The Last Kiss

by Leslie Brody

  When Milo and I agreed to separate seven years after our beautiful wedding, it was done with great civility. In contrast to our flawed marriage, we had a model divorce. A few times we even found ourselves laughing together over a funny turn of phrase at the mediator’s office. My one gnawing fear was the pain we were causing our children. But it can’t be good, I told myself over and over, to grow up with unhappy parents. Our daughter, Devon, was four when Milo moved out. Our son, Alex, was one. The months surrounding Milo’s departure passed in a wrenching haze of guilt and anxiety and desperate hope that the kids would be okay. We did our best to separate with kindness. Still, it was heartbreaking to watch Alex, so little, sob with hurt confusion when we first started the every other weekend and Wednesday night handoffs, his quilted diaper bag passing back and forth between the grownups, along with our stiff smiles.

  The second time around, my groom had none of the pedigree or detachment of my first husband. Elliot was the son of a printer in Queens. He grew up on malted milk shakes offered as bribes to go to Hebrew school and relished his summer job as a fourteen-year-old delivering fabric for a garment dealer. His boss gave him cab fare to keep the goods clean, but Elliot would take the subway and spend the cash he saved on meatball heroes.

  Ironically, these two very different men, coming from such disparate origins, ended up on similar paths. Both fled the Northeast to go to the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Both found their calling at the college paper, The Daily Cardinal, just a few years apart. And both ended up covering legal news for bastions of New York financial journalism.

  While Milo grew up surrounded by power, Elliot was raised on romance. His father printed the posters for Broadway shows and used to take Elliot to musicals like South Pacific and Carousel. Elliot adored all those songs about soul mates and passion and the healing power of true love. He grew up hoping that some enchanted evening, he would see a stranger across a crowded room.

  That crowded room turned out to be the messy, grey-carpeted fourth-floor of The Record in Hackensack. It would be years before we acted on our attraction, but once we did, we felt inseparable.

  My second wedding was almost nothing like my first, and that was a good thing. This time I took charge. I wasn’t going to ask my mother to organize a ceremony she didn’t support. She was concerned about all this upheaval for her grandchildren, and that I could understand. I was worried too.

  To keep the day as relaxed as possible, I booked a Sunday lunch in June for two dozen people at Arthur’s Landing in Weehawken, a restaurant with a spectacular view of Manhattan across the Hudson. My parents and a few city friends could come by ferry. No designated drivers necessary.

  The challenge was finding someone who could marry us there. We didn’t want anything religious. After several leads proved fruitless, I picked up the phone book. Lo and behold, in the yellow pages under “weddings” was a guy who promised to deliver whatever ritual you wanted.

  There was no time to wait until Elliot could come with me to check him out. On my next weekday off, I drove an hour to the man’s house somewhere in Central Jersey with my little boy in tow. Alex was about to turn four, all blond hair and freckles and mischief. I brought toy trucks and pretzels and a sippy cup of juice to keep him busy.

  When we arrived at the wedding guy’s slightly unkempt ranch house, two couples in shorts and t-shirts were perched on his living room couches, thumbing awkwardly through fat binders with the prices for various services. The wedding guy—I don’t remember his name—wore a golf shirt that showed his beer gut spilling over his belt. Maybe he was a truck driver who got licensed to run ceremonies through the Internet. The whole scene was a turnoff, but I didn’t have much time to look further.

  “Please just don’t say anything about God,” I told him. “Nothing spiritual or New Age-y either. We want to keep this simple.”

  He charged two hundred dollars.

  A few days before the big day, my father called.

  “I’d like to pay for your wedding,” he said, direct as always. I told him that wasn’t necessary, he had already given me a big one, but he insisted. I was deeply touched. Like my mother, he had reservations about this marriage but his determination to pay for it told me he was doing his best to get on board. Maybe he recognized that it would be almost impossible for me to find a man he thought was good enough and that I was serious in my choice. Perhaps he also saw that I was following a bit in his footsteps. When he married my mother, their parents were appalled. My mother’s family in the South couldn’t believe she picked a Yankee, no less a Jew. Despite such censure, my parents had been together for more than four decades and were still devoted to each other.

