Chapter Thirteen
“I don’t know, Ned. It’s not like he knows Led Zepplin or
somebody like that.” My best friend, Chris Natoli, sat on his‘ ’=[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
towel with his back against a big maple tree on the west side of
the Hilltop pool. “I just don’t think I could handle being around
a guy like that.”
“Well, I’m really not around him all that much,” I explained,
sipping my blueberry Italian water ice. “He doesn’t come into
Berger’s office every day. Half the time I’m stuck by myself in a
back room with a typewriter typing up stuff that Berger claims that
lazy secretary of his doesn’t have time to get to.”
Chris distractedly picked with his right forefinger at a zit
on his large, round belly. Sometimes he seemed more like Archie’s
son than I did, except for his jet black hair and a deep tan I
couldn’t have achieved even if I had been able to spend the summer
working in Wildwood.
“Yeh,” he said, “but aren’t you afraid of catching HIV from
him?”
“Listen, Chris,” I replied, now idly inspecting my own stomach
for any sign of a new pimple. “If there’s one thing I am getting
out of this summer job, it’s a first year of medical school. When
I’m not up in New Hope serving as an indentured servant to Ms.
Florence ‘God©Almighty’ Kaiserman, Pop’s got me down at the
Philadelphia Free Library or at Jefferson University xeroxing every
article on HIV and AIDS I can lay my hands on. Then I have to read
them, write a synopsis and file them.”
While a part of my conscious mind was explaining all this to
Chris, another part was taking note of the chest hairs he had begun
to sprout. Where he had a nice crop of pubic hair coming up and‘ ’>[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
curling out of the center of his well©tanned chest, I had three
nasty looking zits in varied stages of rise and decline occupying
that favored location on mine. I flicked at the nastiest of the
trio with a vengeful finger nail.
“Believe me,” I continued, “somebody or other has investigated
every conceivable aspect of HIV infection. There’s a study that
finds that HIV can’t be transmitted from person to person by
drinking out of the same communion chalice at a church service.
Another study claims that cookies baked by an advanced AIDS patient
in a hospital where eaten by the doctors there with none of them
picking up the virus.”
“Well,” Chris replied, taking a Snickers bar from his beach bag
and tearing off the wrapper in one neat motion the way an
experienced hunter might skin his quarry, “I still don’t know if
I’d take the chance of being around that guy. Why all the articles
anyhow?”
“Arch says we have to convince the judge that if Dennie is
given his old job back through a court order, there’s absolutely no
chance he could transmit HIV through the food to the restaurant’s
customers. We have some pretty good experts lined up who are going
to say that too,” I added.
Chris chomped off about half the Snickers bar and mumbled around
the wad of chocolate in his mouth, “If you say so.”
Chewing reflectively he added,”Hey, maybe I shouldn’t be
hanging around you.”‘ Ä%?0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
I was still sufficiently sensitive about the subject to get a
panicky look on my face and drop my water ice, which landed upside
down on a dusty bare patch in the lawn.
Chris laughed and a few flecks of the chocolate coating from
the Snickers popped out of his mouth and onto his ample belly.
“Hey, man,” he mumbled,”chill out. It was just a joke.” And
as if to prove it, he handed me the surviving half of the Snickers.
“Here…want a bite?”
‘ ’@0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åChapter Fourteen
“Ned!”
That voice… shrill, capable of penetrating not only plaster
walls and solid oak doors, but the eardrums, brains and other vital
organs of the persons taking futile refuge behind those walls and
doors. In this case, as usual, the refugee was me.
I bent lower over the latest JAMA (that is, Journal of the
American Medical Association) article on AIDS as a health threat in
the restaurant industry. I focused on the technical jargon and
hoped Mrs. Kaiserman might think I’d gone off for an early lunch.
But no…
“Ned!” Louder this time, if that was possible. “I need you.”
During the four or five weeks I’d been working in the Law
Offices of Lawrence Fishbine Berger, he and Mrs. Kaiserman
apparently had concluded there was not enough work on the Lustig
case to keep me fully occupied. Or perhaps Larry was just
determined to get his money’s worth, since he had agreed at the
fateful picnic to pick up half my paycheck. Whatever the reason,
my time was now about equally divided between helping get √
√Lustig v.
Freeman’sƒ
ƒ ready for its August trial date and serving as Mrs.
Kaiserman’s gopher. Though I found Mrs, K. pretty grating on my
young nerves, I had to admit I enjoyed the opportunities her little
tasks gave me to get out and about on balmy summer days when
otherwise I’d be in my closet/office peering at small print.
‘ Ä%A0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
I turned off the desk lamp, pushed back the hardwood chair
that played proxy to a proper desk chair, stood up and stretched.
I had been hunched over my labor for almost two hours, since I had
arrived at around nine in morning. My leisurely reaction to Mrs.
Kaiserman’s clarion call resulted in a third howl of “Ned! Are you
back there?”
Opening my door I responded in a tone that I hoped masked the
irritation Mrs. K. always aroused in me, “Right here. I’m on my
way, Mrs. K.” Unfortunately, I think the rhyme resulted in a sing™song tone that sounded a note of sarcasm.
“I’m on my way, Mrs. K,” the fifty©something secretary mimicked
back at me. “You’d be on your way to a job bagging fries at
MacDonald’s, if it were up to me, young man. This office requires
a proper law clerk, not a high school kid who happens to be an
attorney’s son.
“That’s what Larry promised me. But he’s so cheap… look what
I get.”
I could feel my ears turning red, as they always did when the
Kaiser©cow went off on one of these tirades. I had complained to
Archie about her the first time it happened. He had been
sympathetic and promised to speak to Berger about it. But nothing
changed, and Pop had been pretty vague and evasive, when I tried to
pin him down about just what, if anything, he’d said to his co™counsel about my latest tormentor.
Given that my most of my pay was deferred until the case’s
end, I was ready to react.‘ ’B[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
My mouth was open and the words about to leap out, which would
have brought circumstances to the crisis stage, when the front door
swung open and in strutted Dennis. His expression suggested he was
preoccupied at the instant he entered the reception area where Mrs.
K.’s formidable hundred and eighty pound hulk blocked anyone who
hoped to sail back to her master’s large, rather opulent rear
office. But as soon as he saw me, Lustig’s expression changed. He
flashed his puckish smile and I swear his violet eyes flashed.
“Ned, how √
√areƒ
ƒ you?” he inquired brightly. Then, tilting his
head slightly to the left, he pronounced a perfunctory “Mrs. K.”
upon the grand dame of Larry Berger©land, whose scowl shifted
seamlessly from me to him.
The anger drained from my face, as I seemed to involuntarily
absorb some of his good humor, a reflex I had come to recognize in
myself with a certain sense of surprise each time it was repeated.
“Hey, Denny. I’m okay, man.”
“Great. So how about an early lunch?” he asked. “that is,” he
added, cocking his head in Mrs. K.’s direction again, “if the
mistress of the establishment has no objection.”
The Kaiser©cow’s look would have killed if it could. Her
normal lack of friendliness was enhanced in Lustig’s case by her
unvarnished disapproval of gays.
“Ned was just leaving with a package I have to get over to
Wellington Realty before noon,” she carped.
“Fine. He can drop it off and then we can can grab a bite at
the Sunflower. It’s only half a block away.” Denny picked up the‘ ’C[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
large brown envelope and headed quickly out the door with it. I
backed my way toward the door, shrugging to Mrs. K. as I went.
Her face was crinkled up like a lunch bag that had been used more
than once and she was silently mouthing words in Denny’s direction.
I was no lip reader but hte words seemed to be ones that my parents
strictly forbade me to even think of using.
The small of my back rammed into the door knob. I reached
behind me with my right hand, turned the knob and did a smart
little about©face out the door and bounded down the three brick
steps onto the sidewalk, where a leering Denny stood waiting with
Mrs. K.’s package tucked under his left arm.
“Somehow, over the months that I’ve been coming here, I’ve
gotten the distinct impression that that old cow doesn’t approve of
the gay lifestyle,” Denny observed in that droll way he had with
his eyes twinkling mischievously.
“In the weeks that √
√I’veƒ
ƒ been coming here, I’ve formed the
distinct impression that the Kaiser©cow does not approve of anyone
younger than she is, smarter than she is, happier than she is, or
richer then she is,” I retorted, falling into step with Denny on
the uneven slate sidewalks. “In short, she doesn’t much like
anybody who ever has a reason to come into her reception room.”
Denny laughed out loud. “Kaiser©cow… I like that, Ned.”
We walked briskly down the streets of New Hope chatting
happily. But once again, waiting for a traffic light to change, I
caught a glimpse of Denny’s expression when he was unaware that I
was looking at him. I saw the same anxiety peep out from behind‘ ’D[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
the lighthearted facade as I had detected when he first came
through the door of Berger’s offices a few minutes earlier.
‘ ’E0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åChapter Fifteen
At lunch, sitting at a tiny corner table in the Sunflower, a
little cafe owned and run by a couple of Denny’s gay friends, I was
again struck by the ethereal sort of violet shade of his eyes, as
I had been a number of times before. This time I was relaxed
enough with him to say so.
“The same as Elizabeth Taylor,” he replied, looking me straight
in my eyes and giving me the full effect.
“What do you mean?” I asked, not getting his point.
“Liz Taylor and I wear the same shade of contacts,” he told
me.
“Those are contacts, Den? I never guessed.”
“Ned, darling, nobody has lavender eyes,” Denny responded.
Then noticing Lawrence, the older of the Sunflower’s two owners
approaching to refill our Cokes, he added, “Except perhaps Larry
here.”
Looking up at Lawrence, who reached for my glass and poured
Coke and ice from his pitcher, Denny added, “Do you have lavender
eyes, sweetheart?”
“If you cared anything about me at all,” Lawrence retorted,
pouring Coke into Denny’s empty glass and ©©© purposely, I think ©™© letting it splash onto Denny’s half©eaten BLT sandwich, “you’d
know I have dishy green eyes.”
Denny smirked as Lawrence moved on to another table requiring
refills. “The man’s mad for me,” said Denny when Lawrence was out
of eavesdropping distance. “He also knows I can ‘ ’F[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åout©cook, out©manage, and out©everything©else that slut Henry he
lives with. He’d bounce Henry out on his ear and have me move in
in a minute if I’d let him.”
