Family Law

by Gin Phillips

  She had to stop for a breath.

  “People can be nasty,” Lucia said.

  “Nasty and fragile,” agreed Sheila.

  Lucia thought of Earl Conway. He pulled me aside when he came to pick up the kids, Sara Conway had said, smiling on the other side of Lucia’s desk, and he asked me why I picked such a bitch of a lawyer. She said it as if it were the sort of comment that Lucia would chuckle over.

  She thought of Garrison Langley. Amenable.

  She thought of Judge Musgrove. Just to see your sweet ass walk out the door.

  Judge Simmons, telling her to come see him in his chambers, the walls decorated with one picture of Jesus Christ and one picture of George Wallace in matching frames. I want to tell you that short skirt makes my blood boil.

  Ben Stallworth, a lawyer. You’d win more cases with lower-cut blouses.

  Judge Stone, who refused to let her appear in his courtroom because he didn’t think feminine ears could handle the coarse details of a paternity case.

  Judge Mathison, who slapped her on the butt.

  Tim Blankenship, a lawyer, who slapped her on the butt.

  Louis Carlson, a lawyer, who slapped her on the butt.

  Janet Carlson, Louis’s wife, who showed up at Lucia’s front door, pushing past Evan, calling Louis’s name, as if Lucia would ever touch the man. As if she would have some illicit affair with her own husband standing right in the den. He has trouble saying no sometimes, the wife had said, as if Lucia would have coerced him into sex.

  That wife whose name she couldn’t remember, the one who had called her at the office about yet another husband, saying, I know you’ve had drinks with him, as if half a dozen other lawyers hadn’t been at the table, too. If men were fragile, women weren’t much better.

  “Everyone is just flapping and squawking,” Sheila said. “Terrified.”

  Lucia could only meet the woman’s eyes by crooking her head back. The angle showed her a square jaw, a creased neck, and the underside of wide, flattened breasts. She looked like some pagan statue, rough carved.

  Sheila tossed another smattering of crumbs. Then another. Eventually her hands were empty, and she slapped them against her pants. A duck ambled up the incline toward her, and she kicked at it, stopping short of making contact.

  “No more for tonight,” she said.

  She told the ducks good-bye. She told Lucia good-bye. Before she had even disappeared behind a wall of broad leaves, the ducks had drifted away. Lucia stuffed her paper napkin into her empty glass. She had spilled crumbs on the chair, and she was brushing them off when she felt someone standing over her.

  She saw his shoes first. Black leather, not too shiny. She recognized him immediately, and she thought of bread crumbs. Had she led him to her, somehow? Laid out some invisible path? He nodded to the empty seat next to her. No, not a nod. A tilt of his head. He looked even taller than he had from across the lobby.

  “Would you mind?” he asked. “Or were you leaving?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  He sat down, his feet extending nearly into the water. His jaw was dark with stubble, and he wore no rings on his fingers.

  “Jake,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Lucia,” she answered, offering hers.

  He jerked his head toward the turquoise stream. “Was that woman kicking ducks?”

  She laughed and leaned toward him.

  Rachel

  I.

  Before our biology quiz on the skeletal system, the boys in the back corner sang a song:

  Open up her mandible

  Or down on her patellas

  Doesn’t know which way she wants it

  So you have to tell her.

  They drummed their hands on the edge of the lab table, keeping the beat, saying the same lines over and over until Mrs. Hughes finally walked into the room, sipping her coffee.

  It was a catchy tune. People were laughing. Girls were laughing. Not all but some. I kept both palms on my lab table, fingers spread like when you make turkeys from your handprint. Next to me, Nancy Mann tugged her banana clip loose from her long blond hair.

  I wondered, do you really have to tell her which way she wants it?

  I felt like I understood sex. We had HBO at home. And yet if I were doing it for the first time, might I appreciate some guy’s advice? I might. But that wasn’t what Tyler and Kevin and Craig meant, and I knew it. What did they imagine when they sang that song? What girl did they see, or did they see any girl at all?

  “Pencil and paper,” called out Mrs. Hughes, her slip hanging below her skirt. “Notes and books put away.”

  Craig Lewis had a belly like a grown man.

  Tyler and Kevin had thrown up in the same umbrella stand at Tina’s house.

  Here is another thing I wondered: how were you supposed to know what you wanted?

  II.

  Mom and I sat on the couch. We’d picked up baked potatoes and chocolate chip milk shakes at Rax, and the wrappers were strewn across the sofa. We’d gotten into a routine lately, where we brought home fast food most nights and ate on the couch. Or really, I ate, and she used her French fries to draw designs in her ketchup.

  I could smell melted cheese and nail polish. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t.

  “I still don’t know why you can’t just go in the bathroom to paint them,” I said for the second time.

  “I didn’t want to miss the show,” she said, forking a bite of cold potato and then setting it down. The bottle of pink polish was balanced on the arm of the sofa.

  “You had plenty of time,” I said.

  “Shhh,” she said as the commercial ended, and we watched Jennifer Hart walk into her living room, smiling at the sound of jazz.

