“Does counseling ever work for these people?”
“It could with some education and separation, but as long as they keep flunking out of school and running away and coming back to the same inadequate family system, what’s the use?”
“How do you stand it?” I asked her.
“I’m doing a good job for these people,” she said. “I stand it fine. Aside from the purchase of a ranch or the making of a will, not many people drop in here to share their good news.” She pulled off her glasses. “Surely you understand that.”
Small town law. In L.A. I did have the illusion of occasionally winning something for someone. Once their adoption or divorce was finalized, I didn’t see them again. Roberta, on the other hand, would be running into clients at the beauty shop or drugstore for the next twenty years, as she had for the last thirty. We did more business in stores, on the street, and in the cafe than we did at the office. Clients rarely made appointments unless it was for one of us to go to them. They hung out and waited for one of us to stumble by; we billed them whenever we filed or wrote something. For several weeks I had to carry a list of charges in my purse to quote Roberta’s fees for services I was asked about. Roberta said she didn’t think it would matter one way or the other; sometimes disputed invoices became favors. All this makes the practice of law in a town this size sometimes oppressive. Bleak. Often predictable.
I met the Honorable Bud Wilcox, Superior Court judge, in Roberta’s office. He was fiftyish, classically handsome, and he possessed a stylishness that spoke more of Washington, D.C., than Coleman. Well-built and tanned, he had a finely chiseled nose, square jaw, thick gray hair, and intelligent blue eyes. He wore expensive clothes: pleated pants of fine wool; Florsheims; starched, monogrammed shirts; a cashmere sweater. Also, a Rolex.
And he was clumsily flirtatious. He had an eye-twinkling come-on that included showing off his watch. “Well, Miss Sheppard, it looks as though the bar has raised its standards. It certainly will be a pleasant change in my courtroom; I can tell already that it’ll be hard to be objective.” Flick, flick... check the time. “I hope we’ll run into each other outside of work as well.”
Ugh. I found out from Peggy that he was a known flirt; he had a fat, unhappy wife and two teenagers who had frequent scrapes of trouble. His son, now a college freshman, had gotten speeding tickets and been drunk at high-school parties, and was arguing that he was not the father of a cheerleader’s child. Bud’s sixteen-year-old daughter, gossip said, had had two abortions, dabbled in recreational drugs and had already been in treatment, and had run away from home at least once. I cringed at the prospect of a womanizing judge from a dysfunctional family.
It was in that frame of mind that I faced Saturday, and met Tom as though he were my only friend and a long-time friend at that. He wasn’t as eccentric in those small-town ways as the rest of them; he was more like me, being a big-city person who had escaped to a small town. He seemed equally glad to see me. In the back of his truck he had the finished shelves and cans of paint and primer for the wall.
“You couldn’t resist,” I said. “No willpower?”
“I thought I’d put you to work on the wall while I install the shelves, if you feel like it.”
“And you’re going to add the cost of the paint to your bill?”
“Since you didn’t ask for the paint, Jackie, I can’t charge you. If you decide you want to pay for it, here’s the receipt.”
“I want to pay for it,” I said, secretly delighted. Is it too cynical for me to admit that I had never experienced the kindness of strangers before? Friends in whom I had invested time and favors, yes... but not strangers. Of course, Tom never seemed like a stranger at all. Not even in the beginning.
We worked together smoothly and comfortably. I had questions about the townspeople, about the renovating I wanted to do on the house, about him.
“What was it that drove you out of L.A.?” I wanted to know.
“The way no one trusted anyone. And for good reason. Crime was getting terrible, pollution was already catastrophic and getting worse, and there was such an emphasis on materialism. I don’t want to sound like some new-wave guru, but here in the mountains you usually know right away which people are decent folks, or if they’re eccentric but harmless, and which ones are no damned good. The no-damned-good ones are rare and stay among themselves. We have the Bledsoes, the Travises, the Gilleses — a batch of hoodlums who stay drunk and pregnant, who fight, race their cars and trucks, and keep the bunks in the county jail warm. And we have a bunch of terrific people here — Roberta and Harry, the Trumans, Andersons, Talleys, Rawlingses, and more. Honest, hardworking people.” He spoke while he fitted finished boards together. Then he looked at me. Well, he looked at my back, because I was priming the wall. “What about you?”