I had no idea what to reply to that. So I took an extra©big
bite of my Phillie cheesesteak and stared at my fries.
After lunch, which Denny insisted on paying for (he always
seemed to have plenty of cash, though so far as I knew he hadn’t
worked since the Freemans had fired him last December), he
suggested a walk down along the Delaware River. I protested that
Mrs. K. would be watching what time I returned.
“What’s the Kaiser©cow … God, I √
√loveƒ
ƒ that name, Ned,” he
replied, putting his arm around my shoulder, ” what’s the K©cow
going to do? Fire you? I think not.
“No,” he added, steering me toward the little park that runs
down to the river bank, “I think her office, powerful though it may
be, lacks that level of authority. Let us commune with nature
awhile.”
We wound up seated beneath a large silver maple growing near
the water’s edge. I leaned back against the southwestern side of
the trunk and let the sun caress my face. I closed my eyes and
might have drifted off to sleep had not a sweet, smoky odor entered
my nostrils at that moment. I turned my head slightly to the left
and squinting against the bright sunlight, saw with my left eye
Denny sucking hard on a small, hand©rolled cigarette he held with
the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.‘ Ä%G0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
I sat bolt upright.
Naturally I knew what it was.
Certain
guys, who frequented certain restrooms at the high school, smoked
the occasional joint in there. I honestly had never touched the
stuff myself. In fact it scared me a little bit.
Denny held his breath a few seconds, then exhaled loudly. He
noticed me watching him intently.
“A hit, Ned?” he inquired, holding the marijuana cigarette out
to me.
“No, I don’t think so, Den,” I responded.
“What’s the matter? Afraid you’ll contract the dreaded
disease?” he asked. His voice had a little bit of menace in it I
thought, just the least edge on it, like a challenge.
“I don’t do drugs, Denny,” I aliterated a little nervously.
“You’re not telling me the magic weed is unknown at… where is
it you go to school?”
“Haverford High,” I responded.
“Ah, yes… Haverford,” he said. “Goat crossing… did you
know that’s what it means?”
I didn’t say anything. I just stared at the joint that seemed
to be billowing its pungent white smoke in my direction.
Denny moved his hand a little closer to my face. Still I didn’t
reach out and take the joint from him.
A second later he pulled it back. “Okay, sweety. suit
yourself.” He took another long drag on the joint and held the
smoke in much longer than before. When he exhaled almost no smoke
came out of his mouth at all.‘ ’H[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åô
He turned to me and the mischief usually in his eyes had been
replaced by a kind of meanness I had never seen them reflect
before.
“Well, little darling,” he said, almost with a snarl, “You
needn’t worry about catching the dreaded affliction from yours
truly.”
“Denny, I didn’t…” I stammered.
“Because I’ve never had the dreaded plague.”
“What?” I responded in an embarassingly high©pitched voice.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not HIV positive, you little asshole,” he said in a nasty
little whisper that passed through me like a winter chill even
though the day was hot and humid.
I didn’t need Denny’s arm around my shoulder to guide me back
to the office. I followed him like a whipped puppy. The mix of
emotions was almost overwhelming. Because of Dennis Lustig I had
come to terms with Archie’s alternate plan for how I spent my
summer. Denny was a victim that had been wronged. Like my Dad, I
had come to believe I was working to right that wrong. In between
assignments as Mrs. K.’s gopher I was serving the side of justice.
Denny also ©©© perhaps somewhat paradoxically ©©© had come to
represent forbidden fruit. “Alternative lifestyle” is the buzz
phrase today. I’m not sure I had ever heard it back then from
anyone except Denny.
He claimed to know Lou Reed and had even “walked on the
wildside” , as the infamous lyricist had put it in one of his most‘ ’I[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
popular songs.
Such a world seems exciting, enticing, even to a
teenage male who is already pretty clear on his own ‘straight’
sexual orientation. Now I wondered if all this ‘wild side’ stuff
was also so much fantasy talk from the lips which had just revealed
their devastating secret.
Denny elaborated on his revelation as we took a winding and
indirect path in the general direction of the Berger Law Offices.
“The first test did come back HIV positive, Nedster,” he
stated, most of the earlier meanness gone from his voice now.
“That’s when I flipped out and spilled my guts to the Freeman…
and got my sweet gay butt fired in the process.”
I stumbled on the uneven bricks of a historically restored
stretch of New Hope’s sidewalks. Regaining my balance, I smiled an
uneasy, crooked little smile at my companion.
“I didn’t go back for a retest until after I had already
signed on with the AIDS Law Project,” he continued, “and they had
hired your dad and Larry to represent me. I was so psyched out…
I was sure the next test would be the same.
“See this queen I had a thing with for a awhile… well, I
knew he had it. So I just naturally figured I must have it, too.”
I idley kicked a brick chip lying on the walkway.
“When my doctor finally bullied me into getting retested, the
test came back negative.”
Denny suddenly stopped and turned to face me. I was
still staring at the ground and nearly bumped into him.‘ Ä%J0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åHe put his hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes.
I
suppressed the urge to shrug his hands off me and brush past him
and run back to my closet office and lock the door. I stood there
numbly staring back into the ‘Liz Taylor’ eyes, now intensely
sincere.
“Ned, can you imagine in your wildest young dreams how I felt?
I felt like freakin’ Lazarus, called from the tomb by Christ
himself.
“Ned, lad, the kid here is not a religious man. God knows, the
churchmen have little use for the likes of me. But you may
believe, young Ned, that I felt reborn that day.”
He released my shoulders, turned and resumed walking.
I followed along behind, more confused and emotionally distraught
than ever.
“The doctor demanded we get a third test. This time I was a
nervous wreck, but eager to oblige. The result was another
negative. I was going to live!”
Denny’s arms went up, his hands palms open, over his head in a
gesture of.. what? Elation? Redemption?
For a half block we walked in silence. Then Denny sat down on
a bench in front of an antique store, one of the dozens that line
the streets of New Hope. He gestured for me to sit beside him.
He placed a hand on my knee. Again I fought back the urge to
pull away.
“Ned,” he said, again all ‘Mr. Sincerity’, “I need your help.”
‘ ’K0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åChapter Sixteen
Dennis Lustig’s remarkable revelation occurred on a
Wednesday. The rest of my week was utter emotional turmoil. I did
Mrs. K.’s bidding without protest, as if I was her personal robot
or zombie. At home I kept to myself as much as possible. I hardly
touched the Lustig file, which anyway was about as well organized
as a high school kid working pretty much unsupervised could make
it.
On Friday afternoon, Archie, who hadn’t been in New Hope all
that week, drove up to collect me and the file and take us both
home for the weekend. He and Larry Berger had decided that Pop
would attend and defend Denny’s deposition, which was scheduled for
Monday morning at ten o’clock in the opposing lawyer’s conference
room. Lustig would be placed under oath and asked as many
questions as the opposition cared to ask. And this was precisely
why Denny had chosen his moment on Wednesday to reveal his
devastating secret to me. The guy who claimed to cruise on the
wild side of Greenwich Village with the likes of Lou Reed wanted
his sixteen©year©old ‘buddy’ to break the news to his father before
the day of the deposition.
I chose our drive home to Havertown as the moment to break the
big news to my old man. In 1984 Archie owned a 1978 Cadelac that
was about half a block long and guzzled gas at a ferocious rate.
“A big man needs a big car,” he would shrug when Mom, writing a
check for his gasoline credit card at the end of the month would
berate him about the expense. The car was a sort of white and‘ ’L[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
pocked here and there with rust spots, caused mostly by road salt
in the winter time, and usually referred to as “body cancer.”
The whole family referred to Archie’s Caddy as “White Fang”,
the name of the friendly bear on the Soupy Sales Show, which at
that time Arch still liked to watch as re©runs on one of the cable
channels. Riding in White Fang was like sitting in a living room
chair that was floating on a cloud. Even six years old, rusting
out and boasting more than ninety©thousand miles, the Fang was a
smooth©riding chariot.
Ordinarily, after my week of alternately slaving in my closet™office and tramping all over New Hope with Mrs. K.’s shrill
instructions reverberating in my ears, I’d lean back and snooze
while Pop played his “oldies” tapes and got me safely home for a
weekend of reviving my tan at the swim club. But this Friday
afternoon I sat bolt upright, watching like a sentinel for the
right opening to break my news.
Since that time back in January, when I decked Big Bill Hall,
wound up in the hospital myself, and ended the day crying on the
old man’s shoulder, a sort of silent bond had existed between me
and my Dad. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say a barrier between
us, built during my early teen years, had been knocked down.
Whatever had happened that day had felt really nice ever since; but
while it had made communication between Archie and me a lot
friendlier, it hadn’t made communication much more frequent. We
still seldom had long or animated conversations. And so this‘ Ä%M0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
particularly ticklish one started off slowly.
We were well out of
New Hope and headed for I©95 when I started it off.
“Dad,” I began, “you know I’ve gotten pretty friendly with
Denny this summer, don’t you?”
“Sure, Ned,” Pop replied, not taking his eyes off the winding
two©lane highway he was navigating amidst fairly heavy Friday
afternoon rush©hour traffic. “I think that’s a good thing.
Denny’s very bright, and I want you to grow up without prejudice
against people who are different from you. I want you to evaluate
them one by one. I thought you’d see the same good qualities I saw
the first time I met with Denny.”
I looked sideways at Archie. He had a contented look on his
face. I suddenly realized I was about to crumble an illusion as
large as the one I had been harboring until Wednesday afternoon.
“I thought it was a good thing too.” I chose my words
carefully, a boy crossing a freezing cold stream on slippery rocks,
any one of which could tip and dump me in an instant. “…at
first.”
Archie shifted his head slightly to the right, keeping his left
eye on the road ahead. A better lawyer than he knew, his
attorney’s antennae sensed trouble.
