Somewhere on a Plane
Buxton had a splitting headache. The pills he’d taken weren’t making a dent. Since Woody had dropped his bombshell, he’d done lunch with the founders of Emily’s List, glad-handed his way through a cocktail party, spoken at a labor union dinner and stopped at a second union event to give a post-dinner address and shake a million hands. Usually such a productive day left him pumped with adrenaline and eager to dissect the events with Frank and Woody and often with Maggie. Today he felt like doing none of that.
Surprisingly, neither Frank nor Maggie seemed eager to make him do it. They were huddled in a corner with their heads together. An increasingly common sight, and one that made him uneasy. He wasn’t keen on having Maggie take too big a role in the campaign. If he lost, it would be that much harder on her and consequently on him. Maggie had made it clear how important winning was, equally clear about the sacrifices she’d made for his career and what she was owed. Calm and relaxed, Maggie had excellent judgment. Excited, she lost it. And this campaign was getting her excited.
As the campaign heated up, he worried her ambition was making her too prominent. Sexist or no, the public didn’t like a candidate’s wife to be more than wifely. It was fine if she kissed babies and stood by his side. She could lunch with the ladies and open daycare centers and talk about the parental role and the working mother, so long as she espoused the party line and wore feminine suits. Much less fine if she began to express opinions of her own.
On the way to the airport, he and Woody and Ken had tried to get a handle on Frank’s level of involvement with Lila Friedman and Jennifer Cates. Frank’s “What’s the big deal?” had been dismissive. He’d raised his almost invisible eyebrows and tilted his head so he was looking down his nose at them. “Friedman’s still in a coma. Her troublesome brother had an accident, and so, alas, did the poor girl. So many potential problems solved so quickly. You should be pleased.”
He’d switched topics and then there had been the fuss of getting on the plane.
Now, despite his aching head, Buxton needed to finish the conversation. Frank didn’t know Jenny Cates was still alive. His callousness was chilling; his ignorance of the true state of things disturbing. Arrogance, carelessness, and indifference were not desirable qualities in a campaign manager. The campaign manager was supposed to have his fingers in all the pies, his eyes on all the players, and manage to keep all the important balls in the air. If this ball had dropped, and Frank didn’t even know it, what other important things had slipped through his grasp?
It’s a fact of political life that people one wouldn’t ordinarily want to be in the same room with are tolerated, even courted, because of their savvy. Frank was supposed to be the best. Was it just a facade? Buxton felt an unnerving stab of panic. They were in the lead but with nothing like a comfortable margin. This was no time for his campaign manager to stumble. He signaled Frank and Woody to join him, said in a low voice, “We never finished discussing Jennifer Cates. Have we been following the girl?”
Frank’s shrug was too casual. “Why would we? It was the mother who posed the threat.”
“I think you know why, Frank. You’re pretty observant. I’m just hoping that Maggie isn’t. In fact, I’d like it to be your job to ensure Maggie doesn’t think about the girl.”
Frank shrugged. “The girl was never important, and anyway, she’s dead. There’s no issue.”
Frank’s response roiled a stomach already made queasy by the headache, and by his rising fear that Frank, this sleaze bag his success depended on, had missed too many vital things lately. But he couldn’t deal with it when it felt like his brain was being pressed out his ears. “There’s an issue,” he said. “Woody will explain.”
Shrugging his shoulders wearily, he went in search of better remedies for his pounding head. There was a meeting with state party officials when he landed, and tomorrow he had a eighteen-hour day. The man hadn’t winced or flinched, but he was sure Frank had been involved in Jenny Cates’ accident. Involved, if not responsible. He hadn’t been watching faces thirty years and learned nothing. The tells could be small. Just a slight twitch near the mouth, a slight shifting of the eyes.
Ominously, that shifting had been toward Maggie, who, as much as he, had a stake in keeping the Lila Friedman business under wraps. More than once, Maggie’d sworn she’d kill him if anything embarrassing to her came out during the campaign. Beneath her polished surface and ready charm, his wife was a born hater. Her unyielding stances sometimes astonished him.
He hated to imagine his wife and campaign manager colluding behind his back, but few things surprised him anymore. They had to rein Frank in or go down in flames. A wily politician can weather a lot. People get paid off, with connections, proximity, jobs, contracts. Politicians cheat on their wives and are forgiven. It’s all part of the game. Murder, however, is not.
Linwood Bean leaned forward. “The girl’s very much alive, Frank.”
Frank cast a nervous glance at Maggie. “How the hell do you know?”
“I make it my business to know,” Bean said quietly. “You should, too. In particular, you should make it your business to see that nothing happens to the girl. The Senator has a particular attachment to her, if you get my drift. He is concerned for her safety.”
