Five Days Left

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  Mara bent to touch the baby’s stomach and flinched as Gina’s voice blared in her ear. “The mediator! The Torkko executives! Mr. Hoskins! Everyone!”

  When Mara didn’t respond, Gina said, “The Torkko mediation? Nine thirty this morning?”

  “Oh, shit!” Mara stood and the baby, startled by the shout, began to cry. Neerja scooped her up and carried her out of the room as Mara checked her watch. She was thirty minutes from the office, without traffic. “I can be there by nine forty-five, ten at the latest. Stall them.”

  Later, when the elevator doors closed and the clients were gone, Mara grabbed Gina in a tight hug and kissed her on the cheek. “You are a godsend! What would I do without you? Come on, I’m taking you to lunch. No deli takeout for you today!”

  Gina smiled proudly but waved her hands in protest. “Doing my job, is all. And do we have time to go out? It’s already after noon, and the Winchester Foods brief still needs a lot of work, doesn’t it?”

  Mara stared at her blankly.

  “The Winchester Foods appeal,” Gina repeated. “Our response brief? Due today . . . ?”

  Mara’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh my God! I totally forgot!” She looked wildly at Gina as the memory of hours spent on the Winchester Foods appeal brief the prior day came back to her, along with the work left to do before the hours-away filing deadline.

  “Are you okay?” Gina whispered to her boss, taking her arm. She led her past the reception desk and around the corner to her office, where Mara flopped into her chair.

  “What on earth, Gina? I’d have spent a long lunch whooping it up over the Torkko relationship being mended while I committed malpractice in the Winchester Foods appeal. What is the matter with me? We worked on that thing all day yesterday. It’s the only thing we talked about the entire day.”

  Mara moved her hand from her mouth to her eyes and pressed her thumb hard against one temple, her fingers against the other. It was one thing to forget a dentist appointment or to pay the housekeeper; those things were easily remedied with an apology and extra money. Forgetting work deadlines could get the firm sued, and Mara fired. She couldn’t muse with idle curiosity about her memory problems any longer. She needed to take action.

  But first, she needed to get the Winchester Foods appeal brief finalized and filed with the court. For the next three and a half hours, they tore through the revisions to the brief, handing it to the courier with no time to spare before their filing deadline. When the runner left, Mara closed her office door and sat at her desk, motioning for Gina to take one of the guest chairs.

  “We can’t let this happen again,” Mara said. “I can’t count on clients being so understanding about forgotten mediations. And a missed court deadline is malpractice.”

  Gina started to interject but Mara raised a hand to stop her. “Last week, when you had your doctor’s appointment over lunch? I was supposed to speak at the noon litigation meeting. I almost forgot to go at all, until Steph came to get me on her way there. And it wasn’t until they introduced me that I remembered it was my day to give my annual civil procedure rules update.”

  Gina’s mouth opened wide. “I assumed . . .” she started, but stopped herself.

  “You assumed I knew about it?”

  Gina nodded.

  “Because . . . we talked about it?”

  Gina winced.

  “Jesus!” Mara slapped her hand on her desk. “We talked about it?”

  “You’re the hardest worker at the firm. Everyone says so,” said Gina. “I’ve wondered myself how you keep track of it all. Maybe after a while, you just can’t.”

  “Well, ‘can’t’ isn’t an option. We need to come up with a solution.”

  “What about slowing down a little?” Gina asked. “All the other female partners have done it, at least for a little while, after they had their babies. Even Steph—”

  “Gina.” Mara shot the other woman a warning glare. The subject of how hard she worked was off-limits—to Gina, to Tom, to Mara’s parents, to her best friend, Steph, a fellow partner at the firm. Not that they hadn’t all tried, some of them more than once, to get her to ease up. But this was who she was: Mara the workhorse; Mara the woman who was married and had a new baby but still billed the hours of a single woman.

  It’s how she’d always been, doing all the extra-credit projects in elementary school, reading all of the “suggested” books on the summer list in high school while her friends were sleeping late, squinting at her texts under the dim bulb of her desk lamp long after her college roommate had started snoring in bed a few feet away. Even in law school, a place rampant with workaholics, she was known for her marathon sessions in the law library, her refusal to join her classmates for Friday evening happy hour if she hadn’t fulfilled the requisite studying for the week (a standard she set for herself).

  And it’s how she always would be, she told them. So they could keep their warnings and cajoling and pleas to themselves. Nothing made her feel as alive as a long, hard day of productive work at the law firm. And nothing—not friends or parents or happy hour or a husband or even a new baby—could make her give that up.

  “Okay,” Gina said, reaching for a notepad and pen on Mara’s desk. “Let’s take some time right now and go through your calendar to make sure I have all the deadlines down. Then I can remind you when things are coming up.”

  “Thanks. That will help. But it’s more than just deadlines. It’s everything. It’s as though my entire short-term memory is on strike. We need a system of some kind, something foolproof.”

