One Good Turn

by Judith Arnold

  “You’re forever in my debt,” Sybil reminded her.

  “Forever and ever,” Jenny dutifully confirmed.

  There was a tap at the door, followed by Kate’s voice: “Jenny? Luke is here.”

  “Knock him dead,” Sybil whispered, handing Jenny her purse. “The father, not the son.”

  “Got it,” Jenny whispered back as she waltzed to the door and opened it. Maybe it was the attractively shaped braid, maybe Sybil’s generous encouragement, or maybe it was the peace of mind she felt in the wake of her acknowledgement that she was in love...but whatever it was, as she headed down the hall to meet Luke, she felt absolutely no misgivings. Tonight was going to be wonderful.

  * * *

  TONIGHT WAS GOING to be disastrous, Luke thought as Jenny hurried down the hall to him. She was wearing the beautiful white skirt and blouse that had put him in mind of nymphs and brides the last time he’d seen her in it, and her hair was pulled back from her face in a sleek, stylish braid. She had on her gold hoop earrings and her college ring, and she looked radiant.

  This time, however, he thought not of nymphs and brides but rather of a lamb being led to slaughter.

  “Are you absolutely sure you want to go through with this?” he asked, extending his arm to her.

  “A dinner at a private Georgetown club? You bet,” she joked, hooking her hand around the bend in his elbow and letting him usher her out of the apartment.

  “Seriously, Jenny—I could tell my father something came up at the last minute and you couldn’t make it.”

  She sent him a luminous smile. “Relax,” she murmured.

  He wished he could. But he knew, he just knew this evening was going to be a disaster. Things were strained enough between him and his father without having Jenny in the picture. His father had been down to Washington two other times since she’d said she wanted to meet him, and Luke had twice considered arranging a dinner threesome like tonight’s. Twice he’d thought better of it.

  He had only been delaying the inevitable, he acknowledged. Sooner or later Jenny and his father were bound to meet each other—not only because Jenny had her heart set on it but also because Luke intended to keep her as a friend for a long, long time.

  Still, he would have preferred to put off introducing her to his family until he and his father had gotten a few things straightened out. During his father’s last two trips to Washington, Luke had dropped all sorts of hints about how he wasn’t keen on attending law school. His father had alternately pretended not to hear him or else refuted him. “Law school is the foundation,” he’d pontificated. “It’s the basis of all that follows. This isn’t open to discussion, Luke. You’ll get the law degree under your belt, and then you can start picking and choosing. But first things first. We’ll get you into Yale...” And on and on, as if Luke hadn’t even spoken.

  His mother’s warning echoed in his head: He’s going to stampede you the way he stampeded Elliott. The way he’d stampeded her, as well. She had escaped into liquor, Elliott into the icy mists of Sitka. But Luke—if he could find the courage within himself—was not going to escape. He was going to stand and fight.

  He only wished Jenny didn’t have to witness the battle. It was likely to be brutal, and she might get caught in the crossfire.

  “What a lovely evening it is,” she said as they descended the front steps to the sidewalk. Obviously brutality was the furthest thing from her mind. “Why don’t we walk to the restaurant?”

  He glimpsed his BMW, parked halfway down the street. He had intended to drive over to the restaurant, and then, after dinner, he and his father would drop Jenny off and from her place travel directly back to the duplex in Capitol South. But now that she’d mentioned it, he realized that he wanted to walk. A leisurely stroll in the balmy evening air might dissipate some of his tension. And that way he’d have to walk Jenny home after dinner, which would give him a few minutes alone with her before he had to resign himself to his father’s company for the night.

  Jenny talked during the entire walk. He didn’t pay close attention to her words—she was rambling on about the excitement generated in Western Europe division that morning when someone stole the supply of M&M Peanuts from a department head who was seriously addicted to them—and he understood that she didn’t mind his distracted state. She was talking to put him at ease, and her husky, midwestern-accented voice did seem to allay his anxiety. He concentrated on its pitch and timbre, and on the light pressure of her fingers curving around the sleeve of his jacket, and of her attempts to lengthen her stride as he shortened his. He wrapped himself up in the comfort of having her with him.

