“Oh, Brek,” she whispered. “My precious, precious child.”
“Nana?”
The word exhaled from my lungs with a whimper, accompanied by the recollection of an old photograph, the face of my great-grandmother Sophia Bellini, my Nana. She’d died from a stroke when I was four years old.
“Yes, child, oh yes,” she said.
My earliest memory was from her funeral. I’d thrown a tantrum when my mother made me kiss Nana Bellini good-bye in the open coffin. I remembered the slap of my mother’s hand across my face, and that Nana’s eyes did not open, and that her smile, serene and insane, did not change.
“Nana?”
“Yes, child,” she said again, squeezing me close. “Welcome home.”
I grinned and pushed myself away.
There comes a moment in every nightmare when disbelief can no longer be suspended and one must choose between waking or allowing the drama to play on, comforted by the thought that it is, after all, only a dream.
I stepped around Nana, the illusion, and ran my fingers along the white column at the top of the steps. Sure enough, there were my initials—B.A.C.—carved with an eight-penny nail one August afternoon when I sat on the porch drinking iced tea and wondering whether summer would ever end and middle school would finally begin. The scent of mothballs and garlic wafting from the kitchen was as distinct to my grandparents’ home as the scent of lilacs to late spring. The screen door chirped twice as it had always done, and our family pictures were arranged on the dry sink in the hall.
“I’m dreaming,” I said to Nana. “What an odd dream.”
A smile crossed her face, the same knowing smile that had crossed Luas’s in the train shed, as if to say: Yes, my great-granddaughter, I understand. You’re not ready to accept your own death yet, so we must pretend.
“Is it a lovely dream?” she asked.
“No. It’s a scary one, Nana,” I said. “I’m dead in it and you . . . you’re here, but you’re dead too.”
“But isn’t that a lovely dream, dear?” she asked. “To know that death isn’t the end of everything?”
“Yes, that is lovely,” I said. “I’ll try to remember it when I wake up, and I’ll try to remember you too. I can never seem to remember your face, Nana; I was too young when you died.”
Nana smiled at me, amused.
I yawned and stretched. “My, this is such a long dream,” I said. “I feel like I’ve been dreaming all night. But that’s a good thing. It means I’m sleeping well. I’m so tired, Nana. I want to sleep some more, but I don’t want to be scared. I want this to be a nice dream now. Can we make it a nice dream so I won’t have to wake up and chase you away?”
“Yes, dear,” Nana said, hugging me again. “We can make this a nice dream. We can make this the nicest dream you’ve ever had.”
She led me upstairs without another word, drew me a bath in the claw-footed iron tub off the main hall, and hung a thick terry-cloth robe from the door. The dream was improving already. Before leaving me to soak, she paused to look at the stump of my right arm. I smiled, as I always did when someone noticed the amputation, to put her at ease. She kissed my forehead and closed the door.
Although the bleeding had stopped, I had to flush red water from the tub and refill it twice. There were three holes in my chest: one in my sternum and two through my left breast. I fingered each hole indifferently, as though I were merely touching a blemish. I could feel the soft tissue inside—torn, fatty, and swollen—and jagged edges of broken bone.
After my bath, I wrapped myself in the robe Nana left for me behind the door and crept through the second floor of the old house, resurrecting memories both pleasant and sad. There was the happy photograph in the master bedroom of Nana and Great-grandpa Frank posing before the Teatro alla Scala on their thirtieth wedding anniversary. My mother told me that one month later, Great-grandpa Frank confessed to having escorted his mistress to the very same opera house while on a business trip to Milan. Nana somehow overcame her humiliation and anger and offered him the forgiveness he sought. In return, on the wall between the windows, Great-grandpa Frank hung a large crucifix with a large Christ, whose mournful eyes watched over his side of the bed as a reminder. A heart attack took him the following year.