Why √
√Iƒ
ƒ was so nervous I’m uncertain. I had done nothing wrong
that I knew. But somehow I felt guilty by association. I had been
bedazzled by Lustig’s apparent panache and his colorful
stories. If I had not tasted forbidden fruit, I had enjoyed the
titilation that comes to a teenager from being around someone‘ ’N[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
dangerous… someone who lived an alternative lifestyle without
shame or apology…someone who carried a fatal disease without
showing fear or regret. Calling Mrs. K. the Kaiser©cow was a
reflection of the attitude I affected when Denny was around. The
double shock of first being confronted with the temptation to try
marijuana, followed almost immediately with Lustig’s revelation of
what I had come to call in my mind “the Big Lie,” had brought
painfully home to me how I had, as the Bible says, sinned in my
heart. Consequently, I felt a shared guilt, made only heavier on
my shoulders by the very delay in telling my Dad that this guilt by
association had engendered.
“Dad, Denny came by the office on Wednesday and we had lunch
together. Then we took a walk down to that park along the river.
”
“Okay.” I could sense Archie tensing up. I saw his hands
tighten on the steering wheel.
“Something happened that I have to tell you about.”
Archie jerked the wheel a little, getting the car safely away
from the center line. His whole body seemed to sag as if a long
sigh had been released. Then he instantly tensed up again.
“Well, then what, Ned?”
“I guess I should tell you everything. First of all, he lit
up a joint,” I said. “Uh, do you know what that is, Pop?”
Archie’s big face relaxed a little and his lips parted in a
sly smile. “Yeh, Ned. I’m a child of the sixties, remember? Yeh,‘ Ä%O0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
I know what a joint is.
I really didn’t think people still
bothered with that junk to tell you the truth.”
Then tense again, smile all gone. “Hey, you didn’t try that
stuff, did you?”
“Heck, no, Arch. I promised you and Mom I wouldn’t. And I’ve
kept my word.”
“Well, hey… good. Great! So I’ll talk to Lustig. I’ll
tell him not to do that around my kids. Okay?”
I figgited in the soft leather seat as White Fang cruised up
the ramp onto I©95 South.
“That’s great, Arch,” I said. “But that’s not what I really
wanted to tell you about.”
By now Archie must have been wondering what more could be left
to tell.
“Dad, Denny confessed to me that he’s not HIV positive.”
Archie’s big melon head snapped to the right even faster and
farther than before. A big tractor©trailer blasted its horn in
three short, loud bursts, as White Fang drifted into the left lane.
Archie’s head snapped back the other way and this time he had to
pull hard on the wheel to get us back into the right lane. There
was a sort of miniature rest area ahead with just a picnic table
and a battered green trash barrel. Archie didn’t say a word as he
maneuvered White Fang off the interstate and brought her to a halt
near the table. Archie threw open the heavy door, banging it on
the corner of the wooden table.‘ Ä%P0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
Archie lumbered out of the car.
I took the hint and got out
on my side, walked round the back of White Fang and sat down at the
picnic table on the bench opposite the one now occupied by my Dad.
Archie dragged his big, sweaty right hand down the length of
his face and then clapped his blue, watery eyes on my face.
“Ned.. son, are you telling me that Dennis Lustig told you he
is not HIV positive?”
My eyes met his. “Yeh, Arch, that’s what I’m telling you. He
told me Wednesday afternoon right after he offered me the
marijuana. And he told me he wanted me to break it to you and Mr.
Berger before his deposition on Monday.”
Archie dropped his eyes to the table. “Why, that little…”
Then he looked back up at me. “Did he say how long he’s known this,
Ned?”
“Yeh, Pop. He said he found out when his doctor finally forced
him to go in for a re©test. He said the first test back in
December actually was positive for HIV.”
The old man pondered this for a minute or two, idly rubbing
the side of his bulbous nose with two fingers.
Finally he said, almost as if to himself, “Well, at least
that’s something. At least he wasn’t lying to us from the
beginning.”
And then, after another pause and some more rubbing of his
nose, “Come on. Get back in the car. We’re heading back to New
Hope.”
‘ ’Q0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åChapter seventeen
“So what brings team McAdoo back to my den at this hour?”
Berger inquired, his feet on the table, cocktail in hand.
Archie and I had returned to Berger’s office to find the front
door still unlocked at almost 6:00 PM. We walked in and found
Larry and Mrs. K. having scotch on the rocks together in the
conference room. (Mrs. Kaiserman, I ought to add, was Berger’s
thrice©divorced aunt, which went a long way toward explaining how
she had held onto her job. Her willingness to hang around on a
Friday afternoon and provide Larry with company for his tippling
apparently was another.)
Archie had begun by suggesting that Mrs. K. ought to be
excused. After first grandly declaring that, “Aunt Flo is privy to
all my secrets,” he agreed after further prompting by Pop to send
her on her way. She had tossed back the dregs of her drink,
glared at me and my Dad, flashed Larry one of her most insipid
smiles and stomped out.
“Lock up on your way out, Flo,” Berger had bellowed more
loudly than was necessary, given the modest size of his law
offices. Archie and I exchanged rueful glances that said we were
both wondering how many Berger and his beloved aunt had shared
since we had left little more than an hour ago.
As if reading our minds, Berger said, “First and last one,
guys.” As if to prove the point he drained his glass and placed it
back on the credenza against the wall.
Turning back to us,he asked again, “So what’s so important?”‘ ’R0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åAfter some prefatory remarks by Archie, I told Berger my story.
At
first he was even more incredulous than Pop.
“Alright, let’s settle this right now,” he had finally said.
Turning in the swivel chair back toward the credenza, he punched
the “speaker” button on the phone and dialed Denny Lustig’s home
phone number. Over the phone’s speaker we could hear the numbers
being dialed and the ringing at the other end. And then…
“Hello, sweetheart. This is adorable Dennis. I’m off burning
my candle at both ends and so can’t take your call. But I love
your cute tushy. So leave a name and number at the tone…”
Larry and Archie exchanged disgusted looks as Berger lifted
the receiver from its cradle and slammed it down again, which
disconnected the call.
“Okay,” he said, leaning toward us across the table.
“Let’s assume Lustig told the lad here the truth. We have the
deposition coming up on Monday. How do we handle it?”
I sat stone still for the next twenty minutes as the
discussion became a debate and raged back and forth across the
cherrywood conference table. After reviewing the law together and
agreeing that an employer was guilty of handicap discrimination by
treating an employee as if the employee were handicapped, even if
he really wasn’t, Berger contended that the team should tough it
out.
“Look, Arch, according to what Lustig told your kid,” he
argued, referring to me as if I wasn’t there (and who knows… by
then he may have forgotten I was), “Denny honestly believed he had‘ ’S[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
AIDS when he told old man Freeman and got himself fired.
It also
appears that he filed his discrimination charge with the human
relations commission in good faith. And when he signed the
complaint, he apparently still didn’t know that the test was wrong.
“We’ve got ’em, Arch. I’m telling you, we got ’em on this.”
Archie took a minute to reply. He cleared his throat furiously
and wiped his big hands on his trouser legs.
“Technically, Larry, you’re right.”
“Sure I am,” said Berger hastily, a half smile on his lips.
“But…”, Archie continued.
“But what?” Beger’s tone signalled he was prepared to turn
nasty.
“But it’s just not right,” Archie stated, a little lamely I
thought. Berger angrily pushed his chair back from the table,
banging the back of it against the credenza.
After that Berger tried everything ©©© shouting and
intimidation, legal reasoning, even pleading toward the end ©©© but
to Dad’s credit he stuck by his initial, lamely©stated conclusion
that proceeding with the suit was “just not right.”
Berger never folded either. Instead it was agreed that Archie
would get hold of Marsha Milhouse at the AIDS Law Project in the
morning and see if she was available for an emergency meeting.
Larry for his part would keep trying to reach Lustig. At Archie’s
prompting, Berger agreed that, even if Lustig changed his story
when he got hold of him, the emergency meeting would go forward,
AND with or without the client.‘ ’T[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
We parted company with Larry Berger at about 7:15.
As we
walked around the side of his house©turned©office, we could see
Berger, still in the conference room, reaching for the crystal
decanter of scotch.
On the ride home Archie and I hardly exchanged ten words.
“You two guys are pretty late,” Mom had commented when we
finally came home.
Archie gave her a guilty look. “Something came up at the last
minute,” was all he said in reply.
Mom turned as if to ask a follow up question, but Archie had
already retreated to his office.
I took the stairs two at a time and made it to my room before
she could interrogate me.
‘ ’U0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åôChapter Eighteen
Archie spent the first couple hours of his Saturday morning
in his ‘sanctum sanctorum’ making and receiving telephone calls.
When Claire and I got up around ten, Mom was already gone. We
assumed ©©© correctly ©©© that she was putting in some overtime at
REFA, where the fiscal year, ended July 1, was being closed out by
her department together with a group of outside auditors. Mom was
always more tense and overworked than usual during this part of the
business cycle. Whether Archie was able to keep his news from her,
which would have only made her emotional state worse, I didn’t
know.
I filled Claire in on the situation over bowls of Fruit Loops
at the kitchen table.
“Holy shit!” she had blurted out, when I came to the clincher
about Lustig not being HIV positive. Then she clapped her hand
over her mouth and giggled.
Just about then the old man emerged from his office and padded
in his bedroom slippers, pajamas and robe into the kitchen.
Claire and I looked up from our cereal, perhaps looking a
little guilty, as people often do when the person they’ve just been
talking about suddenly appears in the doorway.
Archie looked back at us with tired, sad eyes.
“Hi, kids,” he muttered, shuffling past the table and over the
refrigerator. He opened the frig door and just stood there,
kind of staring at the stuff inside.
“Pop,” I said.‘ ’V0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
He turned quickly, as if startled out of a revery.
“What, Ned?”
he asked.
“Did you get your meeting set up?”
“Oh… yeh… yeh, I did.
We’re meeting in Marsha’s office
downtown at one o’clock.”
“Dad.”
“Yuh, Ned?”
“I want to come along.”
“Ned, this is no place for you. This meeting could get pretty
ugly. I don’t think anybody will want a kid there.” Archie
considered what he had just said, and added, “No offense, Ned.”
“None taken, Arch,” I replied. “But I’m the one Denny chose to
confide in. I had to take the heat of breaking the news to you and
Mr. Berger. I think I have a right to be a part of this.”
