Family Law

by Gin Phillips

  Her mother was holding her burned wrist toward the light, trying to see it around the nasturtiums.

  “I always kill the aloe,” she said.

  “You don’t need to water it every day, Mother,” Lucia said. “You overwater.”

  “Traffic’s cleared up some, don’t you think?” said Oliver behind them, shifting from loafer to loafer. “We’d better head on.”

  “Let me take those, Caroline,” Evan said, reaching for the flower arrangement. “I’ll carry them to the car for you, and Oliver can get the door.”

  Lucia watched as her mother handed over the arrangement. Even in the kind light, the illusion of youth didn’t hold. Caroline moved more slowly than she used to, and she was thicker around the waist. Underneath her topaz necklace, freckles covered her clavicles. Lucia remembered lying in her mother’s lap during a thousand sermons, her hair ribbon hanging against her mother’s stockings. She would pinch the ribbon between her fingers, a magnifying glass, and every peek through the loop captured some piece of her mother. Smooth, filed nails. Vaccination scar on her arm. The freckles across her throat, which Lucia had once been able to count. They were uncountable now. She had watched the dusting across her own throat darken and spread, and she knew they would cover her, too, one day.

  “Essie and Matthew are headed this way,” said Evan, vase tucked in the crease of his elbow.

  “I barely got to speak to them tonight,” Lucia said.

  “I’ll go with your parents,” Evan said, shifting his grip on the arrangement. “You stay here and chat. I’ll meet you at the car.”

  They exchanged a quick round of hugs, and Evan shepherded her parents away. Lucia watched the three of them head off at an angle—“up by the fire hydrant,” her father was saying, and she admired the width of her husband’s shoulders. Matthew and Essie Green stopped and congratulated her, and they had news of their son, who’d been accepted at Florida A&M. She saw how close the Greens stood to each other, no space between their arms, and she watched Essie straighten Matthew’s collar. Over their shoulders, she could still see Evan between her parents, his hand under her mother’s elbow as they stepped around a buckled bit of sidewalk.

  In the beginning, she had kept track of how often he touched her like that. She’d noticed every single brush of his hand against her back, every linking of his fingers through hers.

  After a while, the touches became uncountable. She felt him all the time.

  She had talked to clients before about the ebb and flow of marriage, but she had never really believed in it. She had seen clients inching toward a court date, claws extended, and then both of them would magically realize that they were still deeply in love with this person who they’d just claimed shouldn’t be allowed to see their own child unsupervised or ought to have mandatory drug testing, and every time she had secretly thought that those people were unbalanced. Still, she’d constructed a speech about how every marriage had low points and high points, and she’d warned plenty of clients that a low point wasn’t the same as an ending.

  She still thought people were crazy who reconciled after hiring lawyers and drawing up custody schedules and screaming threats over the phone at each other. There was a point at which you could not go backward.

  But maybe at times you could. And maybe it wasn’t even backward. Maybe it was an ebb and flow, and it all came together—not an exact science—and you had to trust that it would. It didn’t fully cohere, but there was her husband, disappearing into the darkness with her parents, likely still talking of traffic and green beans, and she kept watching the spot where she had last seen him.

  Matthew and Essie said good-bye, and Lucia turned toward Evan’s Datsun, which was at the far end of the lot, separated from the street only by the sidewalk and a narrow patch of grass and dandelions. Her shoes were cutting into her feet, so she paused, lifting one foot to run a finger under the edge of the strap.

  A car on the street pulled alongside her, and at first she thought it was parking in one of the parallel spots. She finished adjusting her shoe and headed down the sidewalk, and the car did not stop. It followed behind her, keeping pace. She could see the headlights and front fender from the corner of her eye, and she thought of bail hearings and rifles, and she thought that maybe her father was wiser than she had given him credit for. She thought, too, that if the shooter was in the car, she would very much like to see his face.

