The Quiet Boy Read online

  “I am so sorry,” said Shenk when she was done talking, and he held out his two hands and she took them and squeezed. “I cannot imagine.”

  And he couldn’t: Shenk could not imagine.

  We can allow for skepticism, but if Jay’s small, alert face looked like the face of a man whose heart was breaking, it is because his heart was breaking. He was simply devastated for this woman, who within the last few hours had received the worst possible phone call, who had watched as holes were bored into her child’s skull, and who found herself trapped in the confusing complicated horror of whatever was happening now. Sincerely did Shenk partake of her grief, and yet he was pretending.

  Pretending not to have come here specifically to find her, pretending to have only a stranger’s empathetic interest in her sad situation. Shenk’s tears were real, his love for her was real, just as real as his need to land this case, to sue this hospital, to turn this tragedy into something tangible. For her, for the boy, for himself. It was all true at once.

  They stood together with hands clasped, trembling, like cousins at a funeral, and for Shenk everything was true.

  “I’ll tell you, Beth,” he said. “One thing my wife used to say, don’t invent reasons to suffer. Things may turn out just fine in the end, so don’t torture yourself needlessly. Right?”

  “Sure,” she said, looking down, nodding. “Yeah. It’s just…”

  “I know. I know.”

  He looked at her and she held his eyes, and he felt in his body the sharp snap of connection.

  This would happen. That was the fact of the moment, absolutely clear and absolutely true.

  Jay Shenk had married very young and had become a widower way too soon after that, and in the years since had only dabbled, never plunged, into the anxiety-provoking and time-consuming universe of romance. He had taken a pass on all of it, the matchmaking and the speed dating and the new websites promising connection and chemistry for a monthly fee. There had been dinner dates, there had been occasional partners for the relief of the base urges, but this right here, the forging of lawyer-client bonds, was the form of relationship at which he was most practiced, and by which he felt the most rewarded. Client development was not the same as sexual pursuit, of course, but for Shenk it fell into the same category. Two human beings, strangers at first, enter into a negotiation with unspoken rules, each evaluating the other and evaluating themselves, making a thousand small calculations, and then after due consideration entering into contract. Both of them aware of what this thing is—that it is transitional, impermanent—but who nevertheless develop strong feelings toward the other that ultimately transcend the transactional origins of the relationship.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Beth, pushing tears from the corners of her eyes with her knuckles, making a wry face. “What a baby.”

  “It’s OK.”

  “I’m not a crier,” she said. “I don’t cry.”

  “It’s really OK.”

  “You’re a doll,” she said. “Tell me your name again?”

  “Jay. Jay Shenk.” He took a breath and looked at her with composure and confidence. “I’m a lawyer.”

  He held up his card by one corner. It was a brand-new card, freshly printed, and at the angle he held it, it was made so white by the sunlight that it looked like there was no writing on it. Blank and gleaming, like the business card an angel would carry. Beth took it from him and turned it end over end, felt the matte weight in her hands.

  “Personal injury,” he told her. “Slip-and-falls. Vehicle accidents. And malpractice, of course.”

  He said the magic word, malpractice, with tremendous care, as if he were delicately hanging it upon a hook in the air between them.

  There were many people who would have tossed the card on the ground, torn it in half maybe, a lot of people who no matter how thoroughly Shenk had cast his spell would be disgusted with him now, on discovering that the whole thing was a pickup scene.

  But Beth Keener said, “No shit?” She said, “A lawyer.”

  He had her, and then he lost her. There was a screech of tires, and Beth looked up, distracted. A truck had slammed to a stop in the hospital driveway, and a man was lurching out. He was a big man, sturdy and broad. Heavy boots on the asphalt, and Beth immediately calling for him: “Richie! Baby!

  “Rich!”

  November 19, 2008

  1.

