Warm Wuinter's Garden (5 page)

Too many discussions had turned their words
bitter. Bill wanted his future secure; Dilly wanted her present
insured. Dilly knew that she needed to make a decision. She didn’t
know what to do with all the fear and anger. A year of holding in.
There were days when it felt as if the pressure of what she
contained would rip her skin loose from her muscles. She could
imagine hearing the wheesh of the escaping emotions.

Dilly Koster had had built her life upon
righteousness and being right. She had spent her life’s energy
convincing others that she knew what was right for them. In Dilly’s
thinking Bill had been lost when she first met him. She had given
him purpose and direction. When her children were young and had
come to her for answers, she had provided them. When they had
slowed in their requests, she had sought them out and answered
things not asked. She needed to help. She knew what was right. She
had always known. Until now.

In the last months, she had found that a
lifetime of having all the answers had made it difficult to ask
questions. She was finding that being so adept at solving others
problems, even those that they failed to recognize, did little to
help her solve her own.

Leave? Give in? Accept? Change? Push Bill
out? Pull him in? Push desire out? Change it? Adopt? Finish the
degree? Teach? Day care? Nurse? Divorce?

Dilly had been mothering something ever since
she was a tiny child. It had made no difference whether it was her
progeny or not, whether of her species or not, whether it had
porcelain body, snag-looped terrycloth stuffed with batting, a coat
of fur and burrs, or the pinkest sweetest smelling skin. Dilly
Koster had mothered so much that she had forgotten how to be a
child. She had become so enamored of the heart-pounding rush of
relieving an infant’s hunger, of healing hurt, of answering
questions that she had forgotten how to tend her own wounds or feed
herself beyond stale marshmallows and pie crust. Being ever the
parent and never the child, questions came hard for Dilly and
answers weren’t heard.

A car pulled up and stopped. Doors slammed
and excited voices carried in and swept away Dilly’s thoughts of
loss. She hurried to the front of the house. She spread her feet
wide and opened her arms in anticipation. Waiting eagerly, she ran
through her orders of the day.

Sun-flushed daughters and son came through
the doorway in the order of their ages. Each held a limp sausage of
damp towel rolled around a wet bathing suit. All three grabbed a
quick hug from Dilly before veering off in all directions as if
they were planes in an aerial show.

“Put those wet towels in the laundry room.
Hang those suits on the line.

“Jessie, honey, Jessie, try to get a brush
through that mop. Did you hang your head out the window all the way
home?”

“Dodger, Dodger, Uppy is going to be in bunny
heaven soon if you keep forgetting to feed him. He’s so weak a
tortoise could race right by him today.

“Oh Kate, my Kate, I’m raising a raisin who’s
going to grow up to be a wrinkled prune. You’re going to look like
Mother Theresa before you’re twelve. Honey, didn’t you put on any
sun-block at all? Jessie, I’m holding you responsible for Kate’s
nose. If hers falls off because it’s so burned, the cost of a new
one’s coming out of your allowance. Kate, precious Kate, go grease
it with something. Anything. Crisco. Lemon oil. Put a piece of
bacon on it. Anything. Oh, baby, if it peels we’re going to have to
leave it home when we go to Mop and Pop’s this weekend. How far did
you swim today? To China?”

“Almost, Mummy.”

Kate rubbed her slightly reddened nose in the
soft cotton shirt and softer flesh of her mother’s belly before
running toward the back of the house to rid herself of her
laundry.

“Kate?”

A pause.

“Kate?”

From the back of the house came a voice edged
with suspicion, “Yes, Mummy?”

“Can you pick us some very, very pretty
flowers for dinner?”

“Yes, Mummy.”

The conversation continued for another minute
as, yelling back and forth through the walls and rooms that
separated them, Dilly defined very, very pretty and Kate
reluctantly agreed that the round, reddish, spiky head of a
petal-less gaillardia was not pretty.

As she walked to the kitchen to prepare
dinner, Dilly, surrounded by noise and filled with purpose, felt as
momentarily joyous as a junkie with a fix.

