I should feel happy, but I don’t. The victory lights up my Partnership Tote Board big-time, but it comes at a price. If Brent’s information is right, my partnership could cost the firing of either of two fine lawyers, one of whom is my best friend.
And don’t forget about the Harbison employees, says the little Mike-voice, come back again. They were fired just when their pensions were about to vest, and the only mistake they made was choosing a lousy lawyer. Now they don’t even have him anymore. Is that what you went to law school for?
I try to shake off the voice when I hit my office. 2:25. I run out the day’s string, listlessly dealing with the mail. I ask Brent to divide it into Good and Evil, with Good on the right and Evil on the left. The Good mail is advance sheets, which are paperback books summarizing recent court decisions. I’m supposed to read the Good mail, but if I did, cobwebs as heavy as suspension cables would grow from my butt to the chair. Instead, I put them in my out box so the messengers will shovel them onto someone else’s desk. That’s why they’re Good.
The Evil Mail is everything else. It’s Evil because your opponent’s trying to fuck you. There’s only one lawyerly response: Fuck back. For example, last week, in a case for Noone Pharmaceuticals, opposing counsel tried to fuck us into a settlement by threatening to publish company memoranda in the newspaper. So I’m writing a motion asking the Court to restrict the use of company documents to the lawsuit and to award Noone my fees in preparing the motion. This is primo fucking back, and you have to fuck back. If you don’t fuck back, you’ll get fucked.
Believe it or not, I usually enjoy this aspect of my profession, the head-banging and the back-fucking, but not today. Anxiety gnaws at the edges of my brain and I can’t focus on the Evil mail. I turn to the unfinished brief for Noone. I read it over and over but the argument sounds like a verbal Mobius strip: Judge, you should restrict the documents to the lawsuit because documents should be restricted to lawsuits. I can’t tell if it’s a failure of concentration or of writing. I pack the draft in my briefcase and leave the office at dusk.
The remainder of the day’s sunlight is blocked prematurely by Philadelphia’s new and improved skyline. Developers went crazy after City Council permitted buildings to be taller than William Penn’s hat, with the result that the city streets get dark too soon and there’s a lot of empty office buildings sprouting like mushrooms in the gloom.
The air cools down rapidly as I reach Rittenhouse Square. I’m shivering like all the other superannuated yuppies, except that I refuse to wear Reeboks. If my shoes were too uncomfortable to walk in, I wouldn’t buy them.
The square looks just like it does every evening this time of year. The old people huddle together on the benches, clucking worriedly about the young people, with their orange-striped hair and nose rings, as well as the homeless, with their shopping carts and superb tans. Runners circle the square for the umpteenth time. Walkers stride by in fast-forward, plugged into Walkmans. A pale young man on a bench looks me up and down, and then I remember.
Is someone watching me?
I look backward over my shoulder at the pale man on the bench, but he’s joined by a girlfriend in a black beret. I look at the other people as I pass through the square, but they all look normal enough. Is one of them the someone? Does one of them call me and do God-knows-what when I answer? My step quickens involuntarily.
I hurry inside when I reach my building. It’s quiet in the entrance hall, the kind of absolute silence that settles in when a big old house is empty. I’m the only tenant here. My landlords are an elderly couple who live on the first two floors of the house. They’re nice people, hand-holders after fifty years of marriage, off on another Love Boat cruise. I pick up my bills and catalogs from the floor and make sure the front door’s locked.
I climb the stairs, wondering if the telephone will ring after I get in. I unlock the door and switch on the living room light. I glance at the telephone, but it’s sitting there like a properly inanimate object. I breathe a sigh of relief and drop my briefcase with a thud.
“Honey, I’m home.”
The tabby cat doesn’t even look up from the windowsill. She’s not deaf, she’s indifferent. She wouldn’t care if Godzilla drove a Corvette through the door, she’s waiting for Mike to come home. In winter, the windowpane is dotted with her nose prints. In summer, her gray hairs cling to the screen.
“He’s not coming back,” I tell her. It’s a reminder to both of us since the episode this morning in court.
I kick off my shoes and join her at the window, looking out at the apartments across the street. Most have plants on their windowsills, starved for light in the northern exposure. One has a turquoise Bianchi bike hanging in the window, like an advertisement to break in, and another has an antique rake. Most of my neighbors are home, cooking dinner or listening to music. The window directly across from mine has the shade drawn; it looks dark inside. I wonder if the person who lives there is the one who’s been calling me. It’s hard to imagine, since Mike knew all our neighbors. He was the friendly one.
“Come on, Alice. Let’s close up.” I nudge the cat and she jumps to the living room rug, her hindquarters twitching.
I yank on the string of the knife-edged blinds, which tumble to the windowsill with a zzziiip. I pad over to the other window, flat-footed without my heels, and am about to pull down the blinds when I hear the ignition of a car outside the window.
Strange. I didn’t see a driver walk to the car, and it’s not a car I recognize.
I let down the blinds but peek between them at the car. It’s too dark out for me to see the driver.