  Gina leaned forward, put both hands on top of Mara’s and smiled. “We’ll sort it out.” For the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, they went through every open file in Mara’s office. Gina was armed with a desk calendar, a notepad, a stack of sticky notes and colored pens. By the time they stood to stretch, a little after seven, Gina had ten pages of notes and a calendar full of colored markings, and she had put sticky notes on over half of Mara’s files, with different colors signaling different levels of urgency.

  “I’ll go input all the deadlines into the calendar on the e-mail system,” Gina said, gathering her things, “and I’ll send you meeting notices for each one. And I’ll set that calendar alarm to give you several reminders for each deadline.” As she reached Mara’s door, she looked back thoughtfully. “Let me get that finished, and then I’ll think about what else I can do to make sure we stay on top of everything.”

  “Thank you, Gina. This is all so far above and beyond.”

  “You know, you’re the only lawyer I know who’s been keeping track of your own deadlines. It’s about time you let me help with all of this.”

  It made Mara feel better to hear it. She wasn’t the only one who was under too much stress from work, and from the frenetic pace involved in balancing work and family, to be able to keep track of everything.

  “Yes, well, you’ve hardly been underworked,” she said to Gina. She waved a hand around her office, indicating the hundreds of neatly labeled files that Gina spent hours each week keeping updated. In her five years working for Mara, Gina had put in countless hours of overtime without complaint; she was the only secretary Mara had ever had who was able to keep up with the workload, the constant deadlines and the requirements of a perfectionist boss who wanted every brief reread one more time for errors, every stack of exhibits checked one more time for completeness.

  “You’re my guardian angel, Gina.”

  “The feeling’s mutual. You seem to be forgetting that.” Mara didn’t respond, and Gina said, “Don’t pretend. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Mara rolled her eyes. So she had flown to Oklahoma for Gina’s dad’s funeral, and ended up staying over a week to help Gina’s mother sort out her financial affairs. When Gina’s mom died two years later, Mara traveled to Oklahoma a second time, staying another week when she reali
zed how much Gina had to contend with in packing up and selling her parents’ house. It was weeks before Mara’s first oral argument in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, and she should have been back home preparing.

  But she had refused to leave Gina to face it all alone, and had the firm overnight three boxes of briefs and exhibits, which she reviewed late at night, after she and Gina had finished the day’s packing, or meeting with the family’s lawyer, or whatever else needed to be done. Back home in Dallas, Mara had insisted Gina spend Thanksgiving with Mara’s family so she wouldn’t have to face the holidays alone.

  Mara waved a dismissive hand at Gina. “Please. Anybody would’ve done those things.”

  “You mean nobody. Nobody does those things. Nobody offered, and nobody did. Except you.”

  Mara shook her head and Gina walked resolutely over and put a hand on Mara’s. “Did you hear me? Nobody. Except you. You have been my family. The least I can do is be your memory.” She squeezed Mara’s hand, turned around and walked out. “I’ll be at my computer,” she called over her shoulder. “You’re about to get seventy-five meeting notices over e-mail.”

  “If I start forgetting to check all the sticky notes we’ve got everywhere,” Mara said, following Gina to the door, “then I’ll really be screwed.”

  “Then I’ll start calling you, to remind you to read them.”

  “Oh my God, Gina. If it comes to that, please push me off a cliff.”

  8.

  Mara

  By the following September, Laks was a year old and Mara was finished with the jokes about her forgetfulness. She no longer made self-deprecating comments about it, and she wouldn’t tolerate Those Ladies, Tom or her parents making light of it, either. In fact, she could barely tolerate any of them at all, for any reason. She had turned irritable, moody. No one was immune to her sudden rages, especially not Tom.

  One evening in late November they were standing in the kitchen. Mara was stirring soup on the stove and Tom slicing a loaf of French bread. “We’re about three weeks behind on laundry,” he said. “I thought after dinner—” He stopped when the wooden spoon she had been holding flew past his head and clattered against the kitchen table, soup splattering across the floor and walls.

  Tom looked in astonishment at the spoon and then turned back to Mara, his mouth open to speak. She didn’t give him a chance. “I can’t believe you! I’m standing here making you homemade soup after twelve hours at the office and all you have to say is I’m behind on laundry?!”

  Tom raised his hands in the air, questioning. “What are you so upset about? I didn’t say you were behind on laundry. I said we were. And I was about to say I’d get a load started after dinner—”

  “Bullshit!” Mara spat. “You were accusing me. You know I feel terrible when I get behind on things around the house, and you’re just trying to make me feel bad.”

  Tom put his knife down and walked toward her, his arms open. “Mara, when have I ever—”

  She backed away from him and as she did, she untied the apron she was wearing over her suit and threw it to the floor. “Make your own damn dinner!”

  She stormed out of the kitchen and into their bedroom, slamming their door behind her, and paced in front of the bed, her fists clenching and unclenching. Finally, her pacing slowed and she walked into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, embarrassed by the red, blotchy, angry face staring back at her. She’d acted like a child. Wetting a washcloth with cold water, she pressed it against her face for several minutes before leaning close to the mirror and peering intently at herself as though she might be able to find, on close inspection, the thing that was making her act so crazy. “What. On. Earth.”

