At seven, two women Sister Dabney had plucked from the gutter several years before joined the small cluster of people. The women now had good jobs and would leave enough cash in the offering box to pay for the food.
The prayer meeting started. Anyone prayed who wanted to. After about thirty minutes, the back door opened, and a teenage girl hesitantly peeked inside. Sister Dabney recognized a young woman whose father and mother had long resisted the demands of the gospel and forbidden their daughter to have any contact with the church or its leader. The girl’s countenance told a tale of sadness that could be read without prophetic revelation. Sister Dabney’s militancy melted. Before her stood the need of the moment. Tomorrow’s battles gave way to today’s troubles. She motioned to a woman and pointed to the girl. The woman got up, went to the child, and guided her to a pew. Seconds later, the young woman dissolved in a pool of tears.
Sister Dabney cried out in a loud voice, “That’s it! He’s here! Let us pray!”
“I CAN SEE WHY YOU LIKE ZACH,” Julie said as she slid a complete set of the pleadings in
Paulding v. Dabney
across the table. “He inspires me, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way he looks at me, his tone of voice, the little smile when he’s teasing, and the pull on his ponytail for emphasis. It’s all darling. It made me want to work extra hard to do a good job.”
“Are you trying to steal him away?”
“Could you stop me?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was better equipped to land a catfish than catch a man. Julie must have seen the bewilderment on my face.
“Don’t worry, if I wanted to bewitch Zach I’d sneak around be-hind your back and lure him away while you were reading your Bible. But I can appreciate him even if I can’t have him. At first I was rooting for Vince to be your bachelor number one, but now I’m leaning toward Zach.”
“I’m not sure I’ve chosen. I’m exploring my options.”
“Please. Don’t make your love life sound like you’re a commodities trader discussing pork bellies. Zach is perfect for you. He believes enough of the weird stuff that’s important to you, yet he thinks for himself.”
“And, unlike me, it doesn’t sound like fingernails on the chalk-board when he corrects you?”
“Careful, I’m rubbing off on you.”
We went to work. From Julie’s law school memo on defamation law I knew she was a good writer. But the complaint and discovery material put together in less than a day was equally impressive. The pleadings came across as a serious lawsuit, not a claim based on the ranting of a handful of derelict street preachers. If I’d received the stack of papers from the hand of a deputy sheriff, I would have considered myself in serious trouble. I made a couple of minor corrections and suggestions.
“This is good,” I said when I finished. “But I still wish Mr. Carpenter would try to negotiate a settlement.”
“You wouldn’t think that way if it didn’t involve a church.”
“Maybe, but wouldn’t it feel weird if this case involved a rabbi and a synagogue?”
“No. Intolerance and slander shouldn’t be part of any religion.”
“That’s your opinion.”
“You disagree?”
I could tell Julie was in debate mode, poised on the edge of her seat. I pressed my lips together in frustration for a moment.
“It’s all in the way you categorize it,” I answered. “Just because the truth sounds harsh doesn’t mean it’s any less true.”
“And who decides what’s true in a defamation lawsuit?”
“The jury.”
“Right. And our job is to give them the opportunity to decide. Isn’t that better than a gunfight at noon between Paulding and Dabney in the middle of Bay Street?”
There was no use arguing. Paulding and Dabney wouldn’t shoot it out, but the preacher was in the law firm’s gunsight, and Mr. Carpenter wanted to pull the trigger.
WHEN I ARRIVED AT HOME, the note to Gracie was gone and she’d left a fancy salad with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and celery for me in the refrigerator. There was no sign that Mrs. Bartlett had been in the house. Flip hadn’t chewed the edge of the antique rug, and the silver was still in its place. I ate on the dining room table. Flip curled up in his usual place beneath Mrs. Fairmont’s chair.
After supper, the phone rang. It was Mrs. Bartlett.
“Where are you?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Mother is in a regular room, number 3426. She asked again about you before I left. Get over to the hospital before they sedate her for the night.”
“How? Vince Colbert, who took me last night, has to work late.”
“Drive Mother’s car.” I could hear the exasperation in Mrs. Bartlett’s voice. “Do you know where she keeps the keys?”
