Barring Complications Read online

  “I don’t really think that’s the best use of her time.”

  “I don’t suppose it would matter if I told you it was her suggestion. She and Wallace were up all night working on it. She didn’t want to step on his toes.”

  “My clerk is working on projects for you now? Fantastic.”

  “Actually, my dear, I think you’ll agree it’s really a project for you.”

  Victoria swallowed. “Point taken. And what do you propose I do with the results from this little foray into judicial private lives past? We’re not exactly in the business of leaking memos to the press.”

  “It’s just for you, Victoria. Armed with facts and precedent, you’ll know how to respond if you find yourself cornered by some over-ambitious cub reporter.”

  “You mean, besides ‘piss off’?”

  “That language is hardly becoming for a beautiful young woman like you.”

  “Overdue for your ophthalmologist appointment again, Alistair?”

  “Never. She’s this young Japanese beauty who always gives me a cookie. My appointments with her are more regular than …well, you don’t need to know about that.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “Thanks for sparing me your toilet humor.”

  “Victoria, I’m serious about this. There is absolutely no basis for these calls that you recuse yourself, apart from stirring up media controversy. I want you to read this memo, decide on two or three talking points, and be done with it. I assume you’ll want to hear the case in December. Ease the swing vote toward gay marriage gradually, before we hit him with oral arguments. You need to focus on how you want to author our decision for Samuels so that it contains the appropriate historical weight and is also something Jamison would be willing to sign his name to. Michelle, Jason, and I have talked, and we all agree you’re the one to write it.”

  The three other liberal justices on the court blithely stepping aside so that the youngest member of the court could author the decision, majority or minority, smacked of tokenism. She knew the public would view it that way as well. Additionally, if she penned the landmark decision that called for the United States government to recognize the marriage rights of gay couples, the fantastically ornate closet which had protected her sexual orientation for decades would be stripped away as easily as Lindsay Lohan’s dignity.

  Victoria leaned back in her chair and removed a piece of lint from her skirt. “Why don’t we just see how arguments go, and discuss authorship afterwards?”

  “Scared?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “Ah, the mantra of gay people everywhere.”

  She opened her mouth for an attempt at a witty response, but was interrupted by Sunmin and Wallace bearing, among other cartons, a carryout box filled with Singapore rice noodles that had her name on it. As the two young clerks unpacked lunch, Alistair peered at Victoria over his steepled fingers. If she couldn’t bear his scrutiny, she stood no chance with the reporters who would be dogging her steps in the coming months. She smiled, reached for her lunch, and turned to ask Wallace how he was settling in.

  Later, when lunch was over and she was alone, she cracked open her fortune cookie and was confronted with the following words: “Do not let your past get in the way of your future.”

  Hardly a fortune. Since when did it become convention that those tiny slips of paper instructed, rather than predicted? She moved to drop the fortune into her trash, but in a moment of uncharacteristic superstition found herself tucking it inside her top desk drawer instead.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Kellen O’Neil’s secretary waved Victoria through the anteroom to the chief justice’s chambers. She halted in front of his door. During her brief time on the court, she had only entered his office once, and that was an unannounced visit to invite him to a dinner party. He had politely declined the offer, citing dinner reservations with his family. She suspected his actual reservations were of a different nature.

  Kellen had summoned her with a handwritten note delivered by one of his clerks, requesting that she visit him in his chambers before she left for the day. It was a quirk of his. He used e-mail, and wrote and edited decisions on a desktop computer, but he still believed all communication between the justices’ chambers should happen via paper memo rather than electronically. In the moments when she felt affection for the chief justice, Victoria found this archaic attitude charming. Today, she shook her head at the waste of paper and his clerk’s time.

  She raised her hand to knock, but stopped when she heard the sound of her own voice coming from within. She turned her ear toward to the door to listen.

  “I, Victoria Jane Willoughby, do solemnly affirm that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.”

  Shaking off her surprise, she knocked and heard a terse “Enter!”

  “Victoria,” he said when she entered.

  “Kellen. You wanted to see me?”

  “Do you know that swearing-in ceremonies are one of my favorite parts of this job?” He turned away from the archival video and met her eyes.

  Victoria raised her eyebrows. She rarely associated sentiment with the conservative hard-liner. “Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “It’s one of the few moments the court feels as divorced from politics as the Constitution dictates we be.”

  Victoria was inclined to agree. Plus, she was a sucker for pomp and tradition. She smiled at him. “Common ground, at last.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Unsure where he was going with this, Victoria claimed a leather-covered chair opposite him and waited.

  He sighed. “Victoria. You and I may have completely different approaches to constitutional interpretation, but there are a great many things on which we agree. For example, I’m confident we both feel strongly that a justice recusing herself from a civil rights case simply because she shares identity markers with the minority group in question sets a dangerous precedent.”

  She inclined her head at him, grateful for his support.

  “Good then. I would be loathe to see unnecessary distractions influence our upcoming session.”

  “Understood.”

  He shifted in his seat, and his tone grew somber. “Victoria, I hope you appreciate that these votes—on the judicial level anyway—are never personal.”

