Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

As Seth remains beside me, easily keeping pace, I am engaged in reassessment. 'Hobie T. Tuttle can be treacherous.' 'He and Dubinsky cooked something up.' It's hard to imagine Seth as Hobie's emissary and bringing those messages. I'm even briefly tempted to ask what he thinks Hobie's up to, but better sense prevails. With Seth, I have to maintain a firm grip.

'Jesus, it's cold out here.' He's attempting to ease the silence with a joke and rubs the open expanse of his scalp. 'No natural protection,' he says.

'Seth, am I supposed to feel sorry for you because you're bald?'

'Going,' he says. 'Going bald. Forehead-challenged.'

'Let me tell you the truth, Seth. A woman after forty has to worry about everything. Top to bottom. Her chest sagging. The onset of menopause. Bones going soft. If she's had kids, her back end isn't likely to fit the jeans from twenty years ago, and maybe her bladder's weak, too. So it doesn't really break my heart that men go bald. In fact – and I'm not usually like this – I'm glad they have something to worry about. And to top it off, the truth is I don't think it looks all that bad. It makes a guy appear mature, which, frankly, is a rare quality in a lot of men. So I'm not sorry for you, Seth.'

'Holy smokes,' he says. 'What's got you so cranky?'

'Come on, Seth. You're following me down the street, on one of my two free hours in the week. And frankly, every time I talk to you, there's this lament. As if I'm supposed to pity you, when the fact is I've got a job to do. Which I've already explained.'

Oddly, he does not offer the defenses I would have expected. 'Right,' he says instead and his eyes fall to his shoes. I realize suddenly – guiltily – that I've been trying to drive him off by picking a fight. His face, in the interval, remains buffeted by strong feeling.

'My son died,' he says then. 'You asked what was dramatic for me. Yesterday? That was dramatic'

He has tried, it seems, to strike the tone of historical distance we maintained about our lives a day ago. But the edges of his voice do not hold up. I stop at once while he flies on another twenty paces, so completely unable to look at me that it's that long before he notices I'm not beside him. We've reached the tarred oval and he trudges back to me, against the backdrop of the tortured amputee elms, his posture withered by the questions he knows are coming next.

How long ago? I ask. Almost two years, he answers.

'My God. Was he sick? Was he chronic?'

'He was just a little boy. Seven years old. I mean, kind of a difficult little boy if I'm completely honest. He died in a traffic accident.' He waits a moment and searches the pewter sky for the sun, where the dark accumulation of clouds has temporarily milked the daylight of everything vital. ‘I was driving.' 'Oh God.'

'It wasn't my fault. That's what everybody says. This guy was drunk – just out of his mind, four times the legal limit, and he ran a light. He hit a curb and came careening right at us. I saw him, you know, maybe out of the corner of my eye, I was trying to move the car forward, it had started forward, but he had the angle on us. It like sheared the car in half. One second I'm sitting there telling Isaac to mind his fingers in his nose, and – Afterwards, the one thing I was grateful for was that I didn't have to hear him scream, and yet, Jesus, how can your child die without even making a sound?'

By now, my arms have closed around my sides to cope with the rampant pain. I try a few words of consolation, but his palm rises at once, and I realize this must be one of the worst parts, listening to people grope for words, in hopes of expressing an agony so much his, not theirs. Even then, I can't help saying the same thing again and again. I'm sorry. So sorry.

‘I had no idea, Seth. Your life seems so exposed in your column. There hasn't been a word, has there?'

‘I hate talking about it. I'm rotten with self-pity, as it is. You see it. Everybody sees it. I'm just a running sore.'

I find I have taken his hand. Sweat has trailed down beneath his watchband and the sleeve of his dress shirt. His other hand is against the bridge of his nose, in an effort at self-control.

'And the guy who hit you? Is he in prison?' Dumb question, I think at once, stupid, trying to press the whole thing within my own horizons, because the thought of what he's been through so frightens me.

'Oh, sure. He got fifteen years. He had a record, a big record. Some poor fucked-up black guy. Stolen car. The whole shot. He pled guilty. I never even had to look at him again. Lucy went to court for the sentencing. I guess she cried and carried on. I just -

I mean, what's the point? I never think about him, the guy. I think, you know, if I'd moved faster, if I'd pressed the accelerator harder. If, if, if.' He scans the park. A thirteen-year-old, hat on backwards and smoking a cigarette, whizzes by us on roller blades. 'We're going to freeze out here,' he says. He starts to jog then and I follow, walking fast. He slows to keep my pace.

'And Lucy? Is Lucy crazy with it? Is she -'

'She's crazy. Not that I'm in any position to talk. We're both out of our minds. But in different ways.' This is what's between Lucy and him, I realize. It must be. We travel half the oval without words, but he can tell what I've been thinking. 'It's not like she blames me,' he says. 'At least, not the way I blame myself. But like this? Running? Six months ago, we started jogging together before dinner. We'd take the dog. We bought these lights you wear on your elbows? We had matching suits. But how can you enjoy it? You can't. You think this is not how our life is supposed to be. We're supposed to be at home. We're supposed to be tied down. We're supposed to be yelling at Isaac to turn off the TV, to start on his homework. It's not bitter with us. We just can't find a way to move on.'

'I wouldn't imagine Lucy knows how to be bitter.'

'Not a clue.'

'Still incredibly good-natured?' 'Incredibly.'

'I assume she found a career beyond astrology?'

'Yeah. But she still believes in it. And reincarnation. And ethical shopping. And the music of the spheres. You'd call her New Age.' He marvels at her with a toss of his head. For the past year, he says, Lucy has been the director of a local soup kitchen in Seattle. He draws an ironic picture of her, on a first-name basis with all the losers, junkies, drunks, and nuts to whom she extends a helping hand. Lucy is a person of boundless generosity, a collector of strays, mother to anyone in need, whether it's a bird with a crippled wing, her beautician who needed English lessons, or their cleaning lady, for whose eldest daughter Lucy, by dint of an eight-month crusade, won admission to Bellingham Country Day, where Seth's own children were not accepted.

'Do I sound like I resent this?' Seth asks.

'Maybe,' I answer.

'Then I'm striking the wrong note. I'm amazed – that her heart goes out so fully to people she barely knows, while I'm always in this muddle, trying to find a way to feel enough for the people I'm supposed to care about.'

‘I hope it works out for you, Seth.'

‘I do, too. It's a mess now. You've been through it. The friends. The house. I mean, all of a sudden nothing belongs to you anymore. Stuff that was yours forever. People see you coming and they have this look on their face like you goosed them. I'm glad to be out of there for a while.'

Charlie's pals were at the U. Ray Napue was acerbic, terribly funny about everyone but himself. Carter Melk, another poet, was gentle but wordless. I miss both of them, but not the university, with its intense, secret rivalries, reminiscent of a medieval court.

'So what did your chump do?' he asks.

'Charlie? Why's he a "chump"?'

'He let you go, didn't he?'

'I left him. Finally. We took turns over the years. But I got the last curtain.'