Almost Like Being in Love (18 page)

Dear Craig,

I think my stepfather is a Nazi. I even had to learn projectile vomiting in case he starts goose-stepping. Mostly I wait until he puts on Wagner and then I let it fly. And he wants me to call him Pop-Pop. Gag me.

Also Frau Schneller is one too. At night when she thinks I’m asleep she calls Berlin and talks in code. She’s a bad influence. She sings “Liebowitz”

in the shower. I don’t think I should be left alone with her while my mother and the Brown Shirt are in Hamburg.

If we tell these things to a judge, will they let me live with my father?

Noah

P.S. What if they take me to Germany with them next time? Maybe they’ll turn me into a Storm Trooper.

MCKENNA & WEBB

A LAW PARTNERSHIP

118 CONGRESS PARK, SUITE 407

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NEW YORK 12866

May 14, 1998

ATTORNEY-CLIENT COMMUNICATION

Mr. Noah Kessler

6026 Foxhound Run

Saratoga Springs, New York 12866

Dear Noah:

First of all, it’s “Lieberstrum.” Second of all, Frau Schneller isn’t talking in code and you know it—that’s German. Third of all, I agree that “Pop-Pop” is pretty barfy, but do the best you can. Fourth of all, your stepfather’s crazy about you. But fifth of all, we’re going back to court anyway to see if we can kick some butt this time. I can’t promise you anything, but if your dad can hit one out of the park with a pulled hamstring, we ought to be able to do the same thing without one.

So stop puking on the walls.

Guess who loves you? (a) Your father. (b) Me. (c) Clayton. (d) Charleen.

(e) All of the above.

Craig

Craig McKenna

Attorney notes

Interview with Jody Kessler

5/18/98

 Met with client at his Shell station in Utica.

 Helped client change a universal joint.

 Fought with client about the Bill Buckner error in the 1986

Series. Client maintains it was Buckner’s fault that the winning run crossed the plate. Attorney argued that if somebody with half a brain had pulled Schiraldi off the mound before he’d given up the nine thousand singles, there wouldn’t have been anybody on base to score in the first place.

 Client threatened to kick attorney’s ass.

 Facts of case were discussed. Client claims he lost the custody battle in 1997 because he washed the socks he’d gone 4-for-4 in.

Attorney argued that the stench wouldn’t have been a viable alternative either.

 Meeting was interrupted when client received a telephone call from his son, which lasted almost an hour. Among the issues discussed: a second Little League trophy, Beavis and Butthead, people living on Jupiter shaped like Jello, cupcakes, Rollerblading raptors, building a time capsule, and Darth Vader farting.

 Attorney requested permission to file a second custody petition.

Client replied, “Hell, Craigy. You don’t stop swinging just because you’re in a slump.” Attorney interpreted this to mean

“yes.”

 The usual fee arrangements were made and a check was exchanged for a fully executed retainer agreement. Client is still under the impression that a superior court action can be prepped, deposed, litigated, tried, and adjudged for $300. If client ever finds out the truth, client will break attorney’s neck.

 Client invited attorney, attorney’s sig oth, and attorney’s law partner to Utica for a home stand with the Troy Bandits next weekend. '“I get Noah for three days, so we can make it a family thing.”( Attorney accepted on behalf of all parties.

 Attorney filled his tank with Shell Premium and hit the road.

Before he did, client re-emphasized that the weekend invitation included attorney’s elusive law partner as well. '“Doesn’t she know I’m crazy about her?”( Attorney assured client that he got the picture, even if the law partner didn’t.

Total Time
: 6.5 hours @ $200/hr.

$1,300.00

Travel:

178 miles @ 30¢/mile 53.40

Total Billable
:

00.00

Special Handling
: Write it off to office supplies.

Jody Kessler was our Golden Boy. Tall and blond with a grin wide enough to light up most of Saratoga County, he was the kid down the street who’d slept in a Red Sox jersey for most of his adolescence, who’d married his high school sweetheart in the on-deck circle between halves of a semi-pro doubleheader (her parents were furious(, who’d fed his family and bought more baseballs by overhauling entire transmissions in forty-five minutes flat, and who’d routinely broken plate glass windows up and down Union Avenue with one implausible home run after another. (In a unanimous vote, the City Council agreed to push the Diamond five hundred feet farther away from downtown in order to prevent any more damage. It worked—but barely.)

