Acts of Contrition

by Handford, Jennifer

  The lawyers took a liking to me, especially the middle-aged men, some of whom were lecherous but many of whom were simply solicitous of me, and impressed that I was working full-time while chipping away at my degree. When summer rolled around, a group of handpicked summer associates descended on our offices, seeking corporate law firm experience. Most were book smart, panicked, and lacking in social skills. But one, a gorgeous guy named Landon James, stood out. He was tall and broad-shouldered and he exuded confidence like the cocky quarterback of a winning high school football team. The law firm had sent around a sheet of biographies. From that I knew he was from Colorado, held a literature degree from Loyola, had gone to law school at Notre Dame, studied at Oxford.

  One day, after having seen Landon around the office and traded smiles and hellos, I leaned into the doorframe of his office, my arms filled with brown accordion files brimming with legal documents. “How’s it going?” Though I was younger than he, and just a peon file clerk, this law firm was my territory and I was comfortable ducking in.

  “It’s going,” he said, looking up, a sly grin playing across his face.

  “How do you like being a slave?”

  “I was hoping there would be more beer involved.”

  “Beer’s good.” I laughed. “You might want to do some work first, though. Show the old men that you know how to write a motion.”

  “What’s your deal?” he asked.

  “My deal?” Half flirty, half snotty.

  “Yeah,” he said, examining me closely. “What’s a girl like you doing in a law firm like this?”

  “What, you don’t think it’s my life’s ambition to file pleadings for a bunch of midlife-crisis lawyers?”

  That got a laugh from him. “Tell me how you really feel,” he said, his killer smile reaching to his gorgeous blue eyes. “But seriously.”

  “I’m in college,” I said. “But I also like money and I’m impatient, so I’m working full-time and going to school at night.”

  “Admirable,” he said. “What’s your major?”

  “Criminal justice.”

  “What are you looking to be: a cop or a lawyer?”

  “I was thinking more of a superhero,” I said, my answer surprising myself, feeling a blush flood over my cheeks. “I’ve always wanted to be a vigilante.”

  “Root out injustices?”

  “Only by night, of course,” I said, trying to tamp down my smile, which was pulling so wide my cheeks ached. “In the daytime, I’ll probably be a schoolteacher or a librarian.”

  “Right. Something with a bun.”

  “A bun?” I repeated, as laughter tumbled out.

  “You know—a bun, glasses.”

  “Yes, a bun and glasses.” I laughed again, hardly able to believe I was having this conversation with this guy.

  “What will your actual power be?” he persisted.

  “The cleverest legal mind in the history of the bar. I’ll win every case just from my pure brilliance.”

  He beamed at me. “Maybe you’d like to have a beer with me sometime so that some of that brilliant jurisprudence will rub off on me.”

  “I’m not really a superhero, Landon James,” I said. “A mere mortal.”

  “I’ll still buy you a beer,” he said, locking his blue eyes with mine.

  “We’ll see,” I said, and walked away, keeping my head up and my stride confident until I made it back to my crappy little desk shoved into the corner of the file room. There I sat in my chair and put my face on my desk, inhaling the smell of wood and musty papers, and half giggled and half cried at my moxie. I had just met the most amazing man of my life and I had batted banter back and forth with him like I was a comedian. Maybe I did have superpowers: super flirting powers.

  Weeks passed and Landon and I continued to see each other in the hallway, exchange hellos over coffee in the break room, and engage in our brand of witty repartee. Finally, a month into his stay, we both pressed the up button on the elevator at the same time.

  “When are we going to grab that beer, Mary Russo?” he said, sending my heart into a tumble.

  “Here’s the thing, Landon James. I’m only nineteen,” I said, a blush heating my cheeks.

  “Maybe we could order you a Shirley Temple.”

  “Nice,” I said. “I usually get served, but I’m just warning you. I don’t want you to be embarrassed.”

