Other Writings

"Slouching Towards Portland"
"The Deed"
The Writer's Journey Interview

"THE DEED"
(Literary magazine, "Arts and Letters", Spring 2005)

When I stepped into the foyer after work I expected to hear the silence of Martin's absence, or rather I expected to hear the amplified sounds of my own actions ricocheting about the empty house, but instead I heard the grandfather clock ticking unevenly. I stood still for a moment, hushing the twins who, sensing something, grew tranquil and heavy at my hips. Yes, the ticking of the clock was distinctly uneven. Some of its beats were loud and others were light, giving it a slightly syncopated sound.

I suppose it was about a minute that I stood there, puzzling over the clock. It was the strangest feeling, akin to what it's like to arrive at your desk and know, from a brief or a pen that is out of alignment that someone has been there, tampering with things in your absence. The most bewildering aspect was that the clock showed the correct time, 6:53.

I had to get on with things, of course – the girls were hungry and beginning to fuss – so I forgot about the clock, or perhaps, more precisely, I shoved the clock problem aside. It was an old clock dating back to the early 1800's and it was natural that it should need some attention after all the years that Martin and I had ignored it. I jotted it on the list, the list I was keeping for Martin.

I'm not one of those fanatical people who expect lists to solve all their problems; I simply think they're useful for keeping life orderly, for fending off encroaching chaos. Like countries having borders. Anyway, the first thing on my list was: Overly bold birds? In the morning when I was leaving the house four or five blue jays had flown in a pack onto the porch steps. They had lingered there, pecking at the floorboards and cackling like voyeuristic old men, as if they didn't intend to leave. When I shooed them away with my foot, they allowed me to make contact with their bodies and I found their solidity and boldness frightening. They weren't aggressive like the birds in the Hitchcock film, but they seemed stronger than I was.

The second thing on my list was: Grandfather clock, uneven ticking. Once I write something down I can usually stop thinking about it.

I lowered Beatrice into her high chair and gave her a piece of zwieback, then went to get Gina who I'd left on the floor with some measuring spoons. Gina's pudgy hand, fingers splayed like a starfish, reached out for me. I saw the faint red smudge on her wrist – a stork's bite, the doctor called it. It wasn't Gina after all, it was Beatrice, she was the one with the mark. I'd never made that mistake before, not since a few days after they were born.

Rattled, I shoveled rice cereal into their mouths, berating myself, not daring to yearn so soon for Martin's return. I don't like it when Martin is away, but I've always prided myself on being able to manage. The secret is keeping busy, adhering to a strict routine. Before he leaves I make sure my suits are cleaned and pressed, my nails are freshly manicured, my hair is trimmed. As an attorney, it is part of my profession to remain alert to things that may go wrong, but it is also my policy not to dwell on those things in Martin's absence. It is not helpful to articulate what I know to be true – that every moment our lives are only a hair's breadth from spinning out of control.

I gave the twins their baths and read them a story, and thankfully they went to sleep without much fussing. I listened for Beatrice who is usually the one to squawk after the lights go out, but even she went down easily. That made me feel good. I distinctly remember descending the staircase feeling a sheen of accomplishment, thinking I did have control of things and would get through Martin's absence just fine after all.

Downstairs in the kitchen I decided I was entitled to a drink. I know it's usually considered a sign of unhappiness to drink alone, but at that moment I was not unhappy. I wanted a drink because I felt satisfied and thought I should celebrate the feeling. I opened a bottle of Chardonnay. I'm not knowledgeable about wines – that's Martin's department – but I couldn't help noticing that this bottle, a California wine, was probably good, as it cost almost twenty dollars. I hoped Martin wasn't saving it for some special occasion.

As soon as the glass was poured and the corked bottle was restored to the fridge, I heard the TV pop on. For a minute I froze. It flew through my mind that it might be the neighbors' TV I was hearing but, though our neighbors on one side can some-times be loud, I'd never heard their TV sounding as if it was right in our house. I considered that a burglar could be responsible for the sound, but I didn't hear any rifling about and of course why would a burglar (unless he was completely psychotic) enter a house and turn on the TV? It didn't make sense. A mechanical problem then? A short circuit? The TV had tripped on like a car alarm responding to a bolt of thunder? Perhaps the popping of the wine cork had done it.

