to reconsider. We need the help. She knows the cases.
Isabel tried, too, says Nate. She cornered him in his office, and gave him hell in that withering Spanish accent.
This is a foolish thing. You know yourself this is wrong.
Louis is adamant, though, unmoved.
Why? Leah says.
I have to be able to trust the people I work with.
Trust. An unruly thing, changing shape from moment to moment. Always a risk to trust some person, some circumstance. A necessary bet, though. Otherwise, paralysis would set in — people unable to take another step without some assurance that the ground would not collapse.
But trust doesn’t require mindless obedience, she says. Trust doesn’t require docility — if anything, a failing in a lawyer. Law is too tricky, too many-sided for that. Even trust is too tricky for that.
You’re fired, he says again.
Owen. Is it possible he might intervene on her behalf, might explain that he had put her on the spot? But asking him would be dangerous, might only stir up the situation further. And why would he intervene, this man who is an expert non-combatant? A man who is above all cautious — only ever engaged to the extent he can retreat.
I underestimated how quick he is, she says to Nate. I admit it. And my attempts to sidestep the issue — not very adept. Perhaps his conclusions suited me. Perhaps Louis has some reason for being annoyed. But this?
From Louis, a man normally so hard-headed, says Nate. Self-satisfied, yes, but not a martinet.
More than that, she says, thinking of his flickers of warmth.
A four-year-old at the office one weekend, running up and down the hall, windmilling his arms, shouting gleefully. Louis scoops him up and begins singing to him, a children’s ditty, his voice surprisingly musical, the child quieting down. He turns around and sees her, and stops singing abruptly.
He has his moments, says Nate cautiously.
Do you think this is another sign of some brain problem, some neural slipperiness? she says.
Possibly. Or maybe you hit a sensitive spot. A valuable client, too, a source of future cases.
Or perhaps he is more of a dictator than I thought. Maybe I’m better off without him, she says.
But she doesn’t really believe that.
···
Her mother is humming again, so faintly as to be almost imperceptible. Fiddle dee dee, fiddle dee dee, the fly has married the bumblebee.
···
A job, this is her goal now. No more dolce far niente. But this is a daunting proposition without a reference. She needs an explanation for this event that is wholly inexplicable, something she can offer a potential employer.
We had a difference of opinion. Insubordinate, they will think.
We had a misunderstanding. Stupid, they will think.
I made a mistake. It must have been serious.
I did nothing wrong. She sounds like a client.
He was a difficult person. She sounds petulant.
No one will want a junior who might sidestep directions.
Why not start your own firm? says Malcolm, so pleased to have her in the ranks of the fired that he is full of useless ideas.
It takes too long, she says. Too long to build up a client list, too long to produce an income.
Could she evade the questions, claim to have done something untraceable for the last year — a lengthy trip? Ah, lies, there they are again, but she is without the desperate circumstances of her clients to justify them. And she has almost a physical distaste for lying herself, real lies, that is, not white lies. Something growing up with Malcolm had instilled, watching his lies ricochet around them.
She has nothing like his knack, his skill with them, either. A lie like this would call for agility, for practice. Deceit is a muscle as much as a skill, she thinks, something that requires strengthening, maintenance. And a good lie needs commitment — to vigilance, to consistency, to specific details, to auxiliary lies. Things even Malcolm was often too lazy to provide.
But perhaps her reluctance to lie is only a form of squeamishness. Maybe she is indulging a sense of integrity at the expense of her uncles, an income, she thinks. Is this really a matter of her concerns about virtue, about doing right? Or is it possible her preoccupation with the idea of doing right is part of a bribe, a bribe to luck? Does she secretly think that if she promises to be good — whatever that might be — this will ward off any strokes of random disaster? A modern form of superstition. Or a form of moral protection money.
Then she realizes that lying about a trip is not possible in any event. Too many lawyers, potential employers have seen her in court over the last year, with Louis and without him.
There are other jobs, though, other lines of work. Perhaps she can get a position in something else. But part of her rebels at the thought. So unwilling to come to terms with law at first, she is reluctant to abandon it now. And people, potential employers would be puzzled, so many of them impressed — in spite of themselves — by law. Why would someone abandon this, they will think — had she been expelled, even disbarred?
If there are some people who are impressed by law, she thinks, there are others who are fascinated by it. No matter how many laws there are, they want more, and no amount will satisfy them, will relieve the craving. They are addicted, they want laws about everything — sexual acts in ravines, purple loosestrife in marshes, bulk spices. About barking dogs, about keeping rats, about where the cremated ashes of dead people can be scattered. They are intoxicated by the extraordinary trick of power that law offers, the possibility of changing the constellation of things, of changing the results.
