Primary Justice

3

BEN REMEMBERED THINKING, AFTER four years of undergraduate school, two years of special studies, and three years of law school, that the days of desperate, last-minute cramming were finally over. He was wrong.

Thanks to his eleventh-hour assignment from Derek, Ben had about forty-five minutes to immerse himself in adoption law prior to counseling a client of indirect but genuine importance. He was confident that Family Law I and the Socratic method didn’t come close to providing enough real-life practical experience to enable him to advise other human beings. He polled Greg, Alvin, and Marianne, and learned that none of them knew anything about adoption, or if they did, they weren’t telling him. He grabbed a family law hornbook and a copy of the relevant Oklahoma statutes from the library and walked hurriedly toward his new office.

A middle-aged woman with a frosted bouffant hairdo was sitting in the cubicle between Ben’s office and Derek’s, separated from the hallway by heavy wooden dividers. She was smoking, and her ashtray indicated she went at it as fervently as did Derek. She did not look up as Ben approached.

“You must be Maggie,” Ben said amiably.

The woman’s gaze shifted from the paperback romance novel she was reading. “Yes.” Her voice had a detectable nasal twang. Ben wondered if she had come from back East with Derek.

He smiled. “I’m Ben Kincaid. I guess we’re going to be working together.”

“I work for Mr. Derek,” she said crisply. She returned her attention to her novel.

“Evidently you’re working for me, too. I’m the new associate on Mr. Derek’s team.”

Maggie looked up slowly. “I haven’t worked with a new associate in seven years.” She removed the clear plastic reading glasses hanging on a chain around her neck and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “New associates are always … writing things, and always wanting them typed by yesterday. And always changing them once they are typed.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Ben said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “It wasn’t my idea. I’ll try not to be a bother.”

Maggie lifted the receiver to her ear and punched a button on the complex phone console on her desk. “We’ll see about this. This isn’t supposed to happen to me. We have an arrangement.”

Ben decided that his need to hit the books was more pressing than this rewarding conversation. “I’ll be in my office,” he said.

Maggie didn’t even nod.

Ben surveyed his new office. Well, there will be few distractions, he thought.

Raven, Tucker & Tubb provided him with a desk—a table, actually, and a matching chair, both made of a cheap pine Ben wouldn’t have used in his college dorm room. The walls were a barren, uninterrupted white. The table held a green banker’s lamp and a complicated telephone unit, smaller than but similar to the one at Maggie’s station. There was a short, empty bookshelf beside the table and two undeniably hideous orange corduroy visitors’ chairs. Apparently, furnishings were passed down from one associate to another—the good stuff going up the totem pole and the wretched stuff going down. Ben hoped his first client didn’t have a keenly developed sense of decor.

On the table, he saw a small box. He opened it and found hundreds of preprinted business cards with his name on them, just beneath the firm logo. Ready for business. He cracked open the hornbook and began to read.

A few minutes before eleven, he was startled by an electronic beeping noise. He pushed the illuminated button on his telephone console. It was Maggie.

“Visitors for you in the main foyer,” she said brusquely.

“Thank you, Maggie. Please show them in.”

There was a pause, then a slow, inhaling noise. “You understand this is only temporary, Mr. Kincaid.”

“Yes, I do, Maggie. But while it lasts, I plan to treasure every precious moment we spend together.”

“I’ll get your visitors,” she said, and rang off.

There was no reason for Ben to be surprised. Derek had not made any representations regarding his visitors’ appearances, although he had linked them with one of the most sophisticated and prosperous corporate entities in the state. Nonetheless, when Maggie ushered the visitors into his office, Ben was surprised and vaguely disappointed. The two adults, a man and a woman, were older than he had expected, perhaps in their early sixties. Both had pure white hair. The man wore blue jeans and a white shirt with a plastic pencil holder in the front pocket and noticeable yellow-gray stains under each arm. The woman wore a simple green print dress, a plain brown coat, and white costume beads.

“My name’s Jonathan Adams,” the man said, taking Ben’s hand, “and this is my wife, Bertha.”

The single sentence had been sufficient to tell Ben a great deal about Mr. Adams’s origins. He had the thick, slow drawl usually found in rural areas in the western part of the state.

Ben shook his hand, then Bertha’s, and introduced himself.

“Honestly!” Bertha said, eyeing him with suspicion. “Are you an attorney?”

Ben tried not to react. People usually thought he looked young for his age. “Yes, I am,” he said amiably. “Promise. I’ve got a diploma and everything. Just haven’t coughed up the money to have it framed yet.”

“Oh,” she said, looking meaningfully at her husband. “I see.”

Ben knew exactly what that expression meant. It meant: Jonathan, I thought we were getting a real lawyer.

She turned her attention slowly back to Ben, eyeing him carefully. Ben knew that expression, too. It meant: This case may not mean much to your firm, but it’s the whole wide world to us, and we’d like to have a real lawyer, not some baby-faced kid who hasn’t lost his training wheels yet. Or something like that.