  Young Ruben Shenk had a thing he did, when he was very excited, which was that he kept his narrow body as still as he possibly could. He pretended there was something fragile inside him, balanced between the bones of his rib cage, and if he moved too quickly it would fall and break. The more anticipation he had about something, the more feelings, the less he wanted anyone to see those feelings or know he was having them. He didn’t know why this was. He had always been this way, and though he was older now, a teenager, he still felt it. He felt it even more intensely, actually. Be still. Don’t move. When he was most worked up inside, he tried hardest to keep his exterior even and calm.

  Right now was definitely such a time. Definitely.

  His father’s excitement had gotten him excited. He was churned up, agitated by his curiosity about this new case.

  Not a new case. A potential new case. Do not jinx it. Do not, do not jinx it.

  They were out on the metal catwalk that overlooked the strip mall parking lot, Ruben and Jay Shenk like two sailors abreast at the rigging. Ruben took his glasses off with a precise movement and cleaned them on the sleeve of his shirt, and then slid them carefully back onto his nose. He was wearing khaki pants and his checked button-down shirt. His father hadn’t told him to dress nice. He hadn’t needed to be told.

  He looked at his dad now, and his dad smiled down at him, a big, beaming grin, and clapped him on the shoulder.

  “So glad you’re here, pal. Seriously.”

  Ruben nodded, just a tiny bit, let a smile flick on and off his face. “Me too.”

  There were only nine spaces in the parking lot, which served not only Shenk & Partners, but also Gloria’s Glorious Donuts, the ramen restaurant, the nail salon, and the massage place, which was called Happy-Go-Lucky. Seven of the nine spots were taken, and Ruben was concerned. What would happen if the new clients couldn’t park? Would they just drive away?

  Potential clients, Ruben reminded himself. Come on. Come on.

  He and his father had spent the morning together, preparing to welcome the Keeners, arranging the conference room chairs in a neat semicircle. Ruben had run down to Gloria’s for an assorted dozen and one of those temperature-stable boxes of coffee, and now everything was ready and they were just waiting, shoulder to shoulder, four hands on the railing, squinting out at Palms Boulevard, Ruben now feeling his anticipation like a small star, bright behind his heart. This was a big case, his dad had told him, potentially, a potential humdinger, so he had kept him home from school even though it was a Monday and his work-study at Shenk & Partners was supposed to be just on alternate Tuesdays between one and four o’clock.

  Ruben’s progressive private high school allowed motivated students to make arrangements for a quote-unquote “offsite work experience.” Generally speaking, this work experience wasn’t supposed to be at a family business, but Ruben’s father had paid a visit to the school to request an exception. He had planted himself in the office of the dean of students, Mr. Cabrera, and argued the point with fervency, as he argued everything: “Listen, what if all this kid wants is to be a lawyer? What if it’s all he’s ever wanted?”

  “And what if”—pausing here to laugh, to give Mr. Cabrera permission to laugh—“what if the boy’s old man just happens to be the best personal injury lawyer in LA County? What are we supposed to do—punish him?”

  Shenk had winked at Ruben on the way out to the car after that meeting, a dishy acknowledgment, just between us, that they’d gotten one over on the Man.

  But all of it was true. It was bullshit and it was true, because Jay (Ruben knew to a certainty) believ
ed in his heart that there was no better place for his son than at his side.

  “Shenk & Partners,” just for the record, was a legal fiction. Jay Shenk had no partner and no interest in acquiring one, which he had explained to Ruben more than once. The name had a nice ring to it and it looked sharp on the website and the business cards, but Shenk & Partners was just Shenk. It was Shenk and Darla the bookkeeper, who only worked three half days a week; Shenk and Angela the cleaning lady; Shenk and Gloria Jiménez of Gloria’s Glorious Donuts, who gave them a standing 40 percent discount in exchange for occasional review of their health-department and ADA compliance.

  Most of all, Shenk & Partners was Shenk and his only child, who’d be a partner in full one day, but for now, for today, stood beside him, home from school to do some new-business development. The law was in Ruben’s blood like it was in Shenk’s, for though he was not of Shenk’s blood he was of his spirit, and Shenk’s spirit was the spirit of the law—not the law of regulation and statute book, but the law of justice and love, the law of setting wrongs to right. Ruben had a lot to learn and he would learn it.

