States of Grace

by Mandy Miller

  Anger rises up in my chest at the thought of Zoe’s chart sitting on Dr. Kesey’s desk. The girl must be under constant monitoring on a suicide watch. There’s no way the chart has been filed away already. But fighting bureaucracy is futile.

  “Maybe if I had listened to her, she wouldn’t have—” I say, pacing around, Miranda Velcroed to my side.

  “Let’s go, kid. None of this is your fault,” Vinnie says, shepherding Miranda and me to the elevator. “Don’t go taking the blame for something you didn’t do. It’s enough that we have to take the blame for what we did do.”

  Chapter 13

  I can’t sleep. Again. And on the rare night when sleep does come, the nightmares return.

  I dangle my arm over the side of the futon and stroke Miranda’s fur until the first rays of sunrise worm their way between the missing slats in the blinds, another thing Vinnie keeps forgetting to fix. Unlike me, Miranda’s snoring with the innocent contentment reserved for babies and rescued mutts. Me? I’m resigned to the fact that it’s hopeless to even attempt to sleep at this point.

  One minute, I’m a pathetic, bleeding-hearted fool for being taken in by Zoe’s histrionics, the next, it’s my fault for not hearing her out.

  Out of habit, I dig my phone out from under the pillow. A new email. At this hour? It’s from someone at sao.gov, the State Attorney’s Office, with an attachment labeled Motion to Revoke Bail.

  “What the hell?”

  Under Miranda’s Zen-like gaze, I grab a suit off the handlebars of the stationary bike/clothes rack, splashing my face with cold water before attempting to brush my teeth with a hairbrush.

  “That jackass Steiner or Steinman or whatever his name is,” I mutter, trying to make out the Assistant State Attorney’s scrawl at the bottom of the motion. “Freakin’ cheap shot, filing a motion to revoke Zoe’s bond exactly four hours before the time of a hearing he must have set up online in the middle of the goddamned night.”

  I strap on Oscar. “Technically she’s in violation of Garrison’s house arrest order, but holy mother of God, she left on a stretcher. It’s not as if she sneaked out to drink beer with her friends in a park like I used to do.”

  Miranda sits stock still.

  “Mental health care in the jail is bullshit. But ASA what’s-his-face will argue it’s just fine for Zoe. I’ve seen the psych pod” I say, pulling on a blouse that could do with an ironing. “It’s a hell hole where the staff have been known to derive morbid pleasure from strategically pairing cellmates with conflicting psychiatric diagnoses. They once bunked a catatonic schizophrenic in with a bipolar man who talked twenty-four seven. After several days of getting no response from his catatonic cellmate, the bipolar man resorted to beating him to get him to talk, hitting him so hard he broke eight ribs and punctured a lung. Pathologically mute, the catatonic man suffered in silence for hours until a psychiatrist found him in curled in the fetal position on the concrete floor covered in his own feces. Nice, huh?”

  A head tilt to the left from the dog.

  “What? I’m going soft?”

  Head tilt to the right.

  “Stop that!”

  The judge’s name on the upper right-hand corner of the motion catches my eye. Not Garrison, but a trial judge, the result of random computer selection, a game of judicial bingo. And the winner is? The Honorable Josiah Twietmeyer. Back to square one ingratiating myself and Zoe with a new judge.

  When I fling open the door, the humidity slaps me in the face like a wet rag, but the grandeur of the rising red-velvet sun, a fiery bridge between the horizon and the cotton-ball sky, makes the sticky discomfort worthwhile. For a brief second, I stand and marvel at Mother Nature.

  “Well, well. Look who’s up bright and early,” Vinnie says from downstairs, broom in hand.

  “Don’t say another word. Not one thing about me not being an early bird. And nothing about why I’m wearing this itchy straight-jacket of a suit in the middle of July.” I struggle downstairs, Oscar swinging wide each time I try to speed up, but Miranda hippity-hopping behind me as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be a canine tripod.

  “It might be within the rules and everything to let the other side know about a hearing with only four hours to spare, but I am sure the legislature of the great State of Florida did not mean hearings should be set in the middle of the f’ing night.”

  Vinnie holds his hand out.

