Irritated with herself and her thoughts, Carole Ann jumped up from the sofa and hurried down the hall, through the living room and out on to the balcony. She took deep breaths of the heavy, moist air. The time had "sprung forward" last Sunday, providing the extra hour of daylight, and the sun still was bright and sunset still was at least two hours away. She paced the length of the balcony, around the corner, to the bedroom and back, down the combined lengths of the living and dining room. Was she actually considering quitting? That was the feeling inside her, the one that had taken root and would not go away. She didn't want to be a lawyer any more. At least not the kind of lawyer she had become: the kind who placed winning above all else. Well, perhaps not all else, she wanted to believe. She had never compromised an ethic or a principle—unless almost costing an innocent man his freedom counted in that category. Which, of course, it did. She could not free herself of the guilt, the remorse, the pain, and the fear that welled up within her every time she envisioned Hazel Copeland's eyes calling her a traitor. Had it not been for Hazel, Tommy Griffin would be in jail now, and she would be guilty of the worst kind of client misrepresentation.
She thought of Patrick Delaney, who deserved to be in jail. The man was a thief. But she was a better lawyer than the U.S. Attorney. Or was she? Suppose Hazel had been on Delaney's jury? She was tying herself in knots until she unraveled the strings of her thoughts and returned to the salient point: She hadn't cared about Delaney or the U.S. Attorney. She'd cared about winning. And yes, had the prosecution been better or cared as much about winning, Pat Delaney perhaps would be wearing khaki and eating industrial-strength beef stew instead of delivering champagne lunch to her office. Who the hell did he think he was?! And again, she answered her own question: He was a man she'd convinced a jury not to send to jail and he was grateful and he wanted to display his gratitude. She directed her anger where it belonged: At herself, and let it dissipate.
Annoyed again with herself and her thoughts, Carole Ann turned her gaze to the Potomac shimmering in the near distance and tried to enjoy the scenery. She could not. But she could hear Al admonishing her against trying to enjoy a view, or anything else for that matter. He hated the word, try. He said it had no meaning. One either did or did not do a thing, based on one's level of desire. She either wanted to enjoy the view before her, or she didn't. She waited for herself to decide: She didn't. Enjoying a view didn't utilize nearly enough of her conscious mind. She needed something else. She turned, sliding the door half closed behind her, and headed back to the den. She'd finish watching "Shawshank Redemption." She absolutely loved Morgan Freeman, the only man, she'd told Al on more than one occasion, who could steal her attentions. But Al was safe, she'd assured him, since there was precious little likelihood of her ever meeting an Academy Award-winning actor. Then there was the White House dinner where they'd met Morgan Freeman.
She giggled to herself, remembering Al's almost-real alarm as she'd really almost swooned in the actor's presence: He was fine as wine and cool as a cucumber and she’d been mesmerized. She started the VCR. They'd watched about half the film before falling asleep on Sunday night. It was, after all, their third viewing. She'd watch the remainder and eat more popcorn and wait for Al...
"C.A.? You here?"
She jumped up and scurried down the hall. "What are you doing home so early?" She flung herself into his embrace, aware that he was juggling several bags that were emitting delicious odors. "What's in the bags?" she said into his mouth.
"What's more important: Kissing me, your beloved spouse, or what's in the bags?" And they laughed together, knowing what her response would be.
"There are levels of priority, my good man," she said, laughing and taking the bags from him. He followed her down the hall to the kitchen. "And Beirut is Level One." Beirut was a Lebanese restaurant, one of their favorites, and the source of the food in the bags. "Tell me you've got hummus, stuffed grape leaves, and marinated chicken and I'll be yours forever."
"I did and you are anyway. You're also in hiding from the press, I take it?"
"Is that why you're home so early?" She bristled and backed away from him. "And how dare you accuse me of hiding from those scummy assholes!"
"Hide may be a little strong; let's try avoid. And the way they're after you? Yeah, I can believe you're avoiding." He took off his jacket and tie and tossed them over the counter into the living room and on to the couch. "Hell, one of 'em even showed up at my office looking for you. That's how I knew something was up," he said, releasing the top three buttons of his shirt.
"At your office?!" Carole Ann exploded. "Who the hell came to your office?! What idiot would look for me at your office? Probably one of those blow-dried BarbieKens tv news seems to buy in bulk from the toy department at Target."
"That's too nasty even for you, C.A. Calm down and tell me what the hell is going on." He began unpacking the bags of food. "Of course I know you're not afraid of the press, but I also know you've got some good reason for coming home at this time of the day. And I figured if it was good enough for you, it was good enough for me."
"Besides which, you haven't had lunch."
"How did you know that?" He frowned at her and licked hummus from his fingers.
"Wasn't it dog-and-pony show day with the P-P guys?"
"I don't want to talk about that," he snapped.
It was Carole Ann's turn to frown and she looked at him so long and so hard that he relaxed his face into a grin.
"I'm concerned about you, OK?" He wrapped his arms around her.
