Break and Enter

by Colin Harrison

  But in truth he had never been content in those days. He worried about her happiness, money, and his future, for the process of becoming a lawyer was narrowing and honing him, imposing architectures on his thinking, removing colors from his perceptions. Thought had become navigation by logic; he tacked back and forth in subroutines of inference when no tailwind of certainty carried him straight toward an answer. Increasingly, life appeared to be a series of planned manipulations and strategic intentions. This change was a matter of grief, for it implied not only the absolute death of childhood but of a way of thought, the murder of pure intuition. And yet the evenings he walked alone, there would come a moment when he’d turn the corner and see their darkened apartment window above the street and know she slept there waiting for him. This had been enough. Wasn’t it she who would preserve in him the sense of wonder? When he returned to the bedroom, always he softly whispered reassuring noises. She needed to know it was him, for otherwise she might hear the creak of the bed and jump awake, terrified.

  The phone rang. “Peter Scattergood,” he answered dully, by habit.

  “Hey, man, Mr. Scattergood, why’d you let that fucking nigger go free, man?” A heavy working-class, city accent. “You asshole liberal pussy—”

  “Who is this?”

  “Me? I’m a taxpayer. I pay your fucking salary. I bet you love niggers, let them fuck you up the ass. I pay you to fucking lock up them son-of-a-bitches, not—”

  He hung up. Did these idiots know where he lived, too? He clenched his fists in the air, half wanting the chance to beat up the next person who crowded him.

  The phone rang again. He grabbed it.

  “Yes?” he demanded in anger.

  “Oh, Peter, finally.”

  He hadn’t spoken to his mother in weeks, at least. “I know I haven’t called.”

  “I was thinking of you. I’d love for the two of you to come out to dinner one of these evenings. I haven’t seen Janice in a couple of months, it seems.”

  “I’m pretty busy now, Mom.” He heard the vulnerability in his voice, hated himself for lying to her. “So’s she.”

  “I’m sure you both are. Why don’t you ask Janice to look at the calendar and find a day next week? Any day’s fine for me.”

  “I’ll do that, call you back.”

  She hadn’t mentioned the television. Having given up on local news and its mix of sensationalistic and idiotic filler stories, his parents adhered to the national newscast and its relatively prim journalistic standards.

  “Here’s Dad.” Her voice faded. “It’s Peter, honey.”

  “Peter? What’s new?”

  “Been playing some racquetball. I’ve got a new partner.”

  “Good?” His father loved to analyze sports; as he aged, his ability to remember the golden moments of his youthful athletic prowess seemed to improve, those moments becoming even more glorious and heroic. “I played tennis indoors twice last week. I can’t serve the way I used to. I hate these new oversized racquets, but everybody has them. I tried to stretch my back out on the living-room rug—”

  “Put heat on your back.”

  “Yes.” His father changed his tone, father-son ritualizing done. “Look, your mother thinks you don’t want to come home.”

  “No—”

  “She’s in the other room, so I’ll get right to it. Mom doesn’t want to mention it, but she’s due to have a little surgery. We don’t know why we haven’t seen much of you lately. But that’s not the issue. Your mother would like to see you and Janice before she goes into the hospital Sunday night.”

  “Dad, what’s the matter?”

  “The doctor wants her to have a hysterectomy.”

  “Uhh,” Peter breathed. “Cancer?”

  “The Pap smear turned it up and they ran some more tests. There’s, uh, some abnormal tissue, in the, uh, cervix and uterus.” His father, an overly modest man, stumbled along: “We don’t know how extensive. Mom’ll be in the hospital awhile.”

  “Tomorrow’s Thursday.” He pulled a commuter train schedule from a drawer. “I’ll be on the eleven thirty-six Paoli Local Saturday morning.”

  He hung up, remembered his mother’s voice, and wondered what a uterus meant to a fifty-eight-year-old woman. Nobody liked being cut open. He didn’t believe his mother had cancer, but told himself he had to prepare for that possibility. His chest ached. He reached for the phone again, to call Janice. Only she would understand. They had to talk—he needed her reassurance. This kind of fear flattened other worries and he had faith Janice would set aside their troubles temporarily on behalf of family unity. Of course she would.

  The phone line was busy. Good, Janice was home. The next time he called, five minutes later, there was no answer. He tried fifty or more times that night to reach her.

  Chapter Six

  THE NEXT DAY, Peter Scattergood was alone in a mirrored elevator, rising soundlessly one hundred feet per minute up one of the new granite and glass towers, his feet deep in the wine-colored carpet, his face ruddy and abstracted before him, worrying about his mother, watching the floor numbers flick on and off, worrying about how much this was going to cost him, worrying about the Mayor, and, above all—like a knife in his chest—wondering where Janice had been the previous night.

  Mastrude’s law office looked respectable enough, but when the secretary waved Peter in, he had second thoughts immediately. The attorney was a bearded, clownishly obese man in his late fifties who had a few thin red hairs plastered to an otherwise bald, freckled scalp. His bifocals, too small for his fleshy head, rested below bloodshot blue eyes. Crumbs clung to his tie and a constellation of dandruff floated across the dark lapels of his suit. The office smelled unmistakably of Chinese food, and everything about the man bespoke a marginally competent, low-budget law practice. Perhaps he had made a mistake.

