Exit Strategies

by Catherine Todd

  “Have you met anyone here? Have you made any friends?” I asked desperately.

  My mother looked away. “How could I? There’s no one here I want to know,” she said.

  Mrs. Fay, the residence administrator, was more sanguine about my mother’s adjustment. “Some people just take more time to settle in,” she said as Allie and I sat in her office off the reception area. “Physically, she’s still very slow to make her way around, and she complains a good bit. I expect that will pick up soon, after she’s healed from her fall. I know we’re keeping an eye on her after her TIA, but otherwise she seems to be adapting reasonably well.” She sighed. “A lot of younger people come in here and say, ‘Oh, I’d love to live in a place like this, with everything taken care of,’” she said. “But look, it’s hard to give up your home and your independence. All your choices. A lot of people resist that, the way your mother has, and I really don’t blame them.”

  I felt vaguely rebuked. “I’m just worried that she isn’t meeting anyone. She doesn’t go out, doesn’t participate.”

  Mrs. Fay smiled. “Is that what she told you?”

  “She certainly implied it.”

  “Did she tell you she’s learning Spanish?”

  “No, she didn’t. In fact, I sort of had the impression she never left her room.”

  Her smile broadened. “I told you before, we have lots of activities. It’s usually just a matter of finding the right one. Carlos is one of our best volunteer instructors, and his beginning Spanish class is very popular. It also doesn’t hurt that Carlos is a dead ringer for Ricardo Montalban,” she added.

  “Who’s that?” asked Allie.

  Mrs. Fay and I exchanged sympathetic glances. “An actor, dear,” she said. “A very handsome one.”

  “So are you saying that my mother is socializing some?” I asked her. “That I don’t need to be worried?” I felt like the parent of an underachiever at Back-to-School Night.

  She folded her hands together on her desk and looked at me kindly. “I’m saying that your mother may be misrepresenting things a bit because she still expects you to take her home. After all, if she’s happy here, there’s that much less incentive, isn’t there?”

  Allie was silent for much of the drive home. I knew most of her silences—there were leave-me-alone silences and please-ask-me-what’s-wrong silences. I thought this was the latter.

  “Anything wrong, honey?” I asked, turning down the volume on the radio.

  She was quiet a few moments longer. At last she said, “Grandma doesn’t like it there, does she?”

  “Not much,” I admitted. “But it’s a nice place. She’ll probably like it more in time.”

  “Does she have to stay there?”

  I looked at her. “For the moment, yes.”

  “That sucks,” she said, sounding like her grandmother. I had told her a zillion times that that was not my favorite expression, but I let it pass.

  “Sometimes people have a hard time getting used to living with strangers, particularly when they get older,” I told her. “And it’s difficult for them to admit they need help. But you know Grandma needs help. You remember how she was at home.”

  She frowned and then turned to look out the window. “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  Her voice was so low I could barely hear her. “You didn’t put Grandma in that place because of me, did you? I mean, I know I said it was boring taking care of her and I wanted to have a life, but I didn’t mean that you should send her away.”

  I pulled the car over to the curb and turned off the engine. “No, Allie, it wasn’t because of you,” I told her firmly. “The social worker at the hospital evaluated her and said she shouldn’t be by herself or just with you anymore. I should have seen that myself.”

  “I still feel really, really terrible,” she said.

  “So do I,” I told her.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “I feel sorry that she has to be someplace she doesn’t want to be. I also feel guilty that I’m relieved that she’s there so I don’t have to worry about her all the time. I feel guilty that I put too big a burden on you long after I should have. All of that makes me feel terrible.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I guess I feel guilty for feeling relieved too. I mean, I miss Grandma, but…”

  “I know,” I told her. “It’s complicated. Sometimes you have to do things for people you don’t particularly feel like doing, no matter how much you love them. Usually it all balances out.” I smiled. “I don’t suppose Grandma was too thrilled with changing all my dirty diapers either. You have to look at the big picture.”

  “Is that like a ‘Circle of Life’ thing?” she asked.

  Philosophy à la Disney. “Sort of,” I told her. I turned the key in the ignition. “Okay now?” I asked her.

  “I guess so,” she said. “Mom?” she asked again.

  “Yes?”

  “Is it too late to get a dress for the prom?”

  “You asked somebody?” I tried to keep my voice noncommittal and low-key.

  She nodded. “A guy in my Advanced Algebra class. He’s not one of the jocks or anything. He’s just a nice person.” She looked at me in wonder. “He said okay.”

  “Good,” I told her carefully. “I’m glad.”

  She settled back comfortably against the seat, her happiness spilling over into a nonstop grin. “This is so awesome,” she said.

  I smiled too, relieved. And then I thought, I should remember this moment. The smallest minute of inattention and I might have missed it—it was so hard to keep everything in focus at once. But life has a way of slipping things under your guard, and here it was all of a sudden—the evidence that my baby girl had a life of her own and a heart to be touched or broken. I thought with a pang that loving your children is about having and losing them at the same time. Circle of life, I thought, and then I had to laugh at myself.

