by John Warley
“Make yourself at home, Chris,” I say as I walk between them. He grins and rises to shake my hand, his grip welding my fingers together.
“Mom says to tell you she’s running late and to give her an extra half hour.”
“Hey, Dad,” Steven says. “What’s the scoop with Allie and the St. Simeon? Chris says she can’t go.”
I clear my throat. “Well, you know how conservative the rules are. We were turned down for an exemption, but that isn’t necessarily the last word.”
“Oh,” says Steven. “Is there like an appeal or something?”
“Not exactly. I’m not sure yet what can be done. I’m going to see Margarite Huger about it next week.”
“She’s cool,” acknowledges Steven. “Think she can help?”
“She’s chairman of the Board,” injects Chris.
“Chairwoman of the Board,” corrects Allie.
“Whatever,” says Chris. “I guess it would be too obvious if my mom pushed it, huh Mr. Carter?”
“I’m afraid so, Chris.” We are all four seated now. No one seems in a hurry to leave. “Technically, your mother probably ought to disqualify herself. She’s done us a favor by hanging in there. She could get some flack for it.”
“Boy, it’s lucky for them Mom’s gone,” says Steven with a droll lifting of his eyebrows. “Can you imagine her reaction? She’d have put the heads of those Board people on spikes in the front yard.”
“Yes,” I acknowledge, recalling Elizabeth’s temper on those rare occasions when something personal, close to the core, was at stake, “but getting yourself augured into the ceiling isn’t always the solution.”
“Then what is the solution?” Steven asks. His question is benign, without reproach, but I feel their stares and I am less comfortable than when I sat down. They are watching me in this instant as children younger than they are, through eyes that still sanction the Rambo solutions to adult dilemmas. Elizabeth’s approach—spike their heads as a warning to others—has great appeal. When both sides to a confrontation take that approach, the result is called war. Compromise, negotiation, mediation; all these pusillanimous practices on which I have built my reputation carry a certain stigma of indecisiveness, the shades-of-gray shadowing that the Rambos of the world disdain. They will, I remind myself, mature into my point of view as college and early work experiences anneal them against the glamour of warfare, of take-no-prisoners mentality. Yes, I think as I return their collective stare, feeling better, I am a man of the world, mature and seasoned and possessed of the even judgment demanded by modern existence. The bull in the china shop is an entertaining image until the day you own the shop. Soon enough these three, each in his own way now questioning my resolve in the face of the St. Simeon’s recalcitrant directors, will own the shop.
The kids scatter and Mother again assures me of her enthusiasm for spending a quiet evening amidst the rooms and relics of her former residence, the treasured architectural remains of her happier period.
Adelle is lovely this evening, her hair piled on top of her head and pinned for a more sophisticated look. We attend a rather dispirited performance of King Lear at the Dock Street Theater, followed by dinner at Pretlow’s, a seafood restaurant near the market.
Halfway through the meal Adelle is radiant. She has on a pale cashmere sweater, high at the neck, which lends bulk to her breasts. One fleeting thought of cleavage and I feel the stirring of desire. The “s” matter will be an issue before dessert is over and I am not about to suggest another hotel.
“That was delicious,” she says, dabbing her mouth daintily with her napkin, having left just enough cheesecake on her plate. My pecan pie is gone and I am ready for, to be blunt, her. She seems of like disposition.
“Is our evening over or would you like to come back to the house?” she asks pointedly.
“I’d invite you to mine but my mother’s staying overnight.”
She smiles seductively. “Somehow I think your mother would be in the way this evening.”
Frankly, it’s been awhile and being a man with normal hormonal callings I am quite excited by this prospect, so much so that I must perform a dexterous shielding with my napkin as I rise, least an anticipatory tumescence embarrass me. I feel like a matador with something to hide from the bull.
“You’re not getting nervous again, are you?” she asks. “Are you thinking about a hotel?”
