Third quarter progressed steadily. The excitement of Michael Morgan was gone. Criminal law was a rehash of torts with criminal penalties rather than civil. It was perhaps a little gamier, seamier, definitely different. Mr. Graves was not Michael Morgan, however.

At the same time that classes were etching themselves into predictable lines, work went berserk. "It seems as though there’s been a month of full moons," sighed Mairin to Bea one morning at coffee.

"I believe it," said Bea. "I brought Mrs. Nudelman for a return engagement at the low vision clinic, and she blew up at Dr. Graham. Good, kind,patient, nice Dr. Graham." She looked at Mairin. "You look really tired, dear."

"I’m getting senile," said Mairin. "My mind wanders. Seriously," she paused, "I feel washed out. Last night I got a call from Mr. Thornton at quarter ‘til five. I just couldn’t hang up, so I talked with him until 5:30. Then I had to run. Literally. I came into contracts a few minutes late. No sooner did I get settled than Hanson called on me. My mind just wouldn’t make the shift. I floundered awfully. I went home and poured a huge shot of bourbon. Then, this morning I got another panic call at nine. I just hung up before I came in here for coffee. I feel like a zombie."

Bea looked thoughtful. Mairin looked thinner and less alert than usual, and she had a listless quality that was extremely rare. "Come over this weekend," she said. "I’ll cook you a good meal. What’s your schedule?"

"Saturday night I’m going out with Evan," Mairin said, without the slightest flicker of interest. "Sunday I’m free."

"Sunday it is. What time?"

"Well, it takes me most of the afternoon to study. Any time after five is okay."

"Come at five-thirty, then."

After coffee Mairin felt that she had the energy to organize the rest of her day. She felt that she’d been guilty of short-changing the clients sometimes when she was worn out from school. Today she’d make up for it. She’d really clean up all the problems. She’d see a client on the west side. Then the Storms on the east side, then, back at the agency, a conference with the director of rehabilitation about Robert Brush, the forty-three year-old fellow with the memory loss. Then work should be done on a case where there was a foulup with Social Security.

Mairin loved driving in the spring. She swung onto the shoreway, headed west, turned the radio to a country-western station, turned up the volume, and watched the city flow by. Lord, it’s big, she thought. The downtown buildings glistened in the sunlight. She wondered what it would be like to work in one of the huge buildings, but she liked this better, the continual driving through the city, getting to feel at home in all different areas. She loved the big two-family homes, characteristic of midwestern cities. There was nothing architecturally remarkable at all about them, but they looked solid and honest,row after row of them, and she imagined that the people who lived in them were solid and honest too.

Mairin pulled off the shoreway but stayed on a major westside street. She didn’t have to go too far this morning. She was making a home visit to a man who had come to this country in the mid-1950’s from Poland, she thought it was. He had been absolutely battered by the loss of sight he had experienced. And, as some did, he wanted the sight to come back enough to hope that religion alone would restore it. He lived in a neat, comfortable apartment building near a little neighborhood shopping area.

He and his wife were hospitable as usual. "How are you feeling, Mr. Zaken?"

"Fine, except for the blood pressure," he said. His wife broke in. "He worries me so much. He gets excited about little things, then his blood pressure goes up."

"Has something been worrying you lately, Mr. Zaken?" asked Mairin.

"No, no, Miss Farrar. Maybe I get excited about getting my sight back. I want to ask you a question. I hear stories of people who were very sick and then they go to these revivals or something, and they get better. There’s a program on the radio about it. Do you think this is a good idea?

Mairin hesitated. She knew all about the therapeutic value of trying to make Mr. Zaken realize that he was asking for advice and to help him see why he was asking. That was a good social work technique, but common sense overrode it. This religion business bothered her. As she had said to Carol recently, "It’s a crock, and I’m not going to dodge it. These people are given so many false hopes by everybody--family, doctors, workers who don’t want to say there’s no hope--that it’s ridiculous."

She heard herself saying, "No, Mr. Zaken, I really don’t think this is the answer for you. You’ve seen one of the finest doctors in this town. If anything could have been done, believe me, it would have been done. If these revivals really worked the kind of miracles that they say they work, the hospitals would be empty, and they could close tomorrow. No, you’re an intelligent man. Let’s turn this intelligence into a rehabilitation program for you. If your blood pressure stays down, you could come into the agency for the training we’ve talked about."

"Maybe you talk to my doctor," said Mr. Zaken. "I would like to come to the agency. I would like to learn the things you talk about."

