The Newman Resident (2 page)

“Has she already given him the lion?” Carol asked without looking back at the screen.

Richard started to get up, but Carol gave him her cross-examination glare. He leaned back up against the couch and adjusted the ice compress.

“What’s your problem? I mean, look at that,” she said, pointing to the screen without looking at it. “He’s loved, happy. He’s well-cared for. He’s one of the luckiest kids in the world.”

“But don’t you ever wonder why he didn’t cry?”

“Cry? Why would you want him to cry?”

“He’s just a baby, and he fell down. It must’ve hurt—he should’ve cried.”

“You’re the only person I know who’d be upset his son got up instead of crying. It’s good to learn when you’re young: you fall down, you pick yourself up.”

“That young?”

“I give up,” she said, looking down at the floor.

“I’d love it if you would,” Richard said.

“Look—”

“Think of everything we’ve missed in his life. Reading to him…tucking him in…bandaging a scraped knee—”

Carol sat down on the chair. “How many times do we have to have this discussion? Have you ever thought maybe you’re being a little selfish?”

“What?”

“It’s all about what you’ve missed out by not having him here, but it’s not his job to satisfy our needs. We’re supposed to meet his.”

“I grew up with a mom and dad. I had a great childhood. I just want Christopher—”

“I know,” she said as she stood up. “But your experience isn’t the only valid one, Richard. I had a nanny when I was little and went to boarding school when I got older. Summers were for camp. I want Christopher to have all the opportunities I had. And more.”

“It’d just be three months. I could take a leave from work to be with him during the day and he’d be back in school before you know it.”

“It takes both signatures,” she said, leaving the room, “and they’re not getting mine.”

CHAPTER THREE

C
arol always insisted they leave early enough to beat the standing-room-only rush on the subway so she could sit down and get some work done. Both she and Richard wore expensive suits, hers more expensive. Often people told them they looked like brother and sister. Carol had her briefcase on her lap, scanning a forty-page contract on her computer tablet, occasionally marking a sentence or paragraph. Richard sat next to her, staring straight ahead, holding a pen in his hand and balancing a black notebook on his lap. He felt like a man dressed up for his own funeral.

Richard kept picking at his novel in his mind. He had gotten to the second chapter a few months ago, but now he was back on the first, reworking it. He kept telling himself he was laying the foundation, that the first chapter had to be just right or the entire novel would fall apart. A month ago he heard writers should spill their words out on the page, get what they have to say out before them, then go back and craft their sentences later during revisions. Like a sculptor who plops down a lump of clay, then shapes it. Richard believed that. But, a couple of nights ago, he read that writers should craft each page, carefully, painstakingly, to avoid unnecessary, endless revisions later on. Apparently, spilling out the words meant laziness and bred too careless an attitude. Now
Richard knew that was true, so he was back at the first chapter. It had to be perfect.

“How’s the chapter coming?” Carol asked, looking up from her document. They had barely spoken to one another all morning. But her question might mean things were better now. “Making progress.” He stared straight ahead, trying to look deep in thought.

“You know what your writing reminds me of?”

He looked down at the page. “Hemingway?”

“No. Law school.”

“Ah, what every writer strives for.”

“Remember at Columbia,” she said, “how you used to fall asleep in class? You’d be in the middle of taking notes, and you’d just start to doze off. Your head would jerk back up, and there’d be this little squiggly line in the middle of the sentence. It basically looked like you were writing on the subway.”

“At least I’ve improved. Back then, the scribbles made more sense than the words.”

“You had the same problem in every class,” Carol said, “but it was worse in Stuart’s.”

“Civil Procedure.” Richard shook his head. “Nobody liked Civil Procedure.”

“I did.”

“I know.”

Carol sat up in the subway seat, sticking out her chest and trying to look stuffy, professorial. Her voice deepened. “Wake up, Mr. Carson! Why are you wasting my time here? What in the world made you come to law school? Surely not love for the law.”

