by Una Tiers
My desk was bare of my personal things. That rat must have been back after I left.
My motives were unclear, still undoubtedly malicious.
Searching cabinets and file drawers, I started a pile of office supplies to take home to punish Bob, and lo, there under the discount legal pads, were my files, notes, three bar journals and his wills notebook.
Feeling brazen, I flipped on the office lights and copier and started to copy in a rage. Files, notebooks, his things, mine. Then I hunted down my seven client files.
When I started the codicil project for Judge Curie, I asked Bob if I could look at his wills notebook. It disappeared and he said he was using it at home.
After I spit on his desk, I filled a shopping bag with my things. I wrapped everything else in my plastic rain jacket (after taping the sleeves shut) and headed for the car. It only looked like I was carrying parts of a dismembered attorney.
I threw the office keys through the mail slot, foolishly announcing my misconduct.
Out on the street the snow had stopped and was that magical glittering place like a snow globe. As soon as the cars and dogs arrived, the beauty would be marred.
After a drive through breakfast, I drove to safety, my Aunt’s house. I shoveled out a space and waited for a decent hour to knock on her door. I dozed off to the initial drone of snow blowers and shovels scraping. I woke up to a sharp tapping on my window that scared me silly.
“Fiona, come inside,” she said drolly.
There in a black velvet cape, like a well dressed, but aging crime fighter, stood my Aunt Tessie.
She didn’t ask questions, but was she really wearing lipstick at this time of the morning?
Aunt Tessie is my favorite relative for many reasons. The first is she never displays a sense of unwelcome, even when I arrive at inconvenient times. A second reason is that we share a low threshold for stupidity and third, we share a twisted sense of humor.
My Aunt is also a heroine for those of us who think love conquers all. Her marital resume is wildly intriguing. She is divorced twice, widowed once and dates often. Unfortunately she doesn’t talk about her husbands. There seems to be a lot she doesn’t want to share.
Growing up I overheard whispered snippets about her that stopped when I walked into the room. My questions were answered with shrugs. I was twenty years old before I got any details from her sister, my Aunt Irene.
Tessie’s first love, Johnny Fisher was regarded as scandalous. He was from Florida and his family raised cows. He was unacceptable to my maternal grandmother because Tessie was seventeen and he was thirty-one when they met. She also disapproved of his religion, his mustache and their moving to Florida.
Listening to all the complaints, I think their smoldering passion for one another was the largest part of his unacceptability.
While ransacking my grandmother’s linen closet when I was about eleven, I found an envelope filled with pictures of Tessie and Johnny. They looked at one another, eyes aglow in every picture. It was as if they had a secret unknown to most mortals about love.
Listening to Irene’s version, I could hear their hearts beating wildly. I thought I heard more than a little jealousy since Irene had never married.
The saga continued, after three years, Tessie moved back home and quietly announced she was divorced. No one asked questions.
My grandmother wanted her to enter the convent.
Two years later, when Tessie was in secretarial school, she married her typing teacher, Richard.
Their relationship was described as a screaming match. There was a nasty Thanksgiving dinner where a fork, hand wound, and emergency room visit were involved. Her second marriage lasted five years.
I have a vague memory of her third husband. Irene stopped her narrative as the wine wore off. I don’t remember his face, but he tried to teach me to ride a two wheeler. It was a boy’s bike, and I hated him for this for years.
They ran a cigar shop together. He died in a car accident. Tessie sold the business but has lived in the same townhouse for years.
Although she never had children, she is ideal parent material. She is great with kids, or at least with me. She never treats me like I am in the way, even when I am. When I was small, around five years old, she would perch me on the kitchen counter and invite me to talk. Most of the other adults told me to be quiet.
Irene and Tessie do not get along. Really they dislike one another so much they won’t stay in the same room unless it’s at the dinner table. Even then, they’ll negotiate seat changes until they are at opposite sides of the room. It’s easier to glare from a distance.
I dragged myself and my bundle of loot inside thinking the police would search my car. Tessie made toast and jelly, and tea, a meal that always tasted better at her house. I am certain there was liquor in the tea. We talked less than an average diner and waitress at a truck stop in the middle of the night.
The conversation about my marriage had played the last loop. She understood and didn’t ask questions. I was uncertain I could return to Jack and uncertain I could not return to him.
I fell asleep under many layers of crocheted quilts, on a sofa in the living room. It was hard to breathe but for the liquor laced tea that pulled me into a cocoon of protection.
The house was quiet when I woke up just before ten AM. A note on the kitchen table announced a sandwich in the refrigerator and was accompanied with a set of house keys. I interpreted this as an invitation to stay instead of a request to lock up on my way out.
The rest of the day was inevitable, I stopped at home and packed two suitcases and several of our best pillowcases. I wrapped my computer and placed it gently in the trunk of the car in our best clean towels. Goldfinger, my goldfish, travelled in a double plastic zip bag, inside my coat. At First National Bank, I closed my checking account and savings accounts and opened new ones across the street at Fifth Consolidated Bank in my name alone.
The banker seemed to leer at me while he was doing the paperwork to close my accounts. Apparently Goldfinger created an alluring bosom.