"And I'm concerned about you, OK? So just give me a hint." She backed out of his embrace and held his gaze, noticing that his eyes were so squinted that the brows almost met in the middle of his forehead; that his shoulders were hunched almost to his ears; that his hands were fists stuffed into his pockets. That much tension compressed in her husband was so rare that she was much more than merely concerned.
"I'd like for Parish Petroleum to sink quickly and permanently to the bottom of the sea," he said seriously, "and I'd like never again to have to devise a legal means for oil and gas multinationals to break the law and live not only to tell it but to profit from it. Now. Why are you home?"
She felt momentarily too conflicted to respond. Her own turmoil combined with Al's to create a sensation of pure, dizzying confusion, so she busied herself transferring the food from the carry-out containers to serving bowls; and then, gathering knives, forks, and plates, she began setting the table. He watched her for a moment before pitching in to help. They were seated at the dining room table before she answered his question.
"Suppose we didn't do this any more."
"Didn't do what any more?"
"Practice law," she said.
"OK. I'm supposing. Now what?" He cocked his head to the side and looked at her in a way that, from the first time he'd done it, every time he did it, made her feel warm and safe inside.
"How does it feel?" she asked.
"Considerably much better doing it with you than doing it alone. But then that's true of practically everything," he said with an easy grin, and, just as easily, began serving their plates. Easily, matter-of-factly, naturally, simply. The way he did everything. And in that, she saw herself and how it happened that she could have become—did become—someone and something that she professed to dislike: She did nothing easily or naturally or simply. She did everything with an edge, an urgency, an intensity. Winning back some of what had been taken from her people became winning at any cost, and guilt and innocence became the same in that such concepts ceased to matter. Only winning mattered. Winning despite odds and obstacles. Winning in the courtroom and on the tennis court. Running four miles every day instead of three. Taking the Black Belt in two years of study instead of the usual three or four or five. And none of it easy or natural or simple. And yet he could—had and did—contemplate radically altering his life with the same grace and ease with which he applied shaving cream to his face or tied his tie.
&n
bsp; "How long has this been going on?" She crooned the question to the melody of the popular song, using the tactic to both calm her nerves and quell her irritation with him. For she was growing irritated that he'd apparently had the thought, before today, of quitting and had not shared it with her.
"Don't quit your day job," he said grinning and popping a stuffed grape leaf into his mouth. "Shirley Horn you ain't."
His good humor diffused her irritation and they ate in silence for a few moments, giving in fully to the pure enjoyment of the food. He got up, went to the kitchen and got them beers, kissed the top of her head on the way back, and returned to the table. He sat and studied her. She knew he was assessing her, taking her emotional pulse. He was good at gauging her, at understanding both the source and sense of her moods. She knew that he knew that if she thought seriously enough about something to articulate it, action was close at hand. She watched him watch her, giving him the time and space he needed to formulate his response; for, despite his natural ease, Al was not necessarily spontaneous. He merely had the ability to make everything look easy. He was deliberate and methodical. If either of them were ever to make a snap decision, she would be the culprit.
"Do you remember Tennessee?" he asked her, and then grinned sheepishly at the silliness of what he'd asked. He knew that neither of them ever could forget the harrowing weeks he'd spent in the remote, desolate Tennessee mountain town where every living thing was dead or dying from the poisonous filth spilled into the river from the ancient, ugly, inefficient smelting plant that was the largest employer in three counties. The company that owned the Tennessee plant and four others like it in the most rural corners of three Southern states was headquartered in Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington. When the Environmental Protection Agency began questioning the company about its compliance with federal toxic waste disposal regulations, the company had hired Al and his firm to formulate a response—in essence, to negotiate a way around full compliance with the federal regulations. What began as a routine filing of responses to the government turned quickly into a personal nightmare for Al.
He'd visited each of the plants—in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas—and had witnessed personally the ruin they'd caused over the years, both to the land and to the people. And he'd witnessed the people who lived with the destruction to themselves and their environment resigned to it. He'd told her he'd known that there were white people who were treated the way Blacks always had been treated, but he'd never before seen them. Their misery, he'd said, was palpable. Their acceptance total. Not only didn't they realize that their governments—county, state, and federal—should help them, they didn't expect or want the help. It had ceased to matter. The people still alive were waiting to die, just as they waited for the remaining fish, deer, rabbit, and vegetation to die.
Because it was the Tennessee plant that originally had sparked the EPA's attention, that is where Al had spent the majority of his time. Every family in the region had at least one member who worked at the plant; and most had several, their years of service spanning two generations. And every family had at least one member, usually a woman who'd watched first husband, then sons, then grandchildren wither, waste, and die, who believed that the plant was the cause of the sickness and death. Because these were mountain people, part of their natural existence was hunting and fishing. And because the natural existence of the deer and rabbit and quail and fish depended on the river and its tributaries, the inhabitants of the area—fish, fowl, and two-and four-legged mammal—not only breathed the noxious air emitted from the plant's smoke stacks, but ingested its poisons. Also because they were mountain people, they accepted what they understood they could not change. And they inherently distrusted any outsider's view of their condition, especially if that outsider happened to be a Colored man in a suit and tie and shiny shoes talking educated.
