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"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Perry recognizes her step when she returns to the hotel suite that’s doubling as their office during their stay in Las Vegas. He doesn’t turn around, doesn’t lay aside the file he’s reading; he simply sends a question over his shoulder in lieu of a greeting: “How’d it go?”
Forty years of shared shorthand are in those three words and Della moves to stand behind him. “Well… I was not very truthful with her…”
Lightly, but with characteristic directness, Perry declares, “Della, you are never not very truthful.”
He states it as a fact - a tenet he knows to be true and one he lives by. He holds his belief in her honesty as firmly as the laws he swears to uphold each day and Della’s throat catches with sudden emotion as she recognizes (not for the first time, but with renewed warmth) how much it means to her that this man - this wonderful, generous, intelligent, articulate man - holds her in such esteem.
He never doubts her - even when she sometimes has doubts about herself. (Like today.)
But she doesn’t say this and instead reaches out and steadies herself against his comforting bulk, her arm around his shoulders while she breathes in the cedar notes of his cologne. A nervous chuckle emerges from her chest and she explains, “Well, I certainly was not very truthful this time.”
She skirted the truth for a case, of course. His case. Perry needed information about the murder victim and Della was the perfect person to question the man’s long-time secretary. It was a woman-to-woman kind of thing - honor among confidential secretaries and all that.
It was simple and necessary and nothing she hadn’t done before, but this time Della didn’t feel at all honorable when it was over. She’d preyed on a grieving woman’s emotions - hunted them down and picked them off one by one, all starting with a seemingly innocent question: “How long were you with him?”
Elaine Hochman was nostalgic when she replied, “Thirty-one years.”
Della heard her own voice echo Elaine’s when she said: “I’ve been with mine over forty. I know what it’s like to devote your life to your job, to one man.”
It felt like a cruel stab to ask the next question, but four decades of partnership with Perry Mason and four decades of devotion to both the work and the man meant Della had to ask Elaine the same question she’d been asked so often herself: “Are you married?”
(She knew the answer but still awaited the response.)
“No,” Elaine told her in a voice that turned rueful. “He was - once - but it didn’t last.” She paused. “He could be… difficult… even mean. But he was always good to me.”
Della recognized the woman’s pain, recognized also the deep threads of loyalty and of loneliness that ran through her, and knew that the loneliness would make it easy for Elaine to give her the answers Perry sought. All Della needed to do was lead with a little of her own truth - just enough to tweak an emotion or two - and prompt the information to pour forth.
She would lead with a little personal truth - very little. That was the plan. (Or at least she thought it was until she began to speak.)
“What you had with him was… like a marriage,” Della heard herself say the words almost as though someone else was telling her life story. “He was probably the closest person in the world to you. I know how terrible it must be for you to lose him.”
Elaine quickly told her, “You can’t imagine.”
That’s when Della’s breath caught in her throat because there was suddenly not enough distance between the story she tried to weave and the one she lived. As such, her next words to Elaine are the ones that haunt her long after she’s returned to the hotel, the ones that echo back as Della watches Perry work.
She holds him a little tighter. He’s focused on the files and she’s focused on him, all the while in her mind hearing her voice tell Elaine: “Oh yes. I can imagine…”
So many years with Perry Mason. So many years of this routine - him at work, the massive mind ever cycling, ever reasoning its way through his encyclopedic knowledge of the law while evermore balancing that information against the fair and gentle nature of his heart. And at each step, Della by his side, aiding him, arguing with him, supporting the work and the man, and always, always loving him. Yet as the infirmities that accompany the slide into old age creep closer - his more than hers at this stage, thanks to his old war wound, the badly broken arm back in 1965, a few recent ski injuries, and a heart the doctors wish to monitor (just in case) - she’s increasingly mindful that they’ve passed a threshold in their lives.
The time behind them now exceeds the time that spools out ahead and it frightens her. In the middle of the night when she wakes and her thoughts prey upon her, it’s the vision of a world without Perry Mason in it that keeps her up. (And her recent conversation with Elaine Hochman isn’t helping.)