Frank pulled a rumpled handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his sweaty brow. “He’d do better to be concerned for his own safety. We’d all be a whole lot better off if that girl was history, Woody. Rumor is she’s carrying a steamy videotape of the Senator and her mother.”
Linwood Bean wondered about Frank’s sources, which seemed to be giving him different information, but he said, “So find the girl. Destroy the tape. Do not destroy the girl. And, Frank…” Frank’s head came up like a startled deer. “She’s just a kid. Her mother is attacked. Her uncle dies. She’s forced off the road, nearly dies, and then she’s so scared she runs from the hospital. Find her before Alfonso’s people do. They’ll make a circus out of this.”
“She survived the accident?” Frank said.
“Survived the accident. Then ran from the hospital. You’re supposed to know this stuff. Alfonso thinks we snatched her.”
Frank’s eyebrows rose. “Unless he’s got her and this is just disinformation.”
“Great word, Frank. Why don’t you get on to your spies, see what you can learn. And since you’re supposed to be so almighty on top of things and in the know,” he set two photographs down, “see if you can figure out why our candidate has a particular interest in the girl.”
It didn’t take him long. “Holy shit!” He picked them up cautiously and stuffed them in his briefcase. “I gotta go to the can.” As soon as the lavatory door shut behind him, he jerked out his phone and started dialing.
“But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
—Tennyson, “In Memoriam”
Safe in Pansy’s comfortable bed, Jenny opened the package from her mother. There were two diaries, so she opened the first and started reading.
New diary. New job. New life. I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a great, wide road, rising smoothly upward with nothing but endless possibilities. I don’t know why I feel so exuberant. I made a total ass of myself this morning. Maybe some people are just born clumsy? If so, then I’m one of them. First day in the Attorney General’s office. My dream job. All the new attorneys are introduced at staff meeting. I stand up when my name is called and spill half a cup of coffee down the front of my new skirt. Lila Friedman. Human klutz. I hope no one noticed. It was a sensible brown skirt. I know better than to wear clothes that show the dirt. But I survived. Got a couple good assignments, thank goodness. I know how to think and I know how to write. I was in the law library until nine p.m., when they threw me out.
Now I’m here at home, trying to figure out how, with exactly $123.47 between me and the poor house, I’ll make it through the next three weeks until my first paycheck. Luckily, my first month’s rent is paid.
The noontime sun pressed in through every window, as if trying to entice Jenny out of bed. It tried in vain. Propped against pillows in the big sleigh bed, she was oblivious to everything except the volume in her hands. Beside the bed was a blue and white jug filled with daffodils. There was a tentative knock on the door. Reluctantly, she raised her eyes and called, “Come in.”
A gray-haired woman with a soft, billowy body came in with a tray. “I brought you some soup,” she said, setting it next to the daffodils. “Beef barley. Homemade. I spoke with Rose a while ago. She says to tell you hello and to be sure you know Andy’s not mad about the car.” She hesitated. “They went to your friend’s house. Britt? Searched for you everywhere, even though the family said you weren’t there.”
Jenny looked up at the kindly face. It was clear Pansy hated being the bearer of bad news. Rose’s cousin had taken tender care of her and asked for nothing in return. All Jenny had done was sleep. “I love Rose,” she said, drawing a sweet smile from her hostess. “Did she have any news about my mother?”
Pansy shook her head. “Not exactly. She was very cautious, as you can imagine, since none of them have much information, and she didn’t want to discourage you. And then, you know Rose. She only likes good news. But she said that while on the surface things appear unchanged, the nurses are smiling more and talking to your mother more, as if they expect she’s listening.”
“What about my dad? How’s he doing?”
Pansy shook her head. “Not so good,” she said.
Jenny hugged the diary against her chest. “I wish I could be there.” The news made her anxious. Any improvement in her mother’s condition put her mother in greater danger. She assumed the doctors knew that and would keep things secret, but with someone like Feeney, who was barely human, they couldn’t count on discretion. And from her brief time there, Jenny knew the place was wide open. Anyone could walk in or out, especially if they wore something vaguely medical or slung a stethoscope around their neck.
Pansy—evidently her family went in for flower names, since there had also been a reference to a sister named Daisy—gestured toward the soup. “Better eat before it gets cold, dear. I left a robe and nightgown in the bathroom, in case you want a bath. There’s an elastic and a plastic bag to cover your cast.” She gestured toward a chair. “Or, if you feel like getting dressed, here are some of my old things. Pretty big on you, I’m afraid. I’m going run out to Walmart and pick you up some clothes.”
She pulled an index card from her pocket and waited, pencil poised. “If you could just give me your sizes?”
Jenny rattled off a list of sizes.
Pansy gave some unsettling instructions about escape and flight, if they became necessary—the kitchen door, the ell, the barn—and left.
After her rescue from the hospital, Jenny needed gentleness and peace. She needed sunshine through the windows. She also needed the underwear and socks Pansy was getting. Dr. Sampler’s pills and Pansy’s tender ministrations had begun to restore her. Now, all she wanted to do was read her mother’s diary.
Written when her mother wasn’t much old than Jenny was now, they were an intimate look into her mother’s past. From the first lines, Jenny’s reactions had had an unsettling duality. She’d felt like a voyeur, and she’d been mesmerized, caught up in the story and emotions as if her mother were a friend confiding in her.
As she sat up and rearranged the pillows so she could eat, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, startled by the stranger reflected. She hadn’t seen herself since the hospital mirror when she was at the dead end of exhaustion. The person in the mirror was her, yet it was not. She didn’t look restored. Her hair was a rat’s nest, her face still bruised and swollen, and with deep circles beneath her eyes, she looked old and haunted.
Though the last few days seemed like a dream, she didn’t have to pinch herself to know that this was real. Her pain was real, the leaden weariness, and the coil of fear that even in this bright bedroom wouldn’t let go. She grimaced at the mirror. Her face had a pinched quality, all eyes and aggressive dark brows and a small, stubborn chin that lifted defiantly as she watched. “To hell with all of ’em,” she said. “This time the good guys win.”
So far, the good guys had taken quite a beating. She didn’t know the rules of the game. Maybe they scored by catching her, she scored by not getting caught. Whatever the rules, it wasn’t fun.
She sighed and picked up the bowl. Holding it awkwardly with her left hand, which didn’t have much mobility due to the cast, she tasted some soup. Like a stone falling into a well, it went down, down, down, landing with a splash in the bottom of her stomach. The last meal she’d had was that pot pie. She gobbled the soup and looked at the tray, hoping for more. There was a tall glass of milk and a plate of cookies.
She grabbed the milk, the cookies followed, and seconds later, glass, plate and bowl were back on the tray, and Jenny was reading the diary again. She had already followed her mother through the acquisition of her first job. Those first nervous weeks, desperately poor, trying to stay afloat until her first paycheck. Now she was watching her mother learn to be a working woman in a man’s world. For Lila Friedman, it hadn’t been easy.
I don’t know whether to trust my instincts or not. My friend Cassie says I don’t know anything about men. Why should I? I’ve spent the last seven years with my nose buried in books. Cassie thinks I’m a riot. She says she’s never seen such a smart woman who is so dumb about men. Tonight, in the office, I was explaining some of the legal points I’ve been researching, things I’m excited about because I think I’ve found an argument which will give us a real edge in the case. Well, I got into my excited lecture mode, the one where I’m taken over by ideas, and when I looked up, Jim Buxton was sitting there with the oddest expression on his face. It was almost like he hadn’t been listening, only watching me talk for the fun of watching me. He has the most wonderful eyes and I couldn’t help it. I felt a blush that must have started at my toes. It didn’t help that I said the first thing that came into my head. “But you’re married.”
He grinned like a teenage boy caught peeking into the girl’s locker room. “That doesn’t mean I’m blind,” he said. “When you’re excited about something, like now, you almost glow.”
It was about the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me, so I said, “Oh, pooh, Jim, don’t be so silly. People don’t glow. Come on, we’ve got work to do.”
He laughed, picked up my outline, and we went back to work. I wondered if he was going to try anything, but he was a perfect gentleman, we got the memo written, and then, both exhausted, we called it a night. I don’t know about Jim, but I didn’t sleep a wink. I tossed and turned all night, alternating between wondering if I should quit my job before I got into serious trouble, and knowing I couldn’t quit when I had the most wonderful job in the world. Am I a traitor to the feminist cause if I think it’s unfair for him to make me feel this way? Do I concede too much power to a man if I admit he has the upper hand? Damn him! I just want to be the best lawyer I can and help people. Why does he have to make it so hard?
Jenny stared unseeing at the sunny window. She had trouble with this version of her mother. Lila Friedman had always been so definite and certain, at least the side she’d shown her daughter. Forceful. Deliberate. Sure of herself. The roles she had modeled for Jenny had been strong ones. Know what you want and devise strategies to get it. Know what is right and do what is right. Don’t take the easy way out, do the work necessary to do the job well. Remember your obligations to help those weaker or more needy than yourself. Rules Jenny had taken to heart. She’d always held herself to these standards.