  “Okay,” Mastrude barked, pushing aside the files covering his desk. “My secretary said you called yesterday. How long have you and your wife been married, Mr. Scattergood?”

  “It’s been about seven years. Please call me Peter.”

  “I will. Children?” Mastrude scribbled on a pad.

  “Nope. We talked about it.”

  “Well, it’s a whole hell of a lot simpler without a custody battle.” Mastrude rubbed his fingers across his belly.

  “Right,” Peter answered. “My wife isn’t looking for a fight, anyway. She just wants out. I’m certain she doesn’t want to take it to divorce court and will agree on a settlement with reasonable monthly alimony. So, uh, the divisible assets accumulated during the marriage—”

  “You an attorney, Mr. Scattergood?” Mastrude looked annoyed, as if he was not being allowed to do his job.

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”

  “Big firm in town?” Mastrude bit a pencil and inspected the tooth marks.

  “No. Assistant D.A. down at City Hall.”

  “Have a specialty?” Mastrude’s voice held more interest.

  “I prosecute homicides,” Peter said, feeling strange, as if he were guilty of one.

  “Okay.” Mastrude was not impressed. “In that case, you should already know that life is messy, unfair, fraught with irreconcilable conflict, and basically a long row to hoe. Most people are unhappy most or some of the time, and few human relationships are devoid of the most evil intentions and the most wicked and hateful of thoughts.”

  “Wow,” Peter joked uncomfortably.

  Mastrude leaned forward, ready to move on. “No kids. How about affairs while you were together?”

  Peter shook his head. Cassandra didn’t count, really.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “We need the facts here.” Mastrude sounded like a prosecutor.

  “You have the facts.”

  “Why’s she leaving you?”

  “It’s pretty complicated.”

  “I don’t doubt it. What about her? Affairs? Flirtations?”

  “No, not that I know of.”

>   “Well, let’s hope you know about yourself at least.” Mastrude’s massive red face crinkled in delight. ” ‘The codpiece that will house Before the head has any, The head and he shall louse: So beggars marry many.’ The Fool, Lear. In other words, take care of yourself first, your pecker second. You’ll find I’m an irreverent man, Mr. Scatter—Peter. It’s the only way I can cope. That’s not to say I don’t care about your situation. Now then, since it’s sometimes an issue, what religion are you?”

  “Quaker.”

  “Quaker? No kidding! There aren’t that many left.”

  “Some, here and there.”

  “They founded this city, if you read your history,” Mastrude exclaimed. “You look Presbyterian or Episcopalian, something typical. A Quaker, how about that? There’re not many original Philly Quakers left. Like descendants of the Dutch in New York City. Can’t find them. How strong is your practice?”

  “I go to Meeting for Worship once in a while.” Janice had usually wanted to go. She loved the silence.

  “That’s what Quakers call church, right?”

  “Yeah—it’s silent.”

  “I’ve seen the meeting houses,” Mastrude remembered. “Scattered all over the state, right? Most of them are stone and look three hundred years old.”

  “Most of them are.”

  “The Quakers don’t dress in hats and black—”

  “No, plain dress went out about a hundred years ago,” Peter responded; it was a typical question. “That’s the Amish or the Mennonites. Quakers have been corrupted by the modern world along with everyone else.”

  “Is your family—”

  “Goes all the way back. One of my ancestors worked for Governor Penn himself.”

  “Very few people know that the Declaration of Independence was based in part on the Charter of Liberties, written by Penn.” Mastrude beamed. “Did you know the Liberty Bell was cast in honor of that document, and its inscription written by a Quaker?” he asked.

  Peter shrugged. The Quakers had relinquished all political power by the nineteenth century. Somehow this was painful to him.

  Mastrude pulled open a drawer. “You a pacifist?” he asked, producing a soggy cardboard box.

  “Is this related to my marriage situation?”

  “No, just curious.” Mastrude nodded, his mouth suddenly full of pork and rice.

  “I don’t think force should resolve problems. I’m nonviolent, yes.”

  Mastrude made a sucking sound, half laugh, half scoff. “How do you square that with your work? Christ, man, you say you’re a pacifist and yet you enforce the law via punishments! This state has the death penalty—”

  “I’m quite aware of that.”

  “Well?”

  “The death penalty does bother me—I consider it an awesome thing, never to be taken lightly. Perhaps I believe in the law more than I subscribe to the tenets of Quakerism. As dictated by reality,” Peter said, not enjoying the exchange.

  “Like a Catholic who uses birth control.”

  “Well, that’s a pretty faulty analogy.”

  “And you’re an argumentative fellow. Which is expectable. I like that in a man, but not in a client.” Mastrude opened another drawer and brought out a beer. “Now, what does your wife do?”

  “She’s director of a safe house for battered women.”

  “You’d be surprised who beats up on whom—then again, you wouldn’t, I suppose.”

