Lily White

by Susan Isaacs

  “I didn’t say you were mannish,” Melanie explained. “I said you are using tactics that are associated with men. Yelling, for instance.”

  “When was I yelling?”

  “During most of your summation.” She rubbed the rose petal between her thumb and forefinger.

  “I wasn’t yelling,” Lee retorted. “I was trying to sound strong.”

  “But your talent is for being direct, down-to-earth. You’re likable. I admit I was in and out of the courtroom, but I must have seen about an hour of the trial. You were very easy to take. You asked a question—a well-thought-out question—and you knew just what to do with the answer. You were polite to witnesses, to the judge, to Suarez’s idiot lawyer. When you made an objection, your voice was firm but under control. Excellent.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you almost blew it during summation.”

  “I wanted to be forceful.”

  “Be forceful for Lee White, then. You were forceful for some hairy-chested Italian guy out of St. John’s. Sweeping gestures. Big voice. They could have heard you in Bronx Supreme. And that banging on the podium!” Melanie let the petal drift from her fingers. Then she crashed her fist on her desk. “Does that seem natural?”

  “No, but I’m not like you,” Lee explained, trying not to stare at the lace hem of Melanie’s handkerchief.

  “Granted. But you are not a stevedore either. You seem to be a bright, energetic young woman from … Where?”

  “Long Island.”

  “Do they bang podia on Long Island?”

  “It’s not a local custom,” Lee admitted

  “And the women there: Do they speak forcefully and directly? Or do they shout?”

  “They don’t shout,” Lee admitted.

  “If you came from a long line of female shouters, it might be another story. I assume you do not?”

  “I had one grandmother who was in the Yiddish theater. She had a healthy set of lungs, but no, I don’t think she shouted.”

  “Nor do you.”

  “Right.”

  “You see, juries know that about you,” Melanie said, looking at her short but perfectly buffed nails. “They watch you. During your opening. Walking up to the sidebar for conferences. Taking out a Life Saver during his lawyer’s cross of the transit cop. You, the judge, the defense lawyers … All of you represent the law to them. Justice. For many of them, this trial will be one of the most memorable events of their lives. So they are riveted on you and everything you do.”

  “Sorry about the Life Saver.”

  “Perfectly all right. The jury understands reaching into a pocket or handbag surreptitiously and popping a Life Saver into a dry mouth. It also reinforces what they already know about you: a nice, normal person. A young woman from Long Island who was probably brought up not to shout.”

  “But this is a trial. I’m a prosecutor!”

  “This is a trial, and more than anything, they have to believe you. During your summation, several jurors were sitting back and going: Huh? What’s going on here? What’s she yelling about? This isn’t the assistant D.A. we’ve come to know and like. This is someone emoting. Being false. Can we trust her? Were we wrong about her being so nice?”

  “But I won,” Lee argued.

  “Yes, but look what you had going for you. The bodega owner was a great witness. And the defendant looked like the punk he is; he didn’t dare testify. The jury was out almost a full day. They shouldn’t have taken longer than a couple of hours. That means you almost lost them.”

  “I didn’t realize … I thought because they were out so long, I had done a great job.”

  “A good job. The summation … well, you made them doubt you, and therefore they doubted your case. But as you say, Lee, you did win it. Congratulations.”

  The Whites and the Taylors got along amazingly well. That was because all four of them—Leonard, Sylvia, Foster, and Ginger—had good manners. If they hadn’t, Lee and Jazz’s third anniversary celebration at the Whites’ might have ended with words, or even a “Well, I never!” followed by a slammed door. Each set of parents despised the other individually and collectively.

  Sylvia stood by the Frank Lloyd Wright-style chrome and glass bar where Leonard was pouring drinks and whispered in a not very sotto voce about Ginger’s outfit: “It’s a slap in the face! Baggy cotton pants and an old sweater, like she was going out to mow her lawn … which would be nice for a change.”