  Maybe this evening wouldn’t be a complete nightmare. Maybe only a partial one. Luke would take whatever he could get.

  They entered the City Tavern through the unobtrusive door of the Federal-style brick building on M Street and Jenny gazed around her, wide-eyed. Luke almost cautioned her not to act awed or say anything corny, on the chance that such behavior would bring his father’s scorn down on her. But he held his words. Let Jenny be herself. If his father didn’t like her that was his problem.

  If he heaped scorn upon her, though... That would be Jenny’s problem. And Luke’s, because he didn’t think he could bear seeing her insulted by anyone, especially his father.

  “It isn’t too late to back out,” he whispered as a doorman in gold-braided livery approached them. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  She chuckled. “You make it sound like I’m going in for elective surgery,” she teased. “It’s only dinner, and you should know by now that I’m a swell eater.”

  “Right.” He sighed, admiring her bravery and simultaneously regretting it.

  He gave his name to the doorman, who led them into the dining room. Luke scanned the room and saw no sign of his father. He wished the old man had gotten to the club first; sitting at the table with Jenny gave him an unwelcome chance to relapse into nervousness as the soothing effect of their stroll wore off.

  They took their seats at a reserved table at the center of the room. “I like this place already,” Jenny declared, gazing around in appreciation of the dining room’s faded luxury. She admired the heavy china and the thick, soft linen of the napkins. “Don’t worry about a thing,” she confided under her breath. “I know which one is the salad fork.”

  In spite of his qualms, Luke laughed. Once again he conceded that Jenny was capable of miracles. Surely it was miraculous that she could make him smile at a time like this.

  His laughter trailed off as the familiar sound of his father’s voice filtered into his consciousness. Twisting in his seat, he spotted his father jovially greeting the doorman. “That’s him,” Luke muttered.

  Jenny scrutinized the tall, robust man in the impeccably tailored suit. Her gaze ran from his thick mane of black hair sprinkled with silver to his bold, square face, his broad shoulders, the leather briefcase he toted in his right hand, the signet ring on his right ring finger and the wedding band on his left. Turning to Luke, she whispered, “You don’t look anything like him.”

  “I take after my mother,” he whispered back. “He’s never forgiven me for that.”

  The doorman pointed out Luke’s table, and James Benning nodded, murmured something to the doorman and walked to the table unescorted. Luke stood to shake his father’s hand, then took a deep breath for fortitude and said, “Dad, this is Jennifer Perrin. Jenny, my father, James Benning.”

  “Jennifer,” his father said, oozing charm as he took Jenny’s hand. “What a pleasure.”

  “Please call me Jenny,” she said with a guileless smile.

  Luke watched as his father settled into his chair and gave the young woman at the table a sharp, swift assessment. Although James’s smile never flagged, Luke noticed the calculating hardness of his father’s eyes and cringed inwardly. “Luke’s been telling me about you,” his father said.

  Jenny’s smile was so sincere compared to his father’s. Her eyes were so brig
ht and trusting. Still, she didn’t seem the least bit cowed by his father’s imperious attitude. “Luke’s told me a lot about you, too, Mr. Benning.”

  “Uh-oh,” said James with a falsely hearty laugh. “I’d better watch my step. I think we’ll skip cocktails and go with a bottle of wine,” he resolved, turning to the waiter who had materialized at the table to take their drink orders. “The Chateau Maucaillou.”

  “Yes, sir.” The waiter gave a slight, deferential bow and left the table.

  Jenny’s eyes grew round as she regarded Luke’s father. “You didn’t even look at the wine list.”

  Luke cringed again. This was it: the first evidence that James Benning had intimidated her with his unctuous superiority. “Well, dear,” he said with a supercilious smile, “I eat here quite often and I know what I like. So, I’m happy to say, does the sommelier, who makes it a point to keep certain bottles of wine on hand for me.”

