Marital Privilege

by Greg Sisk

Shortly before classes for fall semester began at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Dean Colleen Ordway had again invited Candace to accept a one-year paid leave of absence. Candace had once again declined. Descending into a year-long bereavement—separated from her work and its life-affirming purpose, and isolated from the benevolent community at St. Thomas—would leave her destitute and emotionally impoverished.

  Fortunately, Candace also had no need to accept any extension of the calendar on which she would be considered for tenure on the law faculty. The tragedy had fallen on her shortly after the end of her third year on the faculty at the University of St. Thomas. By that point in time on the “tenure track,” she already had published three major law review articles, while receiving the highest peer and student evaluations of her teaching.

  The formal written tenure standards set three articles as the quantitative minimum that must be submitted by a candidate for tenure. Candace already had satisfied that minimum expectation. However, Candace well understood that St. Thomas held to the highest standards of scholarship, which was one of the reasons she had come to the Twin Cities. Three articles was the floor, not a ceiling, and by itself was no guarantee of receiving tenure. The tenure committee would look to her portfolio for evidence of a pattern of scholarship that promised future productivity. A faculty member who worked steadily on research and writing during the untenured period would be judged more likely to continue scholarly activity, than the faculty member who was inactive for long periods of time.

  For obvious reasons, Candace had made no progress on a fourth scholarly article during the previous summer. Still, with the fourth and fifth years on the tenure track ahead of her, she had ample time to finish at least one more article before she would be evaluated for tenure. Each of the two semesters consisted of thirteen weeks of classes, to which should be added about one week of pre-semester preparation, one week for a fall or spring break in the middle of the semester, and one week (maybe two) to grade exams afterward. That allowed her nearly five months each year—including three uninterrupted months each summer—to devote to scholarly writing. Accordingly, Candace admonished herself, she would have no excuse for not maintaining a writing schedule designed to produce at least one and maybe two more major articles before the tenure clock ran down.

  Candace did accept one accommodation offered by Dean Ordway. She had been scheduled to teach first-year Civil Procedure in the fall, a task she had relished for the past three years. She regarded it as a distinct privilege to teach beginning law students and guide them in discovering a love for the law and for learning—and to do this in a course like Civil Procedure that most students initially found daunting.

  However, with Bill’s trial being set for October, which would mean that she would miss two weeks of class right at the middle point of the semester, Candace worried she would fail to meet her ­obligations to her students. Moreover, she also feared she would struggle unsuccessfully to maintain composure in front of a classroom of new and unfamiliar people, during the period when her personal pain would be paraded before a jury and highlighted on the nightly news.

  Dean Ordway generously agreed to take over the section of Civil Procedure, on top of Ordway’s other considerable duties as head of the law school.

  With reluctance but sober recognition of her own limits, Candace acceded. Given the sad if unsurprising outcome of the trial, as well as Bill’s sentence to life in prison shortly thereafter, she was very glad she had been able to keep a lower profile in the law school during that period.

  By spring semester, when Candace was scheduled to teach Professional Responsibility, the worst of the events would be past. And she then would be teaching to upper-level students she previously had in other classes—a congregation of friendly and familiar faces, many of whom had been at her house in June generously assisting in the unexpected move from suburban Eden Prairie to downtown Minneapolis.

  During the fall semester, Candace would continue her work with Sharon Tipplett in the Veterans Clinic. With Candace added as a supervising attorney, the clinic was able to enroll a larger group of students and provide legal representation to more of those men and women who had served their country so heroically and sacrificially in the armed forces.

  In late October, Candace had learned of the gratifying success of the appeal she had briefed for the veteran with crippling back pain, who had been denied disability benefits by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Receiving financial assistance through restored veterans disability benefits, and with the family’s debt payments to other creditors restructured, this veteran and his family were seeing the answer to their faithful prayers.

  For an interval, Candace worried that this family’s legal victory would be overshadowed by their own personal hardship. This veteran’s young boy was afflicted with chronic leukemia. In early November, he suffered an alarming relapse. With the malignancy impairing the infection-fighting function of white blood cells, the boy contracted a respiratory infection which was not responding to antibiotics and threatened his life. As the boy fought back against the infection, Candace sojourned to the hospital every evening to sit with the parents.

  Acutely aware of the loss of Candace’s own boy, these parents leaned heavily on her and drew considerable comfort from her presence. Candace was overjoyed and much relieved when the young boy recovered. She was not confident she could weather another loss of a young innocent, even if the child was not her own.

  • • •

  During the autumn months, as Candace continued to work with veterans and their families, including those who had lost family and friends in military service overseas, she perceived an exceptional openness to her counsel and realized that others derived extraordinary comfort from her personal attendance in their hour of need. As she had with the veteran’s family and the young boy suffering from leukemia, Candace apprehended that she was so gratefully embraced because her own tragedy had become a matter of widespread public knowledge. Her empathy was accepted as genuine and her words of consolation were especially valued because others understood she had been well acquainted with sorrow and yet had persevered.

