The Nix

by Nathan Hill

  He rolled himself into the study, coffee in hand, and turned on the television. Another morning ritual, watching the news. He wanted to know everything that was everywhere happening before he went to work. At his age, people were looking for signs of decline, waiting for his inevitable diminishment. He remembered when he was a young prosecutor there were judges of a certain age who let themselves slide as they approached retirement. They stopped keeping up with the news, local politics, the enormous amounts of reading required of the job. They began acting like mad scientists—unpredictable megalomaniacs, supremely confident in their fading abilities, treating the courtroom as their own personal laboratory. He would not devolve into that, he vowed. He watched the news in the morning, got the newspaper delivered (even if that was a bit quaint these days, the actual physical newspaper).

  But the news was talking about what the news was always talking about these days: the election. Election Day was still pretty distant, but you’d never know it judging from the news, from the way the news salivated over the primary race, the dozen or so candidates for president now practically taking up permanent residency on both the cable news channels and in Iowa, where the nation’s first nominating vote would happen in roughly three months. Among them all, Sheldon “the Governor” Packer was out to an early lead according to various polls and surveys and pundits who debated whether the governor’s popularity was a post-attack sympathy bubble that would soon burst. So far it seemed that Faye Andresen’s attack was the best thing to happen to him.

  This was what the nation had to look forward to for the next year. Twelve full months of stump speeches and gaffes and ads and attacks and stupidity, agonizing stupidity, bordering on immoral stupidity. It was as if every four years all news everywhere just lost perspective. And then billions of dollars would be spent to achieve what was already inevitable—that the whole election would come down to a handful of swing voters in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The electoral math pretty much ordained this.

  Democracy! Huzzah!

  The two most popular words on TV to describe Packer’s campaign appeared to be “buzz” and “momentum.” At rallies Packer talked about how the recent attempt on his life had made him more resolute than ever. He said he wouldn’t be cowed by liberal thugs. He played the chorus to “Break My Stride” at campaign events. He was awarded an honorary Purple Heart by the new governor of Wyoming. Cable news personalities said he was either “bravely continuing his campaign despite tremendous personal risk” or “callously milking this minor distraction for all it’s worth.” There did not seem to be any position between these two. The video of Faye Andresen throwing rocks at the governor was shown again and again. On one channel, they said it was evidence of a liberal conspiracy, pointing out people in the crowd who might have been aiding and abetting. On another channel, they said when the governor ducked and ran away from the thrown rocks he “did not seem presidential.”

  That the news could not mention Governor Packer without also mentioning Faye Andresen’s trial made Judge Brown feel happy. Made him feel important and big. The governor was “still riding high in the polls after his brutal attack in Chicago,” was how they said it. Of course, the reasons for this were simple—the attack made him more famous, and fame tends to attract more fame. Like wealth tends to build upon itself, so too fame, which is a kind of social wealth, a kind of conceptual abundance. One of the many benefits of taking the Faye Andresen case was that it made Judge Brown a little famous. Another was that it forestalled retirement for as long as it would take to adjudicate. At least a year, he guessed.

  Those were not the primary reasons he took the case, but they were part of the decision, part of the tableau. The primary reason was of course that Faye Andresen deserved whatever cruelty came to her. What a gift, this case. Like an early retirement present, this chance at retribution, his righteous reward for so much suffering.

  Good lord, retirement. What in the world would they do together, he and his wife, in retirement?

  There were all the usual clichés: They should travel, their daughter told them. And, yes, maybe they would travel, to Paris or Honolulu or Bali or Brazil. Wherever. All places seemed equally horrible because the thing they never mentioned about traveling in your retirement is that in order for it to work you must, at the very least, be able to endure the person you’re traveling with. And he imagined all that time together—on planes, in restaurants, in hotel rooms. They couldn’t escape each other, he and his wife. The nice thing about their current arrangement was that they could always blame their isolation on work. That the reason they saw so little of each other was their very demanding schedules and not in fact their total mutual resentment of each other.

  How easily a simple façade can become your life, can become the truth of your life.

  He imagined them in Paris trying to talk to each other. She’d give small lectures on the country’s innovative health care system; he’d give similar disquisitions on French jurisprudence. That would get them through one day, maybe two. Then they’d start making small talk about whatever was in front of them at that moment: the charming Parisian streets, the weather, the waiters, the daylight that clung on until well past ten. Museums would be a good choice because of the enforced silence. But then they’d be at a restaurant looking at menus and she’d say what looked good and he’d say what looked good and they’d stare at the plates of other diners and point out those that also looked good and express how they were perhaps changing their mind about what they intended to order and that whole inner debate one usually has when ordering food at a restaurant would be vocalized and performed for the express purpose of filling space, of jamming the silence so full of meaningless idle chitchat that they’d never get around to talking about the thing they never talked about but were always thinking: that if they had been born into a generation that found divorce more acceptable, they would have left each other so long ago. For decades they had avoided this subject. It was like they’d come to an agreement—they were who they were, they were born when they were born, they were taught that divorce was wrong, and they openly disapproved of other couples, younger couples, who divorced, while secretly feeling bolts of envy at these couples’ ability to split and remarry and become happy again.