Was the mother she knew really the same woman who had blushed from head to toe at a look? Could Lila Friedman ever have struck anyone as so insecure or uncertain a friend accused her of knowing nothing about men? Had the woman who’d coached her since birth to stand up for her rights actually considered quitting a job she loved because the boss had roving eyes? Wouldn’t Lila Friedman have rapped him sharply across the knuckles and ordered him to get a grip, act his age, and stop making her uncomfortable? Even though she knew how this story ended, Jenny was fascinated.
I never expected to have my personal morality tested this way. For the past week, Jim was away with his family on a Florida vacation. I didn’t expect to miss him. After all, I’ve always known his place was with them; always told myself this was just a professional relationship, a business acquaintance which has grown into a casual friendship. I told it to Cassie, when she stopped by and found me weeping into my wine, and she just laughed. ‘Oh, Lila,’ she said, ‘you’re such a hoot. Do you really not know you’re in love with the guy?’
I said ‘Of course I’m not in love with him. We just work together. He thinks I’m smart. He likes that. And we agree on a lot of things. That’s all. If I’m in love with anyone, it’s with Bud Cates.’”
“At that she laughed harder. “Lila, dahlin’, men and women can’t be just friends.” She said that I wasn’t in love with Bud, Bud was in love with me. “Stares after you like a love-sick dog,” is how she put it. That made me mad. Bud Cates is the nicest man I’ve ever known. We’re so comfortable together it’s like we’ve always known each other. I told her that. She said, “Sure, Lila. It would be like marrying your brother.” Then she left and I wasn’t sorry to see her go. The problem with Cassie is that she’s so darned sure of herself. She says things with such confidence I wonder if she’s right even when I don’t agree.
And I don’t agree. Maybe there aren’t any fireworks, but I love Bud Cates and know that I will marry him. I’m just not ready to settle down yet. I want to spend more time at my career first. And I don’t see why Jim Buxton and I can’t work closely together without anything physical happening. I don’t see why I can’t admire him for his politics, for his passion to help people, for his determination to preserve his integrity and not fall into a bunch of cheap compromises that won’t be good for Maine’s citizens in the long run. I don’t see why I can’t admire these things and share these passions without falling into bed with him.
Cassie’s know-it-all face appears before me. “Because passion leads to passion.” If she were here, I’d hit her. She’s wrong about me and the Attorney General.
So why do I miss him so much? Why did I not sleep well all week? Why did I jump every time the phone rang, hoping it was him? Why was I so hurt when he rushed past me in the hall today and didn’t even say hello? Why did I sit and stare at the same paragraph for an hour this afternoon, when one of the Deputies was waiting for a memo? I know I have to do a good job if I want to get interesting work. I know the few women in this office are held to a higher standard and if I let down, I let everyone down, not just myself. I let down Sarah and Judith and Sheilah and even that self-centered bitch Ellen. I don’t know why I worry about her. She’d stab us in the back and walk over our bodies if she thought it would help her get ahead. I always wonder about people like Ellen. Where they come from, what shaped them, where they get that incredibly self-centered drive. I’d want to be more like that if it weren’t for the awful selfishness. I’d like to be more certain, confident, driven. Ellen’s older, so maybe it comes with time. Live long enough and I, too, can be an Ellen. It’s a scary thought.
Then at five, when I was finally focused and getting work done, he comes in, sits in a chair across from me, and just stares. Just stares at me and sighs and leaves without a word. I could have killed him. Just when I’m getting my concentration back, he comes back, sits down, and says, “Lila, I think I’m falling in love with you.” He leaves and this time he doesn’t come back.
My heart is dancing, whirling, caught up in a wild dance. My hair flies out in the wind, the music grows louder, my feet are dancing on air. He has gone away with his family and he has come back to me! I don’t give a damn if it’s wrong. I am ecstatic. I go into the ladies room to splash cold water on my face and see myself in the mirror, flushed and radiant, and I am ashamed.
This cannot be, I remind myself. I must not encourage him. Jim Buxton is a political creature. He has a bright future which getting entangled with me could ruin. But isn’t that his problem? He’s the married one. I’m free and single and can do whatever I damn please. Why am I worried about my self-control? Why doesn’t he worry about his? I’m not the one who announced I’m in love. I don’t sit in his office and stare at him. I’m just a humble staff attorney, trying to write a memo. What am I supposed to do, quit? I love this job. I love this job. I love this job.
The last declaration of love for her job trailed off in a blur of smudged ink. A tear, Jenny thought. She wanted to reach back into the past, and comfort the confused young woman her mother had been. She wanted to grab Jim Buxton and shake him. Tell him to grow up, be more responsible and stop trifling with the affections of a young and vulnerable female employee. If only there were time travel. If she went back in time, she could protect her mother. And prevent herself.
