Reef Dance

by John Decure

  Ten o’clock on a Friday night. I took the phone and exchanged a curt greeting with Gilbride. “This had better be an emergency,” I told him.

  Wonderful news, Gilbride said. He was at the Danforth place, and can you imagine! His clients had invited Sue Ellen and Ty Randall into their home for the first court-ordered visit with Nathan. The visit went well—very well. They talked, they laughed, they cried. It was a miracle of sorts, an understanding, a healing.

  “Let me speak to my client,” I said. I knew where this was headed. “Right now.”

  Why, that was the purpose of this call, Gilbride explained. The parties had agreed to the adoption after all, but Sue Ellen wanted to clear it with her attorney. He signed off with a counterfeit little editorial on the best interest of the child.

  Sue Ellen sounded like hell, all broken up and afraid, just like the day I’d first met her. Muttering something about not wanting to let everyone down, not wanting to let me down. Christ, as if what I thought of her should even figure in to her decision to relinquish her baby for all time. She was in no condition to make this kind of decision. I told her to stay put, got some highway directions from Gilbride, and hung up.

  “We still going to the contest tomorrow?” Britt asked.

  I assured him I’d be back in a few hours.

  Jackie sucked a final hit off a beer, his tanned triceps flexing under a black T-shirt as he tilted the bottle over his head. “Another client with a serious pet problem?” he said.

  “Don’t lecture me,” I said, rinsing my hands. “This was totally unexpected.”

  Jackie flicked his fingernails across the side of his empty bottle like a guitarist tuning up. “Then how’d they get your home number?”

  I couldn’t think. Sue Ellen had my office line only, as did the other attorneys. My home phone was perpetually unlisted. “I don’t know, Jack,” I said. “I’ll ask the asswipe when I see him.” I dried my hands and left the sink.

  The Danforth home looked something like a big, two-story country English through the night shadows and heavy foliage. I parked on the street and walked up a long driveway that curved left toward a three-car garage. A brick walkway sprinkled with tiny white petals led me past a flower garden and under a vine-laden archway to the front door.

  Corwin Danforth answered the doorbell. I followed him down a long entry hall toward the back of the house, where Gilbride and Mrs. Danforth were seated in a huge living room cluttered with unmatched furniture and fine objects in the classic British manner. Sue Ellen was at the far end of the room, standing near a grand piano as if it were a museum piece she was afraid to touch.

  I said a few very brief hellos to Gilbride and his clients. Mr. Danforth asked me if I wanted a drink. God, I was tempted to order a shit-face special like a double Dewars on the rocks just to see his mindblown expression, but I politely said no. Cigar? No thanks. These ones were Cuban. No thanks, I said again. Both of the Danforths looked terrific as usual, he in tassled Italian loafers, pleated gray slacks and a navy polo shirt buttoned to the top, she in a white cotton dress embroidered with creeping flowers. Gilbride could have come straight from court in his Brooks Brothers three-piece. The guy probably had no life. Then I remembered that I, too, was here in Pasadena, at 11 P.M. on a Friday night.

  Sue Ellen and I stood alone near the piano while she recounted her first visit with Nathan since she’d relinquished him at the hospital. The Danforths had phoned earlier in the day with a kind offer to let the first visit take place in their home as opposed to the Family and Children’s Services offices. Tonight was convenient. Sue Ellen was thrilled to get a visit so quickly—she thought the social worker told her early next week would be the soonest. Ty had made bail that morning. They could go together.

  I caught a flicker of movement outside, through the broad glass windows that faced onto the backyard porch. Ty Randall was out there in a dirty yellow windbreaker, alone with a fat cigar, puffing into the darkness with one hand in his jeans pocket.

  Over my left shoulder, Gilbride and the Danforths were staying put on a kidney-red leather sofa and matching chair, giving me enough space to confer with my client. “Don’t tell me,” I said quietly to Sue Ellen, “you and Ty are impressed by all this.”

