The Life of the World to Come (6 page)

PETER AUSBERRY, CO-FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Peter Ausberry
is the New Salem Institute's co-founder and executive director alongside his former Yale Law School classmate, Martha Bok. Before co-founding the NSI in 2007, Mr. Ausberry clerked for Judge Ray Westley of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, served as a fellow in the Department of Justice's Honors Program, worked as a senior attorney in the Office of the Solicitor General, and was appointed to the President's Advisory Council on Prison Reform. A native of Seattle, Mr. Ausberry received his B.A. in Political Science from Yale University in 1987 and his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1991. He has been married to Christine Lanchik since 2003, and is a member of the state bars of New York and Washington. He appears at first glance to be gruff, but he is also kindly in his way.

JESSIE SUNDBY, MANAGING ATTORNEY

Jessie Sundby
has been the New Salem Institute's managing attorney since its inception in 2007, and was a member of its original team. Before coming to NSI, Ms. Sundby served as a clerk to Judge Dale Centers of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and worked as an associate in the San Francisco offices of Morrison Foerster. Originally from Los Angeles, she received her B.A. in Political Science from Pomona College in 1999 and her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2004. Ms. Sundby is a touch frenetic, and is a member of the state bars of New York and California.

KEVIN BLEDSOE, SENIOR STAFF ATTORNEY

Kevin Bledsoe
joined the New Salem Institute as a staff attorney in 2007, and specializes in litigating post-conviction DNA cases as well as talking to Mr. Brice about college football based on one conversation they had on Mr. Brice's first day of work that led Mr. Bledsoe to the mistaken belief that Mr. Brice was at all interested in college football. After graduating from law school, Mr. Bledsoe spent two years as a litigation fellow with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund before returning to his hometown of Boston to join Ropes & Gray as an associate. Mr. Bledsoe received a B.A. in History from Harvard College in 1997, an M.A. in Political Science from Northeastern University in 1999, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2002. He is admitted to the state bar of New York.

SALIM MCCULLOUGH, STAFF ATTORNEY

Salim McCullough
is a proud Texan, and has been a staff attorney with the New Salem Institute since 2011. He's pretty rah-rah about the whole Texas thing—maybe too much, given the line of work he's in. Mr. McCullough received his B.A. in Texan Studies or something from the University of Texas in 2004, and his J.D., also from Texas, in 2010. He spent 2010 clerking for a judge in Texas, and is admitted to the state bar of New York.

SAMANTHA KIDEARE, STAFF ATTORNEY

Sam Kideare
joined the New Salem Institute as a staff attorney in 2011 after clerking on the Second Circuit. The two most obvious things about her are that she is tall and joyful. Ms. Kideare always has a sweet thing to say, and always says it earnestly; there is no one with whom she cannot get along. Mr. Brice thinks that she might be interested in him, romantically, he means, but there have definitely been a great number of times when Mr. Brice has thought that and been sort of comically wrong. Once back in high school, Lucy Gafford complimented him on his cool Elvis Costello t-shirt, and Mr. Brice became convinced that the moment stood for something more; she had dyed hair, the color of bad blood, which she always twirled with one thin finger when she talked to him about bands he'd never heard of or art shows he'd never attended. Three weeks after Lucy—who was neither tall nor joyful—broke up with her boyfriend, who at the time would have been several years into college had he cared about that sort of thing, she and Mr. Brice were the last two remaining at a late-night bonfire on the beach. He'd had four or five beers, and, jousting at the embers with a long driftwood stake, he listened as she recounted a dream she'd had of a boat ride: how the black water washed on forever through the dark of her mind, and disappeared at dawn. He tried to kiss her then. He tried to kiss her then, beneath the olive oil moon, but a man has never been so wrong. Ms. Kideare earned her B.A. in Political Science from Harvard College in 2006, and her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2010.

