The Laws of Gravity

by Liz Rosenberg

  The initial meeting took place in chambers with the judge and lawyers only. Sol was old-fashioned that way. He’d found that even lawyers tended to be on their best behavior in his chambers.

  The lawyer for Nicole Greene, the plaintiff, was Peter Allister, a man he did not know. Sol was surprised that that the plaintiff hadn’t hired a larger law firm for the case, with a specialist in medical malpractice or contract law. As far as he could tell, this lawyer worked alone. He was soft-spoken, his sandy hair touched with gray. He presented the case simply—almost too simply, Sol thought, not trying to tug on the judge’s heartstrings as most lawyers would have done, but simply pressing the urgency of moving forward quickly, and emphasizing the contractual nature of the letter that the cousin, Ari Wiesenthal, had signed.

  The defendant’s lawyer, Sol did unfortunately know quite well. She was famous, or infamous, depending on your point of view. A few jurists admired her; many did not. Katrina Turock was a junior partner at Singular and Prescott, a large prestigious law firm located in Great Neck, with branches in two of the Five Towns. Turock was in her early thirties but had already made her name with a few well-publicized cases. Her client was always the big guy, the five-hundred-pound canary. Her beauty tended toward the showy side, with long, wavy blonde hair. It was said she was a bodybuilder, but she was too muscular, almost bulky-looking, and, he noticed, her hair was starting to thin. She was also high-strung, smart, ruthless, sarcastic to her opponents, and had had numerous affairs with older men in high places. None of these ended well for the men.

  As he’d expected, the first thing she did was reargue the motion to dismiss. She called the case “ludicrous, based on old-fashioned notions of gallantry that have nothing to do with law.” She did not shake Flannery’s hand when introduced, and spoke insultingly in front of Peter Allister about “little firms that had nothing better to do with their time than to waste it.” Peter bared his teeth in a smile.

  “The court has already decided to keep the case,” Sol said. “So let’s move on to scheduling.”

  Katrina rolled her eyes and took out her BlackBerry. “I’m not free till March or April, at the earliest,” she said.

  “That’s unfortunate,” said the judge, “as the case will commence in two weeks, time being a key factor. Perhaps another lawyer in your firm can take your place.” He hoped that this was true.

  Her pale eyes flashed. “It’s my case,” she said. “I’ll rearrange my schedule.” She was wearing a low-slung belt with many brass studs over a short skirt, over a pair of leggings. Over this she wore a jacket that he supposed was stylish, but the whole effect was vaguely military. If Arnold Schwarzenegger became a woman and a lawyer, this was what he’d be wearing.

  “Thank you,” said Peter Allister, gathering up his papers. “I’d better mosey on back to my little office.”

  “Let the games begin,” said Katrina Turock.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Sarah said one morning at breakfast. Sol knew from experience that this was never a good sign. “I did some thinking while I was in Thailand, and I realized…” She bit into her bagel and chewed it in thoughtful silence.

  As usual, she made him ask her. “Realized what?” When he was younger and newly married, he would begin to panic inwardly. I just realized that I want a divorce. I realized that I hate this house. I realized that we should move to Alaska. In reality it was likely to be, I realized no one in my family was ever a Republican. Sol had learned not to guess. So he laid down his morning paper and waited.

  “I have a choice,” she said. “I can settle down and become a grandmother and devote myself entirely to that—and it’s very tempting, with Iris so close. Or I can try to develop myself in some way. It doesn’t mean I won’t be available for my family. But I realized something is missing.”

  Another long silence. Another question. “What’s missing?” he said, tempted to make a joke.

  “Spirituality,” she said. “I go through the motions on Friday night, but I barely feel it anymore. You know, we took Iris to a Buddhist temple for a blessing—they do that with all the orphans—and I felt very uncomfortable. But I didn’t know why I should be uncomfortable. What does it mean for me to be a Jew?”

  It was not a question he could answer.