  Where was all this piety getting them? Who was benefiting?

  She’d never forgiven him for the lustfulness of his youth, for his early indiscretions. She’d never forgiven him but also never spoke of it, not after the accident that put him in the wheelchair, which was an effective solution. Yes, he’d been punished by God for his lust, and punished for decades by his wife, and now he was in the punishment business. It suited him. He’d learned from the best.

  No, they would not travel. More likely they would sink into separate hobbies and try as best they could to reproduce in retirement exactly their working lives. They’d repair to separate floors of their giant house. It was an uncomfortable life, yes, a painful life. But it was a familiar life. And this made it less scary than whatever would happen if they finally acknowledged all this resentment and loathing and actually talked.

  Sometimes what we avoid most is not pain but mystery.

  He had finished a half pot of coffee when he heard the newspaper delivery truck drive by, and heard the newspaper land softly on his front driveway. He opened his front door and glided down the house’s short front ramp, landing on the sidewalk and letting the momentum carry him into the driveway, where the newspaper lay wrapped in its rainproof orange plastic sleeve. That car, he noticed, was still there. A nondescript sedan that could have been made by anyone, foreign or domestic. A light tan color, mildly dented on the front bumper, otherwise completely inoffensive and anonymous, one of those cars you’d never even notice on the road, a car that salesmen pitched to families as “sensible.” Teenager borrowed his daddy’s ride, Brown thought. Better be moving along, as the rest of the neighborhood would soon be stirring. In less than an hour, joggers, dog walkers, they’d all be out and alert to the
presence of strangers, especially a teenage boy wandering down the street postcoitally.

  But as Judge Brown reached for the newspaper, something caught his attention, something in the trees: a slight movement. The sky was beginning to lighten, but the block was still dark, the trees beyond the car still black. He stared and searched for confirmation: Did something move over there? Was someone there right now, watching him? He looked for the shape of a person.

  “I see you,” he said, though he didn’t see anything.

  He rolled himself into the street, and as he did so a figure emerged from the tree line.

  Brown stopped. He had enemies. Every judge did. What small-time dealer, what pimp, what crackhead was there across the street waiting for revenge? There were too many to count. He thought about his gun, his old revolver, sitting uselessly in the upstairs nightstand. He thought about calling out to his wife for help. He sat up as straight as he could. He exuded the most calm and intense and frightening expression he could currently produce.

  “Can I help you?” he said.

  The figure approached and moved into the light—a young man, perhaps mid-thirties, a face that seemed mortified and cowed, a look Brown recognized from his years in the criminal justice system: the embarrassed face of someone caught doing something wrong. This man was no crackhead out for revenge.

  “You’re Charles Brown, right?” the man said. His voice—young, a little shrill.

  “I am,” Brown said. “Is this your car?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Were you hiding behind a tree?”

  “I guess so.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I don’t have a very good answer for that.”

  “Do your best.”

  “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I suppose I wanted to see you, to find out more about you. Frankly, it made way more sense in my head than it does now, as I attempt to explain it.”

  “Let’s start over. Why are you spying on my house?”

  “I’m here because of Faye Andresen.”

  “Oh,” Brown said. “You a reporter?”

  “Nope.”

  “Lawyer?”

  “Let’s just say I’m a concerned party.”

  “C’mon, man. I’ve already memorized your license plate number. I’m going to run it as soon as I get inside. No sense being coy.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Faye Andresen’s case.”

  “Usually that’s done in the courtroom.”

  “I was wondering if maybe it’s possible to, you know, drop all charges against her?”

  Brown laughed. “Drop all charges. Right.”

  “And maybe just leave her alone?”

  “That’s funny. You’re a funny guy.”

  “Because, here’s the thing. Faye never did anything wrong,” the man said.

  “She threw rocks at a presidential candidate.”

  “No, not that. I mean back in ’68. She didn’t do anything wrong back then. To you.”

  Which gave Brown a moment’s pause. He frowned and studied the man. “What do you think you know?”

  “I know all about what happened between you and her,” he said. “I know about Alice.”

  Brown’s throat tightened at the thought of her. “You know Alice?” he said.

  “I’ve spoken with her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Not going to tell you that.”

  Brown’s jaw muscles tightened—he could feel it happen, that old tic of his, the way his face seemed to constrict and ossify whenever he thought about Alice and all that had happened back then, a habit that had caused him some pretty intense TMJ-related suffering now, in his old age. His memory of Alice had never faded—more like it became a reservoir for all his guilt and remorse and lust and anger, decades-deep. When that old photograph of her appeared on television recently, he had such a powerful and tactile sense memory of her body that he momentarily felt that gush of excitement he used to feel when he found her out walking the streets in the deadest part of the night.

