by Jessica Love
“Where were you earlier in the evening?” asked Claire.
“What is the last thing you remember?” asked Tony.
“Were you with anyone?” asked Lily.
My grandmother, still sitting at my side, was looking at me intently, my mother from her perch at the window.
I didn’t say anything at all at first, and just stared up at the ceiling and the walls. Of course. they all thought it was because I had just come out of a short coma.
Finally, I lied to them all and said, “I don’t remember.”
• • • •
It made a great story in The Seattle Times: “Attorney who kept drug dealers and prostitutes out of jail on technicalities drives a fast Porsche full of drugs and paraphernalia into Puget Sound and nearly dies.”
They loved it.
I made mistakes, too. The first of which was representing myself. Tony offered, but I didn’t want him to be even more tainted. I put feelers out to Max Moore’s firm, but they were rejected, all via back doors. There were others I could have trusted but did not. I thought I could do it.
The second was not telling anyone where I’d been that night, who I had seen. But though I wasn’t particularly ashamed of myself, I was very afraid of what Claire would think, what my grandmother would think. I guess I didn’t quite see the difference between guilt and shame.
My parents didn’t really matter, since my father was already so disappointed he said he wanted nothing to do with me, and my mother couldn’t even visit. Because of his condemnation, he wouldn’t let her.
After I got out of the hospital, Sarah and Lily drove me down to my grandmother’s, where I stayed until the cast came off my leg. It was a simple break, and though the muscle atrophy lasted a little while, I was up and around before long.
“These things are not true, Grandmama,” I told her one morning over “café.”
“Yes. I know this,” she said.
“Why? Why do you believe me when everybody else has doubts?”
She put her hand on my cheek as she often did when she wanted to add emphasis to what she was saying.
“Because, my Petite Princess, that is not who you are. You have many questions for life, but you also have many certainties. One of these is that you address life on its own terms, you do not take the easy way, and you do not run away, to drugs or love or any other illusions.”
“Love is an illusion?”
“Non. But the fact that it is real does not make it permanent.”
“Tout passé, tout lasse, tout casse,” we said at the same time, causing us both to laugh. It was the first time I had laughed in many months and the first time I had seen her laugh in years.
When I got back to Seattle, I started my defense. One of the first things I did was go back to SASSA to see if I could learn anything about the what happened as I left. They don’t keep tapes more than 48 hours for privacy reasons, according to Mike, the big guy who was often on the door.
“It was the first time I’d ever seen you shit-faced,” Mike said. “That’s really why I remember it.”
“Was I with anyone?”
“Just one of the guys you were playing with. He said he was taking you home, but then came back in a little later saying you had come around and insisted on driving yourself. I told him he should have taken your keys. He said he tried, but you must have had an extra set and had driven off.”
“What time did he leave?”
“I don’t know. I went out for a smoke and he got out of a big fancy car, you know, one of those Chrysler 300s with a fancy custom grill the drug dealers drive, I think.”
“What color? Are you sure it was a Chrysler?” I asked.
“I’m a bike guy, not a car guy. Anyway, he said you’d taken off. He was hoping to have a little more fun with you, he said, but the dealer offered a taste after you left, so it wasn’t a complete loss.”
“Can I get a name? Who is he?”
“You know I can’t let you have that.”
“Mike, it’s really important. This is a really big deal to me.”
Mike wouldn’t give it to me, nor would his boss Elizabeth, even after hearing my story.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I know you are in a jam.”
I finally got to the owner, the man I’d met so long before when he was represented by my ex-husband and Max Moore, and who had provided me with pillows and a towel that night I was busted.
“No,” he said.
“No? That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“I really need the information,” I tried to be tough. He was tougher.
“You get nothing without a subpoena. Even then there might not be anything to get. We purge our files frequently.”
The way he said that made me believe he was guaranteeing I would get nothing, and the effort to do so would come with more cost than benefit. Since I was trying to do all this while concealing my presence at SASSA that night, I tended to agree.
I kept pushing where I could push, but I was trying to cover up some things, didn’t remember others, and was a very tempting target for a legal system I’d been pretty successful in giving an occasional bloody nose — all those things together made it extra tough.
Prosecuting attorneys I had beaten put a little extra effort into making sure I would be found guilty. And honestly, so did the judge that assigned my case, even though he was not one I’d ever been before as a lawyer.
They had piled on the charges, layer after layer of multiple counts. There was no doubt I would win most of them.
But juries want to be “fair.” Even if they toss most of the charges, they still want to give a little something to the prosecutor to reward the effort made, and also because they don’t want to seem unreasonable or soft. I’d used that desire for “balance” to my client’s advantage on more than one occasion myself.
But given my line of work, even a partial win would mean a pretty significant loss.
And then there was something else I hadn’t counted on. As I’ve told you, since Mark and I had split up, I had changed my hair and worn different clothes or my old clothes differently. As investigators interviewed those around me, it became clear that they were making a case that I, myself, had “changed.”