Archie seemed to ponder this a moment, the refrigerator door
still standing open, the frig motor humming away, trying to keep
the temperature down where it’s supposed to be.
“Yeh, Ned. I think you’ve earned that right,” he finally
pronounced. “Okay, you can come.”
I glanced at Claire who just rolled her eyes at me.
Claire wanted no part of this thing and never had.
As for me, I was swinging wildly between cynicism and naive
idealism. Working these past four weeks from mid©June to mid©July
on the Lustig case had been both a noble crusade, viewing it with
my Dad’s eyes, and a walk on the wild side, as seen through Denny’s
violet orbs. Now the case, and by implication my efforts in it,‘ ’W[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
were neither noble nor romantic… just sordid and cynical.
Yet
riding with Archie in White Fang to our meeting, I could almost
palpably feel the shredded idealism which my Father continued to
wear like a tattered uniform. Mentally I pulled a bit of that
threadbare cloth over to my side of the front seat and tugged it
across my skinny teenage shoulders.
We spoke little as White Fang hauled us down West Chester
Pike and Chestnut Street and finally parted with us at the AIDS Law
Project offices, located in an aged four©story office building on
Cherry Street a couple of blocks east of Broad. On Saturdays the
building was guarded by a lanky, Black rent©a©cop who seemed to
lear at Archie and me when Pop told him where he wanted to go… as
if perhaps he thought Archie was an obese child molester with his
latest conquest.
The rickety elevator slowly lurched its way to the fourth
floor and let us off in the Law Project’s reception area. Another
lean young man, this one White, sat at the reception desk. I noted
quickly that he was wearing two earings in his right ear, three in
his left. His blond hair sported an auburn streak front to rear
just left of center.
He led us back to a conference room, and advised us we were
the first to arrive. He offered Archie a cup of coffee. He gave
me a quick appraisal, then said, “We also have cocoa.”
“No thanks,” I replied, my mind more concerned with where I
ought to sit when the others arrived. Obviously I wasn’t anything
like an equal at the table, and I figured Denny could speak for‘ ’X[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
himself now.
There was a battered red©leather chair and an equally
beaten©up end table in the far corner of the rather cramped
conference room. I said, “Pop, maybe I’ll sit there and reorganize
some of the articles and stuff in the file folders.”
“Sure, Ned,” Archie responded somewaht absently. I guess he
was mulling over how he thought the meeting ought to go.
Five minutes after the receptionist brought Dad his coffee,
Marsha Milhouse and Larry Berger arrived together. Berger had a
Dunkin’ Donuts paper coffee cup in his right hand, a briefcase in
his left. Like Archie he was dressed in an Izod polo shirt and
slacks. Milhouse also had her briefcase, but no coffee. She wore
a sweatshirt and jeans, and what looked liked men’s high top
sneakers, the tops hidden by the legs of the jeans. Her hair was
longer than when we’d first met, unkempt and sort of romantic
looking, like a woman who had spent the morning running through the
Scottish Moors in some old movie.
Before Archie had a chance to inquire, Milhouse sat down and
said, “I’ve been trying to reach Denny all morning. I’ve called
everywhere I can think of. Nobody I talked to… none of his
friends or members of the gay community in New Hope has seen him
since Thursday night, when he apparently left the Forbidden
Fruit… that’s a gay bar in New Hope… in what the owner told me
was a very drunken condition.”
Milhouse ran her left hand through her tangled mane and looked
from Archie to Berger and back again. Berger and Archie also
exchanged glances. Berger being the most vocal lawyer at the‘ ’Y[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
table, I expected him to chime in, but it was my Dad who spoke
first in response to the AIDS executive’s news.
“It sounds to me like Denny knows the game is up,” he said in
an even voice, which must have masked keen disappointment. “And I
have to agree with that. I say we drop the suit on Monday
morning.”
Now it was Milhouse and Berger who exchanged another round of
glances. Berger repeated what he had said the day before:
“Like hell! The Human Relations Act makes it a violation to
treat someone as if he’s disabled. When Freeman’s fired Denny old
man Freeman thought our boy had HIV. Denny told him so in good
faith, so there’s no estoppel argument operating here. Freeman’s
is still on the hook and I say we continue going after them.”
Archie starred into his coffee. Milhouse, after apparently
pondering Berger’s point for a brief moment, said, “I agree. This
is still a significant test case in Pennsylvania. If we back away
now the whole gay rights movement suffers. And we set the
development of the law on AIDS discrimination back a year in this
state.”
Berger and Milhouse turned their gazes on Archie, who sipped
his coffee and went through his throat©clearing ritual, before
speaking again.
“I’m sorry, Larry… Marsha. But as I see it, no matter how
sincerely Denny believed he was infected when he told the Freemans,
the fact is he’s perfectly healthy now. He could have cleared up
the mistake months ago if he had just listened to his dcotor and‘ ’Z[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
been retested right away.
Meanwhile, the defendants have run up
legal fees and suffered negative publicity, possibly loss of
business. And nobody will believe that this wasn’t a set up if we
change our legal theory now.
“I think we could lose this case and wind up being sued for the
other side’s attorney fees,” he concluded.
Berger curled his upper lip in a show of undisguised contempt.
I noticed from my perch in the corner that his eyes were blood
shot, and wondered how many more scotches he had consumed after we
left New Hope last evening.
“Archie, boy,” he growled. “This is no time for a loss of
nerve. √
√Weƒ
ƒ have valuable attorney time into this case too. And so
far as what anybody thinks, we’ll be crucified as bad or worse if
we pull out now. I say damn the torpedoes.”
Archie’s big, bloodhound eyes looked pleadingly, but I thought
rather hopelessly, at Marsha Milhouse.
Milhouse raked her hair with her hand again and said,”I have
to go with Larry on this one, Arch. This is our test case and we
have to stay the course… go the distance, as you boys like to
say.”
Archie recognized he wasn’t going to win this one, at least
not here and now. So he retreated to a fallback position.
(Somebody once unkindly remarked about my Dad in his later years
that, “Archie’s philosophy is that the best offense is a good
defense.” There has always been some truth in that.)‘ Ä%[0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
“Okay… I see your point.” At that Berger and Milhouse
flashed quick, triumphant glances at one another. Arch didn’t
notice because his eyes were glued to his coffee cup.
“But before we make a final decision, I think we have to know
were Denny’s head is this morning,” he continued. “He’s the one
who has to face a deposition Monday morning.”
“We can postpone,” Berger chimed in, his voice turning into a
low, rumbling smoker’s voice.
“Regardless,” Archie pressed forward,” We have to find Lustig
and talk to him, as soon as possible.”
“Why don’t you handle that?” Milhouse said, turning to Berger.
“I’d love to,” he replied, fishing a cigarette out of a pack
in his shirt pocket. (I had noticed that when Berger wasn’t in a
situation where he could drink, he smoked. But, as he had once
jokingly remarked, “I never sin with both hands at once.”) “but I
promised the missus we’d drive over to Trenton to see her sister.”
“Never mind,” said Archie, surprising me, “I’ll run Denny to
ground and talk this through with him. I’ll call you both tonight
and let you know how I made out.”
This offer posed a dilemma for Berger and Milhouse. The one
team member who wanted to drop the suit was offering to deal on
their behalf with the client. This endangered their case. On the
other hand Berger didn’t want to spoil his weekend, and Milhouse
wasn’t leaping to the task either.
“Look, Arch,” Milhouse said, “that’s fine, but we have to be
agreed on our proposed course of action.”‘ ’\[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
“Right,” echoed Berger, “You’re onboard with us, correct?”
Archie slowly twirled his coffee cup in his fat fingers.
“Yeh, I’m in,” he said softly.
“Don’t worry about it.
I’ll either
get Denny straightened out for Monday. Or if he’s too
upset, I’ll see what I can do about a continuance.”
Milhouse and Berger simultaneously smiled at Archie. And why
not? They had what they wanted from the meeting and they didn’t
have to blow the rest of their weekends to get it.
‘ ’]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åChapter Nineteen
And so, by mid©afternoon Archie and I were in White Fang,
grinding up Interstate 95 North to New Hope. Archie had directions
from Marsha Milhouse to Denny Lustig’s apartment, which proved to
be on the third floor of an old, and rather poorly restored,
building that housed an antique shop on the ground floor, even
though it was located away from the main tourist thoroughfares.
In fact there were few shoppers on this side street and Archie
actually was able to park right in front of the shop. He told me
as firmly as Archie was ever able to give an order to one of his
kids that he wanted me to stay in the car. I didn’t argue. I
watched through White Fang’s right side window as Archie went into
the shop, apparently to confirm that Lustig lived upstairs, then
came out, turned left and went through a small, ornate door with a
leaded glass picture of some saint or other, which I guess had been
removed from a defunct church and used in the ‘restoration’ of the
building. Before Archie closed the quasi©religious door behind him
I caught a glimpse of a steep set of stairs that obviously led to
the top two floors.
As five minutes turned to ten and then fifteen, I began to
daydream and then to doze off. Claire and I usually slept until
around eleven on Saturday mornings, typically having either been
out the evening before at a school event or else having watched a
double feature of rented videos from Movies Unlimited.‘ Ä%^0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
Last night had been no exception.
Despite the Lustig crisis,
when Claire invited me to stay up with her for a pair of horror
flicks (one of the earliest “Nightmare on Elm Street” films plus
something else I’ve since forgotten), I hadn’t refused. So,
dragging ourselves out of bed early to see what Archie was up to,
Claire and I had missed a couple of those hours of sleep. As 4:20
PM came up on White Fang’s digital display, my eyelids were
drooping.
In fact, a pleasant dream involving a meadow and a beautiful
red dog, an Irish setter I think, had just begun to flow across the
screen behind those eyelids when a thud, followed by a violent,
wrenching shake from White Fang, caused me to snap open my eyes and
jerk up straight in the seat. I was startled to find myself face
to face with Denny Lustig.
