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

The woman’s friendliness had surprised Lucia. Months after her original appointment, Margaret had called the office to say she would like to start the divorce process. She’d asked for a meeting and Lucia had agreed to it, and then Margaret had called back within a week, wavering, and asked to cancel. When she called again weeks later, Lucia told her gently that she deserved a lawyer more suited to her particular preferences. She’d found one easily enough, Rachel had reported.

Now as Lucia pulled into the driveway, Rachel opened the passenger door, waving, her hand a fan-shaped blur in the streetlamp glow. Lucia waved back, more enthusiastically than she might have expected from herself. She would not have minded a half hour to watch the news or nap on the couch.

And yet. To get that smile, merely for pulling into her own driveway.

By the time Lucia got out of the car, Margaret was standing, one elbow on her car door. She’d not only lacked resentment, she’d been effusive. Every time they met, the woman acted as if they were the sort of friends forged by slumber parties and mai tais. Her smile was as wide as her daughter’s.

It was baffling.

“She begged me to stop and see if you were home,” Margaret said, her voice low and conspiring. “We were headed to Molly’s, but I could drop her off for a little while. As rude as it is for her to impose on you like this.”

“Mom,” hissed Rachel, empty-handed for once.

Lucia took a few steps closer, tightening the belt on her leather coat. The almost-dead grass bristled under her feet.

“It’s always a pleasure to see her,” she said. “Although Evan and I have dinner plans tonight. Come in for twenty minutes, Rachel, and then we’ll drop you back at your aunt’s.”

“I can walk,” Rachel said.

“We’ll drop you,” Lucia said. “You don’t have a coat?”

“I can’t ever get her to wear one,” said Margaret. “Where are you going for dinner?”

“The Bamboo Garden.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of it,” Margaret said, coming out from behind the car door. “I went to the Lampliter the other night—they’re putting on Guys and Dolls. The musical? You know it? They did this chicken pasta for dinner, and it was too spicy, really. But, still, it’s the theater you go for, isn’t it?”

Rachel slammed the passenger door. Her hair whipped around her head, revealing sequined turkey earrings that dangled nearly to her shoulders. She angled through the yard, her daisy-print blouse loose and blowing.

“Bye, Mom,” she called over her shoulder.

“Oh, she’s always so—” started Margaret, voice low again. “You know how she is. And did you see those ridiculous earrings?”

“I’ll have her back soon,” said Lucia. “In plenty of time for dinner.”

Margaret lifted her hand to smooth her hair, her keys and her bracelets jingling. “You’ve been in this house for how long?” she asked.

Rachel was waiting with her hand on the doorknob.

“Four years,” Lucia said.

“And you still feel good about the neighborhood?”

“Margaret,” said Lucia. “Your earrings. They’re so pretty.”

“These? I got them at Parisian on sale.”

“Really beautiful,” Lucia said, as she started up the drive. A couple of steps, then a look over her shoulder. “So nice to see you.”

She had learned this method of escape from her mother, who always needed to get home to start dinner after church on Sundays but inevitably got trapped in the pew by Mrs. Norris, who talked about her granddaughter’s ballet recitals, or Mrs. Rigby, who talked about her back pain, or Louis Herbert, who stared at any woman’s chest the whole time he talked to her. Louis, her mother had said once, what smooth sleeves you have. Not a wrinkle in them. She had been building momentum as she spoke, and as he thanked her, she had darted past him toward the fellowship hall, dragging Lucia along by the hand.

“Thanks again,” Lucia called.

“Sure,” Margaret replied, turning, finally, toward her car. “Sure.”

Inside the house, Lucia shed her coat and grabbed a Tab for herself and a ginger ale for Rachel. Evan had obviously put the dog in the backyard because there had been no mass of fur hurtling toward them, only Evan, who kissed Lucia and asked her if jeans were all right for dinner—which was likely a way of making sure she remembered their plans. He exchanged a few words with Rachel and disappeared toward the bedroom.

Rachel took her usual spot on the couch. “I’m nearly done with The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Thanks again for it. It’s horrible. Amazing, I mean, but horrible.”

“You haven’t read anything like it in school?” Lucia asked, although she knew the answer.

“No,” said Rachel, frowning. Considering.

If she had to make a bet, Lucia would guess the girl had never heard of the bus boycott. She could imagine the school-board men dickering among themselves in rooms filled with pipe smoke, deciding that it was best to keep teachers from stirring up the past. Not that it was the past. Those black boys on the igloo wouldn’t have been allowed on that particular playground a few years ago. Brown v. Board hadn’t done anything here—it took Carr v. Board of Education in 1964, and then redistricting in 1969, and then another round of redistricting in 1974, and the upshot of it was that Montgomery had managed to avoid integration for two decades, and maybe a silver lining was that it let tempers cool. No one got mobbed. No one got beaten.

The consequences were more subtle.

“I heard they used to assign reading with Black History Month,” Rachel said. “Before they canceled it. It was, like, really disruptive. Mom read in the paper that the black kids at Lee wanted to skip classes on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death, and the principal said no, and they did it anyway. He suspended, like, two hundred of them. Mom said they were out of control, acting wild and making trouble.”

Lucia considered that Jane Pittman might have a limited effect. Wild. Out of control. She knew that Rachel could