The Rothman Scandal

by Stephen Birmingham

  At the door to apartment 1815, he pressed the doorbell, and waited for the sound of footsteps.

  From inside the apartment, he could hear a telephone ringing. But no one was responding, and it continued to ring. After a minute or two, he pressed the doorbell again.

  Now a second phone was ringing, a different tone, and now both telephones were ringing, their rings alternating. Joel counted the rings … ten … eleven … twelve … He pressed the doorbell a third time, but there was no response.

  It was eerie, listening to those phones ringing. And all at once a third phone in the apartment began to ring, and now there were three different telephone lines ringing all at once. Presently he heard a beep, as an answering machine picked up on one of the lines, and then he heard a man’s voice delivering what seemed to be a long, complicated, urgent-sounding—even angry-sounding—message. But even with his ear pressed against the door, Joel could not make out the words. One by one, the other telephones stopped ringing, but the man’s unpleasant voice continued from the answering machine. Joel pressed the doorbell once more, then tried the knob. The door was locked. Joel wondered all at once if she might be in some sort of trouble. He knocked loudly on the door, and called, “Fiona! Are you there?”

  Two middle-aged women in pants suits, laden with shopping bags, stepped off the elevator and started down the corridor in his direction. As they passed him, both seemed to give him peculiar looks. Was it because they had seen him with his ear to the door? Or because they had heard his loud banging or his yelling? Or was it the bunch of long-stemmed roses he was carrying? Or had they noticed the bulge of the packet of condoms in his jacket pocket, or another bulge, the beginning of an erection, in the silhouette of his doeskin slacks? He pressed the doorbell impatiently several more times, and the ladies in the pants suits glanced back at him from down the corridor, and one of them whispered something to the other.

  Downstairs, he approached the receptionist’s desk. “Is Miss Fenton in?” he asked.

  “Miss Fenton? Oh, you mean Her Ladyship. No, Her Ladyship went out at about four o’clock, and I believe she may have gone for the weekend. She had luggage.”

  “Did she leave any sort of message for me—Mr. Rothman?”

  The clerk looked at Joel over the rims of his horn-rimmed glasses, another look that struck Joel as peculiar. “No, sir, she did not.”

  From Joel Rothman’s journal:

  6/23/90

  9:30 P.M.

  I put the roses in Mom’s room with a note thanking her for getting rid of Otto for me. No point in letting Fiona’s roses go to waste.…

  I’m sure she didn’t mean to stand me up tonight. Something very important must have come up, some family emergency perhaps. After all, Fiona is a pretty important lady. She wouldn’t have deliberately stood me up, and I know I’ll hear from her soon with the explanation.… I’m sure she tried to call me this afternoon while I was out shopping, getting my haircut and all that shit, but she didn’t leave a message because she didn’t want Mom to find out about our date. But still the whole experience of tonight has kind of spooked me, because I was really horny for her, and she seemed to be looking forward to our evening, too. “I’d adore to see you tonight,” she said. Oh, well. Came home. Jacked off. And now I feel really shitty about having done that. Funny thing happened after I left the hotel. I was walking down Madison, and as I was waiting for the light, I looked back and I swear to God I saw old Otto in the crowd on the sidewalk, about half a block behind me, as though he was still following me! But when I looked again, he was gone, so it must have been my imagination. It must have been because I was feeling so spooked about not having my date with Fiona. I’m sure that’s it. Today’s journalistic question: What about “tuna fish”? Recipe in today’s N.Y. Times called for tuna fish. But isn’t tuna the name of the fish? So isn’t “tuna fish” a redundancy? We don’t say “bass fish,” “trout fish,” “salmon fish,” etc., etc., etc. Swordfish, cuttlefish, needlefish seem okay, since they’re all one word. But tuna fish sounds wrong to me. Or am I being silly? Spooked.

