As she worked in the library during those few weeks, she heard that Bob Jeffries was getting ready for the Guilford trial. Sandra had been on the phone almost nightly with Mairin. She was very upset, which was understandable. People would be on the stand saying extremely nasty things about her. It was cutting right to the heart of her life. Mairin listened, she murmured, she said what she could.

"Will you be in court?" asked Sandra.

"No," said Mairin. "I haven’t mentioned it, but I’m really on Bob Jeffries’ shitlist, so I know I can’t take any time from work to be in the courtroom. I’d feel awkward anyway, because I know both Michael and Bob."

Sandra was immediately interested and questioned Mairin about what had happened. Reluctantly, Mairin told her and found Sandra was extremely supportive and understanding.

The upshot of it all was that Mairin would go over to the court to pick up Sandra for lunch while Michael worked on the afternoon’s strategy. Bob saw her a few times, and, as usual, cut her cold.

At the end of the first week of trial, Mairin was in the Hadleigh library finishing a first draft of a rewrite of another of Kate’s disastrous memos. She was staying late. Another friend was picking Sandra up for dinner. All of a sudden Bob Jeffries was standing beside her desk. The rancor was gone, and it was the charming Mr. Jeffries who said, "It’s been a hard week for both of us, come on, I’ll buy you a drink."

Mairin felt as though she’d had a shower and that the upset was washed away. The trouble had blown over. "Great!" she said.

They went to the same bar where Mairin had ordered manhattans against the winter’s cold and dark. This time she had a gin and tonic.

"I’ve really been a bastard, Mairin," said Bob. "I’m used to having my every little whim obeyed. It was really hell for me on the Evans case, but I have to admit, you did the right thing for the girl."

"I’m sorry I didn’t tell you," Mairin said.

"It’s okay. It’s in the past," said Bob.

To change the subject Mairin asked, "How is the trial going?"

"Oh, we’ll win," Bob said, "but it’s going to be hard on Sandra Guilford. There’s no way she can win. She’s blind; she can’t do the job."

"That’s not true," Mairin said. "She can do the job. The trouble is that the jury will never believe it."

"Oh come on, Mairin, said Bob. "You can be honest about it at this point. You and I both know she can’t do the job."

"No, I don’t know that. As far as I’m concerned, she can do the job. If you want to be honest, you know she can do it. You’re just fighting for your client."

"Sure, I’d fight for my client, but in this case I really believe, personally, that she can’t do the job."

Mairin was truly surprised. No wonder working with the blind is so tough, she thought. It’s the damned public that has to be educated. "Why do you think she can’t do it?"

"She has to have lots and lots of help. Someone to do this thing, someone to look after that thing. The home needs one person to do everything."

"It’s their attitude. Doing this thing and that thing would work out okay if they accepted Sandra outright. But some of them are afraid of blindness, and others dislike certain of her philosophies, like the sex education, so they lump it all together under the rubric of she-can’t-do-the-job-because-she’s-blind."

"So they don’t help her."

"Right. And then her job is that much harder.

"But why should they have to help her?"

"They don’t, really. If, as people of goodwill, they want to help her, fine. A little here, a little there, it all gets done. If they don’ t, she expands the time she pays somebody to help her.

"And you think that solves it?"

"Yes."

There was a moment’s silence. "But what about the caretaker role?"

asked Bob. "Essentially the director is there to take case of those girls. Safety things. If they were perfectly capable adults, they’d be living on their own. But they’re not."

"Sandra can look after them. Come on, you know there’s not a shred of evidence that anything untoward has ever happened to any one of those girls."

"That, my friend, is debatable."

"Not really, and you know it."

"Not at all. It’s simply dangerous to have a blind person as a residence director. How many other such situations do you know about?"

Mairin pursed her lips. ‘Well, there was one...but it really wasn’t the same." She stared morosely at her drink.

"And what was that?" asked Bob.

Through Mairin’s relaxation, both of body and of spirit, came a tension. Something is not right, she thought. Leave that alone.

"Oh, nothing," said Mairin.

Bob decided to let it go for the moment. His sense of timing was always excellent. He waved the waiter over to order another round. "Well, how do you feel now that you’ve taken the bar?"