My grandparents moved into the house after Nana’s death and their belongings now filled the room, but the crucifix remained: alert, watchful, reminding. It was really their house I remembered, not Nana’s. Beneath the cross stood a small bookcase filled with hardbound volumes by Locke, Jefferson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and lesser treatises on contracts and procedure. They were my grandfather’s law books, and after the accident with my arm and the lawsuit that followed, I began to look upon their impressive leather bindings and heft with a sort of reverence and awe. The pursuit of justice seemed to me a more noble and honest religion than the one I heard preached each Sunday in church.
Next door, my uncle Anthony’s room was a time capsule sealed in 1968, the year after Nana died. In some of the black-and-white photographs on the walls he’s slumped against a howitzer, the strain of fear and fatigue twisting his face into a haunted smile. Dog tags and a crucifix with the right arm broken off hang from a chain around his neck. The only color photograph in the room was taken two years prior to these. In this photograph, First Lieutenant Anthony Bellini stands gallant and brave in full dress uniform next to an American flag. My grandparents kept this picture on the dresser beside the dog tags, the broken crucifix, and the sad blue triangle of cloth presented to them at Uncle Anthony’s funeral. I loved that broken crucifix. Jesus was missing the same arm as me, and when I touched it, I believed he somehow understood. I didn’t remember Uncle Anthony; he was sent to Vietnam soon after I was born. When I asked about him I was told only that he was a hero.
The bedroom across the hall belonged first to my grandfather’s brother, Gus, and, next, to Uncle Alex before he himself shipped out to Vietnam two years after Uncle Anthony. Uncle Alex returned in one piece from the war, though, so my grandparents had no need to create a second shrine. Instead, they used the room to store broken chairs, boxes, and clutter that couldn’t find a home in the rest of the house.
My mother was the oldest of the three Bellini children. After she married, her room became the guest room, but they kept her things. The bed was white, with a dingy canopy I detested. A pair of ragged old dolls sat glumly against the pillows, yearning for affection and needing a bath. The lacy curtains she had sewn from an old tablecloth decorated the windows, and at the foot of the bed sat a pine hope chest filled with silly letters and pleated skirts and photographs of horses and kittens. It was a little girl’s room, and, in many ways, my mother remained a little girl all her life. Her room was way up high in the turret, where a princess would sleep—an oval-shaped refuge protected from robbers and dragons, with small windows facing the front and side of the house. Mom and I lived here for an entire year after she divorced my father. I slept next to her every night in the same bed. We ate popcorn and read books, and sometimes she cried herself to sleep. I was the grown-up in that bed, and this made me feel safe. Grown-ups were always safe. She had nursed me back to health after the accident with my arm, and I was happy to repay the favor. I couldn’t replace my father any more than she could regrow my arm, but somehow we helped each other heal from our wounds. We were never close the way some mothers and daughters become, but we loved and understood each other as only a mother and daughter can.
After my bath, I had intended to dress and go back downstairs to talk to Nana, but I suddenly felt drowsy and weak, as though I were descending within my dream into a deeper level of sleep. I succumbed to the urge, sliding in with the dolls beneath the crisp cotton ticking of my mother’s bed and turning out the white unicorn lamp. I fell fast asleep. During this sleep, I began dreaming of my last day on earth.
3
It’s early morning and I’m nursing Sarah in bed with the television on. We’re watching Bo, in his first month as the
new anchorman of the Channel 10 Morning News, trying to make chitchat with Piper Jackson, Channel 10’s incredibly dull but incredibly beautiful new weather girl. Regardless of atmospheric conditions, Piper’s tight skirts and blouses guarantee fair skies and high pressure. Bo and Piper make a picture-perfect couple on the set and smiling down together from the slick, new highway billboards that have already helped increase ratings for the show. I seethe with jealousy every morning—until Piper opens her mouth. Today, while talking with Bo about a tsunami that has just devastated the northern coast of Japan, she mispronounces it “samurai” and speculates that this must be how Japanese warriors got their name. Bo cringes.
“It’s pronounced ‘sue-na-me,’ Piper,” he says.
Piper looks bewildered, like a puppy being scolded for peeing on a rug.
“What is?” she asks.
“The Japanese word for tidal wave.”