So, after a period of time – undoubtedly less than a minute – when my mind was sorting these possibilities, I headed for the living room, still holding onto this (in retrospect) somewhat far-fetched thought about the TV having been tripped on by the audible popping of the wine cork.

When I got to the hallway, I noticed the living room light was on. It had not been on when we arrived home – that I knew – and I was certain I hadn't turned it on since. I am very thrifty and try hard not to waste electricity. So the fear I had so successfully laid aside a moment earlier rose again, and (I am ashamed to say) my first impulse was to cry out for Martin. But I restrained myself and instead hugged the wall of the foyer. That was when I first heard the sound of a person moving. How instinctively programmed we are to recognize the sounds of human movement. Someone was rising from the couch and walking to the door. Someone was in the house with me.

I thought of screaming, but for what? It would only scare the babies.  And, terrified as I was, I felt foolish raising my voice, so I pressed my face against the wall as if it would hide me. Then, into the stretch of floor included in my vision stepped a pair of sneakered feet.

"Can I help you?" asked a male voice.

I'm sure I looked ridiculous, clutching the wall and gaping at this man as I did. But what was I to think when a perfect stranger addressed me that way in my own house? 

As men go, he was rather harmless-looking. He was possibly thirty years old (a little younger than I). Neither tall nor short, he had the densely-muscled body of a weight lifter. He wore khaki trousers, old-fashioned white sneakers, and a maroon V-necked sweater that looked as if it might be cashmere. Neat but casual clothes, the clothes of a relaxing professional, not a criminal. He stood watching me patiently, no observable alarm marring the symmetry of his features.  Embarrassed, I stood up straight.  In the living room I heard the sudden rise in the TV's volume as the ads took over from the program.

"Can I help you?" he said. 

"Who are you?" I demanded.

"Cute."  He took my upper arm in a forceful grip and led me to the door.  "Don't worry, I won't press charges."

"Press charges?"  I shook off his hand and faced him.  He seemed taller than he had at first and his body blocked off my view of the rest of the house. 

"I'm curious, though, how did you get in?" he asked.

A terrible helplessness came over me, reducing my voice to a whimper.

"My purse is upstairs, take what you want.  But please get out."  I panted.  A pulse in my neck jittered.  His gaze scanned my body before he began chuckling.  Then he stepped back from me and held out his arm, extending it to the stairway. 

"All right, we'll find that purse of yours."

I didn't move.  "My husband will be home soon you know."

He nodded.  "The purse?"

I knew it was always the best policy to give these people whatever they wanted, but I hesitated, thinking of the girls asleep upstairs.  I did not want to leave him downstairs alone, nor did I want to allow him into the bedroom with me.  He was not unsavory and he had curiously good manners, but there was a businessman's callousness about him, and it did not take much imagination to picture him hurling me onto the bed and having his way with me. 

I went because I saw no choice.  I plodded up the stairs sideways, keeping my eye on him.  He returned my look calmly.  I prayed that the twins would not awaken.

He stood courteously outside the bedroom while I searched for my purse.  What caught my attention instead was a man's suit lying over the easy chair on Martin's side of the room.  It was not Martin's suit.  Martin never wore gray suits so I knew it wasn't his.  Could it really belong to this man?   

So distracted was I by the suit that I couldn't find my purse, and then I remembered that I'd left it downstairs.  I told him this and he smiled an irritating power smile as if he didn't care where it was since he knew he'd get it eventually.  We paraded back down to the kitchen.  There was my purse on the telephone table.  I found the wallet and handed it to him.

"Now you can go," I said. 

His smile, or I should say sneer, wouldn't go away now.  He opened my wallet and looked through it, scrutinizing each credit card approvingly before he looked for the cash.  When he got to the compartment for bills he spread it open and held it up to my view.  Nothing. 

"How generous of you," he said.

"I meant to stop at the cash machine.  We can go there now if you want."

"I see we've been sampling the goods," he said, nodding to my untouched glass of wine on the counter.  He slipped the wallet back into my handbag, laid the handbag on the table, and handed me the glass of wine. "Finish the wine and go.  I have some people coming.  This episode will amuse them."

I drank the wine because I did not know what else to do.  I was thinking about the word episode.