"Oh, said Mairin. "I just don’t believe the days have so many hours that I can use for anything but studying. Frankly, I’ll never know how I got it all in before."

Bob laughed. "That’s what I was telling you all along. No one could possibly believe that you could do all you were doing."

They lapsed into office talk. Mairin was immensely relieved that Bob’s anger seemed to have blown itself out. It had been excruciating for her to have the coldness directed at her day after day. She had come to terms with it in her own mind. He had to be that angry at her. He was a hard fighter. She should have told him.

Bob could see the relief in Mairin’s manner. He’d been damned hard on her deliberately. Hopefully she’d never pull another move like that one. He had almost fired her. But he knew that she’d be a good lawyer. She was a superb researcher. He still would like to see her as a trial lawyer, but he doubted that she had the toughness for it. If she were that tough, she wouldn’t have been so upset by his anger--or, perhaps more important, she wouldn’t have shown her relief at its ending. Some things you kept hidden in this business. He waved the waiter over for another round.

"Oh, no," said Mairin. ‘I’ll never be able to walk out of here."

"Hell, Mair, it’s Friday night. I’ll carry you if I have to. We’ve both had a hard week. Sandra’s really been hanging onto you, hasn’t she?"

"Do you have any idea how tough this is on her?"

"Yes. It will no doubt surprise you, but I think I do. These courtroom battles are really bloody emotionally. Give me credit for having learned something from all the years in the business."

Mairin looked at Bob. She was feeling the effects of three gin and tonics. "You mean there’s a heart under that Brooks Brothers suit?"

"At least half of one." Bob was watching Mairin. She was feeling relaxed, no doubt about that. "Hey, I really feel for Sandra. She’s a bright young lady, beautiful, too--it’s a damned shame that she’s blind. Hell, I’d love to see her doing something she likes to do in a situation where there aren’t any problems. But you said yourself that these things don’t always work out."

"If it’s not relevant, you can certainly recount the story to me."

"Bob, I am tired of this case. I do not want to talk about anything remotely connected with it."

Good move, he thought. You are no fool, Mairin Farrar. But I have an idea. "I’d better get you home to Harry and Bea, he said. "I do not want his honor to hold me in any sort of contempt."

"Late night," said Harry. "It’s as bad as when you were in law school."

"No," said Mairin, pulling up a chair and cutting a piece of pie. "Bob Jeffries isn’t mad at me anymore. We had a couple of drinks."

"These last few weeks have been hard on you, haven’t they?"

asked Bea.

"Yes," said Mairin. "I couldn’t believe it sometimes--he wouldn’t talk to me, he’d ignore me if he saw me in the halls." Harry was looking very surprised; Mairin hadn’t talked about this before. "He was like a three year-old." She grinned at Harry, "You judges think you’re prima donnas!"

They talked, sat out on the balcony. "No studying," said Mairin.

"What will I do with two whole weekend days? I used to divide days into about eight parts, each with something different to do. Now. . . ."

She filled the time very easily, and on Monday morning she was back at her desk when Deke came strolling in. Deke was one of the investigators for the office. He did everything, including serving of summons. "Didn’t have to go too far for this one," he said, as he threw a paper onto her desk.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Mr. Jeffries is taking your deposition."

"What?" Mairin shrieked and jumped out of her chair. "Wait just a goddamn minute!"

Deke looked genuinely surprised. That wasn’t Mairin’s usual language. "Something to do with that blind woman case, Denise said." He left quickly.

Mairin looked at the summons. That afternoon, at 4:30 p.m., at the offices of Hadleigh, et al Mr. Robert Jeffries requested the pleasure of her company for a deposition. She was being called as a witness in the case of Guilford v. Evergreen House.

At first all Mairin could feel was the anger. It was so great that she could barely contain it. That bastard, that all-American revolving son-of-a-bitch! That’s why he was so nice. He set me up! He wanted to pump me about blind people. Goddamn it all to hell! Blind? I was as blind as anyone could be.

She picked up the phone and called Harry.

"Jesus Christ!" he said "What is that all about?"

Mairin told him as briefly as she could, what she thought it was about.

"Call Michael," he said. "Tell him to come over and to insist that you can’t answer any questions. Jeffries may then ask for a court order, but what the hell, you worked on the case. I’d say it’s privileged."

