Teri was an unnerving companion to the easily unnerved. Her failed relationships stood in support of this. With perfect clarity, she saw all of her past lovers joining arms in her nightmares and singing of her shortcomings in bold unison.
They swayed, their mouths gaping like Christmas carolers in suburban neighborhoods friendlier than Teri’s. Neighborhoods where the inhabitants grew soft around the middle from attending dinners, and where they welcomed newcomers and talked fondly of those who’d moved elsewhere, even keeping in touch, as if the gesture mattered.
When she wasn’t at work, the past came back fast and unexpected. Teri remembered stroking the neighbor’s mutt while her father tied strings to its collar in the dark of their backyard. All summer it had shit relentlessly on their lawn, until, unleashed and feral, it finally dropped a triumphant turd on their porch. Teri kept quiet when Sammy asked if anyone had seen his dog. She’d later asked her father if the dog had deserved it, but he didn’t answer. Her father never answered her unless she pressed on, which came with its own set of risks. At eight years old, she understood that he’d never called the owners to complain about their animal. He’d much rather exact a punishment and then revel in its secret reward. Teri remembered digging her fingers through the dog’s coarse coat and pulling them away smelling of mange and musk. While the aluminum cans were carefully threaded to dog’s collar, it stood unusually still under Teri’s hand, trusting and not at all skittish. Silent, like her father, she’d never mentioned to Sammy that his pet was probably still trying to outrun the empty cans of creamed corn clattering behind it, as the dog’s own momentum created the cacophony from which it fled. Teri shook her head to clear the memory. The past and all of its sad inhabitants were mere distractions strung out in her wake and which must be cut loose.
She boiled a shallow pot of water over the burner and tore open the box of macaroni and cheese. Teri carefully squeezed the foil packet and a waxy yellow lump slumped over the steaming shells. Through the window over the kitchen sink she marvelled at the land development opportunities going to sod across from her quaint community. Her “neighborhood” consisted of a lone row of five townhomes huddled close like an uncertain set of quintuplets with just enough courage to cross the street on their own. She scanned the alien landscape of dirthills punctured by the gnarled bones of trees, unique in their unsightly knobs and the twist of their diseased bark.
Teri dropped onto the couch and flicked the tv on, crossing her sweatpant legs, waiting for her dinner to cool. First to Hollywood Squares where Whoopi Goldberg engaged Gilbert Godfrey in an exchange of insults devoid of wit yet uncomfortably barbed. Next she clicked to the Wheel of Fortune where Vanna posed, resplendant in a white sequined gown, walking back and forth across the screen and turning giant letter-blocks, which brightened at her touch. No woman is made like that, Teri reminded herself and sucked the cheese from the inside of a shell before crushing it between her teeth. So many years of fighting for equality in order to be considered at least as effective as the men that ruled the earth. The same bellicose fools that happily eradicated entire ecosystems just to put up strip malls where their demoralized wives would busy themselves buying the latest fashions, preening subtly for their husbands who would never even notice. These men who fuck for sport and for no other reason.
Vanna touched a glowing block and slowly turned it for the contestant who had yelled out to no one that he wanted to buy a vowel. Even Vanna, flawless, was a slave to their whims.
Mosey, the Calico cat, scrambled across the carpet when Teri flicked the TV off. He didn’t miss an opportunity for attention. She sunk her fingers under the cat’s fur, lamenting how she’d fostered such a helplessly needy pet.
Teri’s gaze settled on the file across the room. A pile of papers on the hall table, innocuous enough, under her clutch of keys on the Subaru fob. In all else she saw herself as a rational woman, but to this, Gerald Palladine’s life, Teri had become…attached. She was one bubble among suds, drawn down with the last of the tepid bathwater, lost to the dark of the drain. She needed what Dr. Phil described as “closure”, and she would only get that by immersing herself in the case, as professionals described it, “offline.”
Gerald was a Wednesday walk-in. He came into her life the very same day that her boyfriend, Kyle, left it. Pure coincidence.