"We all have our stories, don't we," he said.  "Tell me, you look well enough off.  What motivates a woman like you to do something like this?"

I told him I wasn't going to dignify his question with an answer, and then the telephone rang.  What a relief; it was Martin, I knew.  He often called at just this hour.  But, when I reached for the phone the man took it from my hand, not aggressively, but firmly.

"Vern Hallohan speaking."  He answered with casual indifference.

I could hear the buzz of the voice on the other end, and I knew it was not Martin – it was someone who fully expected this Vern Hallohan to answer.

"Yes, whenever you can is fine, I'll be here.  Good, looking forward to it...  No, Mergers and Acquisitions.  Right, bye."

"That was for you?" I said when he had hung up.

"You thought it was who?  Your husband?"  He chuckled softly.

I knew I had to take charge. The wine had braced me.  "If you don't leave the house by the count of five, I'm calling the police."

"Oh, please."

I abhorred his tone of voice.  It was the disdainful tone that mothers use with intractable children, that some of my male colleagues have used with me from time to time.  "I mean it," I said.  "One... two..."

"What will you say to the police?"

"That you're here, that you broke in, that you won't leave."

He shook his head as if I were truly pathetic.  "What a sorry fellow – he won't leave his own house."

At that moment I came as close as I've ever come to hitting someone, but of course I didn't.  "I'm going to reiterate the obvious – this isn't your house," I said.

"Oh?"

"It's my house."

"I'm happy to go through this charade with you if it will make you happy, but let's see who the police are likely to believe.  Prima facie.  Who found who sneaking around?  Do you even have a key for this house?"

"Of course I have a key."  I pawed around in my bag but my keys were snuggled somewhere out of reach.  I heard a click as he laid something on the counter.

"That could be any key," I said.

"Yes, but it isn't, is it?"  He went to the front door and slid his key smoothly into the lock.

I felt myself sinking beneath the quicksand of our misunder-standings.  "My babies are upstairs."

"Your babies are upstairs?"

"Why would I break in here with children?"

He trailed me up there and, to my great relief, Beatrice and Gina were still there, sleeping soundly.  I put my ear down into each of their cribs to confirm that they were still breathing.

"See?" I said.

"See what?  This proves nothing.  You brought your babies here, that's all.  I give you credit for ingenuity.  Not that that will hold any water with the police."

"With cribs," I pointed out, feeling more and more confused. I was still wondering what I could have done with my keys.

"These cribs have always been here.  For my girlfriend's children.  I take it somehow you knew that?"

He picked up a blanket that had fallen off the edge of Gina's crib.  He folded it and put it in the bottom drawer of the dresser right alongside the rest of the blankets!  It could, of course, have been a lucky accident, but it disturbed me because it coincided with something else I'd noticed.  He did not move about the house as if he were a stranger to it; he negotiated the sharp angles and creaky floorboards as if he knew them, as if he'd been moving around here for years.

It sounds absurd, but I could see he really believed this house was his.  I could see it in the unyielding opacity of his eyes, in his immutable body, and in his sneering but decorous manner.  He was being tolerant of me because he believed himself.  It was now up to me to demonstrate the fallacy of his case.

He must have spotted a change in me because quite suddenly he suggested that we go downstairs to the living room to talk.  I followed him down.  He swung through the kitchen and took the wine bottle and two glasses.  He knew exactly which cupboard held the glassware.

In the living room he set the bottle and glasses on the coffee table next to a bowl of popcorn; then he used the remote control to turn off the TV which was playing a baseball game.

"If it's your house, where were you this morning?" I said.

"Here."

"And last night?"

"Here."

Clearly a pointless line of questioning, but I was rattled and my logic had gone haywire.  I watched him pick stray kernels of popcorn from the cracks between the couch cushions, his fingers scratching around like a pecking chicken.  A precise, almost finicky person, I could tell.  This action both fascinated and irritated me, but most of all it called up a strange flicker of recognition.

"Are you an attorney?" I asked suddenly.

He nodded hesitantly.

"Where do you work?"

He paused for a moment, considering the wisdom of an­swering.  "Ostrow, Reichert and Burton."

I nodded.  'Orb,' we called them at work.  "I've seen you then."  I did not mention that his firm was the opposing representation on my 10-B Haines Realty case.