  “She probably thought it was casual,” Leonard replied. “Sunday afternoon, just to celebrate the kids’ anniversary.”

  But Sylvia wasn’t having any: “It’s either a deliberate smack in the face or she’s the dumbest of the dumb goys, which—believe you me—is pretty dumb.”

  At that same instant, Ginger was staring at the food on the dining room table—a turkey that looked as if it had been designed by Ralph Lauren, a glistening glazed ham, a jewel of a cranberry mold, a cornucopia of baby vegetables, a cheese platter that would cause the American Dairy Association to shout Hallelujah—and Sylvia’s triumph, which she had ordered two months earlier: gingerbread models of the Whites’ house and Hart’s Hill. Ginger murmured to her husband in a voice accustomed to summoning dogs from several acres away: “Who does she think is coming for dinner? The whole Israel army?”

  “Not with that ham,” Fos countered. “Anyway, it’s just us.”

  “I hate to say it, but it’s true what they say about them: They know the price of everything and the value of nothing. They wanted us to figure how much it cost. Have you ever seen such a display?”

  Since both mothers were talking at the same moment, they did not hear each other. The fathers kept their feelings to themselves, although Leonard, once enamored of Foster Taylor, then respectful, had been shaken to his core when Fos asked him for rye and ginger ale. Rye and ginger ale! A 1940s low-class woman’s drink. Or was Fos kidding? Was it some Rolling Hills Country Club in-joke, where you ask for rye and ginger ale and everybody hoots with laughter and the bartender hands you an Absolut on the rocks with a wedge of lime. Leonard had tried an experimental chuckle when Fos asked for the drink, but there had been no corresponding laugh back.

  Foster, in worn corduroys and a cotton turtleneck—which covered about a third of his sagging pelican chin—couldn’t think of a thing to say to his in-law, this slim, platinum-at-the-temples man mixing drinks and wearing a double-breasted nipped-waist suit and one of those dime-thin gold watches … on a Sunday! Who the hell gets dressed up like that in his own house? Can you talk about the Giants with a guy like that? Politics? There was no doubt in Foster’s mind that Leonard was a knee-jerk Democrat, and he’d wind up puking if he had to listen to him go on about liberal crap, like how Gerald Ford deserved to lose and how that liver-lipped cracker Carter was so great.

  The elder Taylors were perched on the edge of one of Sylvia’s decorating epiphanies, a leather and chrome daybed that sat, plunk, right in the middle of the Whites’ living room. They were sipping their drinks, tiny bird sips, as if waiting for a moment when the Whites would turn away and they could bolt.

  The Whites, standing by the bar, appeared almost paralyzed, their lips barely able to move. Lee assumed her mother was saying: Let’s serve dinner now, and her father was replying angrily: It’s only three o’clock. We can’t serve until four-thirty—at the earliest. How the hell could you ask them to come at two for a four-thirty supper?

  “I don’t know,” Jazz said to Lee, with that irreverent, irresistible, and decidedly sexual half smile she loved. “Doesn’t look promising, does it?”

  “God knows why. Two Fun Couples like them, they should be whooping it up.”

  “What’s so amusing, you two?” Ginger called out so cheerfully it was clear she was desperate.

  “What’s so amusing?” Kent echoed, sounding a sour note. His parents had stuck him with Lee’s sister, who was trying too hard to find something interesting for him to do. He was tired of drawing pictures of his family for her
and making Play-Doh out of flour and water and salt. It wasn’t Play-Doh, and he’d told her he was too old for Play-Doh, and she hadn’t listened to him. He wanted to be with Lee and Jazz. He wanted to eat. There it was, all set out on the table and they wouldn’t let him even go near it.

  “You two look happy!” said Robin, using her ebullient voice. After six months in rehabilitation, she had returned to Shore-haven for four-times-a-week therapy and a volunteer job at a day care center. She was trying very hard to show the Taylors a good time and, while she was at it, to show she was not a thieving junkie. She was aware that was her reputation around town, a reputation—she had learned to own up to in group—she had earned. But it was exhausting having to act so animated and to keep Kent amused.