She closed the book. Fascinated as she was, this was hard going. She needed a break. A bath and some rest. The hands holding the book were trembling and she felt suddenly overcome with weariness. Weariness and sadness for the vulnerabilities of that long ago girl who became her mother.
The sunlight was fading as she poked the two volumes under the mattress and got ready for her bath. She didn’t even have clean underwear. Just a hair brush and a toothbrush. She’d never thought of herself as a materialist but this sudden poverty hurt. All her clothes, many of them favorites, burned. All her books and notebooks and papers had gone up in flames with Dandy’s car. At least this was a better story than “the dog ate my homework.”
If she ever got back to school to tell it.
If anyone would believe her.
Footsteps on the stairs signaled Pansy’s return. The kind woman came up the stairs carrying several shopping bags. She set them down on the floor with a smile. “It almost feels like Christmas,” she said. “I had fun getting you new things. I hope you’ll like them.”
“I was about to take that bath,” Jenny said. “And thanks for the soup. It was delicious.”
“I’m making a pot roast for dinner,” Pansy said. She hesitated. “As I was coming back, I saw a police car slowing near the house. He went off again, so I expect it’s nothing. But if anyone shows up, don’t worry, dear. I’ll send them away.”
Jenny sorted through the bags, finding underwear, yoga pants, and a sweatshirt. She carried them to the bathroom, filled the tub with water, secured the plastic bag over her cast, and lowered herself slowly down into the stinging heat. Her body was a colorful collage of bruises, everything from deep, livid-purple stripes to patches of egg-yolk yellow and sickly green. She resembled one of her kindergarten finger paintings. She rested her left arm on the edge of the tub and submerged the rest, like a hippo in a river, occasionally coming up for air. Sooner or later, she was going to have to deal with her present. For now, she was visiting her mother in that famous long ago. Soon, as the tale skimmed along, they would do the dirty deed and she would be conceived. She wondered whether Senator Buxton knew he had another daughter. Maybe she’d call him up and ask.
“So it is more useful to watch a man in times
of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind
of man he is…”
—Lucretius, from The Way Things Are
The second time she almost fell asleep in the tub, Jenny decided to get out before she drowned. Leaving the soothing warmth and hauling herself to her feet would be unpleasant. The lure of the diaries finally got her out. Now that she’d started, she needed to go on.
Stories had always had the power to lure her into another world. This story had special power. Through it, she was connecting to her mother in a way she’d never been before. Given a chance to meet a younger, more vulnerable and open Lila Friedman. Her mother had meant her to know this, meant for them to have this connection, only in the event something happened to her.
Jenny understood. Everyone’s past is personal, and her mother had been a very private person. The evolving relationship Lila Friedman was describing, between herself and the Attorney General, and between herself and herself, was important enough to have written down and saved all these years, but too intimate to be shared. It was being shared now only because of the very real prospect her mother might die.
Her mother had wanted Jenny to have this story, to read it, to know it. Recognizing the danger it posed for her daughter, though, she’d dragged herself back from the cusp of death to give a warning. Propped against pillows, Jenny heard her mother’s voice. “Run, Jen, run. Burn diaries and run!” Even in her most extreme moments, her mother’s thoughts had been of her.
The idea of burning these diaries seemed like sacrilege, but her mother would never want to share them with the world. So Jenny would burn them as soon as she’d read them. It would hurt to let them go because of the connection with her mother. It would hurt far more to read them in a tabloid, hear them fall mockingly from the lips of politicians, see her mother dumped into company with Stormy Daniels or Monica Lewinsky. Her mother was no politician’s honey. As much as it was in Jenny’s power to prevent it, Lila Friedman wouldn’t be a pawn in someone’s vicious political game.
I didn’t sleep at all last night. After he left, I finished the memo—a frightfully bad job, I’m afraid—and went home. I thought I was hungry, but when I saw the meal I’d fixed, it looked so unappealing I put it away. I tried to watch TV, but there was nothing on. I thought maybe if I had a drink and a bath I might unwind. I’d been rushing around breathlessly for what seemed like hours and I was getting dizzy. I hate this! I hate it that my emotions can overrun me like this, that my mind can dash away, out of control. I believe in control. I believe in the rational mind. I believe in self-discipline. I believe that part of becoming a mature adult is learning to master feelings, learning to take the long view, to stop indulging in instant gratification. I did not work myself to exhaustion getting through college and law school to blow it all now because someone’s handsome blue eyes make me breathless. It must be time to look for another job.
And then I think, dammit, I don’t want another job. This is the best job in the world. I’m getting paid to wear a white hat. This is what I’ve always dreamed of. I can’t believe the power I have. I can’t believe they actually let me make decisions about important things, when I’m barely out of the cradle. It’s hard and demanding and every day there’s a new challenge, but the highs feel like lifting weights and drinking champagne. And I can get immersed it in. Spend as much of my time as I want, give it all my energy. Early mornings, late nights, weekends. They all belong to me and I can use them any way I want. It’s hard to imagine, even though sometimes I’m so afraid of making a mistake I can’t breathe, that life could get much better than this.