  Shenk’s own and only boy, the good quiet child of his heart.

  “You know, they might not even show up,” Jay said—suddenly, offhandedly, cricking his neck and yawning.

  “I know,” said Ruben.

  “OK. Just so you’re not too disappointed.” Shenk smoothed his tie with exaggerated casualness, working at a spot where the fabric had gotten bunched. “People change their minds. They get cold feet. Maybe Kennerly poached them. You never know.”

  Ruben wrinkled his face at the mention of the other lawyer. Darius Kennerly was the Haman of their household. He was a blindingly white-toothed shyster whose oversize moon head adorned bus-station benches all over West LA and one gigantic billboard at Sepulveda and Pico. Shenk considered Kennerly a mercenary, a charlatan, and his archenemy.

  “Dad,” said Ruben. “They’ll be here.”

  Ruben could tell his father was nervous. His life was spent carefully tuned to the calibrations of Shenk’s voice, its pitches and pauses, its rises and falls; he could hear the distinct timbres of nervousness, excitement, aggression, and, rarest, fear. He loved especially to listen to Jay’s voice in conversation with a client, maybe a reluctant or uncertain one—to hear him talk his way around a legal matter in a way that made others feel comfortable, that drew them in and gave them courage. That’s why Ruben was so excited about today; the idea that his father wanted him here for a new-client meeting made him feel lightheaded. He would do his best. He would be ready with anything Shenk needed.

  And, depending how long the meeting stretched, he would probably miss Classical Poetry Confab, a fact that filled him with a combination of giddiness and unease. Ms. Hutchins, the World Languages teacher who ran the program, had been very clear that missing the weekly after-school meetings would mean forfeiting one’s spot on the Tournament of Poets team, and, eventually, having to withdraw from the confab altogether. Which Ruben would not have minded, because he actually preferred coming home after school, and because he didn’t even really like poetry. Ms. Hutchins was always saying how much the poems made one feel, and Ruben would read them, and read them again, and then just sit there wondering what was wrong with him, feeling nothing, staring at the dead wooden words.

  But dropping out of the club would mean letting down Ms. Hutchins—and, worse, letting down his father, because it had been on Jay’s insistence that he had signed up in the first place. This after a group of Morningstar parents, with sepia-tinged memories of their own boarding-school childhoods, had inaugurated the thrice-weekly poetry-themed after-school program, and Shenk—who on occasion would scan the weekly “Around Campus” email—said it sounded like a blast. Memorizing and declaiming from classic texts is a great way to build confidence, he’d said, that’s first of all, and also, Rubie, this is how you meet people, this is how you make new friends, which now that you’re in high school would not be the worst thing. Right?

  The truth is, Ruben had met people. He had, for example, met a sophomore girl named Annelise McTier, who had shocking red hair and shiny black boots. Ruben almost even thought there was a friendship developing between them, as when (for example) they silently rolled their eyes together at Willy Dorian’s comical stumbles through Yeats. But if today’s meeting went long—if he had to stay and help his dad—Ms. Hutchins might pull him from the tournament and maybe even eject him from the confab, which would be a shame but, also, secretly sort of a reprieve. Ruben held himself still, feeling this jumble of feelings roll over in his gut, clutching the railing till his knuckles glowed white.

  Oh God. Another car had pulled in and was parking, one of those terrible Range Rovers that took up its own space and a prohibitive slice of the next one over.

  Ruben looked at his watch. The clients—potential clients—would be here any minute. Now what? Now the lot was full.

  “The place looks really good,” said Shenk, glancing into the windows of the office, then back out on the street, back and forth. “We did a great job. It’s just a little hokey, right, the doughnuts and the paper plates, but not too hokey. Not too hokey, not too professional.”

  “Totally,” said Ruben. He had heard this speech before, this riff. He could have given it back to his father; he could have said it a half step ahead, like a parishioner singing along to the hymn.

  Oh good. There. Two ladies had emerged from the nail salon and were hugging goodbye, meaning leaving separately, meaning—yes—two new spaces were opening up.