Even as I was prepared to argue that everything in my history indicated that I’d never do the things I was accused of doing, they were preparing to argue I wasn’t that person any longer. They were clear that they were willing to subpoena everyone around me, bring them into court, perhaps question why they hadn’t intervened.
There aren’t words to express the rage I felt.
Eventually I was offered a deal of nolo contendere. No contest. I would not admit guilt, but agreed they had enough evidence to convict. They stretched to make it work in my case, but they had a cost/benefit to worry about, too, and really, what they most wanted was to destroy my reputation and get me out of the profession.
My potential downside was to lose big and serve a minimum of five years. I adhered to advice I had often given to clients, taking the deal and serving six months.
• • • •
I won’t say I could have done the sentence standing on my head. It was unpleasant, but not hard. I got reading done I’d intended to do for a long time. I helped fellow inmates with corresponding to the courts, to their victims. Hell, I helped them write to their lawyers, some of whom seemed to have forgotten all about their clients.
Liberty and justice for all is a myth, and one I helped perpetrate.
Besides, there are lots of things one can learn in jail.
I learned that to some women, blow jobs are much less intimate than making love, face to face, in a bed, for instance. I learned that one woman can call another a “bitch” or “whore,” and it can stick even if both are prostitutes.
I le
arned that “justice” is a word, a term, an ideal, a hope, an excuse, a sham, a pry bar, and a blanket. I learned that thirty percent of the hookers on the street may be black, fifty percent of the hookers arrested may be black, and seventy percent of the hookers in jail are black.
That is not because black hookers commit more serious prostitution.
I learned that there are some good public defenders. But lawyers on the 45th floor of the U.S. Bank Building make seventeen times the money that the civil servants in the public defender’s office make. Just look at their shoes: The shoes of a top lawyer cost more than the whole suit of the attorney representing most of the women I was with in jail.
I already knew this. I wore those expensive shoes.
Money buys talent. Money contributes a “halo effect,” where the good-looking guy in an expensive suit who dines on fresh salmon is going to be paid more respect by a jury than the overworked lump in a baggy suit who gets too little sleep, stinks like gritty coffee, cheap booze, and gas station burritos. This is a fact of life.
I already knew the promise of sex will turn a man’s mind to mush, but hookers in jail added the lesson that just by introducing the “possibility” that another man might have interest, a higher price can be negotiated. Biology, again.
Another thing I learned in jail is that “outrage” is a liability. That’s not to say there isn’t anger. Of course there is. There’s a lot to be angry about, besides the fact that people “outside” are able to do things you aren’t able to do “inside.” There’s plenty to be angry about on the inside, too.
I learned that all sorts of people become jailers. Some of them are kind or want to be kind. Interestingly, those were the ones it was sometimes hardest to get to know. I think they build thicker walls so they didn’t get burned.
Others, easier to know, are not so kind. The power they have over prisoners brings out their bad side. Think of the worst bully you ever met in middle school. Give her keys to your cell. Give her a gun. Give her the right to write down on a piece of paper something that will keep you from an hour outside or from a job where you can talk to other people, just because you looked at her and didn’t smile.
Or you looked at her and did smile. Or because she and her boyfriend were fighting. Or her car was slow to start. Give her the right to say any lie she wants even if there is an army of truth calling her a liar. Give her self-loathing and a chance to take all that hurt out on you.
There was a study done a long time ago about how being a “jailer” brought out the worst in people, even in upper-class college kids. It’s certainly true of those whose lives hurt them every day. Again, it’s probably biology. Maybe that’s why men too-often feel a right to “control” women.
But in jail I also learned that outrage blinds you. If you are feeling outrage, you are focused on yourself, and you don’t see what’s really happening around you. Jail teaches you that not seeing what’s around you is just stupid. And that those who feel outrage over things that don’t hurt them personally are just jacking off.
My mother came to visit me once. She was crying when she walked in, sobbed the whole time she was there, and jumped out of her skin whenever there was a loud noise.
After fifteen minutes I lied and told her I didn’t feel well and had to go back to my cell and lie down. I was afraid she was going to have a heart attack. I wrote to her not to come back.
I asked my grandmother not to come at all, but that was for my sake, not hers.
My father didn’t bother to come, write, call or have any contact.
But I met some quality women while I was in jail. Some of them are still good friends. Some of them would help me later in ways I’m not going to tell you about, but you’ll see it if you pay attention.
I was still in jail when I got the letter from the Washington State Bar Association. They’d revoked my license to practice law. I hadn’t realized what kind of impact that would have, since being a lawyer wasn’t really my life’s ambition anyway. My identity wasn’t ever really wrapped around being an attorney. I enjoyed the work. I enjoyed the income. But it wasn’t all of me or even a big part of me.
Still, having it taken away like that was humiliating and a blow that hurt me deeply, even if I didn’t know why.
• • • •
Tony was great.
