Chambermaid

FUCK!

  Ring. Ring. Ring. It was my friend Rachel from law school. I hadn’t talked to her since the bar. I inexplicably took the call.

  “Hello?”

  “CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!” she screamed. For what? Being a sweating drunk?

  “Huh?”

  “Congratulations. You passed!”

  “What? What are you talking about, Rachel?”

  “Haven’t you checked the Web site?!”

  “Yes, but I can’t get on. Did you actually see my name somewhere?” She had, along with just about everyone else we knew at Columbia. There were two glaring omissions. Greg Jenkins and Samantha Watts from our first-year section weren’t on the list. It sucked for them.

  Matthew quickly found his and Heidi’s names on the California site. Relieved, the four of us opened a bottle of wine, popped in some Rolling Stones, and settled in for a long, hard search of every law clerk we knew. First on the list was Brian. Pass. We surmised that he and his mom were getting busy at that very moment. James confirmed that his coclerks passed before Kevin did the same for his. It was Matthew’s and my turn to find Evan. First department. No Evan Andrews. Not in the fourth, either. I wasn’t fond of the guy, but I’d never wish him failure of this magnitude. Not with the judge as his boss. I said a silent prayer that he’d mistakenly been placed under the second or third—where all the kids from upstate were. Not there, either.

  “Are you sure his last name is Andrews?”

  “Yes. I am positive.”

  “What about his first name? Maybe it’s, it’s Sarah? Or maybe his name is really Ginger Anderson?” Nope. His name was definitely Evan Andrews. And he’d failed. The first law clerk to the Honorable Helga Friedman to have failed the bar. Potentially the first Harvard Law grad to have failed. Maybe Professor Chemerinsky taught Coping with Bar Exam Failure at the famed Clerkship Institute?

  “Wow. She’s really going to kill him. I feel so bad for him. I don’t know what the poor kid is going to do. It’s going to be heinous.” I shook my head as “Gimme Shelter” played appropriately in the background. “Her husband’s about to croak. And now, Evan the clerk failed the bar.”

  The others, including Matthew, sat speechless. What could they say?

  There was nothing anyone could do to prevent what lay ahead.

  Evan hid behind normalcy. “Good morning, Sheila.” Smile. “How are you, Sheila?” Smile. “Good morning, Matthew.” Smile. “How are you, Matthew?” George Washington was woodchucking my brain. While I probably smelled like burnt bungus, Evan smelled worse—reeked of Watergate-style cover-up. Who was he kidding? Every clerk this side of Cambodia was going to know he failed by noon, that is if they didn’t know already.

  Kate paid me a visit. “Hey, Sheila, is everything OK with Evan? He seems, you know . . . different.”

  Was I in the right place? Evan was chatting everyone up. Kate lost the stutter. What would be next? Janet would compliment Roy? Roy would brush his teeth? Maybe it was opposite day. Maybe the judge would come in and actually reward all of us with candies and sweets for being such good law clerks. And she’d give Evan an extra special treat, knowing he was hurting from his fall. Only time would tell. After sneering at me on my way to my cubicle, Janet muttered something about the judge having a doctor’s appointment in New Jersey at 9 AM. She still made it to work by 9:30. I suspected it was that electric broom again.

  The witch was in the house, and there wasn’t a sack of treats in sight. Even worse, she didn’t walk through either the clerks’ cave or secretaries’ den to insult anyone. Instead, she went through her secret judge door and straight into the torture chamber. This didn’t bode well. Her morning insults, while unpleasant, signaled at least a mediocre mood. Silence could only mean one thing—a shit storm was on the horizon, one that would gain momentum after the clerk of the court sent out his annual pass/fail e-mail to every judge on the third circuit. Bringing dishonor to the Honorable Helga Friedman was a crime of epic proportions, and as I’d learned, Pennsylvania was trigger-happy when it came to the death penalty.

  From the corner of my left eye, I could see the judge sitting, seething at her desk. What was pissing her off this super fine morning? She picked up the phone. Per usual, it was on speaker. “Give me Dr. Fermez.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, Dr. Fernandez is in surgery.”