  Jazz and Lee waved her over. As Lee knew he would, Kent leaped up and came along. “Hi!” he said. He put his arm around her, laid his head on her shoulder, and heaved a satisfied sigh.

  “Hi!” Lee smoothed his hair back from his forehead. Too shaggy again. Deciding not to ask herself why her mother-in-law could spend hours every day grooming her dogs but couldn’t take the only child she had left at home for a haircut once every six months, Lee made a mental note to take him to the barber the following weekend.

  “Hi!” Kent said again.

  “Hi!” She turned to Robin. “I know this isn’t exactly scintillating for you. You’re being wonderful.”

  “Stop it! Wonderful is having you guys here in the house. I mean, Mom and Dad have been great—especially considering how I made their lives a living hell. But they’re so nervous with me. If I’m not constantly smiling, they’re nervous wrecks.”

  Lee reached out and put her other arm around her sister. Physically, Robin appeared more fragile than ever. Her dark-blonde hair was swept straight back from her forehead and temples, accentuating the heart shape of her face with its pointed chin. She would have been beautiful or close to it—thin as a whisper, with whiter-than-white skin and eyes the color of an overcast sky—but the drugs she had taken for so many years had taken their toll. She had dreadful dental problems. To hide her unattractive teeth and bad gums, she puffed out her lips. While this made her mouth pretty and pouty in repose, when she spoke it looked as if she were imitating a fish.

  Jazz stared at the sisters and, as people invariably did, marveled at their differences. Forget that they seemed to have come from separate families: They might have belonged to separate races. Although the same height, Lee was sturdy, with strong shoulders and hips verging on generosity. Her hair was thick and chestnut brown, her skin golden. In her walks through Greenwich Village, tourists would stop her and ask directions in French, Spanish, Italian, or Greek, believing she was one of their own. “The two of you …” he said, shaking his head in amazement.

  “Night and day,” Robin said.

  “Rich and poor,” Lee added.

  “Black and white,” Robin continued.

  “Christian and Jew,” Jazz chimed in. As if on cue, the sisters looked from Fos and Ginger to Leonard and Sylvia—and began to laugh. It was only then that Jazz could see the resemblance: heads leaning to the right at the precise same angle, cheeks red and shiny. They wiped tears of laughter from their eyes at the same instant with the exact same motion, an outward flick with their middle fingers.

  “What’s so funny?” Ginger asked too eagerly. She sounded beyond desperate now, so with Robin and Kent in tow, Lee hurried over to her in-laws to try and make them think they were having fun. This was no simple job. She became a jurisprudential Scheherazade, regaling them with one whimsical courtroom tale after another. Finally, after three-quarters of an hour, she succeeded. Sylvia had joined them in good-natured chuckling, and then Fos took the floor, telling horror stories of pushy parents of would-be Olympic competitors. It was only then that Lee looked around for Jazz and found him gone.

  “In the den with Daddy,” Robin informed her. Lee pictured Jazz and her father watching football, her father mimicking Jazz’s “Yeah!” and “Asshole!” after various plays. Her father admired men who admired sports, and though he himself knew little and cared nothing about athletics, she was aware he was shamed by this defect in himself. Still, after another hour, Lee was astounded at her father’s tenacity. True, she realized Leonard idolized everything about Jazz, from his Platonic ideal of a nose to the way he said thank you to busboys in restaurants when they refilled his water glass. Nevertheless, she wondered how Leonard could last through so much football. Of course, she admitted to herself, she could be wrong; there might be a documentary on Channel 13 on the history of the mink stole.

  The two men came out moments later in high spirits, Leonard calling to Sylvia that he was starved and Jazz putting up his fists for a round of mock boxing with Kent. Sylvia whipped yards of Saran off the spread on the table. Leonard uncorked two bottles of wine Lee sensed were embarrassingly expensive, and the Whites and the Taylors dug into the buffet as if they had spent years in caloric deprivation.

