Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause

by Grif Stockley

  “No,” I say, looking sideways at Kim as I slide up my pants.

  “Please tell me if you do,” I beg.

  “Do you have AIDS or some disease?”

  Kim bursts into tears.

  “No!” she shouts at me.

  “How do you know you don’t?”

  I try to think of the women I have slept with in the last year. There have been only three since I met Rainey, and, of course, they swore (as I did) that they were practically virgins.

  I wore a rubber, but as one worried woman told me, even the best roof will eventually leak.

  “I just know, damn it!”

  The last five minutes, which seems like an eternity, have sobered her as no coffee could. Clinging to the sheet, she whimpers, “I’m sorry you’re hurting. I’m just terrified I’ll get AIDS from you!”

  Thanks for the vote of confidence, I think. I have to get out of here. I cram my socks into my pockets and slide on my loafers. The pain, bearable, however, is constant now, coming in steady waves.

  “I’ll call you,” I say politely.

  She nods, apparently too afraid to move. In the Blazer, I pop the clutch as badly as Sarah used to do before she figured out it wasn’t a device to strengthen your knee. Where to go?

  I noticed there was no blood. At least I’m not hemorrhaging to death, but I am even more frightened by the pain than when it first began. Desperate, I turn onto Fairfax, Rainey’s street. If I’m going to die, I don’t want to be like some animal that crawls off into the woods.

  I ring her bell and pound on the door like a wild man. In just a few moments I hear her yell through the door, “Who is it?”

  I scream back, “Gideon. I’m sick!”

  She throws the door open, and standing there in a thin cotton robe, cries, “What’s wrong?”

  I tell her and beg, “Will you take me to the St. Thomas emergency room? I’m having horrible cramps.”

  Looking dazed and scared, she says, “Of course, wait just a second,” and disappears into her bedroom while I sit on her couch.

  In less than a minute she appears, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes. Her hair is still a mess, and without makeup she appears like a ghost, but at the moment she has never looked better. In her car, she asks, “Where were you when it started hurting?”

  There is not hint of snideness in her voice. She is wondering why I didn’t call first. I want to say that I just happened to be in the neighborhood but don’t feel up to it. I swallow hard and admit, “I was watching the local news.”

  Rainey taps the steering wheel sharply with the palm of her right hand. She doesn’t require much explaining.

  “How interesting she says, her voice taking on a characteristic drollness.

  I look out the window into the darkness. There are a dozen snotty things she could say but won’t. Still, I feel like some lowlife snake running back to his wife after playing around and getting into trouble. Why do I feel this way? We’ve agreed to be just friends. For God’s sake, we’ve never seen each other naked, yet guilt begins to bubble up like boiling oil alongside the pain in my rectum. What is a friend for if you can’t tell her something without feeling guilty about it?

  Maybe it is true men and women can’t be friends.

  She whips into the St. Thomas emergency room parking area, and brakes to a halt at the security guard station. A black guy who looks a hundred sticks his head through the window on Rainey’s side and asks, “Is he going to need a wheelchair?”

  Through the light shining through the windshield, I can see the barest hint of a smile on Rainey’s face. She says, “I think he can walk.”

  Embarrassed now, I hiss, “Of course I can.”

  Fortunately, it is a slow night at St. Thomas. Only a couple of people are waiting, and they look so miserable I can’t tell whether they are family or patients. I look at Rainey, who yawns and says, “I confess that there is a part of me that hopes you’re really sick.”

  An hour later (the pain began to recede thirty minutes ago, but I am too embarrassed to admit it has gone away entirely) I am told I am simply middle-aged.

  “Prostatitis,” says the intern who had stuck his finger halfway to China.

  “How old are you?” “Forty-four,” I say, wishing his pants were a little cleaner.

  Dr. Wacker, according to his nameplate (for all I know he may be an orderly pressed into service because the regular doc is off sniffing glue with one of the nurses), looks about Sarah’s age but not as responsible.

