by Susan Isaacs
“They’re going to say I’m an unfit mother.”
“That’s nuts!” Will said.
“You’ve got him on adultery charges,” added Joe. “With your sister. Who’s unfit?”
She could tell they were losing patience with her. “Look, I’ve read some of the case law,” she explained. “There’s a trend. Mothers don’t automatically get custody anymore. And it’s not as if he’s bringing in some New York slicko to represent him. Everyone says this Manny has won a lot of cases out here and …” Fear overcame her, and she could not speak. She pictured all the nights she had worked late, how often Jazz had given the nanny, Cherry, the night off. He had said: I don’t mind being home. I love puttering around the house, making dinner. Robin had been there every one of those nights. She fit in so well, as if she was one of the family. Which she was, someone whose presence Val would never question. The judge would bring Val into chambers, and Jazz and Robin would be sitting there, and before the judge could ask the little girl how she felt, she’d be racing over to climb onto Robin’s lap.
And what could she offer? Jazz had taken Cherry away. Hired her to work for him and Robin. At first, Lee, although furious, was amused at his chutzpah, but then she realized how confident he was that he would win. Did he know something about the judge that she and Joe Clark and Will did not? Jazz was pushing this case with demented energy. He wanted it over. He wanted to win. Every day brought a new shower of paper from Manny’s office, details—dates, times—of nights worked, meals missed, dinners Lee had had with Will.
“Do you think he had a detective following me the times I met Will for dinner?” she asked Joe quietly. Her hands were like ice.
“Sounds like it.” With his close-cropped hair, rasping voice, and jutting jaw, he appeared to be the ex-marine he actually was.
“But that works for our side,” Will added. “Nothing happened. I’ve been involved with Maria for years. He knows you and I are just friends.”
They both looked at Joe. “In that case, nothing to worry about,” Joe told them. “What can any picture show? A man eating a bowl of spaghetti talking to a woman eating a meatball?”
“How about a black man and a white woman standing in front of the woman’s car talking?” Lee answered.
“You are nuts,” Joe told her, nodding apologetically to Will for having doubted him.
“Not totally nuts,” Will responded after a moment. “What she’s getting at is that it depends on what the judge feels in his gut when he’s faced with an interracial relationship. Legally it’s meaningless. Practically, if his gut goes into a knot at the sight of a white woman with a black man, it won’t help.” He rested his elbows on the conference table and gazed across at Lee. “But I can’t believe that’s going to be a deciding factor in this case. Look, this has been a nightmare for you. The man you loved betrayed your trust. That’s a terrible thing, but you know what? It happens. Somewhere in the back of your mind, Lee, you know that in marriages, it is sometimes possible for a man to be unfaithful to his wife. It is even possible that he might want to leave her for another woman. So while this is a bad blow, it’s something that you can deal with.”
“I’m so damn tired of being strong,” Lee said.
“I know. What I’m telling you is that nobody’s strong enough for what you have to handle now. It’s one thing for you to acknowledge that, okay, the marital contract might be violated. But there are certain social contracts that are assumed to be honored by everyone. The family: parent and child; brothers and sisters. Your husband can screw you forty ways till Sunday, but don’t worry—there’s always your family. They’ll be there for you. So what I’m saying is that you’ve had the rug pulled out from under you in new and unexpected ways. The fact you’re sitting here, brave enough to be able to talk about what happened—”
“What the hell choice do I have?” Lee cried out. “Don’t you think I’m up every night, sick with fear about Val and sick with thinking how I’d like to kill them? Some nights, I’m running over Robin with my car. Some nights, I’m taking one of those knives they use to cut fur and slashing my father’s …”
“Understandable,” Joe said with such placidity that she realized his practice was as permeated with threats of murder as hers was filled with the actual deeds.
“All that’s keeping me sane is Valerie. And they want to take her away from me.”
“We won’t let them,” Will said.
Lee pushed back her chair and stood. “Can you give me a guarantee?”
