“There’s nothing to mention. Until three years ago, I’d never clapped eyes on the man. But the Hampton acquittal got a lot of media coverage, and my father saw me on television. He called the office, identified himself, and said he wanted to see me. I figured what the hell, so I met him for lunch.”
“What was he like?”
I felt Zack’s muscles tense. “He was a maggot. A piece-of-shit lawyer who ordered a number of very stiff drinks, pushed his food around on his plate, suggested I throw some business his way, and asked for a little something to tide him over.”
“Did you give him money?”
“Sure. I wrote him a cheque. Quickest way to get rid of a maggot is to throw it some meat. He couldn’t get to the bank quick enough. I guess he was afraid I’d change my mind. Anyway, he left me his business card and told me to stay in touch.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Nope. After he left, I finished my wine, went to the can, ripped up his card, and flushed it down the toilet.”
“He never came back for more money?”
“Many times. Norine handles it.”
“By …?”
“Giving him what he wants – in an envelope – sent through the mail. No more up-close-and-personal.”
“Zack, I’m sorry –”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Zack said quickly, cutting me off. “Your turn now. What about your parents?”
“They’re dead. My father was a doctor. My mother was an alcoholic. For most of my life she might as well have been dead.”
“Wow. Both of us, eh?” Zack kissed me and for a moment everything else fell away. When he spoke his voice was gentle. “But we turned out all right, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” I said. “We turned out all right.”
I drew closer and we lay side by side watching the play of light and shadows on the ceiling. “So what happened with Charlie?” I said finally.
“As promised, he made me eggs. While he was cooking, he riffed on all the variations of what he called ‘the look’ – the way people react when they’re confronted with what he referred to as ‘people like us.’ ”
“Meaning you and Charlie.”
“Right – the crips and the freaks. There’s nothing wrong with Charlie’s powers of observation. He had all the responses down pat: the people who focus on a point just past your ear; the ones who keep shifting their eyes searching for a safe place to put rest their gaze; the ones who pretend they haven’t noticed; the ones who stare openly. It was disarming.”
“You really like him, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of anger there, but he has what my mother called ‘hurting eyes.’ ”
“Charlie has more than his share of demons,” I said.
“He keeps them in check,” Zack said. “And I respect him for that. It’s not easy coming up with a strategy for dealing with a world that doesn’t know how to react to you.” He drew me close. “And that’s enough about Charlie.”
Zack’s breathing slowed, deepened, and became more rhythmic. He was asleep, but I lay in the dark for a long time, thinking about the man beside me and wondering about the strategies he used to keep his demons at bay.
Working on the premise that a holiday dinner is the responsibility of everybody who will eat it, the next morning we allocated tasks. And so while Mieka and I each stuffed a turkey, Greg, Peter, and Charlie peeled, chopped, sliced, and diced, and Taylor and Isobel set the table. Zack took care of Madeleine and Lena. He seemed an unlikely choice, but during the summer the little girls themselves made the selection. With the unerring instinct children and cats have for gravitating towards the one person in the world who is not particularly partial to them, Madeleine and Lena had designated Zack as their companion of choice.
Zack had been neither delighted nor appalled. He treated the little girls exactly as he treated everyone else: with undivided attention until it was time to move along. That morning, as the rest of us worked in the kitchen, he led Madeleine and Lena to the piano in the living room and thumped out show tunes while they danced.
The rest of the day passed with the usual benevolent blur of a family holiday that’s working well. As we sat down for dinner, I had many reasons to give thanks. Isobel and Taylor had made a centrepiece of an old wooden dough box filled with pomegranates and miniature pumpkins and placed candles in brass hurricane lamps at intervals around the table. My granddaughters, fresh from their nap, were rested and happy. Best of all, everyone was getting along. Charlie was the model guest, and Mieka was making a real effort with Zack. In his self-cast role as paterfamilias, he was going to carve the Thanksgiving bird. Mieka was a professional caterer who had sliced a hundred turkeys, but when Zack approached her for advice, she had given it, and as she placed the bird in front of him she made a little speech about how in Renaissance Italy, trained carvers used to hoist the bird on a fork and spin it in the air, dazzling the guests as slices of breast fell in orderly circles on the plate below. Then, as the piece de resistance, she presented Zack with a duplicate of her favourite Henkel carving knife as a host gift.
Charlie’s reaction was sardonic. “Nothin’ says lovin’ like a twenty-five-centimetre blade,” he said, and we all laughed.
It was the best of times, but the spectre of the trial was always there, reminding us that the best of times has an inevitable corollary. All weekend, Zack’s ubiquitous BlackBerry brought news of a dark, complicated world where, increasingly, things seemed not to be breaking in Samuel Parker’s favour. As the holiday drew to an end, there was a tangible and immediate worry. The hours before Katherine Morrissey’s
