The Circle Game

by Tanya Nichols

  “I didn’t mean to pry.” He gave his head a gentle shake, and his black hair fell down over his eyes, prompting him to brush it back with his long fingers.

  Funny, Bernie thought, he’s trying to tuck his hair back behind his ears, and I’m trying to keep mine covered. She felt the flush of red wine and smiled, wishing she’d opted for the beer. “You didn’t pry. It was a long time ago and I offered the explanation. And, in case you think I’m afraid to move out, I didn’t always live here. I had my own place for a long time.”

  Bernie knew that in a modern world where you rarely found people living in the same city of their birth, living in the same house for twenty-five years was peculiar. “Anyway, eventually Noni went to live at the Nazareth House, and I moved back in here.”

  “What’s Nazareth House? A nursing home?”

  “Sort of. It’s, I think the official term these days is senior residence.” An old worry plagued her. Despite Noni’s insistence on the situation, she still felt a painful guilt about moving her to an old folks’ home. When she was a child, her Girl Scout troop had gone to sing Christmas Carols at some place out in the country that smelled like dead flowers doused in urine. Her mother had made her promise to never put her in one of those awful places when she got old, never imagining the alternative to living to a ripe old age. Bernie had dutifully vowed that she’d never do anything like that, not ever.

  “I tried to get her to stay here, in her own home, get her some in-home care, but she wanted to live at Nazareth. It’s actually pretty nice. Not like those places you read about in the news, you know, old people left dirty and hungry with oozing bedsores.”

  “I’m sure it’s wonderful,” he said, nodding in approval.

  “It really is,” Bernie added, still feeling the need to affirm her actions. “She gets to go to mass every day—that’s important to her—and she has her own little community of friends that she hangs out with. It’s a little like high school sometimes, the way they argue about petty stuff. It’s pretty funny. And she has help getting around. Her hips are shot.”

  Bernie surprisingly felt free to chat rather than simply dive into the work. She told Don about the time she and her friends got caught skinny dipping in the pool at Fresno High, about fishing with her dad on the Kings, Sunday dinners with Noni when her folks were alive, how she hated those days, but now thought of them often. Simply handing over the documents and sending him on his way might be less complicated and faster, but it had been a long time since she’d just sat and visited with someone in the evening. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed company and conversation, drinks after work, so to speak. That was the one part of being single and living alone that was tough; there wasn’t anyone to just talk to about nothing at the end of the day.

  “So, back to why I’m here; Noni went to Nazareth and I moved in here. Now, she’s the one that comes here for Sunday dinners, but not every week. It’s too hard getting out.”

  “That’s too bad,” Don said. “I know what it’s like when your hips go. My father-in-law had a hip replaced last year and it never took. Said he’d rather die than go through that again, so he struggles.”

  Bernie flinched ever so slightly at the words father-in-law. “Oh, for some reason I didn’t think you were married, but I don’t know why. I hope I’m not keeping you away from home at dinner time.” She suddenly felt a little foolish about her fascination with his hair.

  “Well, I’m not. At least not anymore. I went through a divorce last year and moving here and starting over in a new city with a cabin in the mountains to take up my time seemed like a good idea. A fresh start.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I know what that’s like too.”

  “Are you divorced?”

  “No, not technically. We weren’t ever really married.”

  “Same difference.”

  “At least we didn’t have kids. Do you have kids?” She knew he had not mentioned children before, but perhaps it just hadn’t come up.

  “No. Just a cat. She kept the cat.” This time he took a minute to drink from his bottle, taking two or three big swallows. “So, if it’s really not prying, and we’re getting to know each other better—which is really nice, by the way, since I’m still fairly new back in town—how’d your parents die? You said they died in an accident, but I don’t think you ever explained what kind of accident. Was it an automobile accident?”

  The question startled her. People often told Bernie that her pale grey eyes seemed to flash blue at certain times, usually if she wore something blue or if she was surprised or angry; she would bet good money that they shined cobalt at the moment. She hesitated, unsure of what to say, to lie or tell the truth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “My overly curious nature. Never mind, but, if you’ll recall, you asked me a lot of personal questions. For the record I, too, can be direct.”

  “It’s alright. It just caught me off guard; yes, they died in a car accident.” She wondered why she still felt the need to lie. It wasn’t like she was back in her plaid skirt and white blouse at St. Helen’s, the girl whose parents offed each other as Jason Grodin had so nicely put it. When she transferred to the new school near Noni’s house, she decided a fiery car crash was better than telling people the violent truth of a murder-suicide. Noni went along with it, told her she could make up anything she wanted if it made life any easier. Later, she just said they died in an accident, telling herself that’s what it was, really. An accident. All these years later, the one thing she knew from the box of news clippings under her bed was she wasn’t alone. Those awful things happen every day, but usually to other people.

  “That’s terrible. Wow,” he breathed, “no wonder you’re into this Carlos case so much.”

  “That’s what my secretary, Crystal, says. Only she made a point of explaining how different the whole thing is because I’m white, and my parents were white Americans, and Carlos is just a poor Mexican kid whose parents were field workers, so he’s not worth as much.” She waved her hand, whooshing away the offensive argument.