  The line of cars exiting had finally cleared out, and Evan hadn’t returned. The catering staff seemed to have vanished en masse. The car crept along next to her, still barely in her peripheral vision. There was no one else in sight. She stepped into the broad bright circle of a streetlight, and she slowed her pace, because surely the light was preferable to the shadows. Some small degree of protection. She skimmed her hand along her purse strap, acting as if she were adjusting the weight. She dipped her fingers past the open zipper, feeling the edge of her wallet. The cap of a pen. Her checkbook. She felt the curve of metal as a woman called out her name.

  “Lucia Gilbert,” the voice said. “I thought that was you.”

  Lucia turned, her hand still in her purse. She didn’t recognize the driver. The two-door car was in shadows, and the woman had leaned across the passenger seat to roll down the window. She was sprawled across the front seat awkwardly, and Lucia could only see long dark hair. Then the woman turned her head, and her perfect face caught the streetlights.

  Bo Derek cheeks.

  “Donna?” Lucia said, dropping her hand to her side.

  She hadn’t seen Donna Lambert since she’d told her to find a new lawyer. It was strange that her former client would stop to say hello on a downtown street after dark. They hadn’t parted on friendly terms. But no, that was not what was happening. The look on Donna’s face was not friendly.

  “Are you going to do it?” Donna asked, faint lines creased between her symmetrical eyebrows. She had one hand on the window frame. The angle of her neck looked uncomfortable.

  Lucia walked to the passenger side of the car, a pointy-nosed Mazda, and, of course, this woman had a red sports car. Lucia leaned down, nearly at eye level.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Jerry wasn’t trying to hit anyone,” Donna said. “He lost his temper—I know that, and it’s a problem, honestly. But no one got hurt, and he never came near you again. He told me that. Afterward. Not that I knew anything beforehand.”

  By the time she finished speaking, Lucia had pieced it together.

  “Jerry was the man you were seeing in Atlanta,” she said.

  “I thought you must know.”

  “No,” said Lucia. “No. I didn’t know.”

  Another car drove past, the headlights blinding for a moment. Somewhere in the darkness, a woman laughed. Lucia thought of glass breaking and the taste of carpet, of Rachel’s thick hair against her palm and the empty space where Evan had been standing.

  She thought of the gun in her purse.

  “I don’t understand the purpose of it,” she said. “I no longer represented you. I didn’t have anything to do with you. Was that the issue? You were mad at me for refusing to keep your case? He was mad at me for saying you shouldn’t see him? Is that really what was behind him nearly killing me—nearly killing my husband and a child?”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Donna said.

  Lucia bent closer, ducking her head into the car. Donna pulled back, latching on to the steering wheel.

  “He wouldn’t have known my name unless you told him,” Lucia said.

  “Well, yes, I mentioned you. He obviously knew the name of my lawyer.”

  Lucia breathed in and out.

  “Why?” she managed.

  “He didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  “I asked you why.” She backed up and grabbed hold of the side mirror as she saw Donna glance at the gear shif
t. “Oh, don’t think about leaving now. Why did you stop if you didn’t want to talk to me? He shot six bullets into my house, Donna, and I never even met the man. I never even knew his last name. I think you can suffer through explaining why.”

  The shadows played over the woman’s face, and she looked like some Pre-Raphaelite painting, all hair and lips. She gave every appearance of being desperate to escape, and yet she was the one who had stopped the car. Lucia wondered what she had planned. A tearful monologue? A screaming and gnashing of teeth? Had she lost her nerve?

  “I ended things,” Donna said.

  “Your boyfriend tried to kill me and my family because you broke up with him?”

  “I told him what you said about how I couldn’t see anyone until the divorce was final. I said we should stay away from each other, and he didn’t like that.”

  “You didn’t like it, either,” Lucia said. “Which is why you ignored my advice.”

  She shifted her sore feet, suspecting her shoes had broken the skin. She did not let go of the car.

  “That was stupid of me,” Donna said. “I told him that. I told him that you were right and that I should wait. He just—I don’t know. Maybe he’d been drinking? He had a bad spell. He’s not normally like that. I mean, I feel bad for him. I think he has some problems.”

