The Seducers

by Martin Shepard

  “My lawyer says the same thing.”

  “Lawyer?”

  “When Jonas told me what I had to say in court I thought I’d better check it out independently. I saw an old friend—a lawyer—and told him of my doubts. He advised me to think very carefully before agreeing to do any such thing, saying that wives of defendants could not be compelled to testify and when they do are subjected to the most personal and harrowing cross-examinations, that parts of my life that I don’t want exposed could well become public.

  “Then he asked about my marriage. I guess he picked up on my unhappiness. I told him I’d been thinking of leaving Jonas after the trial. ‘After?’ he asked. ‘Why not before?’ and then he gave me still another compelling reason to do it now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Money. This trial could easily cost Jonas fifty thousand dollars in legal fees alone. Separating now means dividing things; one house for me, one for him. Half our assets for each of us right down the line. He may have to sell one place just to pay his lawyer. And God knows how much more if he’s found guilty.

  “Leaving under those circumstances would leave me half of nothing. Separating now means I’d have something to get started with, invest in some shop or business with. Yet I’d feel like such a mercenary bitch for doing it.”

  Anne went to the stove and poured more coffee. “I’ll tell you, honey,” she said as she brought back the steaming cups, “there isn’t a housewife alive who hasn’t considered the same thing. Mercenary schmercenary. You’ll need the money to live on. When you’re on the horns of a dilemma you don’t get off it by sawing one of the horns off, pretending the problem doesn’t exist.”

  They sat for a while longer, finished their coffee, talked about how they’d never talked together like this before. Phoebe appreciated Anne’s time and her comments. Anne felt pleased that she could come and confide in her. And any time she liked she could always drop by again. “My kitchen is always open.”

  Saying good-bye, they embraced. Another first. Anne felt the elation that comes from deep conversation. To hell with the wash and the shopping. Omelettes would do for dinner tonight. She could barely wait for Ned to come home so she could share the exciting developments with him.

  29

  April seventeenth would have been the day he opened the house in East Hampton. Instead, he was riding the bus from Kennedy to the city, having just left Liza at the airport.

  The fumes along the highway were intense, the sky laden with the gray smog of countless exhausts, Con Ed generators, and scores of factory smokestacks. How easy life might be if, like Phoebe, he could go to San Francisco, use a maiden name, stay with parents in a house on Muir Beach, walk among the redwoods, and breathe the clean Pacific air. What if he did? What if he stepped aboard an aircraft Monday morning instead of walking into court? The temptation to do so was strong today but convention ruled against it.

  Perhaps, one day, someone would offer a course in Convention to psychiatrists in training so that they might appreciate its double aspect. Surely it was as formidable and decisive a process as any of the instincts. Abiding by convention led to psychic slavery. Violating it, though, resulted in his current difficulties. Or was it the other way around?

  After all, once he began living with Arlene his impulse was to stay with her. It was Carlo, that idealistic romantic from Rome, who persuaded him to choose the more conventional course. Might that decision have caused his plight?

  The bus slowed as it approached the Midtown Tunnel’s tollgates. Eleven A.M. He’d be back in his apartment by noon. Liza’s absence would be felt.

  Her visit over the Easter vacation had buoyed him. Now that she was a Californian, she’d decided to take in all of New York’s tourist attractions. Together they’d visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, seen a Broadway musical, watched a light show at the Hayden Planetarium, toured the Cloisters, climbed the Statue of Liberty, dined at Sardi’s, and spent one afternoon at the Bronx Zoo.

  That was over now. Her “Don’t worry, Dad. I love you whatever happens” at the departure gate came back to him and he grew misty-eyed. Don’t be mushy. You’re sitting in a bus. Save the tears for private quarters. Think of something to do. Activity helped you last week and it can help you again today.

