The Real Liddy James

by Anne-Marie Casey

  Liddy looked over at Lucia, who was packing up her bag in time to the steady metronome-like plopping of the water into the vase on the floor.

  She braced herself to start begging.

  Rose, finally alone but kept awake in the dark by the various snores and snuffles and soft footsteps of the ward, closed her eyes and imagined herself back home, where she longed to be and where, from her bedroom window, she would admire the blue and white ceramic tiles she had plastered onto the garden wall and inspect the fig tree.

  When Liddy and Peter had bought the house, one of their neighbors was an elderly Sicilian man named Giovanni Matisi, who had three fig trees, and at night, lying in each others arms by candlelight, they would listen to him singing to the trees in Italian. Charmed by Liddy, whose beauty in those days could inspire poetry, Giovanni presented them with one of the trees in an earthenware pot tied with a red ribbon, and every year after that they enjoyed the late summer bounty of fresh figs and the sight of Matty toddling around on chubby legs and stuffing the plump, juicy fruit in his mouth and laughing.

  Liddy loved the tree and Giovanni, and whenever Rose looked at it she was reminded that Liddy was a romantic at heart; Peter might choose not to remember now, but he had once told her the whole story and added that when Giovanni died Liddy had wept inconsolably, and every year sent a present to each one of his grandchildren now scattered along the East Coast.

  When Liddy left, Peter ignored the fig tree (although he had refused to let her take it, likely because it was the only thing she had wanted), and when Rose moved in it looked shriveled and dark and almost certainly dead. But that winter Rose wrapped it in an old quilt, and even sung arias to it when she was alone in the little garden tending her lavender and rosemary, and that spring it bloomed, and then bloomed again, more than ever before.

  Every summer from then on, Rose secretly sent Liddy a small basket of figs.

  Neither of them ever mentioned it.

  ANCIENT, AND SECRET, HISTORY

  Lydia Mary Murphy met Peter James at a storytelling salon in the Cornelia Street Café when she was twenty-five years old and impatient for the next chapter of her life to begin.

  She had arrived in the city in triumph six months earlier, her choice to study law in graduate school vindicated by the competing bids to employ her from every firm to which she had applied. “Rosedale and Seldon is lucky to have you,” said Marisa Seldon, managing partner, who became, if not exactly a role model, at least a mentor for Liddy, and encouraged her to pursue her career goals in her own way. For, after all, Liddy had achieved all this with no family connections, an undergraduate degree in art history, and summers spent working not in unpaid resumé-enhancing internships but on the production line of a plastics factory.

  In her interview, Marisa had asked Liddy why she had chosen the noble profession. Liddy had looked her straight in the eye and said, “Because of the money.” When Marisa grinned, Liddy had added, “And because I want to be like Grace Van Owen in L.A. Law.”

  Then she told Marisa about Miss Gwendolyn Harris, the teacher in eighth grade who had changed her life. Marisa listened, but she was not surprised. She knew from experience that for people like Liddy, there was always a teacher.

  Miss Harris was in her midthirties, wore long suede skirts over her boots, tribal jewelry around her neck, and had long snaky blond hair like a benign Medusa. She had a boyfriend who was a musician, and occasionally he arrived on his motorbike, his guitar case strapped to the back, to pick her up after school. She would hike up her suede skirt, pull her helmet over her tresses, and clamber on behind him as he roared away.

  This was an extraordinary sight outside the Sacred Heart High School.

  Liddy’s mother, Breda Murphy, who was also in her midthirties, wore tan hosiery, used hairspray, and sat in the front seat of her father Patrick’s rusty Chevy. Breda disliked and distrusted Gwendolyn Harris, but it made no difference. Miss Harris showed fourteen-year-old Lydia Mary that there was more than one way of being a woman.

