Exposed (13 page)

“
Non
. But the fact that it is real does not make it permanent.”

“Tout passé, tout lasse, tout casse,”
we said at the same time, causing us both to laugh. It was the first time I had laughed in many months and the first time I had seen her laugh in years.

When I got back to Seattle, I started my defense. One of the first things I did was go back to SASSA to see if I could learn anything about the what happened as I left. They don’t keep tapes more than 48 hours for privacy reasons, according to Mike, the big guy who was often on the door.

“It was the first time I’d ever seen you shit-faced,” Mike said. “That’s really why I remember it.”

“Was I with anyone?”

“Just one of the guys you were playing with. He said he was taking you home, but then came back in a little later saying you had come around and insisted on driving yourself. I told him he should have taken your keys. He said he tried, but you must have had an extra set and had driven off.”

“What time did he leave?”

“I don’t know. I went out for a smoke and he got out of a big fancy car, you know, one of those Chrysler 300s with a fancy custom grill the drug dealers drive, I think.”

“What color? Are you sure it was a Chrysler?” I asked.

“I’m a bike guy, not a car guy. Anyway, he said you’d taken off. He was hoping to have a little more fun with you, he said, but the dealer offered a taste after you left, so it wasn’t a complete loss.”

“Can I get a name? Who is he?”

“You know I can’t let you have that.”

“Mike, it’s really important. This is a really big deal to me.”

Mike wouldn’t give it to me, nor would his boss Elizabeth, even after hearing my story.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I know you are in a jam.”

I finally got to the owner, the man I’d met so long before when he was represented by my ex-husband and Max Moore, and who had provided me with pillows and a towel that night I was busted.

“No,” he said.

“No? That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“I really need the information,” I tried to be tough. He was tougher.

“You get nothing without a subpoena. Even then there might not be anything to get. We purge our files frequently.”

The way he said that made me believe he was guaranteeing I would get nothing, and the effort to do so would come with more cost than benefit. Since I was trying to do all this while concealing my presence at SASSA that night, I tended to agree.

I kept pushing where I could push, but I was trying to cover up some things, didn’t remember others, and was a very tempting target for a legal system I’d been pretty successful in giving an occasional bloody nose — all those things together made it extra tough.

Prosecuting attorneys I had beaten put a little extra effort into making sure I would be found guilty. And honestly, so did the judge that assigned my case, even though he was not one I’d ever been before as a lawyer.

They had piled on the charges, layer after layer of multiple counts. There was no doubt I would win most of them.

But juries want to be “fair.” Even if they toss most of the charges, they still want to give a little something to the prosecutor to reward the effort made, and also because they don’t want to seem unreasonable or soft. I’d used that desire for “balance” to my client’s advantage on more than one occasion myself.

But given my line of work, even a partial win would mean a pretty significant loss.

And then there was something else I hadn’t counted on. As I’ve told you, since Mark and I had split up, I had changed my hair and worn different clothes or my old clothes differently. As investigators interviewed those around me, it became clear that they were making a case that I, myself, had “changed.”

Even as I was prepared to argue that everything in my history indicated that I’d never do the things I was accused of doing, they were preparing to argue I wasn’t that person any longer. They were clear that they were willing to subpoena everyone around me, bring them into court, perhaps question why they hadn’t intervened.

There aren’t words to express the rage I felt.

Eventually I was offered a deal of nolo contendere. No contest. I would not admit guilt, but agreed they had enough evidence to convict. They stretched to make it work in my case, but they had a cost/benefit to worry about, too, and really, what they most wanted was to destroy my reputation and get me out of the profession.

My potential downside was to lose big and serve a minimum of five years. I adhered to advice I had often given to clients, taking the deal and serving six months.

• • • •

I won’t say I could have done the sentence standing on my head. It was unpleasant, but not hard. I got reading done I’d intended to do for a long time. I helped fellow inmates with corresponding to the courts, to their victims. Hell, I helped them write to their lawyers, some of whom seemed to have forgotten all about their clients.

Liberty and justice for all is a myth, and one I helped perpetrate.

Besides, there are lots of things one can learn in jail.

I learned that to some women, blow jobs are much less intimate than making love, face to face, in a bed, for instance. I learned that one woman can call another a “bitch” or “whore,” and it can stick even if both are prostitutes.