  But what does a forty-three-year-old man, whose wife has recently left, do on a Saturday? Where does he go? Whom does he see? Erstwhile friends had disappeared and he couldn’t abide the grim-lipped sympathy of relatives. Yet a man like Carlo, who in ordinary terms might be seen as an adversary, had befriended him. Perhaps he’d accept Carlo’s offer to spend this weekend in East Moriches. It wasn’t East Hampton but was preferable to the city. Anyway, it was the best and only offer he’d had.

  What he most wished for was a woman. One who could satisfy his desire for physical and emotional intimacy. Could he find her? And if she recognized his name, would she be willing to talk with him? And where do they hang out? Bars were not his scene. Singles parties? Parents Without Partners? Too many losers. Wasn’t he, though, a loser as well?

  He’d lost his wife, his car, his homes, his friends, and his reputation. He’d been asked to take a leave of absence from the Analytic Institute until the trial ended, as they were concerned that Jonas would tarnish their image. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association were conducting independent investigations of him. Group Health Insurance no longer included him on its list of participating physicians and he was fighting his suspension from the New York Society of Clinical Psychiatry.

  For what? Because he might have rubbed genitals with one particular woman? Because he abandoned her? Well, hell. Leaving Arlene had not been easy for him, either. Somehow it all seemed cruelly out of proportion.

  “Grand Central,” the driver cried as he pulled up alongside the large stone building. Jonas waited patiently as the others disembarked, then left the bus himself, picked up a copy of The New York Times, and walked along Forty-second Street toward Eighth Avenue. Taxicabs were a luxury at this point in his life, and besides, he was in no particular hurry to arrive anywhere. Suspended animation was what it felt like. Suspended mentally, too. Wondering why this catastrophe befell him. Hating the lying. Wondering how his life would have turned out had he either played it safe from the beginning, avoided the intimacy with Arlene entirely, or limited it to a few therapeutic sessions in the office. Or if he had gone for broke and left Phoebe permanently last summer.

  Shoppers were swarming about the intersection of Forty-second Street, Broadway and Seventh Avenue, moving in and out of the dozens of smaller stores that fronted on the thoroughfares. Jonas moved through them as if they were invisible, his head held high, his eyes glazed in reverie, his pace somnambulistic.

  How could he ever have misjudged things so? Why had all his years of psychiatric schooling failed to alert him to Arlene’s condition? Of what value was his training if such assessments and predictions could not be made? Was analysis nothing more than convoluted, retrospective second guessing? Would he have been tempted to take part in his sexual experiment had Phoebe been more available to him?

  Walking down the steps of the subway, the questions gave way to memories of his bitterness. The rage he’d felt when Phoebe walked out six weeks ago; rage he now saw as an outgrowth of her years of indifference. Why had he been so blind not to have seen it earlier? Convention, again? Or entropy? Whatever, it was a refusal to accept realities that might puncture the dream life he’d created. In the long run he’d be better off without her. He wouldn’t contest her filing for divorce, but did the bitch have to move so far away that he could only see his daughter parts of the year?

  The anger spread to Arlene for punishing him so, replacing the guilt he’d felt for having played a part in her breakdown. Resentment erupted toward his colleagues, some of whom were guilty of similar or greater crimes, who treated him like a pariah. And toward patients, like Wayne Barzin, who quit with a note calling Jonas “an unethical scum.”r />
  Ultimately the anger rescued him from drowning in a pool of remorse, shame and self-pity. And for this he was thankful.

  Jonas took a dollar bill from his wallet and purchased two tokens, placed one in the turnstile, walked to the uptown platform and waited for his train. Lately he’d come to see himself as a token; a symbol about which the passions, prejudices and values of others revolved. After his picture first appeared in the papers and on television he had found himself pointed at by people on the street. The token bad man. “Look! See! There he goes.… That’s what can happen to you if you don’t behave.… You think psychiatrists are so hot? There goes one who’s a disgrace.” After two weeks he’d managed to hide behind a respectable beard. Jonas fingered it now, as the A train arrived. He’d become rather fond of it. Pity to have to shave it off. Yet that’s what he’d do after the trial was over, for during the next week he’d be seen and known as the bearded misbehaviorist. Clean-shaven, he would again be anonymous to strangers.

