729th Day: Is it worth it?

David inwardly groaned. When he became a lawyer, he hadn't counted on the obligatory recruiting and social events he would have to sit through. Every year, the new associates got younger and dumber, he thought, and it was starting to take more and more patience to sit through a dinner with them.

This year, a youngish looking Asian American woman sat next to him. "Are you important? Should I know who you are?" she asked impudently, in perhaps what she thought was a charming manner.

"I'm not important at all," he demurred. "I'm a partner in the litigation group."

After a few exchanges, they fell into into silence, and David resignedly searched for something to ask the new lawyer. They got onto the topic of hiking, and that worked for a while, until it didn't. They were both trying, David thought, but the conversation just wasn't flowing.

After a few questions about his family, which David answered, the new associate abruptly asked, "Is it worth it? You must love your job to spend so much time doing it, and only see your son for an hour or two in the mornings."

Usually the associates weren't so blunt, and David felt a little taken aback. He went over the usual things he liked about his job -- the intellectual challenge, the joy of reaping the rewards of his labor, the utter lack of worry about money that came from a partner's income. "Does that mean that I don't think about an exit strategy every day?" he asked rhetorically. "No, of course not."

Where had that come from? It wasn't like he tried to keep it a secret, but people usually didn't ask.

"What kind of exit strategies do you think about?"

"Being a farmer," David offered with a half-smile.

"A farmer?"

"I was a farmer for a year and a half. In Israel. Before law school." David couldn't quite believe he was having this conversation. "It was a cooperative, and I was responsible for turkeys and watermelons and..."He paused, trying to remember. "Oh, and tomatoes."

The associate appeared interested. "So how did you decide to go to law school, if you liked farming?"

He could almost feel the grit of the dry, dusty air on the streets of the town where he had raised the turkeys and watermelons and tomatoes. Picking up the phone, warm from the sun, dialing the States, getting his father on the line. He'd never gotten along with the man, and he was prepared to counter all the possible arguments his father would bring up when he told the old man that he was going to enlist in the Israeli army. He was prepared to be calm if the old man yelled, prepared to be persuasive if the old man tried to reason with him.

He'd dropped the news about enlisting, and instead of reacting right away, his father had told him, "Wait a minute. I need to get into my office so I can have some quiet." David waited on the line until his father got into the office in the pharmacy he ran, adrenaline running high, waiting for the disbelief, the anger, the surprise, the bitterness.

Finally. He was in the office. "David?"

"Yes?"

"This past year," his father started out, "this past year, David, it's been ... it's been hell for us. Knowing you're in Israel.

"It's been hell," the old man repeated. "Come back home, David."

David remembered feeling sucker-punched, gripping the warm handle of the public phone in the street, surrounded by people and cars, half the globe away from where his father -- the man with whom he had never gotten along -- was asking him to come home.

I didn't know you cared, he said silently.

He felt a disconnect, telling the story of a moment on the phone 20 years ago to this new associate, in one of the most famous restaurants in New York. Where had that memory come from? And why had he told it to this girl, whom he had met an hour ago?

"Did you and your father get along better after that?"

"No," David answered, "but things started getting better after my son was born. We had something to talk about." The associate fell silent again, and the rest of the dinner was just as awkward as the beginning. David made his excuses and left as soon as he dared, citing Jonah and Melanie as reasons why he needed to leave before everyone else. He murmured that it was nice to meet everyone and beat it out of the room with the views of Manhattan, thinking about the Schuster case and what he needed to get done tomorrow morning, what the dinner had prevented him from finishing tonight.

As he walked away from the coat check, briefcase in hand, he caught a glimpse of the new associate searching for the bathroom. "It's over there," he pointed, and she smiled her thanks. David nodded and headed toward the elevator bank. He pressed the down button and went back to his mental list of things to do tomorrow. But for a moment, he couldn't think of a single thing on the list. All he could think of was the feeling of that warm phone handle, and the plastic pressed against his ear, under the Israeli sun so many years ago.