Only after several long seconds of starring dumbly into
Denny’s eyes, which bore a startled expression which I had never
seen in them before, did all the details begin to organize
themselves and form a coherent pattern in my confused mind: Denny
was sprawled across White Fang’s hood, his neck was twisted in an
unnatural contortion, and blood was trickling from his nose and
mouth. Most odd of all, one of his eyes was violat, the other a
pale blue. As my mind at last interpreted the pattern, my mouth
opened in a long scream.
‘ ’_0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åôCHAPTER TWENTY
The rest of that Saturday is a series of blurry, indistinct
and unreliable images, rather like those we all have from our early
childhoods. You can never be sure whether the images are authentic
memories or pictures your subconscious has conjured from
photographs and verbal descriptions provided by your relatives.
I see myself wrapped in a blanket. I hear a paramedic telling
Archie “the boy is suffering from mild shock, but he should be
alright in a little while.”
I see Larry Berger and Marsha Milhouse and news people and
police, all swirling around the scene like so many actors trying
with their limited numbers and props to convey the sense of some
battle scene in a Shakespearean play.
I seem to recall snatches of the ride home, lying on White
Fang’s back seat, the blanket still wrapped around me, occasionally
seeing street lights shining down into my face from above the car
as we drove in the deepening twilight.
I still can feel Mom’s arms around me, see her undressing me
and almost smell the clean sheets that she pulled all the way up to
my chin. I recall the wet warmth of a tear landing on my forehead
as she bent down to give me a goodnight kiss.
I also recall the warm summer darkness that enveloped me,
followed by an even blacker, warmer sleep in which no dreams I can
remember intruded. I slept for fourteen hours.
CHAPTER TWENTY©ONE‘ ’`0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åô
The next morning… Sunday morning… Denny Lustig’s
suicide was front page news (albeit, below the fold) in the
Philadelphia Inquirer. Archie was visible in the background of a
photo that showed police and medical personnel gathered around a
body bag lying on a portable gurney in front of the seedy antique
store. His name was mentioned as one of the deceased’s attorneys,
but he wasn’t quoted.
On Monday Archie appeared at the opposing attorney’s office at
ten o’clock, the time designated for Denny’s deposition. The
attorney voiced his supposition that the AIDS Law Project likely
would drop the suit under the circumstances and Archie opined that
most likely it would.
I was at home on Monday afternoon. I had had a bad nightmare
the night before, and didn’t seem to have the energy to do anything
but watch television. I was seated in Archie’s lazyboy chair in
the living room, watching sitcom re©runs on a local cable channel,
as I had done since getting out of bed that morning, when Dad came
home from the deposition that never was.
I looked toward the center hall when I heard him come in the
door. He was about to turn and retreat to the sanctum sanctorum
when he must have felt my eyes on him, turned and caught my gaze.
He came into the living room and sat on mom’s matching lazyboy. He
didn’t say anything and neither did I. We just sat there and
watched an episode of the Dick VanDyke show in black and white.‘ #a0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åI felt better having the old man close by me; maybe he felt better
too… not just because of the father and son thing, but because we
had been to battle and suffered a hard defeat together.
An hour later we’d watched the Lucy Show and were well into
“Bewitched”, when the doorbell rang. To me it was like a distant
train whistle… there but of no significance to me. Even Archie
only responded after it rang a second time. He paddled across the
carpet between me and the boob tube and into the front hall. I
heard him open the door but I paid little attention as he talked to
whomever was there. I wasn’t paying much attention to Elizabeth
Montgomery’s antics on the TV screen either. The screen in my
brain kept rerunning the image of Denny Lustig’s face, pressed
against White Fang’s windshield and trickling blood down onto the
windshield wiper. I was okay so long as I didn’t let that image
move beyond the inside of my skull down into my stomach, where it
kept wanting to go.
Archie told me later, when I was more myself, that he had had
to call me three times before I turned away from the TV screen and
looked at him. He was standing in the hallway with two people, a
mand and a woman, who were maybe a little older than he was,
perhaps as old as he is now.
“Come over here, son,” he said to me. “I think you ought to
meet these folks.”
the center hall.
“Ned, this is Mr. and Mrs. Lustig.” I must have looked
puzzled, because he added, “Denny’s mom and dad.”‘ ’b[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
A man in his mid©fifties, hard and slim… the exact opposite
of Archie… held out his hand and I shook it with my own rather
limp right hand. Denny’s mother was a little younger looking than
her husband, her hair a rusty red color, her eyes puffy from
crying. In retrospect I think the look I detected at that instant
in those big, green eyes was one of longing as she saw before her
the son she had had at home with her just a decade or so ago.
Neither grieving parent said anything to me.
Archie broke the awkward silence, saying, “Let’s go into my
office.” Then he added, “Ned, you’re welcome to join us.”
I almost declined, much of me wanting badly to return to the
narcotic effect of the television set. But I followed the three
adults into Dad’s den not because I cared about the case or Denny
Lustig anymore, but because I found being in my father’s presence
even more comforting than the soothing caress of the flickering
light from the cathode ray tube.
As in the meeting in the conference room of the AIDS Law
Project, seemingly a century ago on Saturday, I sat in the chair in
the corner farthest from Archie’s desk. Lustig’s parents sat in
the black walnut captain’s chairs nearer the rolltop desk.
Archie positioned himself in his leatherette desk chair with
the squeaky wheels. Dad had not met the Lustigs before. To my
knowledge Denny had never mentioned his family, though I now
suspect that his parents were the source of his ever©ready supply‘ ’c[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
of cash, since he had never even sought another job while his case
was pending. The Lustigs had come from Iowa to reclaim their boy
and take him back home.
The Lustigs declined Archie’s offer of a cup of coffee or a
cold drink. They explained that they had met with Milhouse, who
had told them a few more facts than they had already gleaned from
the newspaper accounts and a rather perfunctory telephone
conversation with Larry Berger.
“But you were there,” Mrs. Lustig finally said. “You were in
the room, when Dennis…” Her voice trailed off and she looked
blankly, sadly at the worn Oriental throw rug under Archie’s chair.
Mr. Lustig reached across and took his wife’s right hand in
his big, knarled left one. He looked Archie hard in the eyes, the
way a tough farmer might look at a prospective opponent in a a bar
and grill on a Saturday night.
“Mr. McAdoo, we want to know what happened in that room that
resulted in our boy going out his bedroom window.” The statement
carried overtones of both a challenge and a threat. I wondered
if Mr. Lustig thought my Dad had thrown his client out the window.
Archie must have drawn the same inferences from the bereaved
father’s tone, because he replied, “Mr. Lustig… Mrs. Lustig, I
wish I could tell you what caused your son to jump out that open‘ Ä%d0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
window.
I wish to God I had anticipated it and been able to stop
him.” He paused and cleared his throat.
“I’ve reviewed the moments before it happened maybe a hundred
times by now in my mind. I can see myself seated in the straight™backed chair near the door, Denny across the room, sitting in the
cracked leather chair he had positioned by the window. There was
a little table there, where he had a tape player, some tapes, a few
books and newspapers. I imagine he sat there at night, read,
listened to music, and caught the night breezes through the
window.” Another short pause.
“It was a comfortable looking corner and he seemed at ease in
it. We all have a special spot in our home, where we feel safest
and most comfortable, I think.” Archie gestured loosely with both
arms. “My family calls this my sanctum sanctorum.”
He gave a sort of embarrassed smile.
“That spot seemed to be Denny’s sanctum sanctorum. He seemed
completely at ease in it. He went over with me how he had kept
putting off the second HIV test until, by the time he found out he
was alright, we were already deeply into the case. His voice was
thick with a sense of irony, even anger. He said he had become a
symbol in the gay community. ‘I finally was somebody.’
He repeated that a couple of times. But, honestly, I didn’t detect
anything like real despair. At times he even shook his head and
laughed.”
Archie’s third pause in his sorrowful narrative seemed
intended to let his guests speak up. But Mrs. Lustig just‘ ’e[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
continued to stare blankly at the carpet, while her husbands hard
gaze never left my father’s face.
The pause was just becoming uncomforatbly protracted when he
resumed, “Denny was just sitting there, shaking his head slowly and
laughing softly. I was trying to think of the right thing to say.
Before I could come up with anything, he looked straight at me.”
Archie now returned Mr. Lustig’s gaze directly. “Pretty much the
way you’re looking at me now. He said,’Seven months ago I was just
the night manager of a tacky family restaurant. Then I became some
of the things I’ve always wanted to be: a symbol, a martyr, a
cause. For a little while I wasn’t just a strange little man with
strange desires. I was somebody. I counted. The fact that I was
going to die in the end really didn’t take away from how good that
felt. When you’ve been treated like a freak… a queer… all your
life, dying can seem like a small price for that kind of rush.’
“He kept staring at me, watching to see if I had gotten his
point, I guess. Then he just calmly stood up and turned to the
window. I don’t know what I thought. But I guess it just seemed
he was going to open it wider or something. In fact, he did open
hesitating, he dove out head first.”
As Archie said his last sentence, Mrs. Lustig burst into tears
and covered as much of her face as she could with her left hand.
Mr. Lustig finally released Archie from his hard stare. He fumbled
in his back pocket and pulled out a white handerchief, which he
forced into his wife’s right hand. ‘ Ä%f0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
It took a few minutes for Mrs. Lustig to regain a semblance of
compsure. Archie said to me, “Ned, go get a couple glasses of ice
water.”
I hopped up from my perch and headed for the door. As I
scooted through, I heard him call after, “Make that three, Ned.”
When I returned from the kitchen with three glasses of ice
water, emotions had subsided some, and everybody seemed grateful
for the refreshment. I reclaimed my corner spot.
Finally, after several long pulls at his glass of water,
Denny’s dad said,”Mr. McAdoo, I guess I owe you an apology. I have
to admit I’m not real crazy about lawyers. And I was thinking that
maybe something you said or did had… well, you know, had pushed
our boy over the brink.”
Now his eyes were aimed at Archie’s old rug and not at the old
man’s sweating, embarassed©looking face.
“There’s no need for that, Mr. Lustig,” Dad said. One of
Archie’s failings as a lawyer (but one of his strengths as a human
being, I believe) is that he never closes in and takes advantage of
an opponent’s admission of weakness. He is ever the gentleman in
a world populated by predators. “I couldn’t be more sorry about
your son’s death. I believe… I’ve always believed he was a fine
young man.”