  “I’m capable of handling a much bigger scandal than that,” he said. “So, tonight?”

  That night we met at the bar at Old Ebbitt Grill off Pennsylvania. Landon was already bellied up to the brass rail by the time I got there, two frosty ales in front of him.

  “I took the liberty,” he said, walking with our beers toward two empty barstools.

  “Thank you,” I said, taking a long, cool sip, feeling the beer slide down my throat and warm my chest.

  “How long have you lived in DC?” Landon asked.

  “Less than a year,” I said. “But I grew up nearby, in Arlington.”

  “I love it here,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. The monuments, the Mall, the Supreme Court. It’s amazing.”

  “Have you ever been here before?”

  “When I was in high school I came here with my Boy Scout troop.”

  “Boy Scouts? I think maybe you were lost,” I said. “The mountains are thataway.”

  “I didn’t say we were camping,” he said, nudging my arm. “We came to see the archives. The Declaration of Independence.”

  “So you were a Boy Scout, huh?”

  He took a half step back, feigning offense. “You don’t think I’m Boy Scout material?”

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I said, and took another long drink of beer, enjoying it while it was cold just in case the bartender didn’t serve me another one.

  “Altar boy, too,” he said. “In case that’s important to a good Catholic girl like you.”

  “What makes you think I’m a good Catholic girl?”

  “It’s written all over you,” he said, clinking his glass against mine.

  I narrowed my eyes at him, lifting my hand to the gold cross hanging around my neck.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “Mary Katherine? Mary Regina? Mary Margaret?”

  “Margaret,” I admitted.

  “Mary Margaret,” he repeated. “MM.”

  “You think you’re so smart,” I said. “But you have no idea. Any more than I know if you’re a nice Catholic boy.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” he said. “And not even Catholic anymore.”

  “A recovering Catholic, are you?”

  “Recovering implies that I’ve sought treatment for my affliction.”

  “Wow, you’re bad. Equating Catholicism to an affliction, huh?”

  “Suffice it to say, I’ve opted out.”

  “What about the Scouts? Did they offend your fine senses, too?”

  “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “You can count on me to always be prepared.”

  “If I need someone to build a fire from rocks and sticks, you’re the first person I’ll ask.”

  “What about you?” he asked. “Any Scouting in your past?”

  “Of course. I was a Girl Scout for years.”

  “Then you can answer a burning question of mine: What really went on at Girl Scout camp?”

  “Oh, the usual,” I assured him. “We snuck out of our cabins, skinny-dipped in the lake, brushed and braided each other’s hair.”

  “I knew it,” Landon said, his arm brushing against mine.

  “You’re giving away all of your fetishes,” I said. “First librarians shucking off their glasses and letting down their buns, now Girl Scouts frolicking in the moonlight.”

  “What can I say, I have an active imagination.”

  I shrugged. “Pretty standard stuff, I have to say.”

  He shrugged back and grinned. “Gotta love the classics.”

  After taking another drink, I eyed him. “Tel
l me this,” I said. “What did the Catholic Church do to you?”

  “Oh, you know. All the standing and sitting and kneeling and genuflecting. Who can keep up?”

  “I’m serious,” I said. “I want to know.”

  Landon grinned and downed the bottom half of his beer in one swig. “That’s hardly first-date material,” he said, leaning in close enough for me to smell the soap on his skin.

  “We’re not really on a date. Just drinks,” I said, clinking my pint against his. “So you can tell me.”

  Landon looked at me and our eyes locked. He was the first to look away, his power smile dropping. “All right,” he said. “I went to high school with a kid named Andy. He was smart and nice. Very shy, but I liked him. He had a dark sense of humor for anyone who bothered to talk to him. One day I go to school and find out that Andy hanged himself the night before. His parents found his body swinging from the banister when they woke up in the morning. The next day I’m at church for some youth meeting thing, and all of the Catholic kids start talking about Andy, and how he’s not going to go to heaven because he killed himself and how that’s a mortal sin. I remember so clearly thinking, That’s messed up. Why is a kid like Andy, who clearly was in some sort of pain, being denied access to heaven? Of all the people who needed salvation…That was it for me. That was the day I decided it was all a bunch of bullshit.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “That sounds horrible.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Landon said. “I still think about him, though.”