As Mairin drove back east, she mulled over Mr. Zaken’s case. Would he keep these false hopes? Would they interfere with his taking the rehabilitation program seriously? She saw in her mind’s eye the dictation in the case file. "Continued casework intervention is necessary if client is to adjust successfully to a rehabilitation program." If she could just get him to come to the rehab center for a visit.

She had seen it so many times before. A person would come with his family. They’d all be quiet, subdued, troubled. They would sit in her office, and she would talk about the rehabilitation program. Then they would go upstairs for a tour of the rehab wing. They might poke their noses into the prevocational shop, and grandfatherly Max Herman would talk about the machines. Maybe the client had run a machine at some time and thought it impossible that a blind person could run a drill press or power saw. They would talk to Sara Maycomb, who taught Braille, and Sara would read aloud from a Braille book as fast as Mairin could read print. And they’d stop in ADL, activities of daily living, and maybe someone would have just baked a cake, and they would all have a taste. By the time they got back to her office, the whole mood would have changed. There was something where despair had been. Maybe hope, maybe not, but a difference.

Mairin was at the Storms before she knew it. "Well," she had said to her supervisor after her last visit there, "a fine job of casework I’ve done. They say I’m their adopted grandaughter They give me blintzes--‘for you, crepes suzettes, because you’re Gentile’-- and they really are like grandparents."

Her supervisor had laughed. "Well, maybe that’s what they need the most. You’re probably doing them more good as a granddaughter than as a social worker."

Mairin had first met Mr. Storm while he was in the hospital waiting patiently while the doctors tried to find out what it was that had caused his loss of vision. They never did, and all he had to show for his time was an unbelievable load of bills. His roommate, a Lions Club member, had called the agency and asked for a white cane for him. Mairin had gone to the hospital with the cane. Mr. Storm had been quiet, almost bashful, but his roommate had made up for that. When Mr. Storm had gone home, Mairin had met his wonderful wife. They were lovely, both of them, at eighty or so.

"Hello, sweetheart," said Mr. Storm. "I’ve missed you."

Today he was worried about the bills again. "Look at this," he said to Mairin. "Fifteen dollars a day for this man, and I never saw him. I called his office, and they said ‘As long as he was in the hospital, you have to pay. He took over while your doctor was on vacation."

"But he never, once, talked with you?"

"No."

"Robbers, that’s what they are," said Mairin. "I hate to say it against a whole profession, but I can say it against him."

"Don’t I have some rights? You’re in law school." He looked at Mairin expectantly, a little old man in a little apartment, with not much money, and a wife who had medical bills too.

"Well, you could fight it, put up a squawk with your own doctor, but it would be a lot of aggravation."

"He doesn’t need that," said Mrs. Storm. "Come, darling, have some blintzes. They’re all ready."

When Mairin got back to the agency, it didn’t matter that the lunch hour was over. She was full of blintzes and a nice, warm feeling that would help her get through the session with the rehab director. He had to be handled. Mairin felt her mood turning sour. God knows, this was a tough job any way you had to cut it, but when you had to fight your own agency as well as all the rest, well, who needed the aggravation? She and Ben Storm.

She eased into a chair in the director’s office. "Dr. Smith," she began, "I have a case that’s really difficult, and I need your advice." In a pig’s ear, she thought. I know just what to do here. I want that guy in here at the rehab center, getting special attention from Max Herman in the shop. "This is a forty-three year-old man, that’s why it’s tough. Memory is the problem. He had a craniotomy at the clinic, a brain tumor. He can’t remember much of anything. I talked with his doctor by phone, and the doctor didn’t really want to be pinned down. But the gist of what he said was that there may be some return of memory over the next year and a half, but it will be minimal.

"I made one home visit. I asked for an evaluation by a home teacher, and Mrs. Wells made one home teaching visit. You gave her permission to extend evaluation for a second visit. She asked me if I would go with her, and I did. He didn’t remember that Mrs. Wells had been there two weeks before. I doubt that he remembered me. Mrs. Wells was trying to help him work out travel paths between the chair in the living room where he sits and the kitchen, bathroom, etc. He couldn’t remember them. If he weren’t forty-three, neither of us would be this concerned, but he is. We decided to talk with you and get your recommendation."

"Could his wife bring him here to the center?" asked Dr. Smith.

"Maybe. She’s gotten a driver’s license, but she doesn’t have a car yet, so there may be a problem. If so, we can probably work out volunteer transportation."

"Well, I usually don’t advocate that for rehab clients, but if casework wants to set it up, okay."

"Yes, sure," said Mairin. "Is there any chance of this man eventually going to the shop?"