“Yes, ma’am. They’re on a hook in the kitchen cabinet where she keeps the Wedgwood china cups.”
“That’s right. You do know how to drive a car, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. I thought for a minute you’d never been on anything except a tractor.”
I bit my lip, not sure why Mrs. Bartlett was lashing out at me again.
“I’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”
“Don’t get her excited.”
I hung up the phone and tried to remember when Mrs. Fairmont acted excited. The elderly woman had seen much of life. From my observation, what now passed by the window of her soul no longer had the capacity to swing her very far in either direction.
I grabbed the car keys. As an afterthought, I picked up a small photo of Flip that Mrs. Fairmont kept in a silver frame. The car was in a single garage attached to the house. Vernon, the man who maintained the yard and garden, kept the inside of the building neat and started the car for a few minutes every week to make sure it would be available in case of an emergency. Feeling like a Savannah dowager, I backed the enormous vehicle slowly down the driveway. The twins would have loved the cavernous backseat. At the hospital, I parked at the far end of the lot to avoid exposing the car to a ding or a dent.
Instead of entering through the emergency room, I went into the main lobby. There was a bank of elevators to the left of the information station. Before going up, I went into the gift shop and bought the best-looking flower arrangement available. It didn’t rival Vince’s flowers, but it would add color to the room. Mrs. Fairmont’s room was on the third floor. I knocked on the door and waited. When there wasn’t an answer, I slowly entered the room.
The elderly woman was in bed with her eyes closed and her head elevated. She was still in a hospital gown, and I made a note to bring some outfits from home on my next visit. The tubes, except for an IV, were gone. I set my flowers beside a nice arrangement from one of her friends, then sat in a chair beside the bed and quietly placed the photo of Flip on the tray table used for her food.
I’d spent many hours taking care of older women. It was the main way I earned money while attending college. Often there wouldn’t be much to do but sit; however, if the woman in my care needed attention, I tried to treat her like my grandmother. Honoring my elders was a response ingrained in me by my mama, not an option to be applied at my whim.
When she was at home, Mrs. Fairmont asked me to wake her if I found her napping in the den. She considered it rude to sleep in the presence of another person. To illustrate her point, she told me a long story about an aunt who would nod off at family gatherings and snore. But tonight, rest was a remedy. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the back of the chair. I needed to unwind, too. I dozed off.
I woke to sounds coming from the bed and quickly sat up. Mrs. Fairmont was trying to clear her throat. When she saw me, she motioned toward a plastic pitcher of water on the tray table. I poured a cup of water.
“Are you thirsty?”
She nodded, so I carefully held the cup to her lips, letting a tiny bit run into her mouth. She took several sips.
“Thank you,” she said in a clearer voice. “Have you been here long?”
“No, ma’am. You were resting so peacefully that I grabbed a short nap, too. How are you feeling?”
“I’ve been on a long journey.”
“As long as your honeymoon trip to the Mediterranean?” I asked, wondering if I’d caught her in a lucid moment.
“And I wasn’t sure I was going to be coming back. You were with me at the beginning.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know my name?”
Mrs. Fairmont gave me an exasperated look that increased my hope.
“You’re Tami Taylor, the young woman who’s staying with me this summer. Why would you ask me such a ridiculous question? You sound like Christine.”
“I’m sorry. When you mentioned a long journey, I thought you might be confused.”
“I’ve been confused my whole life. And it started a long time before I had the first stroke.” Mrs. Fairmont closed her eyes and licked her lips for a moment. “Did you know I almost died the other night in my den?”
“I was afraid.”
“I saw the whole thing, or at least enough to know that the EMTs couldn’t do anything for me if it was my time to go. Then, when I saw you praying, I realized that you and the others knew something I didn’t.”
My skin crawled. I’d read about near-death experiences but had never talked to someone who’d gone past the edge and returned.
“What others?”
“Those who were praying. I couldn’t see their faces, but I’m sure Gracie was one of them. You know how she’s always pestering me about what’s going on at her church. I’ve always seen right through it. It’s her way of trying to convince me to believe like she does. And then you came into my life thinking the same things. I know you’ve been praying, too.”