  “No, not this time, old man. I’m not giving you ten damn bucks for saying f’ing, I mean, shit, it’s not even a—”

  Vinnie doubles over in laughter.

  “Not like he couldn’t have filed the damn thing yesterday. Maybe as a professional courtesy?” I jut my chin out at him. “Am I right? Or am I right?”

  “Calm down, will ya? And just what motion are we talking about here, sweetheart?”

  “To haul Zoe back to jail. Take away her bail.”

  “Isn’t she locked up in the loony bin?”

  “That’s the point. She’s supposed to be home, but she’s not. Why? Because she tried to kill herself. Where? At home. Not exactly the best argument for persuading the judge to let her go back home. What I don’t get is how the State knew? The hospital can’t even say she’s there. It’s protected health info. Maybe the cops who took her in…I don’t know.” Out of the corner of my eye I spy Miranda squatting on her back leg, poised to water Vinnie’s tomato plants.

  “Hey, hey, no you don’t!” he screams, shooing her away from the plants with his ball cap. “Hey, Gracie, she’s a girl, right?”

  “What? Zoe?”

  “No, Miranda. Your dog. Ain’t girl dogs supposed to, you know, squat?”

  “She may be nuts, but it’s not like she broke the rules to sneak out to a party.”

  “Who? Miranda?”

  “No, for God’s sake. Zoe.”

  He throws his arms up. “Per l’amor di Dio! Start at the beginning of whatever it is that’s got you all pissed off.”

  I point at him. “You owe me ten now. So let’s call us even.”

  He shakes his head hard. “Not a chance. You’re into me for twenty. I only owe you ten.”

  “Okay. Since you asked, the State is trying to revoke Zoe’s bail because she violated the judge’s order.”

  Vinnie puffs out his cheeks. “I’m no lawyer, but the kid did try to off herself. Seems like she needs to be in a hospital, not a jail.”

  “Maybe, or maybe it’s all an act. Maybe she wants to look crazy.”

  “You sayin’ she’s crazy like a fox?”

  “It’s a possibility. I mean she wouldn’t be the first murderer I’ve seen put on a show.”

  “I remember this wise guy back in New York who went around in his bath robe and slippers to dodge a murder beef.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Nah, they got him in the end. Just like they always do,” he says, unlocking the office. “One thing I know for sure is that the government don’t give a plugged nickel about following rules, so long as they get what they need to screw with you.”

  I look away, ashamed I was once a tool of the system that took away years of his life based on a lie, something I swore I’d never let happen again. And I won. But the way the State is pushing full-speed ahead on this, I’m getting the creeping sense of inevitability I used to get when I had a defendant dead to rights and there wasn’t anything the defense, no matter how good, could do about it.

  As quickly as Vinnie’s face hardened a few seconds ago, it brightens. “You’re a smart cookie. You’ll find a way. From what you’re saying about that bozo making a sneak attack, I’d guess you know more than a little about how the game is played. That motion trick. The four-hour-rule thing you said. I’m thinking you’ve done this kinda thing in the past?” He wags a finger at me and steps into the street to hail a passing taxi. “Your chariot awaits.”

  Miranda’s stares up at me, her bearing so trusting, despite what she’s been through. “I’m sorry, girl. I have to go to work. We�
��ll go to the beach when I get home, okay?”

  She lets out two high-pitched yips.

  I hold out the leash. “Would you mind? I need to get to the courthouse.”

  “Don’t worry about your little girl,” Vinnie says, fishing a treat from his pocket. “I’ll take care of her. Now you go grab that bozo by the balls.”

  ***

  I text Gretchen to tell her to get over to the courthouse.

  A few seconds later, she responds, “We’ll be there.”

  “Any chance you could go a little faster?” I ask the taxi driver.

  The driver is non-responsive. He’s ignoring me or, more likely, he doesn’t speak English. For some reason, the Yellow Cab company considers it brilliant marketing to hire drivers who speak no English and have no idea where they’re going. Whatever this one’s problem is, he’s driving like he’s visually impaired, all hunched forward on the steering wheel.

  I stick my head through the smudged glass partition like an irate ostrich. “Hey, buddy. Can you help me out here? I’m gonna be late for court.” I say, jabbing my finger at the clock on the dashboard which has only one hand, stuck on three.