"That’s difficult to say. The problem is, he’d have to be given a job that he could be retrained on every morning." Dr. Smith was deadly serious. It wasn’t funny, and Mairin knew it, but the sadness of it overwhelmed her, and she nearly laughed out of nervous tension.

"His wife’s very supportive; if he could even put a nut on a bolt, she might be able to take him to his work station every morning and take him home every night."

"How would he handle rest breaks and lunchtime?"

"I really don’t know," said Mairin.

"I propose that we bring him in for an evaluation period of two weeks. His wife will have to be with him, help him change areas, etc. We won’t try for any state funding, we’ll absorb the cost of the evaluation and then we’ll see what the situation is. We can’t do anything for a couple of months, then there’ll be an opening."

"I think that’s very sound," said Mairin evenly, but inside she was turning cartwheels. This is what he needs, she thought. This is what Mrs. Wells and I want. "Thank you so much, sir, for going over this case with me."

She went back down to her desk. Two big books on Social Security from the law library had been on her desk for over a week. One of the other workers had a client who had been turned down by Social Security on a disabled widow’s claim. The woman was clearly blind, completely uneducated, couldn’t read or write, except for her name. Christ, how could Social Security say that she was not disabled? Mairin had gone with the other worker and the client to file a notice of appeal. You didn’t have to be a lawyer to represent a client before the Social Security hearing officer, so Mairin had said that she’d do it. She had gotten as far as finding out that she couldn’t get the woman’s file from the local office. She would have to go downtown. Mairin needed to know what was in it, by what stretch of imagination Social Security could reject the claim. She decided to call the Board of Hearing and Appeals.

"Hello, I’m Miss Farrar from the Agency for the Blind, and I’d like to find out about looking at the file of one of our clients. We’ve filed an appeal for her."

"What is her name?"

"LuAnn Williams, claiming on the account of John Williams ."

There was a few minutes wait, then "Yes, it’s here, but it’s not in order yet. We’ll notify you when it’s ready."

"Well, perhaps you could help me by telling me what amount she’d be eligible for. She’s on SSI now, and if it wouldn’t be more, maybe we can all save our time."

"She might not get anything. It depends on the decision of the hearing examiner."

Oh Christ, thought Mairin. One of those. Another five-star flake in civil service. They cloned them. Some went to the IRS, some to Social Security, and the rest to the Veteran’s Administration. "I realize that," she said patiently, "but if she is eligible, what would she get?"

"That’s up to the hearing examiner."

"Is there more than one sum she could get?"

"No."

"Well that’s all I want to know, what the figure would be,"

"We can’t give out that information over the phone. You could be anybody. You’ll have to come in."

Jesus. If I could be anybody, she asked herself, why should I be Mairin Farrar? Why not somebody rich or talented or gorgeous. And I couldn’t be just anybody. Why do I have the right Social Security number? And would just anybody care? But she only said, "I’ll be glad to come down. When can I come?"

"The file isn’t ready yet. We’ll let you know."

"Thank you very much," said Mairin, hanging up and burying her head in her hands. The phone rang again before she could move.

"Miss Farrar, can I help you?"

"Miz Farrar, this is Ronna Jones. My washing machine is busted. Do you all have any new ones that I can have?"

Good god. Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz, in the words of the song. It wasn’t at all unusual for people to give the agency things--furniture, appliances, clothing--and ask that the things be given to the blind. The agency disliked perpetuating dependence, but it was bad public relations to turn things down. The long-time clients were aware of the things that the agency had, and they asked and asked and asked. Damn, thought Mairin. I’ve got enough to do without getting you a washing machine. Why the hell don’t you put your shoulder to the wheel like the rest of us, sighted and blind alike and earn yourself your goddamned washer? There are legitimate demands on my time, like LuAnn Williams’ claim and Robert Brush’s need to come in to the rehab center. But again she said only "Can the washer be fixed? What’s the matter with it?"

"It don’t work right. Maybe you’ve got a newer one that washes better." Belligerent.

"Why doesn’t it work right?"

"It’s old. Must be ten years old."

"Does it turn on?"

"Yes."

"Does it wash?"

"Yes."

"Does it rinse?"

"Yes."

"Does it spin?"

"Yes."

"Well it sounds okay to me."

"It don’t clean good. Miz.Washington, she got a new machine from you. Why can’t I have one?"

"First I’ll have to find out if we have one. But Mrs. Washington’s was broken for sure, and yours sounds as though it works okay." A form sat down in the chair beside Mairin’s desk. Oh god, she thought, recognizing Mary Mitchell, another hard-core client, a young lady who’d been in and out of mental hospitals and was now in a work training program at the agency.