  She stared at him, dumbfounded.

  He removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes and sighed. Clearly he had more to say, but in that moment she couldn’t stomach hearing it.

  She rose from her chair and squared her shoulders. “Chief Justice O’Neil,” she said tersely. Then she turned and exited without waiting for a reply.

  * * *

  At home in her kitchen that evening, Victoria sliced zucchini with such force that tiny disks of it were flying off the cutting board. Not personal? Of course it was personal, and anyone who said otherwise was either horribly naïve or a lying liar who lies a lot.

  What Kellen had meant, of course, was that he wouldn’t be personally affected by the vote. What he had meant was that she shouldn’t be personally offended by his vote. What he had meant was that he hoped she wouldn’t think he was a jerk.

  Ryan Jamison could vote against gay marriage, and she wouldn’t really think he was a jerk. Truth be told, she couldn’t fathom how he had been nominated and confirmed for his current position, because he struck her as mind-numbingly wooden and entirely daft. He blindly voted as though throwing darts and authored almost no opinions.

  Kellen was a different story. Granted, he was a conservative and he and Victoria disagreed vehemently on a host of issues. But Kellen O’Neil was a charismatic leader with a keen mind for the nuances of the law and the integrity to interpret the constitution consistently. She knew she shoul
dn’t have expected his support, but having his negative vote thrown in her face so casually was not just infuriating. It was personally hurtful.

  God, she had to find a way to stop feeling so passionately about this case. It was very unlike her. She was typically so detached when it came to questions of the law, so measured and reasoned. She was known for it, actually—her reputation was that of a reserved jurist with deep respect for the constitution. But she was truly struggling to find that emotional distance on this issue.

  Marriage was personal. She wondered how Thurgood Marshall would have felt voting on Loving v. Virginia. At least that particular case had been decided unanimously. At least when Marshall joined the court shortly after arguments were heard in Loving, he was surrounded by colleagues who voted in favor of interracial marriage.

  Remembering Kellen telling her that he didn’t want distractions such as this recusal nonsense to affect her made her think of the torture scene in The Princess Bride, in which Wesley asked the albino, “Why bother curing me?” and the albino responded, “Well, the Prince and Count always insist on everyone being healthy before they’re broken.” She felt like the Chief had set her up by professionally supporting her on the recusal issue before suggesting in an offhand way that he might vote to take away her marriage rights, but it wasn’t personal.

  Torture. That’s what it would feel like to have her colleagues—especially O’Neil, whom she respected—cast votes that would treat her as less than, as a second class citizen, as other.

  And the thing was, on one level—perhaps on the most important level—it didn’t matter one iota how this case might affect her personally. It was clear to her, as it had been to a host of district and appellate judges, that the Constitution, its amendments, and a number of federal statutes dictated that the United States government must recognize gay marriages. She would know this even if she were straight.

  She was trying to calm down. Lobbyists and legislators had the luxury of envisioning the world as they thought it should be, and fighting for that world. Judges, on the other hand, were supposed to apply the law as it had been written. Of course, there was a lacuna the size of Texas in areas the law didn’t specifically cover. And there was no way to begin to fill in the gaps in American law without the personal coming into play. And this particular issue was as personal as it got for Victoria. This was her life! Well, okay, not her life exactly, since she wasn’t married, or partnered—but she could be. Millions were.

  She was bleeding.

  Damn. She stared at the blood gushing from her thumb, which was decidedly not the zucchini she’d meant to be slicing.

  She shouldn’t have gone to the cutting board angry.

  She elevated her hand and wrapped layer upon layer of paper towels around her hemorrhaging thumb. A wave of dizziness washed over her and she swayed a bit.

  Stitches, she thought, and stumbled toward the phone to call a cab.

  Chapter Three

  While the nurse snipped the thread of the last suture on Victoria’s thumb, the doctor removed her latex gloves. “There you go, Justice Willoughby,” she said. “Five stitches. That was quite a cut you gave yourself.”

  Victoria passed her hand over her eyes, trying to wipe away the embarrassment and hide herself from the curious stare. An inquisitive health care provider was the last thing she needed right now.

  The blonde doctor nodded at the nurse, who quickly departed. “I’m going to prescribe you some heavy-duty Ibuprofen to keep the swelling near the stitches at bay.” She scribbled on her prescription pad. “Do you want Vicodin for the pain?”

  Victoria shook her head. “I’ll manage, thanks.”

  After tearing off the top piece of paper and handing it over, the doctor took off her eyeglasses and studied Victoria. “I’m off now. Would you like a ride home?”

  Through the pain clouding Victoria’s faculties, she couldn’t tell if the attractive woman in the pale blue scrubs was coming on to her. She thought briefly about her brother’s suggestion that if the media was going to scrutinize her love life, she should actually get one—one worthy of the column inches that would be dedicated to it. She glanced briefly at the doctor’s left ring finger and noted an etched platinum band. In a clumsy attempt to cover her silence and disappointment, she coughed a bit. “I can call a cab, Doctor Lukin. But thanks for your concern.”