  “How can’t we be?” she said, wide-eyed. She described the baby’s room in full detail—the musical mobiles floating like glittering clouds, the motorized fire engine, the gingerbread-man motif. An electric train layout full of switches, tunnels and bridges. Anna—Nathan’s nanny—baking cookies and folding colorful baby clothes. Nathan looking disoriented when Sue Ellen held him in her arms for the first time in four long months. Nathan crying first, then Sue Ellen.

  “So now you want to give him up again,” I said. “I suppose you feel inadequate as a mother.”

  Sue Ellen seemed surprised that I’d tapped her dilemma so quickly. “Well, yeah, kinda.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” I said. “The whole thing’s a setup.” I glanced over at Gilbride, who just happened to be watching me at the same instant, and he smiled ingratiatingly and waved. I didn’t bother to wave back.

  “I’m sorry to drag you out here,” she said. She looked like a teenager in her jeans and a sleeveless white blouse. “I figured you’d say that.”

  We both stared at her husband’s forlorn silhouette, the roughneck given an expensive cigar and sent packing when he tried to light it. I recognized then what was going on here. “That’s fine, but you promised you wouldn’t bullshit me, Sue Ellen,” I said. “If you do, I’m walking straight out of here and you can get yourself another lawyer.” She probably knew I was serious because she didn’t flinch. “Tell me the rest.”

  She started to protest but reconsidered. “Forty-five thousand, no questions asked.”

  “Oh, I see.” I sighed long and hard enough to let her know how happy I was to be her court-appointed lawyer at this particular moment. “How’d you settle on forty-five?”

  Sue Ellen peered over my shoulder to make sure the others were sufficiently out of earshot. “Gilbride came up with it. On account of my pain and suffering during the pregnancy. Five thousand a month all the way to term.”

  “I thought you said this wasn’t about the money.”

  “It wasn’t,” she said.

  “It is now. You want my advice—is that why you dragged me all the way out here on a Friday night?”

  Her eyes were filming over with tears. “Ty wants the money, Mr. Shepard, not me.”

  “Right, you’re just the one who feels she’s a bad mother,” I said.

  Her shoulders were beginning to shake. “You told me to stay with him, so I did. You think this is easy? And don’t forget, they put me through hell having that baby early.”

  She had a point. Gilbride knew a down-and-outer like Ty would bite at the prospect of quick cash even if Sue Ellen wouldn’t, but he had couched the payoff in human terms, making the buyoff sound like restitution. It was a damned brilliant idea, and suddenly I felt better about driving all the way over here to run interference.

  “Listen,” I said, “staying with Ty doesn’t mean letting him do the thinking for the both of you. Not to mention, this shit is totally illegal, don’t you know that?” I fished a fresh handkerchief out of my khakis and gave it to her.

  “He said there are ways to get around that.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please.”

  She wiped her nose. “Course I know. Guess I had to hear it from you, though. That’s why I had ’em call you.”

  “Good. You were smart.” I waited for her to pull herself together some more. “You’d better go talk to your husband,” I told her. “Set this straight.”

  She pursed her lips and gave me the nod. “I will.” She walked to the sliding glass door. “Mr. Shepard,” she whispered. The others were still a mere thirty feet away. “You think we can win this—I mean, in court?”

  It was the easiest question I’d been asked all week. This woman was weak and unpredictable at times, yet sh
e was a pillar of might compared to her husband. But I wasn’t inclined to give her the blue-sky routine. We were both stuck in this thing until its conclusion. “We’ve got a chance at trial,” I whispered back, “if we stick together.”

  Gilbride walked over to me as Sue Ellen met Ty on the patio. “Good of you to come on such short notice,” he said, taking a moment to whiff an unlit cigar.

  I glared right past his joviality. “How did you get my home phone number?”

  He patted his thick and forced another smile on me. “I asked around. Imagine my surprise when I found a file on you in my own office.”

  “I’m still trying to live that episode down,” I said.

  “They said you were good.”

  “I needed the money.”

  “You were good.” He paused to let me bask in his little compliment. “I was a fool to let you slip away,” he added as if he was swimming in regret.

  I stepped back a foot so I could eye him more fully, this grinning, beardless Santa who apparently never grew tired of working an angle. “Thanks for the kind words,” I said, “but you must be joking. You didn’t even know I was working for you back then.”