"It don’t clean good," Ronna Jones was saying.

How the hell can you tell, thought Mairin, unless you see better than you’ve told us in the past? You’re supposed to see only enough in each eye to count fingers, according to the records. You, fox, you. "Let me see if we even have a washer, then I’ll call you back." It would be easier to give her the goddamned washer,

assuming that the agency had one, than for Mairin to do intensive casework to help Mrs. Jones become self-sufficient. The simple fact was that there were not enought caseworkers to do that kind of work. It was always putting out fires. Oh well, in Ronna Jones case, it was years too late anyway.

"Hello, Miss Mitchell. What can I do for you today?"

"I don’t want to bother you, but my regular caseworker isn’t here today. I just have to talk to somebody sometimes."

"Are things going badly in the kitchen?"

"No, not really. Sometimes I get nervous. But I have my medicine." She dug into her purse and pulled out a bottle. "See."

"Yes," said Mairin.

"Will you help me address a letter?"

"Sure."

"You’d better put a piece of paper down. My things are contaminated, and your desk will be contaminated."

Wow, thought Mairin. I’ve heard of psychotics, but I’ve never really dealt with one. I don’t have the slightest idea how to deal. Guess I’ll wing it. "Nothing will hurt my desk," she said.

"I wouldn’t want it to get contaminated. Don’t you have any white paper?"

"Here’s a piece I suppose we could use."

Miss Mitchell was unloading an unbelievable amount of stuff onto the paper. A dirty old comb. A bill fold. A container of Tampax. A package of cookies. Finally she pulled out an envelope and a stamp. Mairin made out the address as directed.

"It’s late, isn’t it," said Miss Mitchell.

"Yes," said Mairin, noticing for the first time that it was ten after five.

"You have to go," stated Mary Mitchell.

"Yes," said Mairin, "but I’ll come back." Reassure her, Mairin thought.

"Can I come talk to you again?"

"Sure," said Mairin.

"You won't send me back to the state hospital because I put all those things on your desk?"

"Heavens no!" exclaimed Mairin, truly puzzled.

"Thank you," said Mary Mitchell, who then got up and left.

Mairin left, too, on the run, late to class for the second night that week. If she would hold on until the weekend, maybe she could squeeze in a nap somewhere. And she could look forward to dinner with Harry and Bea.
 
 

At five-thirty on Sunday, Mairin was sitting with Harry and Bea drinking sherry. They had decided to watch a documentary on public television before supper. Mairin was in the big blue chair. It was so comfortable and soft. She was fighting to stay awake. She lost. She crumpled.

Harry turned to say something to her. "Look, Bea, she’s out:"

"Oh, the poor thing. She’s really working too hard. And some of her cases at the agency are just coming apart right now."

"She looks cute," said Harry. "Like a little kid. I’m going to get that teddy bear that Lisa left and put it beside her." He got up to get it.

The show ended, and Mairin slept on. Bea put supper on the table. "Wake her up. Harry," she said.

Harry shook Mairin gently. "What?" she asked, coming to. There was an enormous teddy bear on her lap. She started to laugh. "I think I died and went to kindergarten."

"I hated to wake you up, you looked so peaceful. But Bea’s got dinner ready."

Mairin brought the bear to the table and put it on the floor by her chair. "What a stimulating guest I am," she said ruefully. "I hope I make it through this quarter. I have a nightmare about sleeping through exams."

"When are they?" asked Harry.

"In three weeks," said Mairin. "My study group is going to work the next three weekends."

"I remember. A study group is a good aid to have. You have a good one?"

"For sure. All women. We’ll beat the guys anytime. Seriously, we’re a good group. We get along well, even though our backgrounds are different."

"Your goals are the same."

"Not really. Sure, we all want to be lawyers, but our styles are so different I bet we go in very different directions." Mairin told Bea and Harry about the party the group had had. "That won’t be anything to what we’ll have after finals!"

"You might rather sleep for a week," said Bea.

"That’s no joke. Speaking of which, I’d better go home so that I can finish my goodnight’s sleep. I have to see ayoung woman tomorrow. She’s lost her sight in a car accident and is still in the hospital."

Harry shuddered. "Can’t you find some easier work to do while you’re in law school?"

"This is my first-chosen profession," said Mairin with a trace of something that Bea said later seemed like sarcasm. "Thank you both so much for the nice evening. Sorry that I was such a rude guest." Mairin went home and fell asleep as though she’d never had a nap.