I learned that “justice” is a word, a term, an ideal, a hope, an excuse, a sham, a pry bar, and a blanket. I learned that thirty percent of the hookers on the street may be black, fifty percent of the hookers arrested may be black, and seventy percent of the hookers in jail are black.

That is not because black hookers commit more serious prostitution.

I learned that there are some good public defenders. But lawyers on the 45th floor of the U.S. Bank Building make seventeen times the money that the civil servants in the public defender’s office make. Just look at their shoes: The shoes of a top lawyer cost more than the whole suit of the attorney representing most of the women I was with in jail.

I already knew this. I wore those expensive shoes.

Money buys talent. Money contributes a “halo effect,” where the good-looking guy in an expensive suit who dines on fresh salmon is going to be paid more respect by a jury than the overworked lump in a baggy suit who gets too little sleep, stinks like gritty coffee, cheap booze, and gas station burritos. This is a fact of life.

I already knew the promise of sex will turn a man’s mind to mush, but hookers in jail added the lesson that just by introducing the “possibility” that another man might have interest, a higher price can be negotiated. Biology, again.

Another thing I learned in jail is that “outrage” is a liability. That’s not to say there isn’t anger. Of course there is. There’s a lot to be angry about, besides the fact that people “outside” are able to do things you aren’t able to do “inside.” There’s plenty to be angry about on the inside, too.

I learned that all sorts of people become jailers. Some of them are kind or want to be kind. Interestingly, those were the ones it was sometimes hardest to get to know. I think they build thicker walls so they didn’t get burned.

Others, easier to know, are not so kind. The power they have over prisoners brings out their bad side. Think of the worst bully you ever met in middle school. Give her keys to your cell. Give her a gun. Give her the right to write down on a piece of paper something that will keep you from an hour outside or from a job where you can talk to other people, just because you looked at her and didn’t smile.

Or you looked at her and did smile. Or because she and her boyfriend were fighting. Or her car was slow to start. Give her the right to say any lie she wants even if there is an army of truth calling her a liar. Give her self-loathing and a chance to take all that hurt out on you.

There was a study done a long time ago about how being a “jailer” brought out the worst in people, even in upper-class college kids. It’s certainly true of those whose lives hurt them every day. Again, it’s probably biology. Maybe that’s why men too-often feel a right to “control” women.

But in jail I also learned that outrage blinds you. If you are feeling outrage, you are focused on yourself, and you don’t see what’s really happening around you. Jail teaches you that not seeing what’s around you is just stupid. And that those who feel outrage over things that don’t hurt them personally are just jacking off.

My mother came to visit me once. She was crying when she walked in, sobbed the whole time she was there, and jumped out of her skin whenever there was a loud noise.

After fifteen minutes I lied and told her I didn’t feel well and had to go back to my cell and lie down. I was afraid she was going to have a heart attack. I wrote to her not to come back.

I asked my grandmother not to come at all, but that was for my sake, not hers.

My father didn’t bother to come, write, call or have any contact.

But I met some quality women while I was in jail. Some of them are still good friends. Some of them would help me later in ways I’m not going to tell you about, but you’ll see it if you pay attention.

I was still in jail when I got the letter from the Washington State Bar Association. They’d revoked my license to practice law. I hadn’t realized what kind of impact that would have, since being a lawyer wasn’t really my life’s ambition anyway. My identity wasn’t ever really wrapped around being an attorney. I enjoyed the work. I enjoyed the income. But it wasn’t all of me or even a big part of me.

Still, having it taken away like that was humiliating and a blow that hurt me deeply, even if I didn’t know why.

• • • •

Tony was great.

“Let’s have lunch,” he said, within a day or two after I got out. We wandered down through Pike Place Market to The Bomber, a small hole-in-the-wall where they served nothing but burgers and beer.

“Hey, Tony,” said the counter person when we walked in.

“Hey, Kathy,” said Tony. “Got a table?”

“Back in the hole,” she said with a smile and motioned with her head toward the back of the place.

“That’s my favorite,” said Tony, and led me back past the line where waitresses picked up baskets of burgers and fries to a single table that had a complete view of the inside of the kitchen.

“This is the table for staff when they aren’t busy,” said Tony, wiping it off with a napkin.

“I’ll get that, Hon,” said Kathy walking up with a wet rag that smelled like bleach.

“Usual?”

“Yup.”

“I’ll have the same,” I said, without looking at a menu.