  “Do you even know who I am? Do you? I am a FEDERAL JUDGE!” A twenty-foot manhole and international media blitz hadn’t taught her. Like the police officer, the hospital administrator couldn’t have cared less if she was a federal judge. The fact was, a federal judge should have known that if a cardiac surgeon ditched surgery for a call—any call—even one from the president of the United States—he’d be wiped out by malpractice.

  “Ma’am. I’m sorry. I can’t get Dr. Fernandez. As I said, he’s in surgery. But what I can do is have him call you when he’s finished. In the meantime, is there anything I can help you with?”

  “Can you save my husband, you nurse or whatever you are? If you can’t even put the right person on the phone, I have a hard time believing you can do anything! Just tell the doctor that Judge called!” And with that, the judge slammed the phone down. Suddenly, my hangover didn’t seem so bad.

  “Sheera!” In addition to dreading whatever it was the judge had to say to me, I feared that I looked like a prune and smelled like a brewery. No matter to the judge. She barely looked at me at all, instead focusing on the red carpet.

  “I’ve, I’ve lost my bridge! My bridge!” What was she talking about. The Ben Franklin Bridge? Golden Gate? Which bridge had she lost? “Well, do something about it!! Find my bridge!!!” Bark bark bark. She motioned to the floor. I dropped to all fours in search of a suspension bridge underneath her desk, by her dead ficus plant, next to her stacks of briefs. Nope, no bridge there. “My bridge! My bridge! It’s missing!” She was up now and running in circles around her office. Even I, who had passed the bar, couldn’t begin to solve this puzzle.

  “Judge, what exactly am I looking for?”

  “My bridge. It holds my teeth together”—her eyes bulged and she started tapping her front teeth. “It just fell out. Just now.”

  I went from all fours to on the floor, my self-respect vaporized. It was one thing to be nearly thirty years old and banned from all talking, having toilet lunch be the high point of your day, and having a different name and ethnicity repeatedly thrust on you. But here I was on my hands and knees looking for my boss’s dentures. This was years of therapy.

  I found myself asking: “OK, Judge. Please describe your bridge.” I was out of body, floating above a violent red sea, with an even more violent lady running circles around a poor, pathetic law clerk desperately searching for a “small, metal thingy.”

  “Sheera. Shayla. I know it’s there somewhere. Find it! Find it!” I crawled east, west, north, south. Lewis and Clark weren’t this thorough. “It’s a small metal thingy, I said!”

  “Yes, Judge, I’m looking. I just don’t see it.”

  “You can’t do anything. Where’s what’s-his-name?” How was it possible that I felt inadequate because I couldn’t find the judge’s denture Band-Aid? I didn’t know the answer. I just knew that I felt like a total loser.

  “Roy?”

  “Yeah, whatever his name is. Tell him to come in here.” Thank God for Roy. I managed to get up and drag myself out of the torture chamber.

  Roy was sitting, staring at his blank computer screen. His back was perfectly straight. His mullet crisper than autumn in New England. He wasn’t doing one damn thing. Then again, I couldn’t find one small metal thingy. And who knew, maybe Roy would have better luck. After all, he’d been hunting people all weekend. Surely he could find a bridge.

  “Yes?” Roy asked utterly petrified. So was the air that his breath violated. I wondered if you’d die if Medieval Roy gave you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  “The judge wants you in there.” I pointed to her office. “She needs help finding her bridge.” A pause. A
s if he hadn’t heard the entire charade from the torture chamber. “It’s something small and metal and holds her dentures together.”

  Before he could respond, I dodged the malodorous bullet and returned to my cubicle. Type type type. The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “In all criminal prosecutions—”

  “Can’t you do anything, Roy?!”

  “The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and—”

  “Roy! Roy! Faster. Look faster.” How did the woman expect us to work when she screamed like that? The best I could do was stare at Camden. The mere sight of Roy on all fours enraged her more than Dr. Fernandez’s truancy.

  “AAAGGHHH!”

  Camden would have to wait. Matthew jumped up and hid behind our door to witness the action. I peered to my left. Large medieval man with tight khaki pants. Butt in the air. Visible tighty-whitey line due to crawling position. Judge. Big bun, standing behind him.

  “Roy! Roy! Roy!” Then she kicked the bottom of his cheap loafers. He moved an inch, nose to the floor. The moan was apparently caused when Roy bumped into a table, causing one of her deceased plants to fall over. Roy had watered that plant just hours earlier. I felt for Roy.

