And Judge Margot Burr-Nadir is not a child.
*
Then one day she is in Texas, like a tall tale, a twist you never saw coming.
It is the Year of the Rabbit, another collection of Q1s through Q4s, days to work and bills to pay. Late April specifically. The days in Austin have just started to get Texas hot. Armpit weather. Ninety-eight in the shade.
There is a rental car driving into the city from the airport. A blue Ford going fifty-five in the far-right lane. Margot is in the passenger seat. Remy is driving. Hadrian, twelve now impossibly, with a size nine shoe, sits in back. They are headed to visit Story, now twenty-two （also impossible）， an adult by any measure. She moved to Austin two years back for law school, though it may be she has dropped out. Margot isn’t clear. A few weeks ago, phone calls became text messages and then text messages became Facebook posts, and since then communications have mostly ceased.
It is still the early days of the wave. In Wisconsin, Brad Carpenter is already dead. As are Todd Billings and Tim O’Malley, plus the girls at the Wisconsin border. There are clusters in Oregon and Alabama, but no clear sense yet that larger events are afoot.
In back, young Hadrian listens to an audiobook on wireless headphones. Harry Potter, maybe? Remy isn’t sure. He always means to police the device better than he does.
“She knows we’re coming, right?” he asks as he scans the road signs.
“She should,” says Margot. “We planned this trip over Christmas. And I left a bunch of messages.”
Remy nods. He likes to think that he and Story have a good relationship, but the reality is who knows? She was always close to her dad, and Remy is the extra wheel, though he tries to be straight with her, a shoulder to lean on, an impartial ear in times of struggle. He looks back on that period of his life—Hadrian’s first five years, a new marriage, trying to launch a writing career—as a blur. A triage of constant crises, bob and weave. In the end, he thinks what most parents think.
I did the best I could.
In the passenger seat, Margot is reading evidentiary briefs on a bank robbery case. In Flatbush not too long ago, a man made a startling discovery. Anything written in the juice of a lemon is invisible to the naked eye. If this so-called invisible ink could make words disappear, the defendant thought, what else could it vanish? Three days later the man walked into a bank with lemon juice smeared all over his face. He smiled at the security cameras. He felt so confident his face was invisible that he drove across town and robbed a second bank. Later, when the police arrested him using CCTV footage of his face, he cried out in confusion and misery, “But I wore the juice!”
Oh, people, thinks Margot. We know so little and talk so much. Cooks and Drinkers alike. We animals called human beings, who move through life with such conviction, such sureness. So many opinions. Such confidence that our beliefs and ideas are right. So certain are we that the decisions we are making are clear and reasoned that we reject all evidence to the contrary. The Lemon Juice Bandit was the victim of his brain. We are all victims of our brains. They tell us to do things and we do them. They tell us to believe things and we believe them. They hide our blind spots from us. All the while we believe we are making choices. This is the best trick our brains play on us. They tell us we are rational, decision-making machines, when really we are obeying machines, hardwired by DNA.
Margot’s phone rings. She checks the number. Unlisted. Normally she wouldn’t answer, but it could be Story.
“Judge Nadir.”
Remy doesn’t hear what’s said on the other line, but suddenly Margot goes pale.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
She doesn’t respond, just chews her bottom lip, mind racing. Because what the voice on the other end of the phone said was— “Please hold for the President of the United States.”
Outside, the landscape wears its summer coat. Spanish moss on the trees, rain-green grass. They pass new subdivisions on Riverside, the city growing like a weed, sprawling farther and farther from its center. Margot sits speechless in the passenger seat.
“Judge Nadir.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is this a bad time?”
“No, sir. Not at all.”
“You sound like you’re on the move.”
“I’m in Texas, sir.”
“From Texas?”
“No, sir. I’m from Michigan originally. My daughter’s in law school here.”
“Okay, good. Good. Well, I’ll make it quick. Hasn’t been announced yet, but Judge Baker’s gonna retire.”