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

He’d dropped his hands to his thighs. His fingers tapped against his khaki pants so lightly that it seemed more like trembling.

“I’d hoped,” he said, “that with a woman lawyer, it might help—”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll do what I can, but the courts are very set in their ways, unfortunately.”

“You ever read Hop on Pop?” he said.

“Pardon?”

“We read it every night. Maybe a hundred nights in a row at this stage. I’ve been begging them to let me try something new, not to make me read about Mr. Brown and Mr. Black one more dang time, and I’m getting my wish, aren’t I?”

He dropped his head so that she couldn’t see his face, and she was glad.

Rachel

I.

I had ten minutes before the homeroom bell would ring, and I was passing my old middle school. I was going forty-five, maybe fifty, and it took me a few seconds to realize that the police car was following me. When I pulled over, the policeman called me young lady and lectured me about school zones. He said I could run over some little girl and it would haunt me forever. I wanted to say, hey, I spent three years at that school, and trust me, most of those girls would not be a huge loss.

I wound up avoiding a ticket and getting sixteen hours of community service at Oak Park. Two Saturdays. Eight hours each.

I wasn’t concerned when Mom dropped me off that first day. (We’d driven over the day before, making sure that she was comfortable with the route.) The park was green and leafy and familiar. As a kid, I’d fed stale bread to the ducks here, and I still remembered the big slide, and how if you didn’t put your hands down to brake yourself, you’d land on your butt.

I stopped by the information booth, and soon enough a soft-bellied, gray-haired man with matching navy shirt and pants came walking across the grass toward me. When he got close enough, I could see his badge. A security guard. I smiled, but he didn’t smile back. He only asked for my name, and then he led me down a dirt path, thick with trees on both sides, until we hit a sidewalk. He didn’t say a word. We wound up at a picnic pavilion with a concrete floor and benches attached to the tables. Another man, balding and tanned, was inside the pavilion, wiping down tables with a gray rag.

The security guard stopped.

“Now then, Rachel,” he said, looking at me, finally. “This is—what’s your name again?”

The man with the rag looked up, still wiping. “Luther.”

“So Luther will be doing the men’s bathrooms. You’ll do the women’s. There are three sets of bathrooms at the park, and Luther can show you where they are. You’ll empty out the trash cans every two hours, plus wipe down the toilets and the sinks with the cleaner—you tell her about that.” He jerked his head at Luther, and I was pretty sure he’d forgotten his name again. “You’ll mop the floors once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Wipe off the tables in the pavilions. There’s eight pavilions, and don’t miss any. Pick up any litter. Don’t just stand around. Look like you’re working.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I wondered if he’d told me his name and I’d missed it.

Luther nodded.

“I’ll be in the guard shack,” the man said, pointing vaguely behind him. “You come get me if any issues come up.”

He walked off, and I was left with Luther, who was about my height and probably about my weight. I was sure his waist was smaller than mine, and I thought of how girls at my school liked to say, If he can fit in my pants, he can’t get in my pants, although I could see several reasons why this man would never get in my pants. He’d kept his head turned while the security guard was standing there, but now he faced me, smiling, and he was missing a tooth. His skin was all leather.

We said hello, and he pointed me toward a broom propped against one of the wooden pavilion posts. The bristles of it curled to each side like an old-fashioned mustache, and it didn’t seem to make any difference to the pollen and dust on the concrete, but I felt better with something in my hands. I swept my way across the floor as Luther wiped the benches, dirty water trickling on the concrete from his wet rag.

“How much time you got here?” he asked me.

“Sixteen hours,” I said. It occurred to me for the first time that maybe he wasn’t an employee.

“What did you do?” he asked.

I told him about my speeding.

“I got three-hundred and twenty hours,” he said.

That made me lose my rhythm. “What did you do?”

“Littered,” he said, and he made a clicking sound like he was encouraging a horse.

I kept sweeping, he kept wiping, and nothing seemed any cleaner when we finished. Eventually we carried the bucket and broom to the closest set of bathrooms, where Luther unlocked a closet full of mops and spray bottles and toilet paper. He stepped inside and pushed himself against the wooden shelves so I could fit in, too, and my arm brushed against his arm. It was all shadows in the closet, with only the sunlight coming through the trees for light. It smelled like the old lawn mower shed at Molly’s. Luther held up the glass cleaner for the mirrors and the multipurpose disinfectant for the toilets, and his fingers brushed against my thigh as he reached down for the toilet paper.

He didn’t seem to notice.

He talked me through the list of chores, and then I was inside the women’s bathroom, starting with the mirrors. The sinks were rusted around the drains, one of them clogged with wet paper. None of that was too bad. The toilets, though. You