  He was a token, too, for the Women’s Liberationists, who viewed him as a symbol of chauvinist exploitation within the field of psychotherapy. A symbol for the medical and psychiatric associations that wanted to prove to the public that they adequately supervised professions that were, in truth, accountable to no one. A symbol for those who always disrespected his profession and now had a bête noire they might gleefully point out.

  At Fifty-ninth Street he changed for the uptown local. Unfolding the newspaper, he began to read. Buried deeply in the first section was an article on a doctor’s suicide. That, too, triggered memories of similar thoughts he’d had. Were it not for his own work in a suicide prevention center, who knows what he might have done? “There is always time for that later,” he’d often told others. “Why not hold on a bit longer. You can always kill yourself, you know. Perhaps things will improve.” Well, he would see. Certainly they couldn’t get much worse.

  Ninety-sixth Street. Leaving the train, he walked down the platform, through the barred doors, up the staircase and onto the street. A cool breeze blowing from Central Park was a welcome relief from the stagnant underground air. Turning west, he passed the church on the corner and arrived outside his new residence. Fifty West Ninety-sixth Street. A three-room apartment on the second floor that doubled as his office, with views of the brick walls of the surrounding buildings. At least it was quiet.

  In the lobby he opened his mailbox. A medical magazine, several pieces of junk mail, and a large, folded manila envelope—hand addressed—which he examined on the spot. Enclosed was a pamphlet on Satanism, and a note from a woman who “prayed for you.

  “If you open your heart to Jesus,” it went on, “even though you are a Jew, He can drive the devil from your soul.” At least, he thought, she sees me as redeemable.

  Jonas was about to go upstairs when Charlie, the stocky Irishman who worked as the daytime doorman, exited from the elevator.

  “Hey, Doc,” he looked grim but friendly. “I’m off tomorrow, but I wanted to wish you luck with your trial on Monday.”

  “Thanks, Charlie. I appreciate it.”

  “I hope you don’t take offense at my sayin’ so, but whether or not you’re guilty or innocent don’t mean a damn t’me. You’ve always seemed like a good lad. And if you ask me, any woman who’d sue a man over a matter of fornication ought t’have her head examined.”

  III. Final Judgment

  30

  One hundred eleven Centre Street is a large, undistinguished concrete building in lower Manhattan, square and ponderous, well suited for housing archives or bureaucrats.

  The curious began arriving at seven-thirty. By eight forty-five over 150 were queued in front of the green, portholed double doors on the fourth floor. Despite a clerk’s warning that the late arrivals were wasting their time, no one left.

  It was not unlike the lines assembling before the start of a World Series game or those that formed outside motion picture theaters when Jaws was first shown. Except that the spectators were mostly women, this was the Civil Court Building, and the show they were about to see was Lewis versus Lippman.

  The more knowledgeable among them carried paper bags containing lunches, since leaving the courtroom meant losing a seat. Gossiping or reading the Daily News, housewives, students, retired folk and the unemployed, they waited expectantly until nine-thirty, when a blue-uniformed officer of the court opened the doors. Filing rapidly in, they quickly filled the forty available spaces on the divided second and third rows of mahogany benches, leaving the reserved front row empty.

  The room itself was small as courtrooms go, with simple, contemporary lines substituting for formidably carved fixtures. Gray inlaid vinyl tiles replaced hardwood floors. Smooth, polished mahogany panels, separated by metallic strips, covered the walls while a long, low mahogany partition, swinging doors in its center, divided the gallery from the main arena.

  Shortly before ten A.M. the court stenographer appeared and arranged his gear at a table below and directly in front of the judge’s bench. Moments afterward the clerk arrived, a sallow, sickly looking man in a rumpled suit, carrying documents which he deposited in the extreme left-hand corner of the room.