Perry’s fully focused on his case so she knows she can’t say the things she’s thinking: I love you. I’m so grateful we’ve shared our lives and my only regret is that we can’t go back and do it all over again - because I would. In a heartbeat.
Instead, she asks if he needs anything.
“Not right now,” he shakes his head. As an afterthought, he adds, “Thank you, Della.”
“I have a call to make,” she tells him with a gentle pat on the great shoulder. “I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.”
“Mm,” he waves an absent hand and she slips off to the bedroom she’s been occupying - the room he won’t share with her before the trial is over, so intent will his focus be - and dials a familiar number, grateful when an equally familiar voice picks up cheerfully.
Marian Lamont has been retired to Palm Springs for the last fifteen years but Della feels like the older woman is in the room with her when she exclaims, “What a wonderful surprise, Della! I was just reading about Perry taking that case in Las Vegas and thinking about you both!”
“It certainly changed his vacation plans,” Della chuckles and then laughs aloud when Marian astutely observes: “Knowing Perry, he prefers defending a man for murder to the amusements of the gaming tables anyway.”
With an affectionate sigh, Della concurs. “You know, some men just come here to gamble with their money...”
“Perry Mason isn’t ‘some men’ - he never has been,” Marian tells her matter-of-factly and Della feels lighter, buoyed by her twenty-seven year friendship with Marian. It’s one built on a foundation of deeply shared experiences - so much so that Della often feels that Marian might be the only other person who understands her life. After today, Elaine Hochman might come second, but it’s a distant placing in a race that isn’t all that close, for Della and Marian are far ahead of Elaine in one significant way:
Elaine spent much of her life loving her boss from afar. But Della and Marian were both able to share their work, their lives, and their beds with the men they held in such esteem. Della and Marian lived Elaine’s dream - though unfortunately, of the two of them, Della is the only one who still does.
“I wouldn’t know what to do with him if he was any different,” Della tells Marian with affection.
“And then we wouldn’t be friends,” Marian agrees.
“Well thank God for abnormal men!” Della tells her and hears Marian chuckle.
“Indeed,” the older woman says before her tone shifts and she asks pointedly, “Della, you know I love our calls - and you and Perry have an open invitation to join me in Palm Springs whenever you get back to California - but I can’t help but wonder if something’s wrong…?”
Della hesitates only briefly before she spills out everything that’s happening in Las Vegas, from the murder of Robert Stuart to the pending trial of David Benson and the fact that his daughter Melanie has become Perry’s unofficial ward. (Marian chuckles at this, knowing full well that, though he’s always had a soft spot for children, teenage girls are illogical, often irrational beings and are therefore the famed attorney’s particular brand of kryptonite.) And then Della tells Marian about her conversation with Elaine, about how she told the truth but also how she didn’t when it came to the particular parallels between Elaine’s relationship with her boss and hers with Perry.
She leaves out the part about imagining a world without Perry in it, though. Daniel Redmond has been gone since 1977, so even though Marian has lived without her other half for some time now, Della can’t imagine that the sting of the loss has lessened. (It wouldn’t for her, she knows.)
Marian listens in her ever-patient way as Della unloads her guilt and worry, then says the words Della most wanted to hear: “I understand exactly how you feel, Della.”
“You do?”
“Of course,” Marian is - as always - self-assured when she speaks. “You feel guilty - you’ve lived the life that poor woman wanted and, not only could you not tell her that, but you caught a glimpse of what it might have been like had you and Perry not negotiated your way to a different relationship.”
“Negotiated is a fine way to put it,” Della snorts.
“Back then negotiation was your only option,” Marian reminds her wryly. “Except for marriage, of course.”
“Of course,” Della agrees. “Independent career women weren’t invented yet - you and I had to blaze that particular trail.”
“You blazed it first, as I recall,” Marian tells her.
Della hears her own tone shift toward flippancy: “Sometimes I think we weren’t so much blazing a trail as we were just too young and enthusiastic to think things through all the way.”