  He tunes the radio to a station playing some kind of chanting, which sounds more like cats being strangled than music.

  “Court. You know, the place where you go to pay speeding tickets? Not that you’ve ever gotten one of those,” to which the driver mutters a few words in a foreign language I don’t recognize.

  I slump back onto the stained cloth back seat. Better not to think too hard about what might have gone on back here.

  “Please go south by the beach and across Las Olas. Don’t take Sunrise, too much traffic during rush hour,” I say. Both my possible theories for the driver’s non-responsiveness, ignorance, and/or linguistic incapacity are invalidated by his continuing straight on the beach road, as requested.

  “At least that’s something,” I say, and he flashes me a dirty look in the rear-view mirror.

  To contain the knot of anxiety in my stomach, I belly breathe, the one suggestion made by my shrink, Dr. Fleming, that calms me, helps to bring my stress levels below those of a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, an expression used by my mother to describe her jangled nerves before hosting one of her society lady events with finger sandwiches and tea.

  Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Repeat.

  Outside, a tropical diorama drifts by. A hazy mirage. Rich abutting ramshackle. Beach kitsch next door to the Ritz. Gone are the crazy spring break days with wasted college students falling off motel balconies, replaced by luxury hotels where twenty-dollar watered-down drinks are as common as wet T-shirt contests used to be. The innocence of Connie Francis and George Hamilton in Where the Boys Are, all unceremoniously replaced by gold-chain-draped rappers and silicone-enhanced hotties.

  I’m not against change, it’s inevitable, healthy even, but the wholesale substitution of the city’s character with ersatz class in the name of progress does make me sad. There’s something to be said for a cold Bud and a Philly cheesesteak at The Parrot, an iconic dive bar, the kind of joint where the old timers have occupied the same bar stools since the Nixon administration. The kind of place where the checks are accurate only for tourists and barkeeps charge the locals what they can afford. Or maybe I’m just getting old and nostalgic for a time that never was. I rub my stump, which is swollen from the heat.

  As the taxi pokes along, I survey the morning parade along the beach. Guy dressed as a sailor with a squawking macaw on his shoulder, check. Geezer with skin like elephant’s hide walking with bronzed blonde in bikini that looks to have been constructed from dental floss, check—boy or girl? I’ve never been sure. European tourists wearing socks and sandals, check. And the tide still rolls in and out. Just another day in paradise.

  At the summit of the drawbridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, a siren booms from the bridge-tender’s cabin and a steel arm descends silently in front of the taxi. The clenching jaws of the span rise and split apart to allow passage for a tall-masted sailboat. Below, a fleet of luxury motor yachts litters the marina like discarded origami, huddled together under the baking sun, most only used once in a blue moon, and otherwise left to bob in placid waters until their owners decide it’s time to come back and play with their toys.

  Inching toward downtown on Las Olas Boulevard, we pass The Isles, fingers of land separated by waterways. Palatial homes rise from the coral-rock isthmuses with names like Lido Isle, Solar Isle, and the Isle of Capri. The Italianate nomenclature is responsible for the city’s moniker, the Venice of America, yet the canals are man-made and the architecture is more Mediterranean than Medicean, illusions of permanence built for show.

  I ignore a stab of regret as we pass the entrance to Idlewyld Isle and switch my mind into tactical mode, much like I did when I was an MP. Enemy identified. Mission planned. Time to execute. Emotions are for sissies.

  The driver rolls to a stop at the courthouse beside the concrete barricades erected after 9-11 to counter a terrorist attack, a laughable precaution given what they are protecting is a pressure cooker filled with vengeful, violent miscreants, many with nothing to lose, much like those the barricades are trying to keep out.

  I go in through the main entrance in the old wing. Three doors to channel the masses: Attorneys, Jurors, and Visitors. As usual, there’s a jackass who thinks his hoodie and saggy pants will allow him to pass incognito through the Attorneys line. The deputy on duty is not having it, however, and the interloper is escorted to the back of the Visitors line.

  I place my briefcase and purse on the belt of the metal detector and walk through the body scanner.

  Beep, beep, beep.

