Amandine shook her hand.
Then came “Lindsey-Stella-Dominique,” or “LSD” for short.
Question twelve (Larry): “So, as you’ve probably read in today’s Herald, we represent an inmate in Alabama, who is due to be executed through nitrogen hypoxia, which is basically suffocation through nitrogen gas. Yesterday, Chief Justice Cathay released two opinions. The first holds that the Constitution ‘does not guarantee a painless life, nor does it guarantee a painless death. One can experience both liberty and happiness while miserable and in a lot of pain.’ The second opinion holds that ‘it is not cruel and unusual punishment for a state to apply the death penalty to crimes other than murder, which crimes, as a matter of public policy, the state must deter, given realities to which only its citizens are subject.’ Imagine you are giving the news to our client in person. What would you say?”
“Well,” LSD said, “I would say that this is about capture. Our courts have been captured by corporate interests. Our legislature has also been captured and so have our public goods. There is only one response to capture: changing the system from within. It’s only when people like you and me work to ensure through the proper channels, like whom we elect, that people like Chief Justice Cathay are never confirmed to the Court that we end capture. So, it’s about capture, and it’s about overcoming that capture by electing people who are clean. As to what I would say to our client, I would deliver the news as matter-of-factly as I could, I would break down what those opinions meant for him, and I would apologize that this was happening to him. Then I would just listen and be present for our client as he took it all in because the news would change his life forever.”
Amandine nodded.
Larry, I knew, hated the response, as did Andy, because of whom we represented, and so did Hannah, who still admired Chief Justice Cathay, but they all appreciated LSD’s response for its thoughtfulness and the fact that it was unapologetic. In many ways, LSD would be in the minority at the firm, but she’d answered a question about a case close to Larry’s heart, whose result he rejected vehemently.
Question thirteen (Hannah): “Your client is highly controversial and unpopular. Several people at your firm have received death threats on office phones and e-mail for representing that client. What do you do when you receive death threats?”
LSD smiled and, not skipping a beat, said, “Work my ass off for my client and look forward to my bonus.”
Question fourteen (Andy): “What do you do for fun?”
If you’d survived the thirteen questions, this question was merely a formality because there were associates who’d said that they went to nude beaches and to strip clubs, and there had even been an equity partner who’d admitted that he’d gone “abroad” to “make friends with the fine broads over there who’re a little needy in these times.” They all received offers.
Larry shook LSD’s hand.
10
Mom, Why Do You Abuse Me?
It’s funny what comes to mind when your kids are young: Do I have a favorite child? Would I ever admit it?
I did have a favorite.
So did Mauru.
It might sound corny and all, but Mauru and I were each other’s favorites. We adored each other for giving each other the life we had, for having these kids, these crazy families, and these friends.
We promised never to admit it to anyone, but we were devoted to each other more than we were to our kids. If pressed, we’d always say the kids came first, and they did in practice, but we were the best things that had happened to each other.
Anna, Mauru’s mom, picked up on it.
“If you two weren’t such good parents,” she said, “I would’ve said you should have just remained childless because you’re infatuated like teenagers.”
“Infatuated?” I protested. “Me? No. I’ve never been infatuated with anyone. That’d be, well . . . desperate. I’m, I’m not, um, desperate, Anna. No. No.”
“Sure, you aren’t.” Anna rolled her eyes.
As much as I adored Mauru, there was something unnerving about seeing him in a child. Jon, even at seven, had a habit of picking his nose when he thought no one was looking, just like Mauru. Then he’d examine the booger, smell it, taste it, walk outside, and flick it. It was the most disgusting thing, and it drove me nuts, especially when Jon picked up on his dad’s habit of wanting to hug me after he’d picked his nose.
Jon could also be as introverted as his dad, and he sometimes sat with a book beside his dad, who was reading his own book, usually a biography or history of someplace or other. An hour or so later, they’d both be asleep on the couch. It was like two old souls talking to each other in the silence and then falling asleep beside each other as they traveled to the past they once shared in some other lifetime.