  “So I suppose you’re here to blackmail me then, right?” Brown said. “I agree to back off Faye Andresen, and in exchange you don’t release your information to the press. Am I close?”

  “I actually hadn’t considered that.”

  “Do you also want money?”

  “I’m sort of embarrassingly bad at this,” the man said. “You just right now came up with a way better plan than mine. I really came here only to spy on you.”

  “But now you’re considering blackmail. Is that fair to say? You are threatening me with blackmail. You are threatening a judge.”

  “Wait. Hold on. Note that I said nothing of the sort. You are putting incriminating words in my mouth.”

  “What would you tell the press? How would you explain what happened? I would love to hear your story.”

  “Well, I guess I’d tell the truth? That you were having an affair with Alice, and Faye ruined it. And you’ve been waiting all these years to get your revenge. Which is why you took the case.”

  “Uh-huh. Good luck proving that.”

  “If I told everyone—and I’m not saying I will tell everyone, I’m saying if, this is a hypothetical, you understand—then you’d be embarrassed in public. You’d be tried and convicted in the press. You’d be taken off the case.”

  Brown smiled and rolled his eyes. “Look, I am a Cook County circuit judge. I have brunch regularly with the mayor. I was the Chicago Bar Association Man of the Year. I don’t know who the fuck you are, but I’d guess from your shitty car that you’re nobody’s man of the year.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “If it’s my word against yours, I feel pretty comfortable with those odds.”

  “But Faye didn’t do anything to you. She shouldn’t go to prison for something she didn’t do.”

  “She ruined my life. She put me in this chair.”

  “She never even knew who you were.”

  “I warned Faye once—never let me catch you in Chicago. That’s what I told her. I’m a man of my word. And now you have the gall to come here and tell me what to do with her? Let me explain what’s going to happen. I’m going to do everything in my power to see she’s convicted of high crimes. And I’m going to see her hang.”

  “That’s insane!”

  “It would be best if you didn’t try to stop me.”

  “Or else what?”

  “You know the penalties for threatening a judge?”

  “But I never threatened you!”

  “That’s not what it’ll look like. From the point of view of that security camera on my porch, it’ll look like you hid in the trees—very suspicious—until I came out of my house, at which point you approached me in a threatening manner.”

  “You have a security camera?”

  “I have nine security cameras.”

  And at that, the man walked to his car, got in, and turned the ignition. The car’s engine thrummed quietly. Then with an electric buzz, the driver’s window came down.

  “Alice was right,” the man said. “You’re a psychopath.”

  “Just stay out of my way.”

  Then the car rolled off, and Brown watched as it reached the end of his street, turned, and zoomed lightlessly away.

  2

  FAYE SAT SLUMPED on her couch, watching television, her eyes glassy, her face expressionless. Behind her, Samuel paced the apartment, from the kitchen to the couch and back, watching her. She flipped channels, staying between one and five seconds on any given show. Commercials she jumped away from immediately. Any other program she gave roughly a single breath to impress her. Then flip. The small television sat on the mantel of the apartment’s inoperative fireplace. Samuel could swear the TV wasn’t there on his first visit.

  Outside, the midmorning sun shone brightly off Lake Michigan. Through the open windows, Samuel could hear car horns, far off. The city’s usual weekday roar. To the west, he could see the traffic on the Dan Ryan Expr
essway moving at its usual viscous creep. He’d come here directly from his unfortunate encounter with Judge Brown. Samuel decided he needed to warn his mother, to tell her what he now knew about the judge. He had buzzed her apartment, and then buzzed again, and then again, and was about to start throwing rocks at Faye’s third-story windows when the front door finally clicked open. He came up and found his mother like this: quiet, distracted, a little befuddled.

  Faye flipped to a reality show about a couple renovating their kitchen, which seemed to hold her attention.

  “This is a show ostensibly about home improvement,” she said, “but really it’s about watching these two sweep away the ashes of their dead marriage.”

  The show seemed to cut between clips of the couple’s inept DIY misadventures and interviews where they independently complained about the other. The husband—too eager with his sledgehammer—put a hole in a wall that he thought was slated for demolition but, turns out, wasn’t. Cut to clip of the wife complaining about how he never listens and is constitutionally unable to take directions. Cut to clip of the husband examining the damage he’s done to the wall and proclaiming with false authority: It’ll be fine, just calm down.

  “These two hate each other so much,” Faye said. “They’re using their kitchen like America used Vietnam.”

  “That TV you’re watching,” Samuel said, “it wasn’t here the first time I visited. I’m pretty sure of it.”

  Faye didn’t respond. She stared blankly forward. For a full minute. During which she watched a clip of the husband kicking a panel of drywall, which broke and flew across the room, and even though it landed a full ten feet from his wife, she yelled at him as if she were in mortal peril: Hey? I’m standing here? Then Faye blinked and shook her head like someone waking from a trance and looked at him and said, “Huh?”