Mr. Lustig looked up from the rug. “He was a fairy, Mr.
McAdoo.” His look and his voice suddenly lost its edge and
softened. “But he was our son and he deserved better than he got.”
A new sort of sadness entered those hard blue eyes. “From me, and‘ ’g[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
from this mean world.
He didn’t deserve to end up how he did,
sprawled on a car hood on the front page of a newspaper. He didn’t
deserve that, Mr. McAdoo.”
“No, sir,” said Archie, “No, he didn’t.”
Then he added, “If there’s anything I can do…”
Mrs. Lustig looked up and for the first time proved that her
gaze could be as mezmerizing and as willful as her husbands.
“There is, Mr. McAdoo,” she stated firmly.
“What’s that, ma’am,” asked Archie innocently.
“You can continue Dennis’s lawsuit,” she told him.
CHAPTER TWENTY©TWO
Archie’s decision to push forward with the Lustig case
encountered nothing but negative reactions. Larry Berger guffawed
and told my Dad he was “even dumber than I thought you were.”
Marsha Milhouse went balistic, screaming at Archie that he was
“ruininng Action AIDS’ plan to lay a sound foundation of legal‘ ’h[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
precedents from which we can wipe out discrimination against gays
generally.” The Freemans’ attorney, Ernest Oakes, promised Pop to
“pursue my clients’ legal fees against you personally once we’ve
gotten this worthless case dismissed.” Denny’s suicide, followed
by the pathetic appeal of his parents, had turned the members of
the late, great Lustig litigation team on their heads. Now it was
my Dad who was intent on going forward, while the other two wanted
nothing but to jump ship as neatly and quickly as possible.
But the biggest blast of this maelstrom of criticism came …
probably predictably … from Mom. From the time Archie had first
announced his commitment to Denny Lustig’s ’cause’ back in January
down to Denny’s suicide on July 17th, she had kept her peace, and
the relative peace of our household as well. To her great credit,
I believe in retrospect, she also refrained from telling her spouse
“I told you so,” after Denny’s dramatic death left me temporarily
in a state of semi©withdrawal.
Now she was wildly angry and upset, as only a wife and mother,
who believes she is fighting a hopeless battle for her home and
family can be. At least two loud and ugly arguments, which Claire
and I could hear through closed bedroom doors, and perhaps others
that could have occurred while we were at the swim club (where I
was determined, and now permitted, to spend what was left of my
summer vacation), were followed by a long stretch of Mom’s silent
treatment.
Claire, Chris Natali, and I compared notes at poolside, and
unanimously conlcuded that Mom was totally in the right.‘ ’i[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
“Man,” Chris observed, shaking his deeply©tanned head, topped
by a profusion of big black curls that probably hadn’t been
threatened by a barber since the summer had started, “Douesn’t your
Dad mind that half the known universe hates him by now?”
I lay with my head on my beach bag, the sun in my face, eyes
closed behind silver©lensed sunglasses. “I’m not sure I even know
him anymore, Chris, ” I replied. “At first the case seemed to
bring us closer. He was really understanding when I got into
trouble for that fight last term.
“And it even was kind of fun working for him this summer
until…” My voice trailed off as an ugly, unwanted snapshot
intruded for the ten thousandth time upon the warm glow that I
liked to maintain as the exclusive image behind my eyelids.
“None of us really feels like we know him anymore,” Claire
chimed in, completing my thought for me. “He’s ,like, obscessed,
I guess.” Claire, who to her chagrin freckles rather than tans,
adjusted the top of her swim suit above her budding breasts.
“Mom told him he needs psychiatric help. But I don’t think she
really means it.”
Chris bit thoughtfully into a granola bar and brushed the
resulting shower of crumbs from his stomach, which, like his hair,
had grown over the summer, but was beautifully tanned.
“Lots of people are going nuts these days,” he observed after
swallowing the bite of his bar. “That Lustig must have been crazy.
Maybe he affected your Dad.”‘ Ä%j0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
“My father is not infected,” retorted Claire, swatting Chris
with her folded towel and knocking the rest of the granola bar out
of the startled boy’s hand. He picked it off the grass and
carefully inspected it for dirt particles, replying a little
testily, “I said affected, not infected, Claire.”
Claire seemed a little embarassed. “Sorry, Chris. Guess I’m
a little touchy about this. It’s such a drag having everybody you
know think your father is either a loony or a secret gay or
,like… I don’t know.
“And it’s no fun being at home anymore either,” she added.
Suddenly she was crying. “Oh, Ned, why did Dad ever have to get
mixed up in this mess? Why’d he have to mix us up in it?”
I pulled off my sunglasses and tossed them onto the grass. I
pulled Claire to my warm, bare chest. I hugged her hard and tears
filled my eyes too.
Chris must have felt out of place in all this McAdoo emotion.
He studied his big belly, carefully surveying its expanse for
errant granola crumbs. “Maybe I’ll go grab a shower, now,” he
said, ambling to his feet and trudging off toward the bathhouses.
Claire and I looked at each other and wiped away one another’s
tears with gentle fingetips.
“Thanks, Ned,” Claire said in a horse, choked little voice,
“I’ve really been needing a hug like that from somebody in this
screwy family.”
“Yeh, me too,” I responded.‘ Ä%k0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
“Hey, are you two okay?” came a voice from above and behind
Claire. I held a hand above my forehead to block out the sun. I
saw it was the head lifeguard, Sally Spacich.
I smiled back ay her, my tears creating a rainbow in the
corners of my eyes that made Spacich seem as if she was standing in
a spectrum of colors.
“Yeh,” I said, “Yeh, Sally, I guess we’re just fine. Thanks.”
CHAPTER TWENTY©THREE
What happened after that in the case of Lustig v. Freeman’s
Dairy Bar and Restaurant I must report as pure hearsay, since I
stayed as far away from the case and my father as I could. That
was how Mom very vocally wanted it. And, frankly, it’s how I
wanted it, too. Stage two of Mom’s response to Archie’s decision
to go the case alone ©©© the silent treatment ©©© gradually thawed
to the point where in early August she and Pop were communicating‘ ’l[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
at a reasonably civilized, albeit rather formal, level.
Dinner
table conversations were not exactly animated or dynamic. Claire
and I kept pretty quiet, too, behaving a little like gold miners in
the scene from some old movie in which a box of nitroglycerin has
just been brought down into the tunnel where they’re working.
Most days my main haunt was the swim club, although once or
twice a week the dark cloud of depression would blot the sun and
then I’d take refuge at our electronic hearth, watching one sit©com
after another and eating a lot of junk food. Fortunately for my
boyish figure, the swimming offset the empty calories. Gradually
my body was developing the deep tan I had hoped to get at the
Jersey shore. And just as gradually but surely, the sun and the
swimming burned and scrubbed at the scar on my psychy. Just three
weeks Denny’s fatal dive onto White Fang’s hood I could get
through a 24©hour period without imagining his sad, dead eyes, one
Liz Taylor’s and the other his own, more than a dozen times or so.
And I had learned to switch off the image, like changing a channel.
I wasn’t over it all, but I was moving in the right direction. It
felt good.
In fact, it felt so good, that I tended to avoid my father,
associating him with what felt so bad. And so what information I
could have picked up about his lonely progress I carefully avoided
obtaining. For instance, I never even knew about the deposition of
Orville Freeman, the owner of the restaurant where Denny had
worked, until two weeks after it took place.‘ Ä%m0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
The date was August 16th.
Archie told me later that Freeman
and Ernest Oakes arrived filled with arrogance and contempt. The
old man added that he had anticipated that attitude, since Oakes
had already threatened him over the telephone that he was going
after attorney fees once the case was dismissed. The mistake Oakes
made, Archie then remarked with a trace of a smirk on his large
lips, was that, being mainly a corporate and real estate lawyer, he
hadn’t really researched employment discrimination law very
closely. Nor, apparently had he bothered to prepare his client
very thoroughly for what they expected to be a romp around what was
now a case of Dennis Lustig’s estate frivolously trying to pursue
the decedent’s seemingly©defunct cause of action.
I didn’t bother to ask Archie for the deposition transcript
until after the case was over and I was psychologically ready to be
reconciled with him and with Denny’s ghost. Even then I wasn’t
really able to fully appreciate the nuances of the proceeding. I
still keep that deposition transcript today among my growing
collection of memorabilia of what I fancy are now two rather
interesting, and perhaps not insignificant, legal careers.
It’s only about 50 pages long, not a particularly big document of
its kind. It begins with the witness being sworn by the court
reporter. The parties are seated around the table with which I was
so familiar in Larry Berger’s offices. Though Berger had washed
his hands of the case, he wasn’t so much of a turncoat as to deny
Dad the loan of the conference room.‘ Ä%n0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
Next the reporter asks Archie and his opponent whether they
agree to the “usual stipulations.” These include waiver until
trial of most objections that normally would be brought up before
a judge in a courtroom but which tend only to slow down the
progress of a discovery deposition. Only the witness, the two
lawyers and the reporter are present, and both attorneys agree to
the usual groundrules.
Archie then explains to Freemen what he intends to do.
“I’ll be asking you a number of questions, Mr. Freeman. If at any
time you don’t understand a question, just say so and I’ll be glad
to rephrase it. If you do answer a question, I’ll assume you
understood it and are answering to the best of your ability. Is
that fair enough?”
“Yeh, yeh,” Freeman seems to be grumbling. “Let’s just get on
with it. Lustig is dead and I still have a restaurant to run.”
“Alright,” my Dad responds, “Just one more preliminary issue.
Are you under any medication or other drug which might prevent you
from answering to the best of your ability?”
I can see Orville Freeman turning to his attorney, his face
reddening in annoyance, as the transcript reports him saying,
“What the hell is this, Ernie? ”
Oakes replies, “It’s only routine preliminaries, Orv.”