“Don’t be silly,” I say, thinking about a hotel. I tell myself to relax. In the car I kiss her, a kiss that turns passionate as soon as I can put the other arm around her and pull her to me. In no time we are twisting and turning ourselves in mating manipulations that will hurt someone if we aren’t careful.
“Let’s go,” she says in a breathy voice, disengaging.
Her house is dark with only her car parked in front. We mount the front steps and step inside, shedding our coats.
“I’ll fix us a nightcap,” she says, heading off toward the kitchen. “Why don’t you put something on the stereo.”
Adelle’s den is at the rear of the house. The clock on the wall says it’s just after eleven and a large, leather couch looks inviting. Were we married, I’m sure we would dispense with this step and proceed directly to bed. But though we have made love a few times, neither of us seems to have attained the requisite degree of informality required to eliminate this rite. Proceeding from the front door directly to the bedroom is somehow too mechanical, too foregone, too married. I kindle the wood set in the fireplace just as Adelle returns with brandy. In addition to fixing drinks, she has used the time away to fix herself and her makeup is fresh and her hair is down.
“How cozy,” she says, an unmistakable gleam visible as she approaches the couch. I have selected an Eric Clapton album for its rhythms suitable to more than dance. She slumps against me and we take a few moments to peer at the fire before turning to each other.
Adelle is a wonderful kisser, with lips soft and supple and expressive. We are soon locked in an extended kiss. As our breathing becomes heavier, she takes my hand from her shoulder and slides it to her chest. Soon I am cupping the downy cashmere over her breast as she purrs beneath me. Her hand falls to my lap and she gropes. An audible moan escapes from me in a reedy, high-pitched plea. I am thinking that this is quite a sufficient salute to foreplay when she says, “Help me out of this sweater.” I grasp the bottom edge, pull the sweater over her head, and toss it to the floor. She unsnaps her bra, drops it over the edge of the couch, and pulls me to her. “Suck me,” she orders, and I am hungrily obliging her right nipple when the front door opens.
“Mom!” yells Chris.
“Shit!” cries Adelle over the music. “My sweater!” I reach for it but she does also and she is trying to put it on even as I hand it to her.
“In here, dear,” she yells in a voice of comically forced casualness. “In the den.” Her sweater is on and she pats her hair in place as we assume our best pose; two asexual adults discussing the Clinton administration’s Middle East policy over brandy.
Adelle’s couch is set off to the right as you enter the room. It more or less faces the door and divides the den. Beyond the couch are some bookcases on either side of an upright piano. As Chris and Allie walk in, hand in hand, I remember the bra.
“How was the movie?” I ask cheerfully.
“Boring,” Allie says. “How was the play?”
“Boring, but dinner was good,” I say, glancing at Adelle as if to draw her into my assessment but covertly studying the lines around her eyes to glean her awareness of the rogue bra. Her gaze is riveted on the kids, I assume in prayerful anticipation that they will sit down in front of us rather than stroll behind the couch.
“Sit down,” she says forcefully. “The movie must have had at least some redeeming scene.”
“Not really,” says Allie, seating herself in a side chair between us and the fire. “The obligatory sex stuff, but it was pretty crass. The guy is choking her while they get it on.”
“Th
at’s not the way they did it in Casablanca,” I agree. Should I risk standing? I could walk around and kick it under something.
Adelle asks, rising, “Can I fix you kids something to eat?”
“We ate burgers,” says Chris.
“Oh, you’re always hungry,” says Adelle. “I’ll just fix us a snack.” Moments later she returns with chips and dip, which she places on the coffee table. After setting them down, she casually circles the couch to a position behind me, then puts her hands on my shoulders as though we are sitting for some formal portrait. I can feel her leg against the back of the couch, her foot fishing for the bra in a circling motion.
Chris reaches for the TV remote. “Will this bother you guys?”
Allie looks at him reproachfully. “Chris, they probably want to be alone.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says, standing. “Okay, well, I’m going to run Allie home. I’ve got a doubles match at eight in the morning. See you in a few.”
