“Don’t act like you’ve got some entitlement to moral superiority. Don’t pretend that you don’t know what you are! You knew that all along. Helena understood that, too, and she was willing to take the benefits. So if this is about Helena—”
I’ve seen David and Max argue many times. Max lived on argument, and his contrariness was part of his management technique—he needed to be convinced. And so, although David occasionally lost his cool with Max, it always reminded me of a fight between siblings with Max playing the role of the older tormenting brother.
But with Max’s last comment I felt the rules of engagement change.
“Don’t you dare!” David shouts at him. “Don’t you dare tell me what Helena did or didn’t understand. You, of all people, you bastard. You led me by the nose all these years and I followed you like I was an imprinted duck. Helena was the only thing that kept my life from becoming four walls and a computer—and you’d be just as happy now that she’s gone to act as if that part of my life never existed.”
“I’ve no idea what—”
“Come on, Max, be a decent man for just once! Stand up for something besides profits per partner. There’s got to be more. You can be more.”
“You’re becoming a cliché, you know that?” Max says condescendingly. “You go to Paris, have an emotional epiphany, and now the world is all Lifetime Television and the WE channel. Your naïveté disappoints me, David. I thought I trained you better than that.”
“I’m not naïve. I’m just empty. Just like you. That was the gift of your training.”
Max yawns wide. “Save the passionate speech for the jury. I’m not interested. Is there anything more you want to tell me about this or can we get back to real work now?”
David’s eyes narrow to seething slits. “I’m going to the committee on this—with or without you.”
Max leans back in his chair, rubs the bridge of his nose a few times, and then exhales slowly. When he speaks again, his tone is considerably softer and—had it not been Max—I would say warm. “I know it’s been hard for you. I’m trying to help you here. Why don’t you just let this sit for a little while? Take a week and then see how you feel. Don’t jump into this. The repercussions for you here, frankly, may be profound and beyond even my abilities to alter.”
“I don’t have that kind of time. I might’ve waited too long already. I’ll need to pick a jury in a week.”
“Get an adjournment. No judge is going to deny that in a criminal case with the prospect of new counsel.”
“I can’t adjourn. I need some kind of order protecting Cindy pending the outcome of the trial. In less than two weeks, Cindy will be transferred and beyond reach. We need to go forward now.”
Max shrugs. “You’re making a mistake here, partner. Trust me on this. With or without me, the committee will never approve taking this on.”
“I’m not sure their approval matters to me anymore.”
Max looks at David as if these words previously have never been uttered in all of humanity. “You’re bluffing,” Max says finally.
David slowly shakes his head.
Max spins his chair around to an ornate wooden file cabinet. He opens the second file drawer and removes a single file folder. The folder contains a document about half an inch thick. Max pushes the document across the table to David. “I strongly suggest you read your partnership agreement before you decide to do something stupid. Empty or not, people have long memories.”
David lifts the partnership agreement and weighs it in the palm of his hand. Then he gives Max a tight smile. “A lot’s changed. It feels pretty light to me.” David drops the agreement on the table and heads toward the door.
With one hand on the door handle, David turns back toward Max and is about to speak, but Max cuts him off. “ ‘He stops at the door and turns to his former mentor—someone whom he had once respected—to say something that will be both cruel and cutting.’ Oh! The melodrama.”
David’s voice is barely above a whisper when he speaks next. “You’re so smart, Max. Always were. Always had all the answers. Played all the angles. So here’s a question for you. What do you think it’s going to feel like when you can no longer fool yourself into believing that all this is really enough? Maybe you’re not there yet. I think you are.”
“And I think you should watch your back,” Max answers weakly.
“It’s not my back I’m worried about. It’s what I see in front of me that gives me nightmares. You’re a sad, lonely, little man. And when those cigarettes finally kill you, the number of people who show up for your funeral will depend entirely on whether it rains that day.”
Max’s eyes glaze over for a moment, as if he’s been punched hard in the face. Then he sucks his lower lip and uselessly shuffles some papers on his desk, avoiding David’s stare.
When it becomes clear that Max isn’t going to respond, David leaves Max’s office and gently closes the door behind him.
Bless you, Max. Sometimes you never know how much something really means to you until you must defend it from someone’s attack.
Two long hours later, looking tired and deflated, Max returns to his office and finds a note written in David’s hand stuck on the end of his silver desk set.
Dear Max,
After careful consideration, I decided to handle this trial. I need to do this. I can’t give you all the precise reasons why I do—I just do. To me that is not an irrelevant statement. I will not embarrass you or the firm. Do what you need to do. I understand you need to live by different rules.
Sorry what I said about you, but you really do piss me off sometimes.
With affection,
David
Max crumbles the note into a ball and tosses it into the wastebasket.
Skippy’s cough pulled me away from Max and to Joshua’s exam room. When I heard that cough—a dry, non-productive rasp that comes from trying to clear an esophagus compressed by an enlarged heart—I understood that what had once been perhaps a matter of months has become a matter of weeks.