She is startled to find that she is becoming one of them.
···
The strings, she says, as her aunt pulls the bedcovers over her small body, turns on the night light. The ones holding up the birds. What happens if they break? Do the birds fall out of the sky? Or do they float on air?
Flying, floating, falling, says her aunt. You think those are the only possibilities?
···
Val, small, round-faced, quiet as milk, rooting through the kitchen cupboards for tea. She is everywhere, smelling of light sweat and talcum powder. Soothing, a little white moon of a person. A voice faintly husked by smoking, she begins doing some of the cooking, baked apples, leek and potato soup, custard pie, food as quiet as she is. So mild a person, so innocuous, but threatening to break apart this small sphere of existence.
Leah has had her suspicions, she has seen the signs in Gus — the minute upgrades in grooming, a new razor, a polished belt buckle, a different soap.
Don’t leave.
I might not get another chance.
They would never say things like this, this is not the way they talk to each other. This is not the way Gus talks to anyone, but she has learned to avoid any unnecessary words with him. The result? Their conversations take place in a mute language that runs under the surface, a language full of stale repetitions.
Don’t leave.
This might be my only chance.
Is he really thinking about it?
They all think about it sometimes. About separating themselves from this mismatch of people, marooned together by inertia, by a lack of money, by doubts about what else might be possible. More than that — by all the unseen filaments that grow between people, slowly, silently over the years, whether they want them to or not.
The rules of affinity and consanguinity, says Nate.
So far these thoughts of leaving have usually amounted only to half-formed calculations, vague daydreams — nothing as concrete as an announcement, a departure. At least not since Malcolm came back, decree nisi in hand. But Gus is the most likely defector now — the most presentable, the most apt to be liked or adopted by other people. He has friends, too, the bowling team, the pub.
Don’t leave.
Val’s cooking is certainly an improvement, she has to admit this, even though she is still resentful. You can’t buy Gus with food, she wants to say to her. But perhaps she can. Even she herself has a hard time resisting — she eats a piece of shortbread irritably, annoyed at her lack of self-restraint.
Be fair, she says to herself. Be objective. Isn’t Gus entitled to this?
No. Maybe. But who gets what they are entitled to, anyway?
Be smart, then. Be patient. These things have blown over before. Give her a chance, she means well.
Or perhaps she is taking advantage of his burly good nature, trying to wriggle her small moon self into this counterfeit family.
She’s turning him into a spaniel, says Malcolm.
Jealous, he is strongly of the view that if anyone should have a girlfriend, it should be him, the man who even had a wife at one point. But he is such a blend of sincerity and deception, he loses people as quickly as he attracts them. A day trader in people, a speculator in human beings — not someone who can sustain even a friendship.
Isn’t she something? Gus says, surprised into talking.
Yes, says Rudy, who almost flirts with her himself in his own rusty way.
But Gus leaving would be a disaster. She tries to be glad on his behalf, but feels only dismay.
Of course, she has thought about leaving herself, of course she has. This is the expected thing, the usual thing — children grow up and leave. Although perhaps these are children who are not charged with ensuring certain people will not vanish, who are not involved in a loss prevention operation with respect to particular human beings.
What about that guy? says Gus silently.
What about him? Wiry hair, blunt as a bone. Off to the International Court in The Hague, a prestigious internship. A man who needed no decoding, no solving — an easy, knowable person. So easy that even this break — announced calmly — seemed easy, instinctive at the time. Together for seven months, gone now for three months, she has occasional moments of achiness. She tries to keep him locked away in a vault in her psyche, but even there, he is mouldering gently, producing odourless gases that seep through once in a while.
But if leaving is a possibility for her at some point, that some point is not now. Not this cluttered present. Not this moment in time — or the next, or the next — when a change like that would open up lines of contingency, lines of random circumstances. Things that might lead anywhere, that might land anywhere.
The doctrine of foreseeability. A man jumps onto a train leaving the station, boosted by a railway worker. He drops a package of fireworks, which then explodes, causing a coin-operated weigh scale to fall over and hit a woman standing on the platform. The woman sues the railway in tort and wins twice in the lower courts, then loses on appeal. There was no negligence in law because the railway worker could not have foreseen these events. Negligence in the abstract is surely not a tort, says Chief Justice Cardozo, if indeed it is understandable at all.
