I look at my watch and tell him that I’ll call tomorrow with a report. I’m ready to get on the road. I ask him to keep this within their family and hang up, thinking Roy may yet end up wanting me for his son’s agent.
As I am getting Up to head out the door, Clan comes in, his double chin nearly to the floor. He looks like a child who has had his toys ripped away from him by another kid.
“Heading south, huh?” he says without enthusiasm. I have told him everything that has been going on.
“Yep,” I say, reaching for my briefcase. I shouldn’t need anything, but I want to look the part. He looks so pitiful that I can’t avoid asking, “Did you just get run over by a truck?”
Clan sighs and leans back against my door, prohibiting me from leaving.
“Gina wants me to leave Brenda and move in with her. She’s in love with me.”
God, the holidays! They make everybody weird.
“That would give the legal community a juicy little nut for their Christmas stockings,” I say, not taking him seriously.
“I love her, Gideon,” Clan says miserably.
“She makes me happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”
What a screwball Dan’s become!
“She’s a hooker, for God’s sake!” I say for what must be the tenth time.
“You don’t understand,” Clan answers softly, looking down at the argyle socks in which he pads around the office more and more.
“Gina’s a good person. She’s crazy about her little girl. She makes me feel alive in a way that I haven’t for years! It isn’t just the sex; the truth is, I’m so scared of getting AIDS from her I don’t even enjoy it. We just have fun together. Brenda hasn’t cracked a smile since I choked and nearly died on a piece of her meatloaf nearly two years ago.”
I shake my head as I visualize the dismal little duplex Gina calls home.
“Have you thought about going to marriage counseling?”
Clan wipes his eyes.
“The last one we went to admitted she had been divorced three times. Brenda said she wouldn’t pay someone to watch us fight. We can do that for free.”
I laugh despite myself.
“You can’t really be thinking about moving in with her.”
“I won’t,” Clan sighs.
“I don’t have the guts. I’m too middle class. As pathetic a human being as I am, I’m still enough of a snob to care about what other people think.
There goes fat Clan. He lives with a whore dog who nearly cooked her baby. Nan, I couldn’t handle that.”
Poor guy. He seems about to cry.
“I couldn’t either,” I say sympathetically.
“Just hang on until January. Things will seem better then.”
With a blank expression on his face, Clan turns and wanders down the hall, and I follow him out, realizing I have a grudging admiration for him. The difference between me and Clan is that I wouldn’t have the integrity to admit that I had fallen in love with a whore. Clan is pitiful, but at least he is honest about it. I ride the elevator down to the street thinking that the evolution of the species may be more of a short-term proposition than scientists think.
I point the Blazer south on 1-30 to Texarkana, and two and a half hours later, after stopping for gas in Arkadelphia, I exit at a service station just before crossing the Texas line to ask for directions. I walk into the office hugging myself and wishing I had brought my overcoat.
A cold front has moved across the state. An attendant wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap points east on a city map, and five minutes later I am shivering in front of Robin’s parents’ ranch-style home, which occupies two lots, and trying to recall what I know about this family. All I remember is that the husband gives or gave a shitload of money to the Razorback scholarship fund and is a conservative Baptist, a profile that could fit any number of Arkansans.
Though I’ve never seen her, I’d know Mrs. Perry any where. An older, more voluptuous version of the daughter, she comes to the door wearing a red knit outfit that suggests they may have dinner plans. It is almost six o’clock, and two cars, a Buick sedan and a Cherokee, sit in the driveway. If they brush me off, there will be nothing I can do except to head back in the other direction.
“Mrs. Perry, I’m Gideon Page, Dade Cunningham’s lawyer,” I begin, as gently as I can.
“I’d like to visit just a very few minutes with you and your husband. I’m sorry to be disturbing you, but it’s important that we talk be fore the hearing.”
There is no effort to conceal the shock that is apparent on her carefully made-up face. It is as if Dade himself had appeared on their doorstep. I look past her to see if I can get a glimpse of Robin, but she is nowhere to be seen. I do not want her to be present for this conversation, if it takes place. They will feel too protective of her if she is sitting there.
“Just a moment,” Mrs. Perry says frostily through the screen door in an accent even more Southern than her daughter’s. She turns and is gone. I feel as though I am a representative of the Mormons, a long way from Utah. At least she didn’t slam the door in my face.
A full three minutes later a tall, athletic-looking man in his early forties opens the door and the screen and says, “Come in.” He does not offer to shake hands, and not wanting to wear out my welcome in the first five seconds, I don’t extend mine. Gerald Perry leads me into a living room, which even to my unobservant eye comes together in an elegant, understated way. Whoever decorated it had a flair for color. Royal blues, golds, and muted reds give the room a regal holiday look. Holly, mistletoe, and a creche crowd together on a mantle above a hearth in which a fire is roaring. A twelve-foot Christmas tree winking with lights, colored balls, and ribbons and surrounded by presents stands in a far corner. Gerald Perry points to the least comfortable-looking chair in the room.
As if I were a child whose baseball had crashed into his picture window, I perch on the edge and wait for him to give me a lecture about dropping in without calling beforehand.
Less formally dressed than his wife, he is wearing a white shirt, no tie, and pleated slacks. This may be about as relaxed as they ever get.
“What do you want?” he asks, sitting down by his wife on an enormous beige sofa.
I look into their faces and realize they must despise me. If I am to succeed here, I must somehow humanize the cause I represent.
“I have a daughter Robin’s age at Fayetteville. Whether you can imagine it or not, I am truly sorry for what I’m putting you through” I tell myself I see the flicker of a response in the father’s eyes, but it is Mrs. Perry who answers.
“If our feelings made any difference to you,” she says, “you wouldn’t have taken the case.”
Though her words come out soft as honeysuckle, her expression is eerie in its sudden ferocity.
“My job is to represent Dade Cunningham, but the last thing I want to do in this case is embarrass you or your daughter,” I say, hoping sincerity counts for something with this couple.
Goaded by his wife’s anger, Mr. Perry says, in a wounded tone, “How can you possibly even imply that Robin isn’t telling the truth? You have no idea what it is costing her to go through this.”
The male is the one I have to approach. He seems more hurt than actively hostile. On the other hand, his wife seems, in her home at least, like a time bomb. I say, “As presumptuous as this may sound, I think I do. Whatever happens, she will bear scars that will never heal, and so will you, and so will Dade Cunningham.”
“I hope your client rots in hell after he dies in prison,” Mrs. Perry says quietly, her feet flat on the carpet as her blue eyes bore into me.
Her fury is making me nervous. I know I must not anger this woman any more than necessary, or she will explode.
“I don’t think I could put my own daughter,” I say, feeling the weight of my words, “through a trial like this one is going to be, Mrs. Perry.”
She answers as I have hoped.
“She’s done it once!” she says, her jaw firm with determination.