“Princess, don’t be standoffish like that,” Bertha said.

Ben looked up, startled. For a moment, he thought the woman was talking to him. Then he saw a small dark-haired girl standing behind the adults. “Mr. Kincaid, this is our Emily.”

The girl was beautiful. Her features were simple and smooth; her pale skin was virtually translucent. Her long black hair served, to highlight her flawless white complexion. She was a marble sculpture of what a little girl ought to look like, Ben thought, a Botticelli angel. And there was something else about her, he realized, a light, or a glow, that seemed to radiate from her.

Ben suddenly felt embarrassed. He was romanticizing a little girl. And he was staring, too.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling.

Emily gazed at him with a puzzled expression. Her eyes didn’t quite seem to focus on his face. “Good morning, Mr. Kincaid. Have I met you before?”

Ben blinked. “Uh, no, I don’t believe so.”

“Oh,” Emily said. She looked around the office. “Have I been here before?”

Jonathan Adams interrupted. “Good grief, girl. What a lot of questions. Just say hello.”

Ben smiled. “It’s all right. I like to ask questions myself.” He took the pink woolen sweater she was holding and hung it on a hook behind the door. “How old are you, Emily?”

“I’m five,” she said, and she held out five fingers.

Five? Ben was no expert on children, but this girl appeared to be at least eight or nine. He saw Mr. and Mrs. Adams exchange another meaningful glance.

Ben squatted down to her level. “And what grade are you in?”

Emily giggled. “Not old enough for school, silly. Mommy dinn’t want me to go to kinnergarnen.”

Bertha Adams looked out the office window.

Emily abruptly changed the subject. “Do you play pat-a-cake?” She raised her hands with the palms outstretched and chanted. “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can—”

Ben winked at Mrs. Adams. “I don’t think I know that one.”

“I know more,” she said. She continued chanting in the same rhythmic pattern. “A bumblebee and reverie. It will do, if bees are few—”

Mr. Adams interrupted. “Bertha, don’t you have her crayons or something?”

“Yes.” She reached into her purse and pulled out an oversized book. “Emily, honey, I brought your coloring hook.”

Emily turned and stared at the book. “What is this?”

Bertha pressed the book into her hands. “It’s your coloring book, princess. We bought it just before we came here. And here are your colors. You take them and go sit in the lobby.”

Emily frowned. “Don’t remember no lobby. Don’t know this place.”

Bertha pointed out the door toward the lobby.

“You won’t leave me, will you?”

“Of course not, child,” Mr. Adams said. “Now you go sit down and wait for us. We need to talk to Mr. Kincaid here for a spell.”

Ben rose to his full height; “Bye-bye, Emily. Maybe we can play again later.”

Hesitantly, the girl started to leave.

“Wait, Emily,” Ben said. “Don’t forget your sweater. It’s cool in the lobby. Air conditioning’s down too low.”

She cocked her head at a slight angle. The puzzled expression again crossed her face.

Ben took the sweater from the hook behind the door. “Remember this?”

The girl looked at the sweater. “It’s pretty. Can I have it?”

Ben looked at Mr. and Mrs. Adams, but their eyes were fixed on one another.

“Of course,” he said, after a moment. He handed the girl her sweater.

Bertha again pointed toward the lobby. “Now run along, dear.”

Emily obeyed.

Ben gestured for the couple to sit down in the orange corduroy chairs. There was an awkward pause as all parties considered the best means of broaching the obvious subject.

Mr. Adams broke the silence. “You probably know this already, Mr. Kincaid—”

“Call me Ben.” He felt ridiculous hearing a man thirty years his elder calling him mister.

“Sure. As I was saying, Ben, I work for Joe Sanguine out at Sanguine Enterprises. I’m vice president in charge of new projects and development, have been for fourteen years. I go back even before Sanguine bought the outfit. ’Cept during the time I spent in California, I guess my title changed—”

“Stick to the subject, Jonathan.”

He grinned. “Yes, Bertha. Anyway, ’bout a year ago, I was scouting some real estate as a possible location for a new outlet in south Tulsa, out toward Jenks. Place was a vacant lot, out in the middle of nowhere. And who do I find wandering around out there but little Emily? She was filthy and so confused she didn’t know up from down. She knew her name was Emily and that she had a mommy she couldn’t describe somewhere, but that’s about it. Said she woke up nearby but didn’t know how she came to be there. Course I figured she was just kinda confused and disoriented from being abandoned.” He paused, and glanced at his wife. “Later, we found out just how bad it really was.”

Ben tried to maintain an even, professional composure. “Is there…something wrong with Emily?”

