One L by Turow Scott

Author:Turow, Scott [Turow, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2010-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

Somehow I dragged myself through the next week and a half. I didn’t feel much better, but I felt no worse. There were no further crises.

On Monday, Perini became reconciled with the section again. He was slightly bitter this time. He made a comment about the kinds of things one reads in the newspaper. Then he called on Mooney. He was no gentler, nor any harder, on him than on his predecessors. It seemed an effective way to put the whole business to an end.

Section 100’s meeting went forward. Only thirty people showed up, though, and the group promptly dissolved. Kyle, I was told, had written a letter of apology to Perini.

At the end of the week, Nicky gave us another test. This one was a short multiple-choice exam to be worked on at home. I was more comfortable in my own study and I tried to do the test carefully.

When Thanksgiving arrived, I was desperately grateful for the rest. Sleep alone seemed to go a long way toward healing me. Marsha, a dear friend from California, was visiting. We had Thanksgiving with her, then she and Annette went down to Connecticut to spend time there with Marsha’s family.

I stayed in Arlington alone. I had to study. Despite all the resolutions earlier in the term, the study group was now busy assembling an outline of Mann’s Criminal class in preparation for the exam. His casebook was new and none of the commercial guides was yet available. And the course had been so disorganized that we had all been forced to agree that a collective effort was required to put it together. I knew that with only three weeks left in the semester, I’d better get my share done now.

Over the weekend, I worked at the outline listlessly. I spent most of my time walking through the empty apartment, trying to figure out exactly what had happened to me the past month. I recognized many of the things I’ve repeated here about the demands of the student life and of Harvard Law School. I saw that yet another cost of HLS’s size is the depletion of trust, the fact that there are too many people there to maintain the kind of close bonds that could forestall some of the rumor mongering and mass paranoia that had lately been driving me nuts.

And I’d seen some more of “my enemy,” that funny, indefinite collection of shadowy and unnerving recognitions about myself and what was around me to which I more and more willingly gave that name. The latest sighting had come in the oral argument and in Nicky’s test, where wisely or unwisely I had tried to slow down in a stampede. Now I had to admit that I did not have the strength yet to stand up on my own. Looking forward to exams in January, I saw that I should more or less abandon hope of maintaining any perspective. Health, in that circumstance, might well be in excusing myself for giving in.

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