Look Closer

Monday morning. I wake up alone. Vicky went to Elm Grove for the weekend again to see her nieces. The older one, Mariah, got her first period a few weeks ago and freaked about it, probably more than anything because her mother isn’t there for her, so it was sort of a one-two punch of emotions. Vicky, who clings to the idea that she could have prevented her sister’s suicide had she been more proactive, has been spending a lot of weekends with them lately.

Hey, that’s one of the reasons I love her.

My mother would have liked her. She wouldn’t have minded Vicky’s rough edges. She would have admired her bluntness. Mom always said what she thought, sometimes to a fault, often to her disadvantage. My dad told the story of my mother at the law firm she joined out of law school in 1980, some silk-stocking firm of nine hundred lawyers, only six of whom were women. Mom would organize events for the women—lunches, drinks after work, an unofficial support group. One time early on, the firm’s senior partner held up one of the flyers she had printed out and mused aloud, “‘Women’s Night Out’? Why no men’s night out?” (At this point in the telling, my mother would interject that it was no accident that this comment was made while she was standing nearby in the hallway.) To the surprise of no one who knew my mother, she replied that “Every night is men’s night out.”

“Don’t speak unless you have something to say,” she used to say to me during our talks when she tucked me in. “But when you do choose to speak, say what you mean, mean what you say, and be ready to support your points. If you can’t support your point of view, then it wasn’t much of a point of view to begin with.”

It’s early, just a little past five. I’m not running in the morning these days, no Five at Five for now, as I am now doing nightly runs to Wicker Park. So I go for a long walk, come home, shower, post an essay on my blog, Simon Says, about a new case from the Wisconsin Supreme Court on the good-faith exception to the warrant requirement, and make it into my office at eight.

My mother would have loved having a blog that allowed her to sound off on all matters legal for anyone interested. She had her specialties in the law like any professor, but she would read decisions on any subject matter. She’d devour every opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court on any topic and discuss it over dinner. She’d summarize the facts, argue both sides, the pros and the cons, and then announce to us the correct outcome—which, as the law proceeded through the eighties, usually differed from the one reached by the Rehnquist Court.

Around nine-thirty, I start my walk along the promenade toward the Chicago Title & Trust Building. Yes, every morning when I come here, it makes me think of my father and the law firm he had here. And yes, that brings back many an unpleasant memory. And yes, a shrink might say it’s unhealthy for me to be coming here every day. Then again, the day the St. Louis police tried to ask Dr. McMorrow about a conversation we had the morning after my father’s murder was the day that I stopped talking to shrinks. It tends to chill the candor needed for a good therapist-patient conversation.

I grab a Starbucks and take a seat in the lobby of the building. I power up my phone and text her:

Top of the mornin’ to yah, lassie.

She doesn’t respond. I try again:

Good morning, my queen.

Still nothing. Not even bubbles. No indication she even received it.

Sounds like you’re otherwise occupied. Will try you tonight my love.

I kill the phone and remove the SIM card. That was a waste. At least it was a nice morning for a walk.

—

I don’t obsess about Mitchell Kitchens. I just think about him sometimes.

Mitchell could pick up a hundred pounds in his hands and toss it fifteen feet. I know that because I weighed a hundred pounds my freshman year, and he used to toss me fifteen feet. His record was eighteen feet, three inches.

The gym where the wrestlers worked out was right by the front entrance of the school, where the bus dropped us off. Mitchell would call out to me—“Mini-Me,” that is—and I quickly learned that if I didn’t respond, he’d walk over and grab me anyway.

Into the wrestlers’ gym, where the mats were laid out, red tape laid down for the starting point and blue tape to mark Mitchell’s personal best. One hand on my belt and one gripping my shirt, Mitchell would toss me through the air, and I would land hard on the mats. His buddies would laugh and cheer and measure the distance. Sometimes, if he was unhappy with his first toss, he’d make me come back so he could toss me again.