“Oh, they cared so much about you,” said Rose.
“There’s no need to argue about this,” said Arthur.
“A bunch of fools in love with their feelings, is what they were,” said Rose, reddening, leaning forward. “And they didn’t give two cents about you.”
“When they let me stay with them I felt my life had been saved,” I said.
“Well maybe you did, but you were wrong.” Rose paused. “As you can see.”
“OK,” said Arthur. “That’s it.” He put up his hands.
“I’d rather be here than turn out to be what I would have if…”
Rose nodded. “If what?”
“If I hadn’t known them. If I’d been what you wanted me to be.”
“We’re putting on a wonderful show for the whole school,” said Arthur.
I slammed my open palms on the desk violently. I got up and knocked the chair over. I picked it up and thought I might throw it—at my parents, through the window, against the wall. My parents were silent. They looked at me with that mixture of embarrassment, disgust, and envy we feel when someone gives vent to their ugliest, most unreasonable feelings. I let the chair drop and walked toward my parents. I certainly wasn’t going to do them any great harm, though I did have a fleeting vision of taking them by the shoulders and shaking them.
“David,” said my father, with pointed neutrality.
Rose planted her small feet squarely on the floor and leaned back, like a drunk trying to sit erect and miscalculating the angle.
“I never asked you for anything,” I said.
“David,” said Arthur, letting his voice drift toward its natural warmth.
“I’ve been here more than a year and you haven’t done anything to help me.”
Quickly I turned away from them and walked back toward my desk and righted the chair.
“I think we should leave while the day’s still nice,” said Rose.
“Good. Go home. I want you to go home,” I said.
“Don’t pull this,” Rose said.
“We don’t want to go home,” said Arthur.
“Then visit with someone else. That way you won’t waste the long drive.”
Rose and Arthur exchanged glances and for an instant I thought they might discuss me in my presence. It had never been their way, of course. I’d almost never seen them disagree or reveal confusion. Running our tiny family on the principles of centralism, they shielded me from their uncertainties—captains of an imperiled ship staving off the panic of the passengers with buttered rolls and routine announcements.
“Well,” said Rose, with what was meant to be a sigh of finality, “are you through trying to make us miserable? As I’ve said, you’re not the only one in the world who’s upset.”
“I really don’t care,” I said. “With all my heart, I don’t care.”
“Your mother means that this whole mess is as tough on us as you,” said Arthur. He shook his head and lowered his eyes: it wasn’t what he’d meant to say, exactly.
“Do something for me,” I said.
“Our life is very sad these days,” said Rose.
“Do something for me,” I said.
“There’s no reason to discuss our personal lives at this time,” said Rose. “And I refuse to listen if you’re going to pretend you’re the only person in the world with troubles.”
“He knows that,” Arthur said.
“Do something for me,” I said once again. I thought of getting on the floor and chanting it, the way one of the orderlies had taught me to chant Coca-Cola Coca-Cola until my thoughts disappeared and my mind existed only as a pitchless hum. “Do something for me.”
“We want to,” said Arthur. “Surely you know that.”
“I want a new lawyer,” I said. “Who’s looking after my case? Who’s in charge of getting me out?”
“It’s in the hands of the court,” said Arthur. “There’s not much that can be done.”
“Who’s handling it?”
“Ted is,” said Rose. “You know that.”
“Bowen?” I said. “Bowen is a total fucking jerkoff asshole idiot. He’s been losing cases all his life—this is the kind of lawyer you get me? A Communist lawyer with as much influence as a stray dog?”
“You have no right to talk that way about Ted,” Rose said. “This is a man who’s been loyal to you. It’s time you learned who your real friends are.”
“I know,” I said. “Ted Bowen watched me grow up. Well, I don’t care. I don’t want him to have anything to do with me anymore. Don’t I have the right to fire him? I’m eighteen. If you’re too fucking loyal to tell him he’s through, then I’ll tell him.”
“You’re making a mistake,” said Arthur. “Ted’s a very capable attorney.”
“You have to say that,” I said.
“I don’t have to say that—or anything else.”
“Yes, you do. You have to say he’s good because he’s the same kind of lawyer you are.”
I glared at them both and waited for a reply. But they were silent. They didn’t sigh, or shrug, or even move their fingers. Their eyes fixed on a space three or four feet to the left of my face, like people you are shouting at in a dream.
Finally, Rose said, “Obnoxious.”
“Is it the money?” I said.
“You know it’s not,” said Arthur.
“Because if it is, I’ll get the money. Grandpa will give it to me. It’ll cost him less to pay a good lawyer than to keep me here. I want the best. I want someone smart and tough, someone with a little influence for God’s sake, someone who won’t get walked over and laughed at. I need string pulling and pressure and deals. Ted’s not the one.”
“He has an excellent record, David,” said Arthur.
“But he’s not doing anything for me.”
“You think you’re going to find some outsider and get the kind of dedication we get from Ted?” said Rose. “A man who was struggling for the rights of people before you were even born?”
“I don’t want to hear anything about it,” I said. I slapped at my shirt in that open-handed gesture of innocence and exasperation; a little coin of perspiration had formed in the hollow of my chest, trapped in its crater by the pounding of my heart and the hardness of my belly. “I want a new lawyer. I’d find one myself, but how can I? If you don’t do this for me…You have to do this for me. Tell Bowen he’s out. He has nothing to do with this anymore. The next time someone talks about my case it has to be a different kind of lawyer—not some little nobody with soup on his tie. I want the best. I want to get out of here. This is completely unfair. You better find me a new lawyer even if it’s someone you hate.”
3
They eventually got a new lawyer, and it was the kind of lawyer they truly disliked, with an office in the Wrigley Building and a picture of Mayor Daley on his wall, but even so it was practically another two years before the court gave me permission to return home.
4
They took me home in the middle of August on a day turned absurd by melodramatic weather. I sat in the back seat of their car with my tan valise on my knees, like a soldier on a crowded train. I’d been advised by my only friend in Rockville, a boy named Warren Hawkes, who had been in and out of three such places, that the best way to make the journey was to remain as lifeless as possible, and I held my mind tightly, as if in two cranial hands. Arthur drove and each time he glanced at me through the rear-view mirror he took his foot off the accelerator and the Ford slowed down. Rose said two things I remember: “This is the last time we’ll make this trip,” and, “I wonder if you’ve heard there’s been an upsurge in anti-Semitism lately.” We traveled a narrow back route, a short-cut to Chicago they’d discovered just recently; nearly ripened fields of corn thronged the sides of the road, pressing forward like spectators awaiting a parade. Above us, the thunder groaned away and first to the west and then to the north leapt platinum branches of lightning—in momentary silence and then with a great electrical crunch. The cornfields flashed, the air grew heavy, oppressive, almost purple, and before we were thirty minutes away from Rockville it was raining so hard the windshield looked as if it were being splashed with silver paint.