  We stared at our beers for a moment, and then I said, “So if not Catholicism, Landon James, what do you believe in?”

  Landon signaled to the bartender for two more beers. “Pure, unadulterated pleasure and pain. That’s what life boils down to.”

  “You’re full of it,” I said. “There’s got to be more to you than that.”

  “There’s not,” he said.

  “So you live your life in search of pleasure? In the avoidance of pain?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “In fact, I’m probably more like the opposite: I seek pain and avoid pleasure. Why else would I choose to work full-time and go to school at night? And I hardly ever do anything fun, and if I do, I feel guilty.”

  “Catholic down to your bones,” he said. “My grandmother would love you. But you’ve got it all wrong, MM.” He swiveled toward me so that our knees rested against each other’s. He placed his hands on my knees and pushed them up my thighs until the tiny space between us could be filled with a shot glass of my remaining confidence. With his mouth only an inch from mine, I gasped slightly, and when I did, he smiled—that gigantically gorgeous smile—and then leaned in until his lips brushed mine. I pulled back, and inhaled slowly.

  “You are seriously cute,” he said, and I blushed because at the moment, that was exactly what I felt like: cute. Not beautiful, not sophisticated, about a thousand miles out of Landon James’s league, but for whatever reason, he was having a good time—an amusing time—hanging out with nineteen-year-old Mary Margaret, Catholic to her bones, file-clerk peon.

  “You are seriously hot,” I replied, shocking myself by upping the ante. Maybe I could be more than cute. “Pleasure and pain?” I said, and this time I placed my hands on his thighs and knocked him off balance.

  “Getting a little toasty in here,” he said.

  “I like toasty,” I said.

  “Serious question,” he said, stroking his finger over my hand. “Do you still have your Girl Scout uniform?”

  “Why?” I asked. “Do you want to try it on?”

  “If you try it on, I’ll try it on,” he said, and kissed me again, this time laying his palm on my cheek.

  Later that night, Landon walked me home to my brownstone on Capitol Hill. At the top of the steps to the door to my apartment, I turned to him and said, “We should probably call it a night.” As worked up as I was, I knew better than to blow a good thing by inviting him in. Three older sisters had taught me that.

  “We’ll have to save the Girl Scout uniform for another night,” he said.

  “I’ll make sure to have film in my camera.”

  “I’ll pass on the photos.” He laughed. “You should, too. You might be up for the Supreme Court someday. You wouldn’t want an embarrassing photo ruining your career.”

  “Wow, you’ve got grander plans for me than I do.”

  “I think a lot about what the future might hold, it’s true,” he said in a decidedly softer tone. Cocky, pleasure-and-pain Landon seemed to have a gentler side.

  He kissed me again, wrapped his arms around my waist, and gently slid his hand up my blouse and onto my back. “Seriously cute,” he said again, kissing me once more. We stood there, grinning stupidly at each other, and then finally he turned and started his walk in the direction of the three Senate buildings.

  For the next three weeks, Landon and I merged into one person; we inhabited the same space, we held nothing back. We ate lunch together, we met for drinks, we sat on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, our view stretching across the Mall. On nights when I had school, he would wait for me afterward, with a few bottles of Sam Adams and a bag of burgers and fries. He’d carry my backpack home as we discussed con law theory, and then we’d sit on the steps of my brownstone, eating and drinking. Some nights he would help me at the law library, locate cases and decipher the decisions. And we kissed, and touched, and kissed some more, and drove each other wildly crazy.

  A few times, we went fishing. Landon was an avid fly fisherman but guarded that activity as his solitary pleasure. When I asked if I could come, he cocked his head and said, “You don’t want to fish.”

