Yettie brings her hands to her face as if the indignity of this question is too much for her to bear. Finally, she answers, her voice trembling a bit, “How many black professional men do you think I know?”
Her honesty is stunning. She probably doesn’t know personally twenty black men close to her age with even a master’s degree.
“Not many, I guess,” I say stupidly, feeling I should say something.
“Look,” she says, her voice suddenly weary, “I know I sound like a black bitch from hell. All I’m telling you is that you don’t want me as a witness, because I’ll tell everything I’masked.”
I sit for a few more moments, but there is nothing else to say.
“Pair enough,” I mutter and stand.
“Thanks for your time.”
She doesn’t reply.
11
Clan Bailey stands in the middle of my doorway looking as mournful as a man beginning a diet the day before Thanksgiving.
He pleads, “I know it sounds hideous, but it’s right down your alley.”
I rock back in my chair and roll my eyes in mock horror.
“An eighty-four-year-old woman caught having sex in a closet in a nursing home, who wants to dissolve her guardianship?
Thanks a lot.”
Now that he has me talking, Clan tries to hide a manila folder behind him and edges through the door like an uninvited insurance agent.
“You were the best attorney at that mental health garbage at the state hospital when we were at the PD’s Office. Come on, if I could get another continuance, I would.”
I put my feet up on my desk as I watch Clan ease into the chair across from me. He is as inevitable as a mud slide
Obviously, he was hoping his client would die before he had to try the case.
“You know how to natter a guy, Clan.”
Clan balances the dog-eared folder, which looks as if he has been snacking on it, between his knees.
“She was a friend of my mother’s, and before Mama would die, I had to sign a pledge in blood I’d try to help Mrs. Gentry if she ever wanted out.”
I smile, remembering the list of chores Rosa gave me before she died. Polish the table, water the tomatoes. It was as if she were going on a weekend trip. I haven’t missed a week with the table.
“When’s the hearing?” I ask. Hell, I owe Clan. He has given me outright four legitimate cases in the two weeks I’ve been in solo practice and referred me two others. The trouble is that this is the kind of case where you lose credibility. Not only does it waste the judge’s time but it also runs the risk of a Rule 11 motion for an attorney’s fee from the other side.
“Next Tuesday,” Clan mumbles, daring to edge the folder onto the corner of my desk.
“Our plane is supposed to leave at eleven. Brenda and I ‘ll never make it even if she’s my only witness. The nursing home would leave half their patients sitting on bedpans to have their witnesses in court to testify in order to keep somebody from busting out.”
I look down at my desk calendar. It has a big hole in it next Tuesday, but it would be nice to fill it up with some clients who pay their bills. If it weren’t for Andy and my rat-burner case (and she is beginning to call too frequently), I’d be running a one-man Legal Services program. Besides those cases, I’ve got fifteen clients (mostly women who want divorces) and have managed to collect a grand total of nine hundred dollars from them since I moved into the Layman Building.
“Go ahead and hand me the nicker,” I say irritably, “and quit trying to slide it up my pants leg.”
Clan snickers and hands me the folder, which is sticky as well as ragged. If I licked it, I could probably get a sugar high from all the candy Clan handles between meals.
I open it, and a single sheet of paper falls out. On a half-sheet of yellow legal paper Clan has written the words “Wants out.” I pick up the folder by my fingertips.
“Impressive amount of research,” I say and drop it into the wastepaper basket.
Clan, now that I’ve taken this turkey, props his own feet on my desk. “I got it all in my head,” he says, pointing with his finger at his thinning brown hair, now speckled with gray.
“Besides, you’re getting a nice fee.”
I get out a pad in the vain hope he will at least tell me how to get to the nursing home.
“Forgive me for being so cynical,” I say, looking for my pen, “but somehow I doubt if Mrs. Gentry’s got control over her assets.”
Clan, grunting from the effort, reaches across to the corner of my desk to where my red Flair pen has rolled and flips it to me.
“I was about to add,” he grins, “if you get her sprung.”
For the next fifteen minutes Clan tells me the story of his mother’s friendship with Mrs. Gentry, which has nothing to do with her case. Finally, since it is nearly the time the cafeteria opens, he gets to the point. A year ago, with the aid of the family doctor, Mrs. Gentry’s son hustled his widowed mother through a guardianship proceeding (she was slowly recovering from surgery), and had her transferred to a nursing home, where Dan’s mother met her. Instead of shriveling up and dying, as she was supposed to, she has made a full recovery, according to Clan.
“Have you ever seen her?” I ask, totally skeptical at this point. With my family history, I can’t imagine even living to sixty-five, much less thinking I’d be able to get it up in my eighties.
” She’s looks just like Dr. Ruth!” Clan cackles. ” And talks about sex ninety to nothing.”
I rub my head. I can believe the first part but not the second. Clan will hype any story, anytime.
“Is she really eighty-four?” I ask.
His face benign as a cherub’s, Clan beams at me.
“If she’s a day,” he says, struggling to his feet.
“That I can swear to.”
I nod. Meaning the rest is bullshit. I write on my calendar, “Dr. Ruth” and, determined to get something out of this, get up to go downstairs and eat lunch with Clan. I will go out this afternoon to the nursing home to get this travesty under way. As we pass the receptionist’s desk, Julia nods, and picks up a pencil and taps her teeth with it.
“Tweedledee and Tweedledum off to the chow hall again. Maybe we can get a direct phone line installed down there.”
There is no doubt in my mind who is Tweedledum. About the second week I started getting used to Julia’s malevolent comments and have come to accept them for the truths about myself they contain.
“Would you see about that, sweetie?” Clan coos at her.
Julia pushes her cheeks out at Clan and pats her poochy stomach. She is dressed today in mauve pants and a lavender silk shirt, reminding me of a big grape.
“Whatever you say, Porky,” she says, smiling at Clan.
“By the way,” she says to me, “while you were in the crapper earlier Mona Moneyhart called again. Should we be installing a direct line for her too?”
I roll my eyes at Clan. I’d like to trade him Mona. Somehow, I’ve got to learn to charge divorce clients by the hour if I’m going to earn any money. I say to Julia, “I’ll call her back after lunch.”
Julia pitches the pink message slip in the wastepaper basket by her desk. “It’d save time if we got a little cot for her and put it in the corner of your office.”
I nod at Clan, who is grinning now that Julia has shifted targets.
“Let’s go eat.”
In the cafeteria we are joined by Frank D’Angelo and “Ibnkie Southerland, attorneys from our floor. Frank, who is as wiry as Clan is fat, puts his salad down on the far edge of the table across from Clan.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Clan,” he says, watching Clan spoon in a mouthful of cherry cobbler, “it’s just that I haven’t eaten since last night, and it doesn’t look like you’re slowing down.”
Clan moves his hand toward Frank as if to grab his plate of mostly lettuce and cucumbers and then waves it away.