It had merged with our billion-dollar corporate client a decade ago and was now a factor in our lawsuit.
I’d finally finished, marking all 100 boxes with a check to certify that they’d been searched.
I inched my way between two tall stacks and rode the elevator 34 floors to my office.
Then I e-mailed my boss a 70-page chronology of the more than 2,000 documents I’d found.
Before I could gather my coat and head home, the telephone rang.
“Good job,” the partner said.
“There are another 100 boxes on a company called OMS.
Start those on Monday.”
“First QRS and now OMS?”
It felt to me like PMS.
The partner chuckled, a sadist in a three-button suit.
“How’s my big shot lawyer doing?”
he shouted over the whir of fans in his freezer.
“You gonna argue a case soon?”
“It’s not like that here,” I explained.
“Company A sues company B, motions are filed and the winner gets richer.”
“Hold on a minute, baby, will you?”
“Yo, Anthony!
Gimme 10 pounds of those pork butts!”
I sighed, hoping for some sympathy, then realized my dad was working on the holiday, too.
From his view, I had it made.
His favorite refrain was, “You’re at a desk.
I’m in a freezer.”
“Start writing,” he told me.
“The spoon and fork are baby-sized, to remind you to go at it in small bites.”
Writing had always struck me as the privilege of an anointed class to which I did not belong.
Writers were boarding school alums whose parents owned country homes and New York City town houses with personal libraries.
I spent the year learning about publishing and tasting, vicariously, the writer’s life.
“It’s a no-brainer,” my father told me.
“You’ll apply for loans; I’ll pay your living expenses.
it’s possible for you to’t pass up this opportunity.”
“I’m going to backpack through Southeast Asia before law school starts,” I announced.
And then, “Don’t go.”
She wept when I sold my high school Mazda for $6,500 to pay for my travels.
But my father considered my gusto another reason to brag about me.
“You’ll take the world by storm, kid,” he said.
“A lucky charm?”
“A can of mace?”
Could it be, bless his heart, a journal?
I pulled off the ribbon.
My father’s parting gift to me was a roll of toilet paper.
On the first square, he’d written, “In Asia, you’ll need it.”
My classmates argued by logic.
I linked thoughts by stream of consciousness, lapsing whimsically into metaphor.
Legal study will improve the clarity of your prose, I told myself, popping Xanax like Tic Tacs.
I had $85,000 in student loans to pay off.
We couldn’t watch without a spat because I’d morphed into a total bitch.
“Law & Order: SVUmakes being an attorney look so glamorous,” I complained.
“Can’t you like turn it off?”
“Mariska Hargitay is hot,” he replied.
“Real lawyers don’t wear lipstick during an all-nighter.”
“She’s not a real lawyer.
She’s Detective Olivia Benson.”
“That’s it.
I’m sleeping on the couch.”
After two years at the law firm, I enrolled in a writing class.
Whenever I came home from the workshop, Geoff and I had great sex.
“I think you should quit your job,” he announced one night afterward, breathless and sweaty.
I wouldn’t let it drop.
He earned enough money to support us, I pointed out.
Geoff made a spreadsheet, calculating our expenses minus my earnings.
Then he made me promise to log every penny I spent.
For months, I input $4 lattes, $9 salads and $11 manicures.
“I see one potential risk factor in all this,” he said.
“Your credit card bills from Saks.”
My splurges on designer shoes and handbags simply made my job more bearable, I explained.
I wouldn’t need retail therapy once I quit the law.
When I at last gave notice and announced my plansto be a writerthe partners were incredulous.
So was my father.
“I didn’t send you to law school so your husband could support you,” he said.
The truth is, I’d never taken myself so seriously.
Still, his remark throbbed through my temples.
Although Geoff and I didn’t need my income, being a breadwinner gave me self-respect.
The year I turned 12, I interviewed her for my school newspaper.
“Guilty pleasure?”
I asked, pen poised.
“Pancakes,” she said.
“Greatest pleasure?”
“My family.”
I asked about her se cret goals, what she dreamed of.
“At night?”
I’d considered prompting her: “Mom, what about retiring with Dad by a lake?”
Instead, I stayed silent.
“I don’t remember my dreams,” my mother said.
“I’m sorry.
Can you leave it blank?
Or just write an answer for me?”
I didn’t want to live a life of forgotten dreams or follow someone else’s.
It offers a skyline view of my old law firm.
Then I sit on a sunny bench and pound away at my keys.
Photo Credit: Nathan Perkel