  Quiet attentiveness imbued the spectators as they ended their conversations and put their reading aside. Then, as if on cue, the green doors opened in the left rear corner of the room. Preceded by photographers and reporters, the defense attorney and his client made their entrance. Walking with studied serenity through this galaxy of flashing light cubes while pretending to ignore cacophonous questioning, they made their way through the swinging doors to the relative safety of a long table where, with backs to the audience, they took seats on the right.

  Two minutes later the scene was repeated, the new entrants being the plaintiff and her attorney; he pausing for a few seconds to chat with a phalanx of interviewers while she, eyes downcast, waited for him to finish. They, too, walked to the counselors’ table and seated themselves to the left.

  Next to appear was an officer who came through a second door to the right of the judge’s bench. A slim black man with a full head of graying hair, Afro style, and a paper-thin moustache, he led the jury of three men and three women to their box against the right wall. Then, in a voice grown mechanical for having uttered the same phrase for a decade, announced:

  “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye! Supreme Court of the State of New York, Special Term, Part Two is now in session. Judge George Margolis presiding. Please rise.”

  As everyone stood, the jurist, a black-cloaked master of ceremonies, strode from his chambers, through the same door, mounted the podium, raised his robe, and settled smartly into a red leather chair.

  On entering, he was not overly impressive. A slight man in his early fifties, his fine, thinning black hair was shaped in a widow’s peak. Thick wire-rimmed glasses perched atop a prominent nose and he looked lost in his judicial robes.

  That appearance changed as soon as he was seated. The American flag on the eagle-capped pole to the left of his bench, the block-lettered “IN GOD WE TRUST” behind him, and the raised elevation from which he presided lent an air of ascetic authority. As did his opening remarks:

  “I never knew,” he said, peering with interest at the crowd, “that New York had so many students of psychiatric practice.

  “However,” he removed his glasses and held them, by an ear wire, in his right hand, “I intend to conduct a trial, not a three-ring circus. And so I must ask the bailiff to clear the courtroom of all standees.”

  With disappointed faces and audible moans, a score of onlookers were escorted to the door by the officer. Judge Margolis continued:

  “Nor will I permit the taking of photographs. If any pictures are taken the film will be confiscated. Any photographs that were made within this room prior to the start of proceedings are not to be printed or all parties involved will be held in contempt of court. So I suggest to any of you gentlemen of the press in the first row holding cameras that you kindly remove them from t
his courtroom.”

  Another flurry of activity as his second request was complied with.

  “Finally, I will not tolerate demonstrations. Those who are not capable of containing their sympathies had better leave now, for any outbreak will result in ejection from the premises or the clearing of the gallery.

  “Now,” he placed his eyeglasses back in place, adjusting them carefully, “let us get on with the formalities.”

  Explaining to the jurors presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt, he asked if they had any questions regarding these terms. “Are they understood?”

  Six heads nodded aye.

  Next came the checklist of statutory qualifications:

  Were they all citizens? Yes.

  Were any deaf or in poor health? No.

  Was there anyone over sixty-five who wanted to be excused? No.

  Did everyone speak and understand English? Yes.

  Had anyone served on a jury in the past twelve months? Or were there any government, state, or municipal employees wishing to be excused? No.

  Then there were questions on other grounds:

  Was anyone intimately acquainted with the plaintiff’s attorney? Or have pending business with him? Or have a relationship that might be embarrassing? No.

  Was anyone intimately acquainted with the defendant’s attorney? Or have pending business with him? Or have a relationship that might be embarrassing? No.

  Was anyone intimately acquainted with the plaintiff? Have pending business with her or a relationship that might be embarrassing? No.

  Was anyone intimately acquainted with the defendant, have pending business with him or a relationship that might prove embarrassing? No.

  Had any of the jurors read about this case? Several heads nodded affirmatively. Did any of them have any opinions regarding the defendant’s guilt or innocence? All shook their heads no.

  That dispensed with, the jury was sworn in. Judge Margolis gaveled his desk and the clerk announced: