“What’s wrong with that?” I sputter. I thought I looked pretty good today. Sometimes I don’t match.
Rainey surveys me.
“The one downtown,” she says, nodding at Sarah.
“What’s wrong with that?” I say. I know who they’re talking about. Clean, polite, efficient, he always looks presentable to me.
“I take that as a compliment,” I say, preparing for the worst.
“I’m sure you do,” Rainey says, winking at my daughter.
“You’re a lawyer!” Sarah exclaims.
“You ought to wear suits.”
I do sometimes, but if I know I’m not going to court, I can’t bring myself to wear one. Suits I associate with weddings and funerals.
“Having to go to work every day is bad enough,” I say, knowing my defense is falling on deaf ears.
“I’m not going to make it any worse.
That guy probably makes a fortune.”
At the dinner table I move our main topic of conversation from my clothes to the Razorbacks, which is appropriate given the season of the year. How will the Razorbacks do in the NCAA basketball tournament? In the legends that surround the Kennedys, one that has stuck with me as the myths have accumulated is the story that among his other accomplishments, old Joe, the father of a president, an attorney general, and a U.S.
senator, insisted that his children discuss world affairs at dinner. If table talk about geopolitics is a requirement of greatness, my daughter and I are doomed to the sticks.
“The best thing that ever happened to the Hogs was moving to the Southeastern Conference,” Sarah pronounces buttering corn bread that is soft as cake.
“Playing Kentucky, LSU, and Alabama has got to toughen you up a lot more than blowing out TCU and Texas Tech.”
I bite into cucumber and lettuce and chew.
“I miss playing Texas,” I say after I swallow.
“God, we hated them.” How boring my life would be without the emotions of resentment and envy.
Rainey, who is not a sports enthusiast but keeps up out of necessity, asks as she squeezes lemon into her iced tea, “Doesn’t it seem strange that even though nearly all the players are black, people still care as much as they did when they were white?”
“We only care if they win,” Sarah observes, looking to me for my response. My daughter is at the age where she challenges almost every utterance out of my mouth.
My relationships with other women, the way I practice law, and my treatment of Rainey (who sometimes seems more like a saint than a woman to my daughter) are all put under a microscope and rarely seem to pass inspection.
I sip at a goblet of Cabernet red wine I picked up at Warehouse Liquor. Ever since “60 Minutes” aired that piece about how the French develop relatively little heart disease, I have religiously drunk a couple of glasses for dinner and have escaped criticism from the two women in my life. Knowing I will get Rainey’s goat, I say, “If they win, we don’t care what color they are. That’s what makes this country great. Winning is everything.”
Rainey, dainty as the first time I had lunch with her at Wendy’s (she had a salad that day as well), dabs at her mouth with a cloth napkin she insists is ecologically correct, despite the energy expended to clean it.
“We’re great all right,” she says sourly.
“All the wealth in this country, and millions of people don’t even have health insurance. With the cuts in Medicaid, I wonder how people live as long as they do.”
Content to be a white American middle-class male, I savor the taste on my tongue. God, wine tastes good with a meal. If the French weren’t such snobs, they could still civilize us.
“Genetics,” I say, undercutting my excuse to guzzle more booze.
“I’m beginning to think your body gets a certain number of years no matter what you do to it.”
“You don’t believe that!” Rainey practically snorts, shaking her head.
“That would sound too much like fate.”
The truth is, I don’t. Life will continue to be one random accident until, sooner or later, we peel a little too much off the ozone layer.
“Did you tell Sarah I’m working with Chet Bracken on the Wallace case?” I ask her, moving the subject along. She is spooning her soup the way my mother taught me forty years ago in eastern Arkansas: move the spoon through the soup away from you as if it were a Feris wheel and then bring it to your mouth. You don’t look so greedy that way. Manners. An overrated virtue to people who don’t have any.
“I would rather you breach your client’s confidentiality Rainey says dryly.
Sarah puts down her fork, and says in a high voice, “You told me once that Chet Bracken was a brilliant thug.”
I look at my daughter and remember that is exactly what I said. What goes around comes around.
“I meant some attorneys believe that about him,” I backtrack, “but there’s never been any proof he’s ever done one thing unethical.” Losing ground with Sarah, I turn to Rainey.
“Did you know he’s a member of your new church?”
Rainey sips her tea.
“There’re only five thousand members at Christian Life,” she says, giving me an un usual deadpan expression.
“I haven’t met them all in the last four months.”
I managed to keep Bracken’s secret that he has cancer a total of two hours before I told Rainey, which is probably a record for me. I deposit information with my girlfriend faster than a squirrel stores nuts for winter.
Rainey keeps her mouth shut, which is more than I can say for myself.
Sarah has consumed about an ounce of soup. She’d rather have red meat any day. She moves the spoon around in the bowl.
“What case?”
I explain briefly about the Wallace murder and my client’s connection with Christian Life.
“I figured Rainey could fill me in, since she’s started going to her church.”
No longer feigning even polite interest in her food, my daughter pushes back from the table.
“That’s my dad,” she says to Rainey.