  “There’s not much money in it, though she’s a licensed social worker.”

  “She could decide to go into private practice,” the lawyer concluded. “All right, aside from the professional degrees, tell me about the assets accumulated while you two have been married.”

  There were, Peter answered, the equity in the house, the cash management account, the shrimpy savings account they plundered for vacations, the small but healthy stock portfolio Peter had built and was absurdly proud of, various furnishings, Janice’s car, the Ford, the computer, jewelry, etc. With the appreciated value of the house, several hundred thousand dollars.

  “The usual junk owned by the investing class,” Mastrude summarized.

  Their debts included a revolving two thousand dollars or so on the credit cards, the usual monthly bills, the endless years of mortgage payments remaining on the house, and the pesky remainders of student loans. The only way to get back all the equity in the house was to sell it, of course.

  “All right, since you seem to know what your wife wants, why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  Peter opted for the truth. “Hell, I don’t want to get divorced.”

  “As is often the case, one party doesn’t want to do it.” Mastrude nodded compassionately, as advertised. “Too weak, too scared, too sad, too hopeful, too dependent. Any of those words apply to you, Peter?”

  “All, probably.” He leaned forward. “But I think there’s a chance we can get back together.”

  “Why do you want to do that?” Mastrude yanked open another drawer, as if it contained the answer to his question, and pulled out a roll of antacids.

  “Because I love her, Mastrude, far-fetched as that may sound. Jesus, you guys like to chomp on the jugular, don’t you?”

  The intercom buzzed and Mastrude asked his secretary what she needed, then motioned to Peter that he’d be a few minutes. Peter started to think of the work he was supposed to be doing. He had let so many things slip lately, not working as long as he needed to, nor as efficiently. So far no one had noticed, though you never knew; two hundred and twenty lawyers pushed through the front doors to the D.A.’s office every morning and many of the new youngbloods were sure to be plotting their professional rise from the municipal court unit to felony waiver to felony jury up to the cream of the office, homicide trial, just as he had done, an honored tradition in the office. He knew from basketball that there was always some maniac who would outwork you no matter how dedicated and obsessive you were—the guys who shot three hundred foul shots after practice and dribbled a ball while they ate breakfast—always one pathologically organized and methodical nut who cut through the mediocre masses of mumbling, posturing, paper-shuffling lawyers the way Michael Jordan had sliced up the Sixers two nights prior for forty-eight points. He was convinced Hoskins was watching him, waiting for him to screw up the Whitlock case.

  Mastrude banged down the phone.

  “Where were we? You don’t want to split up.” Mastrude inhaled the wheezy breath of the obese. “Okay, Peter, looking at you, I see you’re young, ambitious, probably work too hard, which is what a lot of young lawyers do—I see it with boys of twenty-five, twenty-six, just out of Penn Law or Harvard or some other overrated place, and personally I think Temple and Villanova do a fine job, the graduates are less cocky and more dependable. Anyway, you all are kids aching to start climbing into your graves. Everyone thinks he can beat the system, beat the odds, beat life on its own terms. I hear it all the time. I talk to women and men, men and women. Peter, I’ll tell you what they say, too. Ready?” Mastrude’s eyebrows shot up like a curtain being lifted. “It’s a list I’ve memorized. ‘I want to be alone to be free to think and work, and I want to be in a committed relationship. I want to live forever, but I want to take drugs and drink and smoke to an excessive degree. I want children, but I want to be able to work twenty hours a day. I want my spouse to have the most fantastic body I ever saw but none of the obsession, vanity, or values that go with it. I want to indulge the sickest, weirdest parts of my personality, and I want everyone to think I’m the most healthy soul they ever met. I want my wife to have a fulfilling, lucrative professional career, but I want her to give birth to a bunch of adoring, bright, perfect, happy kids and to have dinner waiting for me. I want to be free to meet new people and have great sex with them, and I want my spouse to stay faithful so that I can have great sex with him or her. I want the wisdom of getting older without losing my hair or getting crow’s feet. I want to do everything I should feel guilty for doing but w
ithout the guilt. I want to be an artist or to help people and not compromise myself, and I want to make a huge pile of money any filthy, sneaky way I can. I want my subordinates to be loyal, productive workers, and I want my boss to give me all the credit for what they do. I want my aging parents to live out their lives in a healthy, happy way, but I want them to die quickly so that I can have all of their money. I want my kids to feel loved, but I don’t want to bother helping them with their homework—‘ ”

  “Okay, I get it,” Peter said, irritated.

  “A childless divorce is small potatoes compared to some of the damage possible to inflict on another person. Good Christ, I hope you know that, you’re the murder man. I always tell people, ‘If you don’t get everything you want, think of what you don’t get that you don’t want.’ Now, to get back to the point, your wife is probably very intelligent and articulate. People tend to marry at their own level of looks, wealth, education, and so on. You’re both attractive people. Nobody waves around a pistol or threatens suicide in your household, the bills get paid, and you subscribe to a couple of great publications like The New Yorker or Harper’s magazine that you don’t have time to read, or am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re right,” Peter answered, feeling reduced by Mastrude’s overview.