Temporary Insanity

by Leslie Carroll

  About twenty feet from where the boy lay, barely breathing, I found one of his sneakers. Even his little blue-and-white-striped athletic sock had come off his foot from the force of the impact. I picked them up and started to cry. So soon, so suddenly, a life can be snatched from us and our entire world is changed forever. I walked back to the boy’s mother and wordlessly handed her the sock and sneaker. From her kneeling position, she offered a polite half bow in acknowledgment. I stood behind her and stroked her hair, trying to calm her.

  Please let him be okay, was all I was thinking, in an endless loop that played inside my head. I waited until the ambulance arrived and the paramedics placed the boy on a gurney and loaded him inside before crossing the street to go to work.

  “Alice, you look like a ghost. You saw the accident, didn’t you?” Rosa said when I got upstairs to the offices of Balzer and Price.

  “You saw an accident? Where?” The news brought my uncle running out of his office. “Alice, you’re late. We agreed that you were supposed to be up here half an hour ago. One day on the job and already you’re goofing off!”

  “There was a car accident downstairs,” I said quietly. “I was on my way in when it happened. A little kid got hit by a taxi and I called the ambulance and waited with his mother until it got there.”

  “Did you hand her a business card?”

  “Who?” I didn’t want to believe what I thought I was hearing.

  “The mother. Was the boy badly hurt? Was he dead?”

  I snapped. “Jesus Christ!” I yelled at Uncle Earwax. “Did the tinsmith forget to give you a heart? The boy was unconscious, I think. He wasn’t dead, but for all I know he may not live. I don’t know how badly hurt he was. A doctor was there, just passing by, and she warned people not to move him. And the last thing on my mind was, Gee, do I have one of my uncle Erwin’s business cards in my wallet? Have you ever heard the expression ambulance chaser?” I asked rhetorically. “You’re worse than Victorian grave robbers.”

  My uncle turned crimson. “You think I’m heartless! Listen, missy, it has nothing to do with heartless. Negligence work is what I’ve done for an honest living for forty years. Getting big settlements on accidents just like the one you saw this morning is what put your cousins through college. Not only that, the money put the victims through college, too.”

  “I just find it repugnant,” I said.

  “You find what repugnant? The kind of law I practice?”

  “No, not particularly. I find your attitude repugnant.”

  “Alice, everyone deserves representation. My clients are good, hardworking people, not the white-collar crooks your former bosses make a killing representing. You want something to get on a high horse about, try this!” He shoved the day’s edition of the New York Law Journal under my nose and pointed emphatically to a first-page story above the fold.

  I began to read the article. “Holy cow…” I muttered, reading aloud, “‘The congressional committee that convened several months ago to probe allegations of fraud and corporate mismanagement in the AllGood Telecom scandal recommended disbarment for a number of the communications giant’s leading attorneys, most notably Raymond Spade of Newter & Spade, a firm well established in the representation of a number of Fortune 500 and blue chip corporations…’” I shook my head in amazement and read on, looking for one specific name. I didn’t find it, but wondered if the sentence about other Newter & Spade attorneys still under investigation for wrongdoing applied to Eric Witherspoon.

  Uncle Earwax looked somehow vindicated. He stomped off into the file room and returned with a big tattered Red-weld folder bursting with papers, which he released from his grip with a resounding thump on my desk. “Pull out two copies of the Miroslav Janousek deposition transcript,” he demanded, “and then come into my office with a couple of yellow highlighters.”

  “Mr. Balzer’s going to lose that trial,” Rosa whispered to me. “But if I tell that to him, he’ll never believe me.”

  I spent four hours behind closed doors with Uncle Earwax, going over the entire transcript as though it were a play script. My uncle was coaching me on how to use my theatrical training to advantage by carefully injecting an inflection on certain words. He asked me to read them with enough subtlety so that the judge and defense attorney wouldn’t catch on to what I was doing, but with enough emphasis so that the jury couldn’t possibly miss it. It was like we were rehearsing a scene together. My uncle read the role of, well, himself, during Mr. Janousek’s examination before trial. I tried to get into character to play a middle-aged Czech garage manager. The casting wasn’t exactly on the money.

