Upon my triumphant return from England, and it was triumphant, I had met expectations despite the problems, I had succeeded at least in my fathers eyes. I was now approaching the top of the mountain, the boulder seemingly lighter with every step. Then of course as I reached the top of the mountain the boulder mockingly teetered and rolled thundering down the other side of the mountain waiting to be pushed back up.
In real terms this means that upon returning home after graduating law school I found that the British Degree was not accepted in Ontario, I would either have to go to another Province or do one more year of school. The plan did not allow for this, the timetable and sacrifices to date did not permit delay, so I contacted some firms in British Columbia to inquire about articling positions, leaned into the boulder and once more started up the mountain.
Enough of the drama for now, I had been caught off guard but think I recovered quickly. I managed to get a position with a British Columbian Firm for my articles that would start the following spring which would give me time to get some rest, get my life together and drive west. As to life at home, not much changed, Chrystal was living with the father of her baby in Toronto, Robin had moved to the US with Abe and I still had the plan, a little battered, worn around the edges not so much an old friend but now more like an addiction, a need that had to be met. Hard to believe that all this started with a little decision in Grade 6.
In the spring of the next year I packed up my old Firebird with everything I own, my cousin who was going to Calgary and we were about to head west when I got a telephone call from Karen, I know what are the chances. It turns out she now lived in Calgary and when I told her I was heading west she asked me to call her when we arrived and we could get together for dinner, at which time I could meet her husband. Dear reader I am sure I don't have to tell you I was not exactly thrilled at the prospect of hearing about and seeing another life and love move on without me.
My cousin and I set off on the understanding that whoever drove got to listen to their own music, as my cousin was into German techno pop, you will understand when I ended up volunteering to drive most of the way across the country. When we arrived in Calgary I dropped off my cousin, called a couple of friends from Law School now living there and then Karen. I arranged to meet Karen and her husband for dinner and despite my desire not to like him, he was a great person, charming and intelligent, basically the kind of person I thought she would marry, if I ever thought she would marry given her free spirit and independent nature. We had a great dinner and I recounted the events of my years in England, perhaps not as thoroughly or dramatically as I have discussed them here but the highs and good times anyway. After dinner I went back to my hotel room alone steeling myself for the drive the next day into British Columbia. About midnight there was a knock on the door and when I opened it there stood Karen, crying, not for herself, not due to any fight she may have had with her husband but as I was to find out, for me. Please don't get me wrong, the dinner conversation was not depressing, actually it was just your general lighthearted dinner with an old friend. Thus as she started to tell me why she was upset I was very surprised. I guess in knowing me, she saw through the laughs and excitement about the future and in a word saw the changes in me and perhaps the price I had paid for my plan and it upset her.
The next part of my story is, well kind of hard to explain and despite her assurances at the time I was not then or now totally comfortable with what happened. As you are probably assuming she spent the night with me and gave me a night of comfort and love that perhaps let me hope that the loves that I had lost were still possible and I was not beyond redemption As to her husband she explained that they had an open relationship and he knew she was with me, that they had married for the future on the understanding that they could both live and explore their present lives. Did I believe it, maybe, it was in keeping with everything I knew about her, did I want to believe it, yes and while it always bothered me, it is a night I still cherish.
You may now have noticed that for some reason my life and those in it somehow keep moving in and out again as illustrated by Karen. I don't know why this happens as I never instigated these returns, its not something I ever thought about seriously before and I have never really heard or seen it in other peoples lives. I mention this now because when you write all this stuff out the patterns in your life begin to become apparent and to tell the truth there will be further and more dramatic returns as the story continues.
The next morning I was back on the road this time on my own, twelve hours of non-stop driving, reflection, introspection, planning, one speeding ticket, and in the end virtual delirium from fatigue but I made it.
I made it to the coast and started my articles with the new firm, the next step to finishing the plan, the beginning of the end in more ways than one.
I had grown up around law firms, worked in my father's as everything from a janitor to a litigation clerk as well as with other firms as a researcher and assistant but to be honest I had never seen then or to date such a bigger collection of pompous, self absorbed, stuffed shirts in my life. This given my proclivity for being totally self absorbed and insensitive to the feelings of those around me, is saying quite abit. However, this didn't matter, I just had to finish my articles and get called to the bar and I was done.
On my first day I showed up, bright eyed and bushy tailed, wearing the new three hundred dollar pin striped suit my father had bought me before I left. I should point out that at th is time a three hundred dollar suit was a serious suit, so I was feeling pretty good about myself. I arrived and was met by the senior partner who welcomed me, introduced me to everyone, showed me around and before leaving me to my own devices advised me that they were not some corduroy sport jacket law firm and I should go out and get a decent suit, he then gave me the address of his tailor and left. I was dumbstruck but obediently went to the tailor and spent a thousand dollars on a new suit, to date the most expensive suit I ever owned, hell at the time the suit cost almost as much as my car. You think I may have seen the warning signs at this point but again like love the plan is blind and generally not to bright.
I went to work determined to succeed and in doing so became friends with one of the junior partners, Dean, a good guy that while agreeing with my opinion as to the nature and character of his associates, had his own plan and with that common bond educated me in the basics of how to get along and get by.