“I remember that day,” Richard said.

Carol slumped sheepishly down into the seat, trying to look like a scared law student. Her voice cracked. “No, Mr. Stuart. It was love for her.”

Richard laughed. Anyone else might think his wife was being mean, but he knew this was her being playful. Teasing him was as close as she’d get to trying to make things all right after the fight from last night.

“And then you had to point to me. You couldn’t have left it in the abstract, could you? I was so embarrassed.”

“You loved it.”

“Maybe a little.”

The train stopped and another ten or so people climbed into the car. There was no more room to sit. The train started up again, the computerized conductor voice saying something Richard couldn’t understand.

“Took the dean to get me back into that class,” Richard said.

“And Stuart called on you every week for the rest of the semester.”

“Now that, I learned in Constitutional Law, was cruel and unusual punishment. Torture.”

“You learned Civil Procedure better than anyone else in that class.”

“Except you.”

She smiled. She still had her student award for Civil Procedure hanging in her office at home.

“Aren’t you glad you didn’t quit?”

They’d spent the first semester trying to understand what the law professors were saying, but they’d spent the second semester arguing about their future. He was determined to pursue his dream
of writing the great American novel, and she was determined to stop him from quitting. She’d been more determined.

Richard knew he had to be careful how he answered this question, or their whole morning would fall apart. “What?” he said, motioning with his hands like a king over his kingdom, “and give up all this?”

Carol shook her head and went back to her contract, but she smiled.

Good, things were good again. He hated how any time they talked about their son these days, it ended up in a fight. How could two people who wanted the exact same thing—what was best for their son—be on opposite sides of the argument?

Carol’s tablet chimed and a window appeared saying there was a call from Hunter. She rejected the call and went back to the contract.

“What’s he calling for?” Richard asked. The second he spoke, he realized he’d made a mistake.

“Hunter can’t call me?”

So much for the peaceful morning.

“It could be about Christopher. It just seems weird to reject the call.”

“So, now I’m wrong to not talk to him?” Carol asked. “You need to make up your mind.”

“You’re always telling me that.”

“Because it’s always true.”

CHAPTER FOUR

W
hen the train stopped at Grand Central, Richard and Carol, along with everyone else in the car, hurried out. It was too early for the worst of the crowds, but people still made leaving the subway car and getting somewhere else a sort of competition. A few people waited on the platform to transfer to another train, but most herded themselves toward the stairs.

They passed by the four men in the Jamaican band, setting up their drums and preparing for their day’s labor. This would probably be the band’s last day at this stop. People were getting used to their music and feeling better about passing by without dropping any money in the drum case. Plus, televisions placed strategically throughout the subway kept everyone occupied. Why listen to a live band when you could watch one on T.V.?

Richard and Carol made their way up the stairs, winding through two or three tiled hallways. Digital posters covered the subway walls:
Wicked
still pulled in the crowds on Broadway, clips of the new Batman movie flashed across the poster screens, and ads for supposedly more powerful sprays to kill cockroaches invited the subway commuters to remember one of the many things they were trying to forget. Richard shook his head—they’d shipped ten people to Mars but they still couldn’t get rid of cockroaches. They walked by several shops, still closed, and exited through the
south doors not far from Park Avenue. They stopped there and gave each other a quick kiss. Richard watched as Carol started the two-block trek to the skyscraper that held Weatherford and Williams high above the rest of the world. The firm took up eight floors, and had other offices in Boston, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Mobile, San Francisco, L.A., and a few other places Richard couldn’t remember. As an associate, Carol played a major role in one of the most lucrative cases in the firm’s history—the Druson case—and won it nearly single-handedly. She brought in millions for the firm and became the youngest attorney in New York to be advanced to partner.

