by Erica Abbott
Jean had little patience for his lack of precision. “So the suit survives his death,” she summarized.
“Ah, yes.”
Good thing I rescued the file from the shredder, she congratulated herself. “And your assessment of the suit?”
“What?” He looked startled.
Jean counted to a silent ten then continued, “The discovery has been completed, correct? So you should have some idea after reviewing the file of the likelihood of success. Is his cause of action valid? Does the county have a valid defense?”
“I, er, I’m not really sure.”
She counted to twenty this time then said, “Did you read the entire file?”
“Um, yeah, well, most of it. But I wasn’t really looking at, you know, the elements of the suit itself.”
Jean wondered how long she would have to wait if she decided she needed to talk to Del and tell him that Todd just might have to go. She’d need to work with him on other projects, but she seriously wondered whether he was ever going to meet her standards. She was a firm believer that government attorneys should actually be better than those in private practice, since citizens were depending on them to get it right. Few of her colleagues agreed with her, but she wasn’t prepared to lower her standards for anyone else’s opinion.
To Todd she said, “I want you to go through everything again and give me a complete assessment about how you believe the suit should proceed. Settlement evaluation, percentages of success at trial, amount Lambert’s estate is likely to recover. End of the week, all right?” He asked for work, he was going to get it.
She watched him swallow hard above his badly knotted tie. Her hands were itching with the desire to take it off and teach him how to tie a simple Windsor knot.
“Um, yes,” he answered. “I mean, I’ll get it done.”
Remembering her mission for Lea, Jean continued. “Good. In your review of the file, reading the depositions, did you get any sense of animosity toward Lambert from any of our witnesses? His supervisor, perhaps?”
“I…no, not really,” Todd responded.
“Look for that too,” Jean directed him, rising from her chair. “And get back to me as soon as you can on that.”
She left without rolling her eyes. She wasn’t completely convinced he was hopeless but she was certainly beginning to have her doubts.
Rita buzzed her just before the end of the day. To keep her eyes on her computer screen, Jean reached over and punched the speaker button on her phone. “Yes?”
“Call for you on line two,” Rita said. “He said he didn’t have your direct line and that it was personal.”
Jean muttered, “I seriously doubt I have anything personal to discuss with an unknown man.”
“He said his name was Ron Kraft.”
A cold fear seized her throat. Ron was her stepfather. She said, “Thanks, Rita, I’ve got it.” She punched off the speaker and picked up the receiver.
“Jean, I’m so sorry to bother you,” and she knew from the tone of his voice that the news was bad. It could only be about her mother and his next words confirmed it. “Edie had a stroke. She’s at Baptist Medical Center.”
“How bad is it?” she managed to ask.
“Pretty bad. They’re not sure. She seems paralyzed on one side and isn’t talking but she’s conscious, at least some of the time. I came home from golf and found her on the living room floor. Oh, God, Jean, if I’d been here…” His voice trailed off.
“Don’t,” Jean said sharply. “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Look, I’ll call and see when I can get a flight out and be there as soon as I can.”
“You don’t have to,” he said tentatively and she knew how badly he wanted her to come. Her mother might or might not care but Ron did and he’d been as kind to her as he was able to be.
“I’ll be there, Ron,” she said firmly. After glancing at the clock, she added, “I don’t know if I can get a flight out to Dallas tonight or not, but I’ll be there this evening or in the morning. I’ll call you when I know for sure. Have you called Bobby?”
He made a noise. “Yes. He’s got something he couldn’t get out of tonight but he said he’ll be driving up tomorrow. Maybe he could pick you up at the airport.”
Jean tried not to laugh. Her brother would be more likely to drive her to purgatory than to the hospital to see their mother. “Don’t worry, I’ll get a cab. I’ll call you when I know my schedule and if there’s a change in the meantime, call my cell phone.” She repeated the number for him.
Would her mother want to see her? She had no idea. All she knew for certain was that she needed to see her mother.
* * *
Jean had forgotten over the space of years how truly miserable Dallas in September could be. The searing heat married to the high humidity was a palpable presence that pressed down on her as if she were under a steam iron. The cab from the airport to the hospital had been air-conditioned and the hospital corridors were cool beige tile, but just the short walk from the outside drop-off to the building had wilted her.
The nurses station was a desk in the shape of a hexagon. The patient rooms were arranged around the desk like spokes of a wheel. She asked to make sure she had the right number and stood for a moment outside the door, gathering her nerve to go inside.
Her stepfather was sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed. He looked up as she came in and said, “Jean. You’re here.”
She went to hug him and she felt him tremble. When she pulled away, he looked as if he’d aged twenty years. He had always had fair hair and pale skin but now he looked more like a ghost. The lines in his face had deepened and his pale eyes were watery, rimmed in red. She exclaimed, “Ron. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I’m so glad you’re here.” He tilted his head toward the bed. “I know Edie is glad you’re here.”
“Have you heard from Bobby?”
“He called. He’ll be here soon.”
Jean felt her lips compress into a tight line. She’d made it from Tesóro to Denver to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport faster than her brother could manage the drive from Houston. But she knew no comment from her would do any good. Bobby had always been their mother’s favorite. She turned to the hospital bed.
