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  County hospitals harbor too many shivering drug babies no one will ever want. Even so, you pray the birth parents will walk away and keep going, wreaking no further havoc on their childrens’ already-cursed lives. But this baby boy was lucky. One child’s good fortune—that should have been Holly Dupree’s scoop.

  In truth, a lot of these kids are blessed because more often than not, their parents—my clients—are willing to fight for them. This I can’t easily comprehend. Most of my clients are poorly educated, lower income, perpetually unemployed hard luck stories, society’s true bottom-feeders. For them, losing is an intransigent fact of life, almost their sole birthright. And yet, against great odds and entrenched histories of seriously fucked-up thinking, they consistently defy their social workers’ dire predictions of imminent failure and somehow locate enough dignity and inner strength to kick booze and longtime drug habits, break away from abusive spouses, and face down molesting relatives. They see shrinks they can’t afford, tolerate repeated jibes from invasive civil servants, endure lengthy separations. They do whatever the court tells them to do, often at great peril and tremendous personal cost, because they want so very much to stand beside their children. I don’t know what drives them to do what they do, but I am deeply, secretly envious of them.

  I was certain Sue Ellen Randall had her reasons for giving up her baby boy, then for trying to take him back. Confronted with a stack of Bibles, she’d surely swear on them. I was just as sure that I didn’t want her case.

  My own mother left me when I was sixteen. My father had died ten years earlier, so when Mom bailed, I became an orphan. All that was a long time ago, but not long enough to ever forget what it felt like.

  Darla grinned as she studied Sue Ellen Randall. “Young lady—”

  “Stay off her back,” I said. “Her problems are none of your damn business.”

  Darla erupted with laughter, and as she tried to catch her breath, her gelatinous rings of fat teetered like an unsteady pile of inner tubes beneath her pumpkin-round head. “Easy, Mr. Shepard. I wasn’t gonna lay into her, though I probly ought to. I was just gonna make a friendly suggestion.”

  “What are you going to do,” I said, “pitch her on the new Wonder Scrubber from Kleenco, takes care of those tough tranny fluid stains in the bottom of your bathtub in a jiffy?”

  Darla laughed. “Good one! You can be pretty funny, Mr. Shepard. I like it. Nice break from your tight-ass approach. Nah, I just wanna say one thing, and it ain’t nothing bad. Listen, dear,” she said to Sue Ellen, “this man’s gonna take care to listen to your problems. I know, ’cause he’s the first one yet to listen to old Darla’s tales of woe, so don’t you worry. Just don’t make it hard for him.”

  “Make what hard for him?” Sue Ellen asked.

  Darla cocked an eyebrow. “Just give it to him straight, honey. Like, if there’s any shit in that report they write on you, you just tell him right up front who that shit belongs to. Trust me, girl, he’ll know what to do from there.”

  With that ringing endorsement, Sue Ellen Randall became my newest client.

  Two

  Willow Reece, the head of the Legal Project and my boss, is an administrator, which means she rarely makes it into court for reasons other than problems with personnel. The last time I saw her face in this department one of our more burned-out attorneys had royally pissed off Foley by rather loudly advising a client not to fear the “old goat in the black robe who thinks he’s God.”

  Not much ruffles Willow, but now, when I saw her in the hall, I felt an unpleasant shock of fear. Willow probably read the trepidation on my face.

  “What’s the matter, you forget I work here?” she said. Every lawyer in the Legal Project carries a crushing case load, and Willow has taken her share of backbiting for sticking purely to the non-legal tasks involved with running the office. Not that I cared; she’d hired me a year out of law school at a time when a hundred new lawyers like me were scrapping for every job opening. I owed her.

  “I’ve got a few files that can get you right back into the swing if you want,” I said.

  Even in her sleek black silk and gold pumps, Willow was a foot shorter than I. Her brown hair was naturally streaked with red, and her face was aglow with the tan she’d brought back from her stay on Maui a week before. Her husband was an entertainment lawyer who did music deals for several big-time rock ’n’ roll acts, and the rumor among our staff was that Willow didn’t really need to work. But I viewed that kind of talk as rather cheap, because the Willow I’d known was always serious about the job and cared about her people.