  “Yes, I’d say he does,” Lucia said.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” said Donna, straightening so that Lucia could only see the lower half of her face. “That’s done. But I wish you wouldn’t press charges. It won’t help any. He regrets everything.”

  Lucia was about to ask why, if the man so regretted it, he had tried to shoot holes in his neighbor, but the sound of footsteps on the asphalt made her look up. She saw Marlon jaywalking across Gilmer, veering around a puddle, and he was in a suit. The jacket and tie made it clear that he had come to the banquet to see her tonight, and she hadn’t even noticed him. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his keys, and she recognized his car parked at the curb because of the beagles scrabbling against the backseat window. Why in the world had he brought the beagles?

  Overhead, something fluttered past the streetlight bulb, and Lucia felt a rush of affection and disbelief. This man had held her dog captive and yet these days he chatted with her in her driveway and rolled her emptied trash can back to the carport, and all of it was possible because she had forgiven him for taking the dog—an act of complete lunacy—and of course she had forgiven him because what other choice did she have? You could not accumulate all these resentments. The weight of them would crush you. Meanwhile Donna stared up at her, lavender eyeshadow glittering, compelled for some reason to defend a no-good, violent ex-boyfriend, a man who must have frustrated and disappointed her, and forgiveness did not seem like the right word for whatever this was.

  Across the street, Marlon walked around to the driver’s side of his car. Lucia caught a glimpse of hind legs and tail as at least one dog sailed over the front seat.

  “Just a minute,” she told Donna. “Marlon!”

  “I knew this was pointless,” said Donna, reaching for the gearshift. “I knew it wouldn’t help anything.”

  Lucia looked from Marlon to Donna, noticing how the woman’s hand shook slightly. Her voice, too, hadn’t seemed quite steady, and Lucia wondered if she should be driving. Marlon had spotted her, though, and she could see his grin from across the street. He waved wildly, and she lifted a hand. He was still waving as he opened his car door, only partially, but enough.

  The beagles pushed past him.

  The dogs raced across the street, which was miraculously empty, and Lucia stepped away from the car, ready to corral them. As soon as she stepped back, Donna shifted into drive, shaking her head at Lucia, not looking toward the street at all. The dogs kept coming, and Lucia didn’t have a chance to voice a warning before Donna jerked the wheel and a tire slammed into the faster dog.

  It was possible that the beagle hit the car, not the other way around. But the thud was sickening, and Lucia screamed, the sound breaking out of her without thought.

  Brakes, squealing. Donna, screaming, the passenger window still open. Marlon, crossing the street as heedlessly as his dogs, and his screams took the shape of one word.

  “No,” he called. “No! No!”

  He said it again and again, and by the time he reached the car, he was barely whispering. Lucia ran around the front of the car to meet him, holding a hand up against the glare of the headlights.

  One dog was on its feet, unharmed, nosing along the spine of the second beagle. That one—why had she never asked Marlon their names?—was lying on its side, unmoving, legs bent, front paws crossed.

  Marlon dropped to his knees, running a hand over the dog, his hand slowing along the curve of its skull, stroking its ears.

  Lucia leaned down, then straightened, realizing she was blocking the light.

  “Marlon,” she said.

  “He’s breathing.” Marlon was kneeling in a traffic lane, and it seemed possible that the next passing car might sever his feet. Lucia grabbed at his hand to tug him closer to the curb.

  Marlon didn’t understand at first, resisting, and his weight threw her off balance. She put a hand down on Donna’s sporty two-door to steady herself and she felt the engine thrumming, the metal warm against her palm. She realized that Donna was still sitting at the wheel with the car running. She wondered if Marlon had the same thought, because he stood, giving the injured dog one more stroke and scooping up the other dog under one arm.

  “You hit my dog,” he said.

  Lucia shook her head, tugging at his hand. They were in the glow of headlights and streetlight, well lit.

