Mickey - 20. Chapter 20

“Do you feel ready?” his mom asked as he started to put on his coat.

Mickey shrugged. “I guess I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be. I just don’t know if I’m more nervous about the interviews or going out into this weather,” he said, glancing out the window at a snow drift slowly piling up against the wall of their one car garage. He was almost afraid that the rickety old structure might tumble down if the white stuff piled up high enough.

“Well, whatever it is, I’m sure that you’ll do great,” she said as she put a scarf around his neck, something she liked to do during winter when he was a little boy. “And I’m sure that Drew has already given you a pep talk,” she added.

“Yeah, it was really good. He knows how to motivate,” Mickey replied, looking down as he pulled the other end of the scarf tightly around his neck and buttoned up his coat.

He sighed. “The undergraduates don’t get this week off to look for jobs like the law school students do. He tried to get people to take notes for him, but there were two exams that couldn’t be missed so he was stuck. It kind of s…’ he was going to say ‘sucks’ but then thought of his mom.

Reaching behind him, she grabbed two breakfast bars from the cupboard. “He asked me to get these for you in case you got hungry,” she said as she slipped them in the broad pocket of the coat.

“Oh, thanks! That may be my lunch today,” he said as he patted the slight bulge in the pocket. “Lunch is a bit too intimate for a first interview, I think, so I’ve tried to schedule around it.”

“Too bad you had to plan these so far in advance. All the local schools are closed, but since you came so far I suppose everyone wants to follow through anyway.”

“Yeah, I guess it makes sense. We’ve only got this one week to make it work, so there’s no way to make a back-up plan with people traveling so far. And you can’t do this by Skype, it’s got to be … face-to-face.”

She noticed his pause, but didn’t acknowledge it. “All I can say is that everyone had better show up! You’ve come a long way to do all this.”

Smiling, Mickey replied. “Well, they’re the ones offering the jobs, so I’ll need to be in a forgiving mood.”

He then cleared his throat.

“Mom, do you think this will matter at all?” he asked, not looking directly at her.

She knew what he meant. “It shouldn’t, they’re all adults. And it’s not as if they don’t know what to expect, what with so much about you being in the press and on TV last year. But people can be…weak, especially when they see something different,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Whatever they think, you’re Mickey and you’re terrific just as you are,” she declared.

“Thanks, mom,” he said, his voice barely audible.

With the wind howling outside, he went through an almost military review of his clothing, from pulling on his gloves extra tight to drawing down the ear covers on his furry hat before checking for his wallet, and then feeling for the hard phone case in his breast pocket.

“How do I look?” had asked her. “Last chance.”

Pulling his scarf just a bit tighter, she got on her tip toes and kissed him on the cheek. “Never better,” she replied.

                                    ***

“We work hard and play hard here,” the partner at Smith-Knight told him. “With your credentials and recommendations, I can’t help but think that you would thrive at our firm.” It was late in the afternoon and the firm had collected all the various interviewers together for a final meeting.

“I do enjoy the law and like the challenges,” Mickey responded. “But one question that I wanted to ask…um… how do you pursue a work-life balance here?” I know that there’s lots to do and things like deadlines, filings, all that kind of stuff. But how does the firm deal with these lifestyle issues?” Mickey was careful in his interviews to avoid this kind of question until later in the sessions and focus more on the legal work as his first concerns. But he was anxious to jump to the subject once someone from the firm had even remotely brought up the issue.

A couple of the junior associates on the other side of the table looked knowingly at each other.

“That balance is important, of course. And our company policy, written and memorialized in our firm manual, is to support the staff so that all can have a healthy life outside of work hours,” he answered.

With its acres of faux-classical paneling, dark green carpets and coffered ceilings, Mickey thought that the office décor looked like a set for a movie about old-fashioned corporate lawyers who did nothing but work long hours for their clients and smoke cigars. And, unique even amongst the corporate firms he was talking to, it looked like all the guys in the firm wore a suit and all the women wore dresses, no pants. Probably every day.

“We benchmark ourselves to make sure that we’re always equal to or better than our peer firms in terms of salaries and amenities and policies,” the Human Resources person added pertly. “We’d be happy to share our employee manual with you. It’s all there in black and white.”

“All true,” the partner added, “and we’re very proud of our policies and firm culture. But the old-timers like me and some of the senior associates know that, at the end of the day, we all have to pay our dues first,” he continued, nodding at the mostly young attorneys arrayed around him at the long, traditional carved oak conference table. They all nodded back.