Jon picked up the word “abuse” from Mauru, who was talking about a student he taught at St. Martin de Porres, who’d been “abused by his parents.” His parents also hadn’t followed through on promises they’d made to him and to the school, all of which required that the California Department of Social Services and the police be called in.
Mauru and I never hit our kids, and we never yelled at them; what had been done to us we wouldn’t do to our kids. There were time-outs, being sent to the room, no games, no TV, and so on, but never anything that might break a child’s spirit.
Jon, a bit of a troublemaker, walked up to me one evening and said, “Mom, why do you abuse me?”
I stared at Jon and didn’t know what to say. I felt a pang of anxiety and wanted to walk away. I was also unhappy with what the twins were doing to my lovely, smooth skin: more and more stretch marks from the pregnancy. I’d had what my OB-GYN playfully called “a bout of the hemorrhoids,” which was no fun: itching and bleeding. Do kids realize what havoc they wreak on their moms’ bodies? I was glad I only had about a month to go before the twins were born.
“Ab-abuse you? Who’s abusing you, baby? Abuse you, Jon?”
“You,” he said. “You promised to call Nonna and Nonno, but you abused me and didn’t call them.”
Mauru laughed from our bedroom, where he was putting Nate to bed.
“Um, well, Jon,” I said. “That’s not abuse.”
“So, what’s abuse, Mom?”
“What I did is not abuse because it’s, um, just, just, um, overlooking something.”
As I said the word “overlooking,” I found myself using my hands to make a gesture suggesting there was a barrier in front of me and my hands were going beyond it.
“So, you see,” I continued, “when you don’t call Nonno and Nonna, it’s just overlooking, which is another way of saying ‘forgetting.’ We all forget, right, Jon-Jon?”
He nodded.
“So, that’s not abuse. Mom’s not abusing anyone. Abuse is when someone does something mean to someone else, and that person has to deal with the bad way they were treated. Abuse means someone’s mean. Do you think Mom’s being mean?”
He nodded, and my jaw dropped.
“Last time,” he said, “you promised to take me and Nate to Grandma G. and Grandpa D., and then you forgot.”
“OK,” I said, “I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry I made a promise to you I didn’t keep, Jon-Jon—”
“To me and Nate,” he said. “You made the promise to me and Nate, Mom.”
“Let’s go to the room, and I’ll apologize to you and Nate together, Jon-Jon.”
Mauru was on the verge of more laughter, which I didn’t find funny. Nate was just about falling asleep.
“Jon and Nate,” I whispered, “Mom loves you both very much. Mom’s very sorry for making a promise she couldn’t keep. Do you forgive Mom?”
Jon nodded, and he gave me a hug. Mauru joined us.
“I love you, buddy,” Mauru said. “Wanna call Nonno and Nonna?”
Soon, we had Mauru’s parents on the app on the TV screen, and Jon ran around the living room doing his version of cartwheels. He also danced and smiled when he saw his grandpa
rents. Anna and Giulio laughed, and Mauru had to grab Jon and ask him to talk to his grandparents.
“When are you coming to visit?” Jon asked. “Mom’s been abusing me and Nate.”
Mauru explained what had happened, and I dropped my head in embarrassment as they all laughed, and Anna told Jon that it wasn’t abuse, darling. It was just “parenthood.”
“Thank you.” I smiled at Anna. “It’s his new word, and he’s been trying it out on me.”
“We’re thinking of coming down next weekend,” Giulio said.
Mauru and I had three bedrooms in our condo. Nate sometimes slept with us while Jon slept in the room he shared with Nate. The other bedroom was a guest bedroom that Elisa used when she visited.
I still have photos of Mauru’s parents’ visit.
They arrived on a Friday evening in late June 2037, and they woke their grandkids. Nate cried until he fell asleep again, and Jon was so happy to see his grandparents that he only fell asleep about three hours later like he was high on candy or something.
For Jon and Nate, Anna and Giulio brought teddy bears and books about wildlife. They brought me a bouquet of roses, a gift card for a spa treatment, and a huge box of chocolate.
