Lawyer for the Cat, page 7
“That should be fun,” I say. Delores has taught me to play along, let her have her fantasies as long as they’re not dangerous. “But you can finish the packing later. Delores and I are going to have some soup. She’s made you a cup of tea and some of those oatmeal cookies you like, okay?”
She may not know who she is, or where she is, but she’s in an agreeable mood tonight. She leaves the dress on the bed, closes the suitcase, and follows me into the kitchen. The cat, who’s finished her visit to the litter box, follows her.
“What kind of dressing you want on your salad?” Delores asks me.
“Vinaigrette’s fine, thanks. This soup smells wonderful.”
“Would have been better with a ham bone, but I did it like you said.”
“It’s healthier this way.”
“You got nothing to worry about, skinny as you are.” She turns to my mother. “Watch out now, Miz Margaret. That tea’s hot. And you,” she says to the cat, who’s rubbing her back against Delores’s thigh, “you go on over there, finish your dinner.” She points to the bowl by the refrigerator. “At least this varmint’s cleaner than that dog. Whatever happened with those people, anyway? They still together?”
“So far.”
“Good,” says Delores. “Once you been married long as they were, you might as well stick it out. She ever go to court for that burglary business? The Hart lady, I mean.”
“The case was dismissed.”
“Figures. Rich old lady like that, she can pay her way out of trouble. Couldn’t make that stuff up! Two old people getting a divorce, fighting over their little dog! Crazy judge gives the dog a lawyer, like he’s a human or something. Old woman says the old man’s running around on her, but then it turns out she’s the one out in the middle of the night, only not for what you think—no, she’s out breaking into people’s houses stealing their dogs!”
“She wasn’t ‘stealing,’ she was rescuing the dogs from abusive owners.”
“But she gets herself arrested,” Delores says, chuckling.
“It wasn’t very funny at the time,” I say.
“But then they get back together and the case is over, and when the news people show up at the old lady’s door, she tells them all about how lawyer Sally Baynard is a miracle worker!”
“She might have been a little drunk.”
“So you think they’ll stay together now?” asks Delores.
“I’m no an expert on long-term relationships. You’re the one who managed to stay in love for twenty years.”
“But we weren’t married until the very end.”
“Maybe that’s the reason,” I say.
“It’s not that simple,” says Delores. “Use your napkin, Miz Margaret.” Tea dribbles down my mother’s chin.
“You always said you were better off not married.”
“But it’s not like there’s one rule for everybody,” she says. “You ain’t me. I ain’t you. Charlie and me, we worked it out to suit the two of us and we was mostly happy, but we could still have some wicked fights.… I don’t mean hitting or anything … just words. We had one right before he died, ’cause he kept talking about how I needed to find somebody else when he was gone, and it made me mad.”
“Well, he was right,” I say.
“No,” she says. “I can’t get used to another man, ’specially not one who won’t measure up to Charlie.” Tears glisten in the corners of her eyes.
“There are a lot of good men out there, Delores.”
“You should take your own advice sometimes.”
After she leaves I help my mother with her shower, then into her nightgown. She doesn’t object when I hang the green dress back in the closet. Just as she’s falling to sleep she says, “I should have married Ed Shand.”
* * *
I turn in early, glad for the comfort of my own bed, my quiet room, where for a few hours no one will need anything from me. Even Beatrice seems fine without much attention.
“It’s weird,” I tell Tony when he calls, “She’s here in bed with me, but she’s … I don’t know exactly how to describe it … aloof. Maybe she’s still getting used to me.”
“Cats aren’t like dogs,” he says. “They’re more reserved about showing affection.”
“So it’s not me, then.”
“She’s paying you a high compliment by just being near you at this point.”
“She’s purring.”
“She’s content,” he says.
“We had a stressful afternoon.” I tell him about the visit to the plantation, the conversation with Gail Sims. “I can’t understand why Mrs. Mackay didn’t just choose Gail. She and Beatrice are great together. She doesn’t want to live in that big old house, but she and her fiancé have a place not far away, and they have cats of their own.”
“That could be a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“Cats are territorial.”
“She seemed to think it wouldn’t be a problem.”
“But didn’t the old lady’s will—”
“It’s a trust.”
“—didn’t it say that the cat should live on the plantation?”
“Her son—Randall—wants the house. He’ll get it anyway when the cat dies, but he wants it now. I can see his point. A cat doesn’t need a plantation. And Randall won’t object to Gail being paid to take care of Beatrice. It seems like such an obvious, practical solution.”
“Except for the other cats.”
“But Randall’s threatening to challenge his mother’s competency if I don’t let Gail have the cat.”
“Can he do that?”
“It’s an uphill battle, and if he loses he could forfeit his remainder.”
“His what?”
“What he gets after the cat dies. She put a special provision in the trust that says if he challenges it, and he loses, he forfeits that.”
“Sounds like a pretty big chance for him to take.”
“Which is why I think he’s probably just threatening. But the last thing I want is to get tied up in litigation in the Probate Court.”
“I thought you lawyers like litigation.”
