“Don’t speak unless you have something to say,” she used to say to me during our talks when she tucked me in. “But when you do choose to speak, say what you mean, mean what you say, and be ready to support your points. If you can’t support your point of view, then it wasn’t much of a point of view to begin with.”
It’s early, just a little past five. I’m not running in the morning these days, no Five at Five for now, as I am now doing nightly runs to Wicker Park. So I go for a long walk, come home, shower, post an essay on my blog, Simon Says, about a new case from the Wisconsin Supreme Court on the good-faith exception to the warrant requirement, and make it into my office at eight.
My mother would have loved having a blog that allowed her to sound off on all matters legal for anyone interested. She had her specialties in the law like any professor, but she would read decisions on any subject matter. She’d devour every opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court on any topic and discuss it over dinner. She’d summarize the facts, argue both sides, the pros and the cons, and then announce to us the correct outcome—which, as the law proceeded through the eighties, usually differed from the one reach by the Rehnquist Court.
Around nine-thirty, I start my walk along the promenade toward the Chicago Title & Trust Building. Yes, every morning when I come here, it makes me think of my father and the law firm he had here. And yes, that brings back many an unpleasant memory. And yes, a shrink might say it’s unhealthy for me to be coming here every day. Then again, the day the St. Louis police tried to ask Dr. McMorrow about a conversation we had the morning after my father’s murder was the day that I stopped talking to shrinks. It tends to chill the candor needed for a good therapist/patient conversation.
I grab a Starbucks and take a seat in the lobby of the building. I power up my phone and text her:
Top of the mornin’ to yah, lassie.
She doesn’t respond. I try again:
Good morning, my queen.
Still nothing. Not even bubbles. No indication she even received it.
Sounds like you’re otherwise occupied. Will try you tonight my love.
I kill the phone and remove the SIM card. That was a waste. At least it was a nice morning for a walk.
? ? ?
I don’t obsess about Mitchell Kitchens. I just think about him sometimes.
Mitchell could pick up a hundred pounds in his hands and toss it fifteen feet. I know that because I weighed a hundred pounds my freshman year, and he used to toss me fifteen feet. His record was eighteen feet, three inches.
The gym where the wrestlers worked out was right by the front entrance of the school, where the bus dropped us off. Mitchell would call out to me—“Mini-Me,” that is—and I quickly learned that if I didn’t respond, he’d walk over and grab me, anyway.
Into the wrestlers’ gym, where the mats were laid out, red tape laid down for the starting point and blue tape to mark Mitchell’s personal best. One hand on my belt and one gripping my shirt, Mitchell would toss me through the air and I landed hard on the mats. His buddies would laugh and cheer and measure the distance. Sometimes, if he was unhappy with his first toss, he’d make me come back so he could toss me again.
“You don’t mind, do you, Mini-Me?” he used to say, patting me so hard on the back that I almost fell over. I remember that part, though; the guy had the IQ of a fire hydrant, but he always made sure I told him it was okay, so he could use that as a defense, if need be. He said he didn’t mind. He liked it. We were just having fun.
I did mind, of course. It was humiliating. And sometimes it hurt. But I got pretty good at breaking my landing, protecting my face when I hit the mat, fingers balled into fists so I didn’t break any of them.
I always wondered, Why me? What did I ever do to the guy? Sure, I was a diminutive, nerdy freshman. I was a walking cliché for a bully’s target. But I wasn’t the only one.
Looking back, sure, it’s not hard to see. We had math together. I was in geometry, which was basically an honors class for a freshman, and he was taking it as a senior. I was getting A’s and he could barely pass.
If our before-school time together wasn’t fun enough, he’d find me at lunch, too. He’d walk over to my table in the lunchroom and pat me on the head. I had a bottle of Gatorade in my lunch every day. My mother was trying to put weight on me. “You don’t mind, do you, Mini-Me?” he’d say to me and swipe the Gatorade off the table. One day, to compensate for this daily interaction, I brought a second bottle to keep for myself, but he swiped up that one, too. “Must be my birthday,” he said. The other kids at my table, mostly freshman like me, just looked away. Nobody ever said anything to me. They knew that they’d do the same thing in my shoes—nothing.