  Thank God for Bob. As it was, even Dr. Fernandez, the head of cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, was scared of the judge and returned her call the moment he finished a triple bypass. The judge forgot about the importance of her teeth, shooed Roy away, and answered her phone.

  “Yes?” she asked as if the doctor were bothering her. Dr. Fernandez was rightfully confused.

  “You called me, Judge. What can I do for you?”

  “So nice of you to make time for me. You know that I’m a rilly rilly busy person. I’m a federal judge.”

  “Listen, Judge Friedman, if there’s something I can help you with, please let me know. Otherwise, I’ll have to go as I’ve got a full list of patients today.”

  “Very well, Dr. Hermandez. When will Bob be ready to come home?”

  “It’s actually Fernandez, not Hermandez. And Judge, we’ve told you. He’s not at all in good shape. He’s very old and weak. I think it may be weeks, months maybe. I can’t tell you much more than that.” This was not the right answer.

  “Well a lot of good you people do. To call yourselves doctors! I have a Juris Doctor, and I could probably do a lot more than you!” She put her small head in her wrinkled hands. In spite of myself, I felt sickeningly sorry for her. Bob was all she had.

  From what I had heard, in addition to having been an accomplished archaeologist, he was an extraordinary person. When other judges asked about him, they seemed genuinely concerned. And judging from the one picture Friedman had of him in her office, he had honest eyes. Sometimes I’d inspect that picture after the judge went home, succumbing to my need to understand the insanity of the woman for whom I toiled. I kept thinking something in that picture would jump out at me, revealing a fellow sociopath, providing some sort of explanation for their marriage. But no, it never did. Seemed that he just loved her, which was crazy in and of itself. The paradigmatic nice guy in love with the toxic bitch. It was no wonder she didn’t want him to go away. He was the only person in the world who loved her. Hell, he was the only person in the world who liked her. And yet, instead of being by his side, she was at work yelling at anyone and everyone she could. Anger was the only thing she knew. It was comfortable, easy, natural even.

  “Janet. Janet. Shut my door. Shut it now!” The judge was on the brink of a breakdown and couldn’t handle her peons witnessing anything remotely emotional.

  Matthew came out from behind the door next to my cubicle. “Why doesn’t she just go to the hospital?” It was a very good question, but we both knew the answer.

  “Matthew, she can’t deal. It’s too painful for her. I feel bad for her. It just makes me so—”

  “Sad. It makes you sad,” Matthew interrupted. “Well, I personally don’t feel sad for someone who isn’t at the hospital with her dying husband.” He stormed off toward the bathroom.

  Matthew had recently admitted that he, too, engaged in intricate dialogues with himself in the bathroom. I’d started noticing that everyone around the chambers talked to themselves. The judge did it vocally, unabashedly. Roy whispered sweet anachronisms to himself. Janet was more of a walk-and-mutterer. Anytime she’d get up to do anything I’d hear soft slices of hate quickly escaping from her chapped frosted lips. At least Matthew and I had the good sense to take it to the toilet.

  No bridge. No self-esteem. No Matthew. What I did still have was a kicking headache, the sweats, blurry vision, and rapid heartbeat. I sat back down in my cell. Was it normal to feel like this after four beers and a glass of wine? Maybe I had diabetes? I did pee very often and my mom had once mentioned that that was a big sign. Panic. Sweat. Google: “diabetes.” Ugh! Frequent urination. Excessive thirst and hunger. Fatigue. Irritability. Blurry vision. I had it, I really had it. I was thirstier than a dehydrated camel, so hungry that I could eat an entire deep-fried cow with mashed potatoes on the side, so tired that I halfway envied Bob for being in a coma, and more irritable than a bloated bowel. And now I’d have to start giving myself insulin injections. Where was I going to do that? I couldn’t do everything in the bathroom—talk, eat, and insulin. I needed a second opinion. WebMD.com. But before I could click enter, an e-mail from Brian popped up.

  It was titled “Rock on!”

  “Rock on” without irony plus an exclamation mark was in the same heinous category as “all about,” and “you go, girl.” This might have been it for Brian. “Congratulations to you all on the bar.” Yeah, and a big congratulations to you for bedding your mom. “So, as everyone knows, Evan didn’t pass the bar. I think we really need to be there for him. I say we all meet for drinks at the Vegas after work today. See you all there ” Roughly half the state of Pennsylvania had been cc’ed.

