No Defense (36 page)

“Sewing?” he asked. “Did you give up
restaurant life for a career in fabrics?” he joked.

I was too upset to say anything. Tears
streamed down my face.

“She told me you were calm-resigned but
calm, was what she said. I guess she got it wrong.” He rested his
right hand over my left and removed the silver thimble from my
finger, then he tossed the thimble up in the air and caught it
several times.

“Who said that?” I asked, biting my lip and
trying to slow the onslaught of tears.

“Your mother.”

“What else did she say?”

“That you were thinking about leaving
Tallagumsa.”

“Don’t you think I should? I’ve made a mess
of everything since I got here. Everything. It’s better sometimes
to start over-a clean slate and all that.” I sniffed and blotted
the tears on my face with the back of my hand.

“What about me?” he asked.

“What about you?”

“I’m serious, LuAnn. Would you leave here
without me? Are you so crazy now that you would even consider
that?”

“Well, what would you care? You and Barbara
are pretty cozy, living and working together.”

“You have no idea where I’ve been or with
whom. You’ve refused to talk to me, remember?”

“You could have talked to me if you really
wanted to.”

“You are such an idiot sometimes. I wasn’t
about to throw myself down on the ground and kiss your feet, but I
did try time and again to call you and see you, and you
refused.”

“Were you living with her or not?”

“You don’t have much right to complain if I
was, LuAnn, but in fact, I wasn’t. I stayed in Barbara’s living
room a few nights until she left on some school trip. I baby-sat
her dog until Labor Day, when she got back to town. Since then I’ve
been at different teachers’ houses. Whoever would have me.”

I picked up the pair of pants from my lap,
scooped the thimble up off the floor where Eddie had put it, and
continued sewing a gray patch over the worn-out knee. “I’m sorry,”
I said, staring at the patch.

Eddie didn’t say anything.

I put the sewing materials on the floor and
looked over at him. “I said I’m sorry,” I said louder.

He turned toward me. “I forgive you,” he
said, his searching gray eyes reading my feelings. “I know we can
make it work out if we both try, LuAnn. What do you say? Are you
ready.”

“More ready than I’ve ever been. I love you,
Eddie Garrett,” I said.

Then he smiled that smile, wrapped his arms
around me, and kissed me.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

“Why don’t you go ahead and talk to the
kids? I’ll finish these clothes with Mother.” I kissed him. We
lingered in each other’s arms for a few minutes, then he left.

I walked down the hallway in search of my
mother. Along the walls she’d hung a gallery of family portraits
and snapshots. I stopped in front of the one of Jane and me at the
beach after one of our sand castles was destroyed by high tide. In
the photograph I am seven, Jane is thirteen. I am sobbing, with my
head on Jane’s shoulder. Her arms are wrapped around me, consoling
a sister who stubbornly refuses to accept the inevitable, a sister
who insists on seeing life as she wants it to be, not as it is.

I took a few steps, then paused in front of
a snapshot taken at my high-school graduation. In the picture I am
striding across the Tallagumsa High School stage wearing my cap and
gown. I recalled believing that I had reached the absolute height
of maturity at the moment nine years earlier when the principal
handed me my diploma. Several feet away one of my favorite wedding
day photographs shows me turning away from Daddy and towards Eddie,
my hand reaching for my future husband’s as the preacher looks on.
I remembered clearly just how grown up I thought I was when my
father walked me down the church aisle and “gave me away.” Finally,
near the end of the hallway, there was a photo of me relaxing in
one of the tattered armchairs at the apartment in Atlanta. My bare
feet are resting on a footstool, and newborn Jessie is in my lap.
The corners of my mouth are lifted in a somewhat self-satisfied
smile. When Eddie took that picture, I was congratulating myself on
the ease with which I’d made the transition from childhood to
womanhood.

Now I knew I was wrong. Each and every time.
Now at least I had a chance.

Sample Chapter from
Things are Going to Slide
by Rangeley Wallace

Attendance was high and the noise level
higher in the spacious but packed ASU moot courtroom as the law
school faculty placed faux bets on who they thought would be
awarded the coveted Sam Bailey, Jr. Chair in Clinical Law. At one
point or another, almost every professor glanced, smiled or nodded
at Marilee Carson Cooper, the odds-on-favorite for the fourth
endowed Chair in the history of the relatively young law school at
Alabama Southern University.

Photographers and reporters from several
newspapers and the law school magazine awaited the announcement.
Sharp, bright rays of late morning October sun streamed through the
windows across the back wall, raising beads of sweat on their necks
and backs, but did nothing to dampen their interest.

Marilee stared straight ahead, trying to
look cool and calm, as though today were just another day and not
one that would flip the downward trajectory of her life on its
head. In a matter of minutes she would receive a much-needed boost
of confidence, not to mention tenure and an increase in salary,
prestige and power. The personal and professional blows of the past
year wouldn’t evaporate when she was awarded the Bailey Chair in
Clinical Law, but they would pale, lose their stranglehold on her,
and over time fade into the sort of vague, ephemeral memories of
events she might have read about in some book long ago. The Chair:
she pictured herself in a velvet armchair, something very much like
a throne, from whence she would rule her kingdom.

“You look like you might throw up,”
Marilee’s sister Dede leaned in to whisper, her chin-length, dyed
jet-black hair covering the side of her face.