Although I still stupidly assumed an imminent reconciliation, I struggled to think like a single person. How long could I expect to linger on the marital/non-marital fence?
Saturday, afternoon, I settled into a guest room. My aunt taped my name on the door with a piece of paper. I sat looking out the window until it was dark and went to sleep very early. Sunday morning I slept, Sunday afternoon I slept. Sunday evening I had toast and jelly for dinner when my Aunt went out.
My Aunt was out again when I went to the kitchen on Monday morning. My first inclination was to wallow, with tissue stuffed up my sleeve, wearing my robe eating macaroni and cheese, watching old television reruns and drinking cheap wine. I realized I had to be a better house guest.
After a hot shower, I assembled my computer, dressed in a suit and finished Judge Curie’s codicil. We made an appointment to sign it the next day in the conference room of his building.
After we signed the codicil and the witnesses left, I was preoccupied, admiring my check. No one was going to claim any part of this one.
“Fiona, you heard Judge King passed away, didn’t you,” Judge Curie asked.
“The judge who got the award at the reception?” I half answered.
“Yes.”
“Wow, I’m sorry to hear that.” I didn’t want to admit I don’t read the papers.
“You could make some contacts at the funeral.”
“Can I pass out business cards?”
He laughed gently, “What time will you pick me up?”
Chapter Two
The day of the funeral was clear, sunny and four degrees, Fahrenheit. This is average January weather in Chicago, Illinois.
During these bitter spells, conversation automatically includes the wind chill factor. It is obscene, causing the four degrees to feel as cold at twenty or thirty degrees below zero. We all speak as if it was the first harsh winter ever. Eyelashes freeze and things in your
nose, well you can guess. A lot of people experience an ice cream headache in this weather.
I wear two or scarves, two pairs of socks, two thin top layers, and silk long johns under my slacks and generally stay warm. But I dropped the ball that day in terms of my hat.
The funeral consisted of church and burial. Mass was held at the historic St. Somewhere Catholic Church in the west loop.
The term ‘loop’ means many things in Chicago, Illinois. Geographically it describes a five by six block area springing around State and Washington Streets.
Technically the term ‘loop’ refers to a set of elevated transit tracks that outline where the city started, not far from the shores of Lake Michigan. The term ‘loop’ also refers to anywhere that you can walk or take a short cab ride to from the general area of where the elevated trains run. Each year the area expands south and west with condominiums born from old factories and warehouse structures. The terms south and west loop are now part of our vocabularies.
Here we don’t use the term “east” too much because Chicago was built on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Chicago is diverse and includes offices, stores, museums, restaurants, the stock exchange, banks, high rise condominiums, the main library, courts and other government buildings. If you have never visited Chicago, you should, everyone enjoys it.
Since I was with the ever popular Judge Curie, I was welcomed warmly at each and every introduction. Some of the introduction smiles included a knowing glance and salacious smirk at the judge that offended me. Nonetheless this was a dramatic improvement from my dismal attempts at networking at the judge’s night reception just a week earlier. At the church I was introduced to judges, politicians and lawyers and after the third introduction, they all looked alike and I couldn’t remember one new name.
Judge Curie and I now had a new dimension to our friendship, funerals.
When the mass ended, we followed tradition and the casket to the waiting hearse. The funeral guys had already fixed little flags onto the hoods of the cars. They walked from car to car to remind us to put our headlights and blinkers on. We also had to be reminded to follow the car ahead of us. All told we were waiting in the car for more than half an hour with the motors running. Haven’t these guys heard of carbon foot prints?
I don’t like funeral processions because they are inherently dangerous, even though driving through red lights is fun. Participants risk getting cut off from the herd or getting hit by some driver who isn’t paying attention. This ironically could generate more business for the very people who advocate funeral processions, the undertakers.
Now and then I worry my evil nature will cause me to turn into a drive through car wash or hamburger place just to see who follows. For this reason, when I am unsupervised, I make sure that I am the last car in the procession.
After the forty-five minute drive, with no near death experiences and no comic interludes, we arrived at All the Holy Saints cemetery, where the suburbs begin at the city’s west border.
I was lucky that Judge Curie was quiet so that I could concentrate on driving. A few times he reached up for the side grip and acted as if a train was heading straight for my car. His unspoken criticism of my driving was not appreciated.
At the cemetery, the funeral guy directed the cars to park two across on the narrow (but plowed and salted) roads.
We waited while the pallbearers struggled to maintain their footing, slipping and sliding a little while they carried the coffin from the hearse to the grave.
“What would happen if they dropped him?” I whispered.
The judge flushed and scolded me with one eyebrow, while his eyes betrayed his amusement.
The ground had been violently disturbed by the digging machine, taking away the serenity of the snow covered areas. Farther away, where things were not disturbed, we could see the snow covering the graves with the taller headstones peeking up. Wisps of snow rolled gently along the surface like snow tumbleweed.
The path from the road to the grave was covered with wooden planks adorned with clumps of mud, ice and snow. I was glad that I slipped on a pair of boots after church. Actually, my Aunt set my snow boots near the front door with a note on them about mud at the bone yard.