Her mother was propped up on a couple of pillows, an IV line in one arm, heart and oxygen monitors hooked to the other. The carefully colored blond hair was in disarray, pushed up against the pillowcase. Without makeup her face looked as yellow as old newsprint.
Her eyes were open—the one eye Jean could see, anyway. The eyelid drooped over her right eye. She seemed alert but Jean couldn’t tell how conscious she was.
Jean went to her and carefully touched a free spot on her arm. “Hello, Mother.”
The eye she could see swiveled toward her. Ron said in an artificially cheery tone, “Look who’s here, Edie. It’s Jeanie, come to see you.”
Jean drew in a deep breath, readying the speech she had rehearsed on the plane. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said quietly. “I know we haven’t been close and we don’t agree on a lot of things, but you’re my mother and I want you to get better soon.”
In a voice that was still too loud, Ron said, “She’s going to get better. The doctors said she can start speech therapy soon and physical therapy to help her walk again. You’re going to be fine, aren’t you, Edie?”
The eye shifted to Ron, then back to Jean. What was she thinking? Jean wondered. It almost didn’t matter that her mother couldn’t tell them what her thoughts were because Jean had never fathomed what she was thinking anyway. She’d never said to Jean, “I’m disappointed in you.” She’d also never said, “I’m proud of you.” At least not to her daughter. The club of disapproval had always been a silent one: a look of unhappiness when Jean had preferred jeans to skirts, or a grimace of distaste when Jean refused to go through the ritual of becoming a debutante. And when Jean had come out to her, her mother had said nothing at all, just turned away from her daughter with
out a word.
Now she had no words to give Jean had she wanted to speak them. Was this some kind of strange karma coming back to settle the score with her mother? Or was everything that happened just random, meaningless?
Jean had a sudden image of Lea and wondered what her answer would be. That she would have some kind of answer, Jean had no doubt.
Jean touched her mother’s arm again. “He’s right, Mother. You’ll have to work hard and you’ll get better. Keep on believing that.”
Was her mother’s crippled expression reflecting a note of gratitude? Or was it resignation, a belief that despite all the encouraging words, Edie Kraft knew her fate was already fixed?
Jean suppressed a shudder. How short life was and how much pain that short life could hold. She wondered if her mother had had any actual joy from her life, with her drinking and her parade of men.
Ron sat down again and they talked for a while about inconsequential things, Jean’s new job, the hot weather, always including Edie in the conversation despite her inability to participate. After a few minutes, Jean kissed her mother on the forehead and said goodbye, promising a return visit in the evening.
She stepped outside the room. To her dismay, she saw her brother Bobby waiting for her at the nurses station. I could have done without this, she sighed.
He’d put on a good thirty pounds since she’d seen him last—how long ago? Almost ten years, she calculated. Worse, the comb-over he’d resorted to wasn’t covering his sallow scalp. She realized with a jolt how much the shape of his face looked like their mother’s. The broad forehead tapered quickly to low cheekbones and fell away to a chin that almost receded.
“Bobby,” she greeted him coolly.
His mouth twisted. “What the he—what are you doing here?”
“Mom had a stroke. Had you heard?” She couldn’t help herself.
He stepped closer, using his height and bulk as he always had to take up space and intimidate. Jean held herself in place with an effort. “You know what I mean,” he said, his voice a snarl of disapproval. “Why bother to show up now? Sniffing around for her money?”
Jean wanted to laugh. “She doesn’t have any money, Bobby. Ron has all the money there is. I came to see her.”
“She doesn’t need you,” he barked. “You took off, left her. Go away. She doesn’t need your kind.”
“My kind of what?” Jean demanded. She knew she should walk away. Engaging Bobby never produced anything but anger and frustration.
His mouth twisted again. “You want me to announce it to the whole floor? My sister the dyke. The queer.”
Jean tried to keep her anger reined in. “Make all the announcements you want, Bobby. You haven’t changed, apparently, so tell anyone you like. You tell everybody I’m a dyke and I’ll follow up with the announcement that you’re a moronic bigot. Both statements will be equally true.”
She expected him to start screaming but he surprised her. He drew back a fist like a club and swung at her.
Jean managed to partially turn away from the blow. It caught her on the shoulder. She could hear shouting behind Bobby at the nurses desk.
The swing made him stagger into her and Jean’s instincts took over. She brought her knee up sharply. She felt it bounce off his thigh to pay dirt. It wasn’t clean contact but it was enough for him to twist away, crouching in pain.
“Jesus!” he shouted. “You fucking bitch!”
Within a moment two men and a woman wearing scrubs had firm holds on his arms. Someone else was yelling into a phone demanding that security make an immediate appearance. Visitors and a couple of patients began to pour out of rooms in confusion.
A nurse approached her. “Are you hurt?” she demanded.
Jean shook her head, amazed at how hard she was breathing after a fight that had lasted less than ten seconds. “Fine. I’m fine.”
Bobby was still cursing at her loudly. “Shut up, man, this is a hospital,” one of the men muttered to him, but as Bobby’s tirade continued, Jean dug into her pocket and produced her cell phone. She punched a few buttons and held the screen out in front of her.