“Oops,” she replies airily, her strawberry red lips ripening from scolded-girl pout into naughty-girl smile. “Well, I guess that explains why they call Japanese warriors tsunamis.”
The cameraman knows exactly what to do. The shot widens to take in Piper’s low-cut top and admittedly impressive cleavage. You can almost hear the spontaneous applause of men all over central Pennsylvania and the spontaneous groans of their wives, girlfriends, and mothers. I pleaded with Bo to stick to reporting the news, but Piper and her breasts were bigger and better than the news.
Sarah finishes nursing, oblivious to TV ratings, perfectly content to see a miniature of her father talking from a box on the dresser no matter what he says. Sometimes she tries to talk back, as though they’re having a conversation.
I shower quickly, planning as I scrub where to pick up with the summary judgment motion I’d been working on and sticking my head out to be sure Sarah’s still on the bed. When the network news replaces her daddy at seven, we switch to Big Bird, and I finish applying my makeup and put on my cream silk blouse and black silk suit. I carry Sarah into the nursery and change her diaper, dressing her in a light cotton jumper before switching to pants and a sweatshirt after remembering Piper’s warning that a cold front will be moving through late in the day. Sarah’s hands swing over her head and she stares at them in astonishment, as though she’s seeing them for the first time, a pair of birds from nowhere, soaring and swooning to the music whispering through her tiny mind. With all my might I try to store this moment away—the wide fascination of her eyes and the delicate contractions of her fingers, the sunlight that celebrates her revelation, the polished perfection of skin on her belly—all locked up in my memory like a jewel in a safe-deposit box to be taken out later and adored.
I drive Sarah to a day care operated by Juniata College as a teaching practicum. It’s an excellent facility, bright, cheery, and clean, with energetic professors and students eager to try the latest methods and techniques for developing infant minds. The classes are small and Sarah never lacks for stimulation or attention. She’s always laughing and playing, and her pediatrician says her verbal and cognitive skills are advanced for her age. When I visit during the day, I’m convinced she’s better off here than if I cared for her at home. But when I kiss her good-bye in the morning and she waves her little hands and looks after me with those sad brown eyes, I wonder whether I’m fooling myself—or whether I’m worse off even if she isn’t.
While I’m unbuckling her from her car seat, she flips her bottle upside down and seems to deliberately squirt formula on the lapel of my jacket.
“Hey, stop that!” I say, pretending to be angry. “Nobody messes on Mommy’s favorite suit, not even a cutie like you.”
I reach the office by eight-thirty and wave to frog-faced Bill Gwynne, who’s already on the phone with a client and whose desk, restored to order by his secretary last evening, is already a mess. Our offices occupy a historic red-brick row house next to the county courthouse in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, used first as a blacksmith’s shop at the time the town was founded in the late 1700s. I toss my briefcase and purse into my office on the second floor and fix a cup of cappuccino, using a canning jar and microwave to froth the milk. Cup in hand, I head up to our small law library on the third floor, where I continue the legal research I’ve been working on for the past four weeks, trying to come up with a defense that will allow our very wealthy and very lucrative client, Alan Fleming, to avoid repaying the $500,000 he borrowed from a bank. This might seem like a fool’s errand, if not a little unscrupulous, but it’s actually my favorite part of legal practice: the intellectual challenge of winning a case that most lawyers would, and should, lose, by uncovering an overlooked fact or finding a forgotten law.
This particular morning, the blind lady of justice bestows upon me a generous gift in the form of a little-known banking regulation from the Great Depression called Regulation U, which forbids banks from making loans to purchase stocks if other stocks are pledged as collateral but worth less than fifty percent of the loan. The regulation was intended to prevent stock market crashes from taking the banking system down with them, but it catches my eye because Alan purchased stocks with the loan he’d defaulted on and, as I recall, pledged other stocks worth only thirty-five percent of the loan. If the bank knew this, then it violated the regulation and would be barred from suing Alan to recover the debt. We would win the case on a technicality.
