Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement

by Grif Stockley

  Amy shakes her head. Trying to improve me is irresistible.

  “That’s what you think,” she says earnestly.

  “But it’s like trying to judge a book when you don’t understand half the words.”

  Is Amy like this with her clients? No wonder she isn’t making any money. She is so damn earnest about it.

  “It’s over my head is what you mean. I can live with that. But I don’t have to have it in my house.”

  Jessie, sensing she is forgiven, raises her enormous muzzle and gazes at Amy with her big, beautiful brown eyes as if to say, this guy is full of it. Seeing that I am shifting the focus of the argument, Amy ignores my dog and says to me, “I wouldn’t expect to have it out in the living room if it upset you.”

  Is every conversation we have these days about us? When I bought the house, I thought she got the message that I wasn’t ready to get married. I take off Jessie’s collar. The tinkling of her tags is driving me crazy. Despite our differences, Amy and I seem to be wearing invisible magnets that have each other’s names embedded in them.

  How to explain it? Months ago she told me that I reminded her of her father. For her part she has Rosa’s spunky personality and irrepressible good humor. Too, like some magical property that is essential to life but poorly understood, there is between us a steady sexual buzz, a ubiquitous all-purpose emotional Super Glue that can temporarily seal every crack in the relationship. This strange attraction to my aging, soft-putty flesh is, to me, another sign of her kinkiness. But women are generally strange creatures. What drives them to seek solace in such a ridiculously unsubtle and ultimately woebegone-looking organ? This relentless, instinctive preference for the obvious proves they have no more intelligence or self-control than we do.

  And tonight, like so many others, we end our discussion in her queen-sized bed, leaving Jessie in her crate in the kitchen, a decision naturally questioned by my girlfriend. However, this confinement,

  instead of being cruel, is an act of kindness.

  Used to a lifetime in tight spaces, Jessie feels secure in there.

  Freedom always sounds better than it is. I’m surprised Amy hasn’t turned that argument on me. I haven’t quite been honest with her, telling her that the reason I’m not hungry is that I was given a bowl of soup by an old friend whom I stopped by to visit in order to get information on the case. I don’t mention that I kissed this old friend or that she responded. Amy, who used to be in the Blackwell County prosecuting attorney’s office, has been fascinated by my account of the intrigues going on in Bear Creek and has listened in wide-eyed fascination at the description of my family’s treatment at the hands of Oscar and Paul Taylor. Why should I tell her about Angela? I don’t even know how I feel about her myself.

  Amy’s bedroom is even more bizarre than the rest of the apartment, probably because, in addition to nudes on the walls, she has pictures of her family on the nightstand by her bed. Her father’s pinched face shows scarring on both sides, perhaps from acne as an adolescent. Bald, withered, he was already worn out at the time of this photograph, taken five years before his death from prostate cancer, but Amy assures me that emotionally, at least, he is still very much a force in her life.

  “Benign?” I ask, my arm around his daughter’s bare shoulders. Her compact body is delightfully voluptuous as well as athletic. As I’ve come to know it, I’ve been confronted by the knowledge of how much work she puts into it. In the corner is one of those Nordic Tracks a fitness torture chamber whose very name suggests an uncompromisingly bleak and sunless existence.

  Waking up on occasion to my girlfriend trudging nowhere is unnerving.

  What if she were to give up exercise and start eating? She claims she weighs herself every day. I believe her, having seen her measure herself in ounces. Only five-two, she doesn’t have any inches to give away to the never-ending battle of the twentieth century.

  Light-years more comfortable naked than any woman I’ve ever known, Amy studies her father’s grim likeness and answers my question.

  “Like you, not always,” she says, putting her hand on my thigh.

  “I can feel his judgment even in my sleep. Actually, he tried hard to be tolerant, but his disapproval always found a way.”

  Later, as we lie in the darkness, it becomes clear what our discussion was all about: whether she admits it or not, Amy wants a father figure.