Mairin put in an urgent call to Michael, and he reached her over the noon recess from court. "Goddamn it!" he yelled. "What made you do a stupid thing like that? Oh come on," he added when he heard her voice break, "it’s not that bad. I’ll be there."

At 4:30 the yelling in the conference room at Hadleigh was so loud that anyone who could wandered by just to see if they could figure out what was going on. Bob and Michael ended up at a stalemate. Bob said he’d move before trial started the next day for the court to direct Mairin to answer the questions. Michael told Mairin he’d call her from court if she needed to come over.

Mairin crawled home with a splitting headache. She went back to work with the same headache. Michael didn’t call. Nobody called. Even Sandra didn’t call until Tuesday evening. Michael must have told her to lay off. When she did call, she didn’t seem to know much of what had gone on. Mairin agreed to meet her for lunch Wednesday. She told Mairin the trial would probably end that Friday and go to the jury.

"Did Jeffries put on any blind people?" Mairin asked, as casually as she could.

"Just sighted ones. One had worked with a blind teacher and didn’t think she could do the job."

So he didn’t get the information. A little checking could have turned it up for him. Some satisfaction, thought Mairin. The anger had returned as soon as the headache and the fear went. She wrote a letter on Friday. She left it with Denise for Bob Jeffries.

The next Monday he called her in. The Guilford case had gone to the jury, and both lawyers would work on other things until they received calls telling them the jury was coming in.

"Mairin, he began, "let’s talk about this one." All the charm was back. Here was a fiftyish, handsome, graying-at-the-temples gentleman, courtly, suave, persuasive. "All games get a little rough sometimes. Law is no exception. I’m sorry I had to put your feet to the flames, but I fight a hard fight for my clients. Is there something unlawful about that?"

"That’s not the point," said Mairin. She’d decided not to let herself be drawn into any arguments. "The point is purely personal, and it’s not negotiable. As I said in the letter, I think I can finish all the research projects in the next two weeks. Then I’ll leave."

"Mairin," Bob’s voice was so concerned. "You don’t understand.

"That’s right," she said, "I don’t." And she left his office.
 
 

As usual the grapevine was superb. By late that afternoon, Kate was sitting in Mairin’s office asking her if it were true that she was resigning.

"The Hadleigh pipeline is like a sieve," said Mairin. "I don’t know how this firm does any confidential work. Yes, it’s true. I’m leaving."

"It will certainly be dull without you," said Kate. "You’ve headlined the past month! Seriously, though, don’t you think you’re overdoing it a bit to make a point? You can make the point without sacrificing yourself."

"It’s no sacrifice," said Mairin. She felt morally superior, but one thing she’d learned in law school was that the moral superiority arguments ware dull, and, furthermore, missed the point.

"No sacrifice?" asked Kate. "You’re giving up lots of money, all the learning situations this firm can give?"

"That’s right," said Mairin. "It’s taught me plenty."

"What are you going to do?"

"I really don’t know."

"Well, I wouldn’t worry too much either, if I were you. Judge Warncke must know everybody."

"Do you think that’s how I got this job?"

"Not entirely, but you wouldn’t have even met Bob Jeffries if you didn’t know the Warnckes."

"Okay, that’s true. Better to say I’d never have met him personally. I’d already met him through Sandra’s case, but he hadn’t met me, if you know what I mean."

"Hey, it’s all contacts," said Kate. "Don’t let anybody tell you different."

"Well, I’ll figure out something," said Mairin.

She finished the research projects, wrote them up into memos or briefs, then brought a big box, unloaded her desk and left. She did the latter on a Saturday afternoon when virtually no one was in the office.

She had no feelings. Rather, they were buried. She knew they were very strong under the surface. But she wouldn’t let them up now. They’d rise to the surface slowly, she knew that, she’d tried to train herself that way. The feelings would simmer, and one would rise to the top at a time. It would be much easier to deal with that way. She would spend hours just sitting. She’d already gotten a part-time job as a social worker in an agency that dealt with youth. It would pay her bills until she could sort things out and make a visible plan for her career.

The one happy feeling of those days was the knowledge that Sandra had won her case. Mairin often felt that her happiness for Sandra was enhanced by the thought that Bob Jeffries had lost.