“You don’t give in to them, I told him this time and again. If I’d been that sensitive I’d have crumpled the first time I went up against the Machine. A few schoolyard insults, they were nothing compared to the threats and hang-up calls I’ve gotten my whole life.”
His cheeks puffed out and in like the bellows of an old pedal organ. “His mother and I, we wanted him to be proud of the life we were making. We marched in Selma, we marched in Marquette Park, and instead of being thrilled at making history, all he wanted to do was ‘fit in.’ As if a boy like him could ever fit in!”
I felt my mouth twist in disdain and tried to straighten it. It was hard to listen to one of my own heroes talk so contemptuously about his only child.
“I can’t see how forcing him to defend Stella would have given him a deep and abiding respect for principles of social justice. Why not get him involved in some of your own work—weren’t you acting on behalf of Guatemalan asylum seekers back then?”
Ira leaned heavily on his cane. “Mandel & McClelland didn’t do that kind of law, and Eunice and I agreed that Joel would wither if we tried bringing him into our firm. In the end, we had to, of course, because he couldn’t make it anywhere else. I can’t retire, not the way men who live to my age usually do, because—”
“Because you’d miss the applause you get for showing up in court and tying witnesses into knots.”
I hadn’t seen Joel come out of the office. Ira said, “How dare you, sir? That’s—”
Joel cut him off again. He’d apparently overheard most of our conversation, because he added to me, “If you really want to know how I ended up defending Stella, Mandel and McClelland liked to pit their associates against each other. Genteel blood sport, no physical blows exchanged. We’d meet in the conference room, go around the table, everyone got thirty seconds to pitch how they saw the case. Then we’d all leap on the pitch and tear it to shreds, trying to score points with the partners. I got good at shredding, but not as good as Spike. Mr. McClelland liked Spike, he took him to the downtown office where he started making the connections that carried Spike to Springfield. And so Mr. McClelland would feed Spike the good cases before we ever got to the conference room.”
“That’s the voice of envy and insecurity speaking,” Ira puffed. “You imagine because you couldn’t—”
“I don’t have a good imagination, as you’ve kindly told me many times. A big case came into the office, the kind of thing we hardly ever had a crack at, a class-action case involving the women at the local Buy-Smart warehouse. I stayed late to work on my pitch.” Joel’s lip curled into a sneer. “I didn’t talk to you about it—I thought if I could make the winning pitch without your help it would prove to you that I wasn’t a loser and a whiner and a crybaby and a drunk and whatever other epithets you like to use about me.”
An elderly woman came up the street, using a cane herself. She stopped to greet Ira, reminded him they had an appointment.
“Let Ms. Murchison into the office, Joel,” Ira rasped, “and let’s not hear more of this nonsense.”
“Ms. Murchison, go inside and make yourself comfortable. Ira will be in soon.”
Joel spoke to the older woman with unexpected gentleness, took her arm while he unlocked the door. Once she was inside, he stood with his back against the door, facing his father, who was stumping up the walk toward him. Bernie was silent, her vivid face turning from father to son, her brow puckered with trouble at their argument. I put a comforting arm around her.
“This isn’t nonsense,” Joel said. “This is something you haven’t wanted to hear all these years, but you can hear it now. Your friend Sol, he wasn’t a nice man, and neither was his partner. You can say all you want about South Chicago being a hard place, and lawyers needing to be tough to stand up to the grime and corruption, but those two enjoyed seeing associates like me humiliated. They wouldn’t get their hands dirty themselves, but they liked having someone like Spike on board to make it a fun game for them!”
“That’s—that’s such a perverted version of the lives of two good men,” Ira puffed. “You couldn’t handle the job and so someone else had to be in the wrong, never you! You’ve been like that since a child. I golfed with Sol Mandel a hundred times, we were on the board of Har HaShem together—”
“I know. He was a saint and I have a dibbuk in me,” Joel said. “You said you don’t believe McClelland fed Spike, but I’m telling you, I witnessed it. Pay attention. Stand up straight and listen.”