Commonwealth(38)

“If I’d started when I was your age I’d be a senior partner by now,” he said to the girls. When I was a boy I took a turn, as an office boy in an attorney’s firm their father liked to sing in the morning. “You two have all the time in the world to study. If you start now and I start now then we could all study together when you come out next summer.”

It was Christmas vacation and Franny didn’t want to study, nor did she want to commit to studying in the summer. He had already told them he’d take them to Lake Tahoe that summer and rent a pontoon boat they could swim off of. She wasn’t about to trade that in for all of them sitting around the kitchen table quizzing each other for what amounted to a giant spelling test.

But when Caroline hung up the phone she might as well have already filled out her application. She went to her room, the Kaplan guide under her arm, and closed the door. She was going to law school with her father.

Franny blew her nose and wiped her eyes and went back to the living room. Her mother was gathering the trampled paper scraps and dazzling end-bits of curled ribbon into a Hefty bag while Bert sat on the couch with a cup of coffee and gazed at the holiday tableau: Christmas tree, beautiful wife, fire in the fireplace, sweet stepdaughter.

“Daddy’s going to law school,” Franny said, making herself comfortable with her novel in the blue armchair. “That’s why he wants us to study. He wants us to go to school with him.”

Beverly stood up, her leaf bag overstuffed and featherweight. “Fix is going to law school?”

Bert shook his head. “He’s too old for that.”

“He isn’t,” Franny said, glad to be able to explain. “He’s going like Dick Spencer.” Franny liked the Spencers, who took them all to lunch at Lawry’s every summer when they were in Los Angeles.

The name rang its small bell in the back of Bert’s mind. Dick Spencer from the DA’s office who had once been a cop; in fact, Dick Spencer who had invited him to come along to the christening party at Fix’s house. Franny’s christening party.

“Where’s he going?” Bert asked. He seemed to remember Spencer had gone to UCLA.

“Southwestern College of Law,” Franny said, impressed with herself for having committed it to memory.

“Dear God,” Bert said.

“Well,” Beverly said, brushing a strand of yellow hair out of her eyes. “I say good for him.”

“Sure,” Bert said. “It’s going to be tough though, trying to go to law school every night after work. I don’t know when he’ll have time to study.”

Franny looked at him, her own yellow hair long and slightly stringy. She hadn’t bothered to brush it this morning in her rush to get down to the presents. “Didn’t you go to law school?”

“Sure I did,” Bert said. “I went to the University of Virginia. But I didn’t do it at night. I went the regular way.”

“So that wasn’t hard,” Franny said. She felt proud of her father, who would be doing two things at once. The nuns had led her to believe that God gave preference to people who did things the hard way.

“It was hard enough,” Bert said and took a sip of coffee.

Caroline came back downstairs and stalked through the living room on her way to the kitchen to get a snack, a second piece of Christmas coffee cake which she felt would aid in her studying.

“So your father’s going to law school,” Beverly said to her, smiling. “That’s great.”

Caroline stopped dead, as if her mother had shot her in the neck with a blowdart tipped in neurotoxins. The expression on her face blossomed into something between horror and rage. They could all see the mistake had been made and that there would be no undoing it. “You told them?” Caroline said, turning the full force of herself onto Franny.

“I didn’t . . .” Franny’s voice started small and then trailed into nothing. She meant to say she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to tell, or she didn’t know it was a secret, but the words just dried up in her mouth.

“Did you think Dad wanted them to know? Did you wonder why he didn’t just call and ask to talk to them?” Caroline took two fast steps to Franny and struck her sister’s bony shoulder with an open hand, the blow knocking the younger girl sideways out of the chair. It hurt, both the arm that was hit and the arm that she fell on. Franny couldn’t help but think that Caroline must have really been mad at her, madder than usual even. Caroline almost never hit her in front of people.

“Jesus, Caroline,” Bert said, putting down his cup. “Stop it. Beverly, don’t let her hit Franny like that.”

Christmas is particularly hard. All four of them were thinking some variation of that same sentence. Beverly leaned imperceptibly away. Nobody liked to see Franny hurt, but the truth was that Beverly was afraid of her older daughter and she didn’t step in unless there was blood.

“Don’t tell me anything,” Caroline said to Bert, spitting just the tiniest bit in her fury. “Tell your snitch.” Franny was crying now. The red imprint of her sister’s hand would be a purple bruise by the time she went to bed. Caroline turned around and pounded up the stairs, every step a blow. She would be forced to study without her piece of cake.

Once Fix started law school, his conversations with the girls revolved around torts. “Mrs. Palsgraf was in the East New York Long Island Rail Road Station standing next to a scale,” he said conversationally, like he was telling them a story about his neighbor. He was only saying it to Caroline because Franny had put the phone down and gone back to reading Kristin Lavransdatter. During the “Law School Summers,” as they would later be remembered, Caroline and Fix sat together at the kitchen table, Fix explaining the cases. He said it helped him, that if he could explain a case to the girls then he would have learned the law that was embedded in it. “People will tell you that law school is about learning to think, but it’s not. It’s about learning to memorize.” He held up his hand and counted off on his fingers, “Negligence, wrongful death, invasion of privacy, libel, noncriminal trespass . . .” Caroline took notes. Franny read. Franny credited her father’s time in law school for her reading David Copperfield and Great Expectations, all of Jane Austen, the Bront? sisters, and, eventually, The World According to Garp.