  Elliot and I got married on June 24, the day before I turned thirty-nine. It was a scorcher. The air was thick and hazy with humidity. When we woke up at my house—we broke tradition and spent the night together before our nuptials—there was a note slipped under the bedroom door. It was from Devon. She had written it in royal blue crayon on white construction paper in slanted capital letters.

  DEAR MOM AND ELLOT,

  HAVE A HAPPY WEDYN! ELLOT IS A GRAT STEPFOTHR! AND MOM IS A GRAT MOM! AND KATE IS A GRAT STEP SISTR! AND MAX AND AREN ARE GRAT STEP BURUTHRS!

  LOVE DEVON

  My heart filled with gratitude for such an enthusiastic endorsement. Elliot kissed me and went off to thank the author. I took a deep breath and tried to inhale confidence. It was a moment of calm before the onslaught. The house shook with feet pounding up and down the stairs as Elliot’s kids and mine took hurried turns in the shower. Elliot put on the new brown suit he bought for the occasion and looked quite dapper. I’d found a silvery grey sleeveless top and long teal skirt in matching silk with narrow crinkly pleats. The material, which resembled that of my first wedding dress, was the only reminder of my first time around. Somehow the Greek goddess theme stuck with me. Elliot’s mother, always kind, gave me the pearl necklace that Elliot’s late father had given her long ago.

  We made it to the restaurant just before our relatives and friends. The wedding guy came in a dark suit at noon and was clearly in a rush to get going. He had another gig to officiate.

  As our guests chatted over flutes of champagne in our private room with floor-to-ceiling views of the Empire State building, I snuck into the ladies room for a moment alone. It was cool from the air conditioner, but that didn’t stop my nervous sweat. Crescent-shaped stains were creeping out under the arms of my silk top. My stomach was in a painful knot. It was hard to smile through a ceremony that my mother disapproved of. I just wanted to get through it so Elliot and I could escape to the beach in Bermuda. I took a deep breath, steeled myself and walked back out into fray.

  Elliot’s children, Max, a shy twelve-year-old, and Kate, quiet at sixteen, sat by a window looking subdued. Aaron, nineteen and home from college, was gregarious as always. Devon, in a classic pink dress with a satin bow and white patent leather Mary Janes, was excited about being the flower girl. I gave her a basket of rose petals to toss. When she realized the room had no aisle to parade down, she pouted in disappointment but perked up when my sister’s little girls arrived. I had brought along new boxes of crayons and Lego kits for making bulldozers in case they needed extra entertainment. Alex, wearing a white button down shirt and navy blue shorts with suspenders, ripped open his box before the service even started.

  Soft jazz piped in from the main dining room.

  “If someone doesn’t turn that down,” the wedding guy barked, “I’m going to get a gun!”

  Could he be any tackier?

  As soon as Elliot and I brought our children together in the center of the room, the guy started. It was impossible to focus on his words about devotion and trust and tolerance. As Elliot’s fingers entwined with mine, I kept looking at the kids to see if they were okay. Kate touched a knuckle to the corner of one eye. It’s hard not to cry when you see concrete evidence that the family you grew up with is gone for good, or at least dramatically altered. Max
pinched the top of his nose with his fingers but would later swear he wasn’t tearing up, really, just tipsy from his first sip of champagne.

  “You are, ALL OF YOU, part of this new family that Elliot and Leslie have committed themselves to,” the guy said to the small crowd of guests standing around us. “It is a great and wonderful challenge they have taken on. There will be days it may seem daunting. They will need every one of you.”

  I stole a glance at my mother. She was sitting in back, outside the circle, looking the other way, far into the distance. She was trying in vain to choke back tears. So was I. Any marriage is a gamble, and it feels like an even bigger risk when you’re bringing children along who could suffer from any bad bets. I was scared. Maybe this would turn out to be a huge mistake. Maybe I was being selfish. But it had taken me half a lifetime to find a man I loved who loved me so much, just the way I was, and I couldn’t bear to give him up. I didn’t want a life ruled by cowardice.