AARON KIA, STAFF ATTORNEY

Aaron Kia
has been a staff attorney with the New Salem Institute since 2012, following up a year-long clerkship with Judge Delilah Cobb of the Eastern District of Michigan. Mr. Kia received his B.A. in Political Science from Duke University in 2004 and his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2011, and is definitely interested in Ms. Kideare, romantically, that is, because he never, ever stops talking to Mr. Brice about it, weirdly. He cares about soccer too much and is a member of the state bar of New York.

RACHEL COSTA, STAFF ATTORNEY

Rachel Costa
became a staff attorney at the New Salem Institute in the fall of 2012 after serving as a legal intern during the summer of 2011. She earned her B.A. in Art History from Wellesley College in 2009 and her J.D. from Northwestern University Law School in 2012, and is admitted to the state bar of New York. Ms. Costa is a warm, thoughtful person, and really quite striking, which is a fact that has already touched down, softly, somewhere in Mr. Brice's vasculature.

BOOTS ROSENBAUM, STAFF ATTORNEY

Boots Rosenbaum
joined the New Salem Institute in the fall of 2012, and is one of the very few people whom Mr. Brice trusts at this point. He didn't flinch when the walls caved in around Mr. Brice's head; he stuck around to help clear the rubble, and that meant a great deal. Mr. Brice hadn't ever had a friend like that before, one who could be counted on in a crisis. Mr. Rosenbaum received his B.A. in English and Music from New York University in 2004, and also graduated from a prestigious law school in 2012.

LEO BRICE, STAFF ATTORNEY

Leo Brice
is some sort of a kind snob. He's been a real mess since Fiona left him for that vacuous prick. He's a lawyer, incidentally, and while he thinks he could become passionately invested in this sort of work, it's difficult for him to concentrate on the deaths of others right now, while his is still so fresh. What went wrong? He runs it back, daily, even now, months later, and will for some time. Just the other night, unsleeping like all others, he reached for a book—something dusty, something dry enough to anesthetize—and carelessly flipped to the inscription she had scrawled inside of the cover not ten months prior: “I love you more and more each day, my Dearest Friend. xoxo, F.” This was
The Collected Letters of John and Abigail Adams
, once a birthday present, now another chalky half-column scattered among the ruins of their vast romantic empire. Listen to him prattle on! She wasn't so great, dammit. Once you go, you don't get to be great anymore—she forfeited the right to keep the all-bright things about her. If you run off, you can't be so smart, and you can't be very funny, you cannot be wry or vulnerable. If you don't exist, you can't be anything at all. Listen to this utter garbage! This is at once the end of the world, and not.

How utterly goddamn silly.

 

THREE

Y
OU LIVE YOUR WHOLE LIFE AS THOUGH
it were an ongoing story, but when someone leaves, here is what happens: you wake up the next morning, and all of a sudden you are an epilogue. I dragged myself wrackful through the same environment I'd always known, but absent Fiona those first days seemed to be little more than a ghostly and meaningless afterword, past pluperfect where a present tense ought to be. I remember thinking about God for the first time in ages—I hadn't really bought into growing up (not much, anyway), but I came around to the idea not long after I met her. I just couldn't believe that a rudderless universe would have allowed us to come together like that. I had no doubt, none at all, that our little confluence had been preordained by the Holy Whatever; when I found her, it was so much like finding the lock the key fit—at last, at last. Fiona was gone, and I still believed in God, only now I understood that She is a monster.

Fifty-six days were lost that summer to the New York State Bar Examination, and this thing happened on day fifty-eight, the second-cheapest champagne from the liquor store not yet dry on the loveseat. Boots and I weren't starting work at New Salem until halfway through September, which gave me nearly eight weeks to lie on the floor and dodge phone calls from the people I loved most. I didn't go home to my parents; I didn't go anywhere, and Boots and Sona were the only two people I let into my building during that long dark vacancy—a new house rule. Otherwise, I dealt exclusively with strangers. I started sitting down in the shower, sometimes for an hour or more. I ate and drank alone each day. I stopped wondering about anything, and dimly chased her ghost around the apartment, slouching from bathroom to kitchen to bed like a wounded animal.

Bzzzzzzzz
.