Allie looks at me on her way out the door. “Now, don’t be too late.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m right behind you.”
Allie is in the kitchen when I arrive home minutes after she does. Adelle and I have said the briefest, blushing good-byes with vows to try again. As I take a carton of milk from the fridge, Allie looks at me sympathetically.
“Dad, I’m so sorry we busted in on you two like that. I told Chris we shouldn’t go in but he seemed to think you would be sitting around playing cards or something. I can’t believe how naive he can be.”
“Well, maybe we were playing cards.”
“Right. We busted in at a terrible time; a few minutes more and it would have been really embarrassing.”
“What are you talking about?” I demand.
“Dad, get real. Does Adelle always wear her sweater with the label on the outside? Don’t worry, Chris didn’t notice.”
I am certain that my blush would have put a pomegranate seed to shame. I am still blushing the next morning at St. Philip’s and into the afternoon, when I carry Sarah back to Sullivan’s. As I tote her bag to the house, yelping sounds come from the direction of the garbage bins. I drop the bag and walk over, Sarah slightly ahead.
“It’s Ralph,” Sarah says, stooping. Ralph is the Irish Setter from down the block. He is sitting on his haunches inside Steven’s trap, looking forlorn and whimpering. The top to the can is off and some garbage litters the concrete.
“Well,” says Sarah brightly as she opens the latch, “at least we proved it works.” She has a way of putting the best possible face on calamity.
23
On Monday morning, while dressing, I fixate on a one-item agenda: verbal dissection of Natalie Berman. Her covert solicitation of Allie, her effrontery in the school parking lot, her eel-like stealth in slithering behind my back have me in the blackest of moods.
In the parlance of modern psycho-babble, I am among the anger disadvantaged. Coping tools available to others—flailing, screaming, fuming, ranting, raving, throwing, breaking, stomping, cursing, spitting, snorting, biting—I employ only by means of imitation since, as with any handicap, I have developed certain compensations. Acting out a missing reflex is not easy, no easier than suppressing a functioning one, such as sitting behind home plate and not blinking when a foul ball hits the screen directly in front. I suppose this malfunction should itself make me furious, but … ? It is with nervous envy that I observe others throw tantrums, instinctively reverting to the pacific calm which is my nature, retreating into something akin to a temporary hibernation in which my body temperature drops, my breathing shallows, and my pulse slows. It drove Elizabeth, whose anger reflex remained a well-oiled, finely tuned precision instrument, crazy.
But when angered myself, either by a pricking of my pride, a calculated slight, or a direct insult, rare as those are, I feel acid in the stomach, the muscular stirring of rebellion, a taunting of nerve endings so that I am positive I possess the gene for anger, but this gene is unschooled in what comes next. It flounders, sending out its neural messages in a signing my brain does not read.
I suppose this all adds up to some variety of psychological deficiency in that everyone seems to feel that anger is healthy. Certainly there is no shortage of anger in America today so we should be healthier than we have ever been. Places like Detroit and Miami, New York and L.A., should be downright rapturous.
So though I know I am angry at Natalie Berman, that a logical, finite, and well-placed reason exists for that ire, and although I can feel within me the rising flood and surge of emotions I recognize as anger, I am very unsure of what I will do about it. The tongue lashing I am rehearsing as I abuse my necktie will not be delivered. That, my experience makes clear. In private, I can feign prickly, vitriolic, even animated, but in confrontation, sarcasm remains the outer reach of my left jab or right hook. Words snarled into my mirror this morning guarantee only that Natalie Berman will not hear them later.
As soon as I arrive at the office I dial the number on her business card. Her address is listed as King Street, far to the north of Calhoun Street, an area in transition; what some might and do call slum. On the second ring a female answers.
“ACLU.”
“Natalie Berman, please.”
“Ms. Berman is at the courthouse this morning. Is there something I can help you with?”
“This is Coleman Carter. Are you her secretary?”
“A paralegal. She doesn’t have a secretary. I’m Susan Shiflet.”
