Family Law, Gin Phillips [top novels of all time .txt] 📗

not feel the age-old currents underneath those words.

“I was in algebra class when Kennedy was assassinated,” Lucia said. “The principal made an announcement over the intercom. Kids cheered. You could hear the yelling and clapping all through the school. Those white kids were fairly disruptive.”

“They cheered?”

“They did.”

Rachel pulled at the metal tab on the ginger ale. It snapped off in her fingers. “Is that when you decided you wanted to be a lawyer? Because of, you know, how unfair everything was back then?”

Lucia told herself she should have expected the question. The girl was especially interested in character. Motivation. She believed an action must have a reason.

“No,” Lucia said. “I didn’t know law was a possibility when I was in high school. I was in college before I thought about being a lawyer.”

“And you love it?”

Lucia tugged at her pantyhose, which had twisted at the knee. She suspected she was incapable of an unedited answer at this stage of her life, particularly with Rachel.

“I feel like I make a difference,” she said.

She had clearly chosen the right answer. Rachel smiled and dug her feet into the couch cushions. Her turkey earrings swayed, transcendently tacky. In October, she’d worn silver skeletons and rats that hung from their tails.

“I got grounded,” she said.

Lucia looked away from the turkeys. She’d never known the girl to get in trouble. “For what?”

“I roller-skated.”

Lucia laughed. She had come to believe that these stories were like the silly presents, a currency offered in exchange for a visit. She increasingly felt the clever engineering of them. The stories were constructions—good ones—but she wondered what was underneath their gloss.

“I couldn’t sleep last week,” Rachel said. “It was about midnight, and I thought exercise would be good. So I went skating, maybe for half an hour. But Mom woke up and found me gone, and when I came back she was standing at the door, like, ‘Where have you been, Rachel?’”

She had a talent for mimicking Margaret’s Southern-lady accent.

“I told her—I mean, it was pretty obvious with the skates—that I’d been skating. She said, ‘With who?’ like I’d had some sort of drug deal or sex date on—”

“Sex date?” said Lucia.

“On roller skates. I told her I’d just been skating by myself, and she said anything could have happened, that there was no telling who was out at that time of night, that I could have been kidnapped or crammed in a van—which are basically the same thing—and she would never have known what happened. She went on like that for a while until she told me I couldn’t go anywhere but school and church for the next two weeks. I can’t believe she let me come here.”

“Two weeks?”

“It’s a waste, isn’t it? I might as well have had a sex date.”

Blues guitar played in the background, and Lucia didn’t recognize the song. Evan had a better ear than she did.

“You know I have to kick you out in a minute, right?” said Lucia.

“Yeah,” said Rachel, content.

1981

Rachel

I.

I closed the back door and dropped my damp purse next to the buffet, careful not to jar the porcelain kittens. My sandal snagged on the turned-up edge of the God Welcomes Us All mat. An obstacle course of small rugs—Oriental, floral, braided—covered the den carpet. They add depth, Mom always said.

I smelled tacos. No surprise. When we weren’t eating at Aunt Molly’s, Mom did either tacos or fettuccini or Rotel dip. Occasionally stroganoff.

Mom was stretched out on the sofa, mostly hidden behind a newspaper. I could see her bare legs, her fingertips, and the curls sproinging from her bun. She wore it like that to work. I didn’t like not being able to see her face.

“Oh!” she said, letting the paper drop. “I was getting worried. Were the roads bad?”

The look on her face was a relief. Not angry. Not sad. Those were the big two.

“They were fine,” I said, as if I’d ever admit that they weren’t. “Just wet.”

She stood up, circling around the coffee table.

“That leak is starting again in the guest bathroom,” she said.

“It’s dripping?” I asked.

“No. But I feel like the ceiling might be discoloring. You want to look?”

I checked the couch for a plate, but she wasn’t eating. She hardly ever ate. Since I could smell the tacos, though, I figured they were ready. Sometimes Mom finished cooking and then drifted away and let the food either get cold or turn black, depending on the burner situation.

“I should probably put a bucket under there,” she said, “just in case.”

Apparently, we were going to keep talking about a leak that was not leaking.

“I’ll look in a minute,” I said. “But all you can do is put the bucket there, right? And then call someone tomorrow if it does start to drip.”

I angled around her, focused on my feet. Heel, toe, heel, toe across the rugs. But Mom didn’t head for the bathroom like I expected. Instead she reached for the Journal.

“Lucia Gilbert is in here,” she said. She was using that tone she had when something mattered to her but she was trying to pretend it didn’t.

I kept my voice and face blank. “Oh.”

She shook the newspaper at me. “She volunteered at some crisis center for women.”

She watched me.

“It says here,” she said, “that the Bar Association arranged for real attorneys to man the phones at the Crisis Center for Law Day—have you ever heard of that? Law Day? Battered women could call in and ask for legal advice. They have a picture of Lucia. They interviewed her.”

Mom lowered her head to the paper and read, her voice singsong. “‘A woman can seek counseling if she doesn’t want to take legal action,’ said Ms. Gilbert, a self-described feminist. ‘But most counselors won’t see a wife about abuse unless the husband is willing to go as well. And there are limits to