  “Does this mean I’m going to lose my prostate gland?” I ask. Hell, maybe it would be a relief if I couldn’t get it up anymore. All it’s done since Rosa died is cause me trouble.

  “Shouldn’t,” the baby doc says casually.

  “You’ve got a little infection, but an antibiotic should take care of it.”

  With a twenty-five-dollar prescription for a bottle of pills (Septra) I walk into the waiting area feeling relieved but a little foolish. Rainey’s face looks frozen in worry. She stands, holding her hands together as if she is about to pray. I had told her the pain was better, but I didn’t tell her how much before I went in.

  “Prostatitis,” I mumble to Rainey as I come out into the waiting area.

  “Just an infection. I’ve got a prescription for it.”

  I head for the door. Do I just imagine it or are the nurses smiling? Rainey walks beside me and says loudly, “You got me out of bed at three in the morning for prostatitis? Women have infections all the damn time.”

  Outside, it is humid and sticky as we walk to her car. I feel like an idiot. I had given the hospital my group insurance card from Mays & Burton, but I have little hope I’m covered.

  “It hurt like hell,” I say, realizing I am whining.

  “I thought I was dying.”

  Rainey unlocks her door. In the brightly lit parking lot, she looks as exhausted as I feel. She stares at me over the roof of her car.

  “You’re such a baby!”

  We ride in silence to her house. How did I have the nerve to put her through this? I wouldn’t wish me on my worst enemy. Still, I can’t suppress the feeling entirely that I’ve dodged a bullet. I turn my head toward the window and smile. I’m okay. After a moment, I say sincerely, “I panicked I’m really sorry I put you through this.”

  Rainey’s voice is harsh as she pulls up in front of her house.

  “Damn you, Gideon, you had me worried to death!”

  I stare straight ahead. I have already apologized once, and I’m getting a little tired of being cussed out. Sure, I overreacted; most people would if they thought the plug was about to be pulled on them. I’m sorry I ruined her beauty sleep, but supposedly that’s what friends are for.

  “I’ll call you to morrow,” I say and open the door to get out.

  She shakes her head angrily and turns off the lights and motor.

  “I can’t wait,” she says as she gets out of the car and stalks into her house.

  I drive home, whistling, thrilled I don’t face surgery to morrow. What is her problem? She is the one who wanted to be friends. I turn onto my street. What am I supposed to do wait until I’m seventy for her to decide I’m good enough for her? I yawn until I can’t see. I wonder if she thinks that I am playing games with her. I have committed a lot of sins in the sexual wars. But that is not one of them. Not consciously anyway.

  on direct examination Mrs. Gentry proves to be a real trouper. If we could stop the trial right now (not likely, since she is the first witness and hasn’t even been crossexamined), I am convinced Judge Fogarty, the probate judge hearing her case, would let her leave the nursing home. For an eighty-four-year-old woman still weakened by the trauma of a serious infection and gall-bladder surgery, Mrs. Gentry seems to have made a decent impression on Judge Fogarty. It is control over her property that is going to be the problem.

  She has become confused about what she owns and how much income is being generated, but, as I will argue at the end of the tria
l, why shouldn’t she? Her son has completely cut her off from her money for the last six months. Fogarty, one of the smarter judges in Blackwell County, also has lived up to his reputation of treating everyone with respect. When she began to grow upset because of the difficulty of her memory, he told Mrs. Gentry to take her time and allowed me to lead her when it became obvious she was having problems.

  As I turn to leave the podium to allow Ferd (“Nerd” of course, behind his back) Machen, the opposing attorney, to crossexamine Mrs. Gentry, I hear a sound like the buzzing of a power line. I have seen her twice and have never heard her hum this loud, but she is going at “Shine On, Harvest Moon” as if she were making her debut at Carnegie Hall. I know it will stop as soon as Ferd begins to crossexamine her, but he is going to stay glued to his seat until Fogarty makes him get up. I had reminded her for the second time right before the trial began not to hum, but, to my horror, she is becoming a one-woman band right in front of our eyes.