“Perry thinks everything through six ways from Sunday and you know it,” Marian corrects her firmly and Della laughs. Then the older woman grows a bit wistful, asking, “Do you know when I figured out the two of you were together?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever told me,” Della replies, thinking back to the relationship Perry and Daniel Redmond formed first, the one that allowed her and Marian to ally. The men were adversaries in the courtroom for many years, only becoming friends after Perry successfully defended Dan against a murder charge. For the famed attorney and highly respected judge, it was a friendship consisting of equal parts academic inquiry and verbal debate; for Della and Marian, theirs was a kinship, the sisterhood of two women living unconventional lives during a period of time in which the unconventional was considered socially unacceptable. But all four defied the expectations of the world and lived as they wished, often traveling in tandem when time permitted, sometimes up to Perry’s lake cabin, other times out to Dan’s desert lodge, and in the winter to Denver to ski.
But in all that time and over all those miles, never once did either couple discuss their relationships. They simply existed, side by side.
Marian tells her: “It was the second or third time the four of us had dinner together - do you remember that wonderful old Italian place Dan loved?”
“Antonio’s, was it?” Della recalls.
“That’s the one,” Marian confirms. “We were already seated when you arrived and I caught a glimpse of the two of you waiting for the hostess to bring you to the table. You noticed Perry’s tie was crooked and I watched you reach up to straighten it and he took hold of your hand when you finished and the two of you exchanged a look and I thought, ‘Oh my. They’re together.’”
Della remembers at least a hundred times she’s straightened Perry’s tie over the years because he’s taken her hand in nearly every instance. Each one has been special for that very reason. In fact, she’s never missed an opportunity to fix his tie - or to hold his hand, for that matter.
She smiles. “We gave ourselves away, did we?”
“Only to someone who knew what to look for,” Marian replies kindly. “And that night when Dan drove me home, I told him what I’d seen and he told me I was crazy - he said it kindly, mind you - but it wasn’t week later that he came back to the office after having lunch with Perry and apologized and told me I was right.”
Della laughs. “What changed his mind?”
“Apparently you’d gone out of town for the day and Gertie was covering the office,” Marian explains. “Perry was out of sorts and he said something like ‘Nothing’s ever right when Della’s gone’ and because of the way he said it, Dan figured out I was right.”
“Score another point for a bear trap legal mind,” Della says.
“Indeed,” Marian agrees, chuckling. “And knowing you were a couple but still working successfully together - and that the rest of the world didn’t seem to know or care - shook something loose in Dan. I wouldn't have believed it after all that time, but less than a week after that, he asked me out on our first real date.”
“…and the rest is history,” Della says warmly.
“All of those years together, everything we’d been through - him keeping my job for me when I had my heart attack, the run for lieutenant governor, the murder trial - everything ,” Marian opines, “and it took one dinner and one lunch with you and Perry to give him the courage to reach for some of that for us.”
“I’m glad we could help,” Della tells her (and means it).
Marian pauses and the silence is heavy enough for Della to feel it through the phone receiver, so she waits until Marian asks the question Della has been both dwelling on and dreading: “You’re afraid of what happens if you lose him, aren’t you?”
Della’s stomach clenches and her throat is suddenly hot, but she manages to say, “Yes.”
She can’t lie. Not to Marian - or herself, for that matter. Talking with Elaine didn’t start the train of thought, but it certainly helped it gain momentum.
“Oh Della,” is all Marian says, stretching the moment before she adds, “I won’t do you the disservice of lying and saying that it’s something you can get through - but I also don’t want you laying awake at night in a panic, which is probably what you’re doing at the moment.”
“I’ve slept better,” Della unsuccessfully feigns lightness.
“Dan and I talked about it a lot before he died - what I would do, I mean,” Marian explains. “We were blessed to have that time before the cancer took him.”
“I remember, that’s when you bought the house in Palm Springs,” Della says.
“The views are beautiful and it was easier for him to maneuver in,” Marian agrees. “And the doctors gave him a year and he made it almost eighteen months. And in that time, we went through all of his old papers - his court documents, old briefs - and reviewed nearly every single moment of our time together. And even though all of that sounds like work, it was the language of our relationship and we treasured that time - do you know what I mean?”
Della knows exactly what she means and says so.
