Better in the Morning, page 8
“What did your mom do?” I asked, but I already had my suspicions.
“The usual.” Jada used a thick Queens accent she had perfected over the years to imitate her mother. “Ya goin’ to be thirty and ya not married. Why not? Why aren’t you two engaged? Doesn’t that botha ya? When I was your age, I already had you. I had ya sister. Ya sister is younga than you, and she’s already got a husband and that sweet little baby. What are ya waiting faw?”
“I don’t get it though. Isn’t she thrilled that you’re a successful lawyer in New York?” I asked as I blew on my latte.
“No. ‘Successful’ to her is getting married and having babies as soon as possible.”
Of course, I wanted John to propose and then I wanted to quit, but that was my plan, not my mother’s. I would never want to be pressured into it. More significantly, I loved John and maybe still do, whereas Jada’s feelings about Mark are uncertain.
“But you do want that someday,” I said. “Does she think you don’t want that at all?”
Jada shrugged. “She doesn’t care. All that matters is that she’ll be happier when I’m married. And Mark uses it as ammunition, like ‘maybe you should listen to your mother.’ He would love to propose tomorrow. It’ll be our two-year anniversary.”
Mark and Jada had met at a law school alumni event. It was a typical wine-and-cheese reception in a large conference room at one of the big firms on Park Avenue. They’d both reached for a cheese cube at the same time and bumped toothpicks. It was a nice story. Everything about Mark was nice. He’d majored in chemistry at MIT, gone to Duke Law School, and was now a patent attorney. He wasn’t a big drinker and didn’t like big parties or loud places. He preferred to read and exercise, and well, that was pretty much it. There was nothing wrong with him, which might have been the problem. There was nothing too interesting about him either.
“Why don’t you tell your mother to stop?”
Jada shot me a look from the top of her eyes, her chin tucked as if I should have already known the answer, which I did. Jada could stand up to anyone—her boss, her coworker—but not her mother.
She was examining her nails. “If that bitch at Princess Nails makes my cuticles bleed again, I will flip a manicure table.”
I laughed.
“So you can’t take a five-minute break?” she asked. “Why do you care so much? Do you get a grade? Or do you just want to be the teacher’s pet?”
“I want a good segment for my reel,” I said.
“What are you going to do with your reel?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll send it to stations or online news sites. You know, there’s so much media now.”
“And make no money? How are you going to pay your rent and your loans, working for an online news site?” She said those last three words a little too mockingly, and all of my sympathy for her situation with Mark and her mother evaporated.
“Why are you being so negative?”
“I’m just being honest with you.”
“Maybe I don’t need you to be honest right now.” My voice was louder than I’d intended. “Okay? Just be supportive.”
“I am being supportive. I’m being supportive by being honest with you so you’re not living in a dream world. I think you’re wasting your time.”
“Who asked you?”
“Do whatever you want.” She got up so fast that the back of her chair hit the bookcase in my office.
“Thanks for the fucking support!” I screamed after her.
I sat at my desk for a few moments. What the hell just happened? Jada and I never fought. In fact, I couldn’t think of another time when there’d ever been any tension between us.
Then I heard the handle of my office door turn. She’s back to apologize so quickly? Or did she forget something?
The door flung open. It was Beverly. She was sweating and grimacing.
I was about to apologize for “having a guest over” and say that I was just about to go over to Kate’s office when she said the words, almost in a whisper, “Trista Hines.”
Fuck.
She walked slowly toward my desk, a piece of paper in her hand. “Can you tell me why I just received a fax from the client regarding the Settlement Agreement in the Stephens v. Hines case?” She said “Settlement Agreement” as if they were the most disgusting words she’d ever had to utter.
My heart raced. My throat dried up. “She doesn’t have a lawyer and asked if she could make payments.”
“I knew that name was on that piece of paper. No wonder there was no filing status for Hines.” I could see the memory forming, the puzzle pieces falling into place. “You never filed the motion.”
“Well, the client agreed—”
“I deal with our clients.”
“It seemed like a reasonable deal and—”
“And nothing.” She dropped the fax on my desk and pressed it down with her pointer finger. “Let me explain something to you, Veronica. I want the best for my clients, and that is why I do things the way I do them. I’ve been doing this for many years, and I know one thing to be true: every single one of these defendants will file bankruptcy eventually. Every. One. Of them. And then our clients will get nothing. I don’t want that for my clients. I want them to get the most that they can now. Do you hear me? Now. How dare you take it upon yourself to do things any differently. And you, of all people!”
My face and neck began to burn.
“Where did you get this Settlement Agreement from? You drafted it yourself?”
I cleared my throat. “I found a template somewhere.” My voice shook.
“Where? Somewhere on the Internet?”
“I can’t remember exactly.”
“Did Kate review it before it went out the door?”
I shook my head.
“Did I review it before it went out the door?”
I shook my head.
“So you drafted a document that no one else reviewed, no one else approved, a document you’ve never drafted before, and you let it go to the defendant’s lawyer—”
“She doesn’t have a lawyer.”
“I’m speaking!” Beverly slammed her hand on my desk.