  The deputy points at my feet, meaning, do my shoes have a metal shank in them? I shake my head and raise my pant leg to show him Oscar. He hesitates for a second before waving me through. Soon enough, folks here will catch on. It’s just that they still remember me in my old incarnation. Sky high heels. Ego to match. Neither applicable now.

  “Hello there, stranger,” the deputy says, a tall man with a gray buzz cut and a warm smile.

  “Deputy, deputy…” I say, as he hands me my possessions, racking my brain for his name.

  “Tanner’s still the name. And I assume Locke’s still yours?”

  I feel a blush blooming on my cheeks. Tanner’s been a fixture at the main entrance for almost as long as I’ve been alive. “Deputy Tanner, of course.”

  Despite being on in years, Tanner still has the tight muscled physique that announces mess with me at your own risk. Never once did I see his polite manner fail him, not even when things got heated with people pushing and shoving to get to court on time, but he had no qualms about extracting the nightstick from his gun belt, although he never used it.

  As I’m about to step away, Tanner puts an arm in front of me, stopping my forward progress. I brace myself, primed as I am to read trouble into even the most innocent of acts, but he stoops to my height and whispers in my ear. “Don’t let the turkeys get you down. If I had a dollar for every lawyer and judge in this building that’s been popped on a DUI, I’d already be living la vida up in Panama City Beach, if you know what I mean.” He stands back. “Glad you’re back, Counselor.”

  A sense of well-being washes over me. I give Tanner a thumbs up, struck as I always am, that so many of the people who work in this place, a cauldron of misery and loss, can be so kind, so civil, as if exaggerated humanity is the antidote to all the evil and hopelessness on display within its walls. I hope one day, I too will be forgiven, able to see the bigger picture again, be part of the collective effort to rise above the grimness. But for now, I feel like a spotlight is trained on me, and only me, even though I’m just one of hundreds trying to get to court on time to do her job.

  Chapter 14

  The ancient elevator lurches its way up to the third floor, the transit point to the new wing of the courthouse. The old wing has nine floors, the penthouse having been the count
y jail years ago, back before incarceration became an industry. The old wing has a musty smell due to the fact that there’s mold in every nook and cranny, which has led to a slew of lawsuits. One was brought by a judge who claimed the mold caused her to develop an autoimmune disorder, although those who endured her tirades speculate it was her noxious soul that made her sick. Whatever it was, she died soon after she filed the suit, and the mold continues to grow unabated.

  I cross the bridge to the new wing, a modern glass-and-steel structure housing the criminal divisions. The courtrooms in this part of the complex were designed to be large enough to keep the judges at more than striking distance from the defendants, and decorated in neutral tones, a doomed attempt to project a sense of calm, a mood not often on display in an environment where freedom is currency and life is cheap.

  I squeeze through the morning crush, staring down a few double takes from former colleagues and adversaries. No way they expected to see me back in this building today, or any other day for that matter.

  The thought tickles me a little and I feel, what? A little bold? Perhaps a little badass? Maybe I can come back?

  As a child, the admonition, “No you can’t,” always baited my inner devil. Like the time my mother insisted, “No, you can’t play on the boys’ hockey team, dear. Perhaps, you should consider ballet.” Ballet my ass. I strapped on the goalie’s pads for what ended up being three winning seasons and two missing front teeth. Or the time my father said, “No, you can’t enlist in the Army, Grace, dear. Ivy League graduates don’t enlist in the Army. They run the Army.” I signed up anyway. Two tours of duty and one accurate IED later, and I still deny foolhardiness had anything to do with my decision.

  On automatic pilot, I find myself in front of Room 5800, Judge Twietmeyer’s courtroom, and barrel through the two sets of doors designed to keep the hallway noise out and the court’s business in. I head into the well, taking in the veritable cornucopia of humanity. Not one empty seat in the gallery. Worried family members, friends, and maybe even enemies, sit side by side. A rabbi in the front row hunches beside a guy in a leather biker vest who, apparently, finds it difficult to say no to tattoo artists. The back row is lined with cops. There are the obligatory girlfriends in stripper heels and tube tops, court being the only place they can see their men without a glass partition in between. An old woman fingers worry beads as the crackhead next to her picks at track marks like a nautical chart on his forearm.