  I wanted to know what she was doing here, but didn’t want to sound pushy. “What’s new?” I asked.

  Willow took me into the interview room and closed the door without a word. “I need to talk to you about a case.”

  My first thought was that I’d blown somebody’s representation without knowing it, and now they’d taken their beef to the top. “Sure,” I said, “anything. Anytime a client’s not happy, I want to know about it.”

  We both sat down. “No J.,” she explained, “that’s not it. I want to talk about this new one you’ve got, the adoption case.”

  “Sue Ellen Randall.” The case I’d decided to withdraw from as soon as I could talk to the judge. My palms began to itch. How could Willow have known what I was about to do? “I want off the Randall case,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Off? No, you . . .” She looked peeved, but she got herself together again quickly. “J., you don’t mean that.”

  “I do,” I said. “I’ve never turned down a case before, but I’m doing it this time.”

  “May I ask why?”

  I never spoke of my mother. That part of my life had been closed to the public for thirteen years now. “Sue Ellen Randall reminds me of someone I once knew. I don’t know whether to lend her my hand or smack her in the face.”

  Willow didn’t react. “I see.”

  “She needs an advocate, not someone who’s going to judge her. I’ll let Foley know.”

  We sat in silence, and for an instant I thought our little talk had ended. “I need you to do something for me, J.,” Willow said, her eyes wide. “For the Legal Project.”

  “Sure.”

  “Stay on the case.”

  “I don’t want it. Personal reasons.” I looked away.

  She sighed. “There’s something you need to be aware of, J. Our budget’s up and the board of supes hasn’t agreed to a new deal yet. And you know how the panel feels about us.”

  Ah, the panel. Several years ago a panel of private lawyers exclusively represented the parents and most children in dependency and billed the county a pre-set hourly rate. With an endless supply of new cases rolling in every week it was a lucrative enough gig, but a few on the panel couldn’t resist the temptation to get rich in a hurry and gleefully overbilled the crap out of their cases. When a county audit revealed the abuses, the Legal Project was created as a county-funded counterweight to the panel. Because Legal Project attorneys like me are paid salaries and don’t bill for their services, the county’s overall cost of providing lawyers in dependency has gone down. But so have the livelihoods of every lawyer on the panel, and for this, many of them despise us and want the Legal Project gone.

  “We’ll get a new budget,” I said. “You said so in our last staff meeting.”

  “I said it looked reasonably promising,” she said.

  I could feel myself getting sucked in. “What is it about me and this case?”

  “The adoptive mother’s got everyone’s attention, including the media. The supes will notice it.”

  “You mean, they’ll judge us by what I do?”

  “They will. They’re getting pressure from the panel not to renew our deal.”

  “I’m still in my twenties.”

  “You’ll be thirty before this case is over.”

  “We’ve got lawyers with five times my experience. Why not sub in one of our veterans?”


  “They’re all swamped. Besides, you’re good. You care. And you’re the only new lawyer I ever hired who knew dependency walking in the door.”

  “I was just a law clerk before.”

  “For Nelson Gilbride, one of the best-known family specialists in the state,” she said.

  “He didn’t even know my name.”

  Willow smoothly folded her arms as if she were shifting gears. We’d had our colleague-to-colleague chat, but now I knew she’d lay down the law as my superior. “I need you to do this for me, J. Do your best, that’s all I ask.”

  I told her I didn’t know whether we’d prevail, or whether Sue Ellen Randall was even telling the truth about why she’d broken up an adoption in the eleventh hour. I said nothing of Marielena Shepard, the old feelings of desertion and betrayal re-awakened in me. But no matter, for I could tell Willow didn’t really want to hear any details.

  “I’m glad we talked,” she said. “Try not to worry about the hoopla. In the end, it’s just another case. You’ll get it handled.”