“Susan, I’m an attorney here in town and I need to speak with Ms. Berman. Which court is she in?”
“She’s not in court per se. She went to watch the Swilling trial.”
Roland Swilling is a black drug dealer who claims two white policemen maimed him in a holding cell after an arrest. He is suing for damages in a trial that will receive lots of attention in the press. Jury selection is scheduled to begin this morning in the courthouse near my office.
I am determined to see her today so I don the trench coat I have just taken off and start out. A cold, misty rain is falling, slanted toward me by a brisk headwind. I point my umbrella forward, thrusting my free hand deep into a side pocket. Fronds atop the palmettoes along Broad whip and sway while their trunks give the illusion of leaning with me toward the courthouse. Iron gray sky, unbroken to the horizon, promises a daylong drizzle. Though dreary, the weather is not nearly harsh enough to drive the flower ladies off their corner and I see them bundled up against the wrought iron fence, adverse possession forever in bloom.
The U.S. Courthouse, on the southwest corner of Broad and Meeting, dates from the turn of this century. To its Renaissance Revival architecture has been appended a quite modern glass and steel wing in today’s ubiquitous style that makes a building in Portland indistinguishable from one in Plymouth. The elevator lifts me two floors, to the courtroom of Judge Lydia Tyler, whose duty it will be to give that drug dealing, glue sniffing, Mercedes driving Roland Swilling a fair and impartial trial on his claim of police brutality. Personally, I’m pulling for the cops.
Prospective jurors are already seated, so the courtroom is crowded. Up front, on my side of the railing separating the attorneys from spectators, I see what I am certain is the back of Natalie Berman’s well-formed head. There is space next to her and I walk forward, nodding imperceptibly to Lydia as I slide into Natalie’s row. The judge and I go back a ways.
Natalie cuts her eyes at me but shows no emotion as I settle in next to her. After a moment, she leans my way.
“Pardon me,” she says, “but this is the bride’s side. Aren’t you here for the groom’s, or should I say goons?”
This unexpected japery takes me off guard. Serious, crusading Natalie plays the Improv. I grin involuntarily, not wishing her to be the least bit personable or witty. At this moment I would prefer her a two-hundred-seventy pound lesbian with a harelip and an ill fitting toupee to the shapely, tightly harnessed, and attractive young woman beside me. To the overweight ogre I might,
with divine intervention, deliver something passably close to the diatribe to which I treated my mirror this morning. To a convivial Natalie, all bets are off.
“I should have guessed you’d be here,” I say through the side of my mouth. “Did the Bat-signal for a possible constitutional rights violation appear in your sky this morning?”
She turns her head, whispering aggressively. “Possible? These two Black Shirts beat this man to a pulp.”
“For which the mayor should give them both medals and promotions. Look, we need to talk outside. Lydia’s going to hold us both in contempt.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t miss the voir dire. Besides, I know what you’re going to say.”
“I’ll bet you do,” I mutter. “When?”
“She announced a lunch break at noon.”
“The café in the basement?”
“See you there,” she says.
I am waiting when she arrives, having trudged back to the office in time to bill an hour and a half and then back to the courthouse in rain falling harder. My dripping coat hangs on the chair beside me, puddling the floor beneath. Several colleagues stop to chat, ribbing me gently about being out of my element.
When she approaches I must decide whether to stand. My visceral southernness is pulling me up, but I resist and stay seated, thinking that this gesture of defiance, if anything, should signal just how sober this meeting will be. She appears not to notice and extends her hand as she sits opposite.
“I know why you’re here and I know you’re upset,” she says bluntly. “I had a choice to make in seeing your daughter or not. She is a few months from eighteen.”
“And I am her father. Why didn’t you tell me when you came to see me that you planned to visit her?”
A waitress approaches. Natalie orders a toasted tuna fish sandwich on whole wheat and mineral water. I order the soup and sandwich special and more coffee.
“I hadn’t decided then,” she says. “It was an inspiration that came to me after you and I met.”