Standing in the front waiting room with its pictures of overdressed old farts on the walls and leather furniture that looked like nobody was allowed to sit on it, Ellen checked herself for signs that she was losing her resolve, but there were none. She used to be intimidated when she came into this room. She wasn’t anymore. She still thought the overdressed old farts would have looked down their noses at her, but she didn’t care. She still thought the furniture cost more, altogether, than what she’d paid for her first car, but she didn’t care about that, either. She had been panicked because she had been thinking the way they wanted her to think, and in the …She groped for the word. There was a word. She’d heard it at a dinner in Washington once when she had been seated at the same table as Michael Novak and his wife. Michael Novak was an intellectual. He intimidated her, although right now she wasn’t sure he’d meant to. Still, she’d listened to him, and she’d come up with a word.
“Categories.” That was the word. She thought in the categories they wanted her to think in, and because she did that, she believed the things they wanted her to believe. And the issue wasn’t liberal or conservative, Republican or Democratic, left or right, or any of the other things that they said were so damned important to them. The issue was smart and stupid, and when it came right down to the wire, that was all they cared a flying damn about one way or the other.
The door that led to the offices at the back opened, and Neil himself poked his head out. Ellen was surprised, but only a little. Neil Savage would have sent out a secretary to greet his own mother, but he probably thought she was out of control, and dangerous. That was one of the things Michael Novak had been saying about “categories” at that dinner. When people started thinking in categories and forgot they were doing it, they ended up buying into the very myths and stereotypes they’d invented themselves. It had been some conversation about religious people and politics. She didn’t remember what it was about. She only remembered that she’d thought at the time that it made sense he was an intellectual.
Neil decided she wasn’t about to scream and cause a scene. He came out and held out his hand. “Mrs. Harrigan,” he said. “Ellen. Come on back and let me know what I can do for you.”
Ellen looked around again at all the overdressed old farts on the walls— she’d almost thought of them as “overstuffed,” which made her smile—and then walked past Neil through the door and into the long corridor beyond. There were more old farts here, and more expensive carpets, and that muted amber lighting very expensive hotels used to give the impression of intimidating elegance. In the end, though, it was just a law firm. It was no different from the offices her father went to on the clotted Main Street of their town when he wanted to buy a house or make his will. It was all an illusion, everything these people had. They used it to make you afraid of them.
She walked right by the doors to the conference room and into Neil’s office, because she knew he would try his best to get her to sit at that big table while they talked. That was more of trying to make her afraid, and she wasn’t having any. She sat down in the big visitor’s chair, feeling the softness of the leather under the palms of her hands. What wasn’t illusion was money. She wondered why it was people were always so intimidated by money.
Neil came in and went around to the other side of his desk. Ellen had noticed that he liked looking “official.” He would have made a good judge. He was tall and intimidating. His face looked like it was hewn out of stone. He walked as if he were already wearing robes.
“Well,” he said, sitting down.
“Do you know who you look like?” she asked him. “You look like what’s his name, the senator. You look like John Kerry.”
Neil Savage blinked. “Yes. Well. As a matter of fact, I think we have a common ancestor in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. My mother would have known.”
Ellen looked around at the walls. There were no old farts here, only hunting prints and dark paneling. Everything in this building was dark paneling.
“I want to do something about the will,” she said.
Neil Savage blinked again. “Yes,” he said. “Well. We will have a reading, of course, as soon as possible, but it’s only been—”
“—We can have it the day after tomorrow,” Ellen said. “That should be enough time for you to get the word out to the other people who will need to be here. You can send messengers if you have to.”
“Well, yes, but that will depend on who is named in the will, won’t it? We may have to bring somebody down from New York, or up from Washington.”