  I moved my milk shake from between my knees and made myself more comfortable. Jonathan Hart was in a band, and it looked to me like Robert Wagner was actually playing the trumpet. Between songs, Jonathan was chatting with a friend who was a piano player, and since I’d never seen that particular friend before, he was destined to either get murdered or be accused of murder.

  “I don’t trust him,” Mom said.

  “You should trust him,” I said. “He’s Jonathan’s friend. He’ll be innocent.”

  The phone rang, and Mom waved a hand at me. It seemed easier to answer the phone than to argue with her. Most likely it was my grandmother or aunt or one of Mom’s friends. My own friends knew not to call me during Hart to Hart.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “May I speak to Rachel?”

  It was a boy’s voice, unfamiliar.

  “This is she,” I said, winding the coils of the phone cord through my fingers.

  “This is John. I asked Tina for your number.”

  I let the phone cord spring free. I hadn’t talked to John since the party, which had been weeks ago. For a couple of nights I’d thought he might call, but I’d stopped waiting.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Do you think that when people say caterpillars are poisonous—”

  “Caterpillars can be poisonous?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Nobody ever told you that? Everybody keeps telling me. We found this white fuzzy one in our window box, and so we put him in a jar—did you know my mom used to be a biology teacher?—but now guys keep telling me that the white ones are poisonous.”

  I appreciated that, so far, there had not been any awkward pauses. I wondered if he’d brainstormed before he called.

  “What does your mom say?” I asked.

  “She says as long as I don’t eat him, I should be fine.”

  I kept an eye on the television. The beautiful heiress had a thin-lipped secretary, and there was something disturbing about her ey
es.

  “But you still seem worried,” I told John. “Exactly what are your plans for this caterpillar?”

  He laughed. I wondered why he hadn’t called me earlier. Had he wanted to wait so I wouldn’t think he was too interested? Had he been unsure whether or not he wanted to call? Did he ask his friends first?

  “Do you think if I had, say, licked the caterpillar—just a little—the poison would still kick in?” he asked. It took me a second to be sure he was joking.

  Mom had collected our wrappers and balled them up on the coffee table. She tucked her nightgown over her knees. I wished I could tell what the creepy secretary was saying—it was her hair, I realized, that was the warning signal. Usually ladies with long gray hair were psychopaths.

  “So is it cocooned yet?” I asked John.

  “Yeah. It’ll probably be some boring kind of moth, but it’s kind of exciting to wait for him to come out. I hope it’ll be tomorrow.”

  I wondered if this was going to be an invitation.

  “You’d like it,” he said. “It’s pretty cool.”

  “It sounds cool.”

  I still wondered if this was going to be an invitation.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  All right. Did he want me to invite myself over? Was I supposed to act more enthusiastic about the moth? I hated the phone. It was all words and silence and wondering, and was it any clearer, really, when we were off the phone? This wasn’t talking—this was mind reading. It wasn’t John’s fault. It was the same with everyone. There was no telling what another person was really thinking, and that was one reason I’d taken a break from parties. The wondering sucked up too much energy.

  “So what are you doing?” he asked.

  “Watching Hart to Hart,” I said, as Jennifer discovered a dead body in the closet. She called for Jonathan just like she always did when she found a dead body in a closet.

  “I’ve never seen it,” he said.

  “Really?”

  Mom was finally peering at me, her face asking a question. I put my hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Homework,” I whispered to her.

  “You’re missing it,” she whispered back.

  I switched directions, twirling the cord. I pulled my foot loose from a sticky spot on the kitchen floor.

  “So next weekend,” John said, “I think we’re going out to my cousin’s farm just for, like, a bonfire with some hotdogs and stuff. They’ve got four-wheelers. Have you ever ridden one?”

  “Once,” I said. “I wasn’t that good at it. What about you?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty fun when I don’t nearly kill myself. There are these trails through the woods—”

  He kept talking.

  It’s too dark to tell which way he went, said Jonathan.

  What are you going to tell Lieutenant Claire? asked Jennifer.

  “My hair actually skimmed the grass,” said John. “And it’s not like my hair is long.”

  “Right,” I said.

  I liked him. I could almost conjure up the giddiness I felt when his knee first landed against mine. I could imagine this bonfire he was talking about, and—assuming he was actually going to invite me—I could see myself being excited about it. I’d tell Tina and Nancy and whoever else, and I’d probably wear my purple boatneck top and my black jeans, and he’d pick me up and maybe it would be really fun—I could picture that—and maybe we would kiss again, and maybe we would fall in love. Maybe we would go out together every weekend, and he would be my date for every dance, and we would sneak snacks into the movies together and his parents would go out of town and I would spend the night with him.

  But—come on—chances were that we would sit at that bonfire, and I’d wish for him to hold my hand but he wouldn’t or I would reach for his hand and I’d wonder if he was only being polite when he let me hold it, and he’d ask me if I wanted to go to an actual bowling alley and I would wonder if he really wanted to go bowling or if he just thought I did, and, crap, I’d have to introduce him to Mom, and maybe on the second date or maybe on the fiftieth, we would be tired of each other and I would be standing right here in this exact spot, trying to find the words to break up with him or listening to him break up with me, and we would both feel terrible, and all of it seemed so pointless.

