Small Great Things

  "Did she say what I think she said?" Micah asked.

  Violet wailed again--this time more clearly. "I want a fork and knife!"

  I burst out laughing, which made Micah give me a withering look. "How many times have I told you to stop swearing?" he says. "You think it's funny that our four-year-old sounds like a sailor?"

  "Technically she wasn't. Technically, you misheard it."

  "Don't lawyer me," Micah muttered.

  "Don't lecture me," I said.

  So by the time we left--Micah taking Violet to preschool before he went to perform six back-to-back surgeries; me, driving in the opposite direction to my office--the only family member in a good mood was Violet, who had breakfast with all her utensils and was wearing her fancy sequined Mary Janes because neither of her parents had the energy to fight her about that, too.

  --

  AN HOUR LATER, my day has gone from bad to worse. Because although I went to law school at Columbia, graduated in the top 5 percent of my class, spent three years clerking for a federal judge, today my boss--the head of the New Haven Judicial District of the Division of Public Defender Services in the state of Connecticut--has sent me to negotiate about bras.

  Warden Al Wojecwicz, the director of corrections at the New Haven facility, is sitting in a stuffy conference room with me, his deputy director, and a lawyer from the private sector, Arthur Wang. I'm the only woman in the room, mind you. This convening of what I've come to call the Itty Bitty Titty Committee has been precipitated by the fact that two months ago, female lawyers were barred from entering the prison if we were wearing underwire bras. We kept setting off the metal detectors.

  The prison wouldn't settle for a pat-down, insisting on a strip search, which was illegal and time-consuming. Ever resourceful, we started going into the ladies' room and leaving our underwear there, so that we could go in and visit our clients. But then the prison said we couldn't go inside braless.

  Al rubs his temples. "Ms. McQuarrie, you have to understand, this is just about minimizing risk."

  "Warden," I reply, "they let you go inside with keys. What do you think I'm going to do? Bust someone out of jail with a foundation garment?"

  The deputy warden cannot meet my gaze. He clears his throat. "I went to Target and looked at the bras they have for sale there--"

  My eyebrows shoot up to my hairline, and I turn to Al. "You sent him to do field research?"

  Before he can answer, Arthur leans back in his chair. "You know, it does beg the question of whether the entire clothing policy should be under review," he muses. "Last year I was trying to see a client last-minute, before I headed out for vacation. I was wearing sandals, and was told I couldn't enter the prison with them. But the only other shoes I had were golf cleats, which were perfectly acceptable."

  "Cleats," I repeat. "The shoes with actual spikes on the bottom? Why would you send someone in with cleats but not flip-flops?"

  The warden and the deputy exchange a glance. "Well, because of the toe-lickers," says the deputy.

  "You're afraid that someone is going to suck our toes?"

  "Yes," the deputy says, deadpan. "Trust me, it's for your own protection. It's like a conjugal visit with your foot."

  For just a heartbeat I picture the life I could have had if I'd joined a sterile corporate law firm, on the partner track. I imagine meeting my clients in paneled wood conference rooms, instead of repurposed storage closets that smell like bleach and pee. I imagine shaking the hand of a client whose hand isn't trembling--from meth withdrawal or abject terror at a justice system he doesn't trust.

  But there are always trade-offs. When I met Micah, he was a fellow in ophthalmology at Yale-New Haven. He examined me and said I had the most beautiful colobomas he'd ever seen. On our first date I told him I really did believe justice was blind, and he said that was only because he hadn't had a chance to operate yet. If I hadn't married Micah, I would have probably followed the rest of the law review staff to sleek chrome offices in big cities. Instead, he went into practice, and I stopped clerking to give birth to Violet. When I was ready to go back to work, Micah was the one who reminded me of the sort of law I used to champion. Thanks to his salary, I was able to practice it. I'll make the money, Micah used to tell me. You make the difference. As a public defender I was never going to get rich, but I'd be able to look at myself in the mirror.

  And since we live in a country where justice is supposed to be meted out equally, no matter how much money you have or what age you are or what your race or gender or ethnicity is, shouldn't public defenders be just as smart and aggressive and creative as any attorney for hire?