  “Calm down,” she said, because she could see Marlon as Donna must see him, and he was not a big man, but he was thick and his face was red with possibly fear but maybe anger.

  Lucia couldn’t make out Donna’s expression against the headlights, but over the angled hood of the car, she could see hands gripping the steering wheel.

  “You hit my dog,” Marlon said again, and his voice was shaking. “You need to get out of the car so we can call the police.”

  Lucia stepped closer to Marlon, still unable to see Donna’s beautiful face, but well able to see the Mazda jump forward slightly. She was sure that the woman had shifted the car back into drive.

  “No,” she said firmly, not shouting. She held out a hand. “Stop, Donna.”

  She had no idea, it occurred to her. She had no idea if a single word that Donna said was true. Who knew, maybe Donna had taken the gun from her boyfriend and fired those shots herself? Maybe she had told the boyfriend to do it or maybe she really was blameless. Maybe at this moment she was terrified that this red-faced man would attack her, or maybe she liked the idea of making Lucia bleed.

  Regardless, Lucia planted herself in front of the car. The prone beagle was slightly off to the side, out of the path of the tire, but Marlon was directly in front of the hood. She angled herself in front of him, her skirt brushing against the bumper, and she backed up so that he had no choice but to back away as well. Keeping him behind her, she felt the pistol in her purse slap against her hipbone. She knew what would happen if she reached into her bag: this seemed to be one of those scenarios that Evan warned about. By the time she got the gun, the front fender of the car would have broken her knees, leaving her bloody like a dog on the pavement.

  She would have to tell Evan that: he had been right. The gun had not made her safe. Although it had made her feel safe, whether that was a false sense of security or a legitimate comfort—she and Evan could argue about it, she would love to argue it, him stealing a sip of her drink, his hand warm against her hip. He would shake his head at the fact that after all the boys’ club stonewalling and sexist slurs and ass grabbing, it was a woman who decided to run her down.

  Marlon threw an arm in front of her, shouting. She coul
d see them both, from a distance, like a movie, going through the motions of an absurd dance, and the car seemed to be moving in slow motion, too, but it would not be slow enough.

  Lucia braced herself, even as she stumbled.

  Rachel

  I.

  I’d been running for a few blocks when I realized that I couldn’t hear or see Mr. Cleary behind me. I suspected he’d gone back to his car, and I could see how it made more sense to come after me that way. I didn’t feel afraid, though. Adrenaline had sapped away the burn in my lungs and the ache in my legs, but I was eating up sidewalk, weightless, passing house after house with blurs of lighted walkways and porch swings and gingerbread curlicues around the roofs.

  I was almost sure that I would make it to Lucia’s banquet before Mr. Cleary found me, and if not, I would run up to one of these houses, and I would scream my head off. I might enjoy screaming.

  I wondered if Mr. Cleary had been right about Gilmer. It was possible that the McNally House was a separate street entirely, and I might be blocks off course. It didn’t worry me: I would find my way. The street was silent enough that I could hear the leaves on the trees, and I’d have thought that downtown would be all horns and sirens.

  It was a night full of surprises.

  It was possible Mr. Cleary had given up and gone home, and he might even head next door and tell my mother what had happened. Maybe he would stand there in his jacket and tie and explain how he’d done nothing but offer me a ride, and then I’d burst out of the car and disappeared into the night. Maybe my mother would even believe that version, but I doubted it. My horror story would suit her better.

  A collection of stories, Mr. Cleary had said. Interpret as you like.

  I clenched my toes tighter around my flip-flops, and I thought of Grant Cleary: he struggled with garden hoses and analyzed the Bible like he was sitting in English class and touched me too often for it to be accidental. Then there was Margaret Morris: she bought me Icees and hurled razors and would give her life for me even though she hardly knew me. And Lucia Gilbert: she threw her body on top of mine when the bullets came and she shut the door in my face. It was all a mess, everything overflowing out of drawers that were never going to close, and I did not mind because I was overflowing, too.