One of the associates, a man who to Mickey seemed particularly gung-ho about the firm, followed up. “My wife and I have our first kid on the way, so that will change things a bit, but the firm is very supportive. The manual has a lot of great programs in it. But I really love this work. I don’t want having a family to change things too much so that I can’t do an excellent job for our clients.”

Another of the young associates then added, “I only took two weeks off for maternity leave and worked up to three days before delivering my daughter. It was important to me and the clients that work got done in a timely and effective way and I was glad to do it.”

Mickey stared at her blankly. ‘Did she really say that?’ he asked himself.

Beyond her and the rest of the row of associates sitting at the edge of the table, he could see the ice piled up on Lake Erie, far below the 35th floor conference room window where they were protected by the floor to ceiling windows. Even with a dry warm breeze coming from the ceiling vent, the windows seemed to radiate the arctic cold outside.

“But we know how to have fun, too,” one of the fifth-year associates, who looked like a former jock but with a conspicuous paunch, said. Elbowing the colleague next to him, he said, “when we win a big case, or have something else to celebrate, we head down to one of the downtown bars…”

“...and get rip-roaring’ drunk!” the other associate continued, practically falling out of his upholstered leather chair as they all laughed together, slapping each other on the shoulder. Mickey just smiled politely.

“I’ve got all the faith in the world in you, young man,” the partner proclaimed after the laughter had died down. “Like I said, you’re a great package. And just so you know,” he started, like he just remembered something he was supposed to say, “we are very supportive of gay people here. It’s part of our diversity initiative, which is also in the manual.”

“And they’ve been some of our hardest workers,” he added. “Like all of our most dedicated attorneys, I know that I can often reach them here at the office on most any weekend.

Mickey played along during the interviews, not betraying any feelings or reactions. Coming down on the elevator, leaving behind the sweeping lake views, he just stared straight ahead until he pushed his way through the large revolving door and was outside on the windswept plaza in the middle of January. The cold wind blowing in from the lake stung his scars, making half his face feel stiff and hard.

His eyes were tearing up, but he told himself it was because of the icy gusts blasting his face.

Moving over to the side of the building, in an area that looked protected from the gale, he called Drew back in Connecticut.

“Hi” he said into the phone.

“Hey,” Drew, responded “Where are you?”

“On a freezing alley, next to yet another bland corporate office building. Brrrr…” he said into the speaker. “It’s as cold as some of the people’s hearts in there”

Drew could almost hear the teeth chattering and didn’t let him finish.

“I think I know where you’re going with this, Mickey, but before we talk anymore, I want you in someplace warm, OK? Find a café, or Starbucks or something like that, any place that you can get out of that weather, alright?”

“I’m not sure where one is, I don’t know downtown all that well, and my fingers are getting too cold to use my phone.”

“What’s your address?” Drew quickly asked.

Mickey looked over at the granite monument sign in the middle of the deserted plaza and read off the address. A snow drift lapped at the bottom of the numbers and he need to squint to read them before he could relay the three digits and street name to Drew.

“OK, one sec.” Drew answered.

Micky had barely raised his hand to blow on his fingers when he heard, “Go toward Euclid Avenue and then turn right, it looks like it’s just two block away. It’s a fancy food store in an old bank lobby; they should have a coffee and dessert area. Call me when you get there. OK?’

“Thanks, babe,” Mickey said into the phone before sniffling and then pressing the ‘End Call’ button with the knuckle of his rapidly freezing index finger. After securing the scarf around his head and putting his gloves back on he set off across the urban tundra.

                                    ***

“They’re all the same. Each one is very sociable and smiley, and they all seem very interested. Most have already asked me for a call-back interview to meet more people on their teams, have a chat with HR, all that stuff,” he said.

Sitting at a tiny round café table with a marble top, he stirred his hot chocolate as he spoke. Since entering, he had only removed his scarf, his body still freezing from having to face the wind on his short walk over.

“That all sounds positive, at least on the surface. But…you sound hesitant. Something’s not quite right…”

Mickey spoke softly into the phone that was pressed tightly to his ear, both trying to reign in his emotions and keep his voice from carrying to the other tables in the small café setting. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, it was packed with fellow refugees from the fierce weather and he was fortunate to have found even one open table. The clanging of cups and saucers and utensils added a soft stream of background noise.

“They all see me as a workhorse. And not just me – they all, well, at least a lot of them, seem to enjoy that role themselves.”

“I know that I can contribute and do more than my fair share and get the job done,” he said almost pleading. “But this job is not going to take over my life. We want to have kids and we want to grow up with those kids and take care of my mom, too. But these people…gosh, they really brag about how they spend all this time on work projects despite having families.”

He put down his spoon.

