The Furthest City Light (17 page)

I didn’t even try to contain my annoyance. “Gee, Vickie, that’s a bit melodramatic, don’t you think? In the meantime, my client’s so-called life is truly over.”

“You’re right, sweetheart, and I’m sorry. I know how hard you’ve worked, how much you wanted to win. This has to be a huge disappointment. But at least you’ve also done something positive. You’ve needed to quit for years.”

“Yep, that’s what you’ve been telling me.” I reached down and ripped a piece of thread off the edge of my pants, then realized too late the entire hem was about to unravel. Well, fuck it; I wouldn’t be wearing these stupid court clothes anytime soon.

“Rachel, I’ve been urging you to quit for years because I’ve never seen anyone use up as much adrenaline as you have.” She was straining to sound reasonable. “It’s a miracle you can even get out of bed, never mind function as well as you do. The supply, though, is not unlimited. When it’s gone, it’s gone. The health consequences can be catastrophic.”

I tried to stand up, but my stomach hurt too much. “Great lecture, Doc, but the timing still needs a little work.”

After a couple of seconds, Vickie said, “Jesus, Rachel, why are we bickering?”

I rubbed my face. “I’m not sure, but I suppose it has something to do with how freaked out I am.” I stared at the empty carton of ice cream in my lap.

“Do you want me to come home?” she asked.

“I just ate a pint of your ice cream.”

“Why would you do that? You’re lactose intolerant. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

***

We spent the evening reading Dashiell Hammett’s
The Thin Man
to each other and then making love. Before I fell asleep, I was thinking maybe this transition wouldn’t be so difficult after all. Then I woke up a few hours later, my face stained with tears, and knew I was in for it. Headed, as the Rolling Stones sang, for my nineteenth nervous breakdown.

I spent the next week roaming from one room to another, never stopping for more than a few minutes in any particular place. I thought of the pale restless lions I’d watched at the zoo when I was a child and wondered if they’d actually understood their true situation—that they were in prison—or if they’d simply paced back and forth because it was their nature. I hoped it was the latter, but knew in my heart it wasn’t. At the beginning of the week, I stood in front of my bookshelves and pulled out five or six novels I’d always intended to read, but at the end of the week I hadn’t done anything more than glance at the covers. I washed the dishes every day, made the bed, vacuumed the rugs and overwatered the plants. I felt like a mechanical doll, a lesbian Stepford wife.

I kept telling myself that my listlessness was only temporary, a kind of postpartum reaction to having made such a huge, long overdue decision. But I was terrified. What if my paralysis was in fact permanent? What if I turned out to be like Vickie’s uncle George who retired, moved into a suite at a hotel in downtown New York and never left for twenty years? Even worse, I could already feel the temptation to believe that if I wasn’t doing anything of value (like rescuing people) then I didn’t really matter.

One of the main problems of being unemployed, of course, was that everyone else was working. If I’d had someone to climb with, for instance, everything might have turned out differently. Vickie, to her credit, made an effort to come home by five o’clock each day, which must have required juggling everyone’s schedule at the hospital. She begged me to try a daytime yoga class, but I balked at the idea of spending an hour and a half practicing a series of slow-motion moves and ending up in exactly the same place I’d started. It reminded me too much of my career in which I’d essentially defended the same five people with the same five problems over and over again. Hiking seemed equally futile. If I wasn’t risking my life or trying to save someone else’s, why bother?

By Friday afternoon, I was almost comatose. As I lay on the rug in the living room, I decided that only a masochist would have lasted at my job as long as I had. Looking back, I saw a long string of heartbreaks interrupted only occasionally by a handful of inconsequential victories. What kind of career choice was that? Would Vickie have remained a doctor if ninety percent of her patients ended up dying in her arms?

For the thousandth time, I thought about Emily, wondering where in the system she was and how she was doing. I pictured her sitting among sly dangerous women, attempting to find common ground. Would she find any allies? Would she make any friends? Although I’d promised myself I’d stop worrying about her, I couldn’t. It was pointless, of course, because she was light years away, living in another universe. You can’t protect her now, I told myself. You never could.