The car’s headlights blaze to life as it pulls out of its parking space and glides down the street. I don’t know the make of the car; I’m not good at that. It’s big, though, like the boats my father used to drive. An Oldsmobile, maybe. Before they tried to convince us that they’re not the boats our fathers used to drive.
I watch the car disappear, as the telephone rings loudly.
I flinch at the sound. Is it the someone?
I pick up the receiver cautiously. “Hello?”
But the only response is static — a static I hear on many of the calls. It’s him. My heart begins to pound as I put two and two together for the first time.
“Is this a car phone, you bastard? Are you watching my house, you sick—”
The tirade is severed by the dial tone.
“Fuck you!” I shout into the dead receiver.
Alice blinks up at me, in disapproval.
4
“Taste, cara,” says my mother, holding out a wooden spoon with tomato sauce.
“Mmmm. Perfetto.” I’m at my parents’ row house in South Philly the next day, playing hooky because my twin sister’s on parole from the convent. She only gets out once a year under the rules of her cloistered order, and isn’t permitted phone calls or mail. I hate the convent for taking my twin from me. I can’t believe that God, even if he does exist, would want to divide us.
“You all right, Maria?” My mother frowns behind her thick glasses, which make her brown eyes look supernaturally large. She’s half blind from sewing lampshades in the basement of this very house, her childhood home. The kitchen is the only thing that’s changed since then; the furniture and fixtures remain the same, stop-time. We still use the tinny black switchplate like a bulletin board, leaving notes among the dog-eared mass cards, a photo of JFK, and a frond of dried-out palm.
“I’m fine, Ma. I’m fine.” I wouldn’t dream of telling her I think I’m being watched. She’s like a supersensitive instrument, the kind that calibrates air pressure — or lies. She has a jumpy needle, and the news would send it into the red zone.
“Maria? They’re not treating you good at that office?” She scrutinizes me, the wooden spoon resting against her stretch pants like Excalibur in its scabbard.
“I’ve just been busy. It’s almost time for them to decide who makes partner.”
“Dio mio! They’re l
ucky to have you! Lucky! The nuns said you were a genius! A genius!” A scowl contorts her delicate features. Even at seventy-three, she makes up in the morning and gets her hair done every Saturday at the corner, where they tease it to hide her bald spot.
“Catholic school standards, Ma.”
“I should go up there to that fancy office! I should tell them how lucky they are to have my daughter be their lawyer!” She unsheaths the spoon and waves it recklessly in the air.
“No, Ma. Please.” I touch her forearm to calm her. Her skin feels papery.
“They should burn in hell!” She trembles with agitation. I wrap my arms around her, surprised at her frailty.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
“Whaddaya two doing, the fox-trot?” jokes my father, puffing his cigar as he walks into the kitchen. He looks roly-poly in a thin short-sleeved shirt. It’s almost transparent, made from some obscure synthetic fiber, and he’s got the dago T-shirt on underneath. My father has dressed this way for as long as I can remember. When he’s dressed up, that is.
“Out! Out of the kitchen with that cigar!” my mother shouts — of necessity, because my father never wears his hearing aid.
“Don’t shoot!” He puts up both hands, then returns to the baseball game blaring in the living room.
My mother’s magnified eyes are an inch from my nose. “When is he going to stop with those cigars? When?”
“He’s been smoking cigars for sixty years, Ma. You think he’ll quit soon?”
Suddenly, there’s a commotion at the front door and I hear Angie shouting a greeting to my father. My mother and I hurry into the living room, where Angie is taking off her sweater.
“Hello, beautiful,” she says, with a laugh. She always calls me that. It’s her joke, since we’re identical twins.
“Angie!” I lock her in a bear hug.
“Hey, that’s too tight, let me go.”
“No.”
“Mare…”
“Not until you tell me you miss me.”
“Ma, get her off of me, please.”
“Let your sister alone. You’re too old for that. Too old.” My mother swats me in the arm with the spoon.
“Too old to hug my own twin? Since when?”
She hits me again.
“Ouch! What is this, Mommy Dearest?” I let Angie go.
“Yeah, grow up,” she says, with a short laugh. Her eyes look large and luminous under a short haircut — our childhood pixie resurrected. She’s dressed in jeans and a Penn sweatshirt just like mine, having left her Halloween costume back at the convent. We’re twins again, but for the hair and the fact that Angie looks rested and serene, with a solid spiritual core.
“Look at her, Ma, she looks so good!” I say. “Angie, you look great!”
“Stop, you.” Angie can’t take a compliment, never could.
“Turn around. Let me see.”
She does a obligatory swish-turn in her jeans.
“You wearing underwear?”
She laughs gaily. For a split second, it’s a snap shot of the twin I grew up with. I catch glimpses of the old Angie only now and then. The rest of the time, she’s a twin I hardly know.
“Basta, Maria! Basta!” chides my mother happily.
“So you’re out of uniform. I can’t believe it.”
“I changed at a Hojo’s after I left.” She sets her purse on the floor.
“Why?”
“No special reason. Tired of you making all those habit jokes, I guess.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“Well I love the sweatshirt. You look like yourself again.”