Tears touched the corners of my eyes.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Fairmont lifted her hands a few inches from the bed. “The sound of voices filled the air. Yours was the only one I recognized. Maybe that’s because I could see you. Anyway, the next thing I knew, I heard the young man who brought the flowers to the house reading the Bible in my hospital room. By the time I got my eyes open he was gone.”
“You heard Vince?”
“Yes, I wasn’t sure he’d really been here until Christine told me he’d been with you. Gracie came by to see me today. When I told her what happened she got so excited she shouted. One of the nurses came in to see if I was all right. Christine thinks I was hallucinating.”
“Do you remember anything Vince said?”
“Yes, he read the Twenty-third Psalm, and then some beautiful poetry about the wings of God.”
“You weren’t hallucinating. That’s exactly what happened.”
Mrs. Fairmont closed her eyes and smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that. God has never seemed more real to me. I’ve even been praying for Christine and pretending there are voices surrounding her, too.”
That night I went to sleep in silence. My heart shared Mrs. Fairmont’s hope that we live life surrounded by the prayers of the saints.
BY MID-MORNING all the pleading prepared in
Paulding v. Dabney
had been delivered to Mr. Carpenter for comment.
“Do you think he’ll change anything?” Julie asked.
“I’d be shocked if he didn’t.”
“But you thought it was good. So did Zach.”
“None of us have worked enough with Mr. Carpenter to predict what he’ll do. He might want a six-paragraph complaint that contains barely enough information for the clerk of court to assign a file number. You told Sister Dabney everything we’ve uncovered in our investigation, and what you didn’t reveal can be guessed from the discovery questions. The only thing left hidden is that Paulding is really filing suit so he can levy on the church property and take it away from her.”
“Don’t be shy about your opinion.”
“I’m in an analytical mood this morning, practicing for the day when I’m a partner in a law firm and a young summer clerk hands me a pleading that she’s slaved over for a couple of days. It will be my job to let her know how the practice of law really works.”
“Remind me not to be around you when that happens.”
“Oh, you’ll be sitting in a corner office on the thirtieth floor of an office tower in Atlanta getting ready to attend a power lunch with one of your rich clients.”
Julie laughed. “I like that picture, but can I have my old, syrupy-sweet Tami back?”
The intercom came on. It was Mr. Carpenter’s secretary.
“Julie or Tami, please pick up.”
We looked at each other, but neither moved.
“You’re feeling tough,” Julie said.
I put the phone on speaker mode.
“This is Tami.”
“Mr. Carpenter has reviewed the pleadings and said you did a good job. He’s made a few corrections and will provide a copy to Mr. Paulding at a meeting tomorrow morning. In the meantime, he wants you to follow up with interviews of the minister at Mr. Paulding’s church, the newspaper reporter, and Mr. Paulding’s wife.”
“Yes, ma’am. What’s our deadline?”
“First of next week. He’s setting the defendant’s deposition a week after she’s served with the complaint.”
She hung up the phone.
“Did you hear that?” I asked with a broad grin. “Mr. Carpenter liked my complaint.”
Julie threw her pen at me. I knocked it away.
“You have the partner thing down already. Let someone else do the work and you take the credit.”
I called the minister at Paulding’s church. As soon as I let him know why I wanted to talk to him, he found an opening in his schedule. We arranged to meet in the afternoon.
“Paulding must give a lot of money to his church,” I said to Julie when I hung up the phone. “His minister is dropping everything to meet with me.”
“No,” Julie said, smiling, “he’s heard about you and wants to meet someone who can tell him what he’s doing wrong.”
I RESERVED THE FIRM CAR for the afternoon, then went looking for Vince to give him an update on Mrs. Fairmont’s condition. Mr. Braddock’s secretary didn’t know where he’d gone, but instead of returning to the library, I went upstairs to Zach’s office. His door was cracked open, and I peeked inside.
“Busy?” I asked.
He looked up and pulled on his ponytail.
“Yes. I don’t have time for lunch.”
“That’s okay, I wasn’t looking for an invitation.” I felt my face redden.