by Kate Hilton
“Doris,” I say, in what I believe to be a calm and even tone, “I would never be involved in a conspiracy to undermine the rights of women. I can assure you of that personally. As to the particulars of the accusation, you’re going to have to enlighten me. I’m in the dark.”
“Are you aware that Jim Crawford has brought in MEL to back his cause?”
“I was under the impression that his cause was adequate soundproofing in the studios,” I say.
“Where have you been?” says Doris. “He wants to eliminate the playground for the women’s shelter and erect some ghastly excuse for public art. He wants to plant a community garden where the family picnic area is supposed to be. He wants to move the daycare to Building Five, which has no access to green space. He wants to use the budget for the learning commons for a green roof. He wants—”
“Obviously, I’ve missed some developments here,” I say. “This information is all extremely helpful.”
“We are voters, Avery,” says Doris. “You can’t just ignore the women of this city and hope they’ll go away. Women put Peter Haines in office and they can take him out.”
“Doris,” I say. “I’m sure there is a solution here that will satisfy everyone. Let’s all sit down and figure this out.”
“I want the mayor there,” says Doris. “I want him there in person. Does he even know what’s happening on his watch?”
“Of course he does,” I say. “This project is his top priority.”
“Then I’ll expect to be sitting across from him by tomorrow afternoon,” says Doris, “and not one minute later. This administration is asleep at the switch.”
One thing we are not is asleep. Sleep feels like the most precious and most inaccessible of prizes. I could solve every conflict on the waterfront project, I could get Peter re-elected, be named WAFADASS’s Woman of the Year, have my portrait commissioned and painted by members of ArtCo, have an essay published in the New York Times about how cities are transformed by visionary chiefs of staff. I could knit the threads of rent relationships back together. I could do all these things and still not know the peace of an untroubled sleep, which is why I find myself back in the kitchen for another cup of horrific coffee.
Bonnie appears in the doorway again. “For the love of God, Bonnie,” I say. “There’s a reason I don’t bring my phone in here.”
“The chief of staff doesn’t get breaks,” says Bonnie, in a rare demonstration of humour. Or possibly she is dead serious. “And might I suggest that you look at how often your assistant is taking them?”
“Thank you for the suggestion,” I say. “Anything else?”
“Someone named Marshall Westwood is on the line,” she says. “He says he’s from the Mother Earth League.”
I close my eyes. When I open them, I’m still in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee in my hand, and Bonnie looking at me with mild concern. “It was worth a try,” I say.
In my office, I sit and wait for the call to ring through. It is, as promised, Marshall Westwood, who claims to be the “international greenkeeper” for the Great Lakes region of the Mother Earth League. “I’ve been speaking to Jim Crawford, our local representative,” says Marshall, “and MEL is troubled by the dismissive treatment he has received so far from city officials.”
“I spoke to him twenty minutes ago and promised him a meeting with the mayor,” I say.
Marshall continues as if I haven’t spoken. “MEL feels that an international presence is required at this meeting, and so I will be in attendance. Could you please ensure that all the meeting notes are forwarded to me with forty-eight hours’ notice.”
“Well, Marshall,” I say, “since everyone involved seems to want to have the meeting tomorrow, and since I haven’t drafted up any meeting notes, I can say with complete assurance that I won’t be doing that. But you’re welcome to come to the meeting, and if you email me your contacts, I’ll make sure you’re in the loop.”
“I can see we have a lot of work to do,” says Marshall. He takes my email address and hangs up.
It’s time to talk to Peter. I head to Bonnie’s desk and fill her in. We find a conference room to book, and I give her all of the contact details of the various players. “I’m going to brief Peter now,” I say.
“Not a good time,” she says.
“I can stand outside the bathroom door, if need be,” I say. “But this is going to take a while and I need to go home for dinner if I want to have a home to go home to.”