It was a couple of weeks later than I learned what Orville
Freeman looked like. Then he was in an apron and chef’s hat. But
I see him in a tight©fitting seersucker suit or a brown sport coat
and coordinated tan pants that his wife had picked out for him, a‘ ’o[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
big, red©faced farmboy©made©good… and resentful as he could be of
the lawsuit, and his former night manager, and of my Father. I see
him turning back to face Pop, the color in his cheeks subsiding to
their normal ruddy complexion, as he regains his control, and with
it his arrogance. Having seen how ably Pop had defused the anger
in Denny’s dad, another aging farmer, I can visualize how well he
‘worked’ Orv Freeman, patiently but efficiently toward Archie’s own
goal.
“No, Mr. Attorney, I am not under the influence of any drug
which will prevent me from answering your questions. I’m not under
the influence of any substance at all, except maybe the caffein in
my morning cup of coffee, which I had when I opened my restaurant
at seven this morning.” The transcript doesn’t reflect a pause,
but I suspect there was one, before he smuggly adds, “It’s your
client, or should I say your late client, who no doubt knew a thing
or two about the influence of drugs.”
Most attorneys, faced with such a demeanor so early in a
deposition would have requested the witness’s counselor to caution
him about being more cooperative. But Archie just plodded on,
patiently questioning Freeman about his business and slowly leading
him up to the evening shortly before the previous Christmas, when
Dennis Lustig had called him at home. At this point the deposition
reads like this:
Q. And what did Mr. Lustig tell you when he called you that
evening?
A. What difference does it make? It was all a lie anyway.‘ ’p0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
Q.
Mr. Freeman, once again I must ask you to answer the
question I ask you and refrain from editorializing.
BY MR. OAKES: Orv, please… just answer the question. The
sooner you do, the faster we’ll be out of here.
BY MR. McADOO: Do you need me to repeat the question, Mr.
Freeman?
A. No, no. You asked what Lustig said. He said he had been
tested for HIV and that he had come up positive.
Q. What did you understand that to mean?
A. That he had AIDS and he was going to die. I’m just saying
that it wasn’t true.
Q. But at the time of the call, you didn’t know it wasn’t
true, did you?
A. With him, I should have known. Mr. Slick, that’s who he
was.
Q. But did you know?
A. No, I didn’t. I believed him.
Q. Do you think he knew at that time that it wasn’t true?
BY MR. OAKES: Objection to the form of the question.
BY MR. McADOO: Well, Mr. Oakes, I’m not sure I see anything
wrong with that question, but since we haven’t agreed to waive
objections to form until trial, I’ll try and rephrase.
Q. Mr. Freeman, looking back on that telephone conversation,
do you believe today that Dennis Lustig was deliberately lying to
you?
A. How would I know?‘ ’q0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
Q.
Well, what was his general condition?
Could you tell that
over the phone?
A. He was alright through most of the conversation.
Q. You say ‘through most of the conversation.’ Was there any
time when he was not ‘alright’?
A. Well, yes. He seemed to be crying at one point.
Q. When was that?
A. When he told me about being HIV positive. But he could
have been faking it. He considered himself quite the amateur
actor. But if he was so terrific, why was he managing a
restaurant?
Q. Maybe he wasn’t much of an actor at all. Maybe he was
really upset?
A. Yeh, maybe.
Q. At any rate, you believed him when he told you he was HIV
positive.
A. I did.
Q. What did you tell him?
A. I said if that’s the case, then he should consider
himself on a permanent leave of absence.
Q. In other words, you fired him?
A. I put him on a leave.
Q. But you said it was permanent.
A. Well, I knew that once you have AIDS you don’t get over
it.‘ Ä%r0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
Q.
In all honesty, Mr. Freeman, as we sit here man to man
today, did you consider that you had fired Dennis Lustig that
night?
A. Okay, Mr. McAdoo, yes I did.
Q. Thank you for that honesty, Mr. Freeman, Now let me ask
you this: why did you feel you had to fire him?
A. Well, I never cared much for the fact that Lustig was
gay. But, heck, if you insisted all your staff be straight in
southern Bucks County you couldn’t staff a large restaurant like
ours. But AIDS is another matter. Who’s going to bring their kids
for ice cream if they know the guy managing the kitchen has an
incurable, fatal disease? Hanging onto Dennis Lustig would have
been the kiss of death for Freeman’s restaurant.
Q. Perhaps I can appreciate your point of view, Mr. Freeman.
But Mr. Lustig had worked for you for some years. Didn’t you feel
you owed him something?
A. Owed him? The little liar wasn’t even sick. I’m glad I
dumped him when I did. I would have fired him for lying anyway.
I believe God intended to punish him one way or the other.
‘ ’s0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åô
CHAPTER TWENTY©FOUR
Within a week of Orville Freeman’s deposition, Archie filed a
motion for summary judgment with the Court of Common Pleas for
Bucks County. The motion argued that the estate of the plaintiff,
Dennis Lustig, was entitled to win its case against Freeman’s Dairy
Bar and Restaurant because Mr. Freeman had admitted that he had
discriminated against the plaintiff in violation of the
Pennsylvania Human Relations Act. What Freeman’s lawyer, Ernest
Oakes, apparently hadn’t bothered to learn, and therefore hadn’t
bothered to tell his client, until it was too late, is what Berger
and Milhouse knew back when they still wanted to proceed with the
case just hours before Denny’s death had changed their minds: the
statute made it illegal to treat an employee in a discriminatory‘ ’t[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
fashion because you believed he had a disability, even if he didn’t
have one. Archie argued that it really didn’t matter whether his
deceased client had lied or not back in December when he told
Freeman he was HIV positive.
“The undisputed, material facts are that Mr. Lustig told Mr.
Freeman he had tested HIV positive,” the brief supporting the
motion concluded, “Mr. Freeman believed him, and though the
decedent was at that time perfectly able to perform his position,
the defendant summarily terminated his employment for the sole
reason that the defendant believed the decedent to be suffering
from a disability.”
And little more than a week after that, on the Saturday of
Labor Day weekend to be precise, yet another visitor appeared at
the Mcdoo front door seeking a word with my Father. This time the
visitor was Ernest Oakes, who had called ahead to make sure we
weren’t away for the weekend.
I was burrowed into my usual Saturday morning nest, one of the
two lazyboys in the living room, watching Looney Toons and munching
a blueberry Poptart. I paid little attention as Archie ushered the
attorney into his inner sanctum. I hadn’t met Oakes. And besides,
I was still consciously withdrawn from anything having to do with
the old man’s legal practice, especially the Lustig case.
The conversation was a very quiet one. I heard nothing over
the cartoon voices and the boisterous music coming from the
television. Even when I got up once to go to the powder room built
under the center hall staircase, which required me to pass within‘ ’u[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
four feet of the door to Archie’s office, both coming and going, I
didn’t hear any of the conversation occurring on the opposite side.
About an hour after Oakes had arrived, he and Archie emerged
from the sanctum and Oakes left… without shaking Archie’s hand I
noticed, glancing casually at the two men. Archie gave me an
ambiguous look. I thought I detected the ghost of a smile on his
face, or maybe just a bit of a twinkle in his watery blue eyes. He
seemed to consider saying something as he looked at me. But then
he turned, went back into his office and closed the door.
Sunday was spent at the swim club. Mom, Claire and I were
intent on enjoying the last weekend before the pool closed for the
season. Mom packed a big picnic basket and cooler of drinks and
icecream bars. Archie excused himself, saying he had pressing work
that wouldn’t wait.
Mom looked at him skeptically. But relations were still very
strained. So she didn’t try to talk him into coming along.
Monday morning, Labor Day, I woke with a bittersweet feeling
similar to the one I always had when I both looked forward with
anticipation to the imminent start of a new school year and a
whimsical wish that the summer could last just another week. The
feeling was more bitter than sweet that summer, as I fought the
usual rush of bad memories that had haunted me since mid©July, and
also that morning fought back a growing anxiety about meeting Big
Bill and his buddies in the middle school halls again.
All in all, I wandered down to breakfast with no youthful
energy or boyish excitement to share with the rest of my family. ‘ ’v[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
Claire, however, made up for my gloomy demeanor.
Already dressed
in a new Led Zeplin t©shirt and sexy little shorts, she was excited
about going to the Hershey Amusement Park with her best friend,
Jennifer Gallagher, and her family. In fact, CLaire had just about
wolfed down a bowl of Fruit Loops when a horn blew in our drive,
and she was on her way.
As she literally skipped through the center hall, Archie came
down the stairs. I noticed that, even though it was only eight
o’clock, he too was already all dressed… in a sport coat and tie
no less.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said to Claire, “how about a kiss for the
old man?”
Claire stopped, turned and gave Archie a kiss on one of his
big, plump cheeks.
“Here’s a little something extra. Buy a nice sweatshirt or
something,” said Archie, handing Claire a folded bill. “Just do
your old Dad a favor and bring me the newspaper from the driveway
before you go.”
“Wow, thanks, Dad,” squeeled Claire, jamming the bill into the
tiny back pocket of her tight blue shorts. She skipped out, picked
up the paper, and gave Arch a peck on his other cheek before
turning and running to the Gallagher’s green Chevy van. Archie
beamed and waived as he watched the van back out of the drive and
head away down the street.
He closed the front door and took the paper from under his
left arm. He looked over the first page, smiled a satisfied‘ ’w[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
little smile, then walked slowly into the kitchen, where Mom was
sitting at the table sipping her coffee and thumbing through a
flier from the Manoa Hardware Store.
Archie placed the paper in front of Mom, turned and went to
the counter to help himself to a cup of coffee. His back turned to
Mom, he had the satisfaction of hearing her choke a little on her
next sip of coffee, as her eyes scanned the lower half of the front
page of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
I walked quickly across the tile floor to stand behind her and
look over her shoulder, as I had peered over Archie’s shoulder at
another newspaper nearly eight months earlier. “Settlement reached
in case of man fired because he had HIV,” the headline read. The
subhead said, “Successful plaintiff committed suicide this summer.”
Archie had done it. I learned how a little later that same
day.
‘ ’x0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åô
CHAPTER TWENTY©FIVE
Mom and I both accepted Archie’s invitation to drive up to
Doylestown with him. He was scheduled to meet Ernest Oakes at his
law office at ten thirty to sign some documents. While Archie had
succeeded in onsisting on the right to break the story to the
Inquirer, winning for himself the story in the lower left hand
corner of the day’s front page, a condition had been absolute
secrecy concerning its monetary terms. To help preserve his
client’s confidentiality conditions, Oakes had insisted that the
settlement check be exchanged for signed releases on the holiday,
when most of the legal district around the courthouse would be
deserted by other attorneys and the usual contingent of journalists
assigned to the courtroom beat.