Will hesitated, then turned to his partner to speak. “No,” Joe Clark said. “Wish I could, but I never give guarantees. Sorry. Especially not with a lawyer like Manny Plotkin on the other side.”
“You’re fucking crazy, Lee,” Terry Salazar told her.
“I could take her anyplace. Ohio … Iowa …”
“Yeah? And how would you earn a living?”
“I don’t have to be a lawyer.”
She could say to Terry what she could not say to Will. That with the trial date set in the custody suit, she was growing sicker and sicker with fear. Joe Clark’s rational “Highly unlikely” and “Not to worry, I can be as tough as it takes” did not bring her ease. Nor did Will’s continual reassurance and his attempts to help her understand why she was so terribly scared: Was she frightened by the fury blazing up in herself? Racked with guilt about being a working mother—not just a mother who had to work, but a mother who loved her work almost as much as she loved her daughter? Did she feel that somehow, Robin—pretty, clothes-buying, don’t-want-to-work-for-money Robin—deserved Jazz more than she did because Robin was what a real woman should be and Lee was not? Or that she owed Robin something because she was a success and Robin a failure?
She was getting so tired of Will’s constant company and loyalty and thoughtful analysis that she was actually relieved when he went off to be with Maria. Well, not so relieved. Lee told herself she did not expect him to end a years-long love affair now that she was free, that she was perfectly content with his deep and devoted friendship, with his incredible sweetness, now not only to Val, but to Kent also. But in her heart, that was precisely what she had hoped for: Will for herself.
“Listen, you want to be treated like an equal, but you’re talking like a real dumb broad,” Terry told her. “You got your head so high up your ass you can’t see daylight. You run with the kid, he’ll find you. The bastard’s got nothing but resources to squander on guys like me, to say nothing of the cops and the Feebies who would be looking for you if you went on the lam. You know what this Jazz guy’s worth?” He grabbed the papers on his desk, looking for the figures he had gotten, with a hundred-dollar bribe and a great deal of charm, from a secretary in Jazz’s accountant’s office. “The mil he showed you and Uncle Sam and almost two mil more.”
Lee sat on the white couch in Terry’s all-white office, for once blending in. She was pale, almost colorless. When she looked at herself in the mirror that morning in the house she was renting, she felt sure she had faded, that she was already less. Jazz was winning. She might even die. She was so tired she could barely speak. “Then what should I do?”
“Do? You got a good lawyer. You got evidence up the ass. I got you that waiter who quit the Carlyle, who’s willing to testify about him and her. What other detective could have come up with that, especially considering that I’m working for you on such a discount it’s practically nothing? You’ve got his own admission, for Christ’s sake. He’s fucking living with your sister in your house. Jesus, you folded on that like a fucking wimp. All you had to say was ‘Hey, get your cheating ass out of here and—’”
“It didn’t matter. I couldn’t stand the place anymore. He bought it under false pretenses, so right from the start …”
Lee stopped because Terry began playing an imaginary violin. She did not tell him to go to hell, because she knew he was expecting her to. “You know what gets me about you?” Terry demanded. “You’re so tough. I’m not talking about
butch. You’re not. You’re okay, if somebody likes ball-busting women. But look at you now: a fucking basket case. And over what? What are you scared of? A Wasp who was born to run the whole goddamn country and he winds up selling fur coats? What kind of a man do you think that is? For Christ’s sake, Lee, you’re a powerhouse. He’s a pussy! What’s with you?”
“What should I do?”
“‘What should I do?”’ he whimpered. His hands dangled from limp wrists. He pretended to cringe. “‘Oh, what should I—’”
Rage propelled her across the office. It was only when Terry grabbed her arm and held it out to the side that she realized her fist was clenched tight and that she had been about to punch him. Not a stop-that-you-bully sock in the shoulder. A hard punch in the mouth. They stood there, facing each other, arms stretched out, perpendicular and stiff, as if in some travesty of a tango.