Prince, the gargantuan vet office cat, saunters into the exam room. Skippy was Prince’s one known nemesis. When Skippy would come to the office with me, as he did on most days, he would spend the first several hours chasing after Prince under legs (human and other), chairs, and desks until something or someone got knocked over and Joshua or I decided to intervene. Then Skippy and Prince would spend the next several hours glaring at each other from a human-imposed distance, with Skippy usually emitting a constant, low growl.
I often wondered how much of these antics were just for the benefit of those looking on or to give the two creatures something to do with their day. Perhaps Prince was the Questing Beast to Skippy’s Sir Pellinore—an unattainable grail-like quest the pursuit of which gave Skippy’s life greater meaning.
The clearest evidence to me of the advanced stage of Skippy’s illness is that he now makes no move toward Prince when the cat walks across his path at the animal hospital. Skippy doesn’t even growl at the cat. Prince waits for a few more moments, clearly confused by Skippy’s indifference, and then turns around and walks out of the room. I could swear that Prince’s head hangs just a little bit lower, his tail slightly less spirited, from the encounter.
“I thought maybe it was just a cold,” Sally tells Joshua.
“I wish it were. Did you tell David?”
Sally shakes her head. “He’s had so much going on… And I wanted you to see him first.”
“He’s still eating, right? He hasn’t lost any weight.”
“I hand-feed him. He likes his eggs scrambled with a little cheese.”
“I think it’s going to need to be soon, but…”
One great myth of veterinary practice is that the veterinarian somehow knows “the right time.” Part of that belief, I’m sure, is the client’s understandable urge to escape the responsibility for taking the life of a loved one. In all the euthanasias I’ve performed, no “owner” ever asked me whether
he or she could depress the plunger on the syringe that will kill the animal with whom they’ve shared their lives. Just once, I would’ve liked someone to move my hand off the syringe, say, “This is for me to do,” and relieve me of the weight of even one additional soul.
The irony is that most owners care enough to hand-feed their creatures at all hours of the night, clean them of their own urine and feces, and carry them when they cannot walk on their own, but these same people will not—or cannot—make the ultimate irrevocable decision for their companions.
The other reason owners abdicate the decision is the mistaken belief that “the right time” to summon death can be determined by a review of objective medical factors—some combination of white and red blood cells, the amount of protein in the urine, or the results of a liver enzyme test. In my own practice, I tried never to predicate the decision to end a life on the cold reality of a test result.
Instead, I would ask my long-ago learned quality-of-life questions: How is the dog acting? Is he eating and drinking? Does he go to the door to greet you when you come home? Does your cat still like catnip, chase shadows, use the litter pan? These queries are all designed to get the answer to one question—what does your companion animal want you to do? Is the continuation of life too painful? Is defecating and urinating on itself too embarrassing? Does it still like life enough to want to live?
You’ve lived with this animal for years. You’ve laughed and cried with it, talked to it, eaten with it, and, more likely than not, shared your bed with it. What makes you think I’m better equipped than you to judge when your companion wants to end its life? Show me someone who wants their vet to determine the right moment for death and I’ll show you a coward.
I’m glad to see that Sally is no coward. She bends down, holds Skippy’s face in her hands, and looks deep into his dark eyes. They continue to be clear and alert. “Don’t worry, Skip. We’ve still got a deal, right? No plastic crap.”
Although Joshua doesn’t understand Sally’s comment, he knows enough not to ask. “For now,” he says quietly, “we should increase his Lasix and digitalis again. That should keep his lungs clear and help with the cough, at least for a while.”
Sally wills herself to form a smile. “I’ll take what I can get.”
21
When I find David again later that day, dressed in a pair of old jeans, work boots, and a wool coat, he is carefully maneuvering Collette into her pen. He shakes a bucket of food, and the pig seems content to follow him.
Once Collette is settled, David scratches her rump—a sensation that she enjoys. She expresses her pleasure with a short grunt and by rolling on her back to expose her substantial belly. David seems happy to oblige, getting down on one knee to do it.
With Collette safely away, David strides up to the barn. As soon as he’s within those warm wooden walls, he takes a nearby empty box and begins packing away the most personal of my equestrian items. At this, Arthur lets out an angry snort.
David turns, and now horse and man face each other. “Still have a lot to say, don’t you?” David says, not unkindly. Arthur just stares at him, confused, I believe, by David’s tone.
“Look, I don’t know why it was her time to go. I can only tell you that it had absolutely nothing to do with you. You didn’t make it happen. That’s all the explanation I have. It’s got to be enough.” David takes a tentative step toward the horse. “I know, I know, practice what I preach. But at least I’m trying now.” David takes one more step. It is one too many. Arthur backs up and then bolts out into the paddock. David calls after him, “I think we should try couples therapy.”
On his way back to the house, David spends a few moments roughhousing with Bernie and Chip. It’s the first time in a long while that David has paid attention to them just as dogs instead of additional cares that must be given food, water, and a safe place to sleep. The dogs love the attention and show their appreciation by knocking David on his ass as he laughs.