“And the gays don’t seem any different. They all know who I am, of course. But not even the gay partners seem to object or struggle with the system. At one place, it even sounded like gays were a favorite because many of them didn’t have families to conflict with the firm’s work demands.”

Drew could hear Mickey sniffling again. “Are you OK? he asked.

“I’m fine, Babe, thanks. It’s pretty cold outside, so it's nice to be warm in here,” he answered. Without thinking, he started to unbutton the thick grey, wool coat that Drew had given to him. It was a lucky find in a cache of Drew’s old clothes that he had outgrown in high school after he started lifting weights – but it fit Mickey perfectly.

“You’re sure?”

Mickey held off another sniffle. “Yeah, I’m OK. No worries.”

“Hey…” Drew started.

“It’s just kind of disappointing, that’s all. But I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything different. It’s a ‘dog-eat-dog world out there,’ as they say. There aren’t exceptions for anyone.”

“My dad, as hard as he worked, never believed that. Before my mom died, he always made things work with the family. And we can, too.” Drew answered.

“Thanks.” Mickey said, breaking into a slight smile. The hot chocolate was starting to warm him up.

“Your reputation precedes you, but maybe that’s not a good thing. All your recommendations are first rate, your grades are great, you’re one of the top students. They can’t help but see you as a billing machine to make money for them. That’s what my dad used to say about the employees of some of the law firms who worked for him. They really abused those young associates while thinking that they were being responsive and making my dad happy. Much of the time it was useless churn work that they nonetheless charged him for.”

“Are they all that way?” Mickey asked. “It’s too soon to work in-house for some company and not be at a law firm. I know that I need good training, and a law firm is the best place for that. But is it going to be like this for the next five or ten years?”

“Jeesh, Drew. I don’t think that I saw more than a half-dozen family pictures out of probably two dozen or so lawyer’s offices I was in, both partners and associates. Maybe a few more pictures with the associates, but almost all of the partner’s offices were stuffed with shots of them with politicians, billionaires and, believe it or not, celebrity chefs. Such…bullshit…” he said before sighing.

“This interview week is pretty stressful, so maybe that’s a big part of how you feel, Mickey. How many firms have you talked to, like, five, right?

“Yup, I’ve been at the top five firms in town, at least if you measure them by the number of lawyers employed. They are all world-wide companies with offices all over the place and recruit from class valedictorians and the Ivy League schools. I guess that what I’ve bought into, for better or worse…” he said, sighing again.

Drew waited for him to say something else, but nothing.

“Mickey?”

“Yeah?” for some reason, he sounded even more exhausted.

“Is there something else?”

“No, um…I don’t know…maybe I’m just being overly sensitive, but…I’m probably just imagining…umm…”

“What is it?” Drew asked, now letting Mickey back off.

“Ummm….for a couple of the firms, the tables were almost filled, often with six or eight people, but, um…there was usually an empty seat on my right-hand side.”

The line was quiet on the other end, then he heard a deep sigh.

“You know this better than me Mickey, but…that’s what some people are going to do. They don’t understand, or maybe they’re nervous or they think that it’s still physically painful and are being empathetic. Maybe that’s a test. If they aren’t sensitive enough to make you feel completely welcome, then that’s a sign of who they really are.

“I know Drew, I guess it’s not so easy for some people to look at me. I understand that, I guess that I shouldn’t blame them.

Drew spoke softly, belying the fact that his hand had formed into a fist.

“All you can do is ignore them for now, Mickey. Concentrate on the future, look forward to good stuff,” he replied.

“By the way, don’t you have just one more firm to see?” Drew asked. “Any chance that they might be different?

“Yeah, there’s one more, a smaller firm and I heard they do pretty good work. But I don’t really know much more than that about them except that Professor Hadid went to law school with one of the partners and suggested that I meet them. They’re probably a sweatshop just like every other place, so maybe I should just cancel it. At least these big corporate guys pay pretty well.”

“We’ve talked about that, Mickey. You don’t need to make a lot of money to do what we need to do. And if a prof who you like recommended them, well, they can’t be too bad.”

Mickey exhaled. “You know, I dreamt that I could have it both ways, a great job that paid a lot so that you wouldn’t need to work and could raise the kids, I could take care of Mom, everything would be cool,” he said as he reached into his pocket and felt for one of the breakfast bars.

“I only care that you enjoy your job and make enough for us to do OK? We don’t need more than that.”

Mickey sniffled again. “Well, I’m pretty sure that most these five will probably offer me a job. But, what the heck. I’ve already schedule the interview for tomorrow. So why not?”

“That’s the spirit!” Drew said, getting a smile from Mickey.