I race back down to my office for the transcript of the deposition I took of the bank’s loan officer, Jorge Mijares, to see whether he knew that Alan intended to use the loan to buy stocks. The transcript comprises several hundred pages of testimony given under oath before a court reporter with each line of testimony numbered for easy reference. Scanning through it, I recall how, like most of the male witnesses I had confronted during my short legal career, Jorge Mijares had refused to take me seriously because I was a young woman. I used this to my advantage. I had discovered that rather than resent and resist the arrogance of men like this, I could more easily defeat them by flirting with them and using their prejudices against them. Their unbounded conceit inevitably led them to become distracted and careless—and to say more on the record than they intended.
On page 155 of the transcript, I locate the testimony I was hoping for—the testimony that destroys the bank’s case. I’m thrilled. I take the transcript and the regulation over to Bill’s office and lay them on the last open patch of mahogany on his desk. He’s buried in a file and doesn’t look up as he speaks.
“Yes?” he grunts.
Bill’s always irritable in the morning, and this morning even more so because he’s preparing for hearings in two cases at once. His eyes dart from file to file, fingers snapping at the papers. He’s wearing a conservative gray suit and matching vest, white shirt, and maroon tie. He’s old school and never takes off his jacket in the office, even in the middle of the summer.
“Read it,” I say proudly.
“Why?”
“Because it’s how we’re going to win a case we’re supposed to lose.”
He glances at the regulation. “What’s this got to do with anything?”
“Mijares testified he knew Alan was using the loan to buy stocks. But he didn’t post the collateral required by the regulation. The loan’s void and unenforceable as a matter of law. We win.”
Bill snatches the transcript from the desk. There’s silence as he reads the testimony, then he starts laughing. “Jorge got a little carried away with himself, didn’t he?”
“He likes to think that he’s very charming,” I reply.
Bill puts down the transcript, picks up the regulation, and reads it. “He won’t be so charming when he finds out you outfoxed him,” he says. “I’m glad to see you know how to handle men like that. Jorge’s father would be disappointed if he read this. He was a professor of archaeology at Juniata College, very well-mannered and cultured. He hired me to represent the grape growers in the cyanide case. Wealthy family. The Mijares still own vineyards in Chile.”
“Wow, you handled that
case too?” I say, always amazed at Bill’s remarkable legal career. I was in college during the public scare over red Chilean table grapes being laced with cyanide. When the news stories broke warning people not to eat them, my dorm roommate promptly started buying them and snacking on them by the bunches. She hated red grapes but her boyfriend had just broken up with her. She said she didn’t have the courage to slit her own wrists and figured grapes would be the easier way to go.
Bill nods.
“But I thought you only represented plaintiffs back then, not defendants.”
“The growers were the plaintiffs,” Bill replies. “There was no cyanide. The scare was a hoax, but hundreds of Chilean farmers lost everything—thousands of tons of fruit were embargoed and destroyed. We sued the government to lift the embargo, and we sued the insurers to pay the claims. And, yes, we won.”
Outside the window beside Bill’s desk, the morning sun strikes the bright yellow fall leaves of a maple tree, making the tree appear as though it has burst into flames. A small sparrow lands on a branch, risking immolation.
“I hope we win another one,” I say.
Bill doesn’t respond and an awkward silence follows. I realize I’m rubbing the stump of my right arm and he’s watching me. The bird in the maple flies away, having survived the inferno.
“When can you finish the brief?” he asks.
“Rough draft by Tuesday.”
He puts down the regulation and starts in on one of the files in front of him. “I’ll be in court all afternoon and then I have a board meeting,” he says. “Have a nice weekend.”
“Thanks. You too.” I gather my materials and get up to leave but Bill stops me.
“It’s a creative argument, Brek,” he says without looking up. “Few lawyers would have thought of it.”
“Thanks.”
I turn to leave but hesitate. I’m gratified by the rare compliment but suddenly remorseful about the outcome. “So, Alan Fleming keeps five hundred thousand dollars that don’t belong to him because of a technicality?”
The Trial of Fallen Angels Page 2