Learning to Stay (28 page)

I pay my bill and wander out into a brilliant afternoon sun and down State Street. I should be headed in the other direction—up toward the Capitol and back to work. But the need to conserve professional capital pales next to my need to think, really think, about what I am doing here. About what I’m doing with my life.

I’m pleased to discover that it’s National Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s, and I join the lengthening line. I laugh at this little bit of role reversal: Brad was always the one to stand in line for anything free, no matter how inexpensive the original cost; not me. But today, I have the time.

Though I prefer chocolate ice cream and tend not to enjoy fruit mixed in or even alongside (think banana splits), I choose the Cherry Garcia because the person in front of me does and the girl behind the counter proclaims it a top seller. If so many people have vouched for it, how can I go wrong? Plus, if you’re going to take a flyer on something, it might as well be a free something. I receive my cone and take a lick. It’s heavenly.

I walk all the way down State Street until I reach campus and take a right toward the Memorial Union. It’s early in the season, but the weather has cooperated for once, and chairs in a rainbow of green, yellow, and red are already set up on the Union’s giant tiered patio that steps down to Lake Mendota. The outdoor beer gardens haven’t yet opened and finals are coming up, so the terrace isn’t hosting its usual sea of patrons just yet. But a few small sailboats piloted by Hoofer club members dart back and forth across the horizon, signaling that summer isn’t so far off after all.

At the lake’s edge, I roll up my pants, kick off my shoes, and sit down, letting my legs dangle in the murky water. It’s still winter-cold, though, and my skin smarts from the temperature. I think back to all the times when Brad and I sat right here, our shoulders touching. This is many people’s “place,” but it’s also ours. Was ours? No,
is
, I decide. This place is too infused with Brad in my memories to be anything but.

What about five, ten, twenty years from now, though? If things continue on this way, I might be sitting here on a hot summer day, watching the sun go down over the music and sailboats with someone who isn’t Brad. The choice may be that, or eliminating any place that holds memories of Brad and me together from the haunts I frequent. Either way, Brad becomes just someone I used to know.

I’m not ready for that. The thought of relegating him to my past makes my veins feel like they’re running with ice water. But then I think of a lifetime married to this man who isn’t really Brad anymore, of having to give up every semblance of the life I had dreamed of, and I’m overcome with dread.

What kind of choice is that?

My BlackBerry buzzes incessantly, telling me that I’m missed—or rather, wanted—at work. I roll my eyes skyward. For the past two weeks, I have put every fiber of my being into ensuring that our client
doesn’t have to compensate the parents of a dead little boy for their negligence. That those efforts appear to be too little, too late as far as Susan and the others are concerned is simply a twist of an already-imbedded knife. And I can’t help but wonder what it is I’m doing with my life. I’m on the shore of Lake Mendota, but I might as well be in the middle of those dark waters, trying to thrash my way to shore with a cinder block shackled to my ankle.

I think back, trying to decide if I’ve ever felt more unmoored than I do now. Perhaps after my parents died, but even then, there was a clear path forward: first with funeral arrangements, and afterward, meetings with estate attorneys and doing the Cohodas shuffle through Northern Michigan University’s building of the same name that houses financial aid, admissions, and the registrar’s offices. After that it was taking the LSAT and applying to law schools, then getting married and securing a job. There has always been an obvious next step. Until now.

Most of me would love to stay right here in this spot, mesmerized by the lake’s rippling surface and the way it seems to lift up, up, up to meet the pale blue sky, far off on the horizon. To not have to think. To stare off and breathe and to just
be
.

But the sun is hanging lower in the sky, and it’s time to go. It’s time to stop waiting for things to be different, to stop wallowing. No one is going to make these decisions for me. They’re not going to happen on their own.

I stand up, unroll my pants, and slip my shoes back on. Then I start to trek back toward the office, having decided what it is, exactly, that I need to do.

Back at my desk, there’s an e-mail from Zach at the tip-top of my in-box with the subject line,
Sorry
. I delete it.

I stack the trial binders I prepared in alphabetical order on the tiny conference table next to my desk, double-check my e-mail one last time to make sure I’m not leaving any loose ends, and send Zach an e-mail with the subject line,
Trial Preparation
, and one simple sentence in the body:…
is all but completed and on the table in my office
.

Then I head into Susan’s office.

It’s difficult not to be nervous while I sit waiting for her to tie up a call that was passed through to her right as I sat down. I remind myself not to fidget, to sit up straight, and to tip my chin up instead of down.

Susan hangs up the phone and looks past me. She nods toward the door behind me. “Do you want to close that?” she says.

I do as I’m asked (told?), then take my original seat across the desk from her. As soon as I’m seated, she launches in.

“Well,” she says, “I don’t think it can be argued that you’ve been doing good work lately, Elise. I understand some extenuating personal circumstances have contributed and overflowed into your
professional life. I understand that. You’ve been in a difficult position. But that’s put the firm and especially the
Rowland
case in a difficult position and—”

I want to stick up for myself. I want to tell her about the binders and the visual aids and witnesses I’ve already lined up. I want to tell her what it’s been like toiling under the dual, competing pressures of the firm and making sure that my husband, who survived his time in Iraq, is surviving his homecoming. I want to ask her if she understands, even one iota, how gut-wrenching it is to contemplate leaving the man you married because you don’t know him anymore and he can’t help it.