Before the EPA could jump in and impose the heavy fines the plant deserved, Al negotiated a plan that resulted in the gradual closing of the Tennessee plant, a lump-sum payment of fifteen hundred dollars to each person employed by the plant, a signed release of liability, and a promise—never kept—by the plant owners to clean up the river. That agreement also bought a five-year margin of time for the company to clean up its act in Kentucky and Arkansas. Before that time had elapsed, the company closed all its plants and moved its operation to Central America, leaving not only blighted, diseased land and people, but heavier poverty and deeper hopelessness. And the promise that more of the same would be visited upon some raw and unexposed place in the Central American interior. That had happened almost eight years ago. And Al was asking if she remembered.
"Since then. I've been thinking about quitting since then. I was never more ashamed of myself than when I negotiated that agreement. It made me a murderer."
"That's absurd!" She jumped to his defense, slamming her hand hard on the table.
"Really?" He cocked his head at her again. "Then why do you want to quit? Surely not because of the embezzlers and drug dealers and murderers you've returned to the streets?" His words were questioning. There was not the slightest hint of mockery in his tone. Yet she felt as if he'd hit her. Tears sprung from a deep well and filled her eyes.
"Because I almost let an innocent man go to jail. Because I do my job like the only thing that matters is the law and how the law defines guilt or innocence. Because I'd forgotten that there's such a thing as good an evil and those things have nothing to do with the law. Because Tommy Griffin is a good man and I didn't recognize him as that."
She stopped because the tears overflowed and spilled. Al stood quickly, knocking over his chair, and came to her, scooped her into his arms, and held her so tightly she had difficulty breathing. She willed the tears to stop and looked up at him. "Because I am a traitor if not a murderer, and perhaps I am that, too. If you are, then I must be. We do the same thing. Don't we?"
He tightened his grip on her. "Yes. We do. Only I don't call myself a criminal lawyer, so that makes you a hundred times more honest. And at least the courts call your clients criminals. Mine are called CEOs and COOs. Businessmen. Captains of industry." He dropped the oratory and released her and crossed over to the balcony doors and looked out, toward the river, as she'd done earlier.
The sun was setting and reflecting copper off the river. Early stars blinked in the darkening sky. The street lights glowed softly, not deterring a single rape, robbery, or drug deal. Just as softly, lights switched on in the spaces people called home, lights that would not prevent a burglary any more than their warm glow could spread love and warmth among those who shared the spaces. Oh! but how serene, how placid it looked. How far above it they'd thought themselves, safe in their penthouse, arrogant in their success.
"Parish Petroleum is worse," Al said so quietly that she wasn't certain she'd heard him; and after she convinced herself she'd heard the words, she fumbled for a moment to find their meaning. Parish Petroleum was worse than Tennessee? Could that really be true?
"How much worse?" she asked, afraid of the answer.
"Enough that I plan to quit tomorrow."
"Quit the case!" She struggled through her shock to understand what it would feel like to quit a case at mid-point. Long hours of emotional and intellectual investment bonded a lawyer to a case in such a way that severance often was debilitating to the lawyer, and certainly to the case. It would be extremely difficult for another attorney to pick it up at mid-point; and in criminal law, few judges would permit it anyway, especially in Federal court. What in the name of God could be so awful that Al would withdraw from a case risking reprimand from the bar?
He turned to face her. "Quit the firm."
She laughed and knew he knew better than to think she thought anything was funny. Laughter often was how she dealt with the unbelievable, the unacceptable. Laughter was her cover when words failed. And she had no words for him. She looked at him, standing silent and still, silhouetted against the now-full darkness, the world a dramatic backdro
p for his pronouncement. She stopped laughing when her words were ready.
"Well, if you've been thinking about this for eight years, I don't have to ask if you're sure."
"I'm sure, C.A. And I'm also angry and disgusted. This Parish Petroleum business stinks. And it's not just the Louisiana swamps I'm smelling. But my esteemed bosses, the senior partners, only smell the big bucks. Especially that damned Larry Devereaux. What a nasty bastard he is! I've been trying to warn him for months that something about this case stinks and stinks bad, and you know what he said to me? The little prick actually told me that my job was to solve problems, not create them. And all because nobody wants to risk cutting off the flow of dollars! Do you know I've already billed more than three hundred thousand?"
She tried to remember when he'd begun working on the Parish Petroleum case. They knew the general outlines of each other's cases, but not the particulars. She recalled that she'd accompanied him on his second trip to Louisiana just before Thanksgiving. And he'd been on the case perhaps a couple of months by then, so eight months? He'd billed more than three hundred thousand dollars in just eight months!
"What do you mean the case stinks, Al? What stinks?"
"That's why you're the best, C.A. You cut right through all the crap. Any other lawyer would be focused on the money."
"Remember the Philly bagman, Al? The bastard sidled into my office and whispered to me that his uncle told him a first class defense of what he was charged with would cost half a million dollars. Then he opened his bag and dumped half a million dollars on my desk. That money actually stank, Al. You remember I told you how it smelled?" She wrinkled her nose at the recollection.
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