Page 21 of Everything We Thought Was True
“If anyone asks, you say your father can’t stay with just one girlfriend, that he dates too many women and can’tsettle down—stuff like that, to use your phrase. Or say nothing at all. It’s nobody’s business. We don’t need to air our dirty laundry for all to see.”
After that exchange, I certainly didn’t intend to say anything. I was a good rule follower—always had been. Growing up, I’d only broken that rule one time when I confided in a high school guidance counselor about our family secret, only to be shut down. I shuddered and pushed that unpleasant memory out of my mind.
The car in front of me lurched forward, brake lights turning off, and I realized traffic had opened while I was busy chatting with my brother and reliving our family history.It’s about time, I thought and hit the gas pedal.
As the elevator ascended to the division’s offices, I ran through a mental checklist of my day: multiple client appointments, an all-staff division meeting, deposition prep for one of my cases not yet ready for trial, lunch meeting with opposing counsel to discuss a potential settlement, and trial prep for the Hawke Health Care case. Chock full. Thank goodness I’d gotten out of handling that sexual orientation case against the Fletcher School District.Dodged a bullet. It would be tough to watch Brad be the one to try that case, knowing I could have said yes to it. But I didn’t have the time. That case would be huge, all-encompassing. And public. I felt a sense of relief, but something else was nagging at me. Perhaps my regret for giving it to Brad ran deeper than I’d realized.
“Hey, Lena, come here. I want you to meet someone.”
Speak of the devil.Brad gestured to me as I exited the elevator and headed down the hall. He was towering over a man I didn’t recognize, who looked like a little kid by comparison. Then again, Brad towered over most people. He was six foot three, with a large, bald, shiny head atop his body, like an ornament adorning a Christmas tree.
As I approached the two of them, I got a better look at the stranger next to Brad. He looked to be in his twenties and was well dressed and good-looking. Fresh-faced and eager—another paralegal probably. Brad hired paralegals and law students for the division. He claimed to love finding new talent and mentoring them. I had a feeling it had more to do with his massive ego.
“Lena, this is Toby, our newest paralegal. Toby, this is theotherdeputy US attorney.” He emphasized the wordother, stressing that he occupied the deputy role as well. In some federal government agencies, there was only one deputy. Ours had two—me and Brad. And he let no one forget it.
I reached my hand out. “Nice to meet you.”
Toby shook my hand and smiled at me warmly.
“If you need to know about any discrimination statute, ask Lena. She’s like a walking encyclopedia of discrimination laws.” Whenever Brad said this, it didn’t sound like a compliment.
“Well, that may be a slight exaggeration,” I said, giving Brad a sideways smirk. He was always trying to one-up me. Although it irked me, it served the purpose of keeping me on my toes. Not that I would admit that to Brad.
“Hey, you and Toby have something in common,” Brad said. “He just moved here from New York. Long Island, right?”
Toby nodded.
“Lena is from New York originally too. In fact, if you get her going, her accent still sometimes comes out to play.”
Seething, I forced myself to smile. Brad loved to mention my New York accent, which got stronger every time I spoke to one of my Italian cousins back east—the accent that still lingered in my dad’s speech even after he’d been living in Los Angeles for two decades.
“That’s cool. Where in Long Island exactly?” I asked, ignoring Brad.
“Manhasset,”Toby said.
My stomach lurched. Visual snapshots of time spent on my dad’s boat in Manhasset Bay came flooding back to me—not all of them pleasant. One still haunted me, sometimes making me feel like a soldier with PTSD who kept replaying a wartime incident over and over.
“Oh...” I hesitated, not trusting myself to continue. Fortunately, Toby saved me.
“I read about you on the website. Looking forward to working with you.” He looked at Brad then added, “Hopefully.”
Only here a few minutes, and he can already tell Brad will try to hog him all for himself. Very perceptive.
“And as far as accents, I get it. I’ve tried hard not to let my Long-guyland accent take over. Not a simple thing to do, as I’m sure you know,” Toby teased.
“Yes, I sure do.” I smiled, detecting the accent now that he’d mentioned it. “About as hard to keep at bay as an Italian American New York accent. But alas, we can still try.” This guy seemed really likable. I might steal him for one of my cases. “What brought you out here to Los Angeles?”
“My partner, David, is from here. We met in law school, and I followed him here after graduation last month. He got a great job offer with O'Melveny & Myers. I’m sort of a romantic stalker, if you will.” He laughed.
Well, well. Toby and I had more in common than both being from New York. I always felt a jolt when someone told me he was gay, as if they’d moved the red velvet rope to the side, allowing me to pass into the inner sanctum of a private club. It still shocked me that some people talked about it so openly. I was fully aware it was 2015 and I was living in Los Angeles, a city known to be progressive. And the legal landscape for sexual orientation law was being revolutionized. But to me, it remained a foreign concept to talk about one’s sexual orientation—or that of one’s parents—so openly and not worryabout the consequences. Leftover baggage from my upbringing. The particular luggage I carried around was heavy and persistent.
I spent the bulk of my waking hours in the US Attorney’s Office, where every morning I shed my private persona and zipped myself up into my lawyer-as-advocate existence, a role that allowed me to feel like I was staying true to my past while keeping a safe distance from fully owning being the daughter of a gay parent. I told myself I wasn’t actually hiding the truth—I just wasn’t voluntarily sharing it, so it wasn’t so much a lie as an omission. I could spin my logic in almost any way that suited me.Such a lawyer.
“That’s a great firm,” Brad said. “Lena and I had a case against them a few years ago. We won, of course. But they put on a solid case.”
For God’s sake, shut up, Brad. He always had to go on and on about his wins.
I stared at Toby, curious. In typical lawyer fashion, I wanted to fire off a round of questions:Have you always been out? Did your family accept you? What was your religious upbringing?I couldn’t help comparing his normal to what my father had endured years before—the secretiveness, the hiding, and the fear of being outed, arrested or killed. And the heavy toll that secret took on our family—before and after we knew.