The DA in Bangor offered me a job. It would get me out of here, and I’ve always wanted to chase bad guys. Talk about white hats! But I’ve got opinions to write on the constitutionality of proposed legislation. I’ve got a case involving discrimination against native Americans by the ironworker’s union. I’ve got a bank that routinely fires women just when their pension rights are about to vest. I’ve got a lawyer who wants us to sign off on a piece of property, half of which has escheated to the state, for a token payment, while his client walks away with a couple hundred thou. It’s not just a cloud on the title, buddy, it’s a great big ugly stain! And contrary to popular opinion, we government lawyers are not all morons.
Jenny read on, envying her mother a life in which she could be so completely immersed. It wasn’t so different for her. She was very much her mother’s daughter in her ability to become completely engaged in what she was doing, and to delight in it. Many people Jenny knew never found delight in anything, were never able to let themselves go, to make their lives and their work become one. Drew had been jealous of it. Her ex-friend Betty had made fun of it. But deep down, even though it made her unlike other people, Jenny had reveled in it.
Now, sitting here reading about her mother doing the same thing, she felt a kinship, a sisterhood that made her want to reach back through the decades and whisper, “I know. I understand. Don’t let them drive you away from what you love.”
The Attorney General has been out of the office for the past two days, meeting with business people in Portland and Bangor. I saw a glimpse of him as he was heading for his car, but that’s all. When he’s gone, I can breathe, knowing I won’t meet him around the next corner, knowing he won’t come into my office and sit there and stare at me. Knowing he’s not going to say something that upsets my equilibrium. I have a very fragile rein on my emotions these days. It’s like having that funny, infuriating, emotional day before my period starts go on for days.
Last night I had dinner with Bud and I felt so deceptive. I’ve told him the truth as I know it, that there’s this attraction which distracts me but nothing is going on. I can’t stand it that he’s so nice to me. I can talk to him about absolutely anything and he listens so well. He’s like my brother and my best friend and my boyfriend all in one great package. How, with a guy like this, can I look at anyone else? A guy who loves his work, loves the kids he’s teaching, and loves me. I mean really loves me. Knows who I am and loves me warts and all. Because the heart isn’t rational. After dinner, we went back to his apartment and drank some wine and had some nice, cozy, roly-poly sex. He’s pleasing and fun and generous and unquestionably the best man I will ever meet. What the hell is wrong with me?
Jenny had to stop. She wanted to grab her mother and shake her. What the heck was wrong with her? Why wasn’t Bud Cates enough for her? Sure, she, Jenny, would never have existed, but her mother and father—that is, Lila and Bud—would be pursuing their happily ever after without thugs in suits. Without a bank of bleeping monitors and a staff of specially trained ICU nurses. She wondered why her parents had never had any more children. She hadn’t been that bad, had she?
This morning he brought me coffee. Just came waltzing into my office, carrying two cups and two doughnuts from the blind vendor in the basement. He set mine down on the desk, settled into my visitor’s chair, and stared at me again. No words beyond “good morning.” I didn’t have anything to say. I was hung-over from wine and my hair needed washing, which I couldn’t do very well at Bud’s because I need my special dryer and brush, and I was wearing one of Bud’s shirts with yesterday’s skirt, and also, as a joke, one of Bud’s ties. I’d stuffed my hair back in a ponytail and thought I looked like hell.
I pried the lid off my coffee, trying not to spill. Those eyes made me so nervous. All sexy bright blue and dancing. I picture them on a child. He’s got three daughters, I think, but I’ve never seen any of them. His family doesn’t seem to play much of a role in his life. They haven’t even moved up from Portland. Cassie says Augusta is too much of a backwater for his wife. He keeps an apartment in Augusta for when he works late. I wonder what it looks like. Probably tiny and messy and very masculine. It probably smells like stale scotch and feet.
“You look about twelve years old today. Same age as my oldest daughter,” he said.
“Well, I’m not twelve. I’m twenty-four and I’ve got work to do.” I didn’t mean to be snappish; only he makes me so nervous and I did have things to do.
“Have dinner with me tonight,” he said. “I want to ask your advice about something.”