And another unexpected thought began stalking me as well. That I’d not only failed as a lawyer, but I’d also failed as a Jew. Which was funny because I hardly ever thought about my ethnicity. Like my parents, I was never an observant Jew. We didn’t even believe in God. But they’d suggested early on that being Jewish meant being an advocate for social justice. Since we’d been oppressed for centuries, they reasoned, we were experts at noticing and fighting against oppression. Our mission, if we chose to accept it, was to help repair the world. To do something about a few of the myriad injustices that surrounded us. My father was a professor of American History, my mother a newspaper reporter, and I—taking it one step further—had become a criminal defense attorney representing indigent people. But instead of repairing the world, I’d let an innocent woman fall through the cracks, a woman I’d practically promised to save. Bad lawyer. Bad Jew.

Clearly, I was depressed. When Vickie came home that day, she took one look at me and stamped her feet.

“Enough,” she said. “Get up.” Her tone meant business.

I struggled to a sitting position.

“I know it’s been rough,” she began. “I know it really killed you to lose Emily’s case, but you have to move on. This isn’t helping. Fortunately, I have an idea.” She sat down across from me on the rug. “Let’s go back to Zihuatanejo. We ended up having a wonderful time there. I think I can arrange to take three weeks. Dave and Allison have agreed to cover for me. What do you say?”

I noticed the lines around Vickie’s mouth seemed deeper than a week ago, and I reached over to try and smooth them out a little.

“Thanks for the offer, babe. I’d love to go on a vacation with you, but not right now. I have to figure out my life first. The thought of lying on a beach in a foreign country while the poor people who live there trudge back and forth in front of me trying to sell me junky things that I don’t want is too much to bear.”

Vickie nodded. “Fine. If you don’t want to see poor people, let’s go somewhere like Aspen and see rich people.”

“That would be even worse.”

My partner tried to laugh, but she was obviously frustrated. “Rachel, you have to do something.”

I looked into her beautiful disapproving eyes. “Why?”

She looked surprised and then confused. “Because this isn’t healthy.” She paused. “And you’re scaring me.”

I sighed and lay back down again, gazing up at a couple of interesting cracks in the ceiling. “Let me get this straight. You want me to stop feeling sad and do something so that you won’t have to feel scared. Under the circumstances, don’t you think that’s a little selfish? Besides, what’s the difference between lying on a beach or lying on the living room floor?”

Vickie stood up and was now looking down at me. “That’s not what I meant, Rachel.”

I waved her away, as if she were a bee that wouldn’t leave me alone. “Hey, you know what? If you squint your eyes in a particular way, the cracks in the ceiling look just like stallions racing free across an empty prairie.”

Vickie tapped her foot a little too close to my head. “What about a few sessions of therapy? It might be really helpful. Allison says Marilyn Samler is great.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Maybe you could figure out why you’re so fearful. Actually, here’s an even better idea. Why not take a vacation without me? It’ll be a lot more fun that way. For both of us.”

I could hear the sharp intake of breath, as if I’d punched or slapped her. “Maybe I will, Rachel. A vacation without you sounds delightful. It’s very tiresome being a guest at your self-indulgent little pity party.”

I smiled icily. “Well, the party’s over. From now on, whenever you’re around, I’ll just put on a happy face.”

There was dead silence and I guessed she’d had enough. Finally I heard her whisper, “Rachel, we’ve never fought like this before.”

I sat up, grabbed her leg, and held onto it. “I know and I’m very sorry.”

After a long pause, she asked, “Are we going to be all right?”

I closed my eyes, rested my head against her leg and said, “Of course we are.” And hoped it was the truth.

Later when we couldn’t sleep, I apologized again and promised to make a genuine effort. We curled up in each other’s arms and I wished that love alone could solve all of my life’s problems. Christ, even as a kid, I’d known better. I was obviously regressing, but at least I didn’t have too far to go. A few more years, and I’d only be a twinkle in my father’s eyes. That night, I dreamed Emily stabbed me in the heart with a pair of scissors.