By the time we’d moved to Saratoga Springs, Jody was already something of a sandlot legend. Before we’d even met our neighbors we knew what kind of toothpaste he used (Aim), where he bought his Reeboks (The Foot Emporium on Nelson), what he ate for breakfast (sausage and eggs up, rye toast, and grapefruit juice), and which Red Sox hero he most resembled (fistfights sometimes broke out over this one—it was usually Carl Yastrzemski or Rico Petrocelli, but for my money, he was a dead-ringer for an unsurly Tony Conigliaro). Together, he and his wife were the Jack and Jackie of Carriage House Lane—Jody with his .373

average and Annette with her B.A. in literature from Cornell—and when Noah was born in 1987, all that was missing to complete the snapshot was a minor league contract. It wasn’t long in coming.

FINAL The Saratoga Courant 25¢

JODY HEADS FOR UTICA!

“Jesus, look at him fly!” whistled Clayton on Opening Day. We were sitting over the Blue Sox dugout in Utica, having driven six hours through a near-hurricane just to see if Jody could pull off his mythical hocus-pocus in front of the Big Guys. And once the sun had come out, it was a day made for baseball: the sky was so blue and the grass was so green, you kind of got the feeling that if there had been an eleventh commandment, it would have been “Thou shalt cover third.”

Over by first base, bouncing on the balls of his feet and chewing one stick of Doublemint after another, Jody Kessler actually looked nervous for the first and only time in his professional career. That lasted until Sammy Tucker came to the plate for the Syracuse Sparks and hit a sizzling line drive at least three thousand feet over Jody’s head. Some say that when he made the catch, he didn’t seem to realize what a spectacular play it really was. Actually, it was a lot simpler than that: nobody had told him a rookie wasn’t supposed to put one over on Sammy Tucker. Then later in the game, he sent Billy Glavin’s lead-off pitch into the deepest part of the Mohawk River and didn’t even bother to blush when he crossed the plate. Nobody’d told him he wasn’t supposed to do that, either.

FINAL The Saratoga Courant 25¢

IT’S FE WAY PARK FOR JODY!

When the Red Sox inevitably called him up in 1993, their ticket people weren’t exactly anticipating an order for eight hundred seats from Saratoga Springs—but they didn’t really have much of a choice. You just don’t fuck with a local hero. Jody wound up with his own cheering section ten feet east of the Green Monster, and when he made his first appearance during batting practice (with 6-year-old Noah on his shoulders(, you’d have thought that Ted Williams had shed forty years and come back for one more dose of magic. Even the usually cynical sportscasters didn’t know what had hit them.

Neither did Jody when a 2-and-1 fastball shattered his jaw.

FINAL The Saratoga Courant 25¢

JODY CHA GES HIS SOX AGAI

It took him nearly a year to recover—and when he returned to uniform as a pinch hitter for Utica, even longsuffering Red Sox fans refused to believe that one at-bat at Fenway Park was the only big-league chance he was ever going to get. We were wrong. He struck out on three consecutive pitches that day—but five thousand people in the ballpark gave him a standing ovation anyway.

Over the next few seasons, we learned to ignore the rumors. And there were plenty: Jody was on his way down to single-A, Jody and Annette were splitting up, Pawtucket wouldn’t renew Jody’s contract, Jody and Annette were getting back together, Camelot was teetering on the brink again—but nobody wanted to hear it. So I was thoroughly unprepared for the envelope I received on March 14, 1997, that looked for all the world as though it had been addressed by a kid.

Dear Mr. McKenna,

I am 9 years old. I saw a picture of you on TV about childrens rights when the little girl got teased in school and nobody did anything about it.

My father is the world famous baseball player Jody Kessler but they won’t let me live with him because he’s not rich like my mother’s boy friend who she just married.

Am I allowed to get childrens rights too? If I am then how come nobody listens to me?

Noah Kessler

POST-IT NOTE

Charleen:

We’re taking this case sight unseen. Remember when I let you represent the Women’s Defense League for free and you said you owed me one? This is the one you owe me. And if he can’t afford to pay us, we’ll settle for a pair of autographs.

Craig

POST-IT NOTE

Craig:

When did you get to be such a pushover?!

What the hell. The kid’s adorable and the father’s no slouch either.