  “Let’s take it from page ten, line three,” Uncle Earwax said. “‘Question: Do you recall seeing the puddle of grease where the plaintiff slipped?’”

  I responded. “‘Yes, I did, sir.’”

  “Alice, hit the words ‘yes’ and ‘did’ a little harder,” my uncle instructed.

  I complied, repeating Mr. Janousek’s response.

  “No, that was a little too obvious. Take it down just a notch and we’ll continue on the page. ‘Question: Did you see the puddle of grease on the night of plaintiff’s accident?’”

  “‘I did,’” I replied.

  “Good!” my uncle said. “You hit the ‘did’ just right that time. Continuing. ‘Question: How often do you walk by the area of the garage where the plaintiff’s car was parked?’”

  “‘Every day, sir.’”

  “‘And how long, in your own estimation, do you believe that the grease puddle had been in the same spot in the garage?’“

  “‘I don’t really remember…but for as long as I remember.’”

  “And we’ll stop reading-in this section right there, right before his attorney objected on the record,” my uncle said. “Alice, on that last line of Janousek’s, try to gloss over the first part of the sentence where he says he doesn’t really remember, and punch up the words where he says ‘as long as I can remember.’”

  “He says ‘as long as I remember,’ not ‘can remember,’” I corrected.

  This went on for hours.

  “So tomorrow morning, you’ll come to court with me. I’m not sure if we’ll get sent out to a trial part right away, so bring something to read. And dress like a person, not like a slut. Don’t you own some nice business clothes? What did you wear when you were working uptown for those corporate lawyers?”

  “If you’re going to start in on my wardrobe, I’m leaving right now and you can find someone else to play the role of Miroslav Janousek,” I warned him. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll look appropriate for a courtroom.”

  “You’re an actress. So be an actress. Dress the part,” Uncle Earwax said.

  I sneered at him. “In that case, shouldn’t I be wearing a workshirt and coveralls smothered in axle grease?”

  I sat on a hard wooden bench at the back of the courtroom and waited while my uncle and the attorney for the defendants had an in camera conference with the judge in his chambers in the hope of settling the Dalton case at the eleventh hour, instead of taking it all the way to trial. Randall Dalton sat with me; Uncle Earwax felt that his client’s nervous anxiety, which manifested itself in an air of self-importance, should be on display as little as possible. He didn’t want the defense counsel to think the plaintiff was a jerk. Which was what I thought he was. So what if he broke his leg and needed metal pins implanted in it to fix it? I’d read enough of Mr. Dalton’s file yesterday afternoon to get the hunch that he’d slipped and fallen because he hadn’t looked where he was going. Because on the way to his car he was making out with his girlfriend, a woman who was not going to be Mrs. Dalton anytime soon because there already was one of those. And I don’t mean the client’s mother.

  My mind flashed on Tony DiCarlo and I wondered briefly what—or who—he was up to.

  Moral judgments aside—and I sensed that Randall Dalton wasn’t exactly my uncle’s favorite client—Uncle Earwax thought the man had been seriously i
njured “due to the defendant’s negligence” and therefore deserved his day in court.

  To help pass the time, I’d brought a novel with me—a long one, so I wouldn’t be likely to finish it during the trial and end up sitting there twiddling my thumbs. I figured this week was as good a time as any to catch up on the classics I’d always meant to read. But every time I opened my edition of A Tale of Two Cities, Mr. Dalton attempted to engage me in conversation.

  I had no interest in chatting with him, although I was afraid of appearing impolite. My uncle had reminded me that I had no idea who might be observing my body language and behavior toward the plaintiff. If it looked like I didn’t want to give the man the time of day, it wasn’t too good for our side.

