He smiled, put money down for his coffee, and got up. “I noticed you don’t have any luggage,” he said, suddenly realizing.
I wondered now why Moses hadn’t asked about that and thought he had been too kind to ask me too many personal questions. No wonder I looked like someone in drastic flight. “I have everything I need at my aunt’s,” I said.
He shrugged. “Fine. Ready?”
“Yes.”
I took my purse and followed him out. He had one of those hybrid SUVs. When we got in, I noticed the backseats were down and had a small carton on them.
He saw me looking. “That’s a case of this great wine I picked up at a vineyard near here. I’m bringing it back as a gift for someone who’s done me some big favors,” he explained. He started the engine, and we headed out of the parking lot.
“What was your case about?” I asked.
“Case? It’s Pinot Noir, a red wine.”
“Not
the wine case, your deposition.”
“Oh,” he said, laughing. “Right. It’s an action involving a challenge to a will. Two brothers are at each other. When it comes to money, blood thins out,” he added. “You’d be surprised at how many court actions involve family members. Families aren’t the way they used to be. That’s why I’m a little freaked about committing myself to a long relationship. You know how many marriages end up in divorce? I mean, that alone can support half of the legal profession in this country. I see a lot of that, and you can’t help but be affected.
“And what about the children, huh?” he asked me quickly, as if I had said something to defend divorce. “That’s what I mean about being selfish. They only care about their own feelings, their own egos or whatever. My parents are divorced. They got divorced when I was only six, and then they would fight over who would do what for me all the time. They both counted what they did. How would you like hearing that argument when you were only six? ‘I took him to school all last week. I met with his teacher. Where were you?’ ‘I was there when he had a cold. I had to buy him a new pair of shoes. Where were you?’ ” he rattled off, changing his voice to sound like two different whining people.
He turned to me. In the vague light of cars approaching, I saw his lips writhe with anger. His good looks seemed to fly off his face with the way his jaw tightened and sent currents of electric rage through his cheeks, into the bridge of his nose, and into his eyes.
“You know what I began to do?” he asked.
I shook my head. His outburst seemed to get louder and more intense with every word. I was afraid to speak.
“I began to keep track myself of what each one did for me. How’s that? Pretty clever, right? I was only six, but a bright six-year-old. I wrote down what they said the way a little boy that age might, and then I made a chart with ‘Daddy’ on one side and ‘Mommy’ on the other. ‘Daddy, school.’ ‘Mommy, wash clothes.’ Stuff like that. One day, I brought it out and showed them while they were arguing, and they just stared at me and at my chart for a few moments before they turned on each other and started blaming each other for what I had done. I ripped up the chart and threw it at them.
“What do you think of that? I bet you didn’t have parents like that. Did you?” he asked when I didn’t reply.
“No, but I never really knew my mother,” I said.
“Divorce or death?”
“She ran off when I was very young,” I said.
“Selfish,” he muttered. “Couldn’t compromise. Never should have said ‘I do.’ ”
He was silent a moment, but it was a deep silence, the silence of someone seized by his own dark memories. I saw the way he gripped the steering wheel, too. His knuckles seemed to grow more pointed, the veins on the backs of his hands pressing up against his skin.
“They abuse us,” he muttered finally. “They abuse us when they create us. How lucky are the sperm and the eggs that never meet.”
“Who’s going to win in the case?” I asked, hoping to get him onto another topic.
“What case?”
“The one you’re on, the deposition you just did.”
“Oh.” He shook his head. “I don’t care, really.”
“How can you not care?”
“Hey,” he snapped back at me, “do you think the doctor you go to really cares about you? He’s just pumping out medicine and racking up insurance payments.”
“Well, what’s the argument?”