“Let’s have lunch,” he said, within a day or two after I got out. We wandered down through Pike Place Market to The Bomber, a small hole-in-the-wall where they served nothing but burgers and beer.
“Hey, Tony,” said the counter person when we walked in.
“Hey, Kathy,” said Tony. “Got a table?”
“Back in the hole,” she said with a smile and motioned with her head toward the back of the place.
“That’s my favorite,” said Tony, and led me back past the line where waitresses picked up baskets of burgers and fries to a single table that had a complete view of the inside of the kitchen.
“This is the table for staff when they aren’t busy,” said Tony, wiping it off with a napkin.
“I’ll get that, Hon,” said Kathy walking up with a wet rag that smelled like bleach.
“Usual?”
“Yup.”
“I’ll have the same,” I said, without looking at a menu.
“Got it,” said Kathy, looking at me with a smile.
Walking past the kitchen she called to the cook, “Two B17s, bacon and Swiss, lots of tots.” A minute later she came back with two dark brown beers, set them down, and turned to the high stainless counter where orders were plated just as a cook shouted “Order up!”
“You still have a job,” said Tony, when she was out of earshot.
“I don’t know how. I can’t practice law, and you can’t afford to carry me,” I said. “What’s in it for you?”
“I’m a good guy,” he said, not looking at me but into the kitchen where cooks and dishwashers danced.
“I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t act in their own self-interest.” I meant this to come out with some humor, but it didn’t. It came out flat and bitter, and I didn’t like sounding sorry for myself.
“Me either,” said Tony, neutralizing my hurt. “You run the show from the back room, we get someone to make the presentations in court, we grow the whole thing, and it’s win-win-win.”
“Tony, that will take a while. And it might not work.”
“Might not. But might,” he said.
“Can I get back to you? I really need a break,” I said.
“Take all the time you need,” he said.
We finished lunch and headed out.
“Hey, Tony, whose night is it to deliver?” asked the cook as we walked past.
“I’ll get back to you,” was all Tony said.
It was hard cleaning out my desk in the Seattle Tower. It was even harder when I watched Claire clean out hers.
“Honey, this isn’t on you,” she said. “Besides, I’ve got a new gig. It won’t be as much fun, but it will more than pay the bills.” She was headed over to one of the software companies that were ramping up along Lake Union.
“They need someone tough to keep the geeks on task,” she said.
Sarah was going home to Spokane to care for her dying dad. Lily was going to stay on with Tony, who had plenty of work and enough other lawyers on staff for her skills to be put to use. “I really do want to be useful,” she said. “That’s as important to me as the money.”
I read in The Seattle Times about the engagement of my former husband, Mark Love, Seattle, to Ashley Moore, daughter of Max and Claudia Moore of Bellevue, Washington — yup, the girl I’d gotten off from a cocaine bust.
Everything passes, everything wears out, everything breaks.
Tout passé, tout lasse, tout casse.
Part IV
When the call came that would change my life —
again — I saw the number and I didn’t answer. But when I listened to the message and heard the tone in my mother’s voice, I called her back immediately.
“Jessi… ” she started to say, then stopped.
“Mother?” I asked. I’d stopped calling her “Mom” after the blow up over my divorce from Mark.
“Your grandmother has passed away,” she said. For a moment I thought she was talking about her mother, who I didn’t really know that well.
“Mom, I’m so sorry for your loss…” I started to say, hoping that reverting to the familiar would lend sincerity to my words. Then suddenly I realized it wasn’t her mother she was talking about, but my grandmother, Grandmama, Grandmere.
“Oh God. Mom, what happened? Why didn’t I know?!”
“None of us knew, honey,” said Mom. “She kept getting a bit more frail. We suggested she see a doctor, but she just blew up her lips and said ‘No doctor. I know medicine. I am old. I know what to do.’ You know how stubborn she could be.
“I took her a bowl of chowder this morning. You know it’s the only thing I cook she would eat. She didn’t answer the door. I went around back, and she was sitting in her kitchen chair, but her head was down. I knew something wasn’t right. The doctor said her heart just stopped, and she didn’t even know.”
By the time my mother stopped talking I had slid down the wall to the floor. I could not breathe. My eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sand, then lemon.
“Honey… ?” My mom said.
“I’ll call you back,” I whispered.
I should have known, I told myself. I should have been there, I said. I should have seen her more often, I said. I should should should should should…
“Jessi!” said Grandmere, sharply in my ear. “There is no ‘should!’”
Startled, I looked around. Of course I couldn’t see her. She had died. But I could feel her. She was sitting next to me on the floor, her hand on my shoulder. “Come see me now,” she whispered. “I am waiting for you. I have something for you.”
I got up and washed my face, threw some clothes in a bag and jumped in my replacement Porsche. It wasn’t new, but it was like new. It wasn’t like I’d spent all the money I’d been earning over the last few years or from the divorce settlement. I still had a pretty good stash. The trip home over the back roads was slow as I tried to remember as many of the moments Grandmere and I had spent together as I could.