“By the way, thanks for the breakfast bars. Mom put a couple into my pocket before I left. They’re all the chocolate ones that I like”, he said as he started to remove the plastic wrapper.

“I thought that you might need a little energy boost, so I hope they help.”

“They do,” Mickey replied, looking at the picture of Drew on his phone.

After they had talked, Mickey looked around at his table and sighed as he surveyed all the accoutrements that he had shed and that now had to reassemble into his shell against the continuing snowstorm. He hadn’t even noticed that he had taken them all off in the course of his conversation with Drew. Coat, hat, gloves, scarf, sweater, and even his tie were strewn around the small table or lying on the empty chair on the opposite side.

But that could wait.

Pulling up his phone’s folder of personal photos, he started randomly going through the images. There was one of him and Drew at Thanksgiving, before Nate’s infamous pizza episode, a really nice one that he took of Drew overlooking the railing at the lake house, and Drew in Washington, outside their hotel looking toward the capital. Pictures inside and outdoors, through fall, winter, spring and summer.

Flicking his finger in the scroll mode, he randomly flew back to see older pictures. It stopped on a picture taken by Jill when he and Drew were ‘hiding out’ from the press in Andrew’s room. The room was crowded, but he and Drew were in the center, Drew sitting in a chair, and Mickey on the floor in front of him, legs crossed, leaning back into Drew’s knee.

Spreading his fingers apart, he enlarged Drew’s face until it filled the screen. The quality of the image was high, good enough to see the detail of his eyes. But if there was anything that another person would call a blemish, he didn’t notice it as the lingered over the image.

Glancing outside, he stole one more quick look at the picture before slipping the phone into his pocket, thinking about the cold trip back home.

                                    ***

The friendly receptionist ushered Mickey to the office of the senior litigator and he was invited to have a seat before the partner arrived. After the tough previous days, he had lowered his expectations to almost zero. Even though the receptionist didn’t seem to have the attitude that he smelled at some of the big corporate firms, he told himself that it was just a job interview and that it wouldn’t turn out to be any different than the others.

In spite of his attitude, he politely waved and smiled as she closed the door behind her and said, ‘good luck.’ It was the first time that anyone at a firm had said that to him all week.

Having been continually monitored and observed at the other firms, often by multiple associates or partners, it was nice to have some time alone in an office to just look around. And as he focused in he realized that it seemed like a different environment from what he had seen in all the previous law firms. Besides the sleek modern furniture and the subdued contemporary colors, the most striking difference were the kind of pictures that were mounted on the wall.

They were arranged in a neat 3x3 grid for a total of 9 images. The clear geometric way it was organized, emphasized with sleek modern metal frames, made it look like an Architect or designer had done it. But that wasn’t the most unusual thing.

Unlike the other firms where it was a parade of celebrities, fancy public dinners or political events, this was different. It was clearly nothing but family pictures. No pictures of people who paid bills or were potential marketing opportunities.

He wanted to get up and stare at them, study them, see who these people were. Being in someone’s private office he couldn’t quite get up the nerve to do it, yet he couldn’t help trying to get into this little private world. And there was one image in particular which engaged him.

It was two adult guys with three boys, all teenagers. The two guys, maybe parents, Mickey guessed (or hoped), but probably brothers, or in-laws, were nothing but smiles and had their hands on the boy’s shoulders. The boys looked happy, too, with their arms around each other’s shoulders and huge grins. The presence of Half Dome at Yosemite gave the picture an even more festive character, making it really feel like a special holiday shot.

There were other pictures, too, with the subjects ranging from babies to young adults to a shot of a grandparent-like couple, probably taken years ago, judging by the fashions, standing in front of the kind of simple suburban home popular in the local suburbs. In some he recognized people from the vacation picture, but in others there was no clue as to the connection. But he kept going back to that one image.

He was lost in thought, trying to imagine who these people were, and didn’t notice that the interviewer had entered the room until he was suddenly standing next to him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, “My youngest is having his first baby, so we’re giving them some furniture and I got waylaid with the crib delivery,” he said by way of apology as he laid a manila folder on his desk with the words ‘Mickey Deringer’ typed neatly onto the tab. “I’ve forgotten how long it takes to prepare for a baby,” he continued.

Shaking his head for a moment to get back to reality, Mickey turned and faced him.

“Oh, no worries,” Mickey quickly replied. Then, reaching out his hand, he said, “I’m Mickey Deringer.”

He was surprised by the moistness of his own palm, but the handshake was already launched and it was too late to wipe off the sweat.

“Thanks for coming in! I’ve heard great things about you from Bill Hadid and couldn’t wait to meet,” the partner said, reaching out to shake Mickey’s hand. “My name is Brad Kovar.”