“Dude,” crackled Boots into the ancient intercom. “The government sent me to make sure you're alive today.”

This was the seventeenth of August: three weeks into the new calendar, the one Fiona invented by leaving.

“How we doing today, buddy?” Boots asked, first thing.

“I think I'm dying, Boots.”

“Still emo. That's wonderful. You know, I can never tell whether you're actually depressed or whether you're just regular-sad and doing a little commentary about depression.”

“Me neither sometimes,” I conceded, because it was good to have one sharp ally. I was actually depressed that day.

“So I'll ask again, and maybe you can shoot for an under-the-top response this time: Leo, how are you?”

“I've had better months. All of them, actually,” I croaked truthfully, burrowing further into the easy chair.

“And I understand that, but I'm going to keep asking from time to time, just so we can be sure that you're on an upward trajectory.”

“I'm fine. I need time, you know? To process. More time.”

Boots was a tremendous pal, and perfectly suited to this particular tragedy. He'd had an engagement broken off prior to law school which nearly wrecked him, and that gave him a survivor's view—an aerial perspective on my suffering that I could never hope to comprehend from way down here on the molten ground.

At thirty, he was four years my senior, but his face bore the crags and heavy remembrances of a much older man. He had a face like an old wooden workbench—angular, unshaved, and dusty, and were it not for his hollow cheeks, we could have easily been mistaken for brothers. Before law school he'd been a drummer for a hyper-locally renowned three-piece Brooklyn outfit called Snaggletooth. I joined him on guitar half a dozen times—most often at lushy student organization parties—and together with our bassist acquaintance, Shira Pollard, and Gracie, herself a vivid singer and serviceable pianist, there was much talk of dropping out and making a go of it (what would we call our ragtag band? “Counselor,” it was decided). Never happened.

“You gotta clean this place up, man.”

“I know,” I said.

“These flowers are dying,” Boots pointed out, as he plucked an ashen ex-carnation from the vase on the table.

“I know. Fiona got them for me—for the Bar, I guess—and I, uh, appreciate the metaphor.”

Boots picked up a bag of grapes from the kitchen counter and began to casually whip them at my chest, one at a time.

“Hey!” he hollered.

“What?”

“Hey!”

“What? Stop that.”

“How long are you going to be like this for?” he asked, the next grape striking me squarely on the forehead.

“I don't know. How long did it take you to snap out of it?”

“Almost a year.”

“Okay, so, it sounds like I've got a year minus three weeks before you can pass judgment on my mood.”

“It's not healthy to be this devastated. Trust me. You've gotta get out there, you know? Out into the open air. Embrace the fresh start! I don't want to have to explain why you're such a sad sack to all of our fancy new colleagues when we get to the New Salem joint. I don't want to have to come up here next week and have you be, you know, dead, or something dramatic like that.”

“Ugh.”

“It's transition time, man. It's moving day. This is a big, critical moment for you; you just got out of a five-year-old relationship. It's time to grow up and move along and all that.”

“Three years,” I said.

“I'm sorry?”

“Fiona and I were together for a little over three years.”

“I know that.”

“You said I just got out of a five-year relationship.”

“I said you got out of a five-year-
old
relationship,” clarified Boots as he launched the final grape and I swatted it away.

“What?”

“I wasn't referring to duration. I meant both of you acted like five-year-olds. Real relationships are not supposed to be that twee.”

“Twee?”

“Yes.”

“You think we were twee?”

“Very much so. You two existed in this fantasy romance world that nobody else was privy to. It's not your fault, man—she was a strange one, and you're a little strange too, so I'm sure it was easy to fall into all that. Look, Fiona was great, but Fiona is gone. She does not exist anymore.”

“Of this … I am … aware,” I sighed.

“It will end up having been for the best. That's always how it works, and if you could be objective about the situation, you would agree with that.”

“That's not necessarily true, at all. You know? What if I'm not okay? What if this is the worst thing that has ever happened or that ever will happen, Boots? I can't even wrap my mind around it. She just … unceremoniously broke up with me.”

“And what? You wanted it to be ceremonious?”