  “Leslie and Elliot, this day not only solemnizes your marriage,” the guy continued, “it also honors and celebrates the family you have formed with Aaron, Kate, Max, Devon and Alex. Young members of the family, please join Leslie and Elliot and all hold hands in a circle.”

  Alex, who had wandered off to work on his Lego bulldozer, heard his name called and came over to stand next to me. He looked a bit stunned to be in the spotlight.

  “Family is not about a blood relationship. It is a construct of the heart. You are now, and for all time, married and a family.”

  Devon’s eyes grew glassy. She sniffled. Aaron squeezed her shoulder and she looked up at him. He gave her a grin and she smiled back.

  That was a gift, just what I needed to see. The kids were so sweet, and so sweet to each other. They’re adjusting, I told myself. It’s the grownups who are having trouble. I think we’re all going to be alright. This is going to work. I have to make it work. We have to. We’ll fly off on our honeymoon, wash our worries away in the ocean and come back to start life fresh.

  My father came over to shake Elliot’s hand and kiss me on the cheek.

  “Just be happy,” my dad whispered in my ear.

  Elliot reporting for The Record in Haiti, 1986.

  Photo courtesy of The Record.

  THE THINGS HE CARRIED

  Elliot always schlepped a knapsack—to work, to baseball games, on vacation. When the blue one he adopted as a hand-me-down from his youngest son wore out I got him a simple black one from L.L. Bean. It always had a book, an umbrella, computer screen wipes that he used to clean his glasses, Band-Aids, pens, and, after he got sick, condoms. To his horror, doctors said that we had to use protection when he started the highest octane drugs—otherwise the most intimate acts might dose me with his chemotherapy. He hated the feel of those slippery things, but he put up with them for my sake and had to confess it gave him a youthful little kick to fumble with the wrapper like a lusty teenager. Ever optimistic, he always carried a few Trojans in his knapsack’s front pocket so he’d be ready for anything, anywhere. I just hoped my kids never unzipped that pocket to hunt for a Lifesaver.

  Aside from our amorous adventures, one of Elliot’s favorite times of the week was Saturday morning. He believed in long, languorous breakfasts eating pancakes, reading The Times and railing against finger-in-the-wind politicians, corruption on Wall Street and ridiculously overpaid athletes with bimbos on their arms. He savored hashing over the previous day’s Mets games, initiating my son into the manly world of sports stats, criticism and fierce loyalty to the team he’d rooted for since he was twelve, saving milk carton coupons for tickets to Shea Stadium. He’d cheer for those scrappy underdogs no matter how much they disappointed him year after year. He told Alex that being a Mets fan built character.

  “What a bunch of bums,” Elliot would grumble, shaking his head in exasperation. “My eighty-year-old mother could throw better than that.”

  “Yeah,” Alex would nod soberly. “Mine too.”

  Some people thought of Elliot as a bit of a kvetch, but they just didn’t get him. Most of his gripes struck me as comedy shtick, just venting to get aggravations out of his system. He’d carry on about Montclair mommies who blocked the road to chat in their minivans, breakdowns on NJ Transit and those rolling briefcases that took up the whole damn sidewalk. He was sincerely irritated by such offenses but knew his condemnations were excessive. They were largely meant to entertain, and he always made me laugh.

  When it came to serious injustice, his complaints stemmed from real outrage. His anger was the flip side of his passion. As a determined young reporter, he wrote heartbreaking accounts of the custody trial of Baby M, whose surrogate mother changed her mind about giving up the little girl she had promised to another couple. He wrote about mistreated war veterans and Haitian children so poor they bathed in sewers. At the office, his criticisms of bad editing decisions and favoritism felt to me like a tender form of sharing. He talked to me more openly than any man ever had.

  My parents never got him. They saw complaining as a character flaw, a sense of victimhood. To make matters worse, sometimes Elliot looked down to the side while he was talking so he could concentrate without distraction. My father found that terribly rude.

  “Why can’t the guy look me in the eye?” he asked me once after they met. I didn’t have a good answer but knew Elliot was unaware of the transgression. And he always looked straight at me.