  “Your Honor,” I plead, “can we have a recess for a moment

  Her asshole of a son is smirking as if his mother had been caught trying to pull down her pants in the courtroom. Judge Fogarty stands up.

  “Why don’t we take five minutes?” he says, smiling benignly at Mrs. Gentry.

  Typically, as soon as someone speaks, she becomes quiet so she can hear what is being said. It is the silence she has to fill. I invite her to step outside with me. As we walk by the counsel table, I begin to hum “Stars and Stripes For ever.” Screw them all.

  The Nerd grins, then tugs at my sleeve and whispers, “You’ll never see a dime of it.”

  I shrug as if this were a pro bono referral from Legal Aid.

  Yet, I have discovered in the last week that Mrs. Gentry is loaded, or was, having assets of well over a million dollars, more than enough to live comfortably in any retirement community of her choosing and to pay her newest lawyer a generous fee. Out in the hall by the water fountain, I take Mrs.

  Gentry’s right hand in mine to calm her down.

  “Do you remember we talked about your humming when nobody is talking, Mrs. Gentry?”

  Her face flushed with embarrassment, my client stares miserably at the floor. She seems shrunken, and for the first time she looks her age. Maybe she ought to be in a nursing home. Yet why should a person be locked up because of a little humming? She is wearing a bright emerald-green dress and matching pumps with little high heels. This morning when I saw her at the nursing home, I had a fleeting thought that we had a chance. Mrs. Gentry moans, “Some people bite their fingernails when they get nervous. I hum.”

  True, but not so loud they can be heard a block away, I think, but then I get an idea. I pull from my right pants pocket an unopened pack of five-flavored Life Savers I bought in the courthouse coffee shop this morning and hand it to her.

  “When nobody’s talking, take one of these out and suck on it like your life depends on it.”

  She squints warily at the pack of mints in my hand as if I were trying to get her to take drugs and then bends over the fountain to drink. When she is done, she straightens up and takes the mints, sighing, “I’ll try.”

  Back in the courtroom, the mints don’t rescue her completely, but they help. A couple of times during her crossexamination, she sounds like someone humming with a Life Saver in her mouth, but at least the volume is way down.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Gentry is becoming more confused than ever about what she owns, and there is nothing she can do about it, since Judge Fogarty won’t sustain a single one of my objections. It is apparent that she needs a guardian of her estate but not so obvious at this point that she requires a guardian of her person, as the law distinguishes the two.

  Rustling through his papers, Ferd pretends to pause, hoping he can get her humming again, but I point to her mouth, and she pops in a Life Saver just as she begins “The Blue Danube.”

  The Nerd waits as long as he can and then asks, “Isn’t it a fact that three weeks ago you were caught in a closet…”

  I shoot out of my seat, cutting Ferd off, “This is irrelevant, Your Honor!”

  Judge Fogarty, who for some reason suffers fools more gladly than most judges, says mildly, “I can’t rule on your objection, Mr. Page, until I hear the question.”

  There is no jury to keep from hearing the question, so there is no excuse to approach the Bench and argue the point quietly. I look at Mrs. Gentry and know she is beginning to die up there. She pops her last Life Saver in her mouth and stares at me with such a forlorn expression I feel a lump forming in my mouth.

  Ferd, whose normal clientele is about as scruffy as mine, finishes his question, “.. . in a closet at the nursing home having sex with a Mr. Peterson?”

  I am livid. I turn to Mrs. Gentry’s son as I speak. He is in his sixties, squashed down in his seat as if he knows his mother will never forgive him; nor should she.”

  “Your Honor, this question is probative of absolutely nothing, is a total invasion of Mrs. Gentry’s privacy, and is simply to harass and upset her.”

  Taking off his reading glasses and rubbing his eyes, Judge Fogarty, laconic as usual, says in a monotone, “What’s the relevancy, Mr. Machen?”

  The Nerd, for no apparent reason, points theatrically at my poor client.

  “Your Honor, Mrs. Gentry is old and sick;

  she could have gotten hurt or even locked in the closet. She may well have been given a social disease. It is just another example that this old lady has no idea what she’s doing and needs to be protected.”