  “But see, that’s what people want. They don’t want to walk into an office with all the tinted glass, the mahogany tables, and all the—you know.”

  “The fancy furniture,” murmured Ruben.

  “Exactly!” said Shenk, as if Ruben weren’t just saying what he’d heard Shenk say a million times. “All the fancy furniture and that stuff. What people need is a fighter. An underdog.”

  Ruben nodded solemnly. “I know, Dad.”

  “You’re the best, my boy.” And he bent down now, and clasped his son by the cheeks. Ruben blushed but did not pull away. “You’re the absolute best.”

  Ruben grinned. “Thanks, Dad.” He rubbed his cheeks where his father had squeezed them and turned away, smiling.

  “So,” said Shenk again, absolutely offhand, out of nowhere. “OK. So when they get here…”

  “Yes?”

  “We say hello, we introduce ourselves.”

  “Yes.”

  “We offer them coffee, doughnuts, et cetera.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Obviously.” A Shenk grin. A Shenk wink. “Then I will usher the Keeners into my office. You stay outside.”

  “Oh.” Ruben blinked. “OK.”

  “Because I need you, Kemosabe—this is key—I need you to keep an eye on the kid.”

  “The kid?” Ruben was confused. The kid was surely still at the hospital. If the kid was well enough to come to the meeting, then this case wasn’t nearly as serious as he had understood.

  “The sister, I mean. Not the kid. The little sister. You hang out with the little sister while me and Mom and Dad get into it.”

  “Oh,” said Ruben. “I see.”

  And he did. He saw. This was how it was with Jay: the truth sometimes came in late, and unannounced. He hadn’t wanted Ruben here to participate in the meeting, but to allow for it. Of course. The Keeners could hardly discuss a complex civil litigation, relating to the debilitating condition of their elder child, in the presence of their younger. So Ruben’s role was not to sit in on the client meeting, but to occupy the kid in the meantime. To babysit, in other words.

  “I told you, buddy,” said Shenk. “I need you on this.”

  “Of course, Dad.”

  Ruben looked out at the parking lot. He bit his lower lip with his upper teeth, thinking sadly of Poetry Confab, thinking for one longing instant of Annelise McTier, of the red hair and black boots. But this was fine. It was good. He could
do this. In a law office, everybody had their role to play.

  “Hey, hey,” said Jay. “Here they come!” He squeezed his son’s hand, just a bit too hard. Ruben smiled, tilted his face toward his father’s happiness.

  The vehicle navigating into the parking lot was a white pickup truck: enormous tires, mud spattered around the wheel wells. In the driver’s seat, a big man with a thick beard and aviator shades; riding shotgun, a short woman with round sunglasses; a little girl sandwiched between them.

  “You ready?”

  Ruben nodded. “Ready.”

  This was mid-November. California in the autumn, seventy degrees and bright and blue, right at the beginning of it all. Ruben Shenk was fourteen years old. A freshman in high school—the same as Wesley Keener.

  2.

  “All right, man,” said Richard. Before sitting down, he emptied his pockets—thick black wallet and chunky flip phone and the keys to his truck—and tossed it all onto Jay’s conference table. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Jesus, Rich,” said Beth. She was still over at the side table, where Shenk had set up the doughnuts and coffee, pouring a cup for herself and one for him. “Maybe wait a second?”

  “What for?”

  Richard sat back and crossed his heavy arms over his chest and looked coolly at Jay, as closed off and unyielding as a sealed tomb. His aviators were pushed up over his brow. His hair was thick and dark, and he wore a longish and unkempt beard. “We’re here. Let’s do it.”

  “Well,” said Shenk, and took a breath. How does one start? One starts with gentle words of welcome, with expressions of condolence and sensitive inquiries about the current condition of the afflicted family member. Delicately asking if there had been any change.

  You moved from there to the outlines of a plan, a process, but only in general—hey, here’s how these things usually work—until slowly but surely you downshifted into the particulars of this case. But Wesley’s father was not going to sit still for all that. He sat there glaring, nostrils flaring slightly, waiting to be impressed.