  17

  Henry Coker was one of the most buttoned-down men she had ever known. Even here on her sunny terrace, on a Saturday morning when he could not possibly be going to his Wall Street office, he was dressed for business, in a dark blue suit with the tiniest of pinstripes running through the fabric, a dark blue necktie and wingtip shoes. He was a tall, thin man whose prematurely white hair had the odd effect of making his not-unhandsome face appear more boyish. Henry, Alex guessed, was about her age. Alex, by contrast to Henry’s buttoned-down look, was wearing faded blue jeans, rope-soled sandals, and one of Joel’s old Brooks Brothers shirts, with the tails knotted at her waist. She had pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail, and tied it with a red scarf. She had dressed for the drive to Long Island.

  Henry Coker put his coffee cup down, and snapped his briefcase closed. “Well, as I say, your contract is pretty cut and dried,” he said. “Your title and duties are clearly defined. This contract is hardly of the boilerplate variety, if I do say so myself.” He smiled slightly. “Since I helped work out the terms for you. So I don’t anticipate any difficulties. I feel confident that I can persuade Herbert Rothman that what he proposes is in violation of the terms of this instrument, to which you are both signatories. And I trust I can settle this—ah, disagreement—with Mr. Rothman or his attorneys on amicable terms, without the threat of legal action on our part. At least this is what I hope to do, Alex.”

  “I warn you, Henry. My father-in-law is not in an amicable frame of mind toward me right now.”

  He sighed. “Family disputes,” he said. “They’re always the most painful kind, aren’t they? So many little things that can divide a family. Little things like—”

  “Money.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And power.”

  “Well, yes, and that too. Well, let me see what I can do, Alex, at this initial stage of our negotiations.”

  “Tell me something, Henry,” she said. “How rich am I?”

  He looked startled by the question. “How rich? Well, I—”

  “It’s something I’ve never paid much attention to, but I know your office has made some investments for me, and of course you prepare my taxes. But I’ve been thinking that perhaps it would be a good thing if I knew where I stand, financially. I mean, if I do end up having to resign—which some people are saying I should do, and others are saying I shouldn’t—I ought to know where I stand.”

  He scribbled a note on the pad of legal cap in front of him. “Let me ask our financial department to prepare a full statement of your assets,” he said.

  “For instance,” she said, “there is supposed to be something called the Steven Rothman Trust. It was in Steven’s will when he died—a trust fund that was set up for Joel and me. I’ve deliberately never touched a penny of that trust. Since I didn’t need to, I didn’t want to. But I have no idea how much is in it. Could you find out for me?”

  He made another note. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a copy of that instrument,” he said.

  “Neither have I,” she said.

  “Let me see what I can find out,” he said. He looked around the terrace from the gazebo where they sat, at the flowering trees and shrubs, at the ilex hedge that framed the northeast corner of the L. “Of course, in terms of assets,” he said, “surely one of the most important ones would be this apartment.”

  “The McPhersons, on fourteen, just sold theirs for three million five.”

  “And yours is higher up, with a better view.”

  “And nobody else has this terrace.” She shrugged. “I don’t suppose I need all this acreage now, do I?” she said. “Joel will be going off to college in the fall and, after college, he’ll surely want to live somewhere else. I suppose I really should consider selling this apartment. But it’s just that I’ll miss this terrace. I’ve probably spent more time and thought and money on landscaping and maintaining this
terrace than I have on the entire apartment. My mother.”

  “Your mother?”

  “My mother’s genes, I was thinking. My mother was an avid gardener. Used to be, when I was a little girl, growing up in a little town called Paradise. Then she gave up gardening.”

  “Let me check with our real estate department, and see if we can get some sort of valuation on this apartment. It wouldn’t hurt to know.” He made another note on his long pad.

  “No, it wouldn’t. Putting together a garden is like putting together a magazine, isn’t it?” she said. “You start from scratch.” Then she straightened her shoulders, and forced herself back into the reality of today, which was a conference with her lawyer who was probably charging her $750 an hour for horticultural woolgathering. “There’s another thing, Henry,” she said. “I may be getting married again.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “Nothing definite. No date set, or anything like that. But I was wondering whether, if I were to remarry, that would have any effect on the status of Steven’s trust fund.”