  Lydia Mary followed Miss Harris around the school whenever she could and sometimes, at recess, Miss Harris would talk to her. It doesn’t matter who you are, Liddy, Miss Harris would announce (for it was she who had first called Lydia Mary by that name), you are allowed to be successful. Then she would add, As long as you work ten times harder than any man in the same job! (This was one of Miss Harris’s favorite statements. The other was A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, which Liddy laughed at on cue, although she didn’t understand it.)

  That year was the year Liddy discovered that working harder than anyone else was one of her things.

  At night in bed, she would pull the blankets over her head and practice her signature, which seemed an important part of her future, although she never found a way of writing Murphy that she liked. She fantasized that one day Miss Harris might invite her to live with her. They would read books about art together, and visit the museums in New York City, which Miss Harris said was the most wonderful place in the world. Miss Harris told Liddy that artists did not choose their subjects, their subjects chose them. She taught Liddy to see the stories hidden within pictures.

  (Later in life, when family law had chosen Liddy, this skill served her well; she would find trust funds for illegitimate children concealed in the elaborate footnotes of prenuptial agreements, she soon knew more than most people should about off-shore accounts in Antigua, and she could sniff a bigamous marriage like napalm in the morning.)

  But all this she kept a secret from her parents. She had to. Patrick and Breda Murphy had used all their courage to get themselves across the ocean and there was none left over for her. And how do you tell the two people who made you that your only dream as a child is for a different life than the one you have been born into?

  “They must be very proud of you, though,” said Marisa, but Liddy had said nothing, because she had not known what to say.

  She had not yet learned how to make a complicated situation look simple.

  Liddy had taken to her profession like a swan to water. Her formidable memory and physical stamina got her through the study and the seventy-hour weeks as an associate (for years she had worked night shifts mopping floors with disinfectant so strong it make her gag; hours spent fact checking in an air-conditioned office felt like a vacation). She took her first month’s paycheck to Soho and, in the window of a gallery, saw a limited-edition print of an industrial landscape by Alfred Stieglitz, a framed black-and-white photograph of New York in 1910, the new skyscrapers rising over choppy gray water and smoke rising into the clouds. She paid too much for it, but she didn’t care. It was called City of Ambition and it seemed the perfect image with which to start her new life.

  No one had told Liddy that nice women never use the A-word.

  Marisa’s primary piece of advice to Liddy was to avoid the distractions and dramas of dating, particularly the dreaded office romances that had derailed far too many young women in her employ, and to focus on one partnership only.

  “Don’t marry another lawyer,” she commanded Liddy, with a confidence born of the fact that she had herself married late, to a retired and wealthy entrepreneur, efficiently producing twins nine months later. “They’ll always put their cases first, and if you have kids, you’ll be the one doing the school run.”

  That night in Cornelia Street Liddy arrived with a man known as Intense Rafe, a part-time artist and full-time waiter, with whom she had been set up the previous month by her roommate.

  A story about ginseng picking in Appalachia, told by an enthusiastic woman with black corkscrew curls and a Hole T-shirt, was ending to considerable applause and the woman bowed happily, lifting her hand and pointing it in Liddy’s direction. As Liddy had the anterior vision of a flying spider, she sensed the movement early, and with no tale to tell, she hid behind Intense Rafe, ensuring that it was another man directly in front of her who was summ
oned to the little space in front of the microphone. Liddy, her chin perched on Rafe’s intensely bony shoulder, watched the man saunter up and tap on the microphone.

  “My name is Peter James,” he said.

  “Professor Peter James!” called out the very pretty young woman who had accompanied him.

  Peter smiled and began to speak. His story was fluent and involving, but Liddy did not really listen. She looked at him instead.

  With his messy, sandy-blond hair, his threadbare cords, and frayed Ralph Lauren shirt, Professor Peter James was shabby chic before anyone had ever thought of it; he combined this agreeably masculine disregard for grooming with the self-confidence and self-deprecation of a man who had achieved his career goals with ease.

  This interested her.