  Oh, yes, you’re wonderful, Luke thought bitterly. And the foundation of it all is a law degree.

  To Luke’s dismay, Jenny seemed truly delighted. “That’s neat!” she said. “Does the chef keep certain dishes on hand for you, too?”

  “He does try.”

  “Wow.” So naive, so vulnerable to a hawk like James Benning. “I’d love to be a ‘regular’ at a classy private club like this,” she admitted. “Back home, the only place I was ever a ‘regular’ was McDonald’s—behind the counter.”

  “You worked at McDonald’s?” Luke’s father asked.

  “After school when I was in high school.”

  “How enterprising,” he said dryly. Luke could tell that his father had all but dismissed Jenny in his mind. He shifted slightly in his seat, as if to shut her out of the conversation, and addressed Luke: “Did I tell you I had lunch with Roger Chase last Friday? We had a most enlightening discussion regarding the effects of affirmative action on Columbia Law’s admissions policies—”

  “Dad,” Luke interrupted. “I’d rather not talk about that now.”

  “You’d rather not talk about it ever,” his father chided. He paused when the waiter appeared at their table with an impressively dusty bottle, which James examined thoroughly before nodding his approval. The waiter uncorked it and poured a taste for James. Another lordly nod from James, and the other wine glasses were filled.

  Jenny lifted her glass. “Let’s drink a toast,” she suggested.

  Corny, thought Luke. He adored her corniness, but he knew his father would find it silly and demote her another notch in his esteem. Given how confident Jenny was, she might not give a damn what Luke’s father thought of her, but Luke gave a damn. He knew that his father could cut her to ribbons if the mood struck him, and he wanted to spare her that hurt if he could.

  “A toast,” James echoed with a scarcely disguised smirk. “And why not?” He lifted his glass. “Here’s to my son’s future. And to yours, Jenny.” There was nothing subtle about the way he’d stressed that their futures were two separate entities. Luke glanced at Jenny, wondering whether she’d caught his father’s implication. She was smiling.

  He thought of innocent lambs. He thought of the fog-shrouded coast of Alaska. He thought of his mother saying, “He’s got your whole life planned out.” He thought of a wiry teenager on the soccer team, scoring a point and searching the stands in vain for his father. He thought of a dinner party at which two young boys were marched into the dining room in their pajamas to say hello to their parents’ guests. “This is Elliott,” the father said, pulling the bigger boy to his side. “A chip off the old block, isn’t he? Bound for glory, just like his dad. Oh, and that’s—” with a wave toward the small, pale boy “—my other son.”

  Look at me, Dad! he wanted to scream.

  But it was too late. His father and Jenny had become engrossed in a heated debate about... Oh, shit. About lawyers.

  “To be totally frank, Mr. Benning,” she was saying, “I think one of the main reasons things are so fouled up these days is that we’ve got too many lawyers involved in too many aspects of our lives. Don’t take this personally—I mean, we do need lawyers, of course—but really, when you take a bunch of people whose minds have been trained to think in a certain circumscribed way and whose language has become polluted with all that contrived legalistic jargon, and you ask them to figure out a way to deal with, say, the homeless... Well, you know they aren’t going to approach the problem with sympathy. They aren’t going to look at street people and say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ They’re going to immerse themselves in mumbo-jumbo and wrangle over all sorts of grand-sounding but ineffective legislation, and the lawyers will get their two hundred dollars an hour and the homeless will wind up with zilch.”

  “If the homeless wind up with zilch,” James retorted, veiling his indignation behind a malevolent smile, “it’s because they deserve zilch. Those with legitimate problems have resources at their disposal—”

  “What resources? Many of them were released from mental institutions. Many of them were evicted from their homes due to gentrification.”

  “A mere function of the market,” he contended. “If they’re able-bodied, they can get a job that will cover the cost of housing elsewhere.”

  “Sure, or they could go to law school,” Jenny observed, her smile remaining steadfastly earnest. “A mother doesn’t need a law degree to know if her baby is hungry. But what happens if you train her as a lawyer? When her baby starts crying she might start searching the literature for precedents.”

