“Well, sure,” AJ said. “The election is only eighteen months away. It’s time for Andrew Jackson Brant to pretend he actually likes people.”
Our father stiffened in the front seat, and the back of his neck reddened. Disrespect was a serious offense in our household, perhaps the most serious offense. “Don’t sass me,” he would say, his Virginia accent suddenly pronounced. Teensy, too, was hell on talking back. But our father said nothing even when AJ added: “Yes, sirree, Andrew Jackson Brant can do a darn good job of pretending to like hoi polloi, the people in whose name he serves. Most people would say the hoi polloi, but Andrew Jackson Brant would be the first to tell them that they’re wrong, it doesn’t require an article. People wonder where I get my acting chops from? Well, look no further. Andrew Jackson Brant could have been the Richard Burton of his day. Although he wouldn’t have married Adele Closter twice, I suppose, the way Burton did with Elizabeth Taylor. Andrew Jackson Brant never makes the same mistake twice.”
“I would have married your mother over and over again,” our father said.
“Isn’t that the very definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome?”
Our father braked sharply, although the light was green. Braked sharply, then turned onto the narrow road that led to the tennis courts behind the Village Center. The lights were on and AJ’s face looked even whiter in their eerie glow. He was terrified. As was I. Neither of us had ever pushed our father this far.
But, after a minute of suspenseful silence, our father said, without turning around: “I have no regrets, AJ. I don’t expect you to understand that, but it’s true.”
The next week, we went back to our Friday ritual of having take-out pizza. AJ began taking his slices to his room, talking on the phone while he ate, inserting folded triangles of cheese pizza into his mouth as if he were a sword swallower. I expected our father to reprimand him, but he never did.
JANUARY 12
A knock. Oh, bless the Lord, Lu thought, someone has started knocking on my door. It’s her secretary, Della, but that’s a start.
“Fred Hollister wants to know if he can get on your schedule this afternoon,” Della says. She’s Lu’s age, yet looks years older. Plump, matronly. Did people used to age at more or less the same rate when Lu was a child? More and more, aging seems to be a choice. A choice dictated by genetics and disposable income, but still a choice. After all, anyone can dye her hair, pick out wardrobes that won’t age her. But Della seems comfortable with her gray hair and cushiony frame.
“To discuss what?”
“He wouldn’t tell me, but he says it’s important, something he doesn’t want you to hear from anyone else.”
Intriguing. Lu’s mind runs through the various possibilities. She assumes it’s some hangover from Fred’s tenure, a case that’s going to boomerang back on appeal because of shoddy work by this office or the police department. She had plans for this afternoon, but she accepts that this has to take precedence. If Fred thinks she wants to hear it from him first, then she definitely does.
“Put him in for noon. I’ll eat at my desk.”
Seven days into her new job, Lu is still trying to get a handle on all the bureaucracy that comes with it. She gets up at four and answers e-mail for an hour, but it’s like fighting a hydra: for every reply she manages, another three crop up. Meetings, memos, memos about meetings. In the modern age, access cannot be curtailed. Back in the ’70s, her father had an office with six lines and no answering machine. No mobile phone, not even when the big clunky models became available in the ’80s. Maybe a beeper, she thinks, by his final term. A beeper. She feels like some futuristic creature whose every cell is available for sensory input. And it doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that his/her message, call, memo is one of many, that what is urgent to them can be of a lower priority to her. To the sender or caller, that message is the only one, the crucial one. Lu worked all weekend to justify a long lunch away from the office and now she’s lost that reward.
When Fred arrives, he looks much more cheerful than the man who visited Lu only a week ago. More pampered, too. His gray suit is sharp, expensive looking, his graying hair recently trimmed, not that he has a lot of it. New glasses, tortoiseshell frames with a glint of gold at the temples. He’s actually whistling, although the first thing he says is: “Whoa—trigger warning. I swear I got a little PTSD walking in here.”
“Really? Your step is so springy. And that suit. Are you on someone’s payroll?”
“I am. Do you know Howard & Howard?”
“Of course I do, Fred. I was an assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore. With you. Remember? Howard & Howard is only one of the biggest law firms in the city.”