  Liddy guessed he was in his late thirties. He had no wedding ring on his finger, though she imagined he might be the kind of man who would not wear one, and as she looked around the room she knew she was not the only female to find him attractive. The very pretty young woman was hanging on his every word, and when he had finished she led the applause. But Peter did not hurry back to her, allowing himself to be waylaid at the bar by a tall and glamorous Slavic model in a fur hat.

  Liddy spotted an opportunity. She headed over, introduced herself to both of them, and participated in their sparkling dialogue, even making a couple of jokes that caused Peter to laugh out loud. When the fur-hatted model turned away to order more drinks, Liddy looked right into Peter’s eyes and handed him her business card, suggesting he call her for a date. It was the first time in her life she had ever done such a thing, she announced, confident that he would be as thrilled at her chutzpah and sophistication as she was, and that he would find her irresistible.

  He didn’t.

  She asked around and discovered he was a well-respected professor of literature at a prestigious university downtown. She started reading War and Peace. Every time the phone in her office buzzed for the next two weeks, Liddy expected it to be him.

  It wasn’t.

  She was forced to accept that Peter James had not felt the same inciting pulse of attraction as she had, and had chucked out her card with a scrunched-up tissue from the bottom of his jacket pocket. Or he had forgotten about it and the dry cleaners had done so. (Later on, Liddy would learn that Peter was content with a life that was not plot driven. He was a bit lazy about most things apart from work, but because he was good-looking and quite brilliant, people found it charming. Except for women who dated him, that is.)

  This did not suit her version of the narrative at all.

  It took one phone call to a private detective on retainer at Rosedale and Seldon to get his address (the Village), marital status (single!), and criminal record (none), and despite the intoxicating feeling of self-loathing this induced, Liddy began walking down his street at every opportunity, even if it meant taking detours on the crosstown train. But still she did not “bump into” him.

  And then . . .

  Exactly two months later, on a sublime Saturday morning Liddy, soggy with sweat, was walking home to Murray Hill from her early step class on Sixth Avenue. She had a large cup of coffee in one hand and an enormous almond croissant in the other, and for no other reason than the sun was shining and she was young and exhilarated from exercise and life, she decided to throw the dice once more and headed toward Bedford Street. She paused for the umpteenth time outside the narrow house, number 75½, and pretended to read the red plaque about Edna St. Vincent Millay. And this day the door of the town house beside it opened.

  “Hello,” said the man who emerged. In those days, Peter always said hello when he chanced upon a young woman in tight clothing.

  Liddy turned around. They stared at each other.

  “I know you. You’re the girl from the other . . .” he said. Then he paused. “Are you stalking me?” he asked.

  Liddy snorted in a “that’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard” way. She was convincing, just as she had practiced. “Huh. Don’t kid yourself, Professor James. You must have read enough novels to believe in coincidence.”

  She turned quickly and walked away, her heart seeming to thump louder than her footsteps on the pavement. She accelerated as she approached the corner, but she did not run, as she did not want to spill her coffee over herself and ruin the nonchalant effect.

  “Hey!”

  She was stopped abruptly by the pressure of a hand on her right shoulder. The coffee spilled down her front anyway.

  “Shit!” she howled and, embarrassed, she did not move, so Peter James walked around in front of her.

  “The readers of Victorian novels viewed coincidence as meaningful providence,” he said, smiling. “What you or I would call destiny.”

  “I don’t believe in that,” said Liddy, wiping her chest with her sleeve. “I believe we make our lives through force of will.”

  She did not smile. She was thrilled but wary. She did not know if she would be found resistible again.

  “How old are you?” he said, staring hard into her face.

  “Twenty-five. How old are you?”

  “I will be thirty-eight next week.”

  “Is that why you didn’t call me? You think I’m too young for you?”

  “No,” he said, and now she smiled, remembering the very young woman she had seen with him. “I think you’re too . . . much for me.”