I know this is none of my business, she starts to say to Gus.
That’s right, says Gus.
···
An apology. Apologizing to Louis would be a lie as well, but this is her lie to have, something private, about her own thoughts. Thoughts so crowded, so fleeting that anything might be almost true for a moment. And she feels entitled to this kind of lie, although she is not sure why. But how many apologies are entirely truthful?
I’m sorry, she says to the mirror, pushing out the words with an effort.
Too tepid. She will have to sound more convincing.
I’m sorry. I apologize. Wholeheartedly. It won’t happen again.
Wholeheartedly?
Thoroughly. Thoroughly sorry. I truly regret this.
Does she? She certainly regrets the loss of her job. And apologies are peculiar creatures — many-headed, many-footed. We regret to say. Widespread now, everywhere, for small sins, sweeping injustices, for tiny blunders, vast tragedies. A massive traffic in remorse.
This idea that mere words can heal or repair something — where does it come from? That a ritual of speech can have such an effect. An appealing thought for a lawyer — a person who gambles everything on the power of language.
Drozd. What if he had expressed regret, had admitted his wrongdoing? She is becoming convinced of his guilt, his complicity. As flawed as the affidavits are, together they have a persuasive mass. What if he had apologized at some point, a genuine expression of repentance? Even if he were capable of this, what would be the effect? Would the dead bodies of people be transformed, skin growing back over their skeletons? Would their crumbling torsos begin solidifying, filling in with organs, nerves regenerating? Would the lives they would have lived reconstitute themselves backwards, like a living jigsaw puzzle?
No. Some things cannot be erased. Some things cannot be undone.
There is nothing to undo, says Drozd bitterly. You have no idea what it was like, what it took to survive.
Go away.
If undoing is not possible, if history cannot be turned inside out, an apology might still be useful, might still be a form of consolation. Although her own apology would be merely a gesture, a means to an end, something to pacify Louis.
I’m sorry, she says, studying her face, ensuring that she looks solemn, that no flicker of her eyes, no quiver of her mouth betrays her.
I apologize. I was wrong. It won’t happen again. You can trust me. Your wish will be my command. Anything you say, goes. You two-faced autocrat.
No, no, I mean, I’m sorry. I apologize. You —
Just get it over with, says Nate.
···
The mortgages clear their throats.
···
Two women at a cafe, one with a pear and ice, the other with a ginger beer float. The woman with the float drinks some of it, but when she pours more ginger beer over the ice cream, a dead snail spills out of the bottle. She claims damages for gastroenteritis and shock. She wins in the lower court, loses on appeal, then wins again finally on appeal. The court rules that the ginger beer manufacturer owed a duty of care to the ultimate consumer. I do not think so ill of our jurisprudence as to suppose that its principles are remote from the claims of a civilized society upon its members, says Lord Atkin.
···
Not now, says Rudy.
He is brushing the dog, her tawny coat. He pulls the hair out of the brush, rolls it into a ball, then pushes the reluctant dog around so that he can do the other side, her toenails scratching the floor.
Now, says Leah.
It’s nothing.
Now.
Just my arteries. Just a little problem with my arteries.
And? she says.
Clogged, they’re clogged. And the cholesterol, the blood pressure — too high. Could have a stroke. Or a heart attack. Have to take some pills, watch the fat. Maybe take a few walks.
A stroke. Or a heart attack. She feels an unpleasant shift at the base of her spine.
It’s nothing, he says again.
This from the man who takes gingko, she says half-heartedly.
Rudy, aging furtively — afraid that any admission, any recognition of it will make it more real, more concrete. Or will hasten its progress. There has been no hint of mortality before this, though, no sense of anything serious. Yes, he is passionate about his herbs, each one imbued with benefits, curative powers that he believes in utterly for a while, until his zeal begins to slowly deflate, until it collapses altogether, and he shifts his attention to some other remedy. But these remedies are for minor things — to lubricate his joints, to enrich his bloodstream, to cleanse his glands.
Maybe take a few walks. He is a driver, a driver’s driver, someone who can devoutly summon up statistics on mileage, horsepower, torque, acceleration. He drives everywhere, even to the park several blocks away, letting the dog run around barking at sparrows until she is tired and then driving her home. The dark blue car is as old as the dog, shock absorbers worn out, metal body rusted through in spots. He sands the holes, fills them with putty and paints them, mixing the paint to match the colour exactly — camouflage — only to have the putty fall out again a month later. Often they have to jump-start it, she and Gus pushing it down a slope in the street while Rudy steers, the car stuttering over and over until the engine coughs and catches — each time a moment of small triumph.