  “So do you think we could still get a dress?” she asked me, confident of the answer.

  “What do you think?” I said. The questions—What’s his name? Who will be driving? What time will you be home?—and the worries—Will there be drugs involved? Alcohol?—could wait for later. I didn’t want to spoil the magic.

  “Let’s call Grandma when we get home,” I suggested. “She’ll be very excited.”

  “Do you really think so?” she asked, wanting to believe.

  “I know it,” I said, and suddenly, I did.

  “You did what?” Lauren asked me. We were having our lunches outside on the RTA patio. We both had salads encased in plastic containers—chicken for her, mixed greens for me. No dressing. Most of the men, both partners and associates, went out for sandwiches or took clients to lunch at upscale restaurants, but nobody ate big. It was bad for productivity, not to mention arterial plaque.

  I had by now figured out that Lauren was my designated mentor, officially and unofficially, because of the number of times she dropped by to see how I was doing. I certainly appreciated it, but a part of me held back, wondering how much she reported to the upper ranks.

  I could see at once that I should have held back now.

  “I didn’t tell her why I was asking,” I said. I had just given Lauren a brief summary of my tea with Dorothy Beekman. I thought she’d be interested, since she harbored a certain skepticism about Bobbie Crystol herself.

  She put down her fork. “Never, never, never divulge anything about a client to someone outside the firm,” she said. “It isn’t ethical, and it’s very bad business practice.”

  “I didn’t divulge anything except my interest in the subject,” I protested. “She doesn’t know Crystol Enterprises is a client. Besides, what she told me was inconclusive. Even I could see that.”

  “That’s something, anyway,” she muttered. “So tell me again why you did this.”

  “I heard something, and I wanted to check it out,” I told her. “Wouldn’t you want to know if Dr. Crystol had given pe
ople something that would make them sick?”

  She looked at me with her clear, direct gaze. “No, I would not,” she said firmly.

  “Really?” I asked, surprised.

  She looked resigned but disappointed, as if I were a tolerably nice pet who couldn’t quite get the hang of obedience training.

  “Really,” she said. “Look, Becky, the essence of good lawyering is not asking a question unless you know what answer you’re likely to get.”

  Then what’s the point of asking? I wanted to say, but I didn’t. I said, “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, let me give you an example in the context of criminal law. If you are O.J.’s lawyer, do you ask him, ‘Did you do it?’”

  “I take it not,” I said.

  “Right. Because if he says yes, even though it’s privileged, you can’t put him on the stand and let him perjure himself. So you don’t ask. It’s better not to know.”

  I twirled greens on my plastic fork, thinking. “So you think it’s just better not to know if your client might have done something wrong?”

  She sighed. “I’m saying it makes it a lot easier to represent them. What could you do if you found out that your wildest suspicions were true? Knowing something damaging is not an advantage in this situation; you must see that. Just make sure nothing illegal is going on now. Period. Protect yourself, but be careful where you go poking sticks.”

  “I suppose,” I said doubtfully.

  “Trust me,” she said.

  “But—”

  “No buts,” she said firmly.

  Even I knew better than to argue with that. I said nothing. If she wanted to think that silence meant consent, then I wasn’t going to stop her. Under the circumstances, I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that I wasn’t about to abandon my attempts to get around the trust somehow either, even if Taylor got dragged into the unpleasantness. I felt as if I were walking on eggshells with everyone.

  “By the way,” she said after a few moments during which we both got through the awkwardness by pretending enthusiasm for our salads, “there was something else I wanted to tell you. Remember my gardener’s daughter? The one who’s in law school?”

  “Sure. The one who might have to drop out?”

  “I knew you were the one I’d told about it,” she said. “The most amazing thing happened.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “She’s been invited to apply for a fellowship. No, not invited, encouraged. Some foundation contacted her. If she gets it, she won’t have to drop out.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I said. “What’s the foundation?”

  “I think it’s called the Medallion Foundation or something like that. I don’t think she’d ever heard of them before. It’s something of a mystery how they even got her name.”

  I shrugged. “I say take the money and run. It sounds like she deserves it. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this, would you?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Me?” I shook my head. “I heard it here first,” I told her.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dear members of the board, I sat down to write to the Medallion Foundation. I got stuck after the salutation. I was gratified by the response to my request, but I was unnerved too.

  Someone was listening.

  I mean, originally I’d made up the character of Pendleton Silverbridge and endowed him with an imaginary interest in my little life so that I could indulge myself by sending, over the years, what amounted to one long journal about my career in law school. And a number of other things too, now that I came to think of it. I’d been embarrassingly confessional on occasion, I’d made bad jokes and snotty comments, mostly because I believed, deep down, that the letters were a pro forma exercise and were discarded unread.

  Well, now I knew better. There was somebody out there. It was like the difference between a respectful belief in the Prime Mover and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” One was impersonal; the other wasn’t.

  I wondered if I’d made them cringe all those years—Pendleton or Helen or Jackie or Paul—and how I should address them now.