  “Good thinking,” he said. “It might indeed. It might have a profound effect. But of course I’d have to study the trust instrument, and see how it’s worded. It might well state that you would derive benefits from this trust only while you remained unmarried.”

  “And what about Joel? If I were to remarry, would Joel’s benefits from the trust be affected?”

  “Again, I’d have to study the trust instrument, Alex. There are so many ways these things can be worded.”

  “I wouldn’t want to jeopardize Joel’s share of the trust by remarrying.”

  “Of course not. I understand completely. Do you have any idea where the trust instrument might be located?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He scribbled some more notes on his legal pad. “Well, let me see what I can find out,” he said. “Of course, under the circumstances, it may be—”

  “What?”

  “Since I will have to be dealing with other members of the Rothman family, or their attorneys, and we are currently disputing the terms of their contract with you, they may be unwilling to cooperate with us on the matter of the trust instrument. Until the matter of your contract is resolved, that is.”

  “Yes, I thought of that, too.”

  “But I’ve had friendly dealings with the Waxman, Holloway people in the past. I don’t anticipate any real problem.”

  “There’s just one other thing, Henry.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What if Steven wasn’t Joel’s father?”

  His gaze at her was long and cool, and he stretched his long legs. “What are you saying, Alex?”

  “I’m saying—I’m asking—if someone was able to prove that Steven wasn’t Joel’s father, would that affect the trust fund?”

  He was silent for a moment. “I assume Steven Rothman is listed as the father on your son’s birth certificate,” he said at last.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then that’s all I need to know. I don’t want to know anything else. Years ago, in my first year at Yale Law School, one of the first things we were taught was ‘Never let your client tell you too much.’ So I have just forgotten that you asked that question. And I think that you have just forgotten that you asked it, too.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly, “I guess I have.”

  “Good,” he said. He snapped his briefcase open, dropped the legal pad inside, and snapped it closed again. He stood up. “Very well. I’ll call you as soon as I have anything to report.”

  “Thank you, Henry.”

  As she walked him to the elevator entrance, Coleman, in his silver-polishing apron, appeared from the direction of the kitchen. “Mr. Jorgenson is downstairs with the car,” he said.

  “Thank you, darlin’. Tell him I’ll be right down.”

  As she made her way back through the apartment to her bedroom to collect her garment bag, she noticed Joel’s navy blue blazer lying across a bench in the hallway. It was where he often left things that he wanted sent out to be cleaned, and she routinely picked up the jacket and patted the pockets to be sure that they were empty. That was when she found the unopened packet of condoms in his lefthand pocket.

  She experienced a sudden rush of heat to her face, and a pounding in her temples. Surely every mother experiences a queer rush of feeling like that, when she discovers what she surely knew all along, that her son is a grown man. Still, it was the queerest feeling—anger, bitterness, and jealousy were all involved in it, but what for? Her son was behaving like a responsible adult, she should be proud of him, so why should she feel this swell of rage? It made no sense at all, except that in some tiny but all-important way he had betrayed her by growing up without consulting her. He had taken some part of himself away from her, and she would never have it back again. She forced herself to laugh. There was nothing else to do but laugh. But she felt more like weeping.

  She dropped the packet of condoms back into the lefthand pocket, and laid the jacket back across the bench as she had found it. “I’ve been a good mother,” she pleaded to herself as she hurried on to her bedroom. “I’ve been a good mother, haven’t I?” She slung her garment bag across her arm. For weekends in the Hamptons, she always traveled light.