All of this is not because he is particularly fond of the old machine, they owe each other nothing at this point. If he had any money, he would buy something newer, sleeker. He does the bodywork because he is afraid of being pulled over and sent for a vehicle inspection, an inspection the car will surely fail.
She watches him now, making quick, nervous strokes with the brush over the flaps of the dog’s ears, her feathered legs, her golden flanks. Even in her old age, this dog is gravely beautiful, in the animal-like way denied to people. Rudy is brushing too hard, though, and she twists and turns to get away, and then lies down in silent resistance, one paw over her white muzzle while he concentrates fiercely on her plumed tail.
Suddenly, she has the urge to touch Rudy’s arm, to reassure him. But she knows this would be a mistake — he would flinch irritably, and move out of reach.
···
Keep an eye on him, she says to Malcolm. Let me know if you see a problem, if you see anything different.
She is worried about Rudy, worried that something might happen to him while she is out of the house, that his heart might seize up, that he might be staggering around, dizzy, nauseated, while she is off buying eggplants or looking for grout. Or going to work — soon, she hopes.
Malcolm snorts.
I mean it, she says.
Why me?
Because you live here.
Gus lives here, too.
She doesn’t say: but you don’t care enough to lie to me.
···
One, two, three, says her mother, pointing to each candle flickering on the cake.
One, two, three, says the girl, kneeling on her chair.
She watches the candles for a few seconds — they are beginning to melt, small beads of wax running down to the icing.
Don’t wait too long, says her father.
She puffs up her cheeks, her chin determined, then blows, the flames wavering under her breath.
Presents, says her father.
From her mother: a simple game, fingerpaints, gumdrops.
From her father: a clutch of helium balloons, hovering under the ceiling, trailing ribbons.
She is timid, reverent among these riches.
Come outside, he says.
He shows her how to take a balloon, to hold it by the curling ribbon, to make a wish.
A wish? What is a wish?
Something you want.
But at this moment, this instant, she has everything she can possibly imagine.
I’ll wish, then, says her father. Now let it go.
They watch the balloon soar up into the atmosphere, shimmering in the sun until it becomes a tiny dot in the sky. Now she is amazed, her eyes round, hands outstretched for another balloon.
Her mother raises her camera.
···
Mint is growing wild in the garden, tiny blue spikes filling up empty spaces, strangling the other plants. Good for headaches, says Rudy. And memory. And digestion.
She is drying some for him now — for lack of anything better to do — spreading it out on shallow pans, setting them in the oven at a low heat. Two hours, it will take.
An hour in, she checks to make sure that the herbs are not turning into charred twigs. No, they are still surprisingly green — and the oven is surprisingly cool. A low heat, but this low? She touches the side of the stove absently, and then realizes that it has stopped heating up entirely, that it is cooling down.
This old oven — there is a reason she usually avoids it, only Rudy knows its whims, its moods. She opens the door, peers into its black depths, and spots something. The blue gas flame has gone out. How long has it been? This is the problem.
Simple enough. All she has to do is relight the pilot light. Even she knows that.
What? says Rudy, aghast. No, no, no.
But he is not there. He is taking a walk.
She strikes the match, pulls open the door again, and reaches in to touch the flame to the pilot line.
A flash, a boom so loud it is almost soundless.
Then she is huddled on the ground, on the other side of the room, her hand, her arm blistered, her shirt half-melted. Shaking so hard her teeth are chattering. The room around her is silent, a deep, thick silence. And everything in it has slowed down — when she raises her hand, it moves sluggishly, leaving trails in the air. This is not her hand, not anymore, it is someone else’s hand, suspended in the silence — the skin tight, shiny, red.
Gus is there now, saying something. Crouching next to her, his mouth, his lips are slowly moving.
Speak louder, she thinks. I can’t hear you.
His lips move some more.
Speak louder.
···
Sometimes people have to invent their own fates, she thinks, long, looping lines of events. The traditional Fates — the ancient women creating the stuff of destiny — must be growing tired, they are neglecting their work. Clotho, who spins the thread of life; Lachesis, who measures it; Atropos, who cuts it. Yes, they are the daughters of Themis, the goddess of divine law — they should know better for that reason alone. But they are too careless, too treacherous — only a fool would allow them to have their own way.