“Got it,” said Kathy, looking at me with a smile.

Walking past the kitchen she called to the cook, “Two B17s, bacon and Swiss, lots of tots.” A minute later she came back with two dark brown beers, set them down, and turned to the high stainless counter where orders were plated just as a cook shouted “Order up!”

“You still have a job,” said Tony, when she was out of earshot.

“I don’t know how. I can’t practice law, and you can’t afford to carry me,” I said. “What’s in it for you?”

“I’m a good guy,” he said, not looking at me but into the kitchen where cooks and dishwashers danced.

“I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t act in their own self-interest.” I meant this to come out with some humor, but it didn’t. It came out flat and bitter, and I didn’t like sounding sorry for myself.

“Me either,” said Tony, neutralizing my hurt. “You run the show from the back room, we get someone to make the presentations in court, we grow the whole thing, and it’s win-win-win.”

“Tony, that will take a while. And it might not work.”

“Might not. But might,” he said.

“Can I get back to you? I really need a break,” I said.

“Take all the time you need,” he said.

We finished lunch and headed out.

“Hey, Tony, whose night is it to deliver?” asked the cook as we walked past.

“I’ll get back to you,” was all Tony said.

It was hard cleaning out my desk in the Seattle Tower. It was even harder when I watched Claire clean out hers.

“Honey, this isn’t on you,” she said. “Besides, I’ve got a new gig. It won’t be as much fun, but it will more than pay the bills.” She was headed over to one of the software companies that were ramping up along Lake Union.

“They need someone tough to keep the geeks on task,” she said.

Sarah was going home to Spokane to care for her dying dad. Lily was going to stay on with Tony, who had plenty of work and enough other lawyers on staff for her skills to be put to use. “I really do want to be useful,” she said. “That’s as important to me as the money.”

I read in
The Seattle Times
about the engagement of my former husband, Mark Love, Seattle, to Ashley Moore, daughter of Max and Claudia Moore of Bellevue, Washington — yup, the girl I’d gotten off from a cocaine bust.

Everything passes, everything wears out, everything breaks.

Tout passé, tout lasse, tout casse.

When the call came that would change my life — again — I saw the number and I didn’t answer. But when I listened to the message and heard the tone in my mother’s voice, I called her back immediately.

“Jessi… ” she started to say, then stopped.

“Mother?” I asked. I’d stopped calling her “Mom” after the blow up over my divorce from Mark.

“Your grandmother has passed away,” she said. For a moment I thought she was talking about her mother, who I didn’t really know that well.

“Mom, I’m so sorry for your loss…” I started to say, hoping that reverting to the familiar would lend sincerity to my words. Then suddenly I realized it wasn’t her mother she was talking about, but my grandmother, Grandmama, Grandmere.

“Oh God. Mom, what happened? Why didn’t I know?!”

“None of us knew, honey,” said Mom. “She kept getting a bit more frail. We suggested she see a doctor, but she just blew up her lips and said ‘No doctor. I know medicine. I am old. I know what to do.’ You know how stubborn she could be.

“I took her a bowl of chowder this morning. Y
ou
know it’s the only thing I cook she would eat. She didn’t answer the door. I went around back, and she was sitting in her kitchen chair, but her head was down. I knew something wasn’t right. The doctor said her heart just stopped, and she didn’t even know.”

By the time my mother stopped talking I had slid down the wall to the floor. I could not breathe. My eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sand, then lemon.

“Honey… ?” My mom said.

“I’ll call you back,” I whispered.

I should have known, I told myself. I should have been there, I said. I should have seen her more often, I said. I should should should should should…

“Jessi!” said Grandmere, sharply in my ear. “There is no ‘should!’”

Startled, I looked around. Of course I couldn’t see her. She had died. But I could feel her. S
he
was sitting next to me on the floor, her hand on my shoulder. “Come see me now,” she whispered. “I am waiting for you. I have something for you.”

I got up and washed my face, threw some clothes in a bag and jumped in my replacement Porsche. It wasn’t new, but it was like new. It wasn’t like I’d spent all the money I’d been earning over the last few years or from the divorce settlement. I still had a pretty good stash. The trip home over the back roads was slow as I tried to remember as many of the moments Grandmere and I had spent together as I could.