Richard turned back into Grand Central and entered the main foyer, stopping for a minute to take in the sight. He loved this expansive room—its impressive height and width, its attention to detail, its determination to stay the same. He checked his watch against the clock over the information booth in the middle of the room. As always, his watch was a few minutes behind. More than once he’d told Carol he liked his watch a few minutes behind to remind him there were more important things in life than being a “slave to time.” She’d given up trying to get him to reset it.

He scanned the constellations painted on the high ceiling overhead, like a sailor checking his bearings, hoping to find out where he was, wishing to know where he was going.

A large man from behind bumped into him, but Richard stood still, looking at the ceiling. When he looked down and started walking, he tried not to notice the homeless people sleeping along the floor. There seemed to be some sort of trouble in the corner. One subway police officer was talking to an old man wearing a tattered army jacket, aiming her club at him. Richard walked faster, but not
fast enough to avoid hearing the moans from the old man after he’d been hit.

“How you doin’, Mr. Carson?”

Richard liked to stop by Al’s newsstand to chat and take a look at the magazines and papers before consigning himself to his desk. Al was probably in his sixties, but in pretty good shape. He wore a Yankees cap, worn around the edges.

“Good, Al. What’s hot today?”

“Usual. The used-to-be-royal family’s got its problems making the adjustment. Funny, I’ve never had any problem not being royal.”

“Who wants to live in Buckingham Palace, anyway?” Richard glanced over the counter, looking at headlines. “Anything in the
Review
?”

“Circled one you’d like.” Al reached from under the counter and handed him a copy.

“New novel?”

“Yeah, good one, too. Great title. It’s a biblical allusion, you know.”

Richard smiled. “Thanks, Al.” He began scanning the review. “About a couple of boys growing up in Missouri. . . . This isn’t a Huck and Tom rip-off, I hope.”

“Literature don’t do rip-offs. Writer like you ought to know that.”

“My book is a growing-up story, too. In Vermont.”

“I know, I know,” Al said. “When do I get to read it?”

“Still on the first chapter.”

“Get on with it, man! Rather read a good book than a perfect first chapter!”

Richard smiled and waved his card across the scanner disk. “Keep the change, Al.”

Richard left Al at the newsstand and exited out to the street. He passed the usual individuals: the shoeshine man, headphones on, waiting for commuters; the short, round man always talking on his cell while he stood outside his computer shop; the three women in surgical scrubs who were always at the bus stop at this same time, wires running from their ears to their pockets. He remembered when he was a kid and they’d come to the city for the day. Even though it was always crowded with strangers who rarely spoke with each other, at least there was the potential. Sometimes these strangers would say a word or two, or even just give an encouraging nod. But now everyone was wired to something. There was always music to listen to or television or movies to watch or someone somewhere else to work out a deal with over the phone. No one was ever here anymore.

Richard hurried through his firm’s lobby, reading the book review. Jones, Darrell, and Hubb had only one office, and it wasn’t even as big as Weatherford’s smallest branch. He closed the door to his office and sat at his desk. Something about the book caught his attention, like he was reading a review of the book he was writing before he’d even finished it. Two boys growing up long before they were ready, never having a real childhood. This was his story. Really, his son’s story. He was the one who should be writing this.

He looked at the picture of the cover one more time, reading the title aloud. “
Death of the Innocents
.”

CHAPTER FIVE

R
ichard needed to make up his mind. That’s what Carol always said. And, to be honest, she was right. It was easy for him to analyze and evaluate and reflect; deciding and acting were the tough parts.

Richard had just finished reading the review about
Death of the Innocents
and was pacing in his office. It wasn’t even ten yet, so it was too early to take a break, and there was no one at the firm he could talk to.

He looked over at his phone and said his wife’s name. He wondered if she’d be too busy to pick up.

“Richard?”

“Carol. I’ve missed you.”

“Me too. I mean, we haven’t seen each other for over an hour.”

“Okay, I got it, Counselor,” he said. “Working on a big case?”

“Yamashita case. Worth 300 million dollars. We’ll get a decent slice of that if all goes well.”