***

Over the weekend, I called Maggie, Ray and our friends Dave and Allison, and told them about my midlife crisis, but saying it out loud only seemed to flesh it out, confirm its solidity. I realized, too late, that no one truly wants to hear about your midlife crisis unless you can make it sound amusing. Even then, in order to punish and deter you from ever mentioning it again, they’ll try to help you figure out why it happened and how to avoid it in the future. Maggie’s proposed solution was to go climbing, but I decided to wait until I was sure I wanted to live.

The following Monday, Maggie phoned to tell me she’d fallen on the first pitch of the Yellow Spur and broken her ankle. She’d slipped before she could get her first piece in and fallen about fifteen feet. It was every climber’s nightmare. I knew she’d been planning a trip to Nicaragua as a member of some kind of brigade, but I hadn’t been paying attention to the details. I’d been too obsessed with Emily’s murder trial.

“So now I have to try and find someone to take my place,” Maggie said. “Shit. I’ve been looking forward to this for almost a year. I’m so bummed.”

“I can imagine. I’m really sorry.” I switched the receiver to my other ear, picked up some dirty dishes and carried them to the sink. “What’s the purpose of your brigade again? I forgot.”

She sighed, clearly annoyed. “To help rebuild a medical clinic that was burned down by the Contras.”

“Oh right,” I said. “Sounds worthwhile.” I plugged the sink, and then turned on the hot water.

“It is.”

I examined the sponge and decided it was time for a new one. “Where exactly was the clinic?”

“Where?” She sounded surprised. “In Jalapa, a little town in northern Nicaragua not far from the Honduran border.”

I nodded, then bent down and found a package of sponges under the sink. As I straightened up, I said, “Well, maybe I could take your place.”

“You?”

“Why not? What else do I have to do? Vickie’s going to divorce me if I don’t do something soon. It’ll be good for me. I can get out of my own head and hopefully be of some use. It’s the perfect solution, actually.”

“Do you know anything about the situation in Nicaragua?”

I shrugged. “Some. I read
The Nation
.”

Maggie started to laugh. “Do you even know who the Contras are?”

“The opposition.”

“Good guess. Are they the good guys or the bad guys?”

I thought for a moment. “The bad guys.” I paused. “Which means the United States is probably backing them.”

She laughed again. “No wonder you were such a good lawyer. Okay, fine. I’ll ask my friend Laura to bring over a packet of information later on today. Don’t you think you ought to discuss this with Vickie first, though?”

I turned off the water and started washing some plates. “Vickie’s my girlfriend, not my mother. She’ll support whatever decision I make.”

“Are you sure? You’re going into a war zone.”

“Hey, I’ve been in a war zone for twelve years. It can’t be any worse. Vickie will probably be relieved.”

Maggie snorted. “Don’t be naïve, Rachel.” She was serious now. “This is the real thing. Real guns, real rockets and real people dying. It could be dangerous.”

I studied the plate in my hands, realized it was cracked, and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Well, you were willing to risk it. How bad could it be?”

“That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know.”

I hesitated for less than a second. “Okay, I’ve been duly warned. I’ll work it out with Vickie.”

The packet of information Laura dropped off a few hours later was thicker than a small book. Since Vickie wouldn’t be home until ten, I had most of the evening to skim through the material.

Nicaragua, I learned, had had a long history of struggling against United States domination. In 1927, a local hero named Sandino organized an army of peasants to drive out the US Marines who were then occupying the country. Sandino’s army fought the marines for seven years and won strong popular support. When the marines finally withdrew, they left behind the infamous National Guard headed by Anastasio Somoza as a replacement force. One of the Guard’s first acts was to murder Sandino. For the next forty-five years, the National Guard, headed by a succession of Somozas (all of them relatives) became notorious throughout the world for its brutality and corruption.

By this point, of course, I was hooked. I’d always been a sucker for the underdog. I grabbed a glass of iced herbal tea, curled up again on the couch, and continued reading. Backed by the National Guard, the Somoza family not only ran the country, but owned much of it as well, amassing a tidy fortune estimated at four hundred and fifty million. In the meantime, the vast majority of Nicaraguans lived in desperate poverty. The United States, unfortunately, supported the dictatorship. President Roosevelt was even quoted as saying, “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Eventually the FSLN (the Sandinista National Liberation Front) organized the Nicaraguan people and they ousted Somoza in 1979.