Al-Tounsi

by Anton Piatigorsky

  Rodney paused. Such a torrent of words. He sipped his wine and devoured three dumplings, but only after carefully dividing them into small bites with his knife and fork. He dabbed his mouth with a napkin, and offered a trite comment about the meal being stupendous. When at last he mustered the courage to glance up at Cindy, her open face, so young and pretty, once again astounded him. He took another sip of wine and held the glass suspended at his lips. He had forgotten precisely what he had been saying.

  “As you can see, I’m not in the habit of talking about such matters.”

  “Uh huh.” Cindy’s wide eyes were fixed on him. He must have seemed to her like an utterly transformed man.

  “I hope my candor is not unwelcome.”

  “No, no. It’s fascinating.”

  “Did you know, Ms. Chin, that my daughter, Cassandra, is—like you—presently clerking for a federal judge?”

  “Really? Which judge?

  “Emmanuel Arroyo, on the Ninth Circuit.”

  “I hear he’s tough on clerks.”

  “She works long hours for him, certainly.”

  More than works, Rodney could have said if he had so dared. Cassandra’s affair with Judge Arroyo—if it were true, if Morris Bayfield was to be believed—must have begun under similar circumstances as this. A casual dinner after work, perhaps a drink in some San Francisco wine bar. A sympathetic conversation on the topic of Judge Arroyo’s recent divorce. Probably Cassandra had consumed too much Zinfandel and let it be known with a gesture, a laugh, a touch of her hand, that she was interested in him. But did she consider who that man was? What it would mean to her father if she slept with him?

  Morris claimed that Cassandra’s and Judge Arroyo’s affair was mere conjecture, a rumor from the Browning Federal Courthouse, but Rodney’s friend would never lie or mislead him, and would never report such troubling news if he doubted it himself. Either way, it was not a matter of Rodney’s concern. That was precisely what he had told Morris, after thanking him and assuring him that he harbored no ill will toward the messenger. Cassandra was an adult, a grown woman, and Rodney believed wholeheartedly that people must independently make their ways through the fog of this world guided by their own codes of behavior and moral compasses. They must take the call to freedom seriously and respect the varied results, even when they find them uneven or shocking. And he had to admit that he did not know the inner workings of Cassandra’s relationship with her husband, Denny—the limits of their commitment, any perverse licenses allowed or strict penalties incurred in their marital agreement.

  Cindy Chin shifted in her seat. Perhaps it would be best for Rodney to wrap things up, draw some wise conclusions for his clerk.

  “I think what my life shows, especially in regards to that unfortunate opinion piece in The Daily Californian, is that one must always be careful, exceedingly diligent, not to let one’s personal viewpoints or present traumas affect the rigor of one’s behavior, especially when one is charged with the solemn responsibility of upholding the law.”

  Cindy shrugged and stirred the amaranth and mushroom mix on her plate. “I don’t know. Seems you’ve got no choice sometimes other than to let those things come out. You can’t do everything right all the time.”

  Rodney leaned his elbows on the table. “Just use a little bit of common sense.” His voice was deeper now, weary with fatigue. “That’s all I mean. I was not as diligent as I might have been.”

  “Oh, God, Justice Sykes. You were supposed to be completely mature at twenty years old, or whatever you were, right after your brother died? To know better than to try again with your only other brother? Really?”

  Rodney nodded solemnly. “You know, the most absurd aspect of that whole ordeal with my brother occurred a couple of months after Justice Van Cleve had respectfully denied his habeas petition. Marshall sent to my chambers a long letter, strident and fierce, on stationery issued by the San Quentin penitentiary, which proceeded to ‘educate me’ on the proper functioning of habeas corpus in criminal proceedings. He lectured me, in the mean and condescending tone that I knew all too well, on the history of the Great Writ.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Not at all. It was insufferable. I can still hear him spitting those words. How habeas corpus has been used by federal courts to review state convictions since Reconstruction, and how due process and the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights. He repeated that magnificent Oliver Wendell Holmes quote—I’m sure you recall the one, how the writ cuts through all forms to the very tissue of the structure—and footnoted his entire miserable, rambling document with absurd references to Ex Parte Bollman, and liberally quoted Brennan from Fay v. Noia, and sprinkled the whole thing with bits of Title 28 section 2241, as if the U.S Code was the Koran he worshipped in his cell.”

  Rodney gritted his teeth.

  “Forgive me for going on at such length—it still makes my blood boil. I am a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, only the second African-American to ever hold that title, and yet my felony-convicted brother wants to lecture me on the functioning of law? My criminal sibling, who has never had any respect for anything, who drove my mother to an early grave, and who will spend the rest of his life in prison because some convenience store cashier dared to swing her baseball bat at his thick head, and got herself shot dead, instead of just letting that drug addict slink out of her damn store with a week’s worth of her pay?

  “My brother thought it gravely unjust that I—personally—denied his appeal. Unjust because brotherhood is a bond that supposedly exceeds law. That was the real reasoning behind his inept legal rant. He said he was not asking me for freedom, but merely for additional access to the courts. He wanted me to cut through the procedural tape, to grant him one more chance to prove his point. But I don’t believe for one second that Marshall deserved a writ of habeas corpus on legal grounds. It does not matter that I sympathized with his suffering, and still long for his happiness.”

