The Ditto List

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Besides,” D.T. added finally. “The guy seemed awfully upset. I mean, at best we’ve got a trivial claim if he’s as rich as everyone says he is, but he’s taking it very seriously. So I think we should play him a little.” He smiled. “But of course Mrs. Preston is the boss. You talk to her and tell me what she thinks.”

  Rita Holloway nodded thoughtfully. D.T. waved for Russ to bring another round. When the drinks arrived Rita Holloway pushed hers away with a frown. “Have we covered all the rocks you’ve looked under, Miss Holloway?” D.T. asked when Russ had gone.

  “Yes.”

  “So. Did you find any hidden assets? Did Dr. Preston own half of downtown Phoenix back in 1964 and neglect to mention it at the time of their divorce? Have we stumbled onto a treasure trove, Miss Holloway?”

  Rita Holloway drummed her fingers on the table, so incensed at his levity she was oblivious to the grime. “Have I looked everywhere there is to look?” she asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  “What if I haven’t found anything?”

  “Then that about wraps it up.”

  “But …”

  “But what?”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Talk to people.”

  “What people?”

  “The doctors. The stock broker. I don’t know. Anyone.” The last word caused two heads at the bar to turn their way, though not for long.

  “You’re saying you didn’t find anything,” D.T. said quietly.

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I didn’t find one goddamned thing except some records that listed the little bitty house they lived in. That’s it. I had to put up with all those stuffy lazy bureaucrats who had so goddamned many other things to do other than help me and that’s all I came up with. Nothing.”

  She started to cry and hated herself because of it. D.T. could see her face reflected in the curved flank of his beer glass. It seemed to have broken into pieces. D.T. put his hand over the one of hers that wasn’t swiping at her eyes. “Hey. It’s all right. Come on. It’s all right.”

  “How can I face her, Mr. Jones? I practically promised her I’d do something.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t expect a miracle.”

  “But don’t you see? I wanted her to expect a miracle.”

  She cried again, but only briefly, then blew her nose and picked up her research papers and started to put them back in her briefcase. “Why don’t you take those over to my office so I can make a copy of them for me to keep.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? Something might come up.”

  D.T. remembered the copy machine was broken. “Better yet,” he amended, “wait here. There’s a copy service down the block. I’ll run the papers down there and get them started. By the time we finish our drinks they’ll be copied and you can pick up the originals and be on your way.”

  D.T. grabbed her briefcase and trotted out of the bar with it, leaving a protesting Rita Holloway and a quizzical Russ behind him. Luckily, the copy service wasn’t busy. Also luckily, their only competent employee was on duty. “Xerox down again?” he asked.

  D.T. didn’t have a Xerox, and what he had wasn’t down so much as underfinanced, but he didn’t say that. What he said was, “Rush.” Then he returned to the nurse in the bar.

  She looked at him disgustedly as he took his seat. “While you were gone your friend made a pass at me.”

  “Did you catch it?”

  “Of course not.”

  D.T. shrugged. “He likes to keep in shape during the off-season.”

  Rita Holloway started to counter, then paused, then spoke so softly he had to learn forward to hear. “Did I do everything that could be done, Mr. Jones?”

  D.T. nodded.

  “Will you please keep trying? Will you try to think of something that might work?”

  D.T. thought of his ex-wife and his daughter, and of what they seemed to think of him. “Okay. But don’t hold your breath. And don’t tell Esther Preston I’m about to be her savior, because it’s most likely not true.”

  Rita Holloway stood up and slid out of the booth. He told her where to go to get her papers and she thanked him as she shifted nervously about, unwilling to meet his eye. “I think somehow you’re going to find a way to help, Mr. Jones. Is that silly of me?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Well, I hope … I just hope, I guess.” She stuck out her hand and shook his when he grasped it, then turned and left.

  When she had vanished Russ came over to his booth. “New squeeze?”

  “Client.”

  “Yeah? Probably got a big itch down there, now she’s not getting it regular.”