Mom and I went window shopping among the antique stores on
main street, while Archie met with Oakes. Denny’s Dad, who had
flown into Philadelphia Sunday night, had driven out in a rental
car and was already waiting in Oakes’ office, Archie told us later.
Orville Freeman wasn’t present. Oakes turned over two checks,
representing Archie’s contingent fee and the remainder of the‘ ’y[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
settlement amount, which went to Mr. Lustig.
Archie said the mood
was subdued, business©like, a little frosty on Oakes’ part.
But Oakes did tell Dad something he hadn’t divulged in their
first meeting: In the politically©wired world of county politics,
where a successful restauranteur is a real player in the coveted
tourist trade, judges who must win periodic reelection to their
posts are mindful of the impact of their decisions upon such
personages as Orville Freeman. Though a questionable call on the
part of the judge assigned to decide Archie’s summary judgment
motion, that esteemed Bucks County jurist had made an ex parte call
to Oakes, advising him as an old friend and colleague in the county
bar that he not only was likely to lose on the motion, but that he
may have malpracticed in the balance. Oakes was man enough, and at
least attorney enough, to reveal these facts to my Father, while
Denny’s Dad waited outside Oakes’ office for his turn to sign the
settlement. Of course, he was also enough of a lawyer not to tell
Archie before he had reached a settlement figure on Saturday, for
fear that Archie or his client might hold out for more. All the
same, Archie graciously agreed to maintain this confidence together
with those he was formally promising to observe that day.
Mom and I were walking back toward White Fang when we saw
Archie and Mr. Lustig shake hands on the sidewalk in front of
Oakes’ office door. I noticed someone peek from behind a vertical
mini©blind in the office’s front window.
Dad spotted us and waived as Mr. Lustig walked away in the
opposite direction. The mini©blinds closed again.‘ ’z[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
Once we were back inside White Fang and moving slowly down the
street, I looked out the back window and saw Ernest Oakes step out
of his office and stare after us down the street. He seemed to
shake his head, as if in amazement, then turn and head
down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. As we came to the end
of the block I saw Mr. Lustig getting into his rental car. He
didn’t look up at us as we passed and Archie didn’t blow the horn
or waive at him.
Archie was silent until we were outside town and Mom and I
respected his silence. Then he reached into his coat pocket and
handed Mom the check. It was folded in half. As she opened it and
looked at it, he said, “That should cover my hourly rate on the
case, wouldn’t you say?”
For the second time in just one morning my Dad had managed to
shock my Mother. He said he couldn’t say how much the total
settlement had been. But he observed that we could probably make
a pretty good guess if we assumed the usual contingency was a
third, but that the check included a calculation of the costs he
had incurred up front in the case, such as the expense of the
crucial Orville Freeman deposition. He then swore us to secrecy as
well.
“Archie,” Mom asked, showing the old boy some signs of
affection for the first time in… how long? “Shouldn’t we
celebrate? I mean it’s a holiday. And then there’s this.” She
looked really hard at the check again. She held it in both her
hands, as if it might evaporate if she didn’t hold on tight.‘ '{[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
“How about it, Ned?” asked Archie, becoming voluble himself.
I was leaning over the seat, my own eyes perhaps bugging out
a bit as I studied the check Mom was clutching. Not a fortune, but
good wages for a job well done. I felt a weight lift from me. I
like to think, looking back now, that it was the vindication of my
Dad’s principles, and not the handsome fee, that released me from
under the clouds that had been haunting me for almost two months.
“Sure, Arch,” I said, calling him affectionately by his first
name, an old habit Claire and I had indulged in almost forever, but
which I had dropped during the weeks of my withdrawal from him and
all he stood for. “Whatever you say.”
Archhie seemed to ponder that for a moment. Then he said,
“You know what? In all these months, I’ve never actually seen
Freeman’s Dairy Bar.”
“Archie, you wouldn’t dare!” exclaimed my Mother. But her
mischievous look told me… and my Father… that she was for it.
Archie navigated White Fang to Newtown, a village held second
only to New Hope in all Bucks County for its touristy atmosphere.
It was a little past noon by the time we found Freeman’s Dairy Bar
and Restaurant, and the parking lot was pretty full. White Fang
being the luxury liner she was, Archie had to park her way in the
back of the lot, right beside the dumpster.
Inside we had to wait in line about ten minutes for a table.
When we were finally seated, the festiveness of the occasion seemed
to demand that we all three skip a nourishing lunch and have
icecream sundays. Archie ordered one called “Lost Youth” which‘ ’|[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
featured lots of hot buterscotch topping and what seemed like a
gallon of whipped cream. Naturally, he had ordered the large.
Mom made do with a small “Dusty Road” sunday made with frozen
yogurt. I was Mr. In©Between, getting a medium banana split.
The sundays arrived in less than ten minutes and Archie was
about to attack the mountain of cream when a shadow fell across the
table. Looking up from his “Lost Youth”, Archie saw Orville
Freeman staring down at him, wearing a white apron and chef’s cap.
“Mr. Freeman,” Archie said in a voice that betrayed his
surprise, and perhaps a touch of anxiety.
“The same,” was all Orville Freeman said in reply, as he bent
over, grasped the base of the silver sunday bowl in his huge right
hand and placed Archie’s “Lost Youth” on his head like a soldier’s
helmet. Since Pop had ordered the large size, it fit fairly well.
The hot butterscotch held it stickily in place.
“Excuse me, folks,” he said to Mom and me, taking in both of us
with a quick, friendly smile… the kind he no doubt gave all his
valued customers as he cruised his restaurant, spreading goodwill
and winning back the same.
He turned and headed back toward his restaurant’s kitchen.
Then turning and giving us another quick, friendly look, he said in
a soft voice that belied his great size, “The sundays are on the
house.”
When the shock wore off, the restaurant began to buzz as
people speculated about what had just happened. A few obviously‘ ’}[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
upset seniors got up, demanded their checks, paid and hastily
departed. A couple of little kids came over and pointed at Pop
until their parents scooped them up and carried them back to their
own tables.
“I’m calling the police,” said my Mother, who was beet red
from a combination of anger and embarassment.
Archie reached out with his left hand and gently held her
right arm as she made to get up from the table. With his own right
hand he gingerly removed the sunday bowl from his head. Two
waitresses rushed over, their hands full of paper towels and
napkins, both nervously glancing over their shoulders in the
direction of the still swinging kitchen doors, probably wondering
what their boss would do if he caught them aiding the man he had
just coated with ice cream, whipped cream and hot butterscotch
sauce.
“We’re not calling the police,” Archie said in a quiet voice.
He was perfectly calm as he took his time in cleaning off as much
of the mess as he could.
“Wait here and finish your sundays,” he gently commanded as he
went to the men’s room on the other side of the main dining area.
He returned in about ten minutes. Mom had only poked at her “Dusty
Road.” I had eaten all of my split, partly I think in fear that
if I didn’t eat it either Freeman or Archie might put it on my
head.
When Archie came back his hair was wet but clean, and combed
the way you comb your hair with your fingers when you get out of‘ ’~[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘
the shower at the swim club and realize you don’t have anything
better to use. He carried his wet jacket over one arm. His shirt
and tie also looked wet in several spots, as did one pants leg
which he had succeeded in only partially scrubbing of butterscotch
sauce and vanilla icecream.
He walked with a fair amount of dignity out of the restaurant
as everyone stared after us.
“We ought to call the police,” my Mother insisted again, as
Archie steered her toward White Fang with his free hand.
“No, we shouldn’t,” he assured her. Normally she would have
disputed his opinion. But today she let him call the shots. Archie
was downright cheerful as he drove home, the window wide open to
help him dry off. He explained briefly that Freeman, denied his
day in court by good lawyering tactics, had a lot to get out of his
system. Archie said he was actually glad to have given him the
chance.
“Let’s just be glad it was an ice cream sunday and not a gun,”
he added, I think only half in jest.
“I just wish Denny had been there to see it,” he added. “It’s
the kind of ending he would have really appreciated, I think.”
Even at sixteen I was smart enough to fight back the urge to
reply, “Maybe he was there in spirit.” Maybe he was, but I was
never that hoky, not even then.
So Archie McAdoo had shown them all he was a good lawyer in the
end. And a good man, who could let the vanquished opponent make
his point, even at Archie’s own expense. ‘ ’[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘åEPILOGUE
There were no really big changes in my Father after that, not
on a day©to©day basis. But both his attitude and the quality of
his legal practice seemed to change for the better, little by litle
and day by day, from then on.
As for me, I decided that, though I knew I was choosing a
tough life, I wanted to be an attorney too. Denny’s ghost lives
with me still, as I’m sure he lives with my Dad. Each year in a
lawyer’s busy life brings other scars and other ghosts. You learn
to wear the former with pride, even if gained through your own
stupidity, and you learn to live on friendly terms with the latter.
Oh, yes, one other thing: although Archie has continued to
this day to eat as much as ever, he has never eaten so much as a
spoonful of icecream to the best of my knowledge. As magnanimous
as he was the day Orv Freeman decorated his head, some part of
Archie… the really vulnerable core, I think… can’t bring
himself to enjoy the stuff anymore.
Once, a couple of summers later, when the old boy was deeply
embroiled in his well©known tree mold case, he was offered a
lucious©looking chocolate cone at a church picnic.
“No thank you,” he had unhesitatingly told old Mrs. Shuck, who
was holding out the cone at her booth on the church’s front lawn.
“What’s the matter, Mr. McAdoo,” she had asked, perhaps a
little surprised that such a large man would turn down such a
scrumptious concoction. “Don’t you like ice cream.”‘ ’Ä[1]0*†(†(∞
∞
‘å
“I hate the stuff,” Archie had replied with as much courtousy
as he could manage.
©end©
Buy this book and its sequel, “Ned McAdoo and the Molly Maguires,” at http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1257238
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