“What’s a person for except for him to use to help win a case? And you’re even fixing dinner for him!”
I raise my eyebrows to warn Sarah she is going a little far. Still, we have had this discussion before. My argument is that defense attorneys aren’t given many weapons, and you have to make do with what is at hand. She says that lawyers like me hurt innocent people in the process and then act as if it couldn’t be helped. Worse, according to Sarah, I seem to be more alive right before a trial and during it than at any other time. I seem to enjoy it too much. She’s right. I do.
Rainey nods, apparently having made peace with her self long ago.
“This way I can exercise a little influence over him,” she says, as if I were not sitting across from her.
“If you’re not willing to help him, he won’t listen at all.”
I roll my eyes and pretend I don’t know what they’re talking about. In fact, not too many months ago I stashed in this very house a witness who needed to disappear for a few hours. She spent the night, and Rainey deposited her at the courthouse to testify the next mo ming
“So tell me about Christian Life,” I say to Rainey, who nods as if she expected me to play dumb.
“Only if you won’t make fun of it,” she demands, her lips pursed, daring me to make some smart remark.
“Why didn’t you ask Chet Bracken?”
Sarah, who has not missed Sunday Mass in months after not going for a couple of years after her mother died, nods in agreement. At least I have a clue as to why Rainey has gotten religion. With Sarah I have no idea. Church seems to be a woman thing, mostly, is all I can figure.
“I promise I won’t make fun,” I say, meaning it. Rainey can be a big help if she’s willing to poke around for me.
“Actually, I would have felt kind of weird asking Bracken,” I admit. If Chet had started telling me about how Jesus Christ had changed
his life, I would have tried to crawl under my desk. I can handle that kind of talk better from a woman.
“It’s not like you think, Gideon,” Rainey lectures me.
“It’s not hellfire and damnation.” Rainey turns to Sarah, who is listening respectfully.
“Your father has this image of a Jimmy Swaggart praying for money and promising to heal people. That’s absurd! What Christian Life is about is helping people to accept the belief that God broke into human history two thousand years ago.
Christian Life starts with a person just as you are right now, faith or no faith, and invites you, invites me, to witness the changes in the lives of the members of its congregation. People who are just starting are assigned church families. They are not blood families just groups of about fifteen to twenty people who become your Christian Life family. It’s incredible how persons in your family have changed their lives. Most of them weren’t what anyone would call bad before. They lived ordinary, typical lives filled with the normal boredom, despair, and the sense of meaninglessness that accompany twentieth-century existence. Now their lives are truly God-centered, and they have a joy in their lives that is just thrilling to be around.”
While Rainey is speaking, I am tempted to slurp my soup. When she gets started on Christian Life, she positively glows. It is hard not to be jealous. I never have been able to generate this kind of excitement in her.
Trying to conceal my irritation, I ask, “I don’t get the connection between their lives and a literal belief in the Bible.” I look at my daughter, who is listening intently.
Mass, unless it has changed, is pretty much a cut-and dried affair in the Catholic church.
“What happens if you let it,” Rainey says, her voice soft and fragile, “is that God, working through your family, gives you the courage and will to believe that the Bible is His Word. It’s simply through His grace that you come to accept the Scriptures.”
I realize I have begun to resent the amount of time Rainey spends at Christian Life. In the last couple of months she has been up there at their huge complex for part of four or five days of every week. Christian Life is like a separate city within Blackwell County, but that’s the point. A way of life, she says. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that Christian Life is a cult, but Rainey flatly maintains there is nothing unusual about its doctrine or its leadership. Because of its size, she says, they break themselves down into “families” which nurture people like herself.
My daughter, who has never been shy before around Rainey until tonight, clears her throat and asks, “And you believe the Bible now word for word?”
Rainey smiles.
“About ninety percent of the time I do. To help new members, they use the familiar metaphor of a trip. Joining Christian Life is like taking an unexpected journey. When you first begin it, you don’t have the right clothes; you’re anxious about what you’re leaving; you’re nervous about your destination.
After you’ve been on it long enough, you learn how to be comfortable. That’s where I am right now-I’m learning how to be comfortable.”
I take my spoon and press it hard against the table, trying to contain my frustration. I’ve felt Rainey slipping away from me for months. Christian Life sounds like a day-care center for adults. All you have to do is check your brains at the door. Yet she has told me that a number of Blackwell County’s movers and shakers are members now, including a number of attorneys who are partners in the biggest firms in the state. “Tell me about Shane Norman,” I mutter.
“What makes him so great?”
Rainey’s eyes light up at the mention of Christian Life’s principal minister.
“I’ve actually met him only once,” she says, giving me a rueful smile that is becoming familiar, “but as a preacher the man radiates peace.
Even the Sunday after Leigh was charged, you couldn’t tell the turmoil he must have been feeling.”
I lean back in my chair so exasperated with her I can’t eat anymore. I would be glowing a bit myself if five thousand people were showing up every week to hear me beat my gums.
“Maybe he was at peace because his church raised half a million dollars for her bail by the next day.”
Rainey gives me an indulgent smile.
