Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unfit to Practice

“I wonder if I’m relieving suffering, or causing it. I’m confused, Andrea.”

“You do good work, Nina,” Andrea said. “You help people in trouble and you don’t get much support. I’m proud of you. Don’t forget that.”

Nina kicked at a stone that had fallen off Matt’s rock wall. Squirrels ran along the top, chittering. “It’s all I ever wanted to be. I don’t have any other identity.”

“Now, there you’re wrong. You’re a mother, a householder, a person full of promise, and you’re young yet. What are you, thirty-four? Five? If you had to change jobs, you could go back to college.”

“And study what?”

“Well, psychology for instance. You could be a counselor. Or a teacher.”

“I am a counselor. I counsel people, I plan their lives, I defend them when they’re attacked, I help them order their business affairs, I speak for them, I take care of their problems. This work is so broad in scope-I never get bored, that’s for sure.”

“I know it’s hard. The responsibility is killing,” Andrea said. “I just want to say that I admire you. Now don’t turn away. Let it sink in. Accept it. I admire you. A lot of people admire you. Are you listening?”

But she wanted to know what to do with her life. She felt so troubled by what was happening, she had lost her touchstones. “That wasn’t what I was getting at.”

Andrea laughed. “But that’s what you got.”

“We’re bummed that it’s come to this,” Brandy said, frowning, hands in her silk trouser pockets.

“We’re very unhappy,” Angel agreed, even her hair subdued. She looked like Annie Lennox. Sweet dreams were not made of this, however.

“What has it come to?” Nina asked, knowing she did not want to hear the answer. Monday morning often went haywire as the weekend’s buildup piled in. Sandy tapped in the next room. Messages sat in sorted piles on the desk. Forty-seven other cases called to her from the file cabinet. Meanwhile Brandy and Angel blocked the doorway to the inner office.

“Ladies, take a seat,” Nina said. “What’s on your mind this morning?”

They came in and sat down. “It wasn’t my idea,” Brandy said. “And Angel’s husband, Sam, thinks it stinks, too. We want you to know that.”

“No question. It stinks,” Angel agreed.

A knock on the door interrupted them. Nina got up to answer and found Sandy there.

“Nina, Paul’s on the phone. Will you take the call?”

Nina apologized to the two women, closed the door halfway behind her, stepped into the reception area, and picked up the phone.

“I’m sorry to butt in like this. I understand you’re busy.”

“It’s a bad time,” she said. “Something’s up with Angel and Brandy. I’m in the middle of it.”

He hesitated. “I can call back.”

“No. Tell me, what’s going on?” she asked. Sandy licked an envelope slowly. Then her hands took their stations, hovering over the keyboard, unwilling to break into the conversation.

“Listen, Nina, I’ve got several things to tell you but since you’re busy, we’ll discuss those later. But I want to say-things went frosty at that dinner. I shouldn’t have said what I said about you practicing law.”

“It’s okay. I’m taking a poll, actually.”

“The condo in Carmel is always waiting for you.” He paused. “You are so dear to me.”

Nina glanced back through the crack in the door into her office, where the two women were engaged in a frantic, whispered debate. “Paul, I’m sorry. I can’t think about that right now. I can’t even talk anymore.”

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll check in later.”

“Okay.” She put the phone down.

Sandy’s fingers resumed their customary tapping. Nina walked back inside her office.

“We’ve been beating around the bush,” Angel said, taking charge, “but now, here goes.”

Brandy stood up suddenly and went over to the window. She put a hand on the ledge but never once looked outside. She looked at Angel, at the desk, at the file cabinets, at the framed documents on the wall. She looked everywhere except at Nina. “I told Bruce the whole story, beginning to end, about what happened at the campground, about seeing Cody Stinson, about meeting him in the woods and Angel getting knocked over and me getting grabbed-”

“He was upset,” Angel added unnecessarily. “First off, he hated that she was here without him, and second, Cody Stinson went to see him and scared him good.”

“I really don’t want you to get the wrong idea about us,” Brandy said. “We’re not vindictive or vengeful people.”

“Not at all,” Angel said. “None of us are.”

“So when Bruce showed up at Angel’s on Sunday with this letter, we were surprised.”

“Shocked, you mean.”

Nina got the drift, and drifted away. She looked out the window at Mount Tallac, crowned with white. Then she turned her attention to the lake, the ancient, sacred lake. She considered the hill of beans that was her life, insignificant beside those two regal natural features, and felt a stab of sorrow, because petty or not, it was her hill, her life, and she had loved everything about it. Now along came a letter from a lawyer and it would explode and she could do nothing to stop it. Subterranean terror. Fractures in her beautiful geography.

Maybe the women had some inkling of the full effect of their revelation, and maybe not, but at last Brandy managed to say what they had come to say.

“Bruce wrote a complaint to the California State Bar about you. And I signed it,” Brandy said, standing up.

“So did I,” Angel admitted, also rising.

“We thought it would be really low not to bring it to you personally and say that-”

“We’re awfully sorry.”

Nina couldn’t trust herself to speak, so she didn’t speak. She kept her back to them, trying to control a quiver that had started up around her shoulders and threatened to take over her body.

“Sorry,” they said again in unison, and left.

No sooner had the two women wandered out than the phone rang.

“I am in conference,” Nina said to Sandy. Closing the door, she leaned against it, hyperventilating. Only two things in the world could inspire this level of dread. The other was an IRS audit. The audit was definitely a remote second to a complaint to the state bar. Eyes closed, she took the blow. When she started to feel like she couldn’t stand it, she leaned over and let her arms hang and made herself breathe. She had had a panic attack once before and she was afraid it might happen again. Be cool, be cool, she told herself.

Call Jack, call Paul, call-

A knock. “Phone,” Sandy said. “They said it’s important.”

“Not now.”

“Urgent.”

“Who is it?”

“Heritage Life. The adjuster in the Vang case, Marilyn Rose. She says she has to talk to you. Something about the check.”

Like a ninety-year-old in ill health, Nina leaned on the desk as she went around it and sank into her chair. She rubbed her face and somehow put Bruce Ford aside.

“Hi, Marilyn,” she said. “How are you?”

“Hoping you didn’t send that check to the Vangs yet.”

“Why not?”

“Well, did you?”

“Over the weekend.”

“Well, then we’re both in deep shit,” Marilyn said rapidly. “Now I’m definitely going to get canned, and I owe it all to you. I trusted you. I liked you. You’re going to get a letter and by God you’d better have an explanation or my ass will be out on the street, and I’ve got a mortgage and a sick husband and two kids and if that sounds like I’m scared shitless, well, Counselor, I am in fact scared shitless. It hurts me, it does, the way you used me, and it amazes me that I could misjudge another human being the way I misjudged you. My supervisor is sitting in her office right now writing up a report to three vice presidents in our company, and I’ll be spending all evening groveling on their carpets. I’ll be applying for employment opportunities at Hooters with this job market. But by God, Nina, you’re going down with me. You are. I’m not going down alone. I can’t believe a fellow woman would do this to me-”