As an articling student you are basically a gopher, you do what you are told, when you are told and don't ask questions, hopefully learning something along the way. I realized as time went that not only was I not being asked to do allot by anyone except Dean, I wasn't even seeing anyone other than Dean, so contrary to custom and convention I made an appointment with the senior administrative partner and quietly, meekly and politely asked if there was a problem and why wasn't I being given much to do. I was told there was no reason and to just keep working with Dean. Within a day I was summoned to the senior partner's office, kind of an audience with the king. Upon sitting down in the grand corner office, his first words to me were, "can't you take a hint" Now, dear reader I had been working here by this point for six months with no problems, no criticism and little direction so I was a bit confused, but given the tone and the obvious fact that I was there a day after the previous meeting something was up. I again politely but perhaps a little more defiantly responded to this rather vague question, with the words "I guess not, whats the hint". I was then told that they wanted me to quit, no reason, no explanation, just the suggestion that I quit. I of course said no and was promptly dismissed from his presence.
That afternoon, I met Dean and described the events of the past couple of days. After he finished choking on his beer and laughing, he asked in disbelief if I had really just said no to the grand pooba and when I told him yes he just started laughing again and explaining to me that it was probably the first time the guy had heard the word in respect to his demands. He then went on to tell me that things would get pretty cold around the firm and that I should just keep my head down and wait out the next months because the firm probably would not have the nerve not to sign the ariticling completion documents. I took his advice to a point as what he said was true, even the secretaries barely spoke to me and were always to busy to do my work. However, in addition to keeping my head down, I began to essentially run my own law practice from their offices, using Dean as supervisor. I began to do lesser files and legal aid files on my own all the time keeping notes as to my contact with the partners and my time spent in the office.
As the deadline for articles approached I told Dean that I didn't think they were going to sign the papers and if that was the case I was going to go to the law society. I should mention that most lawyers no matter how good would prefer that the society not even know that they exist, its kind of an inherent paranoia based on the knowledge that no contact with the society can end well. Dealing with the law society is viewed like dealling with a vicious dog, you don't make any sudden movements and avoid eye contact. Given this prevailing point of view the suggestion did not go over well and he again denied that the firm would refuse to complete my articles and as such I should leave it alone. This advice I did not take and without anyone's knowledge I forwarded my outline of events and my notebooks to the society.
After this a few things happened at once, the first was that during the week that the papers were to be signed I was involved in a criminal negligence causing death trial, after all I had been running my own practice for a while now from their offices and part of that involves trials. However, I was supposed to be supervised and given the atmosphere around the office I was not. After being out of the office for three days Dean called me and asked me where I had been for the past three days and I told him that I was going into my last day of a four day trial on criminal negligence. He almost had a heart attack, due to the fact that I had been doing it on my own combined with the fact that a representative from the society was attending the next day due to the firms now apparent refusal to sign the articling papers. His health was not further improved when I advised him that despite his advice to leave things alone I had been sending my logs to the society for months in anticipation of this refusal by the firm.
The next day we were all at the courthouse, me, to finish the trial, Dean came to watch and give the impression he had been aware of my attendance for days, the law society representative and one of the senior partners all showed up for the finale. I finished my closing statements to the judge as did the prosecutor and the judge retired to make his decision.
To say things were a bit tense at this point is an understatement, the credibility of the firm to some extent was hanging on the decision almost as much as my client's life, they had criticized my abilities without spending the time to discover if I had any.
Finally the judge returned and for the first time after years of following the plan, blindly plodding forward I discovered that I was actually good at this stuff. The judge promptly acquitted my client while specifically praising both my conduct of the file, my demeanor in the court, my sensitivity to the issues and specifically stating that if he had not been told I was an articling student he would have thought I was counsel with years of experience. I was thrilled, the law society representative was showing his displeasure to the senior partner, the senior partner was looking like a deer in the headlights, Dean was doing his best not to break down in fits of hysterical laughter, and Sisyphus smiled and leaned into the boulder once more.
After a brief and formal hearing where it was discovered that after hiring me the senior partners had lost a small fortune in real estate and could not afford an articling student, the firm was disciplined and I was called to the bar, the plan was completed.
I had made it but what was I going to do, after all the plan was over and I hadn't thought about what came next.
During all the events outlined above something else happened that to tell the truth at the time I did not think about as a serious or as one of those moments that could have changed my life. In retrospect it probably was not only the plan that stopped me from realizing this fact then and let me go on to the present without realizing the potential importance of the moment but also the fact that as far as relationships were concerned I had essentially given up hope.
While plodding through my articles and before the trouble started I received a telephone call, not from Karen this time, but from Robin. She was calling me to tell me that she was divorcing Abe because he had become physically abusive and had hit her on a few occasions, she wanted some advice as to the divorce. At the time I told her that I didn't know anything about American divorces and she should get a lawyer there. After years of assuming that this was all this call was about it has as of late dawned on me that my insecure self absorption probably missed the chance to get her back. She had no need to call me in British Columbia about an American divorce, there was no reason for her to call me about the divorce at all. If there had been no interest why would she have called to let me know she was now on her own and Abe had shown his true colours. Again the gold ring in my life circled by and as usual I was looking the other way or was just too dumb to see it. As you may be noticing dear reader this is getting to be a trend.