  Do I need another daughter? Surely not. Sarah is more than enough for me. Whatever the future holds, these few hours with Angela have made me wonder if I wouldn’t be better off with a woman who shares my past.

  For better or worse, despite its past horrors and poverty, I have to acknowledge the Delta is still my emotional home. It is a generational thing: the visit with Angela has awakened feelings that I could never possibly have with Amy, who, growing up in the post-civil-rights era, understandably lives only in the present tense.

  In the morning before we leave for our offices I talk almost

  compulsively about Bear Creek.

  Standing behind her in her bathroom and watching her put on her face, I explain about Bear Creek’s Chinese families.

  “I never saw people work so hard. If they ever took vacations, I never knew it. And talk about family values: Their kids never got in trouble.”

  Amy, squinting in the glare of so much light (the frame of her mirror looks like the marquee of a Broadway musical), sniffs, “They must have felt really out of place.”

  Without her makeup, Amy looks pretty ordinary.

  Most women do, I guess. Rosa was one of the few women who could look good without it.

  Sarah has her coloring—an exotic blend of Negro, Indian, and Spanish blood and glossy curly hair and long lashes. In contrast, Amy begins each day pale as a premature baby and takes at least forty-five minutes to emerge from the bathroom as the more cute than pretty woman she presents to the public. I didn’t know it took so much work until yesterday when I watched the whole process intently. Rosa never took more than ten minutes, and she was out the door to rave reviews. In the outside world Amy relies on her high-energy, almost manic personality, which, I realize, is as carefully manufactured as her face. Behind closed doors the smoke and mirrors vanish, and a cooler, more calculating persona emerges.

  “I think they must have liked it that way—at least the parents did,” I

  acknowledge.

  “The old people probably thought being Chinese was better than being white, and maybe they were right. Some of them had worked for planters like the Taylor family. It didn’t take them long to find out that the richest and presumably most educated whites in the South had only one thing in mind and that was to exploit them as laborers as thoroughly and as long as possible. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the Taylors had Chinese working for them after the Civil War.”

  So painstakingly it makes my eyes twitch, Amy thickens her lashes. I’m surprised she doesn’t blind herself with all that gook she puts on them.

  “I’ve never heard you obsess the way you have about this Taylor family,” she says evenly.

  “You’ve never mentioned them before.”

  I lean back against the door sill and fold my arms against my chest.

  That may be true, but the resentment was always there. And until now, I had never been in a position to do anything about it. When I got back to sleep after having gotten up to go to the bathroom after two, I had dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. All I can remember now is that she had looked sad.

  “Out of sight, out of mind,” I say, realizing how much I have traditionally tried to cope with parts of my past by minimizing its bleakness. However, with Sarah, now a history major at the University (this month anyway), becoming curious about the South and her ancestry,

  it is increasingly difficult to do. I realize I have never told my daughter how our family was treated by the county’s leading citizens.

  Why? Embarrassment, I guess. We had seemed so weak and helpless. I didn’t want he
r to think of her grandparents that way. When we had gone over to Bear Creek in November, she had wanted to know if they were racists. Of course, I had told her. In those times we all were.

  What I should have told her was that we were nothing like the Taylors.

  We hadn’t owned slaves, we hadn’t cheated people out of their property or land. We hadn’t been hypocrites.

  I notice Amy looking at me in the mirror. She says, “God, Gideon. You seemed to go into a trance.”

  Feeling foolish, I force a smile, but it looks weak as it comes back to me in the mirror. Am I really still handsome as Angela said? Except for the gut and my bald spot, I haven’t aged too badly. I pooch out my bottom lip with my tongue, noticing the beginning of a fever blister on my lip. Damn. Why now in the middle of winter?

  If doctors got paid for what they actually cured, they’d go broke.

  “It was an interesting visit,” I temporize.

  “What were you thinking about?” Amy asks, coolly appraising her own face. She is performing this ritual nude. I wonder if Angela does. My mother would be horrified at this scene. She was almost laughably modest. Even my sister Marty said she had never seen our mother without

  clothes.

