Small Great Things(89)
I end the call, punching the button with such vehemence that the handset goes spinning out of my hand and skitters across the kitchen floor. Micah turns off the faucet. “Damn cordless phones,” he says. “It was so much more satisfying back when you could slam them down, right?” He approaches me, his hands in his pockets. “You want to tell me what that was all about?”
“That was Wallace Mercy on the phone. Ruth Jefferson wants him to advise her.”
Micah whistles long and low. “You’re right,” he says. “She hates you.”
—
RUTH OPENS THE door in her nightgown and bathrobe. “Please,” I say. “I only need five minutes of your time.”
“Isn’t it a little late?”
I don’t know if she’s talking about the fact that it’s almost 11:00 P.M. or the fact that we parted on such a divisive note early this afternoon. I choose to assume the former. “I knew if I called you’d recognize my number and ignore it.”
She considers this. “Probably.”
I pull my sweater more tightly around me. After Wallace Mercy’s call, I got in the car and started driving. I didn’t even grab a coat first. All I could think was that I needed to intercept Ruth before she mailed back that release form.
I take a deep breath. “It’s not that I don’t care about how you were treated—I do. It’s that I know having Wallace Mercy involved is going to cost you in the short run, if not the long run.”
Ruth watches me shiver again. “Come in,” she says, after a moment.
The couch is already made up with pillows and sheets and a blanket, so I sit at the kitchen table as her son pokes his head out of the bedroom. “Mama? What’s going on?”
“I’m fine, Edison. Go to bed.”
He looks dubious, but he backs up and closes the door.
“Ruth,” I beg, “don’t sign that release.”
She takes a seat at the table, too. “He promised me that he wouldn’t interfere with whatever you’re doing in court—”
“You’ll sabotage yourself,” I say bluntly. “Think about it—angry mobs in the street, your face on TV every night, legal pundits weighing in on the case on morning shows—you don’t want them taking control of the narrative of this case before we have a chance to.” I gesture to the closed door of Edison’s bedroom. “What about your son? Are you ready to have him dragged into the public eye? Because that’s what happens when you become a symbol. The world knows everything about you, and your past, and your family, and crucifies you. Your name will be just as familiar as Trayvon Martin’s. You’re never going to get your life back.”
She meets my gaze. “Neither did he.”
The truth of that statement separates us like a canyon. I look down into that abyss and see all the reasons why Ruth shouldn’t do this; she looks down and no doubt sees all the reasons why she should.
“Ruth, I know you have no reason to trust me, especially given the way white people have treated you recently. But if Wallace Mercy grandstands, you won’t be safe. The last thing you want is for your case to be tried in the media. Please, let’s do this my way. Give it a chance.” I hesitate. “I’m begging you.”
She folds her arms. “What if I tell you I want the jury to know what happened to me? To hear my side of the story?”
I nod, striking a bargain. “Then we put you on the stand,” I promise.
—
THE MOST INTERESTING thing about Jack DeNardi is that he has a rubber band ball on his desk the size of a newborn’s head. Other than that he is exactly what you would expect to find working in a dingy cubicle in the Mercy–West Haven Hospital office: paunch, gray skin, comb-over. He’s a paper pusher, and the only reason I’m here is that I’m fishing. I want to see if there’s anything they’d say about Ruth that might help her—or that is going to hurt her.
“Twenty years,” Jack DeNardi says. “That’s how long she worked here.”
“How many times in those twenty years was Ruth promoted?” I ask.
“Let’s see.” He pores through the files. “Once.”
“Once in twenty years?” I say, incredulous. “Doesn’t that seem low to you?”
Jack shrugs. “I’m really not at liberty to discuss that.”
“Why is that?” I press. “You’re part of a hospital. Isn’t your job to help people?”
“Patients,” he clarifies. “Not employees.”
I snort. Institutions are allowed to scrutinize their personnel and find and label every flaw—but no one ever turns the magnifying glass back on them.
He scrolls through some more paperwork. “The term used in her most recent performance review was prickly.”
I’m not going to disagree with that.
“Clearly Ruth Jefferson is qualified. But from what I can gather in her file, she was passed over for promotions because she was seen by her superiors as a little…uppity.”
I frown. “Ruth’s superior, Marie Malone…how long has she been working here?”
He enters a few keystrokes into his computer. “Roughly ten years.”
“So someone who worked here for ten years was giving Ruth orders—dubious ones at that—and maybe Ruth questioned them from time to time? Does that sound like she’s being uppity…or just assertive?”