I feel Bonnie rising from her desk behind me, but I’m already opening the door. Which proves to be a mistake, because what I see as I step inside is Melanie sliding off Peter’s lap, rebuttoning her shirt, and finger-combing her hair into a ponytail; and Peter pushing in closer to the desk as if there is something in his lap that he wants to hide.
I say, “Special project?”
But what I think is You fucking asshole. How could you?
And this, ultimately, is what makes me so blazingly angry. Not the knowledge that I’ve spent every day of the past three years putting my personal life in peril to be the unsung hero of this administration; not that I’ve selflessly accepted the slings and arrows of every bitter, crazy, disenfranchised taxpayer in order to deflect them from Peter; not that I’ve twinned my reputation to a man I think of as my mentor, my dear friend, and even my hero, only to find that he is capable of doing something as reckless and stupid as screwing an intern in the office; but that all of these appropriate, adult reactions are absent, swamped by the devastation of a rejected twelve-year-old in love for the first time.
I don’t look at him. I can’t.
But I can look at Melanie. And when I can speak, I say, “You’re fired. Get out of here and don’t come back.”
{CHAPTER 16}
July 2009
After law school, I went to work for Peter.
Matt tried to talk me out of it. “Peter’s a good lawyer, Avery,” he said. “It’s nothing against Peter. But you could get a wider range of experience at a large firm. You don’t know what kind of practice you’ll enjoy until you do it yourself. Being a lawyer isn’t like law school.”
“I’m betting on it,” I said. The novelty of law school had been thrilling in the beginning, but three years later my life seemed, yet again, to be in a state of suspended animation. I longed to graduate into active and independent personhood.
“But what if you don’t like being in a small firm?” said Matt.
“Matt,” I said, “I don’t have it in me to compete with a bunch of kids for daddy’s attention, trying to jump higher than everyone else for a chance at being hired back.”
“They’re, at most, five years younger than you are,” said Matt.
“Five big years,” I said. “I want to catch up. I did my research. Peter has a good reputation. His firm is growing. He trusts me. He’ll put me on the fast track to partnership.”
“You shouldn’t be thinking about partnership now,” said Matt. “Avery, a law career is a long haul. You need to find the work you enjoy. You’ll be exposed to only a few types of litigation at Peter’s shop. What if you decide you don’t like acting for individuals?”
“And decide that I’d rather be defending the rights of companies?” I said. “Matt, the only thing that got me through law school were the stories. I don’t give a shit about the law. I want to do something useful with my life. I want to engage with the world, with real people.”
“I respect that,” said Matt. “But understand that when you’re acting for real people, you aren’t usually seeing them at their best.”
“I know what it’s like not to be at your best,” I said. Helping people extract themselves from their own bad decisions seemed like something I might be qualified to do at this stage in my life.
Peter’s firm, Haines & Associates, was wildly busy and chronically understaffed. His detractors called it Peter’s “revolving door” problem. His friends said that exceptional courtroom lawyers, like Peter, didn’t always make
good managers, and that Peter was the victim of his own success. Peter wasn’t remotely interested in these assessments, either positive or negative. He prided himself on his independence.
His career was the stuff of legend, at least to young lawyers trapped in soulless towers. All of them wished they could be like him; all of them knew he was one of a kind. He had started at a large, prestigious firm, the best one, the one that every student applied to and secretly wanted an offer from more than anything in the world. And the firm had adored him, too; he’d been a “fit.” But he’d been restless, and confident, and he’d left after a few short years to start his own practice. Everyone had warned him against it, but his faith in himself had never wavered. He loved being on his feet in court, and hated being trapped behind a desk on a conference call or in a meeting room sixty floors above street level. He’d rented a funky loft space in an old Victorian warehouse and set to work. Before long, he’d taken over two entire floors of the building, and was turning away medal-winning applicants from the best law schools in the country. He told this story over and over again at the conferences and law school panels where he was invited to speak on career choice and diversity.