  Although pleased she was able to offer meaningful solace to others, Candace also experienced a nagging disquiet about the source of her ameliorating counsel.

  Sensing she was troubled, Father Alexander Cleveland inquired one day in early November after morning Mass.

  Candace explained to the priest that she felt tremendously blessed she had been able to bring healing to others out of her own pain. And yet she had been burdened by the perverse notion that her tragedy somehow had been pre-ordained so that, through affliction, she would learn to serve the afflicted. Apologetically acknowledging that her discernment had become distorted, she confessed it had had crossed her mind that her own son’s death might have been divine will.

  “No, no,” said Father Cleve emphatically. “You must not think that. You should not feel that. What you’re feeling is a form of survivor’s guilt. When a person survives an accident in which others perish, she often feels guilty, believing that somehow her own survival was achieved at the cost of others. That’s irrational of course, but a natural emotional response.

  “You have a gift, Candace. You are able to offer genuine comfort to others who are afflicted. To be sure, you draw upon the reservoir of your own experiences in offering that comfort. And one of those personal experiences is your own struggle to overcome tragedy. Because your heart-felt empathy grounded in your own loss draws others to you, you are tempted to believe your tragedy was a sacrifice demanded from you by God. You’re troubled by the thought that the loss of your son was the price exacted by God to mold you into an instrument of healing.

  “God indeed is forming you and strengthening your gift of comfort. But that’s because of His mercy and saving grace, not because He sacrificed your son.

  “It was not God’s will that your son
should die. It is not God’s wish that any one should perish. Death comes into the world through our collective sin, our rebelliousness as human beings. Because of that stain of original sin, death comes to the good and bad, the innocent and the guilty. We are broken people living in a broken world.

  “But God’s love for us, even in our sinful brokenness, is so strong, and God’s divine and eternal purpose is so powerful, that He is able to take these broken people in this broken world and make something holy and good from it. As Jesus said, ‘Behold, I make everything new.’

  “Candace, your refusal to drown in your pain and your willingness to serve others is a testament to your love for J.D. Because of your faith, God has redeemed the evil of J.D.’s killing. When you serve others, J.D. is resurrected in your heart. Treasure that. Never doubt it.”

  • • •

  Candace was nestled comfortably on a recliner chair, placed next to the large picture window of her twelfth floor condo unit in downtown Minneapolis. As she read through the Sunday newspaper on this morning after Thanksgiving, she occasionally paused and gazed down at Loring Park. The trees were now mostly bare, offering only a tantalizing taste of the apricot and cherry that had garnished the park even into late October. Here and there a solitary orange or red leaf still clung to a branch, resisting the onset of winter.

  Technically, Candace remained a tenant of the Zuazos. Not for long. The house in Eden Prairie had sold sooner than she expected and at a price that left enough for a down payment on a new residence, even after paying off the line of equity that had covered Bill’s legal defense. Having settled comfortably into the condo and appreciating its convenient location across the street from the University of St. Thomas law school, Candace had approached the Zuazos about purchasing the condo and becoming a permanent downtown Minneapolis resident. With some financial help from her father, and what she suspected was generosity by the Zuazos, her initial low bid was accepted. Closing on the sale would come within the next couple of weeks.

  Having returned from early Sunday Mass at the nearby Basilica of St. Mary, Candace had planned to relax until lunch-time by reading the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Tucker apparently approved of her plan, as he had immediately jumped up and draped himself across her upper legs for a nap.

  In the weeks and months since they had left Eden Prairie, the cat had become more and more affectionate toward her. It wasn’t like he had many options for human companionship, she reflected. Still, Candace allowed, there was something most comforting about the perfect trust of a feline, purring contentedly as he rests in your lap.

  The buzzer sounded at the intercom near the door, signaling that someone was trying to contact her from the front desk down on the first floor of the condominium building. Almost without thinking, she said out loud: “I can’t answer the door. I’ve got ‘cat privilege.’”

  “Cat privilege” had been something of a family tradition in the Klein household. When the cat had chosen to curl up on ­someone’s lap, that fortunate person was immune from being asked to answer the phone or the door or to run an errand inside the house. Given Tucker’s preference for J.D., the little boy usually had been the one claiming “cat privilege” to avoid a chore.

  Thinking about that piece of family lore caused a shiver of emotional pain to shudder through Candace’s heart. But the pang was followed by a light laugh, as the silliness of the custom struck her.

  The buzzer sounded again. “Well,” said Candace to Tucker, “there’s no one else to answer the door.” She started to sit up, which jostled the cat out of her lap. He jumped down to the floor, stalking away with ostentatious irritation at having been interrupted in his nap.

  Answering the intercom, Candace was connected to the security guard at the front desk. He told her that a police officer named Burton was asking to come up to see her. With reluctance, as she couldn’t imagine that Lieutenant Ed Burton would be carrying good news, she told the guard to send him up.

  Burton came immediately up the elevator to the twelfth floor and down the hall to the condo. Candace met him at the door and invited him in to sit down in the living area.