  A weekend in the Hamptons! It was every New Yorker’s dream. Of course this weekend, she and Mel were getting a later start than usual. They usually left the city on Friday afternoon, but now it was eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, and who knew what they would encounter in terms of traffic on the expressway at this time of day? Out around Jones Beach, the traffic could be very problematical on a Saturday. That was the only trouble with the Hamptons—the traffic. People plotted their journeys to and from the Hamptons like military campaigns, trying to outwit the enemy, the traffic. Depending on traffic, the trip could take anywhere from two to six hours.

  Downstairs, Mel was waiting in his bright red BMW convertible, whose name was Scarlett O’Hara. Charlie the doorman helped Alex spread her garment bag across the back seat, which was also shared by Mel’s big English sheep dog, whose name was Walter Cronkite. Alex hopped into the front seat. Mel gave her a quick kiss and, from behind, Cronkite licked her ponytail, and they were off.

  “Well, how’d it go?” he asked.

  “Good, I think. Henry says my contract is absolutely airtight.”

  “Good. Now remember our promise. We’re not going to discuss this business at all this weekend. This weekend is just for relaxing and having fun, not worrying about anything, and”—he put his lips to her ear—“having some nice sex.”

  She giggled. “Ssh! Not in front of Cronkite.”

  “Cronkite knows,” he said solemnly. “Cronkite knows all about us, darling.” He squeezed her knee. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” she said, and they turned into the FDR Drive, heading downtown toward the Midtown Tunnel.

  “Look, the traffic’s a breeze,” he said.

  “A breeze,” she echoed.

  “Tunnel’s a breeze,” he said, as they entered the tunnel.

  “A breeze.” She let her right arm trail from the open window of the car, feeling happy just to be with him on this glorious day, leaving the city.

  “I hope Buster will be all right, being left alone for the weekend,” she said. “I mean Joel. He doesn’t want to be called Buster anymore. I hope he’ll be okay. But he insisted that this was what he wanted.”

  “He’ll be fine. He’s more grown up than you think.”

  “I mean without Otto,” she said.

  “Kid’s too old for an Otto. Otto was an embarrassment to him.”

  “Still, he’s all I’ve got.”

  He gave her a sideways glance. “You got me, babe,” he said.

  “I mean family—real flesh-and-blood family.”

  “Don’t be too protective. You’ve got to give him his head at some point.”

  “I found a packet of condoms in his jacket po
cket.”

  He chuckled. “Guy’s obviously got a heavy date this weekend.”

  “Yes, but still—it gave me the queerest feeling.”

  “He’s a big boy now.”

  “But he’s still the baby whose diapers I used to change.”

  “Don’t be overprotective, Alex. If you ask me, he’s been over-protected most of his life. The time has come for Buster to head out on his own.”

  “You mean Joel.”

  “I mean Joel.”

  “Still—he seems so young.”

  They were approaching the end of the tunnel now, and Mel slowed the BMW for the tollbooths. He reached in the breast pocket of his green-and-white-checkered shirt and removed a twenty-dollar bill. “Got anything smaller?” he asked her.

  “Sorry. I got five hundred dollars at the money machine last night, and it all came out in twenties.”

  He stopped at the booth, and handed the bill to the toll-taker, a woman in harlequin glasses with rhinestone-studded frames.

  She counted out his change from the two-fifty toll, and was about to hand it over to him when she suddenly gave him a hard, searching look. He was wearing his favorite hunter-green snap-brim cap, and much of his face was obscured by wraparound Alain Mikli sunglasses, but apparently this innocent attempt at a disguise had failed him. The eyes behind the harlequin frames had penetrated it—recognizing, perhaps, the dark hair that curled out from under his cap, and the famous cleft chin. “Hey, I know who you are!” the toll collector cried almost indignantly. “You’re that Mel Jorgenson from on the TV!”

  He nodded, grinning his famous, telegenic grin.

  “Wait till my sister-in-law Lucille hears about this one!” she said. “She’ll never believe me! You’re her favorite! Nine booths to pick from, and you went and picked mine. What a coincidence! Can I have your autograph to prove it?”