“But I’d be stuck with the cat while…” The moment I say this, Beatrice stops purring, as if she’s insulted. “My life is complicated enough.”
“What’s so complicated?”
It aggravates me that he’d even ask this question, and maybe I’m a little sarcastic when I answer: “Well, let’s see. There’s my mother. My law practice. You.”
“I’m a complication?”
“I just meant, I’m trying to take care of my mother, my clients, spend some time with you, and now I’ve got this cat to worry about.”
“Sorry to add to your burdens.”
“You know that’s not what I’m saying. I’m looking forward to spending tomorrow night—”
“I thought you were going to stay the weekend.”
“I’m taking my mother to church on Sunday morning—she likes to go, and she hasn’t been in a while—so I should probably stay in town Saturday night. “
“I guess I’ll take what I can get,” he says.
“Okay if I bring the cat? She hates the car, but I don’t want to leave her here with the sitter if I can help it.”
“Sure. Bring the cat. Bring your mom. Bring your case files if you want to. What the hell.”
“Unless you’d rather I not come at all.”
He ignores this. “I’ll have dinner ready. You got an old blanket?”
“I should bring my own bedding?”
It’s a relief to hear him laugh. “For the cat. Cut up an old blanket, line the bottom of her carrier. She’ll be more comfortable on the road. And bring a toy for her.”
“I don’t have any toys.”
“Empty a pill container, put a few dried beans inside, screw the cap back on. She’ll have a good time batting that around.”
“See you tomorrow, then.”
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too,” but I know how easy it is to say these words, and how difficult it is to live them.
Ladykiller
I often beat Gina to the office in the morning. Her A.M. routine is considerably more elaborate than mine. She needs an hour for her hair and makeup, she tells me, as if this daily ritual is a vital function. Though she’s almost never more than a few minutes late, it irritates me when the elevator opens onto a dark office, especially this morning when I’m running late myself and I’m lugging the cat in her carrier, as well as the litter box, wrapped in a garbage bag. I’d like nothing more than to smell coffee already brewing.
Before I left home I gave Delores her Christmas bonus early, in hopes this might make her more amenable to cat-sitting, but she reminded me that she’d be taking my mother to the podiatrist, and I was nervous about her leaving Beatrice alone in the condo. “You act like that animal’s your baby,” Delores said. “Believe me, it don’t care about you like you care about it! It’ll be fine if you just put it in the bathroom, like the vet said, with some food and water.”
“She’s my responsibility until I can find her a home,” I said. “I have a fiduciary duty to her.”
“A what?”
“It means I have a legal and ethical responsibility to act in her best interests.”
“People leave their cats alone all the time,” she insisted.
“But I have a special relationship to Beatrice, just like I had a special relationship with Sherman.”
“You can say that again! You and that little dog, you sure was a pair there for a while!”
“That’s not what I mean. It has nothing to do with affection,” I explained. “Because I have a special duty toward her, I have to take extra care that nothing bad happens to her.”
“Don’t mean you have to spend every waking minute with it. Good thing you never had children, they’d be spoiled rotten.” She said this without thinking, while she wiped Mom’s face after breakfast, but the words followed me out the door and all the way to the office. Whenever I lull myself into believing I’m okay with my childless life, someone will innocently utter a statement like this and send my mind wandering into a maze of what-might-have-beens, in search of the child who is always, when I imagine him, so much like my ex-husband Joe. Maybe that’s why I’ve developed a reputation as an advocate for kids in Family Court—the abused and neglected, the ones at the center of vicious custody battles. Many of these mostly pro bono appointments have come from Joe; he knows I have a hard time saying no.
* * *
I turn on the lights in the hall, let Beatrice out, get the coffee going. She rubs her back against my ankles as if to say, “Thanks. I hate being hauled around in that thing.”
“Oh, hi, you!” says Gina when she comes in, but not to me. The cat pauses long enough to acknowledge her entrance, then runs back to my office.
“Doughnuts?” I ask. “I thought you were on a diet.”
“To celebrate!” she says, opening the box of Krispy Kremes, a dozen: glazed, chocolate covered and raspberry-filled. “Look!” She extends her left hand dramatically, her fingers caressing the air, so that I can’t miss it: the diamond ring. “Isn’t it gorgeous? I was totally surprised!”
“It’s lovely.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic.”
“It’s from Rick?”
“Who else? I think it’s a full carat.”
I don’t know anything about carats. “It really is beautiful,” I say through the hole of a glazed doughnut.
“I know you think it’s too soon.”
“Gina, I’m not your mother.” But then I can’t help myself. “Rick’s wife just died. He’s hardly had time to—”
“But he was going to divorce her anyway. And he’s a psychologist. He must know what he’s doing.”
“I hope you’re right.” I know Rick as well as any divorce lawyer knows her client, enough to know Gina’s almost certainly wrong. Rick Silber may be an expert on personality disorders, but when it comes to understanding himself, he has about as much insight as a doughnut. “I’m really happy for you.”
“Sometimes you just have to take a chance,” she says, taking a bite of her doughnut, talking through the raspberry jelly. “I know we’re way different, but it’s not like there’s a Mr. Perfect out there, you know.”