  “How can anyone have too much of a good thing?” she said, doing her best to affect allure despite the sogginess, sweat, and stains, and trying hard to convince him that she’d had more than three sexual encounters in her life so far, and that two out of three of them weren’t bad. She suspected, however, that he had guessed this.

  He laughed out loud. He rested his hand on her arm. “It must be great to be you,” he said softly.

  “Are you having a birthday party?” she said. “Maybe I’ll come.”

  “Sure,” he replied. “Eight o’clock next Thursday. You know the address.” He pointed to the white door a little way down the street.

  She nodded. She tried to think of a parting line that a professor of English literature might appreciate. She couldn’t. She had spent all her time working on the introductory one.

  “I’ll get you a present,” she said.

  That fall, Liddy said good-bye to Murray Hill and moved into the loft on Bedford Street that Peter’s aunt owned. Peter was on sabbatical, writing a book on moral aestheticism, and they were happy. Most weekdays they met for a sandwich in an unprepossessing deli on Forty-third Street, equidistant from her office and the New York Public Library, and they discussed disastrous romantic adventures, although his tales were from the pages of novels and hers were from depositions. In the evenings, when they weren’t both working, they went to new restaurants they’d read about in the New Yorker, and plays and concerts and galleries, although Liddy always made the reservations. She took a photography course at the New School and was invited to display her work in a respected gallery downtown; she enjoyed this but did not pursue it. (The impoverished life of the struggling artist held no romance for her. She had eaten nothing but apples and baked potatoes during her time in college. Her hair and nails had never fully recovered.) Occasionally they would visit Peter’s parents, and stay in the large house upstate Peter had grown up in, where there was Bach on the stereo, a library full of well-thumbed books, and a large pond full of shimmering red koi next to a tennis court. Peter’s mother always urged Liddy to play doubles, but Liddy did not know how, and she did not have the time to learn. Instead, she learned about red wine, and sushi, and the opera.

  When Peter went back to work, and her salary doubled and then tripled, they enjoyed numerous winter vacations in Europe and during the long, hot summers took a rental in the same cottage on the water in Amagansett. Often Peter traveled up alone on a Thursday to read and had the takeout ordered when Liddy emerged f
rom the train late on a Friday night, desperate to see him. Sometimes it felt like they had started a conversation the night of that fateful birthday that had never ended. They always had something to talk about. They were “so good together,” everybody said, “still crazy” after so many years, and most of the time they were—until five years later, and the Labor Day weekend that Peter’s parents came to visit and marveled at how Liddy had finally “domesticated” their boy, the “boy” who was now well into his forties, and Mrs. James got a bit tipsy and embarrassed everyone by asking when Peter intended to make “an honest woman of Liddy.” He laughed and then got petulant when she wouldn’t stop asking and said she wanted to be a grandmother, and it was very awkward and Mr. James had to escort her up to bed, saying she can’t take three glasses of wine anymore, and when Liddy asked Peter about it afterward—what was wrong with the idea of getting married or having a child anyway?—he flew into a furious tantrum and headed back to the city, leaving Liddy to cook a bleary breakfast for his parents.

  Peter’s outburst left Liddy hurt and confused. She had assumed that they had boarded the train of life together, that it was chugging along in an orderly and predictable fashion, and would eventually stop at the station of family. But she suddenly realized that while she sat enjoying the ride in peace and safety, Peter might be about to pull the emergency brake. Now that she thought about it, he positively recoiled at the idea of procreation, and while getting pregnant had never been anywhere near the top of Liddy’s to-do list, the more something might elude her, the more she wanted it; what had been true of a pet when she was ten years old was true of a baby now that she was thirty.

  The uncomfortable jolt had shown her she was ready for the next stage; clearly Peter was not. When he refused to apologize, or even discuss it, she spent a miserable forty-eight hours in a fog of distress. She recognized that a life lived by force of will can destroy as much as it can conquer. Clearly she had been an idiot to interfere with meaningful providence, or destiny, or whatever you wanted to call it.