Dinner was a bad idea. I waved my hand airily. “You can ask right now.” Spilled my coffee into my lap and down my leg. Hot, hot coffee. I yelped and grabbed my box of tissues out of the drawer. Next thing I know, he’s got a fistful of tissues and he has his hand up under my skirt, trying to keep the stuff from burning my legs, he says. Then, because I’m shaken and it hurts and my clothes are ruined, he tucks me into my coat and tells his trooper to drive me home. Ken Bass is not much older than I am but he’s got the rigid posture and inscrutable face that go with the job. So Ken Bass drives me home without a word, and I assume he knows what his boss is up to and strongly disapproves, but when we get to my house, he opens the door for me and insists I take his arm to go upstairs, and then he tells me to get out of my clothes right away and soak in a cold tub. While I’m struggling out of my clothes, he starts the bath and leaves some aspirin on the sink.
Nice guy, Kenny Bass. He waits so patiently while I get dressed again and then drives me back to the office. This time, he talks. He even tells me he didn’t talk before because he figured I was coping with the burn, and being drenched with coffee, and my embarrassment at having it happen in front of the Attorney General. It’s clear he’s a rock solid member of the Jim Buxton fan club. He speaks of the man in awed tones. I know how he feels. When I listen to the AG speak, I feel like I’m hearing something important. And he’s such a politician—the AG, not Kenny—he has this way of making everyone feel special. His secretary worships the ground he walks on. His deputies beam when he tells them they’ve done well. I wonder what he’s like when he’s mad.
Jenny closed her eyes, which were stinging from reading. Soon she had to plan. Even here, eventually someone would find her. These people had a knack for tracking her down. She’d finish reading them, burn the diaries, and plan.
He stayed away all day and let me work in peace. A good thing, too, because one of his deputies came rushing in almost as soon as I got back and needed some research right away. I spent the day in the law library, frantically researching and writing, hoping what I was turning out was coherent. It was almost seven before I was done. By then, I had such a blinding headache it hurt to move. I’d missed lunch and dinner, which didn’t help. My neck ached. My legs were tender from the burn. All I could think of was crawling into bed.
I managed the going home part, but ten minutes after I walked in, the doorbell rang. Jim Buxton was standing there with Chinese take-out. When I get a bad headache, I get all pale and puffy and look like something the cat dragged in and then the dog chewed on, but he took one look at me, and instead of running, he said, “Oh, you poor kid. I know you haven’t had anything to eat today, so Kenny and I thought we’d bring you some dinner.”
How did he know I hadn’t eaten?
He put the food on the table, ordered me to sit, went around behind me, and started massaging my neck and shoulders and the back of my head. I was not born yesterday and I know this is a seduction technique a lot of guys use, but he didn’t make any moves on me even though I might have let him. I was so confused! He massaged my neck, he brought me aspirin and a glass of water, he asked if there was anything else he could do, and then he left. Bringing me dinner. No strings attached.
Bastard! He has to know what he’s doing. And yet, sometimes I wonder. Am I conceding him too much power? What if he’s as confused as I am?
I ate dinner, crawled into bed, and slept right through my alarm in the morning. By the time I got up, I was so late I grabbed the first thing I came to in my closet, and it wasn’t until I got to the office I realized I was wearing a dress I’d deemed too short and tight for office wear, at least without a jacket. At lunch, I slunk out and bought a jacket and some dark stockings. This is stupid. Twenty years from now, I’ll read this and think I spent my whole time at work worrying about my clothes. I never think about clothes! They’re just something to cover my body. It’s that damned Jim Buxton again. He’s making me self-conscious.
Sure enough. I had a meeting with him and several people from the human rights commission, and he kept staring at the place where the buttons gape. I can’t help it. I’m built just like my mother. We’re little European peasant women. We look lovely as girls, all skinny arms and legs and big chests, and then the rest of our bodies expand to match our chests until we’re built like sturdy little fireplugs. If I have one wish, it will be that my daughter, should I ever have a daughter, not inherit this body. It’s nothing but trouble.
But her mother hadn’t filled out like a fireplug, though Jenny understood, from the little she’d known of her grandmother and her aunt, a pair of fireplugs, what her mother meant. In her mid-forties, Lila Friedman still had slender arms and legs and a big chest and masses of dark, curly hair. Too busy to eat, always running at high rpms, how could she ever gain weight? Jenny was carrying the body type into the next generation. She might have those damned Buxton eyes, but she had a Friedman body. Right now, the Friedman body was shivering.
She pulled up the blanket, found the painkillers and swallowed two. She picked up the diary again, sure she was about to get to the good part.
Today was another marathon day. I hadn’t even gotten my coat off when one of the other attorneys, Jeff Greenwald, rushed into my office, red-faced, and said, “Have you got any spare time?” I looked at the stack of stuff waiting for attention. “I don’t know, Jeff. Is it an emergency?”