Giulio, Mauru’s dad, also brought a very large world map on which he’d circled Italy with a red marker so that his grandkids never forgot where they came from. Jon asked if we could put the map up in the bedroom he shared with Nate. Mauru and I immediately put the map up in the boys’ room just above their beds. There was no way I was going to be told I was abusing my children again by forgetting to do something. Can you imagine if Jon had said that in public?
First thing the next morning, we had “the Virdis breakfast”: lots of hot coffee with milk and piles of ricotta donuts with a large bowl of crispy pan-fried prosciutto crisps on the side. It was the only thing Mauru ate for breakfast when his parents came over, and I loved the donuts with prosciutto crisps on the top. When asked if this was a Sardinian breakfast, they all looked at each other and said in unison, “Of course. Yes.” Then Giulio proceeded to feed Jon and Nate their “Italian heritage because we gave the world so much, and no one recognizes it.”
“Well,” Anna said, “who would like to go pick some strawberries? You know, Jan, we haven’t seen your parents in a while. When was the last time we saw them, Giulio?”
“Nate’s birth four years ago. I think that was it,” Giulio responded.
Mauru nodded.
“How about they join us?” Anna said.
“I’m not sure there’ll be any strawberries, Mom, given the drought,” Mauru said. “Well.” He paused. “You never know, so there could be.”
“The drought,” Anna said, “may not last that long. They said there might be some rain this year, so—”
“Let’s call and ask,” Giulio said.
The man on the opposite end of the line laughed as I asked if the drought had closed them.
“Ever heard of a greenhouse and irrigation, Miss?” he asked. “Our water is recycled, and we pay strict attention to the conservation measures in place, especially as they relate to farming. But, seriously, the only thing the drought has affected is my mood. I’m tired of hearing of dust storms, sandstorms, and all that crap. I’m also tired of seeing these . . .”
He faded, almost like he was talking to himself as a means of comforting himself.
“Anyway,” the man said clearly. “We’re open.” He ended the call.
A quick drive from Rancho San Antonio to Carlsbad can take about fifty minutes in light traffic and much longer in heavier traffic. Mom and Anna had us stop along the way to buy some stuff. Mauru, Nate, and I were in one car, my parents and Jon in another, and Mauru’s parents and my friend Maria Sanchez and her daughter, Sacha, were in another.
Maria worked as a nurse at Golden State Children’s Hospital. She was still getting over finding her husband, Alexander, a veteran, dead in their bathroom from an overdose.
Alexander had left the military and couldn’t find a job in his chosen profession as an electrician because his PTSD affected his ability to work. He tried everything to get a job: cold calls, interning, job fairs, networking, volunteering, and he’d even worked for Dad in his immigration practice here in San Diego, first as a secretary and then as a bookkeeper, which Alexander wasn’t cut out for and didn’t like, as much as he tried to hide it.
Dad said Alexander startled easily, and he sometimes looked disoriented. Then Alexander stopped showing up for work, and Dad tried to get him help. Dad even asked Alexander if he’d be interested in talking with someone, but Alexander refused. He was ashamed, he said, that he was “weak and dependent.”
Maria gave birth to Sacha, and only a few weeks later, she found Alexander dead from an overdose when she got home after running errands.
Sacha reminded Maria so much of Alexander that after the funeral, Maria couldn’t be around her. Maria also refused to eat, to take care of herself, and she threatened to hurt herself. She spent so much time at the cemetery trying to get an answer from Alexander that she slowly lost her grip on reality.
Her parents moved to San Diego from Mexico City. Maria finally agreed to get help. She started therapy and was put on antidepressants. She eventually started meditating, and she joined a group focused on bereavement. Those changes made all the difference, she said, and they probably saved her life and Sacha’s.
It was only now that she felt able to be around Mauru because it had been too painful to see others with their husbands when hers had taken his own life as a result of his struggle with mental illness.
That was just over two years before we went to Strawberries Forever.