"Oh?"  He was pouring the wine now.  He handed me a glass­ful.

"I work for Bartlett, Boggins, Pipkin, and Spitzer."

He squinted at me.  "For?"

"Bartlett, Boggins, Pipkin and Spitzer."

"I mean which attorney do you work for?"

"I see."  He sipped his wine.  I didn't have to be Einstein to see that he neither recognized nor believed me, but my own memory of him was becoming more and more distinct.  I could picture him sitting at the end of our conference table, digging into the cherry molding with his pencil.  The action had annoyed me then – I suppose he was not relenting on some point; I don't recall exactly – and when I saw him pick up those popcorn kernels, I had no doubt this was the same man.

"An attorney," he repeated and the sneer returned to his face.  I felt I was at work, in a meeting at the conference table with fifteen men who made me half invisible and half a laughing stock, who would never make me partner, and who habitually saved their best jokes until after I left the room.

I was drinking the wine without meaning to.  I knew it was whittling away the legal acumen I needed, but at the moment it was the only way I had to calm myself.  It drove me crazy that we were there chatting like perfectly normal logical people. Or rather I was treating him like a logical person, though he was hardly returning the favor.

"Okay," I said, "do you have the deed?"

"The deed.  The lady wants the deed."

I knew I had him then.  What was he going to do, draw up a deed right then and there?

I returned to the living room.  Next door I could see the silhouetted bodies of our elderly neighbors, the Maxwells, moving around their living room.  When they turned out their lights I felt unbearably alone.  A sudden impulse carried me outside, across the lawn, and onto the Maxwells' porch.  Their outdoor light went off just as I arrived at the front door.  I knocked anyway.  I could hear muffled voices, but it was at least a full minute before the door opened.

Mr. Maxwell peered through a crack, then he recog­nized me and opened the door wide.  He wore a red plaid bathrobe and his expression was puzzled.  We don't see much of the Maxwells, so he was understandably surprised.  Mrs. Maxwell was saying something inaudible in the background.  He glanced at her. 

"It's the lady from next door."  Then he turned back to me. 

"Yes, Dear, how can I help?"  His voice was tired and reedy.

"Yes?"

"Oh dear.  Shall we call the police?  What did he take?  You aren't hurt are you?"

"Oh no, it's not –"  I paused.  How could I say it?  "He's not exactly a criminal.  I mean he might be, but he's very well-dressed and polite and all.  And he's an attorney –"

I lost my train of thought.  Vern was alone in our house, alone with the girls.  How irresponsible of me to leave.

"I'm sorry, I have to get back.  I'm so sorry."

Mr. Maxwell frowned.  "Have you called the police?"

"No."

"Would you like me to?"

"Well –"  I thought of Vern looking for his deed.  What if he had one?  Not that I thought he did but...  I sighed.  "It's so complicated.  I'm really so sorry to have bothered you."

Vern stood in the living room near the window that looks out to the Maxwells.  He eyed me as I tried to recover my breath.  From the superior little smile he wore I realized he'd probably been watching me over there and perhaps knew what had transpired.  As for his deed, I didn't see it, but before he sat back down on the couch he reached into his pocket and withdrew a sheet of folded parchment paper which he handed to me.  It was indeed a deed, bearing the address of the premises and his name, Vernon Leroy Hallohan.  It bore a date from two years earlier.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him leaning back on the couch, sipping his wine and watching me gloatingly.  After that, my mind wouldn't settle properly.  It was not possible that we both owned these premises.  Had Martin sold the house without my knowing?

I did not rip up his deed; I handed it back to him.  I went upstairs and bundled the twins into quilts.  They moaned a little and stared at me.  How solemn their pursed matching mouths looked!  How large their eyes!  It was almost as if they did not trust me to do things correctly.  I put on a warm coat and, purse in hand and one twin under each arm, I went outside without bothering to look for Vern again.

The other houses on the block were dark and the streetlight outside our house must have had a short circuit because it was flickering off and on like a lighthouse beacon.  I went to the car which was parked on the street in front of the house.  As soon as I got there, I remembered in a panic that my keys were missing, but now when I checked my purse they were there in the usual place.  I wanted to cry out from relief and confusion.  Had he put them back there?  Had I simply overlooked them?