  She plowed on. “You know that nice young rabbi who’s renting the apartment to Abigail?” she said. He nodded, though he’d never met the man. “He’s running a study group for older women—women my age who never really had a Jewish education. At the end of it we’re all going to get bat-mitzvahed.”

  Now he did laugh.

  She frowned. “What’s so funny about that? You think we’re too old?”

  “Are you going to have a disc jockey?” he asked. “A theme? Maybe the Golden Girls?”

  She swatted him with the newspaper. “It’s not about the bat mitzvah. It’s about learning. As long as you’re learning, you still feel alive. Learning is the greatest defense against despair.”

  “Are you in danger of despair?” Sol asked. He was taken aback, looking at his wife more closely, like a man searching for symptoms of an illness.

  “I want to feel alive—and not just through other people. I have the time now, I’d like to”—she glanced at him shyly—“to connect myself to something higher.”

  “You should,” he said.

  “Really? You’re not just saying that?”

  “You deserve this.”

  “The class meets Tuesday and Thursday nights.”

  He frowned, unable to control his face.

  “I’ll make dinner ahead of time.”

  “It’s not that,” he said. “I don’t care about food, you know that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’ll miss you,” he said.

  She patted his hand. “I’ll be back,” she said. “As long as you’re sticking around, I’m sticking around.”

  In the weeks after first meeting the lawyers involved in Greene vs. Wiesenthal, Sol had time to remind himself that it didn’t matter how he felt about law firms, or the behavior of particular lawyers, so long as they did not overstep the law; what mattered was the case itself, and the facts and history pertaining to it.

  Flannery had been particularly conscientious and diligent in collating his research. This had always been his strong point as clerk. He was sure of the results. “The case is cut-and-dried,” the chief clerk said with a slash of one thin hand. “Cut, dried, and hung up to wash.” He had pages of notes, “in his back pocket,” he claimed, but Sol waved him off. All of his staff seemed to sense something unusual in this case, some excitement. The thrill of a blood sport, Sol thought morosely. Even Myra made no complaints about putting in overtime typing up notes and running searches online in the various libraries. Frank Zimmer, the young part-clerk, helped Sol upgrade his computer for the task.

  Sol could not get used to the speed at which even the most arcane knowledge could be accessed. At times he felt he must be dreaming it. When did Google become a verb? He remembered sitting around the family dining room table with the Encyclopaedia Britannica to settle questions. It must have felt like this when man, who could only walk or run, suddenly got behind the wheels of a car and watched the landscape speeding by.

  Sol had been born before TV existed, before a man stepped on the moon, even before private telephones were common. He remembered life without those things. He was a mere blip on an enormous screen of time and circumstance. Some people felt larger looking at the ocean, while others felt smaller. The vastness of things had always disturbed Sol, while they always exalted Sarah. It came as no great surprise that she wanted to draw closer to the Infinite, even as he shrank away from it.

  The lawyers for the blood case had met twice more, alone in conference with Flannery. Katrina Turock kept dragging her heels, trying to slow things down. Diligent, quiet, Ned, Sol’s part lawyer, kept stubbornly moving things along. He was young and, despite his baldness, handsome, with delicate, clear-cut features. No doubt, Sol thoug
ht cynically, that also helped keep even Katrina Turock in line. Sol’s immediate problem, one he had never faced to this degree before, was how to keep this case from turning into a circus.

  Turock was a notorious publicity hound. She was well connected, a media darling, photogenic. Clever, caustic sound bites were her specialty. When the judge pulled into his usual reserved parking spot on the day he was to first meet with the defendant and plaintiff, he saw all the cameramen and their trucks assembled and his heart sank.

  He got out of his car, registering the heavy clunk of the Volvo’s door as he shut it behind him. He walked the gauntlet of a dozen reporters jabbing their mikes at him. He shook them off, saying, “No comment, no comment,” as he shouldered his way into the courthouse. He had wanted this first meeting between the cousins as informal as possible, which is why he’d deliberately scheduled it in Flannery’s smaller office. Sometimes all it took was for the people involved to get a good look at one another, and things could be resolved outside the courtroom. But this—this was a nightmare.