  “There’s been some news about Mr. Klein,” said Burton without any preliminaries. “I thought I ought to pass it along to you, just so that you would know.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Candace.

  “Mr. Klein was being transported by the U.S. Marshals Service from a medium security facility in Oxford, Wisconsin, where he was being evaluated, to a high security correctional facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. The transport van was involved in an accident on the highway. The driver of a truck had fallen asleep, crossed the median, and struck the transport van head-on. Both drivers were killed and the van was overturned. One of the two guards in the back was seriously injured. The other guard was overpowered by some of the other inmates being transported. After they got the key and unlocked their shackles, they escaped.”

  “So you’re saying Bill has escaped from prison?” she asked incredulously. While she was startled by this turn of events, she realized she was not anxious. Even now, even after all that had happened, even after the jury’s guilty verdict, she still could not conceive of Bill as a violent and malicious man. It never occurred to her to be afraid for her personal safety, to worry that he might come after her.

  “No, Mr. Klein was still in the transport van when the police and then Marshals Service personnel arrived at the accident scene. Mr. Klein had given some basic first-aid to the seriously injured guard. And he had put a blanket under the head of the other guard, who had been knocked unconscious by the escaping prisoners. He was just sitting there in the back of the over-turned van waiting when law enforcement arrived.

  “The police and marshals were so surprised, since Mr. Klein was the only one of the six prisoners who had remained behind, that they asked him why he didn’t run away as well.

  “He simply said, ‘I don’t have anywhere to go.’”

  On hearing this, Candace felt . . . sad. Unutterably sad. She felt no anger, no hatred, no bitterness toward Bill. The man she had loved and with whom she had built a life and family for more than a decade had been sitting there alone in a prison transport van, with nothing left and nowhere to go. How heartbreakingly sad.

  Then she became angry, although the target of her indignation was not Bill. She was irritated with Burton. By intruding into her Sunday morning with this depressing news, he had unsettled that fragile equilibrium she had worked so hard to reach in the past several weeks.

  “Why did you tell me this, Lieutenant?” she inquired with exasperation. “What am I supposed to do with this information? How does this help me? How does this help me get on with my life?”

  Burton was taken off-guard, not expecting that Candace would be displeased. He immediately but belatedly realized he had been insensitive, not considering how she might react to this development. While he felt he had a duty to share the news with her, he could have done so differently.

  Candace abruptly stood up, leading Burton to rise to his feet as well. In a formal tone as though addressing an unwelcome stranger, she said, “Well, then, good day to you, Lieutenant.”

  She went directly to the door and held it open for him to depart. As soon as he had passed through, she immediately pushed the door tightly shut, not with a slam but not gently either.

  Before the door had latched, Candace already regretted treating Burton so coldly. The poor man was only doing his job, she realized, keeping her informed about something he reasonably assumed she would want to know. Her sense of unbalance reflected her precarious emotions, that she was not yet fully recovered. It was not attributable to his behavior.

  She jerked the door back open, just in time to see Burton turn the corner down the hallway toward the elevator bay and pass out of her sight. She opened her mouth to call to him, thought better of it, and stood quietly one small step outsid
e of her condo.

  Well, she thought with a mental sigh, that’s one more person that I’ll probably never see again. J.D. Bill. Now Burton. Each one had forever passed from her life.

  Candace retreated back inside the apartment.

  She closed the door.

  Chapter 17

  [ELEVEN MONTHS AFTER THE TRAGEDY]

  Even in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, snow in April was not common, although it wasn’t exactly rare. As was typical of late spring flurries, very little crystallized precipitation had accumulated on the ground. Rather than reshaping the landscape by burying sidewalks, streets, bushes, and yards in fleecy drifts, only a thin layer of snow had been pasted on the ground and on every uncovered object.

  The dusting of snowflakes had washed away the color of the setting without changing form. A nearly transparent veil of white covered the earth, concealing nothing that lay underneath. The suburban panorama had been visually transformed into an old-style black-and-white photograph.

  The startling exception to this achromatic scene was the bright splash of scarlet that stained the frosted ground next to the head of the man lying near the driveway. The only other color standing out in this ivory and ebony world was the darker red of the luxury automobile parked in the driveway, which had not yet been enveloped in snow.

  • • •

  “His name is . . . was Maik Pnommavongsay,” said police investigator Melissa Garth to her partner, Lieutenant Ed Burton, as she stood next to the nearly headless body. “In Laotian gang circles, he was known as ‘M.P.’ He was reputed to be the head of one of the biggest drug-dealing gangs in the Twin Cities.”

  “Yeah,” said Burton. “I’ve heard of M.P. Every Eden Prairie cop has heard something about him, ever since he slithered out here to live in a house away from the chaos to which he contributed in the inner city. He supposedly did his best to keep his criminal activity in the city separate from his suburban lifestyle out here. But he could hardly keep the gang rivalry neatly confined to one part of the Twin Cities.