In truth, Peter was a talented lawyer, but his real gift was business development. He barely slept in the early years, out at industry events every night, in the office at six in morning, and in court at ten. He golfed and sat on boards, and the entire legal community waited breathlessly for the arrival of his annual holiday card, which was invariably hilarious and creative and just a step away from inappropriate. When he went to a funeral, he arrived after the church had filled with mourners, walked up the centre aisle, and sat at the front, whether or not he was a close friend. “Never sit at the back,” he told me. “If people don’t know you were there, there’s no point in going at all.”
He made me a partner in my third year of practice.
I had my own routine in those early years. Matt and I would rise early and have a coffee together. In the summer we’d often go for a run, and in the winter we’d huddle on the sofa and share the paper, easing into wakefulness. We’d drive downtown while the streets were quiet; Matt would drop me off and continue on to his office. I treasured those groggy, peaceful hours. Once the day started, we could never be sure that we’d find each other again, but we could begin together, and we did, as often as we possibly could.
I’d spend the first two hours of my day working on my own files. I had mostly matrimonial clients then. When he wasn’t planning his political future, Peter was building up a personal injury and class action practice, and I often pitched in, mostly by managing the young lawyers who were confused by his instructions and in over their heads. I specialized in “leavers,” those who had left their marriages. Most of my clients were men who thought it would make them more sympathetic if they had a female lawyer. They tended to be angry and defensive, but they weren’t criers like the personal injury clients. I didn’t feel responsible for them except in a purely professional sense. My job was to get them to the point where they understood that they would have to pay, because the leaver invariably does; the lucky ones only pay with money.
Once Peter arrived in the office, I’d lose control of my day, unless I had enough gravitational force of my own (a court appearance, a client meeting, an urgent deadline) to resist the pull of his orbit. There were people to be interviewed for positions that desperately needed to be filled. There were staff to manage and young lawyers to mentor, although I was barely a real lawyer myself. There were holiday card designs to approve and performance evaluations to give. There were accounts receivable to chase and clients to soothe, because Peter was smart and talented, but he didn’t always win, and he didn’t like cleaning up the mess afterwards.
Peter would start his day by wandering into my office. “I was at the art gallery opening last night,” he’d say, “and I saw Howard. His son is getting divorced and he needs to protect the family business. I told him you’d call him this morning.” Or “Sylvia Garner’s neighbour might be willing to start a class action on that airbag defect we were talking about last week. Let’s check it out.”
So I’d call Howard, or Sylvia. I’d open a file, staff it, and supervise it. I’d meet with the clients, assign research, review it, write correspondence, and generally move it along until it required Peter’s presence. And then he’d get on the phone with opposing counsel and work his magic. He settled a lot of cases, but only because everyone knew that he wasn’t afraid to take it all the way up. He loved going to court, and when he was prepared, there was no one better. I made sure he was prepared.
I’d eat takeaway at my desk every night. Stress kept me thin and alert. Late at night, I’d collapse into bed beside Matt, who usually arrived home around the same time I did. We’d huddle together like survivors of a shipwreck, trying only to stay afloat to see another sunrise. I was pushed to my limits in a way I had never been before, and although it wasn’t much of a life, I was electrified by the singularity of my focus. Peter had done for me what nothing and no one had ever done: he had made me useful.
At court one morning, I ran into my friend Olivia from law school. She was at the firm that Peter had left, and was considered a rising star there.
“Avery!” she said, dropping her litigation bag and giving me a hug. “I’m mortified. You emailed me about a coffee ages ago and I never got back to you.”
“I never followed up,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s been way too long,” she said. “I kept thinking I’d run into you.”
“They weren’t kidding about these first years of practice,” I said. “The last three years have been a complete blur.”