We arrived at Strawberries Forever in Carlsbad, and Mom and Anna both took out their large canvas shopping bags. I kept away from those bags because a woman risks looking like a bag lady if she moves around with too many things dangling off her arms.
We were the first to arrive and the first to meet Raymond, the man I’d talked to on the phone. He was pudgy and wore a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and slippers. He greeted us with a loud but indifferent “Welcome,” lengthening the “come” so that it sounded humorous, which made Anna and Giulio chuckle. We paid for the entry, and Raymond looked at the kids and me and said, “Lots of children today. More on the way, too.”
Then Raymond proceeded, unprompted, to tell us at the ticket booth that he couldn’t “do any other job on the planet” because he loved to chat. Talking was his therapy, you know, and he’d once tried a silent retreat at a monastery near Mount Shasta when he was “young and foolish,” but he found that silence made him “dumb and dumber,” so he broke the vow of silence each day and sat at the front desk with the secretary, giving her relationship advice. Then he had this epiphany, like in the movies, you know. Well, if she could sit at a desk all day and get paid, why wasn’t he? So, he moved to San Diego, and lucky for him, he ended up dating Richard, the owner of Strawberries Forever, “and the rest is very good history.”
“What a character,” Anna said.
“You can say that again,” Mom said. “You’ve got to be careful around those types.”
“Oh, Gazelle,” Anna said. “Storm in a teacup. A guy like Raymond is harmless.”
“That’s what they’d like you to believe,” Mom said. “But nobody is completely harmless, Anna. Nobody. We have a pastor I’ve told you and Giulio about, a certain ‘Jim’ I call ‘President Jim.’ He believes he can be glib and get away with it. Everyone thinks he’s harmless, but he’s the biggest sinner in the state. Uh-huh.”
“Oh?” Anna said as she adjusted the bag she was carrying.
“I got myself a private investigator, and he told me that President Jim has a lover or two,” Mom said.
Mauru and I looked at each other. My mom and dad didn’t yet know that Anna and Giulio were swingers. It wasn’t our news to deliver, so we hadn’t said a thing. And why was Mom spending Dad’s money on private investigators?
“Quick tour,” Raymond s
aid as we entered the vast greenhouse, where they grew the strawberries. “One-minute introduction to our farm, folks. As you can see, we use drip irrigation and micro-sprinklers for the strawberries. ‘Drip irrigation’ is precisely what it sounds like, and ‘micro-sprinklers’ are exactly what they sound like. You won’t get wet while picking because you just won’t get wet. Enjoy, and please pick what you need without pulling up the entire plant. Last week we had some people here from North County. They thought I wasn’t watching, so they pulled up entire plants to take home. Well, I’m like ConfiPrice. Even first-time offenders who didn’t mean to do it go directly to jail.”
“He’s a trip,” Giulio said. “Straight out of central casting.”
Maria and Anna chatted for a while, and Anna slipped into her role as a psychologist. She often did. When meeting strangers for the first time, she often asked them questions, which to anyone else might seem a little personal, but which made perfect sense to Anna in the context of the conversation. Then she proceeded to offer advice.
“Remember to attend to your own needs. They’re just as important as your child’s, which will come first for a time, but not forever.”
“No one will admit this, but a child is a burden whose development you must choose to enjoy. Don’t expect anything in return or you’ll be crushed.”
“Never lie to a child about what you’re feeling or how you’re doing because she will grow to lie to herself about everything.”
Mom loved hearing Anna give advice, and she nodded as Anna spoke.
“Something my late mother told me,” Mom said to Maria, “is that a woman’s life begins and ends with herself, not with a man’s choices. You went through the worst thing a wife can go through, Maria. The worst thing. Your husband, may he be with God and the angels, had a very difficult life, and he suffered in ways we probably will never know. We must keep him in our prayers, honor the best memories we have of him, love and adore the child he gave us, and remember that his final choice had nothing to do with you or your child; it had to do with him. You begin and end with you. You, Sacha, and your family are always welcome in our home. Always. And I really mean that because you’re not glib.”
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