Without a Doubt - [72]

And I accepted that. Somehow, we’d both come to equate a display of physical aggression with a demonstration of love. When our fights escalated to the point that I tried to walk out the door, his efforts to restrain me were actually a form of reassurance for us both. It was the way we proved to each other that we were still in love.

I spent half the time wishing I could get away from him; the other half of the time I felt that all I wanted to do was be with him. I hated myself for being so weak. I seemed to have no real personality of my own. Gaby was the mirror in which I saw myself. I’d changed my habits to fit his convenience. I’d pegged my expectations to his. I had never had a job other than waitressing or salesclerking. I knew that those menial jobs paid barely enough to live. I felt like a hamster on a wheel, unable to see a route out.

I had a vague, unformed, yet undeniable realization that having a job was where it was at. If you had well-paid work, you had some power in a relationship. You could be independent. And if you had a well-paid job that was interesting and satisfying? That almost took the place of a relationship. But how the hell did you get a gig like that?

By now, I’d realized I would never make it as an actor or a dancer. I had some talent, but not the insane drive you need to make it to the top. I had enough sense at the time to realize that I needed a profession. But I didn’t have any clear idea what that was. I was so clueless that I actually applied to United Airlines for a position as a flight attendant. (In those days we were still calling them stewardesses.) The airline called me back for a second interview. I’ll never forget it-about ten of us sitting around the table. They started asking us our political views. Everybody’s sitting there simpering, “I don’t know, I mean, I don’t really care.” Then I weighed in with a few strong opinions. I never heard from United again.

I fell back to reconsider. I could be a diplomat. Sure. Why not? This was admittedly an odd choice for someone as impulsive and confrontational as I am, but I already had a couple of languages under my belt. I could speak French and Hebrew. I applied to work in the Foreign Office in the State Department. During my first interview some functionary informed me that I would have to take an entry-level post as a secretary. I thought, I don’t see how that works. Secretary to diplomat? No. I don’t think so.

In the spring of 1973, after graduating from UCLA, I took a job with a law firm that specialized in estate planning. My God, was that dense. I did accounts receivable and reception work. Basically, I was a girl Friday. At the outset, I approached the job rather too casually for my employers’ taste. I came in late, showed up when I felt like it. Before long, my supervisor called me in and warned me that I was about to be fired.

That brought me up short. “Man,” I thought, “I don’t mind getting fired from a good job, but I can’t get fired from a job this tacky.” So I cleaned up my act, became prompt, innovative, a real dynamo. They came to love me. I started thinking, Maybe there’s some future for me in the law.

It was not such a leap. An actor seeks validation from his audience. An attorney gets his validation from judge and jury. (Many trial lawyers, I’ve concluded in the years since, are frustrated actors.) I took stock of my abilities. I had a good memory. I could write well. I could think on my feet. So I got a book from UCLA Law School that was supposed to help you prepare for the LSATs. On the night before the test I looked through it. Then I went out and got drunk. Maybe I wanted to sabotage myself, or perhaps I wanted to give myself an excuse if I failed. Anyway, they give that test early in the morning. I stumbled in, three sheets to the wind, barely able to pencil in a blurred succession of circles. Somehow I did well enough to be accepted by Loyola and Southwestern in Los Angeles and Hastings in San Francisco.

Gaby was threatened by the whole idea of my going into law. He refused even to consider the prospect of my moving, or our moving, to San Francisco, so Hastings was out of the question. His objections were just enough to undermine my confidence. I put off sending in my applications until it was too late for Loyola. Southwestern accepted me for the fall of 1973.

I grabbed onto law school like a drowning woman clings to flotsam. It was to become my salvation. Law school took more effort than undergraduate work. I had to study. I had to memorize. I actually had to attend classes. I found that I was well suited to analytical thinking. Briefing cases came easily to me. You take a case decision of fifty pages written in the densest legalese and have to figure out: What’s the issue? What’s the rule? What’s the conclusion? I enjoyed the intellectual exercise of taking something very complicated and reducing it to its essence.

I cannot say that the law loomed before me as some mystical, meaningful vocation. A sense of principle did not kick in until a few years down the line, when I realized my real calling lay in the D.A.‘s office. But from the start, studying law served as an absorbing and invigorating counterpoint to my life with Gaby.