  Judge Fogarty stands up, and crooks a finger at us.

  “I’d like to see the lawyers back in my chambers right now.

  Court’s in recess.” He walks into his chambers without even a backward glance at us.

  Ferd and I shrug at each other, wondering what’s up. We haven’t exactly been Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, but we’ve each done worse, I suspect. I tell Mrs.

  Gentry she can come sit at the counsel table, but she glares balefully at her son and shakes her head. He is finally beginning to seem embarrassed by what he is putting his mother through and glances sheepishly at her.

  Clarence Fogarty’s chambers are impersonal as a public urinal, without a single plaque or diploma on the walls. His office looks as if he moved in this morning. In fact, he is new, having only recently been elected, but he has had six months to unpack. He is a bachelor (shades of Justice Souter). On his desk, at an angle, I can see a single picture of, presumably, his parents, since he looks just like his mother:

  a woman whose most distinguishing features are almost thread-thin lips and a chin so triangular that it reminds me of a snake’s head. No beauty queen, but at least not bovine-looking, as my father used to say of half the girls he saw on the streets in Bear Creek in eastern Arkansas.

  Behind closed doors Judge Fogarty’s manner changes.

  Gone is his laborious, painstaking, and diffident manner. He grabs the volume of the Arkansas code containing the guardianship statutes from a shelf by his desk and flips through the pages in a rapid, irritated manner. His reputation is that he takes so long to make up his mind on difficult cases my client could be dead by the time he gets around to making a decision.

  I glance at the Nerd, who looks smug and confident, as if he has only begun to humiliate my client. It crosses my mind that I am putting Mrs. Gentry through hell. Perhaps, I should tell the judge we will take a voluntary nonsuit and dismiss the case. From the way it has gone in the last ten minutes, it might end up taking six months off Mrs. Gentry’s life no matter who wins, and at her age she doesn’t have that much time to give.

  Judge Fogarty looks up over reading glasses considerably more expensive-looking than mine, and says to Ferd in a low, intense voice, “Mr. Machen, do you know what the probate code says is the purpose of the guardianship statute?”

  Ferd leans back in the imitation-leather chair provided to the judge’s visitors, and says in an offhand manner, “To protect the ward.”r />
  “Do you know?” Judge Fogarty asks me.

  I rack my brain, fearing I’m about to be embarrassed. In taking the case over from Clan, I haven’t exactly knocked myself out reading up on guardianship law. I glanced over the statutes, but I didn’t memorize them. There’s too much law to keep up with all of it, especially if you’re not getting paid. Usually, judges, like lawyers, exhibit a paternalistic attitude when dealing with incompetents. Surely I can’t go wrong with the Nerd’s answer. I guess, “I don’t think Ferd is too far off.” The judge draws back in his chair in obvious disgust with both of us.

  “Let me read you both something,” he says brusquely.

  “I’m quoting here.

  “The purpose is … the development of maximum self-reliance and independence of the parson, and shall be ordered only to the extent necessitated.”

  ” He pops the bright red book shut and says to Ferd: “My suggestion to you, Mr. Machen, is that in the next fifteen minutes you get together with your client and consider settling this matter along the following lines: Mrs.

  Gentry does not appear in need of a guardian of her person;

  however, she would seem to require the services of a guard ian of her estate. Unless Mr. Page is going to present evidence of severe mismanagement or fraud, I see no reason why her son should not be appointed guardian of his mother’s estate so long as she is permitted to leave the nursing home and resume her former quality of life. If you want to try this case, it’s fine with me. But let me warn you that I’m not inclined to keep the elderly locked up in nursing homes be cause it’s convenient to do so. You embarrassed that poor old woman out there by that ridiculous question about sex.

  If she wants to have sexual relations with another consenting adult, she should be able to do so in the privacy of her own apartment or house instead of being forced to have them in a closet. I’ll resume court in fifteen minutes to either continue the trial or dictate into the record a settlement.”