Nita Koster, Dilly’s thirty-three year old
sister, wished that Dan Herlick, the lawyer sitting opposite her at
the small scarred conference table, would fix his collar. Herlick
was so intent upon showing his clients how masterful he was he
hadn’t even noticed that the left tab of his unbuttoned collar tab
was jabbing his throat every time he gesticulated. Normally, a
residential real estate closing might take forty-five minutes. This
one was pushing two hours.

The house inspection had been fine. There
were no termites, over-fused circuits or rotting sills. The title
was fine. There were no loan-shark lien-holders or resurrected
third-cousins-once-removed or descendants from some east coast
Indian chief waiting in the wings to attach the property. The
walk-through had been fine. Nita’s clients, the Furgesses, had not
removed the plumbing, cut down the hallway chandelier, jacked up
and carted away the garage, dug up the lilacs and roses, or peeled
the sod from the yard. The settlement sheet should have been fine.
The Furgesses had contributed the right amounts of money to pay for
their share of the real estate taxes, and the water and sewerage
bills. The only thing that wasn’t fine was that it was Dan Herlick
doing the closing.

When Nita had learned that the Cannaldos were
using Herlick as their closing attorney, she had insisted that the
closing be scheduled for late in the afternoon—the recording be
damned. She didn’t want the heart of a day lost to the ego-puffing
ramblings of the blue-eyed, square-jawed lawyer sputtering at her
across four feet of table. Herlick opined. He insisted. He
expostulated and interpleaded and enunciated. In all of the
verbiage, the only thing that Nita felt that she need attend to was
the violent spray accompanying Herlick’s words. His considered
opinions, exploded with the force of a lawn-sprinkler, while not
reaching Nita’s brain, were beginning to reach nearly across the
table to her paperwork. As the half-moon of mist grew, first Nita
and, then, the Furgesses pushed back their chairs from the table.
After the file was safe, Nita let her mind wander.

Herlick was the type of lawyer who always
represented himself first and his clients second. On a matter as
routine as a real estate transfer, he would expound as if he were
arguing a stay of execution in front of the Supreme Court. His
untutored clients would leave the closing impressed by his
combativeness while being unaware that he had fought a battle where
there was no war.

As she leaned her chair further back to avoid
all chance of being spattered by some particularly explosive p or
b, Nita wondered how good a lawyer Herlick might have become if he
had redirected all the time, energy, and brain power that he
expended on theater into fighting real legal battles. Rather than
spending the extra hour engaged in his present histrionics, rather
than drinking, probably, every night, and schmoozing with other
drinkers while looking for a DUI client, rather than cozying up to
Readford’s cops for an accident report, if he had used that time
for reading digests and developing arguments on cases that
mattered, Nita guessed he might have become a decent attorney,
instead of a blowhard getting by on looks and blather.

Nita rubbed her thumb and index finger
together to relieve the desire that was building up inside her to
reach across the table to button down the blue oxford collar point
that was impaling Herlick’s fleshy neck. She forced her eyes away
before fixing it became an idea too attractive to resist and tried
to think about the work that she had to finish before she could
leave for Clarke’s Cove on Friday night. She had three more
closings and two appearances in Family Court in the next four
days.

Whether measured by income or caseload, Nita
Koster was a successful attorney. That she was successful as a real
estate lawyer was no surprise to her. She had been a top student at
Boston College’s law school. A bright, hard-working, well-educated
lawyer should make a success of real estate law; however the same
qualities when brought to family law gave no guarantees. In matters
of divorce, distribution of property and the rights of children,
hate, resentment, anger, threats and revenge were the standard
accompaniments to the principles and practice of the law. Never
married and childless, Nita counseled and cared for those who were
leaving spouses or trying to hang onto children. There had been
many times when that irony had left her fighting for breath and
fighting off the feelings of being an imposter in the charged air
of a courtroom.