  Trying a case is a lot like making a movie. It’s not glamorous and everything takes a really long time. You spend untold hours playing the game of “hurry up and wait.” Unable to get past the editor’s introduction of my Dickens novel without interruption, I elected instead to constructively use this downtime for my own career by reading through the copy of Spotlight that I’d picked up on the way to work yesterday, circling the auditions that looked like good bets.

  Mr. Dalton leaned toward me, as though he were trying to read the paper over my shoulder. “After we win my case, what do you say we go out for dinner? You name the restaurant. Anywhere in the city.” He kept his voice low, almost conspiratorial.

  He’s a pig, Alice.

  No kidding.

  So tell him what you really think of him.

  Is that wise at this moment in time? I turned to Mr. Dalton. “I’m not allowed to date clients.”

  “After your uncle wins my case, I won’t be a client.”

  Alice. Tell the man the truth.

  That is the truth.

  Don’t play coy or act passive-aggressive. Never mind what your uncle thinks; think of Shakespeare’s words: To thine own self be true.

  “I don’t date married men,” I told him.

  Dingdingdingdingding! Bells and whistles and firecrackers erupted inside my psyche. Mr. Dalton looked stunned, like no one had ever refused him before.

  “But…I have a Lexus,” he said.

  “And I have a conscience.”

  There was a flurry of activity toward the front of the room and the judge and attorneys emerged from chambers. My uncle strode over to us and announced that no settlement had been negotiated and the trial would begin after lunch that afternoon. While Uncle Earwax took Mr. Dalton aside and explained in hushed tones why the defendants hadn’t offered any money on his case, I sat tight and continued to mark up the trade paper. One audition in particular caught my eye and I circled it immediately. Grandma Finnegan’s Wake, a long-running interactive comedy—yes, a comedy—that was presented partly in a theater and partly in half of a real funeral parlor in Greenwich Village, was seeking replacements for a number of cast members who were leaving the Off-Broadway production after four years to start up a Chicago company of the show.

  One available role stood out from the rest. The tempestuous Fionulla Finnegan was a former Star Search champion who went on to have a recording contract, reinventing herself as FiFi, then started up a line of rocker chick clothing, and became one of the hosts of the TV infotainment program Reach for the Stars.

  I had seen Grandma Finnegan’s Wake when it first opened, because I was intrigued by it on a number of levels, not least of which was that I shared the same last name as the title character. I thought it in pretty bad taste, but wickedly funny all the same. It looked like more fun to perform, actually, than to watch, even though audience participation amounted to more than half the show’s loosely scripted format. I remembered that Fionulla got to grab the mike during the wake and sing an uptempo version of “Danny Boy” to the waxy figure of the dear departed, then went around for most of the rest of the party interviewing other “family members” about their relationship with Grandma Finnegan, as though she were shoving the mike in front of celebrities at a film premiere.

  Open auditions were going to be held over the next three days, including this one. The annoying thing about these cattle calls is that you are expected to give up hours of your time waiting to be seen, since no specific appointments are given. And of course I was supposed to be at Uncle Earwax’s office all week during business hours. Or worse, stuck in this courtroom during the Dalton trial proceedings, waiting to be called to the witness stand to read in deposition testimony as a middle-aged male Czech, at the mercy of a half-deaf judge who could care less that plaintiff’s counsel’s secretary needed to get her butt out the door to run to an audition.

  Chapter 17

  Dorian’s got a superstition about his auditions: He doesn’t discuss them with anyone until after they’re over and the roles are cast. Like the wish you make when you blow out your birthday candles, he believes it’s bad luck if you talk about it. So I decided to emulate him and not tell a soul, not even Gram, about my plans—although I would have to tell Uncle Earwax something because I’d need to leave work, or the trial, in order to run over to the Macdougal Street Theatre.

  I’d already written off this afternoon in terms of attending the Grandma Finnegan audition. My head wasn’t in the right place, anyway; it was stuck in this shabby-looking courtroom. I needed more time to prepare, aware that even if I tried to get to the theater today I’d be doing myself a disservice, just as I’d done for years, by not taking my career seriously enough and putting my allegiances to my survival jobs ahead of it.