I didn’t stop at my parents,’ driving right to her house, hoping to decompress before seeing “the family.” It didn’t work. At the house were my father’s truck, the Japanese car my mother drove that I could never remember because I didn’t care, my sister’s minivan, and the pickup driven by her husband that he had bought from my father because “I know it’s been taken care of.”

When I walked in the house everyone stared at me. At first I couldn’t figure it out. My father, as always, provided the insight.

“Jesus, what the hell has happened to you?” he asked. I did not know what he meant at first.

“What?” I asked.

“What do you mean, ‘what’? Look at you. Look at your hair, your clothes. No wonder they wouldn’t let you back into a courtroom!”

“Oh yeah. We should probably talk about that, but not right now, okay? Where’s Grandmama?” Like I said, I’d learned that outrage was something that can be channelled.

“Honey, they took her to the funeral home about an hour ago,” said my mother.

“Well then, I suppose that’s where I should be. What are you all doing here?”

“Waiting for you, Jessi,” said my sister. “We thought we should all go down there together.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to avoid friction right off the bat. That was a fail, of course. As soon as we were in my mother’s car, my father behind the wheel, he started in.

“Did you call her? Did you know it? Did she call you. What’s with the hair? Your eyes are pretty dark. Is it supposed to be some kind of
style
or is it because you’ve been crying? What did… ”

“Hey, James. Enough with the twenty questions, okay?” I’d never before called him by his first name.

“Don’t you… ” he started to say, but my mother’s hand on his arm quieted him for the rest of the trip.

There is only one funeral parlor in town. We thought we were going to pick out a casket, but the funeral director, an elderly man, very dapper but very straight of bearing and of course all in black, his suit immaculate, sat us all down.

“Your mother visited us a week ago,” he said looking at
my
father, “and she made all the arrangements. She gave me these,” and he handed an envelope to my father, another to my sister, another to me. “I have no idea what’s in these, but she directed me to hand them to you, just as I have.”

We all sat there for a moment, trying to take this in.

“She was here a week ago? And you didn’t call me or notify the authorities?!” said my father. “What kind of operation is this? A sick, frail woman on the verge of death and you do NOTHING?!”

“She appeared neither sick nor frail, sir. And we have people come in to make arrangements all the time. It’s what we do.” Though his demeanor was very sorrowful and compassionate, there was steel in this man. Enough that my father ratcheted down his attitude.

Grandmere had been here just a week ago? She knew she was going to die. I thought about that for a moment and wondered if she had taken her own life. If so, she was ready to go. There were few accidents around Grandmere.

I wasn’t ready to open my envelope and didn’t want to in front of the others. I put it in my messenger bag. My father tore his open, as did my sister. As they read, they kept looking at me.

“Did you know about this?” my father asked.

“About what?”

“Why don’t you open your envelope?”

“I don’t feel like it right now,” I said.

“Have you been talking to her?” There was accusation in his voice.

“Um, I live in Seattle,” stating the obvious just to get under his skin.

“On the phone. Did you talk to her on the phone?” he asked.

“Oh yes because Grandmama was such a chatty person on the phone. Hard to break off the conversation sometimes.” This time the sarcasm was so thick that my sister and her husband sniggered. Even my mom had to hide a smile.

“Look at you. Look at you. You are just like her,” he said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder to someplace inside the building.

“Why, thank you. That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me in years.”

“Don’t take it as a compliment,” he snapped back.

“James!” said my mother.

“Dad!” said my sister.

“It’s okay, “ I told them, keeping my eyes locked with my father’s, which could not conceal a smoldering mixture of pain and anger.

“Tout passé, tout lasse, tout casse,”
I said.

“Don’t you repeat that,” my father snarled at me. “I had to listen to that garbage from that whore from the time I was born!”

This time the shock was universal and everyone gasped.

“James!” said my mother.

“My father told me everything,” said my father. “From the time I was ten, he told me how he met this woman, how he’d been wounded in France, how she tricked him into marrying her by getting pregnant with me, how he had to bring her back home. That she was nothing but a whore!”

“That was not true,” said the funeral director quickly, with surprising force.

“What do YOU know?!” my father nearly shouted.

“Your mother and I played backgammon every Friday,” said the funeral director.

“Where, right here? I’ll bet you did,” said my father. I could not believe the bile that was coming out of his mouth. I always thought his quiet reflected some sort of reserve. Instead, I was learning it hid a boiling pot of venom.