  “She’s not that kind of client.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So excuse me all to hell. What’s the matter with you, anyhow? You been about as cheery as a Jesuit lately. You in hock to the book, or what?”

  “That. Other things. Who the hell knows?” Or cares, he almost added.

  “You got what they call the male menopause, D.T. I read about it in the Enquirer.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No. Really. Men get it too, just like the broads. Makes everything seem the shits for about two years.”

  “Then maybe that’s what I’ve got. Only I’ve had it since I was nineteen.”

  Russ chuckled. “So what you got going for you in the courts, D.T.? Class action, wrongful death, Arab divorce, any of that big bucks shit?” Russ picked up Rita Holloway’s glass and wiped the table beneath it, then drank its dregs.

  “I got nothing going for me in the courts at all, Russ. Nothing but a Ditto List as long as your arm.”

  “Ditto List? What’s that mean?”

  “That’s the thing about the Ditto List. It’s totally, wholly, and always meaningless.”

  D.T. pushed his way out of the booth and headed for the lot where he parked his car. Halfway there he detoured sharply and went back to his office.

  It was dark and cold, a catacomb that bore the bones of a thousand lifeless marriages. He turned on the desk lamp and walked to various corners of the room, extracting academic journals and advance sheets, looseleaf binders and law reviews, and took them to his desk. He read through them slowly, Family Law Quarterly and the Journal of Family Law, New Law Journal and Practical Lawyer, Law & Society Review and Current Legal Problems, even the Women Lawyers Journal, as well as more general periodicals that occasionally bore upon his specialty, getting up to date, absorbing the most recent developments in that déclassé branch of the law on which he perched as precariously as a dove on opening day of the season.

  He read for two hours, making notes, dictating file memos, applying what he read to his own Ditto List of active cases that he carried like a menu in his mind. “Evicting the Recalcitrant Spouse”; “Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law—The Case of Divorce”; “Nontraditional Lifestyles and the Law”; “Wifebeating: A Psycho-Legal Analysis”; “Psychology: Impediment or Aid in Child Custody Cases”; “Dilemma v. Paradox—Valuation of an Advanced Degree upon Dissolution of a Marriage”; “Compelling Disclosure of ‘Invisible Assets’ Upon Divorce”; and finally, “Domestic Relations Litigation—Attorney’s Fees,” a gift from the current issue of Trial. Part of the unending stream of theory, some helpful, much naive, that had accumulated over the six months or so since he had last done the exercise. He read till his head had apparently cracked open, till it all seemed absurd and useless, then drove home, exhausted.

  After changing clothes he fixed himself a drink and turned on the television. On the all-news channel a toothsome woman delivered the headlines and somehow managed to soothe him even as she read of riots and economic collapse. As she droned on he flipped through his mail and pulled forth a man’s magazine and turned to the centerfold and wondered what was to be learned from such a specimen, whether it was conceivable that she knew as much as her body and her pose impli
ed, whether such knowledge was a step toward perdition or salvation or merely a good time. Then he wondered why Michele had given him a subscription to such nonsense for his last birthday. To induce envy? Or regret? Or a longing for her own far-less-frightening physique?

  The all-news became all-sports. Fights from Atlantic City. Bums. D.T. had won his last fight wager, so he was laying off, not pressing his luck. He watched the white guy get beat bloody, then listened to the list of the weekend’s football games, calculated his bets, but decided to wait till later in the week to place them, when the spreads, he hoped, would lengthen. He flipped to a reprise of Barney Miller. Wojo dressed as a woman, a lure to muggers in the park. His first drink became his second. His doorbell rang twice before he stirred.

  She didn’t say a word, just shifted her bundle from one arm to the other and blinked at him uncertainly. “Hi, Mr. Jones. Remember me?”

  “Sure I do. How are you, Lucinda?”

  “Fine.”

  Her shyness grasped his heart and rubbed it. “Come in, come in,” he babbled.

  “You sure? I don’t want to disturb nothing.”

  “Nonsense. Everything in here needs disturbing.”