“Think how you would feel if Sarah were charged with murdering her husband. You’d be bananas.”
I am capable of murder, but Sarah is not. She feels guilty if she accidentally steps on an ant. I start to make some asinine crack, but catch myself. Rainey will clam up if I’m not careful.
“You’re right,” I say.
“So have you heard any stories about Leigh’s marriage while you’ve been there?”
“Don’t ask her to snoop on her own church!” Sarah yelps at me.
“It’s not right!” She glares at me as if I had demanded that Rainey stake out the women’s bathroom at Christian Life.
“It’s okay, Sarah,” Rainey says.
“He’s just trying to find out the truth about what happened.”
I nod, ridiculously pleased that Rainey is defending me.
“All I’m trying to do,” I tell my daughter, “is get some information.” At seventeen, Sarah is an idealist. I don’t begrudge her this unrealistic phase in her life. I must have gone through one myself to run off and join the Peace Corps after college. Still, people like my daughter can be a pain in the butt, especially if they are charged with a crime. In my last big case I defended one who almost drove me crazy.
Sarah shakes her head.
“You just want to hear some thing,” she says, “that will make Christian Life look bad. You’re mad Rainey’s never home anymore when you call her.”
A child shall lead us.
“I have to confess,” I say, glancing at Sarah before I turn to my girlfriend, “I’m a little suspicious of anyone who’s made to sound quite so wonderful. He never turns out to be the superstar everybody says he is.”
Sarah’s voice takes on a high-pitched tone that signals she is mad enough to cry.
“You’re just like the media,” she says to me.
“Always criticizing, always looking for the dirt.” She pleads with Rainey, “Don’t tell him anything.”
“Sarah,” Rainey says, coming around the table to stand behind Sarah’s chair and rub her shoulders as if she were a child who needed calming down instead of a spoiled, sulky teenager, “it’s okay. Your dad knows he’s got a standing invitation to get involved with me out there any time he wants.”
Her dark eyes flashing at me, Sarah says, “The only reason you’d go is to get evidence for your case.”
I stand up, wondering what I have done to my child.
In conversations before, Sarah has accused me of using people, but she has never been so angry or so blunt.
“I don’t think,” I say, throwing my napkin on the table, “I’d make it to the inner sanctum in the three weeks left to trial.” I head for the door.
“Let’s go home if all you are going to do is jump down my throat.”
As I knew would happen, tears start down my daughter’s cheeks. I still know what buttons to push. There may come a time when “guilting” her won’t work, but practice makes perfect.
“I’m sorry, Rainey,” she says in a choked voice.
“I am, too!” I call from the door, waiting for Sarah.
Sometimes she acts about three. I’m almost as mad at Rainey as I am at Sarah. I’m willing to bet my fee in the Wallace case that Rainey has been talking to Sarah about her coming to Christian Life. I don’t mind her trying to proselytize me, but Sarah is another matter.
Damn it to hell, who does she think she is? Sarah is my child, and I don’t want anybody trying to feed her a load of crap. There is enough out there anyway without some right-wing nuts brainwashing her. Who the hell is Shane Norman anyway? In an earlier life he probably was some fly-by-night con artist who figured out that peddling salvation was an easier way to make a living.
I may not be a genius or
a saint, but I know bullshit when I see it. From the Crusades on down, with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, Christians who were sure they had a lock on the truth have murdered thousands of people. I’d rather my daughter’s brain not be one of their victims.
“It’s all right. Call me later,” Rainey says, hurrying to the door.
I nod curtly, as Sarah runs ahead of me.
Sarah and I ride in an angry silence until we turn into our driveway.
“You can be so closed-minded,” she says, as she shuts the car door, careful not to slam it, knowing I will explode if she does.
“Just because you don’t believe anything doesn’t mean other people can’t.”
Banging doors, yelling, any behavior except “Yes, sir” or “No, ma’am” uttered with a respectful tone minus a snide expression were forbidden to me and my sister, Marty, when we were growing up in eastern Arkansas. Even when my father was at his craziest, we went around smiling like slaves who were working up their nerve to ask for permission to marry someone off the plantation. Only in the last couple of years have I realized how much I intimidated Sarah when she was growing up. I have begun to lighten up, but I am afraid she will always be a little intimidated by me.
“I believe in something,” I respond weakly. We covered this ground last summer. Since religion has become important to her, it upsets her that I don’t share her preoccupation with it. I unlock the door, and we are greeted by Woogie, a genetic disaster with his long legs and beagle body and head.
“Rainey asked you to visit Christian Life, didn’t she?”
I turn on lights in the den while Sarah reaches down and pats Woogie’s head.
“What’s wrong with that?”
I might as well sell the house and get a motel room.
“You’re supposed to be Catholic. Your mother would be spinning in her grave if she knew you were going to join the Moonies or whatever this group is.”
Sarah’s jaw tightens.
“God, Dad, you’re impossible,” she mutters.
“Rainey wouldn’t join something weird.
Besides, you don’t know anything about Moonies any way, and you know Mom wouldn’t think it was the end of the world like you do.”
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