  “Unfortunately, she makes a good point as far as the numbers go with a jury.”

  “Not if I can help it.” The room began to darken as the last bits of sunlight faded away. Bernie reached behind her and turned the dimmer switch up so that the overhead light grew brighter, another one of her small improvements to the old house. “Their lives were just as valuable to that little boy.”

  “It must have been hard growing up without a mother,” Don said calmly. His hands folded into one another in front of him, resting easily on the table, not holding onto his drink like most people would do in a new environment, clutching onto a safety net, even if that net was only a bottle of beer.

  “I had a good mother for a long time and then I had a really good grandmother. And as you can see,” she waved her open hand about the room, “it all turned out okay. Different than I would have wanted, but okay.” Bernie finished the last swallow of her wine and set the empty glass on the credenza behind her, a symbolic gesture to end the topic of her life as a matter up for discussion.

  “Yes, I can see,” he agreed.

  His simple response was perplexing. Bernie did not want to consider what he might see beyond a house and furniture, so she reached down and picked up the nearly empty cardboard box and placed it at the end of the table near the stack of papers already laid out. “This is the box of papers I got from the Lunas’ old house. I’m still going through it, but there didn’t appear to be any more receipts. The rest is mostly junk mail and I don’t think most of it matters to you for your work, but I thought you might want to see some family pictures.” She rustled around and lifted out a handful of papers and envelopes she had already organized.

  “Of the Lunas? Oh absolutely. I’d like to see what they looked like. It adds a whole other dimension to the job if I have an image, a face, in my head.” He reached across for the small stack of photographs that Bernie held in her hand.

  She handed him the pho
tos, her gaze fixed on him to watch his response. “We have the whole family there.” His words resonated with her. A whole new dimension. How would a photograph of her birth mother affect her?

  “Cute kid.” He looked into the photo and returned Carlos’s frozen smile as if he was in on the secret and knew the source of the child’s playful grin.

  “Those photos and the Western Union slips really make this case strong.” Confidence ran through her as she watched his face light up, his head nodding up and down.

  Don shuffled through the few photos, then turned his attention to the receipts, still holding onto the pictures, not ready to let those faces go. “Looks like he sent his mother five hundred bucks three times in five months from these; not a huge amount, but it’s something solid.”

  “Right. Naturally, I’ll argue that he sent similar amounts of money regularly, probably monthly. We simply don’t have all the receipts.”

  “Perhaps. He probably sent four or five grand a year. It’s not huge, but it’s something.” He tapped the receipts with his fingers and sat back in his chair and looked down at the photos again, examining the image closely. “What else you got in there?”

  Bernie watched the man across the table, carefully measuring her next words, wanting to make her point without manipulating his work or sounding arrogant. “Well, your job is to build those numbers up. Make them bigger, not smaller. Even if the evidence is incomplete, I can argue the assumptions.”

  “I’m simply speculating,” Don said, returning her gaze. “And I’m giving my honest reaction to what we have for right now. This is all very preliminary, but I won’t lie. I never lie. That needs to be clear.”

  “I’m not asking you to lie,” she countered, straightening her spine with each word. “That would be unethical, but in this case, we need some hard damages for these folks. I need to prove they were worth more than a few receipts, that their lives had real value, and I need you to help me do that.” His tranquil demeanor she found so appealing ten minutes ago grew annoying and a twinge of irritation at his nonplussed attitude jabbed her in the gut.

  “And I will, Bernie, but you should be careful not to project what isn’t there. It’s better to be cautious with expectations.”

  “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. Let Reilly worry about tearing the case down; that’s his job.”

  “I’ve heard about him. Stuart Reilly.”

  “Yes, his reputation proceeds him.”

  “I actually had a call from him today. He wants me to look at a case for him. Not this one. Don’t worry, I made sure of that.”

  “Well, good luck. He’s not the easiest guy to work with.” Bernie shook her head in disgust, but Don wouldn’t notice. He had picked up the newspaper that was pushed to the side of the piles of letters and receipts, unfolding the front-page section to find half of it gone.

  “What was this?” He held the cut-up page in front of his face.

  “Oh, I cut out the story about the woman who set fire to the Sierras.” With another flippant wave of her hand, the news article became a meaningless event, nothing for anyone to worry about.

  “You know her?”

  “No. I just, well, she wrote a letter to the judge. And, it was a good letter, so I cut it out.”

  “Oh yeah? What’d she say?”

  “Well, she was looking for leniency, so she tried to explain how no matter how good your plan is, things happen that blindside you. Life veers, you know. Tragedies happen, stuff like that.”

  “Kind of like ‘shit happens’?” He folded the paper back up and chuckled at his own joke.

  Bernie offered a weak half-smile, not entirely sure he wasn’t poking fun at her. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing he would say.

  “Maybe a little more than that. I guess the letter struck me because of what I do for a living. I see people every day who are trying to resolve some life-altering problem that landed in their lap out of nowhere, so to speak.”