“Me? Oh.” I thought for a second; I chose my answer. Though I had rehearsed it many times, the one I rehearsed didn’t come out. As I said, I had trouble with lies. I could avoid the whole truth... for how long, I wasn’t yet sure. I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be long with Tom. I proceeded with a sigh. “I was suddenly alone. I was an only child and my mother died a few years back. My dad was already doing poorly: hardening of the arteries. He had to be put into a nursing home because it was evident that he was more out of reality than in and had to be watched around the clock. He got lost a couple of times when he was on his own. It was Alzheimer’s. When he died there wasn’t any reason for me to stay in the same place, doing the same thing.”
“Pretty strange... you not being married.”
“That isn’t strange at all,” I said defensively, then made a joke of it: “I had a couple of near misses. When you think about someone my age involved in law school and then involved in law, it’s not unusual. Marriage takes time and energy.” So far I had not lied; I had evaded expertly.
“You must have left behind a lot of friends. You can’t be that much alone.”
“I do have some close friends,” I said, knowing that my voice must sound wistful. I was beginning to miss some of them terribly. I missed the ones I had lost as much as the ones who had driven me away. With death and divorce, some gutless wonders tend to disappear; they can’t bear the helplessness. Others, the hard-core codependents, damn near move in. I was lonely for both types. “I’ll have a big phone bill until I make some more new friends... and I know I’m going to have plenty of company come ski season. I plan to learn to ski now that I’m here.”
“What kind of friends does someone like you have?” he asked.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I returned honestly.
“You know. Like lawyers, cops, judges.”
He couldn’t know how dull that sounded to someone in my field, especially since I’d just met Bud Wilcox, the gold-fettered judge. “No, although I have acquaintances among the above. No, my closest friend is Chelsea, a housewife and mother of two little girls. Then there’s Barb, an RN; one friend from high school, who is a teacher; Janice, the secretary from my old law office; and one friend who’s an actress and model.”
“You didn’t want kids?”
I shrugged my shoulders and looked away. I wasn’t ready yet to share those details with him. “I find myself envious of my friends with children. Sometimes I wonder if all this hard work and this big-deal career is my first choice, or something that just happened to me. I’m thirty-seven; I won’t start a family now.”
Mike Alexander hadn’t been my only adult relationship. I had a fairly sad one at the time of Sheffie’s death. I had been seriously dating a guy named Bruce. He was an insurance agent who specialized in the entertainment industry. Bruce was fun; Sheffie loved him. We’d dated for six months, had begun to talk about the possibility of getting married, and then my loss happened to us. He was supportive and loving during the worst of my grief. He was likewise grieved — he loved Sheffie. We were torn apart by it. It was no one’s fault, but my life turned into one big depressing liability. When he started edging away, I
set him free. Bless him, he checked up on me from time to time after that. He found someone else, a woman who could not only make him happy, but be happy herself. I had to redefine the word.
Thinking about Bruce made me feel sad. For us all. Things would have been different had I come back to life before he was committed elsewhere.
I didn’t realize that I was daydreaming; I had become remote in that remembering.
“You just went away for a while,” Tom said, his voice gentle.
“I know. Sorry. Your questions jarred my memory. I want to enjoy Coleman... but you remind me of all the people I had to leave behind. Ever wonder if you’ve made the right choices?”
“All the time,” he said. “Some of them made me, though. I do the best I can.”
“Who are your good friends here?”
“All my good friends are still acquaintances. I’ve been here four years now and I’m still a newcomer.”