  She stepped inside and he closed the door. As she passed close to him he smelled a dusty odor that harkened memories he couldn’t quite identify. As she waited for him to join her she began to smile and to look from him to the package she cradled gingerly. “What’s in the quilt?” he asked absently, guiding her to the living room, his hand resting lightly on the soft pillar of her back.

  “My baby.”

  He stopped short. “Really? No kidding?”

  “No kidding.” Lucinda giggled and unwrapped her prize.

  It was round and red and wrinkled in odd places, fast asleep, awesome. D.T. remembered his first look at Heather, displayed for him by a nurse who held her as casually as a cucumber. His heart raced now as then.

  “He or she?” he asked.

  Lucinda sat on the couch, as familiar with his rooms as a lover. “She.”

  “Name?”

  “Krystle.” She spelled it. “I named her after Linda Evans. You know, on Dynasty? She’s the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “It’s a pretty name,” D.T. said. “And she’s a beautiful baby. Congratulations.”

  Lucinda showed a blush, as though she’d heisted rather than birthed the child. “Thanks.”

  “When was she born?”

  “Three weeks ago. She come early. I was getting real tired of being pregnant so I climbed up on a chair one night, and jumped off a few times, and the pains come later on that morning.”

  D.T. was amazed. “Well. How does it feel to be a mother?”

  “It feels just wonderful, Mr. Jones. At least it does when I’m not scared to death about it. Seems kind of cheating that men can’t feel this same way, you ever think of it that way?”

  He had, in fact, but had reached no firm conclusion, birth being as ambiguous as death. After he nodded he asked if everything had gone all right.

  “Well, everything went all right for me. But Krystle, she may have some kind of heart trouble the doctor says. It’s why I had to come up to the city, to see some specialist about it.”

  “Have you seen him yet?”

  “Yep. This afternoon.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He took a bunch of tests and said he had to wait till the results come back. Then he’ll call my doctor in Reedville. Then maybe they’ll get around to telling me. They had the poor thing all wired up.” Lucinda paused and looked down at the child. “Isn’t she just all red and perfect, Mr. Jones? Don’t seem possible there’s anything wrong inside there, does it? Don’t seem possible her heart could get broke so soon.”

  D.T. sighed. “I’m sure everything is fine, Lucinda. They can fix almost anything these days, if it isn’t.”

  As if to dispute him, the baby began to cry. “She’s hungry, poor thing.” Lucinda hesitated. “Would it bother you if I fed her, Mr. Jones? I mean, I can go if it would. I can’t stay long, anyway. I just wanted you to see the baby ’cause, well, I knew you was worried that one time.”

  “No, no. That would be fine,” D.T. said, eagerness heating him like a wind. “Go right ahead. Do you need anything?”

  “I got it all right here,” she said, laughing marvelously, perhaps to mock him, certainly not to tease.

  He watched her lift the hem of her blouse above her massive brassiere, unsnap a flap, and expose a nipple that was stretched to disturbing dimensions by its function. The baby reached for the tit eagerly, closed her eyes, soon sucked noiselessly. Lucinda wore an expression D.T. had seen only on someone in a spell.

  Fascination overcame his embarrassment and his yen. He continued to gaze upon the scene even when Lucinda opened her eyes and caught him. “It’ll only be a minute,” she said, reinserting the nipple as it popped away from the tiny mouth. “Sometimes I wish she’d keep at it longer. I think these things is about to bust.”

  D.T. was enraptured. Michele’s breasts had somehow malfunctioned, and Heather had been raised on bottles and formula and soy-based liquids out of cans. “What does that feel like?” he asked, compelled to say something.

  “I can’t explain, exactly. It’s just so … warm. Like when you get a puppy, maybe. And hold him and think he’s always going to be there and love you and do what you want him to.…” Lucinda’s voice trailed off. D.T. wondered what had happened to her puppy. The baby slipped from sustenance to sleep.

  “You know what I wonder, Mr. Jones?”

  “What?”

  “I wonder it tastes like. My milk, I mean.” She started to reach down and snap her flap, then looked at him. “Do you know?”

