Final Appeal

“It’s the same thing. You’re lucky my mother can’t see this. You know what she would do? She would set your place at the table with the dog’s dish.”

She never talks about her childhood. “Your mother would do that?”

“She sure would. My mother was spiteful. She’d explain it to you this way. If your dish is good enough to feed the animal, then you don’t mind eating out of the dog’s dish. Believe me, Grace, she would.” She shakes her head and walks into the dining room. “It’s so common.”

I would remind her that we’re common, that she manicured nails to support us, but this is family history long since revised; she tells people she was in the beauty industry, whatever that is. “Is the table clear, Ma?” Bernice trots back to the dishwasher, but I wave her off.

“One left.” She comes back in and hands me her own plate. It doesn’t need rinsing; you would never know anybody ate off it.

“Tell me about my father.”

Her frown is replaced by a cynical smile. “What do you have to know? He had dark hair, he wore it slicked back. He was Sicilian, he might as well have been black. He was younger than me, so I should have known. End of story.”

“Do you miss him ever?”

Her smile, weak to start out with, now fades completely. “No.”

“Were you ever happy?”

“No.”

“Not even before he started drinking?”

“He always drank. He drank from the beginning.”

“So tell me—”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Tell me about his drinking, then. It’s hard to remember.”

“Good. It’s better you don’t.” She does an about-face and heads out of the room. I brace myself as she returns with another glass.

“I remember that he drank Crown Royal.”

Her face reddens but her expression remains rigid. She sets the glass down. “He drank everything. Beer. Wine. Whiskey. Cough syrup.” She pushes back a steel-colored curl. “You know all this. Why do we have to go over and over it?”

“I remembered something about Crown Royal. It used to come in a purple sack with gold letters.”

Her eyelids flutter. “It still does. You know that from now, not before.”

“He gave me the sacks for purses,” I say, the sentence popping out of my mouth of its own force, a memory I didn’t know I had until this very moment. “For dress-up.” I scan her face for verification, but it’s a perfect blank. “Remember?”

“No.”

“The purses? The gold braid on the side?”

“No.”

“There was a drawstring.”

She turns to go, but I grab her arm. My grasp is rougher than I intended, and in the half second she looks back I catch a fleeting expression on her face. This one I can read: fear. She’s afraid I’m going to hit her. Suddenly I understand.

“Did he hit you, Mom?” I ask, horrified. Outraged.

“Why are you doing this?” Her forehead creases with anxiety. She tries to wrench her arm free but I hold her tighter, almost involuntarily.

“I have to know. Did he hit you?”

“It’s my business.” She yanks her arm from my grasp and backs unsteadily away from me toward the refrigerator door. Behind her is a jumble of crayon rainbows and happy-face suns. Maddie’s drawings. “My business.”

“It’s my business, too!”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Mom, there’s no shame in it. It’s not your fault.”

“None of this is your concern.”

“I knew he left us, I never knew why. Is that why? Did you throw him out because he beat you? I’m not blaming you, I just want to know.”

“Stop! Stop it right now!” She holds up a veined hand, her finger pads curled over like the tines on a hand rake. Years of nicotine, the doctor told her.

“Ma—”

“You let me be!” She hurries out of the room but I follow her, almost panicky. To make it better, to make it worse, I don’t even know.

“Ma, it’s just that I’ve been wondering—”

She whirls around and silences me with a crooked index finger. Her face, for the first time in my memory, is full of pain, and she fights for control. “Let it drop. What’s done is done. Going over it doesn’t do me any good, doesn’t do anybody any good.”

“Did he hit me too, Ma?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Something happened the other day at the office, and I remembered.”

Her chest heaves like a boxer’s under the silly sweatshirt. “Grace Deasey—”

“Grace Deasey Rossi, Mom. I had a father, and I would like to know what he did to me. That is my business.”

She snatches her purse from a chair and almost runs to the front door. “You’re out of your mind. You’ll drive me out of mine if I let you. But I won’t let you.”

“Ma—”

“No,” she says simply and walks out.

NUMBER ONE GRANDMA winks at me as the door slams closed behind her.

  16

“Let’s do it,” Eletha says grimly as we encounter the first wave of reporters along the wall of the outer lobby to the courthouse.

“Grace! Grace Rossi!” one of them shouts.

Shocked, I turn toward the voice. It’s the reporter from the day before, Sandy Faber. He’s wearing the same sport jacket and more stubble. “Remember what I said, Ms. Rossi?”

“Which judge does she work for?” one of the women reporters asks. He ignores her, so she shouts at me. “Who do you work for, Ms. Rossi? Do you have any comment on Hightower? Why did it take so long to get the transcripts of the oral argument?”

“Holy shit,” I hear Eletha mutter beside me.

I push forward away from the reporters, but the lunchtime crowd is barely trickling out the narrow courthouse doors.

“Come on, Ms. Rossi!” Faber shouts. “You gonna talk to me? Come on. Gimme a break here.”

The heads of three other reporters snap in my direction. I feel Eletha’s hand on my forearm.

“Who do you work for, Judge Meyerson? Judge Redd?” the woman shouts at me. “I can find out, you know.”

“No comment,” I say.

“Aw,” the woman says, “just tell me who you work for. It’s Simmons, right? That’s who? Simmons?”

I feel Eletha’s talons dig into my arm; she seems shaken. I press ahead, pushing in line for the first time in my life as a good girl. It works. The crowd surges forward, and Eletha and I squeeze out the door and into the