With a twenty-five-dollar prescription for a bottle of pills (Septra) I walk into the waiting area feeling relieved but a little foolish. Rainey’s face looks frozen in worry. She stands, holding her hands together as if she is about to pray. I had told her the pain was better, but I didn’t tell her how much before I went in.
“Prostatitis,” I mumble to Rainey as I come out into the waiting area.
“Just an infection. I’ve got a prescription for it.”
I head for the door. Do I just imagine it or are the nurses smiling? Rainey walks beside me and says loudly, “You got me out of bed at three in the morning for prostatitis? Women have infections all the damn time.”
Outside, it is humid and sticky as we walk to her car. I feel like an idiot. I had given the hospital my group insurance card from Mays amp; Burton, but I have little hope I’m covered.
“It hurt like hell,” I say, realizing I am whining.
“I thought I was dying.”
Rainey unlocks her door. In the brightly lit parking lot, she looks as exhausted as I feel. She stares at me over the roof of her car.
“You’re such a baby!”
We ride in silence to her house. How did I have the nerve to put her through this? I wouldn’t wish me on my worst enemy. Still, I can’t suppress the feeling entirely that I’ve dodged a bullet. I turn my head toward the window and smile. I’m okay. After a moment, I say sincerely, “I panicked I’m really sorry I put you through this.”
Rainey’s voice is harsh as she pulls up in front of her house.
“Damn you, Gideon, you had me worried to death!”
I stare straight ahead. I have already apologized once, and I’m getting a little tired of being cussed out. Sure, I overreacted; most people would if they thought the plug was about to be pulled on them. I’m sorry I ruined her beauty sleep, but supposedly that’s what friends are for.
“I’ll call you to morrow,” I say and open the door to get out.
She shakes her head angrily and turns off the lights and motor.
“I can’t wait,” she says as she gets out of the car and stalks into her house.
I drive home, whistling, thrilled I don’t face surgery to morrow. What is her problem? She is the one who wanted to be friends. I turn onto my street. What am I supposed to do wait until I’m seventy for her to decide I’m good enough for her? I yawn until I can’t see. I wonder if she thinks that I am playing games with her. I have committed a lot of sins in the sexual wars. But that is not one of them. Not consciously anyway.
13
On direct examination Mrs. Gentry proves to be a real trouper. If we could stop the trial right now (not likely, since she is the first witness and hasn’t even been crossexamined), I am convinced Judge Fogarty, the probate judge hearing her case, would let her leave the nursing home. For an eighty-four-year-old woman still weakened by the trauma of a serious infection and gall-bladder surgery, Mrs. Gentry seems to have made a decent impression on Judge Fogarty. It is control over her property that is going to be the problem.
She has become confused about what she owns and how much income is being generated, but, as I will argue at the end of the trial, why shouldn’t she? Her son has completely cut her off from her money for the last six months. Fogarty, one of the smarter judges in Blackwell County, also has lived up to his reputation of treating everyone with respect. When she began to grow upset because of the difficulty of her memory, he told Mrs. Gentry to take her time and allowed me to lead her when it became obvious she was having problems.
As I turn to leave the podium to allow Ferd (“Nerd” of course, behind his back) Machen, the opposing attorney, to crossexamine Mrs. Gentry, I hear a sound like the buzzing of a power line. I have seen her twice and have never heard her hum this loud, but she is going at “Shine On, Harvest Moon” as if she were making her debut at Carnegie Hall. I know it will stop as soon as Ferd begins to crossexamine her, but he is going to stay glued to his seat until Fogarty makes him get up. I had reminded her for the second time right before the trial began not to hum, but, to my horror, she is becoming a one-woman band right in front of our eyes.
“Your Honor,” I plead, “can we have a recess for a moment
Her asshole of a son is smirking as if his mother had been caught trying to pull down her pants in the courtroom. Judge Fogarty stands up.
“Why don’t we take five minutes?” he says, smiling benignly at Mrs. Gentry.
Typically, as soon as someone speaks, she becomes quiet so she can hear what is being said. It is the silence she has to fill. I invite her to step outside with me. As we walk by the counsel table, I begin to hum “Stars and Stripes For ever.” Screw them all.
The Nerd grins, then tugs at my sleeve and whispers, “You’ll never see a dime of it.”
I shrug as if this were a pro bono referral from Legal Aid.
Yet, I have discovered in the last week that Mrs. Gentry is loaded, or was, having assets of well over a million dollars, more than enough to live comfortably in any retirement community of her choosing and to pay her newest lawyer a generous fee. Out in the hall by the water fountain, I take Mrs.
Gentry’s right hand in mine to calm her down.
“Do you remember we talked about your humming when nobody is talking, Mrs. Gentry?”
Her face flushed with embarrassment, my client stares miserably at the floor. She seems shrunken, and for the first time she looks her age. Maybe she ought to be in a nursing home. Yet why should a person be locked up because of a little humming? She is wearing a bright emerald-green dress and matching pumps with little high heels. This morning when I saw her at the nursing home, I had a fleeting thought that we had a chance. Mrs. Gentry moans, “Some people bite their fingernails when they get nervous. I hum.”
True, but not so loud they can be heard a block away, I think, but then I get an idea. I pull from my right pants pocket an unopened pack of five-flavored Life Savers I bought in the courthouse coffee shop this morning and hand it to her.
“When nobody’s talking, take one of these out and suck on it like your life depends on it.”
She squints warily at the pack of mints in my hand as if I were trying to get her to take drugs and then bends over the fountain to drink. When she is done, she straightens up and takes the mints, sighing, “I’ll try.”
Back in the courtroom, the mints don’t rescue her completely, but they help. A couple of times during her crossexamination, she sounds like someone humming with a Life Saver in her mouth, but at least the volume is way down.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Gentry is becoming more confused than ever about what she owns, and there is nothing she can do about it, since Judge Fogarty won’t sustain a single one of my objections. It is apparent that she needs a guardian of her estate but not so obvious at this point that she requires a guardian of her person, as the law distinguishes the two.
Rustling through his papers, Ferd pretends to pause, hoping he can get her humming again, but I point to her mouth, and she pops in a Life Saver just as she begins “The Blue Danube.”
The Nerd waits as long as he can and then asks, “Isn’t it a fact that three weeks ago you were caught in a closet…”
I shoot out of my seat, cutting Ferd off, “This is irrelevant, Your Honor!”
Judge Fogarty, who for some reason suffers fools more gladly than most judges, says mildly, “I can’t rule on your objection, Mr. Page, until I hear the question.”
There is no jury to keep from hearing the question, so there is no excuse to approach the Bench and argue the point quietly. I look at Mrs. Gentry and know she is beginning to die up there. She pops her last Life Saver in her mouth and stares at me with such a forlorn expression I feel a lump forming in my mouth.
Ferd, whose normal clientele is about as scruffy as mine, finishes his question, “.. . in a closet at the nursing home having sex with a Mr. Peterson?”