  Back in the kitchen, she found Tom standing at the counter, the bread sliced, a drink in front of him. He raised his eyes to meet hers, a look of such pain on his face that tears immediately sprang to her eyes. She rushed to him and put her arms around his waist, kissing him. “I am so sorry. I have no idea what just happened.” She hugged him and took a step closer, pressing her entire body against his until she finally felt him relax. “I don’t know what got into me. You didn’t deserve that. Please forgive me.”

  He sighed and kissed the top of her head. “I forgive you,” he said.

  But after that, she stopped apologizing. She would yell at him for charring the vegetables on the grill one night, only to push them aside the next night, complaining they were undercooked. For weeks at a time, when he reached for her in bed, she feigned exhaustion or flat out expressed her disinterest. And then accused him later of not wanting her anymore because they hadn’t had sex in so long.

  She became irrational, paranoid. Depressed and anxious. Over Christmas, Tom begged her to see her doctor, but she refused. She couldn’t remember what reasons she gave. But then, that was part of the disease—it didn’t just go after your ability to think and move, but attacked your emotions as well. A three-pronged assault, each prong as deadly as the other two. Like the devil’s pitchfork.

  A few weeks after Valentine’s Day, they had tucked Laks in and were sitting together on the couch, something they hadn’t done in months. Tom seemed quiet, and Mara asked what was on his mind. He regarded her cautiously. “I’m worried about you,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I think you need to see a doctor.”

  Mara pulled her hand away and stood.

  “Don’t be angry,” he said, reaching for her again. She stepped backward, out of his reach, and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I only want you to be happy,” he said, “like you used to be. You don’t seem to enjoy things anymore—work, us, anything. Tonight has been lovely, but it’s not the norm. Not anymore.”

  “I am so tired of this conversation,” she said. “I keep telling you, I don’t need to see anyone. Normal life things, like a bit of forgetfulness, occasional irritability, are not diagnosable. You don’t run to the doctor for that sort of thing.”

  “That’s the thing, though,” he said. “I’m not sure these are ‘normal life things.’ I think it’s become more than that.” He looked at her plaintively, one hand still extended toward her. He was still trying to discuss this nicely, calmly. It infuriated her.

  She curled her lips into a sneer until he lowered his hand to his lap. “I’m not sure you even know what ‘normal life’ is,” she said. “For our entire marriage, I’ve done everything around here, in addition to dealing with an extremely demanding, incredibly stressful job. I’ve tried cases all day long, and then I’ve come home to raise your daughter, make your dinner and fold your laundry. While you’ve put in your cushy dermatologist hours and then gone for long runs.”

  He snapped his head back, shocked by her accusation. She let out a sharp cackle, enjoying the blow she’d landed and not caring that it was completely unjustified. He was more helpful around the house, and with Laks, than any husband she knew. Having grown up with a father who was generally too drunk to help with the household or parenting, Tom had made a point of being an engaged and helpful father and husband. The suggestion that he had failed at either—or worse, hadn’t even tried—was the most damning thing anyone could say to him. For a split second, Mara considered backing down.

  But she pressed on. “You want me to be happy?” she asked. “You want me to enjoy my life more? Try helping out more around here. I don’t need a diagnosis, Dr. Nichols. I need you to act like an adult. Try that for a while, why don’t you, and then let’s see if you still think I need a doctor.”

  “Mara,” he finally said. “That’s completely unfair.”

  She regarded him coolly for a second. He was leaning toward her, his expression open, trusting. He expected her to admit her meanness and apologize, as she had done before. Instead, she sneered again and said, “You think you’re such a great dad. A great husband. Well, you’re not. You’re just like your father.”

  Tom stood with s
uch speed that Mara flinched and jumped backward. “That’s enough, Mara! You don’t get to say things like that to me! You don’t get to make up terrible, hurtful bullshit like that and throw it out at me because you’re in another bad mood. This has gone way beyond simple work stress, and I’ve put up with it as long as I’m going to. I don’t know if you need antidepressants or iron supplements or just a very long nap. But this needs to stop. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. See a doctor. Or I’m leaving.” Mara watched him, her mouth slack with shock, as he stormed into their bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

  The next day, Mara let Tom make an appointment with Alan Misner, a neurologist Tom knew from medical school who offered to see Mara after office hours that evening as a favor to his former classmate. She didn’t agree to listen with an open mind, however, although she didn’t point this distinction out to Tom. She almost felt guilty about it; he was so happy about her concession to see someone.

  As they drove in silence to Dr. Misner’s office, she let Tom believe she was preparing herself for a discussion about what medical condition she might have. But really, she was readying herself to give Tom an I-told-you-so look after his colleague informed him Mara had been right all along—other than the expected changes that came with middle age, she was in perfect health. And later, at home, she’d tell Tom she’d followed his order, and now it was his turn to follow hers and never raise the issue that “something isn’t right” again. She predicted her ultimatum delivery might come with some slammed doors of her own, so she arranged for Laks to stay overnight with her parents.