  It sounds embarrassingly superficial and backwardly un-feminist, but Elliot’s hair was the first thing that caught my attention. When I first saw him in The Record’s newsroom back when I was thirty-one, before my first child was even conceived, his desk was near mine. Every afternoon at 3:00, after fixing a grilled cheese sandwich at home for his little boy, Max, he’d rush in for a night rewrite shift and dump his worn leather briefcase on his desk.

  Elliot didn’t seem to notice me, but I’d sneak peeks at his hair. It was light brown, straight, shiny and thick with a side part. Sometimes the front sweep of it would fall forward over his forehead as he read, and he had a seductive way of tucking the side strands behind his ear. When he was deep in thought he would slowly stroke the narrow beard that lined his jaw. It looked vaguely French. I don’t generally like beards and moustaches, but his looked dashing, even necessary, to frame his long face. They set off his deep-set eyes, high cheekbones and easy smile. He always joked about his big nose. To me it looked virile.

  “Hi Elliot,” a blond reporter who sat next to him said every afternoon in her teasing can-you-believe-we’re-back-here-again? voice.

  “Hello Laurie,” he always echoed back, low and gravelly. He never said hi to me—and I was too timid to say anything to him—though years later he would swear that his first thought when he saw me walk through the newsroom was “What lucky guy is married to her?”

  Elliot didn’t want to be at The Record again. He’d already had a nine-year stint there four years earlier and was tired of toiling away at a mid-sized daily that dwelled mostly on the meat-and-potatoes of New Jersey suburbs. When he first joined the paper he’d covered some big stories, like the blow-up at The Three Mile Island nuclear plant. He’d won a reputation for his can-do attitude, fairness and elegant writing style. Although he had once dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent for The New York Times in Paris or the Middle East, his ambition ebbed when his first baby, Aaron, was born. Completely besotted, Elliot maneuvered for a cushy position as a feature writer that let him get home for dinner and bath time. Elliot would get right in the tub with his splashing son. When a group of fellow reporters made a run for The Los Angeles Times, he moved too slowly. By the time he applied, The Times’ hiring spree was over, and he wasn’t such a great self-promoter anyway.

  After he had a daughter, Kate, and another son, Max, Elliot’s skill covering federal courts earned him a job at Manhattan Lawyer magazine. He loved the rush of working in the city, but as soon as he was promoted to be a columnist, the magazine folded. With a young family to feed, Elliot nee
ded a paycheck fast, so he swallowed his pride, clenched his jaw and headed back to The Record in much less glamorous Hackensack. Lucky me.

  I got to know Elliot well in 1994, about two years after my start there. He had become an editor and was assigned to help with a long-term project investigating the state’s child protection agency, the Division of Youth and Family Services. I was one of three reporters involved and found myself looking forward to getting back to the office to tell Elliot what I had seen in a case file or learned in an interview. He was so engaged, so sympathetic to the children in these ravaged families, and so interested in what I had to say. I had just had my first baby, and he got a kick out of my gushy tales about Devon’s first teeth and her refusal to nap unless a specific cube-shaped pillow was wedged against the very top of her head.

  That DYFS project was almost a catastrophe, a career killer, thanks to one reporter on the team. Call him Scruffy. He claimed to have dramatic evidence that DYFS workers knew a little girl was in danger at home but left her there anyway; the parents ended up beating her to death. Three days before his stories were supposed to be published in a big Sunday splash—the first of our series—Scruffy admitted sheepishly that he needed to tone down some of his strongest conclusions. As Elliot grilled him over the course of an editing session that lasted until almost midnight Thursday, Scruffy confessed he had stretched the facts a bit here and there. As he squirmed and stepped out for serial smoking breaks, the truth became clear. He had jazzed things up to win a prize.

  The rest of us were furious and panicked. Radio ads had already promoted Scruffy’s bold exposé. At least my stories, detailing the impact of addiction on the families in the system, were ready as a fallback. They weren’t nearly as sexy, but they were accurate. It was an obvious substitution, and editors told me to come in early Friday for last-minute fact-checking.