Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'We're not.'

'Ah.'

'There's just one question I've been meaning to ask you.'

‘I figured you would. The answer is, I truly don't know. That's straight up.' His eyes, a dense, greenish-grey, narrow mysteriously. I haven't a clue what he means. 'Forget it,' he says. ‘I need some work on my Carnak routine.' He raises a hand, inviting my question.

'I couldn't help noticing you sitting here every day with Stew Dubinsky. I wondered how well you know him.'

'Stew? Only since kindergarten. We all grew up in U. Park together.'

'All of you? You mean Stew and Hobie and you?' I didn't have the remotest idea how I was going to broach this subject as I moseyed over, but I've done a decent-enough job. I sound casually curious. Life is full of these funny little connections.

'Hobie wasn't there in grade school. He went to St Bernard's?'

'St Bernard's,' I say, simply to fill airtime. When I was in fourth grade, my mother made the first of her periodic out-of-town journeys, living for three months in North Carolina while she attempted to organize a stamping plant. In the interval my Aunt Hen put me in St Rita's down the block. I was already developing, well ahead of everyone else, and my skin had become awful. I was delighted by the uniform and the opportunity to look like all the other girls. By comparison, the discipline, the catechism, the nuns smacking their rulers on the desktops seemed unimportant. When Zora came back, though, she had a fit. Catholic school? Had Henrietta lost her mind? 'Hobie's Catholic?' I ask, still being somewhat diversionary.

'Just his mother, but Loretta's pretty religious. He got a full dose. I remember, when I was first getting to know him, in sixth grade we had this phenomenal argument because he refused to believe his parents had intercourse in order to conceive him.' Seth laughs at the memory. 'I actually made him cry.'

'But you guys all went to high school together, you and Hobie and Stew?'

'U. High,' he says, 'in the fabled days when U. High was a question, not a place.'

A little buzz passes through me, the naughty satisfaction of the old prosecutor vindicating her suspicions. Stew and Hobie are old pals. Hoping to remain unobtrusive, I smile at Seth's joke.

'If you stick around for Narcotics Court,' I say, 'you'll find those days aren't over. I live in the neighborhood. They have undercover cops in the high school now.'

'Yeah,' he says. 'That's a good column, you know. I write it three times a year. Being the first generation to take a dose of our own medicine. "Listen, kids, Daddy really didn't mean what he was saying about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll." '

'And turn down the record player when I speak to you.'

'The CD player.'

'The CD. So, thanks,' I say.

'That's it? Jeez, don't run away. So what's the deal with Stew?'

'Nothing to talk about. Something struck me while I was on the bench.' He'll mention my question to Stew, I know, even perhaps to Hobie. Which is fine. If it's what I fear, then I want them to realize I'm on to them.

'No, really,' Seth says. 'Take the load off your feet. Tell me what I've missed in the last twenty-five years. Anything dramatic?'

The courtroom is empty now and quiet. One of the stout Polish cleaners, friendly, mute, and virtually analphabetic in English, has come through the chambers corridors and is emptying the trash can behind the bench.

‘I don't think of my life as dramatic, Seth. Anything but. What about you? You're the one who's rich and famous. What's dramatic with you?'

'I'm not famous. Not really. I may not even be that rich pretty soon.' His eyes, his face draw in somewhat with the discomfort underlying this cryptic declaration, then he disciplines himself to look straight at me. 'Lucy and I are separated,' he says.

Sorry, I say. The only thing you can.

'Yeah, well,' he answers. 'Life. Love. The big city. We've been talking about getting back together. I think we will. But it's been a pretty rough patch.' He sighs at the thought. I should have known better than to argue with Marietta. She always has a faultless grip on facts.

'Is she well? Lucy?'

He nods. ‘I think so. She still looks like she's fifteen. There are days I'd say she acts that way, too, but then again there's twenty-five years with me, so she's got her excuse.' The joke does not seem to elevate his mood. 'So you live in U. Park?' he asks. 'You know, my father's still there.'

'Your father? God, my memory really must be going. I have this picture of him as elderly twenty-five years ago.'

'He was. He's ancient now. Don't bother looking for a nicer word. Ninety-three. Visibly failing. Still going to the office a couple of times a week. And still full of shit.'

That was a difficult relationship, Seth and his father. The old man was cold, unyielding. A Holocaust survivor. He had endured, but was hardly unharmed.

'And your mom?' I ask.

'Gone. She died in a home. Advanced Alzheimer's. Terrible thing. It's just a body in a bed.'

'Oh, that's right.' I tap my forehead. 'That was a number of columns, wasn't it?'

'Columns? Hell. That was two years of treatment.'

He's funny, he always was funny, a sweet, vulnerable boy, unusually in touch for a male of his era with the fact he was needy. Irresistibly, mysteriously, I find, still standing above him, that I've touched him on the shoulder. He asks, of course, about Zora, and I answer with the sad news: passed too. I hope my delivery is stoical and mature, but there is still a throb, an inner outcry whenever I am forced to acknowledge this.

'She died of lung cancer four years ago.'

He winces. 'God. I remember the cigarettes. Chesterfields, right? Cancer,' he says.

'I had cancer myself,' I tell him. 'You asked what was dramatic. I suppose that was.'

'No shit,' he says, 'cancer?'

'It was shit, but I'm not kidding.'

'Lung cancer?'

'No, no. Breast. I had a breast removed, almost twelve years ago.' I never impart this information, especially to a man, in a mood of complete neutrality. In some minute way, I always feel as if I'm issuing a warning, an attitude that persists even though I took my retirement money when I left the federal government and, with Gwendolyn's relentless encouragement, used it for a reconstruction. I had terrible conflict about this. I hate the idea of apologizing for being sick. And I'd adjusted. On Saturdays, I'd walk around without even bothering to stuff the other side of my bra. Then I became single again. And it was easier for Nikki. She'd begun to notice and I was always concerned about explaining it to her. Even the little ones are so quick to peek into the void. And what reassurance can I really give her?

Seth says the right things, mentions everyone he knows who's doing well, cites the recovery statistics with which he's familiar. He's clearly pained at the thought of what I went through.

'Was chemo as bad as they say?' he asks.

‘I didn't have chemo. I was lucky. There were no lymph nodes. And I still wanted to try to have a baby. It was radiation. A lot of radiation. It was pretty terrible. But I hated the surgery more. It just seems so barbaric. Cutting off a piece of you? The whole experience made me crazy. It was a little disappointing. I thought I was mature enough to weather anything.'

'No such illusions here.' He's raised a finger. 'We're all as crazy as we used to be, Sonny. There are just fewer opportunities to show it.'

That line I like. My laughter bounces off the empty pews. Standing over Seth, in my robe, I feel some echo of the usual relations of the courtroom, where so many men look up toward me, hoping for clemency of some kind. Seth also wants something. I can feel that much. I've noticed him once or twice, resting his chin atop his hand on the urethaned oak railing of the jury box, his expression as he watches me so stupid, beamish, and – face it – adolescent that I find my heart surge in a combination of shock and dismay as I turn away. It is, all in all, an odd grown-up he's turned out to be. His feelings seem slightly beyond his full control, like a dripping nose. I like him, though. I'm pleased to find he's maintained some basic appeal. It would be horrifying to think I'd wasted my time with him, too, particularly since I've long since reached that conclusion about Charlie.