He waved a paper at me. I snatched it out of his hand so I could read it. It was an order to produce records for discovery in a suit by the state employees union against the state and the board which had revised all the employee classifications. It was signed by the meanest superior court judge in the state. And the materials were to be produced by tomorrow morning. “It’s been sitting on Matt’s desk for a month,” he whined, “and he gives it to me this morning.”
I shrugged airily. Not my problem, but it looked like no big deal. “Get the Board’s staff to pull it out for you.”
“There is no board. It was dissolved about a year ago. So there’s no staff. The stuff is in a bunch of boxes in the state library basement, Lila. This is an emergency! No kidding.”
No kidding. Jeff and I spent the day in a dusty basement, going through boxes, the later afternoon and dinner hour reading the complaint and other papers and deciding what we had to actually produce, and half the night hunched over copy machines, making the necessary copies. No secretaries, they were strictly nine to five. No paralegals, the office didn’t have any. Just good old Lila and Jeff. By the time I got home, I was grimy from head to toe and bent over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. And this time, when I really needed it, no one brought me dinner. I was too tired to eat anyway. Just showered and fell into bed.
The next morning I discovered the milk was sour by pouring it over the last of the cereal, and arrived at the office starving, achy, and cross as a bear. As penance for snapping at my secretary, who commented that I looked tired, I wrote three letters, revised a memo and returned four phone calls before opening my bag of doughnuts. I was one bite into my first jelly doughnut—the first of three, the minimum number necessary to improve my disposition—when Jeff appeared again, snagged one of the doughnuts, and dropped himself disconsolately into my chair. He was clutching an ominous sheaf of papers and looked like he was on his way to be executed.
I moved the last doughnut out of his reach. “Now what?”
He shoved the papers across the desktop. “Interrogatories,” he said. “Matt just found them this morning.”
I thumbed through the papers. “These are due today.”
He shrugged wearily. “I know.”
“So go ask for an extension.”
He stared at me with spaniel eyes. “Been there. Done that. Denied. Judge Watson all but nailed my balls to the bench as a warning to other dilettantes.”
I refrained from commenting on his balls. One thing I’ve learned in my limited time at the bar. Male lawyers talk and think about balls almost as much as major league players. “Two days ago I was naively thinking public practice was fun.”
“Oh, it is, Lila. It is. But the level of competence varies. When you’re playing with the big guys, it feels like heaven. When you’re cleaning up after morons, it’s more like hell. You’ll get used to it.” We spent the day driving all over the state, driving and calling and sending state troopers out with stacks of papers. The clerk’s office closed at four. At three fifty-nine, we staggered through the door with our answers.
At four-ten we walked into the nearest bar, found ourselves a dark, quiet corner, and ordered drinks. When my bourbon came, I glared at Jeff over the rim and said, “I’ve helped pull your ass out of the fire twice in two days, so you owe me, right?”
He nodded.
“Good. I’m going to drink until I fall over, and you’re going to drive me home.”
“Deal,” he agreed. We clinked glasses.
I’m not a big drinker but the bar was dark and restful and I was tired and thirsty. We ordered burgers and fries. Nice, thick greasy cheeseburgers with lettuce, tomato and onion and buns so thick I could barely get my hands around them. I was two bourbons in, my nose starting to get numb, when Jeff suddenly checked his watch and jumped up. “Sorry, Lila,” he said. “I’m supposed to pick up my daughter ten minutes ago.” He dumped money on the table and rushed out.
“Hey!” I called after his disappearing back that he was my ride, but he was out of earshot. I was in no shape to drive and finding a taxi in this town was as likely as finding a New York-style deli. I walked, slowly, carefully, only tripping once or twice, to the phone and called Bud. No answer. It was his softball night. Playing the state police. I’d been a pinch-hitter on the office team when they played the state police. A mean bunch. I should have been there to cheer him on.
Decision time. It was four miles to my apartment and half a mile to my car and my office. I could sleep in the office, drive home in the first blush of dawn, change, and come back. It sure beat getting arrested for OUI. The office frowns on that. I paid the check and went into the ladies room. My eyes and nose were rabbity pink, my eyelids were at half-mast and I looked even more drunk than I felt. I slapped some powder on my nose, which only made it look fuzzy as well as pink, stuffed myself into my jacket, picked up my briefcase, and left. I would have done fine if there hadn’t been steps. I was on the third step when my heel caught in a hole and I started to pitch forward. The only thing that saved me from going ass over teakettle was that someone coming up the steps caught me. Jim Buxton.
Here we go, Jenny thought. Now he’ll drive her home and take advantage of her. She forced herself to read slowly, though she wanted to skim through the pages until she got them into bed. She was being ridiculous. This wasn’t a novel. This was a true story. Her mother’s story. Her story. At some point in this, she was going to be conceived.