  James looked at Luke. “A feisty little one, isn’t she,” he muttered.

  Luke scowled at his father’s condescending attitude. He considered defending Jenny, then decided not to. To defend her would be, in its own way, equally condescending. Besides, she seemed to be doing all right without his help.

  James fingered one of the menus the waiter had left on the table, but his eyes shuttled back and forth between Luke and Jenny. “Luke tells me you want to be a teacher,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Jenny confirmed, still smiling.

  Luke wanted to bask in the warmth of that smile, in her decency and goodness and her high-minded convictions. But he couldn’t shake the understanding that his father was setting her up somehow, tossing her into the air like a clay pigeon so he could shoot her down for the sport of it.

  “You like dealing with children, I take it.”

  “I’d make a pretty rotten teacher if I didn’t,” she replied with a laugh.

  “Well, I’m sure your passionate arguments will prove quite effective with the primary school set, Jenny. Young children lack the wit and experience to poke holes in your theories. You might find yourself more equally matched in that environment.” With that, he lifted his menu and occupied himself with its listings.

  Jenny sat motionless in her chair, obviously stunned. Luke knew his father too well to be stunned; he himself had been cut down to size many times by the man. “Dad,” he said quietly. “That was rude.”

  His father eyed him over the top of his menu. “Oh, was it?” he asked disingenuously. “I thought Jenny and I were just having a little philosophical disagreement. I certainly don’t think it’s rude that she’s impugning our profession.”

  “Your profession,” Luke erupted. “Yours, Dad, not mine.”

  “It’s only a matter of time—”

  “No, it’s not a matter of time.” Luke felt as if the sky was opening above him, as if the dense clouds of fear and anxiety and wanting had suddenly parted, letting the hot, bright sunlight through. He could not ransom his father’s love at the cost of his future. He could not be the number one son at the cost of his soul. What he wanted—his father’s unconditional love—was beyond his reach. Nothing he could do would ever change that fact. “I won’t be going to law school, Dad,” he announced, no longer willing to pretend he could win his father’s affection by sacrificing his own happiness. “Not next year, not ever. I will not go.”

  His father labored mightily
to keep his face devoid of emotion, but Luke could see the hardening in his eyes, the tensing of his jaw as he regarded his son. “This is not open to discussion, Lucas.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” Luke agreed. Already his declaration was having a salutary effect on him. The last clouds were drifting away. He wanted to stand tall, lift his head and breathe in the fresh sun-scented air. “I will not go.”

  His father opened his mouth and then shut it. He glowered at Jenny for a minute, then scrutinized Luke and nodded, as if fitting the pieces together. “Your head has been turned by a pretty coed,” he muttered.

  “My eyes have been opened by a wise woman,” Luke countered, looking at Jenny.

  She seemed distraught. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “This isn’t an argument I should be a part of.”

  “Oh, but you are a part of it, aren’t you,” James accused in his lustrous baritone. “You’ve seduced my son, and now he thinks teaching is the highest aspiration in the world.”

  “Dad—”

  “Teaching!” Ignoring Luke, James favored Jenny with a withering look. “Heaven only knows what reality you’re living in, missy, but it isn’t Luke’s. You have no right to interfere in his life, no right to plant the seeds of discontent in him. He met you a few weeks ago, am I correct? And in those few weeks he’s suddenly started to question his destiny. Forgive me for sensing a cause-and-effect relationship here.”

  Jenny clutched the arms of her chair but refused to quail before Luke’s father. “Mr. Benning, I never—”

  “My son’s smitten with you, and although I wouldn’t have taken you for his type I won’t deny that you’re an appealing girl. However, there’s no reason to assume you have his interests at heart. I do. I’m his father. I know what’s best for him. You want to be a teacher, you want to play with finger paints for nine months a year and extort an exorbitant salary from the taxpayers? Be my guest. I would not be so presumptuous as to tell you that’s the wrong profession for you. In turn, I would urge you to keep your opinions of Luke’s chosen profession to yourself.”