  So I flatten my hands on the table. "You know, Warden, I don't play golf. But I do wear a bra. You know who else does? My friend Harriet Strong, who's a staff attorney for the ACLU. We went to law school together, and we try to have lunch once a month. I think she'd be fascinated to hear about this meeting, considering Connecticut prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and given that only female lawyers or those lawyers identifying as female would even be wearing bras when visiting clients in this facility. Which means that your policy is infringing on attorneys' rights and is preventing us from providing counsel. I'm also pretty sure Harriet would love to talk to the Women's Bar Association of Connecticut to see how many other female lawyers have complained. In other words, this falls smack into the category of You are fucked if this gets out in the press. So the next time I come to see a client, I am going to take my thirty-four C Le Mystere demi-cup with me, and--pardon the metaphor--I am going to assume there will not be any fallout. Would I be assuming correctly?"

  The warden's mouth tightens. "I'm confident we can revisit the underwire ban."

  "Good," I say, gathering my briefcase. "Thanks for your time, but I have to get to court."

  I sail out of the little room, Arthur at my heels. As soon as we are outside the prison, in the blinding sunlight, he grins. "Remind me not to wind up opposite you in court."

  I shake my head. "Do you really play golf?"

  "I do when it means sucking up to a judge," he says. "Are you really a thirty-four C?"

  "You'll never know, Arthur," I laugh, and we head to our separate cars in the parking lot, off to minister to two very different worlds.

  --

  MY HUSBAND AND I do not sext. Instead our phone conversations consist of a roll call of nationalities: Vietnamese. Ethiopian. Mexican. Greek. As in "Where should we get takeout from tonight?" But when I get out of my meeting at the jail, there is a message waiting for me from Micah: Sorry I was an asshole this morning.

  I grin, and text him back. No wonder our kid curses.

  Date 2nite? Micah writes.

  My thumbs fly over my phone. U had me at asshole, I type. Indian?

  I vindalook forward to it, Micah responds.

  See, this is why I can't ever stay mad at him.

  --

  MY MOTHER, WHO grew up in North Carolina on the debutante circuit, believes there is nothing a little cuticle softener and eye cream can't fix. To this end, she is always trying to get me to take care of myself, which is code for try to make an effort to look nice, which is completely ridiculous, given that I have a small child and about a hundred needy clients at any given moment, all of whom deserve my time more than the hairdresser who could put highlights in my hair.

  Last year, for my birthday, my mother gave me a gift I have consciously avoided until today: a gift certificate to a day spa for a ninety-minute massage. I can do a lot in ninety minutes. File one or two briefs, argue a motion, make and feed Violet breakfast, even (if I'm going to be honest) squeeze in a rollicking romp in the sheets with Micah. If I have ninety minutes, the last thing I want to do is spend it naked on a table while some stranger rubs oil all over me.

  But, as my mother points out, it's expiring in a week, and I haven't used it yet. So--because she knows I'm too busy to take care of details like this, she has taken the liberty of booking me into Sp
a-ht On, a day spa catering to the busy professional woman, or so it says on the logo. I sit in the waiting room until I am called, wondering if they really thought that name through. Spa-ht on? Or Spat on?

  Either one sounds unpalatable to me.

  I stress about whether or not I am supposed to wear panties under my robe, and then struggle to figure out how to open my locker and secure it. Maybe this is the grand plan--clients are so frustrated by the time they get to the massage that they cannot help but leave in a better state than they started. "I'm Clarice," my therapist tells me, in a voice as soft as a Tibetan gong. "I'm just going to step out while you get comfortable."

  The room is dark, lit with candles. There is some insipid music playing. I shrug off my robe and slippers and climb under the sheet, fitting my face into the little hole in the massage table. A few moments later, there is a soft knock. "Are we ready?"

  I don't know. Are we?

  "Now, you just relax," Clarice says.

  I try. I mean, I really do. I close my eyes for about thirty seconds. Then I blink them open and stare at her feet in their sensible sneakers through the face hole of the massage table. Her firm hands begin to run the length of my spine. "Have you worked here a long time?" I ask.

  "Three years."

