He was always impeccably dressed - even when wearing his Saturday clothes, his khakis were creased, his shirt ironed and his shoes shined. He smelled of Old Spice and presented a congenial and courteous figure of a successful southern lawyer. When he asked advice, he listened to the answer and paid attention. When he gave advice, it was thoughtful and precise. He appeared to be a respected, old school, almost elegant southern gentleman, smiling when speaking of his wife and family, serious about his law practice, dedicated to the country club and now and then overdoing the martinis. I never saw the rough edges or the private side that landed him in jail, accused of carnal knowledge of a juvenile - an 80 year old lawyer having oral sex with a 16 year old in the very confines of his law office.
How do you return to your life, I wonder?
There's no cover in a small southern city such as our's, not if you're well known and well thought of, not if you're a member of the upper class, not if you live in the right zip code and sometimes make headlines. All the charitable donations and good works will not give you back your privacy, will not insulate you from sex scandals. You can play golf with judges but unless you're Tiger Woods, there won't be any special favors granted. It makes me appreciate the anonymity of big city life where you can dive into your particular dark side and hardly be noticed.
After all the sad jokes have been made and grow stale, after the publicity dies down and the talk turns to other things, after a trial or a plea or whatever the outcome, I'm still left wondering - how do we forgive? How do we rebuild? How does he return to his life?
Why, my daddy might say and I can almost hear the cynicism in his tone, He follows the example of the politicians. What else?
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