That was when my eyes filled with tears. My body was already stinging with nerves. It felt as though tingles of fear rose from within every inch of me and shot straight to my eyes.
Don’t blink. Just don’t blink. I blinked, and tears streamed down my face. “I thought I was doing a good thing.”
“A good thing? And did you think I was never going to find out about this? If you would like to still have a job, there is only one way to fix this. Call this defendant and tell her the deal is off.”
As she marched out the door, she pivoted back around to say, “And I already spoke to Pat Stephens. I talked him out of this. It’s pointless, Veronica.” She shook her head and added, “Boy, do you still have a lot to learn.”
I stood and shut the door all the way. After a good cry, I pulled out the Hines file, found Trista’s number, and dialed. I explained that since the agreement hadn’t yet been signed by both parties, the client had “thought more about it” and decided it wasn’t the way to go. I apologized profusely.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Me neither. “At this point, I would suggest hiring a lawyer.”
“I can’t afford a lawyer.” She sounded desperate.
“There are a lot of attorneys who handle cases pro bono, for free, for struggling small businesses. If you do a search, I’m sure you’ll find someone.” I wanted to add “Feel better” or “It’s going to be okay,” but it felt hollow, so I just apologized again and tried to hang up.
But before I could, she said, “Thank you again for trying to help me,” which only made it worse.
I sat there, stung and stunned by all that had happened in the past hour. The penny Jada had found was sitting on the edge of my desk. I flicked it off.
Chapter 8
When I twirled just the right amount of warm, gooey mozzarella, prosciutto, and crust around in my mouth, it was Heaven. And when the mozzarella oozed out of the corner of my mouth and fell onto my hand or plate, I peeled it off the plate or my hand and ate it. Mozzarella that good should never go to waste.
“Atta girl,” Grandpa Sal said.
I looked up from my hot, crusty sandwich and saw hundreds of white stucco structures dotting up a cliffside. “Where are we?” Peering down, I took in the turquoise sea at the bottom of the cliff.
“Italy,” Grandma Ant said with a tone that implied “Where else?” She put her sandwich down and dabbed her mouth with a napkin.
We were sitting at a dining area outside of a small café. Next door was what looked to be a tobacco shop with a drawing of a big pipe in the window. Beyond that were a few more cafés, a gelato shop, and a leather handbag store.
“Did you ever go to Italy?” I asked as my big Jackie O sunglasses slid to the tip of my nose. I lifted them with my forearm, not wanting to touch them with my deliciously greasy hands.
“We could never afford it,” Grandma Ant said.
“You should travel more, Veronica,” Grandpa Sal said.
“I can’t take off from work.” I didn’t feel like rehashing the deep trouble I was in at my job—a job I desperately needed to pay off my exorbitant credit card bills because I would buy things to treat myself after a particularly bad day at the firm. Talk about a vicious cycle. “I’d love to go to Paris though. It seems so romantic and enchanting, like going back in time.”
“Paris is beautiful,” Grandma Ant said.
She must have gone since she’s been dead.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, eating our sandwiches and drinking Coke from old-fashioned glass bottles.
“Ya enjoyed that class?” Grandpa Sal asked.
“Except for the part where I accidentally groped the teacher, yes.”
“Was that funny or what?” Grandma Ant smiled. “Oh, how we laughed.”
“That’s just wonderful. I’m glad my life amuses you.”
“So serious ya are,” Grandpa Sal said. “You can’t take it all so seriously, Veronica.”
“I wish I hadn’t told anyone about the class.”
“Why? Because your friend thinks it’s silly?” Grandpa asked.
I didn’t answer but instead rescued a small piece of prosciutto that had fallen onto the plate and promptly delivered it to my mouth.
“What are you going to do, spend your whole life not doing things because”—Grandpa Sal spread his hands as if he were holding a big beach ball in front of him—“Oh no, people might laugh at ya?”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why can’t my friend just be supportive?”
“When people have got something to say, Veronica, remember this: it’s not about you,” Grandma Ant said. “So it doesn’t matter, and don’t make it matter.”
“I know.” No, I didn’t.
“Let me tell ya a story,” Grandpa Sal said. “You see that place, that tobacco shop? Pietro used to run it. Pietro the pipe maker. He made wonderful pipes. Everyone loved them. But what Pietro loved more was singing. He had a pair of pipes. Get it? Pipes?” Grandpa laughed at his joke before continuing. “Anyway, he would sing all the time, in the morning, in the afternoon, at night. Always singing, while he made pipes, while he cleaned pipes. He wanted to be an opera singer. But everyone said, ‘Why? You’re better at making pipes.’ But when the opera came to town, he went to see the—what do ya call it?—like a director or someone like that. And Pietro auditioned for him.” Grandpa Sal was looking me in the eye.
“Let me guess. He became an opera singer and shoved it in everybody’s face. Grandpa, I get the point.”
“No! They said, ‘You stink. Go home.’”
“Oh. That’s a terrible story.”
“Stop furrowing your brow,” Grandma Ant said.
I unfurrowed.