  I stared at the gray wall, silently counting back the years. Willow was standing at the door when I heard her say “J., are you okay? You look like you’re somewhere else.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, waving her off. “I’m fine.”

  The summer of ’79, my senior year in high school just over the horizon. The day began, fittingly enough, as fragments. Pieces of an unfinished dream.

  Water, wind in my face, gliding. Free. Beneath the surface shimmer, a large red starfish is watching me. He smiles as he eats a hamburger and I flash on how a TV commercial is appropriating my dream. But the big starfish stays—he’s stopped eating the burger—and winks at me as I speed by. I know now that a wave is powering this dream—and me—onward. Head and fingertips tingle with the hum of forward thrust. The hum grows louder, more punctuated. The phone is ringing on my dresser across the room.

  The room is dark. Shit, the phone will wake my mother. I leap out of bed to catch it before the next blast.

  “Hey J., it’s Mikey. What’s goin’ on?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Time for a dawn patrol, dude. Rise and shine, already. How’s Southside? You check it yet?”

  Mikey Venegas, a local pier crew friend, lives in one of the housing tracts on the inland side of Pacific Coast Highway. Mikey hasn’t had driving privileges since the night he got hammered on Southern Comfort and warm Coke and gunned his father’s brand new Chevy Caprice across his driveway, over a low hedge and into the next-door neighbor’s pool.

  “Venegas, it’s not even light outside,” I said. “Just borrow your sister’s Schwinn and go for a pedal.” Earlier this summer—sometime after his parents lifted the house arrest but before he got his license back—a few of us caught Mikey slinking down Main just after dark on a girl’s hot-pink two-wheeler. White banana seat, sissy bar, neon flower-power stickers, the full feminine complement. He was pedaling no-hands and balancing on his lap a twelve-pack he’d scored for himself and a few other grommets at Pier Liquor. Scoring brew on a girl’s bike—talk about lack of pride. Mikey had understandably died on the spot.

  “That is a low blow, J. Ancient history. I’m not on pedal power anymore, you know that.”

  “Then why don’t you drive down to the pier and take a look for yourself, Mike? I’m a little short on Zs.”

  “I’m still barred from using the old man’s ride, you know that. C’mon, just take a peek off the balcony. Tell me if you see any whitewater.”

  I’d made the innocent mistake of showing Mikey the view from the second-story balcony on the ocean facing side of my house one windy fall afternoon a few years back. If you stand upright on the redwood railings and steady yourself using the chimney bricks as a handhold, you can see a wide swath of wave zone down at the end of Porpoise Way. When the waves are sizable enough for good surfing, the shoreline glows an ethereal pre-dawn white.

  I couldn’t see the clock on my desk. “What time is it anyway?”

  “Five forty-five.”

  The day promised to be the biggest commercial Saturday of the summer in this town, the first day of the September Labor Day weekend crush. Every inch of street curb would be fender-to-fender by 9 A.M. But for now, Porpoise Way was serene, the house enveloped in a peaceful blue light. I didn’t want to wake my mother. She’d been up late last night, staring at a fat new moon from the antique rocker on her balcony, unable to sleep for the fourth time in as many nights. I listened for a sound. I’d have to slide through her bedroom and out onto the balcony for a gander at the surf.

  Marielena Shepard was a light sleeper, no thanks to my many late nights out recently on the local derelict party circuit. There was the night I came home so buzzed on Thai and Schlitz malt liquor that I missed our house entirely, strolling into a neighbor’s living room and passing out with a dive over their coffee table. The night I got picked up during a raid at the Marmaduke with a draft beer and a shooter in each hand and a fake ID in my pants pocket. The Bowie concert in San Diego, topped off by a midnight sampling of Tijuana nightlife—and a three-day stay in a Mexican jail. I’d put her through plenty silliness of late but she never complained, never condescended when she laid down the law. I knew she caught glimpses of my father in my rebellious behavior, my passion for the ocean, a likeness that probably left her heartsick from the memory of her dead surfer husband. But somehow, she sensed that I was growing tired of the excess even before I felt the change coming over me. My mother knew me better than I knew myself, and that made me love her even more.