Everyone walked carefully over the boards that seemed to bow and teeter. As we waited our turn, a plump woman pushed ahead of us, clomping along with three inch high heels. Where were her boots?
Judge Curie and I exchanged a mischievous smile when her shoe got stuck and she literally walked out of it and into the snow, ice and mud with a yelp. A quick thinking undertaker was the first to come to her rescue and he was rewarded with what I think was a dirty look.
Although I estimated the crowd at church to be around two hundred people, here the crowd was down to fifty. Clearly these were the more serious mourners or people without plans for the afternoon. I scanned the crowd and noticed Mildred Shoe, across the way trying to get my attention. I didn’t see her in church.
She introduced me to her friends.
“Fiona, this is Mary Margaret and Steve Vorce.”
Before I could introduce him, someone ushered Judge Curie to the ring of people immediately around the coffin, leaving me with my own kind and a disappointed scowl.
The artificial turf around the grave was full, and we four shouldered together for a little protection from the wind.
I scanned the crowd, guessing which ones were judges. They wear an attitude, with their chests stuck out, kind of like pigeons, but scary.
The sun reflected against an unnaturally black spot.
“Who’s the guy with the Herman Munster hair?” I asked just above a whisper.
“Judge Requin,” Mildred answered.
“From probate?”
“Uh huh. Fiona did you see Judge Peur lose her shoe?” Mildred smirked.
I didn’t recognize Peur as one of the probate judges. Now I knew why the shoe rescuing undertaker garnered a dirty look. He probably touched her foot, a judge’s foot!
The wind picked up speed with a low pitched howl as the priest stepped forward to begin the service.
“Brothers and sisters…” the wind took over and I couldn’t recognize what he was saying until I recognized the familiar murmurs of the Our Father prayer. The murmuring sounds like no one knows the words.
The priest stood perfectly still in the bitter wind. Even the pages of his bible did not flap.
He wore a black suit with a black overcoat. His ceremonial scarf, worn on the outside of his coat glistened in the sunlight, highlighting the metallic threads. I wondered if the scarf had a name or was just called the funeral scarf. It certainly didn’t seem too warm.
After a particularly eye watering gust of wind swirled up from the ground, the priest seemed to skip ahead in his sermon.
Every now and again I caught a few words that were nearly hurled in my direction. “Return to dust,” reverberated in my ears. I confess that my church attendance isn’t too regular. While my intentions are good, I barely manage my social, work and love life. Was there still time to repent?
The phrases “valley of death” and “judgment day,” echoed in my ears.
The priest bowed his head, signaling the end of the holy portion of the service. I bowed my head solemnly pretending to grieve, happy that it warmed my chin. Seriously I think the temperature dropped since we got out of our cars.
“That tiny lady with the fur coat is his sister, Sophie.” Mary Margaret whispered a little too loud, causing a few turned heads with reproachful glances toward us from the crowd up front.
Sophie was dwarfed by her fur coat that nearly touched the ground. Her hair was coiffed and sprayed and didn’t move in the gusts of wind.
When the next speaker started, Mildred commented, “That’s the president of the Downtown Bar Association. A political hack.”
I admired Mildred, she had what I considered a regular job with a small law firm. She was paid a salary in exchange for long hours and pressure to make partner.
She has an office of her own. I’m jealous of all that but only while I forget that I don’t work well under corporate working conditions.
The speaker was brief, probably due to the weather.
The last speaker was a neighbor. We know that because that’s how he introduced himself.
We heard every word Mr. Burns said because he was shouting in competition with the howling winds. Perhaps it was a result of the sheepskin hat covering his ears. Looking around he was the only one with a hat. As a result there were all shapes and sizes of red splotchy ears, including mine. My hat was on the back seat of the car where it was warm.
He continued slowly and loudly about neighborhood barbecues, new cars and good times. The priest could take enunciation lessons from him. He credited Laslo for the law careers of his three children and praised him for his ‘judgeship’ which sounded like something from outer space.
Mr. Burns went on to recite additional accolades of Laslo’s humble beginnings and ascension to the bench, resembling an ordination or at least an epiphany.
“And now Laslo will join the souls of his dearly departed parents, brothers and brother-in-law.” Clearly he was a regular at family funerals.
We could be standing on their graves if they were all buried together. Did they take any secrets to their graves? Did the judge?
His finale included a big hug for Sophie that lifted her feet off the artificial turf and made her drop her purse. Were Sophie and Mr. Burns an item?
Examining the crowd, everyone was wearing leather street shoes (not boots), leather gloves and thick, expensive woolen coats almost like a military dress uniform.
After several more minutes I thought I was getting dizzy from the glare of the sun against the snow. There is a good reason that people wear sunglasses in the snow although it seems more acceptable when you’re skiing than attending a funeral. When I watched carefully, the whole group of mourners was swaying to stay warm. We could really use a church choir about now.
I was inclined to stamp my feet because I couldn’t feel many of my toes. However considering the stiffness of the boards, I envisioned a see saw action and a collapse of the artificial turf. Judges would be vaulted up into the air and then down into the grave ahead of Judge King. This would delay lunch.