  “Just the past,” I say vaguely. Actually, I was thinking of the way Angela looked just before I kissed her.

  “How can your client afford to pay you?” Amy asks, now blotting her lips.

  “Didn’t you say he worked at a barbecue place?”

  Without lipstick, her mouth is a hair too small.

  Painted, it looks bigger. Not Julia Roberts size, but wide enough.

  “He and his wife had saved a few thousand for a house,” I say.

  “I’ll lose money on this case, but it’s better than nothing.”

  “Anything is better than nothing.” Sex is no problem between us, but I suspect money would be. From past comments I know Amy is struggling in her law practice. Domestic relations cases, her bread and butter, are usually a sinkhole unless your clients are rich. They eat up all your time and then don’t pay, or you can’t collect your fee. Dan is the expert in the divorce accounts receivable business. Women going through a divorce usually have less money than criminals. A former assistant prosecuting attorney, Amy, unfortunately, hates representing crooks. I get awfully fed up, too, but as a former public defender, defense work comes more naturally to me. It wouldn’t entirely surprise me if Amy wanted to stay home and tend to a couple of yard apes. Her genetic clock is ticking down and that’s probably where this pressure is coming from.

  Poor women. All this progress and they still can’t figure out how to have it all. Men aren’t much better off. After nearly half a century on this earth, I’m still paying for the one kid I’ve got.

  Ten minutes later Amy and I kiss each other goodbye as if we were a longtime married couple parting to go to our respective jobs.

  I start my day with a win when the plaintiff in my Municipal Court hearing is a no-show. When I hit the office, the mail has already arrived. There amid the collection of professional garbage I find an envelope with my daughter’s handwriting, an event which usually signals some internal struggle being waged. I take it back to my office and close the door and sit down, prepared for the latest installment.

  February 25

  Dear Dad, I sent this letter to the office, because I didn’t know whether you were in your new house. I know you’re thinking: Oh, God, what is wrong with her now, since I hardly ever write. Nothing really is, but I just wanted to describe to you some things that have been happening to me, and when I tell you on the phone sometimes I never can say what I’m trying to.

  After I got back to school in January, I joined an AIDS Care team through one of the churches in Fayetteville. A friend of mine whose brother died of AIDS got me interested, and I went through the training on the Sunday before Martin Luther King’s birthday. What we are is kind of a support group for people with AIDS, or PWAS as they are called. We do all kinds of stuff for the two assigned to our team, and some things

  I’m discovering I’m not very good at doing.

  These guys really are dying, even though one of them is still doing okay.

  “Larry” (we’re supposed to protect their anonymity) is sort of our healthy one. He was diagnosed two years ago and actually is able to work as a salesman for a computer company up here. We just kind of hang out together sometimes. I like him. He’s funny and says the wildest things. He says he is most scared of going blind or getting Kaposi’s Sarcoma which he says will make him look hideous. In lots of ways, he’s a neat guy. He does a lot of things for guys who are sick even though he can be pretty hard on them.

  He has a real strong work ethic and tries to live a healthy lifestyle (he says some of these other people have given up and just do whatever they want—I guess I would, too). Even though he’s gay, I couldn’t tell it just by looking at him. I think he feels real ambivalent about his sexuality. Also, he’s kind of religious. I don’t really know him that well, but I’m getting to.

  The other guy is “Luke,” and he is sick. Right now he is in the hospital and may not make it much longer. My friend Barbara (the girl who got me interested) is really amazing. She just goes in the hospital room and takes over. She feeds Luke (he hardly eats anything), washes him, even brushes his teeth. I can’t do that. I’m just too squeamish. I guess I’m afraid, too, even though I know I can’t catch AIDS that way.

  It really makes me respect what Mom did. I can’t imagine being a nurse! Mom did all that stuff all day long until almost the month she died!

