“Gideon!” she exclaims and gives me a quick smile, her eyes as mischievous as ever.
“How’s the ambulance-chasing business?”
Some women make you glad to be alive. Amy is one of them. Dressed in royal blue from head to toe, Amy’s firm, compact presence radiates a soothing cheerfulness. Despite an occasional flare up in the courtroom when I was going against her regularly at the Public Defender’s office, we re main good friends.
“As of today, it’s a one-man act,” I say, following her into her office and shutting the door behind me. Her office is filled, as usual, with pictures of her parents and five older sisters, and now, obviously, some nieces and nephews. No photograph of Mr. Right. Still in her late twenties, she has plenty of time. Briefly, I explain my situation, sounding, I hope, more cheerful than I feel.
“So have you come to apply for a job?” Amy asks, tilting back in her chair that always seems to swallow her.
The question takes me by surprise. I have never considered working this side of the street. Why not? It is not a point of honor, or is it? I do not think of myself as a crusader for the proverbial “little guy” (whoever that is), but that is always the side where I end up. I lean forward and rest my arms against her desk.
“I’m going to defend Andrew Chapman.”
Amy nods, now understanding the purpose of my visit.
“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
This is the opening I wanted. I want to find out whether it is the police or the prosecutor who is driving this case.
“Why?” I scoff, pretending indignation I don’t feel.
“It was obviously an accident.”
Amy’s normally elfin face is expressionless.
“Gideon,” she says carefully, “I’m not in Jill’s inner circle anymore.”
Surprised, I ask, “Why the hell not? I figured you’d be chief deputy, as good as you are.”
Without warning and for the second time today, a woman bursts into tears in front of me.
“Gideon,” she sobs, “I’m three months pregnant.”
I try not to gawk at her. Pregnant? I look more pregnant than she does. I study the photographs on her desk while she grabs a tissue. Stupidly, I ask, “Are you positive?”
Ignoring my idiocy, she bobs her chin.
“Jill is just rigid on the subject of children. She’d like to fire me, but since she can’t, she wants me to take maternity leave and have it.
I’m thinking of an abortion.”
I look at the picture other father, wondering if he knows.
What if Sarah brought me this news?
“This is tough,” I say, hedging. What do I think? I don’t know.
“Have you told your family?” I ask, hoping she isn’t looking for my advice.
“It’d kill them,” she says, honking loudly into a dry tis sue, “unless I decide to have it. But even then Mother and Daddy would never feel the same about me.”
Her parents, if I remember right, are hard-core Baptists.
I stare at the picture of them on their fortieth wedding anniversary and see guilt being uncorked by the gallon as they toast each other with glasses of presumably fake champagne.
“If you need to talk,” I say, hoping to leave the subject, “call me at home. I don’t have an office yet.” I want to help, but I don’t know what to say.
Taking my cue, Amy murmurs,”
“Poor Gideon. You’ve got your own problems.”
I nod, hoping to make her feel better, but I’d take mine any day I stick to my script.
“What is Jill running for?”
Despite her tears, Amy manages a characteristic smirk.
“If you repeat this, I’ll burn your house down, okay?”
I crook my right elbow at ninety degrees on her desk and hold my palm flat and stiff in imitation of a witness who takes his television lawyer shows seriously.
“I swear.”
Amy leans across her desk, and though I have closed the door, whispers, “The gossip I hear is that she is gearing up to run for attorney general in two years. Personally, I think she wants to be the first woman elected governor in the state.”
I lean back, feeling consternation at the never-ending political ambition of lawyers. Why do we feel we are called to positions of leadership merely because some of us become highly skilled at rationalizing decisions and actions of others?
My question was sarcastic, intended to probe for a less obvious motive.
“Isn’t her children’s crusade enough? I mean, my God, how many retarded people vote? Am I missing something?”
“Gideon,” Amy says, her round blue eyes serious, “she’s totally sincere about all of this. Have you heard one of her speeches?” When I shake my head, Amy’s voice rises as she folds her hands in front of her and begins to imitate her boss.
“Every hour of each day thousands of children are being exploited in Arkansas. Not only are children the poorest population group, they are the most physically and emotionally abused segment in society; they’re being provided an ever worsening education; they’re hooked into alcohol and drugs;
their inheritance, the environment and natural resources, are being wasted instead of conserved.” Amy’s voice returns to its natural pitch. “Her audiences eat it up. Children cut across class and race. It’s powerful stuff.”
I try to picture -Till Mary mount in front of the local Kiwanis Club and fail, but then I don’t have much imagination when it comes to politics. Jill is a tall brunette in her mid-thirties, striking rather than pretty, who reminds me of a high school English teacher. She scolds and shames juries more than persuades them, but I can’t argue with her record. Below a certain age, child-abuse cases are almost impossible to link to a specific perpetrator.
“I’ll take your word for it. She sounds like a nag to me.”
Amy, never modest in my presence, reaches inside her white blouse and painstakingly makes an adjustment.
“She’s got her statistics down cold, and she’s so intense, people hang on every word she says.”
I study my lap. Amy isn’t far from whipping off her bra so she can get at it better.
“What’s politics got to do with charging with manslaughter a psychologist who did his best to keep a child from battering herself to death?”
Finally giving up or satisfied (her expression holds no clue), Amy says, “Jill, I’m sure, in her own mind, honestly believes there is no connection. She sees the child who died as simply one more example of the way children are exploited in this country. It wasn’t the child who agreed to try electric skin shock it was her mother. What adult would voluntarily let herself be zapped with a cattle prod to stop self-destructive behavior? One of her arguments is that, for example, smoking kills thousands of adults each year, but they don’t go to psychologists for shock treatments to quit.
Of course, she holds your client responsible, because a mother in that situation is at her wit’s end and is at the mercy of the psychologist, who isn’t a real doctor anyway.”
So Chapman isn’t a psychiatrist but a psychologist. Amy is coming on a little strong: surely Chapman didn’t use a cattle prod. She is telling me more than she probably should, but I do not discourage her. Yet this may be already part of Jill’s after-dinner speech. I murmur, “So this fits right into her children’s-rights theme, huh?”
Amy wags a finger at me.
“Jill doesn’t mention children’s rights in her talks. Remember, they can’t vote. She simply says that these are our children whom we make into victims, sometimes by our neglect and sometimes by our deliberate actions. Who can argue with her?”
“She sounds like she has the makings of a first-class demagogue,” I say, hoping I can egg Amy on to more insights.
Know thy enemy.
“She’s not, really,” Amy says earnestly.
“Her friends say that she’s been saying the same things privately for years.
Now she’s got a public forum and wants to see if she can take the opportunity to make some changes she believes in.”
As Amy talks, I find myself wondering who the father is.