“Yeah, there sure enough is.” He rubbed his hands against his cheeks, as if rousing himself. “Korsakov’s syndrome.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s what the doctors call it. Korsakov’s syndrome. With some visual agnosia. Emily has no long-term memory. In fact, she has no short-term memory, really. Anything you say to her or show her, she’ll forget as soon as you or it are out of sight. Maybe sooner.” He paused. “Emily lives only in the present. And she doesn’t live there for long.”

Ben nodded, although he certainly did not understand. “Why does she think she’s five years old?”

“Because that’s the last time she remembers,” Adams answered. “That’s when her memory shuts down. Before that, her memory is more or less intact. Course, there’s not really much she can tell you—what do you expect from the memory of a five-year-old kid? Plus there’s the visual agnosia. She doesn’t seem to see faces. Or if she does, she can’t describe them. Can’t put it into words. Can’t draw you a picture.”

He rubbed his hand against his forehead and brushed back his white hair. “After some point in the year she was five—nothing. She can’t even tell you what happened an hour ago. That’s why, first thing, she asked you, ‘Have I met you before?’ She can’t remember.”

“She still asks me that sometimes,” Bertha added, “and she’s been living with us almost a year now.” Her stoic expression did not break, but Ben could see her sadness ran deep.

“She’s pretty good with voices, though,” Jonathan added. “After a month or so, she began to recognize the sound of Bertha and me. Now, once she hears our voices, she seems to remember, at least a little bit, and trust us.”

“I never heard of such a thing,” Ben said.

“It’s a rare brain disorder, according to the docs. An extreme form of amnesia. Usually occurs as a result of alcoholism.”

Ben’s face wrinkled. “But Emily couldn’t have been—”

“No, Ben, she couldn’t have been an alcoholic. It can also be caused by a blow to the head, a brain tumor, or anything else that might cause a”—he took a deep breath, as if gearing up for the big words—“neurological dysfunction.”

“She’s been to see doctors, men?”

“Yes, of course.” A tinge of irritation, or frustration, crept into his voice. “She’s been checked by damn near every neurologist in the Southwest. EEGs, blood tests, CAT scans, psychotropic drugs, the whole dog-and-pony show. No visible sign of brain damage. But then, they explain, the atrophying of the tiny … mammillary bodies in the brain that causes this disorder probably wouldn’t show up on any of their tests.”

“Kind of makes you wonder why they take the gruesome things in the first place,” Bertha added quietly. There was no humor in her voice.

“Then no one has any idea what caused this?” Ben asked.

“There is a theory,” Adams said hesitantly, “though no real proof, that the syndrome can result from what the docs call … hysterical … or fugal amnesia. Meaning that Emily experienced some traumatic event too awful to remember. Something her mind wants to avoid. So it hasn’t remembered anything since.”

Ben felt embarrassed about his earlier snap judgment. Jonathan Adams was obviously an intelligent man. “That might explain why her memory stops at age five,” Ben said. “But what could happen to a five-year-old girl that would be too horrible to remember?”

Bertha’s head was lowered. “I hope she never remembers,” she said quietly. “We try not to dwell on it. We love our little Emily and the thought—” She stopped, and her face tightened. She returned her gaze to a fixed spot on the carpet.

“May not have happened when she was five,” Adams added, covering the silence. “With Korsakov’s syndrome, sometimes the erosion of memory goes both ways. It moves not only forward but backward from the time of the trauma.”

The room fell silent. Ben wished to God he had a cactus or calendar or something in the office to which he could divert his attention. After a moment, he realized he had become so engrossed in the discussion of Emily’s disorder that he had totally failed to explore the legal matter at hand.

He cleared his throat. “Forgive me for changing the subject, Mr. and Mrs. Adams, but I was told that you were seeking advice on an adoption matter. Do you want to adopt Emily?”

“Yes,” Bertha said, not looking up.

“You know, Ben,” Jonathan said, “this is probably going to sound ridiculous, but I’m just a feeble old coot so I’m entitled to a little ridiculousness every now and then. I don’t think it’s any secret how we feel about our little Emily. Took to her from the first moment I saw her in that vacant lot.”

“Well, if you’re sure, then—”

“We know what you’re thinking, Mr. Kincaid,” Bertha interrupted. “Don’t you think it’s crossed our minds? Why adopt such a bundle of trouble? Especially at our age. It’s not as if she’s ever going to be attached to us.” She released a short, unhappy laugh. “She can barely remember who we are.”

Jonathan Adams gently laid his hand upon his wife’s and squeezed.

“But we love her, Mr. Kincaid, we truly do.” For the first time, the strong woman’s voice cracked. “We never had any children of our own. Couldn’t.” She took a deep breath and tried to regain control. “And then, long after I’d given up any hope of children, Jonathan comes home with little Emily. I’ve spent the last year watching her drift from one moment to the next. And I’ve been happy, mostly.” She sunk back into the folds of her coat. “She’s mine how. And I want to keep her.”

Ben looked at the woman, men looked away. At last, the impenetrable fortress had been breached. She began to cry.