But I don’t.

“Susan,” I say, holding up my hand as if to tell her this isn’t necessary—we’ve seen the same Rainmaker report, after all—and then I stop, and so does she. Susan reclines in her chair with a thin-lipped, smug, self-satisfied and condescending smile on her face. I wait another moment, longer than I should. I let silence hang in the air between us for a handful of seconds, just for effect, because right now, for once, I’m the one making her squirm. I haven’t yet groveled, or said I was sorry, or even told her why I wanted to meet with her, other than to tell her assistant it was about “my performance.” I’ve interrupted her and asserted myself—two things she’s not altogether used to receiving from any junior associate, but especially from me.

And then I tell her that I quit.

“I appreciate all that this firm has done for me—all that you’ve done for me,” I say. “The partners and other associates alike have been nothing but supportive and accommodating, and I know that I’ve let you down from time to time. I haven’t been the kind of lawyer I want to be.”

“There’s still time for that. You just need to figure out your priorities,” Susan says, though her words are flat and rote.

“That’s the thing,” I say. “There isn’t time. I haven’t been the kind of attorney I thought I would be—that I wanted to be. And I haven’t been the kind of person I’d like to be, either. It’s just not a good fit, all the way around. And that’s okay.”

She leans back in her chair, crossing, then uncrossing her legs. Then she looks out her window, teasing pieces of her bangs to the side. She pulls the hair tight against her scalp and tries to get it to tuck behind her ear, though she has to know it’s not long enough. It’s a nervous tick—or a tick, at least—that I’ve watched her do again and again. The knowledge that I won’t have to watch her do it much longer makes me smile inside.

“Well,” she says. “You will be missed.” Susan nods in agreement with herself. “I’ll be putting Jaxson on
Rowland
in your place. You’ll make sure to brief him?”

She has come up with a replacement for me so quickly that it makes me wonder how much I’m actually going to be missed. I wonder if the plan all along hasn’t been to replace me. But that’s not my problem to worry about. Not anymore.

“Absolutely,” I tell her. “He’ll do a great job, I’m sure. I’ll make sure to type up memos on all of the other cases I’ve worked on, too, and I’m bringing Zach up to date on where we are with the trial preparation. I just have one request.”

Susan cocks her head to the side and rewraps the multicolored shawl—possibly Italian, definitely expensive—draped around her shoulders. “Yes?”

“I’d like to end my employment effective as soon as I’m able to transfer my caseload and tie up any loose ends,” I say. “I’ll stay the entire two weeks if you’d like, but I’d prefer a shorter, quicker exit if at all possible.”

Susan studies me, then shrugs.

“That should be fine,” she says. “Make sure you copy me on any
correspondence from here on out, and that you leave a status report of your responsibilities with me, too.”

“I can do that. Thank you for working with me on this,” I say, standing up and running my palms down my slacks, partly to straighten them and partly to wipe off the sweat I’m surprised to find has accumulated.

Susan doesn’t speak. She’s staring past me, either lost in thought or debating which thoughts she should give voice to. Then she nods, as if to say, “That will do,” and I figure I’m excused.

My hand is on the door handle when she says, “Elise?”

I turn to face her, my hand still on the handle.

“You remind me a lot of myself in some ways,” she says.

I’ve pictured Susan as someone who grew up chewing shredded metal for breakfast, someone who, by the time she was my age, had sacrificed the sacred areas of her life on the altar of her career. A few months ago, I might have reveled in her compliment, but that woman now feels like a stranger. Right now, I could not care less. I even feel sorry for Susan. This is her life—her whole, entire life, after all—and here I am discarding it as easily as an outgrown pair of pants.

But I just nod and smile and say, “Thank you,” and then I walk out of Susan’s office. Outside her door, I pause and close my eyes. I take a deep breath in and let it out. And then I keep on walking.

Zach grabs me as I pass his office. He throws an arm around my shoulders and pulls me in to him.

“You, my girl, are a rock star,” he says.

“Yeah?” I give him a sly, sideways smile. “So you like?” I say, knowing he’s referring to the binders.

“Oh yeah,” he says.

“Good. I’m glad.”

“So, I’d like to take you to dinner tonight. Can you knock off early? Say, six thirty?”

“Is this a date?” I ask him in mock seriousness. I am in a light, flirty mood.

“It’s a little thank-you for a job well done—totally platonic.” The way Zach is looking at me doesn’t match what he’s saying, and there’s a loud voice in my head yelling, “No!” but I tell it to hush up. Until this afternoon, I have tried to do the things I should, to do them right. I have tried to be sensible and loyal and hardworking and selfless and good. But I am tired. I am all out of try.

“Sure,” I say. My stomach jumps at the thought of a nice, pseudo-platonic dinner where I don’t have to worry if we’re seated out of sight
line of an exit, or if some trigger will cause us to have to leave the restaurant in a rush, entrées still untouched on our plates. I feel Zach’s thumb graze the wispy hairs along the back of my neck, and my stomach jumps again.

“I’ll swing by your office, pick you up.”

I shake my head and unwrap his arm from my shoulders. “I’ll meet you there,” I tell him.

He gives me a sideways glance but agrees. “Let’s hit up Papavero—that little Italian place on Wilson. I’ll see you then,” he says, and slaps my hip with the files he’s carrying as he walks away, whistling a tune I can’t quite finger.