The Son

Why does being a brother and a lawyer mean I have to adjudicate between my two sisters?  Wasn’t it enough that I handled various issues like real estate appeals and housing contracts for free?  Now I’m supposed to fall on one side or another during their constant bickering.  It would be like falling on a sword, something at this stage in my life I’m not willing to do for anyone. At some point I assume I’ll have children.  Then the sword will come into play.

I don’t think I ever really meant to be a lawyer.  Maybe some people grow up thinking, yes, I want to be a lawyer, crazy as that might sound.  But the rest of us just sort of fall into it when our choices are limited.  I was an English major in college, University of Wisconsin, Madison, thank you very much, to get away from the East Coast hot house and its rising expectations.  And, okay, maybe my parents also.  It was four years of freezing my ass off in the winter, but otherwise having an expansive time and finding out how the other half lives, the half in fly-over country.

But what was one to do with an English major?  Under pressure from dear old dad, I took the LSATs and then a year off, wandering from England, to Turkey, to India, to Shanghai, then back home again, taking up my admittance to the law school at the University of Virginia.  Yeah, another effort to escape the East Coast clutches.

But reality comes to all of us, and after an internship during my second year, I accepted a position at a firm in Hartford, Connecticut.  The work?  Well, no one could ever call it intriguing or even very interesting.  In other words, I don’t think this lawyer business is going to last more than ten years.  It’s one thing to analyze Thomas Hardy, yet another commercial buy-outs.

Oh.  I forgot to mention marriage and divorce.  Mine.  Her name was Marni, from Milwaukee, we hooked up in so many ways our junior year, traveled together after we graduated, got married in India, the photos are fantastic, came home and discovered after one year in Charlottesville that we really had nothing in common.  She is now flying the friendly skies as a flight attendant and, okay, I envy her.

As she says, we still love one another, it’s just that our lives are on different paths.  The love part?  Umm.  Not the way it ended up exactly.  Stupid.  All over a BMW.  I mean, why did she need it when she was basically traveling all over the world?  Or at least from Chicago to Orlando and back again.

Let me put that aside and get to the crux of the matter.  My divorce, I think, was the reason my father came to me when he wanted a second opinion re his divorce settlement with my mother.  Was he insane?  Or was I?  I knew Hartford was too close to Scarsdale; but when I moved, my parents were still together, before Heidi slid into the picture.

I informed my father that it was totally inappropriate for him to consult his son about a divorce from said son’s mother.  But he just wanted to go over a few details, see how they sounded to me, because he wanted to be “fair.”

Well, he wasn’t being fair and he damn well knew it.  But how do you refuse someone who’s put you through law school, leaving you to come out with no debt?  So I looked, and yeah, I’ll admit I saw the life insurance policy and that it still had my mother’s name as the beneficiary.  I did not bring it up. But, damn it, my father did.  He asked, “What do you think I should do about this?”

Hey, it was a great policy.

I can remember pushing myself back in my leather chair and relaxing into it.  “Dad,” I began, “how well do you actually know Heidi?”

“I’m marrying her, aren’t I?” he replied, as if that was a logical answer.

Hmm.  If I have known Marni wanted my BMW—but that’s a different story.  “So here’s what I’m thinking.  You believe you know her, but do you.  Do any of us really know one another.?”

“What rot.  Heidi and I love one another.”

“And I’m happy for you.  But—being a fan of detective fiction, and being a lawyer and being divorced, I know that—problems come up that you don’t expect.  Everything’s perfect and then it isn’t. But meanwhile—“

“Wait a second,” my father said with a sneer.  “You’re positing that Heidi might kill me for my insurance policy?”  He gave a laugh.  “Is it too much television or being a lawyer that’s made you so cynical.  Or perhaps—Marni?”

I shrugged.  “Maybe all of that combined.  I’m paid to be suspicious, Dad.  She doesn’t know about the policy, does she?”

“No.”

“Then why not leave the policy as is?  For the time being.  You’re young.  No, no, you’re still a young man.  In good health.  By all the statistics you have another, what, thirty or more years left.  Your father’s still alive, grandma too, so good genes, right?  As of yet, you don’t have children with Heidi, and she has a good job as a drug—representative.”  Yes, I was going to say “pusher.”  “So she’s financially secure in her own right.”

“She’s giving the job up to be my wife.”

I threw up my hands.  “Dad, my advice would be to not change this policy until you have something to change it for.  Like you’re about to start a second family, and you want security for those children, as you’ve very generously given us security.”

He mulled that over.  With fists clenched, he said, “But I don’t want your mother to get that money.  You wouldn’t even guess in your wildest imagination what your mother’s lawyer is asking for.”

“Well, you were married to Mom for quite a long time.  You’re leaving her in middle age adrift.  It’s not the same for women as for men.  She didn’t do anything wrong, you just found someone else.  As a lawyer and not a combatant, I can weigh both sides.  And so can you, Dad, if you’ll admit it.  Divorce is ugly.  We all know that.  But put your focus on your love for Heidi and the life you’ll have together.  Don’t let bitterness tinge what you have.  Hey, you know what they say, it’s only money.  And you’re still making the big bucks.”

So that’s how eighteen months later, my mother ended up with the money from Dad’s life insurance.  Of course, he changed his will and Heidi came out of it with a bundle, but not as much as she would have liked, as we kids got an infusion of cash also, always handy.

So why are my sisters bitching?  Life is sweet and I have a new BMW on order, this time electric.