With some difficulty, I lowered the back seats so the girls could lie flat.  Then I got into the driver's seat, but I didn't start the ignition, I just sat there, trembling, thinking about Martin and wondering if he was still alive.  What I felt was not fear – I had already passed through that – but a frightening sense of dislocation.

Every once in a while I looked back at the twins.  Once, I caught Beatrice's eyes, round and reflective and breakable as Christmas tree ornaments, and I thought: These precious girls are all I have left.  I brought Beatrice into the front seat with me, thinking if I left her awake by herself in the back she would die from loneliness.

After a while, I saw the light in the living room go off.  I put Beatrice in the back again, started the car, and drove a little way down the street until the house was barely visible.  Lying across the two front seats, coccyx against the gearshift, back bridging the chasm between the bucket seats, I tried to sleep.  The light from the streetlights would not stay still, but moved in lurid waves that penetrated my lids.  I suppose I must have dozed a little because I recall a night­marish dream.

I was in the house talking to Vern Hallohan and suddenly various men from my firm started appearing.  They sauntered into the room with drinks and seated themselves, ignoring me.  After a while, I began to realize they could not even see me.  Vern began laughing.  He seized one of the pillows from the couch and rubbed it across his face, removing a layer of dark makeup.  Under­neath the makeup, the man was Martin.

I awoke with a start, filled with a thought I'd never had before.  Did Martin want, deep down, to leave me?   In the dark I fumbled for my cell phone, which I knew was in my purse.  Sometimes it is a reassuring device, but that night it wasn't.  I felt sure it would connect me to bad news.  It was late, I knew, but with Martin that wouldn't matter.  Then, just as I was about to call, I thought of the way I might sound, my voice thin, squeaky perhaps, the voice of a woman without command, incapable of conducting her business alone.  I couldn't help thinking of a thing that had happened the morning he left.  It was a small thing but nonetheless notable.  He was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking his coffee, and I was feeding the girls their cereal.  I alternate spoonfuls – one to Gina, one to Beatrice, one to Gina, one to Beatrice, and so on.  In between my spoonfuls they try to feed themselves with their hands, and their faces, admittedly, become quite comically messy.  Usually Martin doesn't notice.  But that morning something caused him to glance over at us.  His face was hard with disdain.  Martin is a kind, mild man; he never looks disdainful.  "Can't you clean them up a bit?" he said.  His voice sounded momentarily irate, savage even, but then he smiled and turned back to his coffee as if he was only making a joke.  For an instant I could not move, but right away, of course, I came back to life.  He is an accountant and very precise, and I am also very precise, but less so than Martin.  Remembering this moment again in the car, I found it almost a relief to discover I'd left the name and number of Martin's hotel back in the house, and then to see, additionally, that my cell phone battery was dead.

Later, I dozed briefly again, but my arm fell asleep and the numbness awakened me.  I sat up to readjust my position.  My gaze was drawn to the house.  I felt as if the girls and I were all part of a satellite drifting in a lazy orbit around that place.  I didn't want to look, I didn't mean to look, but there I was, looking.  Even from this distance I could tell the whole house was ablaze with light and I remembered how he'd said he was having people over.  I glanced at my watch.  Two-thirty, Tuesday morning.  I considered going to investigate, but to what end?  To gaze at a house I could no longer call my own?

I rolled down the window and heard music playing.  It thrummed with an insistent bass line.  I did not go to sleep after that.  I sat up with my head bent over the steering wheel, waiting for the girls to stir.  They awakened with the sun, wet and hungry and agitated by the strange surroundings.  I'd left the house so hastily that I had no formula or diapers, so I had to distract them by singing crazily.  Exhaustion snaked behind my eyes.  Around seven-thirty people began emerging from their houses to go to work and I knew I had to move.

The girls had made me giddy and I wasn't sure I should be driving, but of course in moments like that you pull yourself together.  As I started the car, I avoided looking down the street toward the house, but I caught a brief glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror; limp, sweaty hair; eyes made grotesque from hours of foreboding – and I panicked.  There was no place to look. 

I drove to the babysitter's at fifteen miles per hour, keeping my eyes on the rectangle of pavement immediately in front of my bumper. The girls were crying in high-pitched yelps that told me how disconcerted they were.

I stood on the babysitter's porch gripping the twins, leaning desperately on the buzzer and trying to suppress the thought that perhaps she no longer lived here and someone else, a complete stranger, would answer the door.  I smelled urine, I wasn't sure whose.

"Heavens!" she said when she opened the door.  "What happened?"  She took the twins and looked for the diaper bag, but saw that I didn't have it.

"I have to run," I said.  "I'll explain everything later." 

I went out to the car and drove a few blocks away to a commercial district where I parked in the back of a dry cleaner's and sat for a long time.  The door to the dry cleaning establishment was wide open and I heard the giant machines slapping the clothes around.  The fumes permeated the car even though the windows were closed.  Finally, I convinced myself to get out.  I walked gingerly to the corner to phone my office.  I told them I was ill and would not be in that day.

Then I returned to our neighborhood to examine the situation in the light of day.  I drove by the house, amazed to see it still standing.  I rounded the block twice, three times, before I finally stopped.  Perhaps I should have enlisted someone's help before going inside, but I knew from the way I looked that my credibility would be in question.  Instead I took the tire iron from the trunk, just in case.

Of course I was as careful as could be.  I didn't go inside until I was sure from the outside everything looked fine.  My key worked as usual and I stood breathlessly in the foyer, waiting for the house to speak.  The grandfather clock ticked out its usual metronomic beat.  Everything looked so neat.  I began in the living room.  The coffee table was clean and unblemished.  I lifted the couch cushions to search for popcorn kernels, but found none.  The kitchen was also spotless.  No wine glasses in the drainer or the dishwasher and, when I checked the cupboard, I found all twelve of them settled complacently in their usual corner.

Then upstairs.  I can picture how strange I must have looked mounting the stairs with a tire iron held high in striking position.

The suit was gone from the chair in the bedroom.  The bed was made.  There was nothing of note in the bathroom or in the girls' room.  The blanket Vern Hallohan had folded was lying in the drawer where he'd put it.  Of course I opened every closet, looked under every bed, even peered behind the extra blankets in the linen closet.  When I was satisfied that no one was in the house, I made sure each door and window was locked.  Then I took a shower, put on some clean clothes, and called a locksmith. 

While I waited for the locksmith I went to find the deed, our deed.  I wasn't sure where Martin kept it, but his file cabinet seemed a likely possibility.  Under 'H' I found a folder for 'HOUSE.'  I rifled through it.  Sure enough, there was the deed.  It had both of our names on it and the date – September 27, 1996 – the day we'd bought the house.  I knew it!

I had Mr. Vern Hallohan now.  If he came back for a visit tonight, he would be locked out and I would be armed with my tire iron and my deed.  His deed would count for nothing then.

I did not leave the house all day.  The babysitter obliged me by bringing the girls home, realizing from my appearance that morning that something dreadful was at stake.

Vern Hallohan did not appear that evening, that night, or the next morning.  By the third day I felt ready to risk a return to work.  When I arrived at my desk I sat for some time, staring at the neat undisturbed piles I'd left, the stiletto points of the pencils my secretary, Janet, had sharpened just so.  I noticed a gray slug-shaped stain on my blotter and I scraped at it with my fingernail.  I like a pristine blotter and the stain irritated me, but I needed to forget about it and catch up with my work.

I pulled the paper pile toward me and began reading.  The case at the top of the pile was a stock fraud case, not an uncommon case for our firm to handle.  But this case I did not recall at all.  In two days I had forgotten every detail of this dossier of briefs and documents.  Usually my memory is irreproachable – sometimes I think my entire intelligence has to do with the precision of my memory – but that day, when I tried to remember the particulars of this case I could not.  I labored for the better part of an hour with a series of self quizzes.  How long have you had this case?  What is the trial date?  Who were you working with?  Who is the opposing representation? I could not answer any of these questions from memory.  What are the names of your children? I asked myself.  What is your husband's name?  The answers to these last questions were still, thank god, accessible.

I knew, in order to calm myself, I had to turn my attention to a case with which I was conversant.  I looked for the Haines Realty case.   That case I had worked on obsessively for close to two months.  I'd taken all the depositions, done most of the research and discovery.  I knew it better than anyone at the firm, even better than Payne Whipple, the partner in charge.   But the Haines dossier was not in my pile.  I checked my file cabinet.  It was not there.  I checked every shelf and drawer in the office.  It was not to be found.

With great reluctance I summoned Janet.  She is a stocky, efficient woman with a no-nonsense manner and intelligent eyes that notice details.  At times I have thought she would make a better attorney than I.  She is deferential to me in all observable ways, but she understands my position at the office and sometimes regards me with such unabashed pity that I am loathe to ask her help too frequently. 

I spoke to her in a low voice.  "Janet, I've misplaced the dossier on the Haines Realty case."

"He didn't leave you a note?  Mr. Whipple took it when you were away.  He said there was deadline pressure."

"He said that?"

She nodded.  She waited for my next request without affect.

"There wasn't," I said.  "There was no deadline pressure.  There are still two full months before the trial."

She shrugged.  "Talk to Mr. Whipple."

She looked at me strangely and I realized I was leaning forward, ducking my head, speaking almost conspiratorially.  I jerked back up.

"Of course," I said.

I dismissed her and put on my suit jacket.  I fluffed the shoulder pads and dusted a few flakes of dandruff off the lapels.  Was this how they fired you, taking your cases one by one until your desk was empty?  I stood with my palms on my desk, as if I planned to spring to action.  But I didn't.  I weighed the benefits of speaking to Payne, versus those of letting the case go without comment.  If I hadn't sensed Janet at her desk outside my office taking measure of my courage, I wouldn't have gone.  Head high, arms in a military swing, I strode past her.  On the maroon plush carpet my shoes were soundless.  By the time I turned the corner onto Payne's corridor, my arms hung like noodles and there was nothing vaguely military about me.

Payne was at his desk, pencil flying.  I stayed outside but extended my head into the office margin.  After a moment he looked up.

"Yes?" he said, almost as if I were a complete stranger.

"I'm back."

He stared at me for a long moment.  Then he said, "Glad to hear it."  His voice was neutral, almost flat.  He returned to work.  I hovered there a moment staring at his thick pin-striped forearms.  I took a few steps backward, then forward.

He looked up again, realizing I had not left.  I felt perhaps he was irritated.

"Do you know Vern Hallohan?" I said.

"Guy at Orb?"

"Yes."

"Think I've met him.  Once or twice.  Look, I'd love to chat, but you know how it is."

I nodded.  My understandings flew away from me like tenuous threads in a stiff wind.  I drifted as quietly as I could down the corridor.  The following week I tendered my resignation, and I have not returned to work since, plagued by a feeling that even after a decade of practicing law I am not, and maybe never have been, suited to it.

* * *

I've never told Martin about this.  When he asked me why I'd changed the locks, I said I'd lost my key.  For a while I considered saying more, but then I wondered why no one – neither  the babysitter nor the Maxwells – had said a word to me after­wards.  No one asked me if I was all right or if things had settled down.  The world is like that these days – terrible and confusing things happen, but no one blinks an eye or even tries to clarify what went wrong.  So why bother Martin with it?  He would only be dismayed and tell me what I already know – that I've been too timid about what's really mine.

About a week after Martin returned, I stepped onto the porch early one morning to get the Sunday paper.  It was frosty out, a day beautifully burnished by cold, and as soon as the air hit my face I felt bright-eyed.  There wasn't any action on the street, and I stood there for a moment reveling in the rare peace.  Then, I heard Martin calling me from inside, telling me I was letting in the cold, so I reached down for the paper.  As I crouched something caught my eye.  Laced into the corner created by the pillar and the porch railing was an exquisite silky spider web, swaying gently from some unseen breeze.  It caught the light, tossing it about playfully so it winked and sparkled and tried to break free.  It was a dazzling sight and I was amazed that it had escaped me until now.  I wondered if our automatic camera could possibly capture this spectacle.

I snatched the paper and rose from my kneeling position.  The spider web disappeared.  I blinked and squinted, but it wasn't there.  Slowly, I lowered myself again onto my haunches, and the web came back into view, as arresting as it had been a second before.  I raised and lowered myself a few more times.  Each time the web came into view at precisely the same place, revealing itself to me not piece by piece, but as one fully formed creation.  There, not there, there, not there, there, not there.