“So now, when I want to feel close to him,” Marian continues, “I go into the study and I pull out those papers and read them. And every time I do, I hear his voice and it’s like we’re together again.”
Della thinks of how she can always hear Perry’s precise dictation when she reads over her own shorthand or how clearly his voice comes through in documents he’s marked corrections on in his favorite old fountain pen.
Marian is still speaking: “It isn’t as good as the real thing, of course, and papers don’t hug you when you’re sad - or snore and keep you up at night - but it’s better than the alternative. And anyway, I’m also lucky to get to see you and Perry and reminisce about old times and that brings Dan back too.”
“We’ll visit again as soon as we can,” is all Della can manage, her throat still tight with the mixture of emotions surging through her - sadness, gratitude, fear, love.
“I can’t wait to see you both,” Marian’s voice holds a smile in it. “And give Perry a big hug for me and tell him good luck in court.”
“I will,” Della tells her, then adds, “Marian?”
“Yes dear?”
“Thank you.” She means for the nearly three decades of friendship as well as the conversation and she thinks Marian understands that.
“Thank you, Della,” is the reply and Della suspects the full text of that sentence might actually be “Thank you for my life.”
The women hang up and Della stares absently at the phone on the nightstand for an extended moment before she senses movement and feels Perry Mason himself take a seat beside her on the bed.
She turns. “Well hello there.”
“Hello yourself,” he says gently and she feels his gaze probe her features, trying to read them.
She should probably be surprised that he looks her over, then asks, “Was that Marian Lamont you were talking with?”
“How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” he shrugs and Della knows it’s a lie because only the great mind of Perry Mason would take Della’s return from a conversation with Elaine Hochman and her admission that she hadn’t been truthful, add it to a phone conversation he couldn’t even hear, and conclude (correctly) that Marian Lamont was the recipient of the call.
Astute, annoying, wonderful man.
Continuing to prove his mental mettle, he asks, “Did you tell her about Elaine?”
“I did,” Della nods.
“And the bit about not being entirely truthful?”
“That too.”
“And did Marian understand?”
“She did.”
“She would,” Perry nods brusquely, seemingly satisfied. But then all of a sudden his arm comes to rest around Della’s shoulders and he leans his head down to hers and says, “We should drive out to Palm Springs when we get back.”
“Marian has already invited us and I said yes,” Della explains as she savors the feeling of being cocooned against him.
“She’s a good woman,” he observes, temple still pressed against Della’s. “Dan was lucky to have her in his life.”
“Mm-hmm,” Della closes her eyes and practically purrs. The man holding her is everything she’s ever wanted in the world; how could she not be content in this moment? She’d banish every negative thought in her mind if she could live inside moments like this forever.
Perry adds, “Just like I’m lucky to have you in mine.”
The moment feels heavier now, straining a bit under the weight of the things Della and Perry aren’t saying, but she somehow still feels better than she did earlier. She and Perry are getting older, their time will continue to grow shorter, and one day she might have to face the world without the comfort of his arm around her shoulders.
But today is not that day.
As such, she lightens the mood instead of dwelling on any more negativity, telling Perry, “Yes you are. Very lucky.”
She feels the chuckle ripple through him before she hears it and they’re laughing quietly together when the bedroom door opens and Melanie Benson’s standing before them, red hair slightly mussed from her nap in the bedroom next door.
“Am I interrupting anything?” she wants to know, shifting nervously from one foot to the other and eyeing them awkwardly.
Della shakes her head. “No, dear. We were just catching up on the day.”
“I’m kind of hungry…” Melanie says and Della tells her, “Well, let’s find something for you to eat then.”
Melanie nods, then looks sheepishly at them for a moment before she says, “I can wait if you need me to… If there’s something the two of you…” She stops herself, turns, and waves a hand at them, exiting the room and calling out over her shoulder, “Never mind. Just… I’ll be out here.”
Della giggles and doesn’t have to see Perry’s face to feel his eyes roll backward into his skull, asking in a somewhat pained voice, “Della?”
“Yes, Perry?”
“By chance, did Marian have anything helpful to say in regard to dealing with teenage girls…?”
”No Perry.”