  He pointed his stogie into the air to let me know a big thought was coming. “No joke. Rest assured, you’ve got my undivided attention now, J.”

  Corwin and Kitty Danforth were standing now, watching Ty and Sue Ellen through the glass. Kitty caught her breath as if she’d seen an apparition, but it was merely the same old bitter disagreement being played out yet again. Relinquishing a child—what a flipping minefield. I wondered, for an instant, whether my mother had argued this way over leaving me. But then, my father had been dead for ten years by then. Suddenly, I regretted not having ordered that double Dewars.

  The room felt still as a museum as Corwin slid an arm around Kitty’s shoulder to steady her. I could see my reflection, the skeleton eyes ringed with black; beside mine, Gilbride’s gumdrop outline was full of twitching energy, the shining forehead and white hair. Outside, Sue Ellen was gesturing as if she was pleading now, Ty shaking his head to ward off her points, shifting from side to side.

  “I think it could be very good, you and me working together,” Gilbride said.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I answered, my eyes on the budding argument outside.

  He chuckled. “No, no, J. I mean work together every day, you and me. I want you to come back to my firm. I’ll pay you well, very well in fact. We can talk about salary as soon as—”

  “You’re serious,” I said. After everything I’d slung at him in court. And after I’d uncovered his phony D.A. connection—which he probably figured out by now, since I’d stopped asking him about it. I was baffled beyond words.

  His face was aglow. “I can think of a hundred good reasons for you to work with me.”

  More heat through the glass—a real standoff now. Gilbride shut up and turned his concentration to the back patio. Ty was calling his woman out, and I saw Sue Ellen’s lips spit out a defiant, last-stand “No!” Ty absorbed the shot wordlessly. He was shaken and seemed to shrink in stature, his whole body drooping. Then he threw down his cigar and stomped off into the dark.

  “I can think of about forty-five thousand reasons not to,” I told Gilbride.

  “That’s not . . . now J., really, I think your client might’ve misunderstood . . .” he muttered, but he was stuck without a ready explanation.

  It was time to bail. “No deal,” I said as I slid past him to go.

  “I know all about you, J.,” Gilbride said before I’d gotten across the Oriental throw rug I’d seen on Holly Dupree’s TV spot.

  I slowed up. Knew all about me, my ass. Nelson Gilbride seemed to have a real knack for pushing one too many buttons with me. “From what, that little file of yours?” I said over my shoulder. “Don’t make me laugh, Nelson.” I passed the Danforths on my way to the front door. Kitty was clinging to her husband for strength. Whatever bravado I’d just milked out of my exchange with Gilbride evaporated when I saw their despair. “I’m very sorry it didn’t work out,” I told them. “Good night.”

  “No parents—mother ran out on you at seventeen,” Gilbride spouted from across the room. “That’s right, I know all about—”

  My face felt hot. Suddenly I needed air. I blew through the front door and down the long driveway, not looking back until I was inside my car.

  Windows up, cold leather, black street, the engine still ticking under the hood. I tried to rub the sting out of my eyes, then clung to the steering wheel the way I’d seen Kitty Danforth grip her husband. Gilbride couldn’t know this was dogging me now, or was I that obvious? Christ, I hoped not. Marielena Shepard had gone her way and I’d grown up anyway, got educated, become a professional. So what if she’d run out—was that what the Santa man said? I knew it was. I tried to put the key in the ignition, but I couldn’t work my hand up to the keyhole. Gilbride’s parting words had spun my head like too much cheap wine.

  Cracking the window a few inches, I pushed my chin up and chugged the night air. The keys rattled onto the floor—fuck it, I thought. My face looked pale and drawn in the side-view mirror.

  I remembered the plush green carpet in Gilbride’s offices—the color of money, I used to think. A clipboard and a standard job application several pages long. A routine interview, Gilbride’s associate impressed with my scope of knowledge. The usual pack of lies I relied on to get myself hired. Nothing said about Marielena Shepard. Not a chance.

  A mother who ran out on me—he’d used those words. I wanted to drive, hit the speed lane, windows down, crank some rock ’n’ roll on the stereo until my ears bled. See if I could outrun the ugly little truth Nelson Gilbride had spoken. But his words had delivered me right back to that time and place yet again, and I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  November, 1979

  Senior year. Shakespeare, World History, Calculus. Each day passing slowly and uneventfully, without a word from Marielena Shepard.

  Cooking for one. Tending her roses. Lying to the neighbors, certain that sooner or later, some local busybody would call the authorities.

  Unplugging the Frigidaire and blowing out the pilot in the stove. Dragging a suitcase down the block to the home of Pam and Grog Baker, two of my father’s old friends who, by necessity, would now conveniently become blood relatives. A temporary stay, just until she came home.

  Finding the board my father called Honey Child one night in the garage. Begging Grog to take me out at Holys—absolutely not, too dangerous.

  Grog asking how he might score some county financial aid for putting me up. Accessing Bundle of Joy, a remarkable how-to manual I’d found behind the reference counter at the Christianitos Public Library, to answer Grog’s questions. Studying that book every day after school, until I’d mastered the legalities of my current situation. Empowered by knowledge.

  Accepting the reality that she wasn’t coming back. No longer feeling empowered about much of anything.

  There was a rap at my side window. I lifted my head and saw Sue Ellen Randall standing beside my car. I briefly considered opening the door, but my legs felt like they might fall off my body, so I reached over and rolled down the window.

  “Mr. Shepard, you all right?” She was huffing lightly and her dark hair looked wild and windblown. I could smell her breath on me: white wine from earlier this evening, bittersweet.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  She glanced behind the car, back toward the house. Nothing stirred. “I been standin’ right here a minute or two. Thought you were dead or something.”

  “Just resting. It’s been a long day.”

  “Your face looks wet,” she said.

  I pressed my palms over my eyes and wiped my cheeks. “What can I do for you?”

  Her eyes were full of concern, and I saw in them a softness that threatened to pull me into another place, somewhere warm and very private. Then I felt a pleasant but unwelcome twitch in my loins.

  “T
y’s still pretty upset, won’t shut up about it. He’s scary behind the wheel when he’s mad.” She flicked back her hair, showing me her long, white neck. “Guess I could use a ride home.” She rested her forearm across the door and waited for an answer.

  Oh, how easy it would have been, to click open that door and just free-fall with my feelings. And oh, how hard the landing.

  I reached down onto the floor mat and patted it until I found my keys. “Don’t run away,” I told her. “Take it from me, that approach doesn’t work. I want you to go back there and talk to him, and listen to him, too. Even if he’s a royal pain in the backside, just do it. If you’re going to get through this, you’ll have to be stronger.” She couldn’t hide her disappointment and didn’t try. “Do it for your little boy, Sue Ellen,” I said.

  The Pasadena Freeway snaked along like an abandoned Grand Prix racetrack toward downtown. I took it easy, floating through fields of floodlit yellow, my front tires chasing the curling white lines. My driver’s-side window was still lowered from my talk with Sue Ellen. But she was gone.

  I pulled the Jeep into the parking lot just south of the Oceanside pier an hour before Britt’s surf contest was to begin. A few other cars were parked nearby, but the rest of the lot was deserted. A pair of brown sparrows pecked at a discarded fast food wrapper and regarded our arrival with disinterested caution. Behind us the edge of town inched onto an unsteady dirt bluff overlooking the shore.

  Britt stirred from his sleep. A row of straight-edged swells was advancing from the south, inky and thin, each line chased by a muted band of whitewash. “Classic setup, J.,” he said. “I’m amped.”

  The day promised to be a long one. Britt was surfing in the amateur trials, competing in four-man heats where only the top two point-getters would advance. If he rode well enough to advance to the quarterfinals, which were scheduled for Sunday, he’d have to surf three times in a five-hour stretch.

  Jackie was stretched across the back seat snoozing happily, half-hidden beneath a blanket. Britt sat across from me up front, timing the set waves. The early sun was blunted by a thick marine layer, the sea reflecting a bland, gun-metal gray sky.