  “It’s a private meeting,” he instructed the court public relations officer. He tried not to show his exasperation. She knew all this. “No media access.” It was her job to tell the crowd that had assembled outside the outer office doors of Part 18. They piled their camera equipment on the white marble benches and they obstructed the hallway. They jostled and shoved and ignored the public relations officer, a sweet grandmotherly-looking woman named Stephanie Korziack. Her gray hair was flattened on one side. Myra was signaling to Sol through the glass, though he had no idea what she was trying to indicate, and Flannery was right beside her, nodding and smiling like the welcoming committee.

  “Do you have any comments on this case?” a reporter asked Sol. “We know that this is a fraught situation, charged with family—”

  “Get out,” the judge said. “Anyone who is not immediately involved in the case. In future I’ll thank you to listen to Mrs. Korziack.” His harassed elderly court officer smiled at him weakly.

  “But after the trial actually begins—”

  “Out!” he barked.

  “You can’t keep us out once the legal process begins,” a young reporter from Newsday began. He was tall and thin, with a hawkish, aggressive look.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Sol said. He knew he was on thin ice, but he didn’t give a damn. “Now get going. I mean it. I’ll start taking names in another thirty seconds.” He spotted Sergeant Carter Johnson making his way down the hall, looking larger and grimmer than ever.

  The reporters turned and scurried away, even the young Turk from Newsday. Through the glass doorway Sol saw Flannery’s face fall. Myra, on the other hand, nodded approvingly.

  “I’m sorry,” Stephanie apologized. “I told them three or four times. They just wouldn’t listen.”

  “I don’t understand why you would deny yourself a little publicity,” Flannery said softly, as the judge walked past him. “A moment in the spotlight, so to speak.”

  “Apparently there’s a lot you don’t understand,” Sol answered. “Is everyone here?” he asked Myra.

  “Everyone but Nicole Greene, the plaintiff. Her lawyer’s inside. So is everyone else. Including that muscle-bound broad on her broomstick.”

  Sol nodded without smiling. “All right,” he said. “Call security. Get someone to escort Mrs. Greene up here when she comes.”

  Inside Flannery’s office sat the plaintiff’s handsome lawyer, wearing a camel-hair coat and looking like an irate movie star. Katrina Turock sported a patterned dress. A big belt. She wore high red heels. Beside her sat a man looking extremely grim and down in the mouth. If the judge hadn’t known better, he would have thought that this was the one who was ill. His hair, his suit, and even his face, were all ashen.

  “I won’t have a circus in my courtroom,” Sol said. “I want to make that clear.”

  “Thank God,” Peter said. “And thank you, Your Honor.”

  Katrina Turock said, “Well, we have nothing to hide. Justice Richter, this is my client, Ari Wiesenthal.”

  The man, Ari, half rose from his seat and shook the judge’s hand. Then he slumped back into his chair, eyes on the floor.

  “Is there any good reason to deny the media access to this case?” Katrina said.

  Sol ignored her tone. “That’s one of things we’re here to find out. Will there be any children involved as witnesses?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Peter. “My client is emphatic that her daughter not be exposed to this.”

  Ari looked up with a hopeful expression. “Yes,” he said. “My son, Julian. He’s only eleven. I think you need to meet with him. You need to see what’s at stake for me and my family.” The pronouns were slightly pronounced.

  “But that doesn’t necessarily mean we block the media—” Katrina began. She put one hand on her client’s arm.

  “It does,” Ari said. “I don’t want Julian in the middle of a crowd like that. My goal is to protect my children.”

  Katrina’s high-heeled foot began to bounce up and down. “We can keep the media away when your son appears.”

  “No,” said Ari. He turned to face her. “We went through all this. No. I want a closed case.”

  Katrina rolled her eyes and let out a sigh.