  Rodney sighed and finished his glass of wine. “And what do you think of that, Ms. Chin? Was I right? Was I just?”

  Cindy squeezed her lips together, suppressing a giggle. She shielded her mouth with her hand. Indeed it was strange and out of character for Rodney to ask her those questions about his personal behavior. No wonder she wanted to laugh.

  “My opinion is that you did the right thing, of course,” Cindy said. “You can’t respond to a personal appeal from a family member, and you had to pass that request onto Justice Van Cleve. But there’s a bigger question, too, whether his appeal had any merit on its own and deserved habeas. Now, obviously I don’t know the exact details of your brother’s case, or if there was some terrible procedural mistake in his trial, but I highly doubt it from what you’re saying. I know you would have been alert to a problem if there was a real one—that’s just the way you are. So, of course you did the right thing, Justice Sykes. You’re always fair. You’re always just.”

  “No, not always.”

  Rodney crossed his arms against his chest. He stopped himself from confessing that he hadn’t been fair to Stone. Cindy didn’t have to know about that. Why did he feel the urge to treat this young woman like a confessional priest?

  “Oh, the ties that bind us all. The ties we are born into and inherit and carry along with us. They are overwhelmingly stringent. But I will say, Ms. Chin, in spite of Marshall’s offense, in spite of everything he has done to himself and to others and to me, I cannot disown him. He remains my only living kin.”

  “Of course.”

  “I should visit my incarcerated brother more often. That is a fact. I should look in on Timothy’s grave more often, as well. His final resting place lies just over the Potomac at Arlington. I don’t make either journey nearly often enough. I’ve ignored them, selfishly, and that is never the right choice.”

  Cindy looked like she wanted to say something kind, but couldn’t think of any good excuse for him.

  “It’s sad, really. My two brothers
in their respective prisons. I know they are both stuck, and I often feel responsible for their fates. Perhaps I am responsible in some manner. Perhaps they judge me.”

  “Well, Timothy doesn’t judge anyone anymore.”

  Rodney smiled. “No, you’re right. Not Timothy.”

  An ambulance roared down Connecticut, the pitch of its siren rising and falling as it passed. An emergency. How remote that seemed—the suffering or death of the patient speeding by in that ambulance.

  “You know, this morning, when I found Stone lying sick on my floor, I spoke directly to him, using his name, as if my cat were a person. And I did it again, in the vet’s office. Twice I said his name, out loud, in a single day. I can’t recall ever doing that before, speaking directly to a cat.”

  Cindy cocked her head. “You never talked to your cats?”

  “Well, of course I said things to him. But I spoke with certain formalities, I should say.”

  She laughed. “That doesn’t exactly surprise me, Justice Sykes.”

  “Forgive me. I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

  He put down his glass. Finished. Done. He would allow himself no more mistakes. Rodney steered the conversation toward a safer subject: Cindy’s eye-opening year at the Court, her grueling schedule, what she thought of her work. They loosely discussed several cases on the docket, and then Rodney brought the conversation around to the incongruity that Cindy had discovered that morning in preparation for Bakerson, those two opposing rulings—his own from 1997 and Frankfurter’s from 1953—the question that had brought Cindy into his private chambers. He pushed back from the table and crossed his legs. How relieving it was to revert to their standard roles, the justice and his clerk, albeit in his dining room. Their intimate conversation had changed something, though. There was more humor between them, a more relaxed tone. When they had finished their meal, Rodney successfully fought off Cindy’s offer to wash his dishes. She hovered by the front door, coat in hand, purse dangling off her elbow. Softened by wine, scrambled by circumstance, Rodney touched his clerk on her shoulder and pulled her close for an embrace, but was careful to hug her with enough force and formality to guarantee it would be understood as a paternal gesture.

  “Ms. Chin, I appreciate this more than you can imagine.”

  “It’s okay!” Cindy patted him on the back, grinning widely. Her full smile exposed her upper gums. “I’m really glad I could help. I’m thrilled. And I am just so so sorry about your cat.”

  She backed out of his apartment, waving awkwardly, like a nervous child. Once she had turned toward the elevator, he closed the door. Alone in his foyer, Rodney imagined Stone as a corpse. Were cats at Dr. Vry’s incinerated, or carted away and buried? Either way, he would sleep alone in his apartment, without wife, child or pet, for the first time in 34 years. The fading alcohol in Rodney’s system made his temples pound and gave rise to faint nausea. Sadness slackened his muscles, and a slow stream of self-accusations flowed through his mind. Why had he not visited Timothy’s grave? He could have taken the Metro across the Potomac River on any warm spring day and laid some flowers before his white tombstone. It would have been nothing more than a two-hour excursion. And Marshall in prison? It was so easy to drive up into Marin County over the summer. Pleasant, even. Why hadn’t he cleaned the cat litter, or scrubbed the bowl, or made sure the poor thing in its last weeks of life was properly fed? Perhaps such unhygienic conditions had contributed to Stone’s illness. And why hadn’t he allowed Stone outside his apartment at least once in his life? It was not right to deny an animal an experience of the natural world.