  I think something is wrong with me. I’m just too big a baby. Barbara says I’ll get used to it, but I don’t think so. All I’m good for is talking. Maybe I’ll be a lawyer after all!

  Mainly, when I visit Luke, I read to him though I don’t know how much he listens. He likes me to read the paper, especially Dave Barry. He sort of goes in and out. Dad, he’s only 27! I can’t imagine how I would cope with knowing I was dying so young and in such a terrible way. Poor Mom. She wasn’t even forty, was she? I know we’ve talked about this some, but didn’t she feel terribly cheated? I know she wanted to see me grow up. You’d think I’d learn a lot from all this, but the only thing I’ve learned is to try to appreciate every moment, no matter how boring it seems. Of course, I don’t!

  I hope you don’t mind too much me unloading about all of this. I know one of your best friends was gay. Didn’t he move to Atlanta? I hope you are making sure Jessie is getting enough exercise.

  Say hello to Amy. Dad, is she even thirty?

  Love, Sarah, Your Squishy-soft Daughter I lean back in my chair and stare out my window.

  Sarah, a carbon copy of her mother, stays on high boil. But no wonder she can’t go into that guy’s room without her eyes watering: My mother used to say sarcastically that I wouldn’t even drink after myself.

  Since I never washed a dish until I was married, it wasn’t always said in good humor. I reread the letter. What a kid. Last semester she was a

  raging feminist; now, she’s visiting the sick. A work in progress if there ever was one.

  I pick up the phone and call her room. Amazingly, she is there.

  “Why aren’t you in class?” I ask when she answers the phone.

  “I’m just leaving,” she says in the same breathless tone I’d hear when she was scurrying around at the last minute about to be late for high school. How did we cope in those years after her mother died? Between us, we had a hard time figuring out how to use the electric can opener.

  We managed, though. Despite some craziness on my part, those years forged a bond between us that will never be broken.

  “I got your letter, babe,” I say, knowing it won’t do any good to preach.

  “I’m proud of you for doing this, but be careful. You’re not around his blood or anything, are you?” I ask, wanting reassurance she is safe.

  “Dad,” she says, her voice impatient, “we’re not nurses. Besides, I can’t even
thread a needle, much less give anyone a shot.”

  I laugh. Poor kid. What did I teach her? Not much. But I didn’t ruin her either.

  “Are you sure this stuff isn’t a little too heavy? College is supposed to be fun.”

  “Dad, it’s so sad! They’re either sick or terrified they’re getting sick.”

  Sarah doesn’t always listen to every word I say.

  I want to ask how these guys got AIDS, but I’m afraid I’d get more of a description than I want from my daughter.

  “Maybe it would be better if you were just doing this in the summer.”

  “Luke won’t be here this summer,” Sarah says coldly.

  “Dad, I’ll have to call you. I’m late. Bye.”

  “Bye,” I say before the phone clicks in my ear.

  I put the receiver down hoping she won’t get too caught up in this latest obsession.

  I go out to the front to go take a leak, and Julia tells me I have a walk-in. I check my watch and decide I can squeeze somebody in before I have to leave. I try to schedule appointments for everyone, but I’ve learned the hard way that some people would sooner eat broken glass for breakfast than agree to talk to me at my convenience.

  “Mr. Longley says he’s got a personal injury case,” Julia whispers respectfully as I nod at the big man in the corner who is already scrambling to his feet.

  “He says he has to talk to you immediately.”

  At the public defender’s office we had the luxury of telling people they actually had to wait their turn. In private practice I can measure the month’s take by what lengths I’ll go to in order to accommodate a client. Usually, I won’t risk asking a client to let me go to the bathroom first. He might be gone when I got out.

  Eager as I am, he walks over to me and extends his hand.

  “Glenn Longley,” he says. Is this a client or a life insurance salesman?

  “Gideon Page,” I say, sizing him up. If he was injured, he has made a nice recovery. The guy is undeniably handsome and looks in peak condition.