To keep her hands from Herlick’s shirt, Nita
once again parsed those feelings. She had gone on her first date at
fourteen. In the nineteen years since then, she had yet to have
what she would call a successful relationship. She had not dated
much in high school, college, or law school. Then, when Nita was in
her mid-twenties, men came and went in her life as fast as
fashions. The weather changed and so did the man. As she passed
into her thirties, the parade had slowed. Recently, she had rarely
been asked to go out and when she had, most times, had said no. No
marriage, no children, an abortion, and more than a dozen hello-I
love you-good-by romances were either very good or very bad
preparation for being a good divorce lawyer. Nita was never quite
sure which it was.

Dan Herlick continued his obfuscations. When
Nita looked up, she was sure that his face had grown even redder.
His collar looked to be tighter around his neck. She dallied with
the thought that Herlick’s head might be swelling up, like a
balloon, from the heat of whatever fire caused his words to hiss
and steam.

A high-crested comber of nausea erupted from
the base of Nita’s her spine and rolled up through her organs.
Being as discreet as the following crippling cramp would allow,
Nita slid down in her chair before drawing her knees up as much as
she could under the protection of the tabletop. She felt a second
wave rise up from her belly, swell, then break just at the back of
her throat.

If it had been a few years before, the pain
would have driven her from the closing. Until the doctors in Boston
had discovered, after much trial and error, that taking Naprosyn
left Nita with periods that were only excruciating rather than
unbearable, she had spent the onslaught of many menstrual cycles
flat in the back seats of friends’ cars or cabs, crying and
whispering “Hurry” on her way to the emergency room of a hospital,
university health services, or, if the pain came during the day,
one of many gynecologists she had seen over the years.

From her first period until her second year
in law school the pain had been so bad that Nita had discovered
that, from month to month, she never anticipated it. When the first
blade cut deep into the nerve endings of her spine and ran white
hot down her legs, its intensity always took her by surprise. She
had heard how the pain of natural birth hurt so badly that it
wasn’t memorable. Her periods had been the same way. She took each
day as it came, happy and forgetful when the day was without
pain.

The monthly agony was part of Nita’s
heritage. She was a DES baby. Bett had miscarried three times
before having her. After the third loss, her mother had asked for
help. Her doctor had put her on diethylstilbestrol.

The professional part of Nita’s mind brought
her gaze back from far beyond the room to look at Herlick and
realize that it was time for her to tell him that her clients were
willing to pay the overnight interest on the mortgage. He had spent
most of an hour saving his clients less than forty dollars on the
pro-rations. If her clients squabbled about the money, she would
pay it. She just wanted the closing to be over so that she could go
out to her car, turn the air conditioning on full blast, recline
the seat back as far as it would go and have the luxury of cramping
by herself in peace.

X-ed spots were signed. Notary stamps were
impressed into documents. Checks were cut. Funds disbursed. The
buyers stood. Nita eased herself from the chair. Hands were shaken.
Smiles exchanged. Thanks given. She felt the lower part of her body
try to twist itself away from its pain and toward the door; however
it was held in check by her competitiveness. She stepped closer to
Herlick.

“As usual, Dan, it’s been interesting working
with you.”

As Nita’s hands reached for his collar, she
said, “Here, let me get that for you before it does you more harm.
For the want of a collar tab, the horse was lost.’

Herlick stared at Nita trying to understand
whether she had done him a kindness or not. He pulled back a half
step before giving her a tight smile that indicated he was becoming
clear about her intentions. He brushed through the door in front of
her. Nita thought he might be eager to cool a throat grown hot from
the friction of an endless stream of words, or, maybe, his anger
from her few words. Despite her pain, Nita smiled.

As he passed in front of her she thought
that, from the back, Herlick did look like a horse’s ass. A large
expanse of quivering flesh, a bar seat butt, sat atop long skinny
legs. A spasm wrenched her. Involuntarily, she moaned. Herlick
turned around.

“You okay?”

Nita waved him off.

Herlick walked back and put out his hand.

“Here, let me take that.”