  The doctor looked at her quizzically, then shrugged and rose from her swivel chair. “Here’s my card, then, in case you need anything.”

  Victoria stood and the two women shook hands.

  “Give ‘em hell, Madam Justice.” Doctor Lukin patted her on the shoulder and left her alone with a bandaged left hand and scattered thoughts.

  Victoria gathered her belongings and proceeded down the overly air-conditioned hallway of George Washington Hospital toward the pharmacy.

  Twenty minutes later, prescription in hand, she headed toward the exit. As she emerged from the sliding doors separating the antiseptic air of GW from the humid air of DC, she fumbled in her purse, searching for her cell to call a cab. If her eyes hadn’t been focused on the many interior pockets of her bag, she might have had more warning.

  “Ms. Willoughby, what happened to your hand?”

  “Justice Willoughby, can you confirm reports that you were with another woman when you injured yourself?”

  “Over here, Justice Willoughby!” That one came from a reporter who had circled behind her, cutting off her retreat back into the hospital. “There’s a rumor that you are pushing for the gay marriage case to appear late in the Court’s upcoming session. Would you care to comment on your reasoning?”

  Startled, she raised her eyes just as a camera flashed. By the time she could blink away the aftermath, she was surrounded. She froze, feeling like a small animal stranded between a cliff and a hungry mountain lion.

  As reporters simultaneously tossed out questions about her relationship status, a black BMW pulled through the sea of cameras and honked, scattering the crowd. The passenger-side window lowered, and Victoria could hear Dr. Lukin’s voice.

  “You sure you don’t want that ride?”

  Victoria bent down and threw her a grateful smile before pulling open the door and sliding into the sanctuary of leather-covered seats, a camel-colored dashboard, and Ella Fitzgerald playing through an iPod adapter. She smiled at the doctor’s taste in music; “It’s Only a Paper Moon” had always been one of her favorites. She leaned back against the seat and sighed.

  “I should have been clearer when I asked earlier. I thought you knew.”

  “No, when the cab dropped me off on my way in, it was quiet.” Victoria rubbed her eyes with her good hand.

  “Is your life always this glamorous?” Dr. Lukin asked.

  “Oh, you have no idea. Between juggling interviews with Vanity Fair and Vogue, I rarely get a moment to iron my robe and powder my wig.”

  “Extenuating circumstances, then?”

  “You might say that, Dr. Lukin.”

  “Please, call me Sonya.”

  “Thanks, Sonya. I don’t usually get in cars with strange women.”

  “We just met and you’re already calling me strange? You haven’t even heard my story about the bike rack and the moose.”

  Victoria laughed and turned in her seat to study her driver. The doctor was about her age, or perhaps a little older—late 40s, early 50s maybe. Her blonde hair was cut into a stylish wedge, long silver earrings hung from her earlobes, and she had slight smile lines around her mouth. The blue scrubs she wore were wrinkled and her eyes looked tired. “Long day?” Victoria asked.

  “Par for the course, really. Although it’s not every day I play white knight to one of the great legal scholars of our time. Twice.” Sonya tossed a grin over to her passenger before returning her eyes to the road. “Where to, Miss Daisy?”

  “Donaldson Run, please, if it’s not too far out of your way.”

  “No problem.” After a beat of silence, Sonya continued. “When will
you all announce the docket?”

  Victoria was surprised by her forthrightness. Most people—at least those without cameras and microphones—tended to dance around any work-related question they wanted to ask her. She found Sonya’s directness refreshing. “We’ll release it by the end of the week, I imagine.”

  The car turned onto the ramp for the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge while Ella and Billie crooned together on “East of the Sun.” Victoria glanced over her driver’s shoulder at the Arlington Memorial Bridge, resplendent in the soft evening lighting.

  “That’s my favorite bridge in the city,” she said, gesturing.

  “Really? Mine too. Gorgeous detail, stunning lighting. Funny thing about bridges, they’re far more attractive when you’re looking at them than when you’re using them.”

  Victoria murmured her agreement, and as they made their way down the George Washington parkway, they engaged in a casual discussion about the aesthetic merits of the various structures spanning the cold waters of the Potomac.

  When Sonya exited Old Dominion Road onto Upton, Victoria began pointing out the necessary turns to bring them to her house. She was smiling at a middle-aged man and woman walking down the street holding hands when Sonya asked, “What’s it like, the life of a Supreme Court justice?”

  “I don’t imagine it’s too different from anyone else who works in the beltway. I go to work and I usually bring it home with me. I take vacations. I exercise. I spend time with my family.”

  Sonya’s eyebrows lifted. “Sorry, but I can’t let that last one slide. Your family?”

  Laughing, Victoria answered, “My brother’s family.”

  “No time for a family of your own?”

  Victoria shrugged. “Things just never worked out that way. I suppose time was a factor.”

  “It must be hard. Is it worth it?”

  Without hesitation, she responded, “Absolutely.”

  “Ah, a fellow workaholic. You know, we keep trying to schedule our support group meetings, but something always comes up at the office—or the hospital, or the Court—and we keep postponing. Maybe one of these days…”