I can’t remember when I’ve seen my husband more at ease in his own skin. He’s not between places or in resistance to where the day finds him. He’s made his decision—not only about Jaycee’s case, but I believe about me as well—and is no longer in real danger of sliding ever downward on the cold, slick surface of self-pity.
David returns to the kitchen out of breath from play, the two dogs right behind him. Sally and Skippy are waiting. When she sees him, Sally smiles and her eyes crinkle at the corners.
“What’re you so happy about?” David asks.
Sally pours David a mug of coffee. “I was just thinking about this case. I’m glad you’re doing it.”
“You’d be well served by a little more cynicism,” David says.
“No thank you. I’ve mastered that one already. All you get at the end of a cynical day are the bragging privileges that come with being right. I think I’d rather be happy for you at this point than right.”
“Okay, Miss Della Reese, just keep in mind that this is the hardest case I’ve ever had to bring in my entire career—which, by the way, is now probably over. I’ve no legal support for the argument I need to make. But let’s not stop there. I also have no associate help. I have no secretarial support. I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing and I have one week to do what my entire team and I usually struggle to do in a month.”
“Well, then, what do you have?”
“I have the facts. I think I do have a damn good set of facts.” David picks up my notebook from the table. “And I’ve got some ideas, if I can get someone to listen to them.”
Sally looks around at the dogs and several of the cats who have now joined them in the kitchen. “I wouldn’t say that’s all you’ve got.”
David follows Sally’s gaze. “If only they could tell me what to say.”
Since the die had already been cast with the article in the Chronicle, and the US Attorney’s Office wouldn’t budge on reinstating the deal, David and Jaycee decided to go all out in the local media. Jaycee was now telling her story to any reporter who would listen and, not surprisingly, there were many reporters who wanted to hear about the chimpanzee who could “speak” like a four-year-old and the scientist who was on trial for trying to save her. David hoped that the news stories could make Cindy politically radioactive and at least delay her transfer. Then, if the trial got national media coverage and if Jaycee won, Cindy would become an icon.
If.
David didn’t want to be in the office when the fallout from Jaycee’s first round of interviews hit the papers. So, by the start of the first full workday following his argument with Max, David converted the den into a makeshift office. His laptop computer, Cindy’s file, my notebook, and several books that I recognize from the living room bookshelves are open on the desk before him. These objects compete for desk space with mugs of coffee in various stages of age—none of them hot—an ashtray filled with broken and chewed toothpicks, and several pads of paper.
David, a toothpick in his mouth, types slowly on the computer while Skippy rests in his lap. The increase in Skippy’s meds has calmed his cough for the moment. The other dogs are sprawled asleep on the couch, and the cats sleep on books and papers strewn throughout the den. The animals now won’t leave David. Go figure.
Far from fresh at this point, David rubs his eyes and then searches with growing frustration for a particular document on the paper-strewn desk.
The doorbell rings. David and the dogs ignore it and the muffled conversation coming from the front of the house as he continues his search for the document. He finally finds it, grunts in satisfaction, and starts typing again.
Within moments, Sally appears in his doorway. She looks grim. “It’s for you,” she says.
David doesn’t even look up from his work. “Is it Jaycee?”
“No.”
“Can you deal with it, then?”
“David,” Sally says gently. “It’s Max.”
This instantly gets David’s full attention, and he heads for t
he front door.
Max’s tall, gray form literally darkens the hallway. I try to read his face—is it anger, disappointment, betrayal, jealousy? I get nothing off him.
“What’s up, Max?” David asks, trying to sound unconcerned, his arms folded across his chest.
“Oh, I think you know. Some documents I needed to give you. You knew this was coming,” Max says.
“You didn’t need to come all this way to give me my expulsion papers. You could’ve just faxed them.”
“Perhaps, but this is so much more fun. I get to see the look on your face, you arrogant little SOB,” Max says, his voice ice-cold. He takes out a sheath of papers from inside his coat pocket and hands them to David.
Although David has tried to talk a good game, I see his hurt and fear. He wasn’t really expecting this; it’s too soon. He thought he’d have the opportunity to explain himself to the executive committee and hoped, in light of his personal circumstances, that they’d show some compassion or understanding, maybe cut his compensation for a year or something, but not this. Didn’t they care about his years of service at all? The sacrifices he’d made? And if he was “out,” how could Max allow himself to be the vehicle for delivering the message? But David knew the answer to that last question—it was always about the money. Always.
David unfolds the papers and begins to read. His brow quickly furrows in confusion. “What’s this?” he asks, still reading.
Max can’t help himself and cracks a smile. “You’ve never seen a new business committee report before?”
“Of course, but what…” David skips to the last page. There it is: his name and, under the section for “description of new matter,” the phrase “pro bono criminal defense litigation of Jane Cassidy.” At the bottom of the page are the signatures of all six members of the new business committee, including the familiar signature of one Max Dryer. David finally looks up at Max. “But this is an approval.”
“Well, at least you can still read.”
Unsaid Page 22