“That doesn’t sound promising.”
He grinned broadly, suggestively. It might have been at that moment that I first considered the possibility that Tom and I could be more than friends. “It looks like the new newcomers are promising.”
At the end of that workday I wrote him a check, and that evening I relaxed while I became acclimated to my new living room. I put my books, stereo, knick-knacks, and things on new shelves. I daringly hung my favorite painting over the sofa on my new wall; I did no damage, thank God. I should stay away from hammers and screwdrivers and paintbrushes. Then I sat there, my favorite tape playing, my lamps plugged in, and sipped a glass of white wine. I had had a good day, made progress on the house, and felt that I’d done the right thing in moving.
***
I slept well that night and the next afternoon I wasn’t completely surprised when Tom dropped by.
“I should have called,” he said, apologetic. “I thought about stopping by to see how the room looked with everything put away and realized I didn’t have your home phone number.”
“That’s all right,” I told him cheerfully. This was a sign of how lonely I was; I tended to mind unannounced visits very much. Dropping in, since the bathtub scene with the policeman, was an unwelcome presumption in my book. This once I was delighted that Tom had taken the chance, followed his instincts.
We admired the wall and shelves together and I took him upstairs to look at some of the other rooms I wanted to renovate. The upstairs bathroom was a horror story I knew I couldn’t handle alone: The tiles were half broken, the other half chipped. I wanted new windows, I wanted to strip the crud off what could be beautiful wood floors, I wanted bigger, more attractive, louvered closet doors.
After about three hours of my wishing and wanting, Tom putting in his ideas here and there, we went out for a bite to eat together. Everyone knew Tom, it seemed. I was beginning to see the difference between being an old-timer, a newcomer, and a new newcomer. While the gas station attendant, waitress, and locals we passed on the sidewalk said their hellos, there is a difference between friendliness and familiarity. He was liked; he wasn’t necessarily one of them. That gave us something in common. I was needing a friend. Independent as I am, I am made vulnerable by loneliness.
We made a date to begin tearing tiles out of the bathroom the next weekend. “Are you sure?” I asked him. “You must have some kind of social life I’m interfering with.”
He laughed in such an engaging way. Tom had a twinkle in his eye that wasn’t an aggressive come-on, although there seemed to be the right amount of innuendo. “Jackie, this is my social life.”
“That doesn’t sound good. You’re in worse shape than I am.”
“That’s very likely.”
***
I didn’t hear from him all week. I thought about calling him a couple of times, though. I made long distance calls instead. It was about Thursday, I guess, when I began looking forward to Saturday. Out of a lawyer’s hard-to-break investigative habit, I asked Roberta about him. “What do you know about Tom Wahl?”
“Why?” she wanted to know.
“He’s helping me with my house. He’s coming over this weekend to start work on the bathroom.”
“So? What do you want to know?”
“What you know about him.”
“That’s a broad request. Be more specific.” She didn’t look up from her work while she fired back at me.
“Okay, specifically, would you let him grout your tiles?”
“Yes,” she replied, humorlessly.
“Jesus Christ, Roberta. You do make a person work hard. Does he have any legal history with you?”
“He was thinking of filing a lawsuit against the State of California. It was bigger than I was; he chose to drop it.”
My rear end found the nearest chair without benefit of my eyes. “Oh?” I asked, intrigued.
“I can think of no reason to discuss it with you,” she went on.
“I see. Do so anyway, if you please.” Although I wasn’t initially irritated with Roberta’s attitude, I found I had to be as tough as she in order to work with her, for her. This was still her law office. There had never been any talk of partnership — it was an assumption I had that, in time, I would be invited in. I was not going to have partial involvement here. I could either be fully trusted, or not trusted to work here.
“I think it would be better if you got it from him, but the files are not locked, as you know.”
“Look, let me be up-front.”
She finally gave me the benefit of her attention. Off came the glasses. “That would be a delightful change.”