  “As does my client,” said Peter.

  “Fine. I’ll take that under advisement,” said the judge. “And to the best of our ability we will keep the media away.”

  “Thank you,” the man named Ari said. A little color returned to his face. But the relaxation lasted barely a moment. There was a flurry at the door, and a woman in a puffy blue winter coat appeared through the window in the door, flanked by Carter Johnson and one of the younger court officers. Johnson’s chest was puffed out; he looked like one of those birds who becomes twice as large in the face of danger.

  The judge suspected they had pushed through a crowd downstairs. The way the tipstaff shook his head at Sol confirmed this. The other court officer was sweating, though it was the dead of winter. Johnson knocked on the door. “We have the plaintiff,” he announced. His voice was loud enough to be heard through the oak doors.

  The woman in the blue down coat practically fell into the judge’s office. She took off a winter hat and shook out a mane of reddish hair. When she unzipped her coat, Sol saw that she was wearing a sweater exactly like one that his daughter Abigail owned—dark blue, with a thin stripe of black across the chest. He was staggered by the resemblance. No matter what happened in this life, he thought, he should know better than to be surprised. This woman Nicole looked like the ghost of his own daughter. Slim, red haired, brown eyed. Her hair singed his eyes, as if she were on fire there in front of him. He felt sick at heart. Flannery made the formal introductions, but the judge’s attention was riveted by the young woman. She looked at the defendant, her cousin, but his eyes were fixed on the carpet. He held his head, using his hands as a shield.

  “Hello, Ari,” the woman said softly. He nodded without answering.

  This whole case, the judge saw in a flash, was going to be harder than he had dreamed.

  MID-DECEMBER 2011

  In the Middle of the Longest Night

  The judge’s daughter had made arrangements for her new apartment online and without meeting a single human being. Her landlord was a Rabbi Theodore Lewin, but most of the e-mail correspondence came by way of his assistant, J. D. Pakul, an efficient but officious fellow. He had some kind of obsession about animals. Abigail was not to have any pets, the man wrote. No, nothing, not even a bird or a goldfish. Even after he’d run a background check on Abigail, he’d demanded written assurance that she had no pets and no plans to acquire any pets.

  “Not unless you count my baby as a pet,” she finally e-mailed back, a touch crabbily.

  “Only if it’s a baby cat or alligator,” J. D. fired back.

  When she went to pick up her keys, neither the rabbi nor J. D. were in the office, and a smiling young w
oman spent twenty minutes apologizing and searching through the drawers till she finally, triumphantly produced the set of keys. “J. D. would have had these right away. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Abigail said. Iris had been unusually fussy all day, and the last thing she wanted was for someone to walk in and find her with a howling baby in her arms. If no goldfish were allowed, probably no crying babies were allowed either.

  When she finally met Rabbi Lewin, she could not tell if he was thirty-five years old or sixty-five. He was balding, and had a potbelly. The bags under his eyes were a bluish purple, with grayish lines around the deep circles, as if he had not slept since seminary school. But there was something youthful about him, too. When they met she had the impression that he was actually running forward to shake her hand. He was wearing tennis shoes under his black suit.

  “Ah! My new tenant!” He beamed. “You must be Abigail.”

  She was carrying Iris in one of those front-slung baby carriers. Iris was almost hidden from view, even to the top of her infant head, her black hair under a knitted cap as fine as the tip of a paintbrush. The rabbi bounded forward a step, took in the bundle at a glance, and smilingly corrected himself.

  “I mean tenants,” he said, emphasizing the plural. “Iris, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The apartment is lovely. I wanted to thank you for the flowers, and the food in the fridge, Rabbi Lewin—”

  “Please, call me Teddy. The only person who calls me Rabbi Lewin is my mother.” He might really be in his early thirties, but with a terrible case of insomnia. “As for the flowers and the food”—he waved one large pawlike hand—“you can thank the temple sisterhood. They’re very good about that kind of thing.”