  He shook his head.

  “I thought maybe you’d had a taste when you had your baby.”

  “My wife’s milk didn’t come. Something went wrong.”

  “Oh.” She fumbled again with her clothes. “That’s real sad.”

  “How about you?” he said, the words as thin as his courage. “Do you want a taste?”

  She laughed. “They’re big but they ain’t that big.”

  “You could put some in a glass. Do you want me to get one?”

  “I … is it bad? To do that?”

  “How could it be?”

  “Well. Sure. It’s just, I been wondering, you know?”

  He went to the kitchen and took a goblet from the cupboard, the most delicate he had, and took it to her. She lowered her flap and grasped her breast with one hand while the other raised the glass to the bulging nipple. She squeezed once, and then again, and a thin white fluid leaked forth, accidentally it seemed, and dripped slowly into the glass, its droplets making the only sounds in the room beyond the baby’s peaceful wheeze.

  She squeezed thrice more, inspecting only her work. “I feel like a big old Guernsey,” she said after a minute, not looking at him.

  “Everybody needs milk,” he said inanely.

  When there was half an inch of nectar in the bottom of the glass Lucinda stopped milking herself and raised the goblet and inspected it. “Kind of funny-looking.”

  “Maybe you haven’t been eating enough grass.”

  She smiled and looked at him. “Are you sure it’s all right?”

  “Sure.”

  She tipped the glass and wet her lips, then licked them, then frowned. “What flavor?” he asked, his sense escaped.

  She took another swallow, then extended the glass to him.

  “No.” Their eyes locked.

  “Yes. I want you to.”

  “No, Lucinda.”

  “Please? It’s the only thing I got to give you.”

  He took the glass and closed his eyes and drank the smallest drop he could. Its taste barely stained his whirling mind. Mysterious. Chalky. Watery. Warm. Unearthly. “Thank you,” he said, and offered her the glass.

  She shook her head. “It ain’t good enough for seconds.”

  He took the gobl
et to the kitchen and started to rinse it out, then put it back in the cupboard instead, just in front of the cereal boxes, where he would see it every morning and monitor the evaporation of its contents into the very air he breathed. Then he went back to the living room.

  Lucinda had redressed her bosom and laid the baby on the couch, snug in its lively quilt. Like a wound, a dark stain spread across Lucinda’s blouse at the point over the nipple that had fed them all. “Can I get you something to eat? Or drink?” He looked for signs of shame and found none. He wondered what he showed himself.

  Lucinda shook her head. “I’m on a diet. I put on a bunch of weight while I was carrying and I got to get it off. Besides, I got to go. I just wanted to come by and thank you again for being so nice to me that night with Del.”

  “It was nothing. Forget about it.”

  “Well, I haven’t noticed many people in this town going out of their way to help someone. Not without wanting something back they shouldn’t have. You’re special to me, Mr. Jones. I wanted to tell it to your face.”

  D.T. fidgeted, not knowing what to do but thank her. Lucinda rewrapped her child and gathered it in her arms. “So how’s your love life, Mr. Jones?” she asked with a twinkle.

  D.T. laughed. “Occasional,” he said. “How’s yours?”

  Lucinda shook her head. “Pregnant women aren’t in heavy demand down in Reedville,” she said. “And besides, I think I’ll stay away from that stuff for a while. I had me an epee—”

  “Episiotomy,” D.T. offered.

  “Yeah. Right. How did you know?”

  “My ex-wife had one, too. She sat on a doughnut for a while.”

  “Well, I didn’t let them give me one of them,” Lucinda said, “but I don’t feel much like loving, either.”

  “Which reminds me,” D.T. said. “There’s a little problem in your divorce case.”

  Lucinda frowned. “What kind of problem?”

  “We haven’t been able to locate Del. Which means we haven’t been able to serve him with the petition, to get things started. There are other ways to do it, but because Del seemed so wild about the whole thing I wanted to try to serve him personally, to avoid any technical problems later on. You don’t happen to know where he’s living now, do you?”