I looked skyward and shook my head, showing my exasperation. “I’ve spent more time with Tom than anyone else in this town and I enjoy his company, so far. If he’s going to be working in my house, we’ll be spending time together. I have a feeling he’s going to ask me for a date. I’m not looking for dates and I’m not looking for a serious relationship, but he seems like a nice guy and you know all the local registered rapists. Mind giving me some motherly advice?”
“Oh Lord,” she grumbled. “Look, I’m not much for advice to young women on dating... I was born married to Harry. Tom is all right, he hasn’t been in any trouble around here that I know of, and I could safely recommend his carpentry. If I were you, I might want to date him. From my perspective, however, he is undatable because of his personal problems.”
“Which are?”
“Touchy stuff, Jackie,” she said, and her voice lowered as she became sincere. “I tend to stay away from people who have been through the grinder, and that poor guy has had more than his share. He is, in actuality, a psychologist who worked for the Department of Social Services in Los Angeles, your hometown. It’s so long ago now, I doubt you would ever have crossed paths. When he was about thirty — ten or twelve years ago — he was a court-appointed Ph.D. in a case involving a man indicted on murder charges. Tom testified that the man was not psychotic or mentally incompetent and should stand trial. He was overruled by the court and by defense testimony; the alleged murderer was hospitalized rather than jailed, and he began to terrorize Tom and his family. Tom’s wife and daughter were murdered while Tom was away one night.”
“The accused who was hospitalized? Had he been furloughed or something?”
“I don’t remember all the details — it’s been years since he told me the story. Tom believes the man he testified against murdered his family. He believes this unequivocally. He had something he regarded as strong evidence or proof... I’m afraid I can’t remember. The man was questioned, the D.A. didn’t concur with Tom. There were several recorded messages on Tom’s answering machine that were frightening. After a fruitless battle for justice, Tom came here, where he lives a low-profile life and does not practice his trade any longer.”
I was fascinated; the complexity of this story held me still and intrigued. “What was the basis of his suit against the state?” I finally asked.
“Strictly punitive; the criminal was the benefactor of the state’s indeterm
inate-sentencing law. If you’re guilty of a crime, you can be sentenced to jail for a determined period of time. If you’re crazy or of diminished capacity, as the accused claimed and was found to be, you cannot be insane for a determined period of time. You’re sick until you’re well; that could be six months. Tom wondered if the suit could have any effect on the changing of the law.”
“And the case against the guy?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I don’t know if there finally was a case. All I know is what Tom has told me; he claims that a close psychological evaluation showed the man had a long history of criminal behavior. Tom believed him capable of remorseless killing. There was no evidence to link him to the murder of Tom’s family. But remember, he had been indicted on a murder charge initially.”
“The murder Tom evaluated him for?”
“Of which he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. You would have to ask Tom for any more details.”
I sat back in my chair. Roberta looked back at the challenging mess on her desk while I solemnly absorbed this. I had gotten no vibes of lurking trauma or misery from Tom. I tried to imagine what he might be going through. Could he feel he had had a hand in his wife’s and daughter’s deaths by failing to convince the court to prosecute the murderer?
“It’s going to be hard to pretend I don’t know about that,” I finally said. “It’s going to be hard to decide what to do.”
“If I were you, I’d be cautious about relationships filled with complications. It would be tempting, I think, for you to draw the conclusion that you share loss. I think that’s inaccurate.”
“What do you recommend, Roberta? It’s painfully quiet around my house, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean. Let your friends know it’s time for a visit. Remember what motivated you to come here. I’ll tell you this much; if you have more than two dates with Tom, you’ll have a dozen... and if you have a dozen, you two will become a couple. All that sort of thing happens around here just because there are few people free to couple. And once you’ve become a couple, you’ll have a relationship. Then, in order to do anything different — see a movie alone, date another man — you end up having to alter or end the relationship. It’s different when you see all the same people at all the same places all the damn time.”