Bobby was literally spitting with pain and rage. After another few seconds of profanity, Jean said calmly, “Thanks, Bobby. I’ll be sure to post the video online just as soon as I get back to my laptop.”
He snapped his jaws shut as Jean smiled at him.
The Pennington restaurant was blessedly cool, filled with green plants and crisp white linens. Jean was on her second glass of iced tea when she saw a small woman approaching from the hostess station.
Her friend had changed very little in the years since they’d left school. She was dressed in a silk blend suit tailored to fit her petite frame and she was carrying a handbag that cost more than Jean’s entire ensemble, never mind the small fortune she must have paid for her shoes. Jean rose from the table and gave her a hug that nearly squeezed her breathless.
“Hey, Jean,” Maryke exclaimed. “I might break if you keep that up.”
“Sorry.” Jean was shamefaced. “It’s just been so long. I’m so glad you could come today.”
“It has been too long,” she agreed. Neither of them mentioned that their last face-to-face meeting was Charlotte’s funeral. “I was so sorry to hear about Edie.”
They sat down and Jean drank in the sight of her oldest friend. “You look great, Maryke.”
Jean pronounced it as “Mar-ée-ka” and the other woman sighed happily. “It’s such a pleasure to hear my name pronounced correctly again. All day I have to explain to clients that it’s not ‘Mary Kay’ or ‘Marky.’”
“You need to blame your mom for that.”
Maryke smoothed back her dark hair, which was still in a perfect French knot. “Actually, I blame Dad. He’s the one who let Mom dig up a genuine Dutch family name and stick it on me.” She rolled her eyes but smiled. “Actually, it’s a lot of fun at programmer conventions on my nametag. Every guy I meet is trying to figure out how to pronounce it by staring at my chest.”
“You just like men staring at you.”
“True. Very true.” Maryke sighed with pleasure. “I’m sorry for the reason, but I’m really happy to see you in person. Email and phone calls just aren’t the same.”
Jean reached across the table and grasped her hand briefly. “I’m really glad to see you too.”
When the waiter appeared, Maryke ordered without having to open the menu. She ate here at least once a week and had all of her choices memorized, Jean knew. Jean settled for a Cobb salad.
“So how is your Mother?” Maryke asked.
Jean grew somber. “It’s going to be a long road back for her. She has what the doctors call expressive aphasia, which essentially means she can’t talk other than gibberish. They don’t know yet if she has other brain damage.”
“I imagine that would be difficult to tell until they can figure out how to communicate with her,” Maryke said dryly.
Jean almost smiled. Her friend was still the least sentimental person she’d ever met. Jean hadn’t been surprised when Maryke took to computer programming like a bird to the air. Yet through all the turbulent years of Jean’s youth, Maryke had always been Jean’s supporter, an impartial listener and dispenser of sound advice. She’d supported Jean’s decision to leave Charlotte at the end and had been the first one on the plane to California when Charlotte died.
“I’ve really missed you,” Jean said simply.
“Of course you have,” Maryke replied. “Who wouldn’t? I’m lovely, charming, intelligent and incredibly insightful.”
Jean laughed. “After the morning I’ve had, I didn’t think it was possible that anyone could make me laugh. Even you.”
“Told you I was charming.” Maryke eyed her critically. “Did something happen other than seeing your mother?”
Jean sighed. She was saved from immediate response when their meals arrived. Maryke was having the Pennington’s signature shrimp salad, the plump pink shellfish layered with avocado.
“That looks great,” Jean said. “I miss how plentiful—and relatively cheap—avocados were in California.”
“What’s the local specialty in Desert Wasteland, Colorado?” Maryke asked.
Chewing her lip, Jean responded, “Green chile cheeseburgers.”
“Sounds delightfully ethnic.”
“Snob. They’re delicious.”
“If you say so. And you didn’t answer my question. What else happened today?”
“Bobby happened,” Jean muttered.
Maryke sat back in her chair. “You should have let me run him down in your driveway when we were eighteen.”
Jean laughed again. “It would have ruined your brand-new graduation present from your parents.”
“The rear end damage to the BMW would have been worth it.” She batted her mascara-laden eyelashes. “‘Oh my, officer, the sun was in my eyes and I didn’t see the creepy bastard trying to cross the driveway.’”
“It was noon, Maryke. I doubt if the ‘sun was in my eyes’ excuse would have worked.”
Maryke waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, please. Have you no faith in my persuasive abilities?”
“I have infinite faith in your persuasive abilities.”
“So what happened with Bobby, the creepy bastard?”
“He tried to punch me outside Mother’s hospital room.”
Maryke’s fork hit her salad plate with a clatter. “What? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She briefly described the encounter, which had ended with hospital security escorting Bobby off the property.
“You should have had his fat ass arrested,” Maryke remarked, picking up her fork again.
Jean cleared her throat. “I did something just about as good,” she said. She showed Maryke the brief video, turning down the sound so that the Pennington’s staff wouldn’t feel compelled to throw them out before they’d finished their salads.
Maryke smirked. “Well, that’s just delightful. What’s your plan?”
“I thought I’d post it online.”