  I watched Mom stretch across the sofa, taking over my spot, propping her feet on the wooden arm next to her nail polish. On screen, Jonathan wondered about the inscription on a gold cigarette case.

  “I think it’s the stars,” John said, and I had lost him entirely. “Rachel? You there?”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “The stars are the best, I was saying.”

  “Right,” I said. “Definitely.”

  “So. What do you think?”

  “What do I think—?”

  There was a quick wet sound, like either he’d taken a drink of something or licked his lips.

  “I get the feeling you’re busy,” he said.

  Too much work. This was too much work, and I wanted things to be easier.

  “It’s a new episode,” I said.

  I could hear his footsteps, or at least I assumed they were his. I wondered if he was pacing around his kitchen, too. For the first time, I could hear us breathing, gusts of air from both sides of the phone. I did not fill the silence.

  “Well, I can tell you’re wanting to watch your show,” he said. “I’ll let you go.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for calling.”

  I hung up just as tires squealed on the television and Jonathan joined in the car chase.

  “He is such a nice-looking man,” Mom said, scooting to make room for me. “Did you get the homework thing straightened out? Who was it anyway?”

  “Nancy,” I said. “It’s all fine.”

  “You comfortable?” she asked, offering me a pillow.

  “Yes,” I said, and it was true.

  III.

  If this was ancient Greece, where you had your choice of temples to offer up slaughtered animals to whatever god you wanted, Mom would bow at the Shrine of Kmart.

  We needed an ironing board. That’s what she told me when she dragged me out of bed at ten on a Saturday morning, and I had no idea why it mattered that our ironing board was ripped around the edges—we did not haul it out and show it to company—but there was no point in arguing. We went to Kmart. We examined all the ironing boards, and she picked one that looked just like all the others. It was on the top shelf, though, so we debated logistics until Mom handed me a couple of dollars to go buy myself an Icee while she found a stock boy to lift down the ironing board.

  I didn’t always give Mom enough credit: she rarely withheld beverages. When she deposited her paycheck every other Friday, she always let me buy a Slush Puppie at the mall, and I never loved her more than when I watched the pumps of green apple syrup splash against the bottom of the cup.

  Coke and cherry were the flavors of the day at Kmart, and I sipped at my swirl as I turned back toward the housewares section. As soon as the ironing board expedition was over, I planned to spend the rest of my day with Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’d fallen back into my old Pellucidar books, and if I was honest, I’d been spending a lot of time wishing for some sort of tunnel to the center of the Earth, where I would stalk through jungles with mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. What I liked about Burroughs’s fantasies was that he told them with confidence. You dug a deep hole. The hole led you to an undiscovered world underneath the earth’s crust. Done. Backstory finished by page five. It worked for me because I didn’t want to waste time mulling over the science of it: I just wanted to go there. I would be mostly naked, but with good weaponry. Sometimes I thought about how my eyes would be a problem—vision was important when spears were involved, and if I lost a contact—well, the fantasy started to disintegrate once I started thinking about sal
ine solution.

  “Rachel?” I heard.

  I turned, straw in my mouth. “Mr. Cleary?”

  He was angling his cart around a display of buy-one-get-one-free Brawny towels, and he stopped between two aisles. He had stacks of air freshener and Roach Motels in his cart, which made me think the inside of his house was probably not a pleasant place.

  “You here with your mom?” he asked, glancing around.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s trying to find someone to help her with an ironing board.”

  “You’re wearing more pants than you were the last time I saw you.”

  I slid a hand down my jeans and stared at my Icee. “Yeah.”

  “Wait,” Mr. Cleary said. “Your mom needs help with an ironing board?”

  He was wearing a blue T-shirt shirt and running shorts that showed more thigh than my shortest shorts. His face was tanned like he’d been to the beach. I thought of him as my parents’ age, but, under the store lights, it occurred to me that he wasn’t that old.

  “She thinks we can’t reach the shelf,” I said, scanning the front of the store to make sure that I hadn’t missed her. “But I could. She won’t let me because she thinks I’ll hurt my back.”

  “Lifting an ironing board?”

  “I know. It’s taking awhile. I thought she’d have been at the checkout line by now.”

  A woman with Crystal Gayle hair and two large-headed children pushed between us, interested in the paper towel sale.

  “Well, she probably wasn’t looking for just any stock boy,” Mr. Cleary said. “She needed a beefy one.”

  “No,” I said. “Just a man. Any size. Any age. Because men lift things and solve your problems and kill your bugs, and women make sandwiches and babies.”

  He stood there, silent. I assumed he was trying to decide if I was joking, and eventually he decided I was, because he laughed and rolled himself closer.

  “So you and your mother aren’t peas in a pod?”

  “We are not,” I said, although I thought of fast-food wrappers on sofa cushions.