  "I bet there are some clients you walk in and see and wish you didn't have to touch," I muse. "I mean, like back hair? Ugh."

  She doesn't answer. Her feet shift on the floor. I wonder if she's thinking that I'm one of those clients, now.

  Does she really see my body like a doctor would--a slab to be worked upon? Or is she seeing the cellulite in my ass and the roll of fat that I usually hide under my bra strap and thinking that the yoga mom she rubbed down last hour was in much better shape?

  Clarice, wasn't that the name of the girl from Silence of the Lambs?

  "Fava beans and a nice Chianti," I murmur.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Sorry," I mutter, my chin mashed into the massage table. "Hard to talk in this contraption." I can feel my nose getting stuffy. When I lie facedown like this too long, that happens. And then I have to mouth-breathe and I think that the therapist is listening and sometimes I even drool through the hole. More reasons I don't like massages.

  "Sometimes I think about what would happen if I got into a car crash and was stuck upside down like that," I say. "Not in the car, you know, but at the hospital in one of those neck braces that get screwed into your skull so that your vertebrae don't shift? What if the doctors flipped me onto my belly, and I got congested like I am right now and couldn't tell them? Or if I was in that kind of coma where you're awake but trapped inside your body and you can't talk, and you desperately need to blow your nose." My head is pounding now, from being in this position. "It doesn't even have to be that complicated. What if I live to a hundred and five and I'm in a rest home and I get a cold and no one thinks to get me a few drops of Afrin?"

  Clarice's feet move away from my range of view, and then I feel cool air on my legs as she begins to massage my left calf. "My mother got me this treatment for my birthday," I say.

  "That's nice..."

  "She is a big fan of moisturizing. She actually said that it wouldn't kill me to not have dinosaur hide for skin if I wanted my husband to stick around. I pointed out that if lotion was what was keeping my marriage intact I had a much bigger problem than whether or not I had time to schedule a massage..."

  "Ms. McQuarrie?" the therapist says. "I don't think I've ever had a client who needed a massage quite as much as you do."

  For some reason, this makes me proud.

  "And at the risk of losing my tip, I also don't think I've ever had a client who was so bad at getting a massage."

  This makes me even prouder. "Thanks," I say.

  "Maybe you could just try...to relax. Stop talking. Clear your mind."

  I close my eyes again. And start going over my to-do list in my head.

  "For what it's worth," I murmur, "I'm bad at yoga too."

  --

  ON DAYS WHEN I work late and Micah is still at the hospital, my mother picks Violet up from school. It's a win-win-win--I don't have to pay for a sitter, my mother gets time with her only grandchild, and Violet adores her. No one throws a tea party like my mom, who insists on using her old wedding china and linen napkins and pouring sweet tea from the pot. I know, when I come home, that Violet will have been bathed, read to, and tucked in. There will be leftover lemon drops or oatmeal raisin cookies from the afternoon's tea party, still warm inside a Tupperware. My kitchen will be cleaner than I left it that morning.

  My mother also drives Micah crazy. "Ava means well," he is fond of saying. "But so did Joseph McCarthy." He says that my mother is a bulldozer dressed as a southern belle. In a way, this is true. My mother has a way of getting what she wants before you consciously realize you've been played.

  "Hi," I say, dropping my briefcase on the couch as Violet launches herself into my arms.

  "I finger-painted," Violet announces, holding her palms up to me. They are still slightly blue. "I couldn't take the picture home yet because it's still wet."

  "Hey, sugar," my mother says, coming out of the kitchen. "How was your day?" Her voice always makes me think of heliotrope and a convertible ride and the sun beating on the crown of your head.

  "Oh, the usual," I tell her. "I didn't have a client try to kill me today, so that was a plus." Last week, a man I was representing in an aggravated assault charge tried to strangle me at the defense table when the judge set bail unusually high. I'm still not sure if my client was angry, or planting a seed for an insanity defense. If it was the latter, I sort of have to give him props for thinking ahead.