  “Yeah, but sometimes good things fall in your lap too.”

  “Well, they don’t seem to happen as often or affect us so much as the bad things do.”

  “Oh, I disagree. I think they happen all the time. I just don’t think people pay much attention to good things. We expect good things to happen, so we don’t even notice when they do. But with misfortune, we’re shocked and scream about how unfair it all is. We give it all our energy.”

  “So, are you some kind of positive thinker with a set of daily affirmations or a mantra that you chant every morning?” An easy grin formed as she imagined the man looking into the mirror, telling himself life was good, and he was good enough, darn it.

  “I do think positively; I’m not ashamed of that.” He returned her sly grin, his eyes nearly closing and the same shock of hair flopping into his eyes. “You should try it.” He inhaled deeply, then added, “Hey, bad things happen to all of us at some time or other; you just have to learn to leave them behind.”

  “So, did you leave a pack of trouble back in Seattle?”

  “A little here, a little there.” He laughed again then swallowed the last of his beer.

  The chatter stopped as he pushed the paper aside and returned his attention to the photos that allowed him a snapshot glimpse into the life of Rogelio and Lucero Luna, the young couple who made their way to America where they worked and slept and dreamed of a better life for their little boy, Carlos.

  “Want another one?” She was already standing next to his chair, holding her empty glass in one hand, picking up his empty bottle with the other.

  “Hmmmm. I should probably get going, but okay.” He looked up at her and nodded eagerly, “just one more.”

  “Want some crackers or something?” Bernie headed for the kitchen and fresh drinks while Don continued gazing at the pictures as if he knew the subjects, studying their faces intently.

  “That sounds good. I haven’t had dinner yet.”

  “Me neither, but I don’t usually do much for dinner other than crackers or leftover lunch, unless I’m in one of my cooking moods. Then I usually end up taking most of it to Noni and her friends. I don’t know how to make just a little bit of spaghetti.”

  “Well actually, I’m starving. What do you say to forgetting the beer and crackers and we go get some dinner?”

  Bernie paused, then quickly returned the cold bottle of beer back to the fridge. “Dinner. That sounds fantastic. How do you feel about Thai food? I bet you like Thai food, and there’s a great place not far from . . .” Bernie gasped mid-sentence and blinked slowly. “Oh God, I didn’t mean you must like Thai food because you’re Asian.”

  “I love Thai food, and for the record, I’m Vietnamese, Bernie, but my family is actually Irish, and my ex-wife is Greek, so Thai food was rarely on the menu.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . I don’t know. It came out so white and weird and racist, but I really meant that because you seem so Zen, so calm, and I think of Thai as . . . You know what, never mind, my whole foot doesn’t fit in my mouth; chalk it up to a bad batch of Pinot or just ignorance. Either one works. God, I really thought I was more enlightened than that.”

  “Don’t worry about it, really. I love Thai food. There are worse things than being called Zen, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, everyone thinks I’m shy because my face turns bright red when I get embarrassed.” Bernie laughed freely, knowing her cheeks were on fire. “Like now. I’m not the least bit shy, but I am humiliated. This shade is humiliation red.”

  “You have a great laugh; your whole face lights up, and I don’t mean that it’s red. You should laugh more.”

  “I laugh plenty.” Bernie cast him a shy smile, embarrassed by the compliment. She grabbed her purse and keys, then remembered the copies. “Better take this,” she said, handing him the manila envelope. “Copies of the receipts and some other things I thought you might need. I’ll drive.”

  “Thanks.” Don tucked the envelope under his arm and
made his way outside to wait for her beside her car. When he opened the passenger door, another envelope dropped out. He picked it up and sat it in his lap while he reached behind him for the seatbelt buckle. “This fell out of your car,” he told her, holding the envelope up for Bernie to see, but she was already backing out of the driveway and merely glanced at it.

  “Oh, thanks. It’s probably nothing, but hang onto it, I’ll look at it later.”

  The restaurant only had six tables, and three of them were empty. They sat sipping hot tea, waiting for their mango salad, pad thai noodles, and spicy shrimp and vegetables.

  “See? Isn’t this Zen?” she asked. Both Bernie’s elbows rested on the table, a small cup of tea cupped in her hands.

  “Very,” Don answered, then sipped from his cup.

  “Have you been doing any fishing?” she asked. After all her frenzied efforts at the office, her tired body succumbed to the peaceful aura of the restaurant and the warmth of the hot tea. She felt relaxed.

  “That’s what I do all weekend. I like to go early in the morning, before the sun is even up.”

  “That’s the best time of day—the crack of dawn. If nothing else exciting happens, you can still say you watched the sun rise. I remember going fishing with my father a few times. I loved that.”

  She sipped the tea and again recalled her father sitting next to her on the bank of the river, the rising sun turning the dark water to gold, its flow and rhythm the only sound, their silence more comforting than any words could have been.

  “It’s pretty great. Hey, you want to go up with me, try your luck?”

  “What? Go to your cabin with you?”

  “Sure. I’m going up Friday evening, coming back Monday morning early.”