  In all the hoopla surrounding dentures and diabetes, I’d totally forgotten about Evan. There were so many new knots in my stomach, I couldn’t decipher if any of them belonged to Evan anymore. Perhaps not. And, even if I did feel bad for him, I wasn’t about to join this cheer-up squad. I’d console Evan in my own way. No more sarcastic comments. No more eye rolls. At least not until the New Year. By then, I’d probably be in a diabetic coma anyway and the only eye rolling that’d be happening would be to the back of my head.

  “Um. Sheila. Can I talk to you for a minute?” Standing before my cubicle was Evan himself.

  “Um. Sure, Evan.” We were like two kids meeting on the jungle gym for the first time.

  “Mind if we go out there?” Evan nodded his head in the direction of the hallway. We proceeded past Matthew who looked up long enough to give Evan a compassionate smile.

  “Sheila. This is really awkward. Um. I know we’re not really friends. But I don’t have any friends here and I really need some help.” I summoned as much empathy as I could and nodded.

  “Sure, Evan. What do you need?” Pretending not to know he failed was the best I could do.

  “Well, I don’t know if you know this. But”—he took a deep breath—“I failed the bar.” Passable shock. Emphatic nod. “And the judge just buzzed me and said she needed to talk to me. I know this is what it’s about. I’m petrified.” His knees wobbled. Instinctively, I hugged him. He started sobbing.

  “Listen, Evan. It’s fine. First of all, you’ll take the bar again and you’ll pass. Don’t even sweat that. As for the judge, don’t cry in front of her. She’ll destroy you.” While not the most comforting advice, it certainly was the most sound.

  “EVVVVVAAAANNNN!”

  I took a deep breath, prompting Evan to do the same. Matthew stood to salute Evan as we Lamazed our way through the clerks’ cave.

  Then Evan disappeared into the abyss.

  Matthew and I accompanied Evan to the Las Vegas Lounge that evening. The afternoon hadn’t been a good one. The judge’s cas
tigation (“You’re an embarrassment to yourself, to this chamber, and to the judiciary itself”) seemed unnecessary, considering that Evan had punished and would continue to punish himself enough. His reaction—immersing himself in his pocket-size Constitution from cover to cover—was at once peculiar and respectable.

  We walked into the bar. There were dozens. No hundreds. Thousands maybe? More people were crammed into that smoky bar than bathed in the Ganges on a sweltering August afternoon. It seemed that every law clerk in America had shown up with the express intent of making Evan feeling like a colossal jackass. Was this really the profession that I had chosen? One in which schadenfreude was veiled as concern?

  “Evan, I’m so sorry!” “Evan. How are you?” “Evan, I can’t even imagine how you must feel.” I loved histrionics as much as the next drama queen, but everyone was treating Evan as though he had just been diagnosed with a fatal disease.

  Matthew pushed his way in front of Evan, shielding him from the misplaced condolences. I grabbed Evan’s arm and pulled him toward the bar. The last thing my body needed was a drink after the night before, but this clerkship could have made an alcoholic out of a teetotaling Mormon.

  “Hold on. Hold on. Where are you going?” Brian said. The proud party planner had emerged displaying what must have been a bar-passage gift from his mother—a sparkling BlackBerry cradled in a plastic holster, which was pinned to his braided belt.

  “We’re just getting a drink,” Evan responded. “We’ll be back in a second.”

  “Hey, we should get out of here,” Matthew suggested. “How about if the three of us go out solo?”

  Evan squinted, aware that something was wrong with the picture but unable to pinpoint the exact problem. “No, Brian went through all this trouble. I think we should stay.” Matthew shrugged his shoulders, got three beers, and for the second time that day, Evan disappeared into an abyss.

  “This is so incredibly hideous,” Matthew started, “I just can’t understand why—”

  “Well, well, well. Look who we have here.” Betsy tripped her way into us tipsily. “What could be next for you guys? First you work for the craziest person on the court. Next you’re on the losing side of a case. Now, one of your coclerks fails the bar exam. I mean, who fails the bar?”