  “You got a lot of sack to be bugging me at this hour, Venegas,” I said.

  “Dude, you know I just wanna surf,” he said, taking his shot at sincerity.

  “The tide’s too high. Go back to bed.”

  “A three-point-four at five A.M. is not that high, J. It’s already headed out. C’mon.”

  “I don’t want to wake her up,” I said.

  “Aww fu—dgesicles,” he said, catching himself. Patience is not one of Mikey’s virtues, particularly when he’s lusting for a surf. “Bud, your mom is the coolest and you know it. She never wigs.”

  “Have a nice day. I’m hanging up.”

  “You do, I’ll just call back. Then she’ll really be awake.”

  Truth was, now that I was up I wanted to surf, too. I set the receiver on its side and pulled on a T-shirt. Then I went into the hall. The house was completely silent. My mother’s bedroom door was cracked open. I knocked lightly. “Hey, Mom, morning,” I whispered, peering inside.

  Her bed was already made. The white lace borders of the handmade quilt dangled straight-edged above the floor. A note lay on her pillow: “Son, say three prayers for me today. Love you, Mom.”

  The closet door was open. Something was missing from last night, her overnight bag, my birthday gift to her last year for her trip to San Francisco with the Saint Ann’s choir. The bag I’d seen resting at the foot of her bed when I said good night seven hours ago. I slid the closet door sideways and its rollers gave a great moan. She’d left it open to keep from waking me. Or maybe she’d been in a hurry.

  I went out onto the balcony and propped myself against the chimney long enough to catch a chill. When I came inside again Venegas was still on the line.

  “What took so long? Big lull?” He waited for a response that didn’t come. “You woke her up and she busted you, didn’t she?”

  “No. I didn’t. She didn’t.” I didn’t know what was going on, or what I was saying. Marielena Shepard was very consistent at being Marielena Shepard. But this was not like her.

  “So how’s it lookin’, boss? Like, compare it to our session at Northside yesterday afternoon. Head high? Bigger than yesterday?”

  A sense of dread slowly overtook me. “Go back to bed, Mikey,” I managed to say.

  “C’mon J., what’s the word?”

  “You want the word? Flatness. Pancake city. No surf, Mike.”

  “No way,” he whined. “You didn’t
wait for a set, did ya? Check it again. C’mon, J., just—”

  I hung up on him.

  That day was the beginning of a prolonged flat spell, the bane of every serious surfer’s existence. It was not until the second week of October that the first major winter storm in the Aleutians sent swell lines stacking across the Pacific toward Southern California and the sandbars off Christianitos Beach that my phone began to ring again early in the morning. But the balcony surf checks were not a problem. My mother was gone and had yet to return.

  Sue Ellen Randall’s case was the last to be heard in Department 302 that afternoon, closing out a depressingly routine parade of crack-addicted babies, belt-wielding disciplinarians and teenage welfare moms with kids named after comic strip animals or pop icons, past and present. Snoopy, Garfield, Hammer, Ice Cube, Sonny and Cher. Whoever coined the phrase “Elvis lives” wasn’t shitting, because a new king graced Department 302’s calendar about twice a month. The last pint-sized Elvis I represented had a sister named Priscilla, and mom was pregnant—with the Colonel, I presumed.

  Darla Madden was first up when court resumed after lunch. She stalked through the swinging partitions like a twitchy gunfighter, hiked up her drooping ankle-hose and started right in on Judge Foley, griping that the county had no right to discriminate against a good family with an inadequately housebroken pet and a washer and dryer in serious need of several parts that—“Swear to God on a stack a Bibles, Your Honor!”—had been back-ordered since the time Eric was still in diapers.

  Of course, Foley’s decision to release Eric and Stacy to Darla’s custody didn’t hinge entirely on Darla’s impassioned diatribe. In my opening remarks, I informed the Judge that I’d made arrangements for the imminent departure of Max. But I was not about to deny the woman her moment of glory.