“Like I didn’t know you’d say that,” Angie says.
“Look at this hair!” My mother runs an arthritic hand through Angie’s hair. “So soft. Just like a baby’s.”
Angie smiles, and I wonder why she’s so accepting of my mother’s touch and not my own.
“Look at this hair, Matty!” my mother shouts delightedly. “Just like a baby’s!”
My father smiles. “You got your baby back, Mama.”
Angie positively glows in my mother’s arms. “I can’t get over how good you look, Ange. I think I’m in love,” I say.
“Will you stop already?” She wiggles away from my mother, still smiling.
“Plus I’m not used to you looking so much better than me. You look like the after picture and I look like the before.”
“That’s because you work too hard.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Did you make a partner yet?”
“No, they decide in two months. I’m going crazy. I hate life.” I wish I could tell her about the partnership rumors and the strange car, but we won’t have any time alone unless I waylay her.
“And it’s a hit! Out to right field! Might be deep enough… It is!” screams the Phillies announcer, Richie Ashburn, but my father’s too excited at seeing Angie again to look at the television. My parents miss Angie, even though they’re proud of her decision. They’re proud of both their twins, the one who serves God, and the other who serves Mammon.
We troop into the kitchen to talk and drink percolated coffee from chipped cups. That’s all we’ll do today, as Richie Ashburn calls a high-decibel double-header to an empty living room. I start the ball rolling over the first cup, whining about my caseload, but my father quickly takes over the conversation. He can’t hear when others talk, so his only choice is to filibuster. None of us minds this much, least of all my mother, who footnotes his narrative of their courtship.
My father takes a breather after lunch and my mother holds forth about the new butcher, who doesn’t trim off enough fat. She tells a few stories of her own, mostly about our childhood, and I realize how badly she needs to talk to someone who can hear her. Angie must know this too, for she doesn’t look bored, and, truth to tell, I’m not either. But we both draw the line after dinner, when she launches into the story of a maiden aunt’s gallbladder operation. Angie seizes the opportunity to head for the bathroom and I follow her upstairs, hoping to get her alone. I reach the bathroom door just as she’s about to close it.
“Ange, wait. It’s me.” I stick my foot in the door.
“What are you doing?” Angie looks at me through the crack.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Move your foot. I’ll be right out.”
“What am I, the Boston Strangler? Let me in.”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Number one or number two?”
“Mary, we’re not kids anymore.”
“Right. Number one or number two?”
She shakes her head. “Number one.”
“Okay. So number one, you can let me in.”
“It can’t wait two minutes?”
“I don’t want Mom to hear. Will you open the goddamn door?”
So she does, and I take a precarious seat on the curved edge of the tub, an old claw-and-ball-foot. Angie stands above me with her hands on her hips. “What is it?” she says.
“You can pee if you have to.”
“I can wait. Why don’t you tell me what you have to say.”
A little ember of anger starts to glow inside my chest. “What’s the big deal, Angie? We took baths together until we were ten years old. Now you won’t let me in the bathroom?”
She closes the lid on the toilet seat and sits down on it with a quiet sigh. The old Angie would have snapped back, would have given as good as she got, but that Angie went into the convent and never came out. “Is something the matter?” she asks patiently.
By now my teeth are on edge. “No.”
“Look, Mary, let’s not fight. What’s the matter?”
I look down at the tiny white octagons that make up the tile floor. The grout between them is pure as sugar. My father, a tile setter until he popped a disc in his back, regrouts the bathroom every year. The porcelain gleams like something you’d find at Trump Tower. My father does beautiful work. br />
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Angie says.
I smile. We used to be able to read each other’s minds; I guess Angie can still read mine. “What was it Pop always said?”
“‘It’s not a job, it’s a craft.’”
“Right.” I look up, and her face has softened. I take a deep breath. “I don’t know where to start, Ange. So much is going on. At work. At home. I feel tense all the time.”
“What’s happening?”
“It’s the last couple of weeks until they decide who’s partner. I heard they’re only picking two of us. Everything I do is under the microscope. Plus I’ve been getting these phony phone calls. And last night I could swear a car was watching me from across the street.”
She frowns. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“But why would anybody be watching you? You’re not involved in any trouble, are you? I mean, in the work you do?”
“I don’t do any criminal cases, if that’s what you mean. Stalling would never touch anything like that.”
From downstairs, my mother calls, “Angela! Maria! Dessert!”
Angie gets up. “Maybe it’s your imagination. You always had a vivid imagination, you know.”
“I did not.”
“Oh, really? What about the time you hung garlic in our room, after that vampire movie we saw? It was on our bulletin board for a whole year. A foot-long ring of garlic.”
“So?”
“So my sweaters smelled like pesto.”
“But we never got any vampires.”
She laughs. “You look stressed, Mary. You need to relax. So what if they don’t make you partner? You’re a great lawyer. You can get another job.”
“Oh, yeah? Being passed over isn’t much of a recommendation, and the market in Philly is tight. Even the big firms are laying people off.”