“Get rid of the fist and I’ll let you go.”
“Stop it, you jerk.”
“I don’t think so,” Terry said. His voice was soft, velvet. Not the rest of him.
“Come on,” she said lightly, as if this coming together were a mere annoyance, and that she could not feel his heat through his shirt.
He stretched out her arm even farther, bringer her closer to him. Her face pressed against his, damp with excitement at their dance. “Come on,” he said, rocking his hips into hers. “Come on.” He kissed her, not a gentle suitor’s kiss. Inflamed, right away, with teeth and tongue working on her. She pulled her wrist out of his grip only to put her arms around him, to try to see if she could draw him in even closer.
Terry was good. Better than good. No finesse, no technique, no sweet words. Hot and hard and didn’t stop: That was all she wanted.
That was all she got.
Jazz refused to meet without their lawyers present. Too emotional, for all of us. Sorry. That’s what he said when she called to say she would like to come over, to speak to him and Robin. Too emotional? Terry laughed. That’s not the reason. After another week on the case, tailing Jazz—just for practice, Terry told her—he had followed him and Robin to a doctor’s office. A gynecologist. Oh, obstetricians too. A little charm, no bribe necessary this time for the cute little technician in the medical laboratory the doctor sent his work to. No, charm was all it took to discover that, indeed, an R. R. White, age twenty-eight, was pregnant. It’s not “too emotional,” Terry said. “The skinny bitch is probably showing.”
Lee pushed her way past the two French-accented junior salesmen at Le Fourreur, past five astounded customers, past Dolly Young, past her father who pleaded, “I beg you, Lee, please don’t—” into Jazz’s office and slammed the door. “You’ve made my life a living hell!” she told him.
“Get out. This will count against you, you know, your not having the self-restraint—”
“I will make your life a living hell.”
“You already did. For years. You can’t anymore.”
“Item one: My sister is pregnant. She can have an abortion—”
“Stop that!”
“—or she can be an unmarried mother, because I will drag on this litigation forever. Living hell. When I can no longer afford my own lawyer, 1 will appear pro se, and by that time I’ll be such a genius at matrimonial law that I’ll make mincemeat out of that shyster you’ve retained. It will drag on for years.”
“Stop it!”
“You’ll be on your third illegitimate child by that time. And that’s just the beginning. I’ll bankrupt you. I’ll kill you with paper. You won’t have a dime left and Manny’s wife will have five sable coats and you’ll still owe him hundreds of thousands.”
“Do you think you can scare me?” Jazz demanded.
“I hope so, because if you’re not trembling in your Guccis now, you’re a fool. I don’t want alimony. This is what I want: I want you to speak to your parents. They don’t want Kent. Do you?” Jazz said nothing. “Well, I do. I want them to agree to name me guardian. I want him to live with me. As far as Val goes, I want child support and a guarantee you’ll split her educational costs with me fifty-fifty. I get custody.” She paused. “I get what I want. Or you get a life that won’t be worth living.”
On the first day of 1981, Lee and Will went to the beach, a spot not too far from Will’s house. The air was cold—freezing, in fact—but there was hardly any wind, so they hunkered down against the dunes, looked across the powder sand to the churning gray ocean, and ate their sausage and pepper sandwiches with their gloves on.
“Brisk,” Will said. “Good for the head, good for the soul.”
“Brisk? You call this brisk? I call this glacial.” She picked up her coffee. “My face is too numb to tell if it’s dribbling down my chin and giving me second-degree burns, so let me know.” She took a sip.
“You’re fine so far.” He lifted his Styrofoam cup and touched it to hers. “Happy New Year, kid.”
“Happy New Year,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything self-pitying and small-minded about this year being better than last.”
“I admire your restraint.”
