Final Appeal

do they.”

“But it wasn’t a veneer. He really was—”

“Perfect?”

I feel it inside. “Yes. In a way. He believed in things. He cared, really cared, and he fought hard.”

“Don’t you think you’re idealizing him, Grace?”

“No, I’m not idealizing him.” My throat tightens, but it could be the scarf. “Take this frigging thing off. I feel like a boy scout in drag.”

She avoids my eye and unties the scarf. “You worked for him for a short time. You had a business relationship with him until one night. Now you’re charging around, going to the police, ransacking his office for clues.”

“I wasn’t ransacking.”

“You’re acting like it was a fifteen-year relationship, like he was your husband. But he wasn’t. In fact, he was somebody else’s.”

Ouch. “That’s beside the point. The man was murdered, Ricki.”

“You don’t know that. It’s not your job to investigate it, even if it is true. If you were my client, I’d ask you why you’re doing all this. What would happen if you didn’t?”

“His killer would go free.”

“And what’s the matter with that?”

I look wildly around the frilly dressing room. “What’s the matter with murder? It’s very bad manners, for starters.”

“Don’t be snide, I mean it.”

“But what kind of question is that, What’s the matter with murder?” I hear my voice growing louder.

“No, the question is, Why does it matter if his killer goes free?”

I hold back my snidehood. “It’s terrible. It’s unfair.”

“Then it’s the unfairness that strikes you.”

“Yes, of course.”

She purses her lips. “You’re a person who’s been treated unfairly. By your father, then by Sam. You had a baby, he wanted out. He broke the contract.”

I feel a churning inside. “Yeah, so?”

“So maybe it’s not this unfairness you’re fighting about, maybe it’s unfairnesses in your past. Ones you can’t do anything about.”

“Oh please, Ricki.”

“Think about it. Keep an open mind.”

“The man is dead, Rick. Am I just supposed to ignore that?”

She folds her arms calmly, like she always does when I get upset. Therapists never have emotions; that’s why they want to hear ours. “How long have we known each other?” she asks.

I boil over. “Too damn long.”

“Well, that’s a very nice thing to say.”

“If you wouldn’t analyze me at every turn—”

“You asked me to.”

“I asked you to analyze him, not me.”

“Why do you need me to analyze him if you know him so goddamn well? Hmm?”

I have no immediate answer. The word uncle comes immediately to mind, but I push it away.

“Well?” A triumphant smile steals across her face. “I should’ve been a lawyer, right?”

Right. Or a personal shopper.

The red-lighted numbers on the clock radio say 4:13 A.M.; they’re oddly disjointed, constructed like toothpicks laid end to end. It flips to 4:14.

The house sleeps silently. The dishwasher stopped cranking at 1:10, leaving only the clothes dryer in the basement. A wet bathroom rug thudded against the sides of the drum, keeping me awake until 2:23. Since then I have no excuse except for my own feelings, tumbling as crazily as the rug in the dryer. The fury, grief, and confusion cycle: it comes right after spin-dry.

Maddie’s in the next room, her door closed against Bernice, who sleeps in my bed like a mountain range bordering my right side and curling under my feet. This must be why they call them mountain dogs. I shove her over, but she doesn’t budge. My thoughts circle back to Armen.

He said he loved me, but there’s obviously much he didn’t say. A secret bank account. An alias. I sit up and shake two powdery generic aspirins from the bottle, then swallow them with some flat seltzer from a bottle on my night table. I flop back in bed and stare up at the white ceiling with its cracked paint, trying to put away my emotions.

But I’m having less success than usual. Anxiety makes my chest feel tight. I wonder vaguely if they have a drug for that, and then I remember that they do.

Alcohol.

The thought warms me like brandy. I throw off the covers, slip on a terry bathrobe, and tiptoe down the creaky stair. Bernice looks up but doesn’t follow; she won’t go in the kitchen now unless she’s dragged into it.

I flick on the kitchen light and dim it down, then open up the tall kitchen cabinet that was built into the wall sixty years ago. My landlord let me strip the old paint away, and underneath was a fine bare pine, which I scrubbed and pickled white. I love this cabinet, a true old-fashioned larder, which finds room for every grocery I buy on its five shelves. The liquor is at the top, like a penthouse above the stories of oversized cereal boxes, cans of soup, and baked beans.

I grab a stool, climb up on it, and pull down a thick shot glass, one of the multitude my mother gave me a long time ago. Half I threw out and half I stowed in the basement until Maddie found them. I eventually had to sneak them away from her, finding something unseemly about a child’s tea party with shot glasses and a steel jigger. I hid them up here, where they line up like pawns guarding the liquor bottles.

I peer at the dusty bottles and try to make a decision. What shall I treat myself to? It’s all left over from my wedding, the last time I had more than two drinks. Alcohol goes right to my head, but that’s suddenly what I want.

A bottle of Crown Royal stands like a king behind the pawns. The lattice blown into its glass catches even the dim light. I pick the bottle up by its gold plastic crown and climb down from the shelf.

I am going to get drunk. This strikes me as a daring and powerful act, something a man would do. I am going to have myself a drink, yessir, I am going to tie one on. I put the bottle on the counter and crack open the cap, which sticks slightly. The bottle’s almost full. I take a whiff.

Fragrant. Sweet. Tangy. Strong.

I remember this smell, and it brings a memory down on my head. My parents fighting again, shouting. My father, lurching out the door. My mother, crying alone. A bottle of Crown Royal sitting in the center of a kitchen table, eye level with me: It’s so majestic, glinting like gold. A regal beacon in a world where Daddy is gone and the future is a mystery.

I pour myself a shot.

  13

My head buzzes with liquor from the night before; my stomach gurgles like a polluted stream. Getting drunk isn’t as manly as I thought it would be. At least not the next morning.

You don’t have to be hung over to be seeing double. Even triple. There are judges everywhere in the grand ceremonial courtroom: circuit judges, district judges, bankruptcy judges, magistrate judges. They gather like ravens in ebony robes on either side of the dais and in the reserved section in front of it. Twenty representative judges from the circuit and district courts fill the dais in two tiers. Crows on the power lines.

The audience, relegated to the back rows, is standing room only. Lawyers, academics, and reporters clog the courtroom. Standing in the back are older men in shabby overcoats, the courtroom junkies dressed up. Shake and