  Discussing the situation with Uncle Earwax sooner rather than later seemed to be a good idea. Or maybe not.

  “Alice,” he thundered so loudly the corridor outside the courtroom reverberated with his ire, “you’re barely back on the job and already you’re doing this to me! You can’t do this when I’m on trial. Pick another week to pursue your career; you’ve been at it so long anyway, are a few more days going to kill you? What are you trying to do to me here?!”

  I stood my ground. The louder he got, the quieter I became. “I’m not trying to do anything to you personally. I don’t schedule a show’s auditions,” I said. “There’s something I’m appropriate for that is seeing people over the next few days and I’ll need to take off a couple of hours to do it. This is your life,” I added, gesturing to his heavy litigation bag and the courtroom door. “And this,” I said, waving the folded trade paper, “is mine.” I refused to engage in any further conversation on the subject.

  I was hoping that “Miroslav Janousek” would be called to the stand the next day so that I could get the deposition reading over and be done with my portion of the Dalton trial responsibilities, thus having time the subsequent afternoon to go to Macdougal Street. I’d spent the evening at home splitting my focus between poring over the deposition transcript and determining the most advantageous wardrobe for Grandma Finnegan’s Wake. Of course, the smartly tailored black suit would be as appropriate in a courtroom as in a funeral parlor, but I couldn’t say the same for the tight gold lamé top I’d found at the bottom of a dresser drawer. I’d bought it about a hundred years ago from Victoria’s Secret, but it always looked like it should have been part of a costume, rather than streetwear, so I never wore it. I could have just given it away to a thrift shop, but I figured one day there’d be a need for it.

  And tomorrow would be the day.

  Not.

  Instead, I spent much of my time the next day bruising my butt on the back benches of the courtroom, glancing at my watch and wondering when Uncle Earwax would call me to the stand. Turns out the trial was delayed all morning with motions on other cases that the judge insisted on hearing before the Dalton case proceeded any further.

  In the afternoon, Randall Dalton himself took the stand. Attending a real trial is a great experience for actors. There are wonderful opportunities to observe human behavior and interaction. I could tell right away that the jury didn’t like Dalton. He came across as arrogant, entitled, and a bit self-righteous, which isn’t a great attitu
de for a guy who, on cross-examination from the defendant’s attorney, had to admit under oath that he was an adulterer. What should have been a case judged upon its merits and not those of the plaintiff was turning into something else. I studied the jury’s faces as they listened to Mr. Dalton’s testimony and got the feeling that his behavior on the night of the accident—the fact that he was with his girlfriend at the time, whether or not he’d suffered a serious injury—couldn’t help but color their consciences.

  From what I saw, Rosa’s little prediction was probably right on target. It would take a lot of work for my uncle to turn this case around. Especially since I could swear that as Randall Dalton stepped down from the witness stand, he picked his nose.

  I was getting ready to go to work the next morning, busily accessorizing, when my watch band broke. I am lost without my wristwatch. I even wear it to bed; in fact, the only time I remove it is when I’m in the tub or the shower. My black suit has no pockets and I thought about tossing the watch in my wallet, but without my trusty Seiko actually on my wrist, I feel naked and incomplete.

  “Gram, have you an extra watch?” I asked her. She was making her toilette, her face slathered in moisturizer. It’s how her skin still appeared so youthful you would swear she didn’t look a day over seventy-five. “The wristband on mine finally gave out and there are no clocks in the courtroom. I think they do it on purpose, so you have no clear idea of how long a trial is dragging on.”

  “Take mine, sweetheart. It’s in the lacquer box on the dresser. I’d get it for you but my hands are full of gunk.”

  “No, I don’t want to take it if it’s the only one you’ve got,” I insisted.

  “Alice, don’t be silly. There are five clocks in this apartment, and one in the corner of the screen on the local TV news station. If I need to tell the time, I won’t exactly be bereft.”