  "Kennedy, not in front of the C-H-I-L-D. Vi, honey, can you go get Grandma's purse?" I set Violet on her feet, and she sprints into the mudroom. "You know when you say things like that it makes me want to get a prescription for Xanax," my mother sighs. "I thought that you were going to start looking for a real job when Violet went to school."

  "A, I do have a real job, and B, you're already taking Xanax, so that's a specious threat."

  "Must you argue everything?"

  "Yeah. I'm a lawyer." I realize then that my mother is wearing her coat. "Are you cold?"

  "I told you I couldn't stay late tonight. Darla and I are going to that counterdance to meet some silver foxes."

  "Contra dance," I correct. "Number one, ew. Number two, you never told me."

  "I did. Last week. You just chose not to listen, sugar." Violet comes into the room again and hands her her purse. "That's a good girl," she says. "Give me a kiss now."

  Violet throws her arms around my mother. "But you can't go," I say. "I have a date."

  "Kennedy, you're married. If anyone needs a date, it's me. And Darla and I have big plans for just that."

  She sails out the door and I sit down on the couch. "Mommy," Violet says, "can we have pizza?"

  I look at the sequined shoes on her feet. "I've got a better idea," I tell her.

  --

  "WELL!" MICAH SAYS, when he sees me sitting at the table of the Indian restaurant with Violet, who has never been anywhere fancier than a Chili's. "This is a surprise."

  "Our babysitter skipped town," I tell him, and I glance sidelong at Violet. "And we are skating the thin edge of DEFCON Four, so I already ordered."

  Violet is coloring on the paper tablecloth. "Daddy," she announces, "I want pizza."

  "But you love Indian food, Vi," Micah says.

  "No I don't. I want pizza," she insists.

  Just then, the waiter comes over with our food. "Perfect timing," I murmur. "See, honey?"

  Violet turns her face up to the waiter, her blue eyes wide as she stares at his Sikh turban. "How come he's wearing a towel?"

  "Don't be rude, sweetie," I reply. "That's called a turban, and that's what some Indian people wear."

  She furrows her brow. "But he doesn't look like Pocahontas."

  I want the floor to open up and swal
low me, but instead, I paste a smile on my face. "I'm so sorry," I tell the waiter, who is now unloading our dishes as quickly as he can. "Violet...look, your favorite. Chicken tikka masala." I spoon some onto her plate, trying to distract her until the waiter goes away.

  "Oh my God," I whisper to Micah. "What if he thinks we're horrible parents? Or horrible people?"

  "Blame Disney."

  "Maybe I should have said something different?"

  Micah takes a spoonful of vindaloo and puts it on his plate. "Yeah," he says. "You could have picked Italian."

  I'M STANDING IN THE MIDDLE of the nursery my son is never going to use.

  My fists are like two anvils at my sides; I want to swing them. I want to punch holes in the plaster. I want the whole fucking room to come tumbling down.

  Suddenly there is a firm hand on my shoulder. "You ready?"

  Francis Mitchum--my father-in-law--stands behind me.

  This is his duplex--Brit and I live on one side, and he lives on the other. Francis crosses the room and yanks down the Peter Rabbit curtains. Then he pours paint into a little tray and begins to roll the walls white again, washing away the pale yellow that Brit and I brushed onto the walls less than a month ago. The first coat doesn't quite cover the paint beneath, so the color peeks through, like something trapped under ice. With a deep breath I lie down under the crib. I lift the Allen wrench and begin to loosen the bolts that I had so carefully tightened, because I didn't want to be the reason anything bad happened to my son.

  Who knew there didn't have to be a reason?

  I left Brit sleeping off a sedative, which was an improvement over the way she was this morning at the hospital. I'd thought nothing could be worse than the crying that wouldn't stop, the sound of her breaking into pieces. But then, at about 4:00 A.M., all of that stopped. Brit didn't make a sound. She just stared, blank, at the wall. She wouldn't answer when I called her name; she wouldn't even look at me. The doctors gave her medicine to make her sleep. Sleep, they told me, was the best way for a body to heal.

  Me, I hadn't slept, not a wink. But I knew it wasn't sleep that was going to make me feel better. That was going to take some wilding, a moment of destruction. I needed to pound out the pain inside me, give it a home someplace else.