  “I do, seriously,” I said, even though, truly, I didn’t want to fish, but I did want to be with him. And so he took me along, let me enter into his private world that he had shared with no one else. As we sat on the bank of the Shenandoah River, our legs warmed from the glittery rocks, he showed me his collection of flies.

  “Where’d you learn to tie them?” I asked.

  “My dad,” he said. “The best thing he did for me.”

  “What’s he like?” I asked.

  “He’s not like anything,” Landon said. “He left early on.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows,” Landon said. “He used to say that living an honest life was like the river. You might start in one place and end up somewhere entirely different.”

  “Poetic,” I said.

  “Bullshit,” Landon said. “He’s a deadbeat. That’s all.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She’s a train wreck. Because of him, of course. When he walked out, my mother checked out. I kind of bombed it in the parents’ department.”

  “How old were you?” I asked.

  “Eight.”

  “That’s when he left?”

  “Uh-huh,” Landon said. “I was down by the creek behind our house. It was summer and I was bored. I was skipping rocks. He squatted down beside me and said, ‘Son, people leave all the time. Better to learn it now. Always best not to get too attached. Fact of life: people leave.’ ”

  “What’d you say to that?” I asked.

  “I said okay. He had never steered me wrong before. He taught me to tie these flies and to cast my rod, so I figured he knew what he was saying.”

  “Then what?”

  “A year later he drove his point home when he packed his bags and left. He never came back. He never called.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Sometimes I think about that conversation down by the creek. He must have known he had one foot out the door.”

  “Your poor mom.”

  “She fizzled to nothing. Spent her days in the kitchen—coffee cup in hand, same terry-cloth robe over the same ratty nightgown. Hair pulled back into a greasy ponytail. Dead eyes staring out the window at the tire swing. Some days she’d look out the other window, the one with the road leading up to our house. I alwa
ys wondered about that. Were those her good days or her bad days? The ones when she thought he might come back?”

  “I’m sorry you went through that,” I said, pressing in next to him, resting my cheek on his shoulder.

  “I’m not whining about it, but in a lot of ways, I don’t think you can really overcome a childhood that messed up,” he said. “The damage is done.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said. “There’s always room for forgiveness, for redemption.” That day I fell a mile deeper for him. My assumptions—that Landon came from a wealthy, upper-crust family—were enormously wrong. He wasn’t just gorgeous, smart, and sexy. He was also in need of saving.

  “Maybe,” he said, and at that moment I really believed that we had started something. He told me he was falling hard. I reciprocated, and told him I could get used to this: us spending every weekend together, me with a fishing vest of my own.

  A few days later, the reality that Landon had opened a door he hadn’t intended to open must’ve hit him in the face like ice water. He more than just eased off and assumed a cooler stance; he canceled our plans, stopped showing up at my school, and avoided passing my desk. He and the other summer associates were due to go home in a few weeks, and the partners had them heavily scheduled with cocktail parties and baseball games and other events meant to sweeten the pot in order to entice the soon-to-be lawyers to choose Becker, Fox & Zuckerman. We talked a few times in the hallway, on the way up and down the elevator, but it seemed Landon had decided that spending every weekend with Mary Russo was too big of a risk to his heart. Whatever that said about me, my craving for him grew with every step he took away from me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Unmanageable

  WE HAVE DINNER AT MY parents’ house every Sunday night. Regina and Robert Russo live in the same Arlington split-level I lived in as a kid. The house sits at the end of a cul-de-sac, is brown clapboard with yellow shutters, and is shaded by a gigantic oak tree. The three bedrooms and two baths now seem more like a dollhouse with miniature furniture, but somehow the six of us lived comfortably there. Somehow we all found ample space kneeling around my parents’ bed each night to say the Rosary. Somehow we always went to bed with full bellies in a heated house with love in our hearts.