“Actually, no. Across the street at Tommy’s Cafe, after your mother left church.” The director nodded slightly toward the Catholic Church on the same side of the street.  

“After my wife died, your mother and I would go over to Tommy’s and play. She usually beat me two games to one, or three games to two. She was very good,” he said.

“What’s this have to do with my father and how they met?” said my father.

“You see, I was in France, too. With your father, in fact. A number of us who enlisted out of Washington ended up in the same unit in Europe. Your father was wounded in a small town in France. Your mother was a nurse. She cared for him. T
hey
fell in love, and she came back with him,” he said.

“That’s not how my father told it,” said my father. “He said…”

“James.” I’d never heard that tone of voice from my mother to my father. It was quiet but anything but soft and seemed to fill the room.

“Your father was an angry, drunk man who lied often and blamed anyone and everyone for his own failings. He often came home late when he came home at all. Your mother told you he was at work, on the night shift. That was a lie to protect you. He was out tomcatting around and made passes at me on more than one occasion,” she said.

“He was a good father!” said mine.

“Just because he taught you to throw a baseball does not mean he was a good man. Now would be a really good time for you to stop talking,” said my mother.

I was more than a little surprised. My sister sat with her mouth gaping, her eyes open nearly as wide. Her husband was cleaning his nails.

“You weren’t there. You don’t know anything!” shouted my father. “You are just making this up!”

“Your mother and I talked often before he died, and on more than one occasion after, when I asked why she never left him. She said she had made her own decisions, and she had to own them. But this is not helping any of us. Just shut up. Now,” said my mother.

I don’t think I knew which confused me more: all this information or my mother’s transformation.

“Your mother will be cremated tomorrow at noon, according to her wishes,” said the funeral director to my father. “She asked me to read a few words, and the priest will be here to say a prayer. She has already purchased the urn.” He turned to me. “Jessica, you will want to read your letter before you come back tomorrow.”

With that, he stood from the table, tall, straight, handsome, impeccable in black, and I knew instantly why Grandmama would have sought his company. They were alike in so many ways.

The car was silent as we drove back to Grandmama’s house. My mother made noises about me coming back to the house, but I told her I would stay at Grandmama’s, something she knew already.

“Thank you,” I whispered to her with a kiss on the cheek as I got out of the car. She brushed my face like Grandmama had done so many times.

“You want company?” my sister asked in the driveway, already knowing my answer. I just shook my head and smiled, and she and her husband drove away. At last I was alone.

I won’t bore you with a lot of unnecessary details about that night or the next day. It was what it was. Except to tell you that not once that night, in that house, was I alone. Nor have I been since.

In so many ways, Grandmama is closer to me now than ever. It’s like she let go of her body so her spirit could be where it needed to be, and wanted to be, and that was near me.

I suppose I do have to tell you about the letter, and what happened next.

“
Ma chère
,” it started, in her careful, elegant script. “If you are reading this, then I have passed. I know you will grieve, but do not feel lost. Nothing is other than it should be
.
Everything passes. People, too. But love is immortal, as long as we allow it to reside within us. And you know my love for you.”

She left nearly everything to me, though there wasn’t much, really. In the envelope was also a small key, which she wrote would open a wooden box on her mantle. Which I did.

Inside, was another letter, fragments of the shattered tea cup I had dropped decades before, and another box. That one was latched, but not locked, and had “For Marcel” written on a small note on the lid.

“
Ma
chère
, do you remember this tea cup? I saved it not because I want you to feel pain of that memory, but because I want you to be free.
S’il vous plait,
take this cup, the small box and my ashes back to France.

“There is a small graveyard there, in a small town not far from Bordeaux, named for my great-great-grandfather, who helped acquire lands for France in the New World. Some places in Louisiana and Canada have our same last name. You will find it easily. Here are the phone number and address that I have.” She listed one phone number and one address.

“I believe my brother is still there, making some of the world’s greatest wines. He was a naughty boy, and all the girls of the village were in love with him, but the woman he eventually married tamed him with gifts of wisdom. You will enjoy her, and learn much, I think.

“My brother was in the Resistance, survived the war but suffered injuries. If he recently passed, his family will still be there. Give them the small box and this letter. They will take care of the rest. Please place the cup fragments in the earth near the chateau and scatter my ashes in the hills. Thank you, Comtesse. You are my blood, my spirit.”