E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

“Linda, I think we ought to get down to business. After all you do have appointments this morning,” the lawyer said. Image white coat hands in the pockets chew on the other side for a day or two. Kind of woman at her best in an office.

“I recognize in you the same look, the same look I see in the mirror. It’s very familiar to me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The look of the same memories. We walk around in the same memories. It’s like a community.”

She sat down on the couch next to the lawyer and their hands met. They held hands sitting facing me on the couch.

“Linda’s a big girl and I can only advise her what to do,” the lawyer said. “Tell us what you’re getting at. There is nothing Linda or her father has to fear from you. There is no legal issue here. We’re not obliged to discuss that case with you.” He says “that case” as if he’s dangling someone’s pair of dirty drawers. “Do you need money? What’s your problem?”

I said: “What did you say your name was? Dale? Why don’t you shut up for a fucking minute, Dale. I’m trying to tell her something. You weren’t there, were you? I don’t remember seeing you there.”

The lawyer glanced at Linda, struggled to his feet. He was white. “I want to warn you that as a lawyer I’m in a position to advise you on intimidation, threatened or implied, and on assault or threat of an assault in the state of California.” He is pointing his shaking finger.

Daniel waited, like a public speaker, for silence. His eyes were closed. He had seen enough of the lawyer. He understood more of Linda by her lawyer: a fellow with brown shining eyes, Disney-animal eyelashes, square clothes, skinhead haircut. Emanates passivism. To be kind. Maybe it’s his chin which in a few years will be completely engulfed in itself. Yet he’s blandly good-looking. Thirty-seven, — eight years old. A dangerous wide-hipped whitey.

Daniel opened his eyes. The lawyer had sat back down. I think he had only wanted to show Linda that he could act commendably. Daniel said, “What I mean is both of us, we both live lives that accommodate an event neither of us was responsible for. Can you agree with that? Is that a reasonably fair description?”

She stared at him. Almost imperceptibly her head dipped, as if in assenting she wanted him to know how small how shallow the space they could both stand in. And even that she had to recant: “You, however, are the one who’s bringing it up. You’re the one who’s come here to dredge things up.”

“I’m hoping your father can help me settle some questions.”

“What questions? Are there still questions? As far as I knew all questions were settled a long time ago.”

“Do you really want me to talk in front of this guy?”

“Dale and I are going to be married.” Their entwined hands lie between them on the couch. They stare at me attached in identical poses, feet flat on the floor in front of them, knees together, the dentist and her fiancé, a professional couple, and my heart sinks in the blank stare of their insularity and rises in rage as I realize whatever I mean to do I need them and rely upon them and have come three thousand miles to see them.

But there are certain things I am pretty sure of. It is not likely that Linda Mindish and her parents are prepared to reclaim their identity. I can assume the loyal friends she mentioned on the phone consist only of this guy. He is their big breakthrough. Therefore I am still a threat, I am potentially the public exposure of what neither of them right now wants exposed. On the other hand, although they have something to protect I’m sure that he, at least, feels his knowledge of the law and the fact that he practices here where he lives gives them leverage. I am a transient. He would want to persuade her that he can handle me with ease.

Yet it might have occurred to her after my phone call, granting her now a shrewdness far beyond my own, that an approach such as I made is essentially one of diplomacy. And that although she should of course anticipate something even as stupid as violence on my part, it is not likely. And that it might be worth the cost of a few tense moments to see what I want to trade. And an intuition, perhaps, that whatever it is she can take me. And be rid of the last possible connection. They had children. Someday we’ll have to deal with the children. I am good at dealing. My parents suffer no winters. They lack real friends, but so does everybody. Everybody here comes from somewhere else. Their neighbors nod to them in the morning. Once a week a Japanese gardener trims the little yard. I have my practice. I have Dale. There is more money in the Mindish family than Selig ever dreamed. Why should I think this bearded misfit is more of a test than my whole life has been since my father was arrested.

“I am interested to know how you and your mother supported yourselves after your father went to jail.”

“What?”

“Linda, it’s none of his business.”

“You were fourteen or fifteen. Your mother was not the kind of woman who could go out and get a job. Savings don’t last six, seven years. And when you moved out here with your father he never resumed practicing, did he? I mean he hasn’t practiced since his jail term, as I understand it. And you were able to get through college and dental college.”

“Linda, don’t feel obliged to explain—”

“No, it’s all right, Dale. I see what he’s getting at. In the first place there’s no tuition if you live here,” she said to me. “And I had scholarships besides. I carried extra course loads and I held down jobs. And in the second place my father worked in a lab until just a few years ago.”

She sat up at the edge of the couch with her hands folded in her lap and her ankles primly together. “It’s true what you say, Danny, neither you nor I was responsible for anything that happened. But we’ve borne the brunt. When my father went to prison my mother and I suffered terribly. But something else was good about the experience — I discovered all sorts of resources in myself that I otherwise might not have. From what I can see, and from what I’ve heard, neither you nor your sister have been that fortunate.

“In many ways I had it worse. Your parents after all were heroes to some elements. Today I understand you can find Isaacson Streets all through Eastern Europe. But Selig Mindish was a hero to no one, to say the least. What my father did brings no honor to himself or his family. You lose friends for something like that. You go to jail, where your health breaks. And afterwards you make no new friends. So you see in many ways it has been worse. I’ll tell you something: there used to be times when I wished strongly, very strongly, that my father might be executed, that we could change places, the Isaacsons and Mindishes, and that I would be glad to stand in your shoes if only you could stand in mine. Let me have your hanky, Dale.”

Daniel watched her. He folded his hands under his chin and rested his elbows on the arms of the chair. A surprisingly cool and objective eye glanced at him as Linda blew her nose.

“You call up with all this phony hippie humility and the minute you’re in the door you start getting nasty.”

“I didn’t bring my lawyer,” Daniel says.

“Perhaps you should have.”

“I didn’t hide my father somewhere.”

“You take me for a fool? Should I have believed you? I owe you nothing. Your whole family have always been liars. All full of high ideals except when it comes to other people. Except when it comes to ruining the lives of friends.”

“What does that mean?”

“They led Papa down the garden path. From the day he met them. They were always too good for him, but not too good to let him chauffeur them where they wanted to go, or run their errands, or fix their teeth, or turn into a spy for them. He wasn’t an intellectual. I was a child but even I understood how little respect they had, and how they took advantage.”