For Teri, the template of their relationship was familiar. She and Kyle had reached a silent agreement on their respective roles in her drama. Both inherently understood the need for weeks of discomfiting calm, docile evenings couch-ridden, turning their brains to paste on whatever reality show they could find among the 200 channels. In their frequent arguments, it was Teri’s job to raise her voice and flail her arms like a synchronized swimmer in a wave-pool. She was expected to say things for which she’d apologize for later. Kyle’s job was to simply fill the shoes of the man opposite her, try to hold his own, look concerned and not distracted, and try not to falter in his calm unwillingness to concede defeat, but most of all, he must not cry. Teri was clear with each of her lovers over the past few years about the importance of his being able weather her most inclement storms. None had ever come close, and one, Duane the unflappable actuary, had actually cried in the face of her wrath. If her partner, her boyfriend, her “other” were to be trusted, respected, then he must be able to handle the overflow of whatever emotion she herself could not fully contain.
In an average argument, Teri reached for small blunt objects, like a cell phone or a slim paperback to lob. Larger disagreements called for something with a bit more heft, so in lieu of the flimsy Harvard Law Journal, Teri tossed the hardcover Rabbit Angstrom novels (all 4 in one edition!). And for that day’s argument with Kyle, in which he’d called her a “cold bitch” for her unwavering support of the death penalty, Teri upended her favorite piece of furniture: a table from IKEA the shape and color of a coffee bean.
Kyle’s mouth moved, but Teri’s father’s voice echoed in the apartment, she felt his bare palm on her cheek again, she felt his spit and smelled the stale whiskey in it as he proclaimed her “Teri, the cold bitch”. Maybe her mother. Maybe not.
Teri growled as her hands found purchase on the underside of the table and she spun it in the air. A thin leg landed awkward with a dry crack, and the table was laid to waste, a pile of sticks on top of a bean-shaped piece of plywood lacquered thick enough that none of the cheap composite could be seen from the top. Teri noticed then that the table looked more like a jellybean and was surprised that she’d ever seen it any other way. The pine legs were so quick to give, the misshapen tin feet, carelessly tacked on. How many of her boyfriends had sat in this couch and put his gold-toed socks up on that table without asking permission and had noticed what she was noticing now: that the table was cheap, unstable, worthless and always had been. What then had they deduced about she and her character from her seeming fondness for this shell, these scrap parts masquerading as the linchpin of an otherwise respectable living-room set?
Teri panned from the mess on the floor to Kyle’s face which was overcast with the fast-moving shadows of possible and appropriate expressions. From indignant to exhausted to disbelief to a stunned and uncertain anger. Teri watched Kyle confuse himself, raising an eyebrow, sputtering unintelligible syllables, and ultimately waiting for her lead to obediently follow.
She asked him, politely, calmly, to leave. She asked that he never come back for any errant garbage that he may think he’d left here by accident because he most certainly hadn’t, and then she requested that he not call her again under any circumstances. He did all of these things, and she hated him for it.
Later that day she’d met Gerald. And in the months since, she had easily immersed herself in the minutae of his case. Taking fewer and fewer clients, she honed in on whatever tasks required the least amount of interaction with anyone new until she’d awoke one afternoon at her desk behind neatly stacked documents earmarked for clerical attention. She’d fallen asleep on her pencil and had to rub her cheek red in order to clear the lead smear. Her phone was on out, the staff had all cleared their jackets from the alcove and set out into the evening traffic. Gerald Palladine had become her only client.
Teri pulled her billable hours report from a file. She’d been busy typing letters, making phone calls, plenty of discovery, and extensive creative outreach. She’d spent hours and days and weeks entrenched in the creation of cashflow, and all of it was to come from one Gerald Palladine.
There was no explanation elegant enough to validate the excruciating care with which she had treated the case. Even buried beneath the unctuous facts of this man and his wife’s life together and apart, Teri could make out the almost certain shitstorm gathering on the horizon. She realized that she couldn’t reasonably bill Gerald for those hours without explanation, and she couldn’t justify to the partners the amount of time spent in the gentle and meticulous gathering of facts. It was time to cut the client loose. And so she allowed herself that final, petulant meeting in order to end her obsession with the case, which of course, only deepened. Then, sent home to spend a week with only her thoughts, she plunged violently into his life. Unannounced and unwelcome.