  He had been forthcoming and honest with Cindy Chin tonight. Remarkable. Or perhaps it was remarkable that Rodney had never spoken so freely about Marshall or Timothy with either of his children, or with Rebecca, for that matter. Not once in his life, and now it was too late.

  He could call Cassandra. It had been three full months. Shameful, shameful. Would Cassandra have sought solace from an older man’s bed, from Emmanuel Arroyo’s bed, if Rodney had communicated with her as openly as he had with Cindy Chin? But he couldn’t call his daughter now. He was drunk and dizzy: the Italian Court rug on his foyer floor seemed to gradually tip to his left, realign itself in a sharp blink, and begin tipping again. And Cassandra was so wildly angry, so reckless and venomous in what she said and how she said it, lashing out at Rodney since Rebecca’s death, as if he himself had driven the truck that had killed her mother! And when she wasn’t expressly furious, then she was remote. Did other daughters call their fathers by their first names, as Cassandra did? He could never be forthcoming with Cassandra. Because she did judge him; she was not at all positively predisposed. And yet when Rodney closed his eyes, he saw Cassandra, laughing at some joke, his beloved little girl, and he heard himself asking all the eager questions he longed to pose, questions that had never before occurred to him to ask her, but now seemed imperative: Why are you furious at me? And what do you know about your mother? I know she felt distant from me by the end, but did she ever complain directly, or say that I had failed her? Was I really so terrible a husband? So awful a father? Did I impede or limit you? Did I ignore any of your needs? What can I do about it now? Will you ever forgive me? Tell me, Cassandra, please: Was I just?

  2

  WHAT WOULD BRANDEIS DO?

  Whenever Senator Lionel Mahoney dropped by Gideon Rosen’s chambers, Justice Rosen got chatty and twitchy. Today he squirmed in his stiff wingback chair, longing to stride around the room as he described the opinion he was drafting, how it would forever change the standing of third-party lawsuits filed against telecommunication conglomerates. No matter that he thought Deniston v. Globalsmart was an unimportant case, a bland consensus, and that his opinion was poorly written. Gideon felt an urge to twist and magnify it; he wanted to heighten its significance to impress his old friend.

  Senator Mahoney slouched on Gideon’s low black sofa, his shoes resting on monographs from National Gallery exhibitions stacked on the coffee table. The senator’s shock of white hair matched in color and brightness the sea foam and taut sails on the racing yachts in the painting behind him. The wrinkles on the senator’s face were deep and grooved, and though his once-firm cheeks had slackened into saddlebags, aging had only slightly diminished his movie-star good looks. It was easy to imagine Mahoney’s spry hazel eyes, speckled green like opals, settling lasciviously on a young woman, erasing the tired face around them. But so what? So Lionel was good looking—why should that irritate Gideon? Justice Rosen had no need to womanize, no need for superficial conquests, and there was nothing about Mahoney’s professional life to envy. The senator’s serial philandering with statuesque models and actresses had been exposed by an intrepid New York Times reporter in the mid-1980s, which prevented him from cake-walking his way into the Democratic nomination and the White House. Lionel was just another casualty in a long list of frustrated presidential candidates, taken down by greed or lust. What was so enviable about that?

  “Al-Tounsi might be moribund,” the Senator said, as he crunched an almond from a nearby bowl, “but that’s not dead.”

  “We voted and it’s buried.”

  “Ah, but you don’t know what I know.”

  The Justice tucked his hands beneath his thighs and balled them into fists, like an overexcited kid trying to contain his enthusiasm. Even the slimmest chance that Al-Tounsi could be revived made Gideon want to grab the senator by his lapels and shake the pertinent information out of him. But Lionel, taking his time now, popped a second almond into his mouth and crushed it with his back molars.

  “Good nuts.” The senator held up another. “Though I can’t say they hold a candle to bacon.” Mahoney ran his tongue around his teeth and inspected his tie for wayward bits. “Got a Health and Education Committee meeting coming up at ten, and the only nuts I want on me are my very own precious.”

  Gideon suppressed his desire to scream.

  “See, that’s the thing about electoral politics. Wer
e I to show up on the hill with my tie all dirty, it would have political consequences. Newspaper articles. Snide comments.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I have got to say, Justice, that’s what I envy most about your job. Lifelong tenure. It’s like diplomatic immunity.” Mahoney panned his gaze back and forth across the room, as if he needed time to take in its splendor. “I cannot believe the laid-back atmosphere of your chambers here. This kind of ease is not possible in Dirksen. I’ve got interruptions from here to tomorrow—staff lawyers, advisers, interns. Fucking constituents phoning me every ten minutes to voice their petty complaints about cuts to some neighborhood pig roast. And you would not believe the non-stop train of lobbyists.” Mahoney chuckled. “Solitude, real solitude, here in Washington? I don’t think there’s a room in this city matching yours.”