“I heard that you made partner,” she said. “I should have called. I was so happy for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But honestly, it isn’t that different from being an associate except that I do more housekeeping around the office.” Making partner had turned out to be a much bigger deal for other people than it had been for me. It had accorded me more respect among my cohort, but less affection. At cocktail parties now, I received more business cards and fewer confidences. It was isolating, and I was glad to be having a real conversation for once. “What about you?” I asked. “How are you liking life as a lawyer?”
“God, Avery,” she said. “I’m practically dead.”
“Sure,” I said. “As we all are. But also strangely alive, no?”
“Like vampires,” she said.
“Exactly like vampires,” I said. “I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun.”
“You were smart to go and work for Peter Haines,” she said. “I owe you an apology. I thought you were crazy at the time.”
“I know,” I said. “So did everyone. Don’t feel bad.”
“I’m looking over my shoulder all the time,” she said. “Watching the competition. Waiting to see if someone slips up. Hoping it won’t be me. It’s been one long episode of Survivor and it lasts until you make partner.”
“Being a partner has its own issues,” I said. “Trust me.”
“I was going to be a crusader for victims of sexual violence,” she said. “I was going to work at The Hague. Do you know what I’m arguing a motion about today? Condominium law.” She made a face. “I hate myself.”
“You aren’t trapped,” I said. “You can leave your firm.”
“Aaron and I bought a house,” Olivia said. “So I really can’t. I’ve put myself in golden handcuffs. This is who I am now.”
I knew about golden handcuffs. I rubbed the bare ring finger on my left hand. “You can change,” I told her, and I wasn’t thinking only of her job.
“Maybe in five years,” she said. “I’ve got to run. Let’s do coffee! Email me!”
I knew I wouldn’t email her, and it made me wistful. Aside from Matt, my social life consisted of Friday drinks with Tara and Jenny at the hotel bar near my office, but even that was fraught. Jenny and I had rekindled a friendship under Tara�
�s supervision when I’d moved back from New York, tacitly agreeing not to mention the Apartment Incident. But relations had cooled considerably when I’d joined Peter’s firm. At Friday drinks, also known as the Outrage of the Week Club, the losers would foot the bill for the winner, whoever told the most shocking tale of professional abuse or injustice. But my stories inevitably infuriated Jenny, who thought I’d made my own bed and that I should lie in it without complaint or free alcohol.
That evening, I slipped out of the office at twenty minutes past five to meet Tara and Jenny. I ran into Peter at the elevator.
“Drinks night?” he asked.
“I’ll be back afterwards if you need me,” I said.
“Avery, it’s Friday night. Your hours are through the roof. Take a night off. Go see your boyfriend.”
“Are you sure?” I said. “The Coulter file is a mess.”
“Then we’ll deal with it on Monday,” said Peter.
“We’ll deal with it tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll see you at ten thirty. You’re in court on Monday and you aren’t ready yet.”
“Ten thirty it is,” said Peter. “What would I do without you, Avery? Bringing you on board was the best decision I’ve ever made.”
My eyes welled up. I was so exhausted. “Thank you,” I said.
Peter smiled. “Oh, Avery,” he said. “Look at you.” He put a hand up to my cheek and brushed a tear away with his thumb. “I should tell you much more often how much I appreciate you. You keep this place going.”
Then his smile stretched into a wide grin and he went down on one knee, arms outstretched. “Did I ever tell you you’re my hero,” he sang, badly and loudly. “And I don’t remember the next line. And I could do something with an eagle. You are the wind beneath my wings.” He drew out the last line with some impressive vibrato. By this time a couple of lawyers and the receptionist had come out to the elevator bank and were standing in a semicircle around us. They burst into applause.
Peter stood up and dusted off his pants. “Thank you very much,” he said, Elvis-like. “But it is Avery who deserves our applause. To Avery!” Everyone turned to me and clapped politely, having no idea why they were doing so. Peter pressed the button for the elevator, and it arrived immediately. He shooed me inside. “Go have fun,” he said. “Tell the girls I said hello.”