  “Mmm! Great turkey,” Ginger said.

  “Good vino, Len,” Fos remarked.

  Everyone, even Robin, had at least two portions of everything and at the end, they all applauded as Sylvia cut the gingerbread White house into slices.

  “Yum!” said Fos.

  “I can’t believe something that looks so good can taste so delish!” Ginger remarked.

  Sylvia insisted the Taylors take home the model of Hart’s Hill. They made a brief, bogus protest, grabbed the cake, and, with an overenthusiastic chorus of “Thank you!” and ecumenical “Happy holidays!” they rushed out the door, forgetting Kent.

  “Don’t worry,” Jazz assured Lee as she made for the door to call after them. “They know he’s in good hands. I’ll drop him off later. Sit down.” He glanced over at Leonard who, as if by design, was sitting back expansively on one of Sylvia’s newly acquired Corbusier love seats, his arm resting on the back, legs crossed in leisurely Gentleman’s Quarterly style. Jazz led Lee to the matching love seat, across from his father-in-law’s. Leonard, meantime, patted the spot beside his own, inviting Sylvia to sit. When she took no notice, preoccupied as she was with watching Greta clear the table, he called out: “Sylvia! Over here. Sit down. We have something to tell you.”

  Lee interpreted the “you” as meaning her mother, so she snuggled against Jazz, her cheek enjoying the incredible softness of the vicuña sweater Sylvia and Leonard had given him the previous Christmas. She half closed her eyes, the better to luxuriate in the blended scents of Woolite and Jazz’s own virile odor. But then she opened them. He was not circling his arm around her in their customary marital embrace. No, he looked casual, legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles, but his torso remained erect, and the arm that always crooked so comfortably around her stayed on the back of the love seat. She sat straight up.

  Her father cleared his throat, then Jazz his, even louder. Deep, manly sounds. But then Leonard met Jazz’s eye, and the next sounds out of them were boyish chuckles. Lee couldn’t be sure. Were they We’ve Got a Secret chuckles or Bad Boy sniggers? Had they planned something? A surprise New Year’s Eve black-tie dinner at some four-star restaurant? God forbid, she thought, having to ring in the bicentennial year with her parents and Robin over mountains of shaved truffles and oversolicitous waiters instead of over a six-foot hero and Chianti with their friends. Or worse, had her father gotten Jazz involved in planning a lavish vacation the five of them could share in some exorbitant tropical paradise? She wished she could be certain that Jazz’s increasing closeness with her father—the twice-weekly lunches, the frequent exchange of jokey notes accompanied with Wall Street Journal or Forbes clippings—arose out of Jazz’s inability to hurt anyone’s feelings and not from any commonality of interests.

  “Lee,” Jazz began. But then he stopped and looked to Leonard.

  “Honey,” her father said. Out of the corner of her eye, Lee saw Robin sitting Indian-style on the daybed with Kent, folding the Times into hat shapes, straining to hear w
hat was being said. “Jazz and I have been talking,” Leonard said. Jazz nodded, as if to quell any doubts that this was the truth. “We’ve come to a decision.” For some reason, Lee suddenly remembered what Melanie Tucker had been saying when they had a drink a few weeks earlier, about never giving the other side any help in putting a knife in your back: I’ve seen too many women lawyers smiling supportively or murmuring comforting, maternal uhhuhs. Don’t get caught in that trap. Just sit there with a neutral expression and let them get out the bad news as best they can. Sometimes they’ll trip themselves up. “It affects all of us,” her father was saying. This is crazy, Lee thought, my thinking like this. I’m not in court. I’m with my family. But her face could not move itself out of its frozen neutrality.

  “What?” Sylvia demanded. “What is going on?” Her cajoling was so girlish it demanded a ruffled petticoat and a hair bow, not the sleek black velvet condom of an at-home dress she was wearing. “Come on. Please. I can’t stand secrets.”