“You really complement each other,” I continue, doing the best I can. Gina is tall, beautiful, energetic, and upbeat. She had a baby right after high school, never went to college, split up with the dad after a couple of years, married again, divorced; but except in matters of romance she exhibits uncommon common sense. Rick is short, balding, and pudgy. Gina convinced him to buy a real pair of shoes to replace the sandals, and to shave the goatee, but her makeover did not extend to his neurotic self-absorption. He has a PhD in narcissism.
“Yes, I think so,” she says, still admiring the ring.
“So, when’s the wedding?”
“We haven’t set a date. He wants to talk to you first.”
“He needs my permission?”
“He just wants to talk to you. You know Rick. Sometimes he needs reassurance. Anyway, how did Beatrice do last night?”
“Okay. She slept with me half the night.”
“Maybe you should keep her.”
“I’m not on Mrs. Mackay’s list. Speaking of which, would you make an appointment for that librarian to come in … what’s her name … Katherine something … to come in next week?”
“Harleston,” says Gina. “I already did. Monday morning.”
“Would you mind watching Beatrice while I run over to Probate Court?”
“Sure, but I’m going over later, if you want me to pick up something.”
“No, I need to talk to the judge.”
“Don’t forget the Vernelle deposition, here, at ten thirty.”
“I should be back in plenty of time.”
* * *
Judge Clarkson’s desk is still covered with stacks of old files. When he stands to greet me he has to hold on to it to steady himself. “Too much history,” he says, sighing. “I thought when I got elected probate judge I’d be escaping the frenzy of law practice, but every one of these”—he waves his hand over the files and the boxes cluttering the floor—“is a little drama. Sometimes a big drama with a lot of screaming and yelling. Even the ones that go smoothly can break your heart. Like this one.” He picks up a thin file. “Widow had almost nothing. Paid her lawyer more money to draw up her will than her estate was worth. Mostly just a bunch of old furniture and costume jewelry, but she wanted to make sure each of her three daughters got some. Turned out she collected paperweights, and one of the damn things was worth a couple of thousand. Of course they fought over that one.” He gestures for me to sit. “Normally I wouldn’t be involved in such a small estate, but the deceased was a friend of a friend, so I helped them work it out. Anyway, I need to quit reminiscing if I’m ever going to close up shop and get out of here.”
“Can’t your secretary help you with these files?”
“Sure, she’d do a great job—put them all in order, send them out for storage—but then I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to them. You probably think I’m feeble-brained, but I spent my life with these people. But you didn’t come in here to listen to an old man ramble.… What can I do for you?”
“I need your advice on the Mackay case.” I tell him about my visit to Oak Bluff, the interview with Gail Sims, Randall Mackay’s surprise appearance and his proposal. “I’m tempted to go along with it. Gail seems responsible, and the cat loves her. The only catch is that she doesn’t want to live in the house. I know what the trust specifies, but it seems to me the most important thing is Beatrice’s welfare, and if Gail is the right person, what difference does it really make whether she’s living in a big house or a trailer?”
“Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind,” he says.
“Not yet. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I’ve scheduled an interview with Katherine Harleston, the librarian, and I’ve made reservations to fly up to New York to see the other candidate, the nephew, but frankly it seems like a waste of time, and that I’d only be using up trust assets. And—Your Honor, with all due respect, when you asked me to take this case I didn’t realize I was going to end up taking care of a cat.”
“Let me ask you a question,” he says. “Suppose a judge appointed you to represent a child whose parents had been killed in an automobile accident. They left no wills, no instructions as to who should be the child’s guardian in the event of death. Three family members have come forward to say they’d be happy to take the child. You interview the first one, an aunt, say, and she seems nice enough, responsible, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Would you go to that judge and say, I’m satisfied this one will do a good job, I don’t need to investigate further. Would you do that?”
“But sir, this is a cat, not a child.”
He leans forward, locks his eyes on mine. “Apparently Lila Mackay felt closer to the cat than she did to her child. And just as a matter of principle, I wouldn’t accept any ‘deal’ with Randall.”
“But if he contests the trust, the cat could be in limbo for months … years, maybe.”
“He has a year from the date of his mother’s death to contest it, but he won’t. He’s a spoiled brat who never made anything of himself despite having all the advantages, but he’s not stupid. Remember, if he challenges the trust and he loses, he forfeits what she left him. You know the law on testamentary capacity, I assume?”
“I’ve been reviewing it.”
“He’d have the burden of proving incompetence at the time she signed the trust. Mind you, the legal test isn’t that she must have had a reasonable basis for what she did, but that she had the capacity to understand what she did. Look at Gaddy vs. Douglass: ‘Even an insane person may execute a will if it is done during a sane interval.’ So once Randall consults a lawyer, he should come to his senses. Of course, I can’t guarantee that. He might just be angry enough to … But look here,” he says, “if you can’t handle this, I’ll find someone else. Probably plenty of starving young lawyers out there who’d be happy to take it on, black cat and all.”