“No, it’s not,” Grandpa Sal said. “Ah, well, maybe it is. I make these stories up as I go along. What do ya want from me, Veronica? Ya think I’m Charles Dickenson?”
“Dickens.”
“Tomato. Tomahto.”
“No, his name was actually Charles Dickens.”
“Whatever you want to call him. The point is, you can’t worry about what other people say even if they laugh at you or say, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ You have to do the things you want if you want to be happy, whatever the outcome, whatever people say. If you did what other people expected and not what you really wanted, you would—”
“Be a lawyer,” I said.
“Let me tell ya something,” Grandpa continued. “It has nothing to do with you—what they think, what they say. That’s their problem. They have a problem with you doing something different because they’re too chicken to do it themselves. And that’s the truth.”
“You don’t know Jada. She’s not a chicken.”
“We don’t know Jada?” Grandpa asked rhetorically.
“I know you know her. You see everything, but what I mean is she thinks the class is a waste of time. It’s not—”
Grandma Ant suddenly spotted something in the distance and started waving her hands wildly. I sat up to see an older lady walking toward us.
“Ruth!” Grandma Ant called out. “Over here!”
Ruth seemed to bounce over to our table. “Antoinette, Sal baby, how are ya today?”
I noticed Ruth was carrying a small black satin clutch. She appeared to have taken great care in styling her silver hair. It was neatly curled, and she kept finger-combing the wisps near her ears. Her nails were painted bright red, and she was wearing a red dress and black satin heels that seemed a little high for a woman her age, but she was walking with no problem. Walking quickly actually.
“Ya got a hot date?” Grandpa Sal asked.
“No, smarty. I just came from my great-great-grandson’s bar mitzvah.” She said that with so much pride that she actually stood on her tippy toes. She had a heavy Brooklyn accent and pronounced smarty as ‘smahty.’ “It was in Jersey.”
New Jersey to Italy. It’s all possible here.
“Well, you look marvelous,” Grandma Ant said before turning to me. “Perfect timing. Meet Veronica. Our beautiful Veronica.”
I gave my grandmother a look that said, “Stop. You’re such a grandmother.”
Ruth smiled warmly and said, “Well, hello there.” She stared at me a little too long.
Not wanting to be examined at the moment, I smiled back then stuffed the rest of my sandwich in my mouth.
“Where ya off to now?” Grandma Ant asked.
“Now, I’ve got a wedding. An old neighbor’s great-granddaughter is getting married here in Italy. How nice is that? So I gotta get going, but very nice to meet ya, Veronica!” She waved and trotted off.
“That’s our friend Ruth Stein,” Grandma Ant said. “You meet the loveliest people here. You really do.”
“Even the people you thought were the biggest pains in the ass when, ya know, you knew them when you were alive,” Grandpa said. “For some reason, what can I say, they’re different here.”
“You knew Ruth when you were alive?” I asked.
“No,” Grandpa said. “I’m just saying.”
“How is she going to a bar mitzvah and a wedding and all these events?”
They both gazed at me, eyes wide, as if they were surprised I’d just asked that.
Grandpa Sal said, “She’s dead!” as in “How else?”
“All right, let’s stretch our legs now.” Grandma Ant stood up, and Grandpa and I followed. “Let’s walk over to the gelato place and see what they got.”
We made our way along the cobblestone path, toward the town with narrow streets, and away from the seascape.
My grandmother pointed to a fuchsia sequin tank top on a mannequin in a window. “That’s nice,” she said. “To wear out with your friends or… on a date.”
“Gram, please. I don’t wear fuchsia.” Let alone a fuchsia sequin tank top.
“Well, I think it’s sharp-looking.”
Grandma and I ordered two hazelnut gelatos and settled on a bench. Grandpa sat next to us with a cannoli that he’d almost finished eating already.
“We think you should go on the Match.com,” Grandma Ant announced.
I almost choked on my gelato.
“Everybody’s doing it,” Grandpa Sal said. “And you gotta make sure your pictures are good. One up close and then the ‘full body shot.’ That’s the biggest complaint, they say. That people don’t have the right pictures.”
“Wait. How would you know? And I don’t know. Not yet. I—”
“She wants to mourn, Sal. She wants to mourn that fella John.”
“She’s got enough black clothes, this one.” He motioned toward me, up and down with one hand from my feet to my head, then he looked me in the eye. “Mourning, Veronica, it’s for the birds. Trust us.”
“Now listen, if you do the Match.com—” Grandma Ant began.
“It’s Match, Gram, not the Match.”
“That’s what I said. If you do this, just go on one date”—she held her pointer finger up—“we’ll tell you where my engagement ring is.”
“Hold on,” I said. “I’m doing the class. Remember? In fact, I was about to say that you could tell me where the ring is now.”
“Not so fast,” Grandma Ant said. “Listen, we know if it were up to you, you’d waste too much time waiting for that John to come back. You gotta get on the Match, girl!”
I almost choked again, on nothing this time. “You got me to do the class, and now there’s something else I have to do?”
“We said there were two assignments,” Grandpa said. “Remember?”
“The class and the Match. And then that’s it. We promise,” Grandma said.
I spooned at my gelato.
