“Ha.” Anthony walked around the examining table, giving Judy a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for taking her, Judy. You’re the best aunt-to-be ever.”
“I so am!” Judy grinned, and Anthony left the room, closing the door behind him.
Mary heaved another sigh. “I guess I should go home.”
“You really should.”
“I hate leaving you and Bennie in the lurch.”
“You’re not.” Judy waved her off. “We have more than enough lawyers on the case. If anything, we have too many.”
“But we have work to do onLondon Technologies, with John gone.”
“We’re not going to get it done today, and I already have a plan. The case is in the discovery phase now, so I’ll team up with Anne, read the file, and review interrogatories and documents. I’ll get up to speed, and she and I will take the depositions.”
“But that’s so much. What do I do? I want to help.”
“You can, by defending the depositions. That will be easier. You don’t even have to know the file.”
“That’s too easy,” Mary said, feeling a wave of guilt. Defending depositions was much easier than taking them, since the objections were the same in every deposition, regardless of the subject matter of the case. The gist was to make sure the client didn’t volunteer information or say something stupid.
“No, it’s fine. Plus if you’re defending the dep, the witness will have to come to us, so you don’t have to travel. All you have to do is sit on your butt in the conference room. It’s the perfect division of labor.”
Mary knew it made sense, even though it was the lighter load. She had a baby and she was thinking for two. “Okay, Anne said there was a dep to defend on Monday. I can do that.”
“It may be too soon for you.”
“No, I’m fine. We’ll meet with Anne and she’ll get us up to speed on the big picture. Meanwhile, I’ll email her and get any passwords to the file, so I can read it at home today. I’m not that busy, I was already cutting back because of the baby.”
“Okay, now, let me help you off the table.” Judy took Mary’s arm, and Mary slid off the white sheet to reveal her hospital gown, which was open in the back.
“Don’t look at my butt.”
“I’ve seen your butt.”
“Not lately. My stretch marks look like a bear attack.”
“Hush. You need help getting dressed?”
“No thanks.” Mary smiled, touched again by her friend’s thoughtfulness. Judy may have looked wacky to the outside world, with her magenta hair and fashion-challenged outfits, but she was one of the most reliable and levelheaded people Mary had ever known.
“Okay, I’ll meet you in the waiting room.” Judy let herself out of the examining room, and Mary padded into the adjacent bathroom, where she dressed avoiding the mirror, her enemy for the past seven months. Whoever said pregnant peopleglowedneeded glasses. Pregnant peoplesweated. Even in March.
She picked up her purse and left the examining room, trundling down the hallway and taking a left toward the billing and reception area, when she heard a hubbub coming from the reception area. She went through the glass door, only to be greeted by a reception room full of bewildered patients, a nervous Judy, and most of South Philly, in the form of Mary’s mother, father, El Virus, and The Tonys, who surged forward as a vaguely hysterical group when they spotted Mary.
“Pop? Mom?” Mary recoiled, horrified. “How did you know I was here?”
“HONEY, YOU AWRIGHT? ANT’N’Y TOLD HIS NEIGHBOR HE WAS GONNA MEET YOU AT THE DOCTOR AND SHE CALLED CAMARR MILLIE WHO KNOWS COUSIN TOOTIE WITH THE EYE SO HE…”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Day turned to night at home, and Mary sat in her favorite chair by the window, which was called a chair-and-a-half since it was wider than normal. She and Anthony used to cuddle in it on Saturday nights and watch Netflix together, but now that she was pregnant, she needed the entire chair to herself. On her left was a box of saltines and on her right was a bag of popcorn, as if she had traded in her husband for carbohydrates. She had her feet up on the ottoman and her laptop open on her lap, though she had to type around her belly and her navel kept hitting the space bar.
She found her gaze wandering outside the window, watching her neighbors giving their dogs a last walk or coming home from restaurants or the movies. Her and Anthony’s townhouse was in the Rittenhouse section of the city, a three-story brick colonial that was nevertheless a rowhome, although in a higher-rent district than South Philly. It had been their neighbors two doors down, the McIllhenys, who had spilled the beans about Mary’s emergency visit to Dr. Foster, and it had taken Mary hours to persuade her parents that she and the baby were fine, so that they’d finally gone home.
She glanced at her laptop, trying to focus. She was supposedto be reading theLondon Technologiespleadings, but antitrust was one of the most technical, business-oriented areas of the law. She felt distracted by her worries about the baby, the lawsuit against her and the others, and John’s departure. She hated that everything was exploding right now, when she should have been easing into the baby’s arrival. She’d planned her caseload so carefully, scaling back the active files and not taking any new clients, but that had gone by the wayside. Life wasn’t going well if contractions would be a relief.
Mary kept her eyes on the laptop screen and her worries to herself, especially about the pregnancy, because she didn’t want to get Anthony started all over again. He had lectured her at lunch and again at dinner about trying to take it easy at work. He sat on the couch on his laptop, working on his book and ignoring the television, which was playing the new season ofThe Crown,their latest binge-watch. She didn’t know when Netflix had become the background music to their marriage, but there were worse things.