So much for cool and calm
. “Hush up.”
Marilee elbowed Dede lightly, clenching one clammy hand in the
other, then switching hands. “Don’t you need to go out for a smoke
or go back to New York or something?” Marilee faked a smile, happy
that her sister was in town for a change, though not sure why she’d
really come home. She knew it wasn’t for this announcement; Dede
had already been home for two weeks, approximately eleven days
longer than she’d stayed in Carsonville since she decided to skip
college and move to New York to dance eight years ago. She claimed
she just wanted to relax at home for a bit. But the words “Dede,”
“relax” and “home” had never appeared in the same sentence before,
and Marilee suspected there was some other reason for the
unexpected visit.

Dede’s pale gray-green eyes focused on
Marilee, appraising her thoughtfully. “For someone on the verge of
puking, you look beautiful.”

“Quiet!” Marilee shook her head. She didn’t
feel beautiful, especially while sitting next to her tall, thin
gorgeous sister. After arguing (with herself) whether sleep was
more important than clean hair and make-up, sleep lost the argument
and she’d stumbled out of bed, washed her shoulder-length auburn
hair, applied make up, and tried on her maternity dresses – all six
of them – looking for the most photogenic choice. Three clung too
tightly to her near nine-month bulging midriff, and two were dotted
with intractable juice or food stains. In the end, she chose the
burnt orange dress, thinking it contrasted nicely with her green
eyes, but when she got to the law school and glanced at herself in
the first floor bathroom mirror she’d realized she looked like
Charlie Brown’s great pumpkin. Hopefully, when she walked to the
podium to receive the award, the photographers would focus their
lenses on her face and feature close-ups rather than distance
shots.

“Just trying to help you relax, Sis.” Dede
reached over with her right hand and gently held down Marilee’s
jiggling knee.

A hush settled across the room as Dean Dody
walked in. Because nature had endowed Dean Dody with a short, heavy
body and stubby limbs, many students, and even some of the faculty,
had christened him Dean Dodo. The Dean’s factotums, Associate Deans
Porter Larkin and Sue Scanlon, sat in folding chairs framing the
podium and the judge’s black walnut bench. The red, blue and gold
ASU seal’s eagle peered down on the assemblage from the wall
above.

As the Dean sat down, Associate Dean Sue
Scanlon stood, running her hands along her form-fitting straight
skirt, to the obvious pleasure of many of the male professors in
attendance. She walked to the podium, her hips swaying slightly as
each red high heel touched the ground. At the podium, Sue flipped
her thick blonde mane a few times as if she were in a L’Oreal ad,
cleared her throat, and slowly smiled. Even though Dean Dody would
be the one to announce the recipient of the endowed Chair, Sue, a
paragon of self-confidence, commanded everyone’s attention with her
steely, critical gaze and her gravelly, authoritative voice.

She announced that ASU had taken out a
national ad celebrating the anniversary of Rosa Parks’s fateful
refusal to move to the back of the Montgomery, Alabama bus and that
they’d hired an architect to submit plans for a civil rights
memorial in the ASU law school garden. In the “New South,”
universities tripped over each other trying to prove their civil
liberties credentials. A round of polite applause followed. Sue
beamed, as if she alone were responsible for these tributes.

Dede poked Marilee, and when Marilee looked
over, she rolled her eyes. Marilee nodded. Without a word passing
between them, they agreed: Sue was a piece of work. That she was
always perfectly dressed and coiffed was not the issue, although
sometimes it annoyed Marilee, especially in these last ever more
frumpy days of her second pregnancy. What was most irritating about
Sue Scanlon was her unshakeable belief that she was far smarter
than everyone, and that her way was the only way.

She and Marilee had been arguing about the
law school’s purpose and future path since Sue arrived last spring
from Harvard. Sue didn’t support Clinical Law, Marilee’s area of
expertise, and had single-handedly nixed her otherwise popular
proposal to expand the Clinic and represent the immigrants
languishing at the nearby Department of Homeland Security detention
facility. A year of Marilee’s hard work had been snuffed out with
one word from Sue. Needless to say, Marilee despised her and she
could barely wait to have the Chair, a powerful platform for making
an end run around Sue Scanlon.

Sue glanced down at her notes. “Please
congratulate Professor Ken Barber on his latest article, which has
been accepted for publication in the Vanderbilt Law Journal.” She
looked up at Marilee, smiling meaningfully at her, and then began
to clap.

Marilee glared back. Sue never missed an
opportunity to remind Marilee that she was hopelessly late in
finishing her first law review article. When the law school hired
Marilee to launch the law school Legal Aid Clinic, the Dean had
given her a two-and-a-half-year contract, but made clear that the
contract’s renewal and any hope of tenure would depend on whether
she published. Since then, although she’d written a number of draft
essays on various Clinical Law topics, she hadn’t come close to
putting even one into law review format, thanks to all-consuming
teaching and family obligations, including the end of what she’d
believed was a happy (enough) marriage. Recently, with the
publication deadline approaching even faster than the due date for
giving birth, Marilee had gone to the Dean for an extension. He’d
been kind enough to tell her she needn’t worry, that the endowed
Chair would be hers, and, though they’d expect publication, she’d
have all the time she needed to take care of the new baby
first.

She hadn’t planned to have a second child,
at least not until she’d put the finishing touches on a law review
article. But, as the result of one moment of passion when her
diaphragm had been the last thing on her mind, her four-year-old
daughter Ellie soon would have a sibling. What she’d thought was
passion, though, had turned out to be her swim coach husband Rick’s
botched attempt to break it to her gently that he was in love with
his NCAA champion free-styler – William Larson.

Rick left in March; Marilee found out she
was pregnant in April; Sue arrived in May. The year from hell.

Finally, Sue sashayed back to her seat and
Dean Dody took the podium. Beaming, his round face bobbed up and
down in anticipation. He looked to the left and the right, then
straight ahead as if to assure himself unnecessarily that he had
the faculty’s complete attention.