Charleen

A week after I’d gotten the letter, we met with Jody and Noah in our large conference room (we call our small one “the kitchen”(. It was a Saturday and Jody had a full afternoon of visitation rights mapped out, but they managed to squeeze us in between the batting cage and the ice cream cones. Kevin had gotten there early to set up—bagels and French roast decaf for the grownups; Oreos, hot chocolate, and half a dozen computer games for the kid. (We used to have two secretaries and a receptionist until we found Kevin—our blue-eyed boy toy who handles the mail, takes care of our filing, screens our calls, corrects our pleadings, rewrites our letters, makes us coffee, deposits our checks, keeps our accounts, sets our depositions, and gets us out of hot water before it starts to boil. On one memorable occasion, we were a day late filing a motion for summary judgment: the battery in my watch had croaked, so I was twenty-four hours off. This is what’s known in the trade as “mistake, inadvertence, or excusable neglect,” but no amount of cajoling, bartering, threatening, or imploring was sufficient to persuade an unusually obstinate court clerk to get with the program—until Kevin said, “Craig?

Go into your office, shut the door, and don’t come out until I tell you to.”

Then he invited the clerk to lunch. One hour later, I had a hearing date and Kevin had a boyfriend. If he ever quits, we go Chapter 11.)

“Sorry I’m late,” said Charleen briskly, sweeping into our tiny wood-paneled waiting room as though she were being filmed. Kevin didn’t even bother to look up from his monitor.

“Save the entrance, Tallulah,” he shot back. “They’re not here yet.”

“I’m sure I don’t know
what
you’re talking about,” she retorted, clearly disappointed but tossing her jacket carelessly onto a rattan chair as though she weren’t. That’s when I knew something was definitely up. In addition to a well-rehearsed air of indifference, she was wearing an eye-popping summer dress splashed with sunbursts of color that was supposed to look like it had just come off the rack at Target when in fact it had “Dolce e Gabbana—$900” written all over it. Whenever Charleen smells unattached testosterone, she goes shopping.

“Why didn’t you tell me we were aiming for the Rodeo Drive look on a weekend?” I chided her. “I’d have worn the jeans with smaller holes.”

“What,
this
old thing?” she asked incredulously, plucking at the fabric.

“Surely you’ve been smoking the drapes again.”

“Then how come the price tag’s still on the zipper?”

“
Where
?!”

“Gotcha,” I fired back smugly. We stopped just short of “nyah, nyah, nyah” only because our clients chose that moment to arrive, and it was clearly in the best interests of all concerned to pretend we were adults.

Noah took care of the preliminary introductions, which consisted of a nimble “Hiya” before he made a beeline for Kevin’s computer to see if Doom was on it. The rest of us remained facing a winningly awkward Jody in a baby-blue T-shirt stretched across his torso, a pair of baseball pants, and a tousled haircut that made him look like the world’s biggest little boy. Though we realized that swooning was definitely out of the question, that didn’t stop Charleen from checking out his eyes, me from scoping out his chest, or Kevin from staring at his crotch. Guess which one of them I kicked?

“I’ve heard a great deal about you,” said Charleen warmly.

“Why don’t we all go inside?” I offered.

“Ow,” said Kevin.

The first twenty minutes of the meeting were notably unremarkable if you could overlook the subtext, which was about as delicate as a heart attack. Noah and I got into a fight about Tom Seaver, Jody stared at Charleen, and Charleen took notes. Noah showed me snapshots of him and his mom at Lake Tonawanda, Jody stared at Charleen, and Charleen poured coffee. Noah recited every one of the state capitals by heart Jody stared at Charleen, and Charleen buttered a bagel. Then, by prearranged signal, Kevin took the kid into my office for ten rounds of Chip’s Challenge (nine of which Noah won). This left Jody staring at Charleen, Charleen polishing the spoons, and Craig with no one to talk to. That we ever got as far as a courtroom is a legal accomplishment worthy of Professor Witkin.

With a representation letter signed and our $300 fee paid in advance, we scheduled a meeting with Annette—an energetic 5-foot-2 bundle of dynamite who turned out to be funny, articulate, and a good sport.

Though she loved her kid way too much to consider giving him up, she wouldn’t allow Jody to pay child support and she still called him Big Guy. Clearly, a messy divorce hadn’t stopped them from remaining partially crazy about each other.