  Nobody’s listening till you make a mistake.

  On the other hand, they had listened, maybe in spite of the mistakes. They had done something I’d asked them to. Maybe I shouldn’t mess with success.

  I tried again.

  Dear Members of the Board:

  I meant to write you a simple note thanking you for responding to the request I made when I last wrote. Thank you for your generous consideration of a very worthy young woman. I’m sure she’ll requite your kindness with success.

  Oh, hell. I might as well say what was really on my mind.

  Thank you for listening. Not just this time, but all those years. I inflicted all my worries and regrets and observations on you like some juridical Samuel Pepys because, the truth is, I wasn’t sure anyone was really reading them, and I have to admit, those letters did me an awful lot of good. I don’t know who you are or where your sensibilities—collective or individual—lie, and for all I know I trampled on them right and left. If so, forgive me.

  I wondered if I should, in fact, inflict my doubts on them one last time just for old time’s sake. L’affaire Taylor had made me more than a little cynical about staying on in the life I had chosen, particularly since I was having a few doubts about Bobbie Crystol too. I had the impression from Lauren that not only was I supposed to dedicate myself to Work for the rest of my life, but I was also supposed to turn a blind eye to client foibles if I knew what was good for me. Don’t ask a question unless you know what answer you’re likely to get. I’d get little in the way of loyalty in return. And not a lot of laughs either.

  I thought about all the lectures I’d given Allie and David over the years about making yourself do what you had to do, even if you didn’t feel like it. It didn’t seem like such a wonderful life plan now. So should I quit my job? After six years of struggle? When I could barely meet my financial obligations as it was? And—not to put too fine a point on it—to do what?

  I studied the letter. Should I tell them? Nah, I thought. Time to grow up and handle things on my own.

  Thank you again for your generosity. I wish you all the very best.

  I’d been putting off telling David about Carole’s reduction in payments and, more to the point, my inability to date to do anything about it. I told myself I didn’t want to upset his studies, but the reality was that I hadn’t been in a rush to share the news. I knew he’d be angry and disappointed. Still, it was important that he know so he could make plans.

  I drove up to L.A. on a Sunday so smoggy that my eyes felt scratchy as soon as I hit the Harbor Freeway. By the time I got to Pasadena the pollution had invaded my body, lounging in my lungs and irritating my stomach. I met David at his apartment; his roommates were away for the day. This wasn’t the sort of news I wanted to impart over the phone. The sight of him—happy, relaxed, confident—twisted my heart. College had done that for him. It was just what Richard and I had hoped for when we made our plans.

  “What’s up?” he asked me after he had bent over and kissed me affectionately. He was a very big man; taller than his father had been by at least three or four inches. He didn’t look like either one of us much, although he had Richard’s curly hair. We sat down on an old brown couch that had clearly come out of someone’s attic to furnish the apartment. I’d called before I came, so there were no unspeakable piles of laundry or discarded pizza boxes in evidence. David’s sloppiness had driven me wild when he lived under my roof; now it seemed endearing and manly.

  “Bad news, I’m afraid,” I told him.

  He touched my arm. “Is it Grandma?”

  I shook my head.

  His face changed. “Are you okay, Mom?” he asked, in a tight voice.

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that. I’m fine. It’s the money.” I explained about the payment reduct
ion and showed him Carole’s letter.

  “Fuck her,” he said finally, throwing it down on the coffee table. He looked at me. “Can’t you do anything about it?”

  I’d been prepared for the question, but it still came as a blow. “Some of the principal has been reduced—the accountants confirm that. I’ve looked into trying to break the trust or get her removed as trustee before she can lose any more. I’m a lawyer, Davey, but I’m not an expert in trusts and estates. I asked someone at the firm. I’ve been advised that trying to do either would be very difficult. Not only that, but it would cost a lot and eat into the capital in the fund.”

  “Fuck,” he said again. “So that means you can’t do anything, right?” He sounded angry and bitter.

  “No,” I told him. “It doesn’t mean that. But it means that right now I don’t have the answer. I promise you I’ll do everything I possibly can to fix it, but I can’t make a problem like this vanish this instant.”

  “Christ,” he said. “Now what?”

  I took a breath. “Well, you have some choices to make. You could try to get a loan. You could get a job during school as well as during vacations. Or you could…”

  “Drop out,” he said morosely.

  “Transfer, not drop out,” I said firmly. I paused. “I’m so sorry, David.”

  He shook his head vehemently. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry, Mom. I’m acting like a baby. I’m taking this out on you, and it’s not your fault. It’s not your problem either.” He straightened up on the couch. I never felt more proud of him than at that moment, because I knew he was signaling something more than taking responsibility for the tuition problem. My children were constantly surprising me. I felt a little misty-eyed.

  “David—”

  “I mean it, Mom. It’s my education. I’ll think of something. I mean, it’s not like you didn’t have to work to put yourself through law school. Try not to worry. You’ve been a good example.” He smiled and patted my hand solicitously. “I just reacted badly because that witch always gets under my skin.”