The Street Lawyer by John Grisham Page B

hole, and was blaming it on his putter when he climbed into the cart.
    “Maybe I’m not looking for greener pastures,” I said.
    “Why don’t you just go ahead and say what you’re trying to say?” he said. As usual, I felt weak for not facing the issue boldly.
    “I’m thinking about public interest law.”
    “What the hell is that?”
    “It’s when you work for the good of society without making a lot of money.”
    “What are you, a Democrat now? You’ve been in Washington too long.”
    “There are lots of Republicans in Washington. In fact, they’ve taken over.”
    We rode to the next tee in silence. He was a good golfer, but his shots were getting worse. I’d broken his concentration.
    Stomping through the rough again, he said, “So some wino gets his head blown off and you gotta change society. Is that it?”
    “He wasn’t a wino. He fought in Vietnam.”
    Dad flew B-52’s in the early years of Vietnam, and this stopped him cold. But only for a second. He wasn’t about to yield an inch. “One of those, huh?”
    I didn’t respond. The ball was hopelessly lost, and hewasn’t really looking. He flipped another onto the fairway, hooked it badly, and away we went.
    “I hate to see you blow a good career, son,” he said. “You’ve worked too hard. You’ll be a partner in a few years.”
    “Maybe.”
    “You need some time off, that’s all.”
    That seemed to be everybody’s remedy.
    I TOOK them to dinner at a nice restaurant. We worked hard to avoid the topics of Claire, my career, and the grandkids they seldom saw. We talked about old friends and old neighborhoods. I caught up on the gossip, none of which interested me in the least.
    I left them at noon on Friday, four hours before my flight, and I headed back to my muddled life in D.C.

Seven
    O F COURSE, the apartment was empty when I returned Friday night, but with a new twist. There was a note on the kitchen counter. Following my cue, Claire had gone home to Providence for a couple of days. No reason was given. She asked me to phone when I got home.
    I called her parents’ and interrupted dinner. We labored through a five-minute chat in which it was determined that both of us were indeed fine, Memphis was fine and so was Providence, the families were fine, and she would return sometime Sunday afternoon.
    I hung up, fixed coffee, and drank a cup staring outthe bedroom window, watching the traffic crawl along P Street, still covered with snow. If any of the snow had melted, it wasn’t obvious.
    I suspected Claire was telling her parents the same dismal story I had burdened mine with. It was sad and odd and yet somehow not surprising that we were being honest with our families before we faced the truth ourselves. I was tired of it and determined that one day very soon, perhaps as early as Sunday, we would sit somewhere, probably at the kitchen table, and confront reality. We would lay bare our feelings and fears and, I was quite sure, start planning our separate futures. I knew she wanted out, I just didn’t know how badly.
    I practiced the words I would say to her out loud until they sounded convincing, then I went for a long walk. It was ten degrees with a sharp wind, and the chill cut through my trench coat. I passed the handsome homes and cozy rowhouses, where I saw real families eating and laughing and enjoying the warmth, and moved onto M Street, where throngs of those suffering from cabin fever filled the sidewalks. Even a freezing Friday night on M was never dull; the bars were packed, the restaurants had waiting lines, the coffee shops were filled.
    I stood at the window of a music club, listening to the blues with snow packed around my ankles, watching the young couples drink and dance. For the first time in my life, I felt like something other than a young person. I was thirty-two, but in the last seven years I had worked more than most people do in twenty. I wastired, not old but bearing down hard on middle age, and I admitted