They set their cups in the sand and went back to their sandwiches, huge, drippy, comforting things. After a while, Lee felt warmer, heartier. She could be one of those Polar Bears, those mad, jolly people who dive into the Atlantic every winter at Coney Island, racing across the sand, rushing through the surf, and going under, only to emerge with a cheer and a huge grin. She turned to Will. “Did you have fun at the New Year’s Eve party last night with Maria?”
He set down his sandwich. “I wasn’t with Maria.”
“You told me …” He had mentioned in early December that he and Maria went to the same party every year for New Year’s Eve. Casual conversation, but meant, she knew, so she would not hold out false hopes.
“I know what I told you. It wasn’t the truth.”
“It wasn’t the truth?” She knew it was an odd question for a criminal lawyer to ask. She was trained to doubt. Yet she had never doubted that every word Will uttered was the absolute truth. “Where were you?”
“That’s a long story,” he said quietly. “A long and difficult story.”
Lee’s heart began to beat faster. Perhaps Maria had only gone out of town or come down with the flu, but the “difficult story” was that they had finally decided to marry. Not now, she prayed. Please, plan a June wedding and tell me about it in May. “Are you going to tell me the story?” she asked him.
“Yes. That’s why I thought we’d come here. No interruptions.”
“Okay.”
“You know how much you mean to me, Lee. Your friendship.” Uh-oh, she thought. It’s coming. She nodded, trying to seem pleased that Will valued her enough to really hurt her. “For me anyway, it’s a lifelong friendship.”
“For me, too,” she said.
“So let me tell you.” She waited, but he did not say anything. Clearly, this was going to be painful for him. She could leave now, rush away, not have to listen, but he had driven his car to the beach, and he had the keys. And it was a stick shift. She wondered if it would be rude to take another bite of her sandwich. She laid her fingers on the warm, greasy, paper-wrapped mess and decided it would be. “I’m gay,” Will said.
“Gay.?”
“As in homosexual.”
Gay, she thought. Oh. No wonder his sports clothes are always so perfect. Suits are one thing, but those slacks, those sweaters. Then a wave of grief crashed down upon her, the realization that she would never have what she now most wanted. What a man! She could love him. She already did.
Suddenly she became aware of what a horrible moment this must be for him, waiting to see how she would react. “I didn’t know,” she said brightly.
Too brightly. “Lee? Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m very, very surprised.”
“Surprised or shocked?”
“Shocked.” Will looked out at the ocean. “Don’t be sorry you told me. You’re my friend and I love you. I und
erstand how courageous it was for you to confide in me.” She rubbed his sleeve with her glove: I’m with you, pal. She left a blotch that looked suspiciously like a mushed-up string of red pepper. “I assume this is absolutely confidential, that I’m not Step One in your plan to come out?”
“God, no!”
“Then I will keep it in absolute confidence for the rest of my life.”
Again, Will’s eyes searched the ocean. They looked watery to her, but it might have been the cold. “I started college in 1958. No one came out then, or at least, hardly anyone.”
“Did you know you were gay then?”
“I knew I was gay by the time I was twelve. I didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t know it had a name, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t know there was anybody else in the world who felt the way I did.”
“It must have been a terrible burden.”
“It was. But on the other hand, I was this bright, healthy kid. Not a great athlete, not what they expected from a black kid in Glen Cove in those days. But good enough not to feel I stood out. And I was smart. Very smart, very reflective. When you’re a teenager, that’s a blessing and a curse, but at least I was able to begin to understand what I was and realize I wasn’t the first boy in the world who didn’t care what the girls were wearing underneath their outfits.”
“But you checked out the outfits.”
“Yes, I did.”
“When did you first have sex?”
“I was fifteen.”
“And? Was it okay? Traumatic?”
“It was fine. Very romantic. A lot of candles and massage oil. It was an affair that continued for four years. That’s why I went to Columbia. So I could stay in New York, be near him.”
“Who was he?”
“My parents’ employer.” Will came close to smiling as Lee’s mouth widened into a huge O. “Clement Giddings. Clem. It sounds like a banjo player, but he was the most urbane man I ever met.”
