HOUSE OF MEADOW
Sopranos Fan Fiction
CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION
By Sopranos Blueprint
Girl Walks Into a Psychiatrist's Office...
If the world is a big puzzle, we’re taught to believe that every year as we get a little bit older, we’ll be able to put together a little bit more of the puzzle. That is, until we put all of the pieces together and finish it. But what if there is no end to the puzzle?
The Next Appointment
Well, here we are. My next appointment. Hopefully this one doesn’t end quite as awkwardly as the last one.
The doctor asks if everything turned out okay with “that meeting you had to run to all of a sudden last week.” I tell her it was fine, though that’s a lie. Â
“I just have a bad habit of catastrophizing. If someone calls me more than once in a row within a five-minute time span, I assume that someone or something is on fire, in the hospital, dead, in jail, or some combination of all of the above.”
When she asks if I’ve ever considered why I get that strong reaction so quickly, what’s my answer? “Because I’ve seen how life works.”
She nods and continues.
“So, last week we started talking a little bit about your job. Why don’t you tell me a little bit more about that. What made you decide to go into law?”
[Meadow has a flashback to a conversation from years earlier with her mother, Carmela]
“I’ve decided not to go to med school.”
 “What? Why?”Â
“I really think it’s law for me. You should see Patrick talk about the justice system and what it means. It’s really inspiring.”
[Meadow has another flashback of her husband, Patrick, telling her parents “We’re defending a County Commissioner on corruption charges. Bid rigging. It’s got bagmen, whores, it’s fascinating.”]
The doctor nods again. “I see. So, are you happy?”
Well, that sure escalated quickly, I think to myself. I can’t help but respond without much filter.
“I mean, isn’t that by its very nature a trick question? If you have to ask if someone is happy, doesn’t that mean you obviously know?”Â
“I don’t obviously know.”
Then the doctor asks if we can return to that question she asked me at our previous appointment:Â
“What were some of the good experiences you remember as a child?”
“I remember getting my driver’s license and my dad teaching me how to drive.”
[Flashback to Carmela announcing that Meadow passed her driving test]
“I had to like parallel park behind this van and I was so nervous.”
“That’s interesting that you bring up learning to drive as an example. Weren’t you trying to park the car the other week when you passed out?”Â
I felt like I was back in college lying down with my mom when she tried to broach the topic of sex with my first college boyfriend. My response to my mom was a quick “Sorry, but we are so not having that conversation right now.” And I’ll say essentially the same thing here, albeit in a slightly more formal tone.
“Um, I’m sorry, I’m just…I’m not ready to get into that again right now.”Â
“Go on.”Â
“You know how you asked me earlier when I first came in how the rest of my day was last week when I had to run out here?”
After I ran out of here, I grabbed another coffee then headed back to the office to find one of the senior partners waiting for me by my office door.Â
He starts in right away with, “Look, Meadow, you know that I’ve thought you were brilliant ever since I first met you back in, what was it? 2006?”
(It was actually 2007.)
“And contrary to what you might think, I’m confident you’re even more brilliant now than you were back then.”Â
Why did I get the feeling there was a big *BUT* coming next? Well, because there was.
“So, Meadow, we can do this a few different ways:
- You can pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll pretend to believe that you don’t know what I’m talking about, and we’ll go about our business as usual.
- You can tell me what’s really going on and what you’ve been spending so many pro-bono hours on. And I can tell you what I think about it.
- You can give me a half-truth, half-lie, or some similar variation, and I can spend the rest of the day thinking about which part is true and which part is not true.
“Up until now, Meadow, you’ve only ever chosen option one and three, so I’m gonna make the choice easier here: I’ll do it for us.”
“Sir, did I miss a deadline or mess something up or did someone complain?”
According to Mr. Grubman, it was only a matter of time until something went wrong that I couldn’t fix.
The doctor says, “Wait, can we stop for a second? What does he mean when he says ‘fix'”?Â
(I’m not touching that one right now, either.)
And then Mr. Grubman says, “The good news about our firm, though, is that after you enter it, you can still get out.”
“Whoa, wait, wait, what?!”Â
“Go figure out what it is you really want in life, but you can’t do it here.”
The doctor shrugs. “Wow, that’s quite a lot to happen in one afternoon.Â
“So what are you gonna do now?”
I tell her that I’m going to keep being a lawyer. “I have a couple of ideas, but it’s going to be me in charge now. I’ve always wanted to do that, so maybe this was the little push I needed.”
“Well, I imagine your pro bono clients will be happier that you can devote more time to them now.”
“Oh, yeah, they’ll be very excited to hear.”
What if justice isn’t as simple as we’d like to believe?
When we’re younger, we’re taught to put things into categories and boxes. There’s good and evil, naughty and nice, hero and villain, sinner and saint.
But what if justice isn’t as simple as we thought? It’s not all black and white and there’s not a clear line.
it can be very “irregular around the margins,” if you know what I mean.
What if there’s this big gray area that’s murky, and that people don’t really like to talk about? And when all we do is look for black and white, we totally miss the big picture.
I feel like I don’t know much of anything anymore I guess that’s why I’m here it’s unfortunate that we have to stop now because I think it’s really important we talk about this. Til Tuesday?
In the meantime, I think I know just the place to set up shop.
