The Real Liddy James

by Anne-Marie Casey

  She packed her bags. She moved back to Murray Hill. She took photographs again. She reconnected with her few friends (she went to Intense Rafe’s exhibition of sound sculptures in Chelsea), and she refused to pick up the telephone for Peter, even when he sang embarrassingly plaintive songs into her answering machine. She had endured adversity but not tragedy, and so her personality was still bright, if brittle.

  She decided to let her true fate reveal itself.

  Liddy had heard rumors about the new and apparently quite devilishly handsome senior associate at Gillespie and Ross but had not come across him until one morning, three weeks later, in a side courtroom in 60 Centre Street. It was Marisa Seldon’s case, but Marisa had called her at 7:30 a.m. to say that both the twins and the nanny had come down with chickenpox, and that Liddy would have to handle the court appearance until she got there. It was a formality, Marisa assured her, and as she hastily read the brief in the cab, Liddy agreed.

  Marisa’s client, Natalia P., was a former aerobics instructor of mysterious origin and indeterminate age, who had taken a job as personal trainer to sixty-five-year-old multimillionaire Dwight P. and married him swiftly afterward. There were no marital assets and no kids, but the case had gone on for two acrimonious years because of yoga. Natalia P. had crushed two vertebrae in her neck after a supported headstand went wrong; her ongoing symptoms included sensitivity to loud noises, numbness in her little toes, and occasional loss of bladder control, which made her unfit for work indefinitely, according to the statements made by three doctors, including an expert on Qigong medicine. Natalia P. looked certain to get a one-off settlement payment, enormous by anyone’s standards.

  Liddy hurried along the tiled corridor in her signature work uniform, navy pantsuit, white shirt, and ballet pumps (on days she was feeling fashion forward she wore a black metallic shirt and pinned a Sarah Jessica Parker–inspired flower corsage onto her jacket), her schoolbag briefcase slung across her chest. Natalia P. was sitting on a wooden bench, waiting. Conspicuously pale, she made an agonizingly slow trip to the bathroom just as Judge Carson arrived.

  Liddy was conscious that the opposing counsel, Sebastian Stackallan, was dark-haired and extremely tall, but she kept her eyes on her notes and the judge, and so the first thing she really noticed about him was his voice. It was a deep, melodious Irish lilt that caused Natalia P. to look over and appear to swoon visibly. It had no effect on Liddy whatsoever. She had spent too many summers in her youth trapped on the rear seats of small cars in Ireland, listening to the similarly deep and melodious voices of local radio hosts and feeling despair that her childhood would never end.

  “And so,” she concluded earnestly, “my client has not only compromised and delayed her career potential by her marriage, she is now stricken with a debilitating medical condition that prevents her, literally, from exercising that potential. Her future is painful and lonely, with medical expenses that could last a lifetime. Surely the whole point of the marriage contract is to protect the parties involved from that?”

  Her rhetorical flourish was rather diminished by the gruff, dismissive laugh from Dwight P. that punctuated the end, but Liddy didn’t care one bit. Judge Carson was clearly unamused by the interruption; moreover, Marisa had heard through the grapevine that he had suffered a similar neck injury while changing a lightbulb. Liddy allowed herself a small, satisfied smile. Then she began to think through her appointments for the rest of the day. At that moment, the back door of the courtroom opened and a very young nervous-looking woman scurried in carrying a brown envelope.

  “Excuse me, Your Honor,” said Stackallan. “There’s some new evidence that has just come to my attention.”

  Liddy jolted out of her reverie on whether to have a Caesar salad or club sandwich for lunch. She leapt to her feet.

  “Objection. No prior disclosure,” she said.

  “Indeed, Ms. Murphy,” said Judge Carson. “Mr. Stackallan, explain?”

  Stackallan ripped open the envelope, sending fragments of white padding flying, and pulled out a VHS cassette.

  “It appears there has been a substantial positive change to Mrs. P.’s health, which goes to the very heart of the settlement negotiation, Your Honor.”

  Liddy had a bad feeling. Stackallan had a serious voice on, but she could tell from the jaunty flourish of the ripping that he was enjoying this.

  “Secret filming is not permissible under the precedent established in Smyth v. Smyth,” she said.

  “This recording was not obtained illicitly. It’s from a security camera in the . . .” He paused and peered at the white strip of tape on the side of the VHS, on which a name had been scrawled in black felt tip. “Disco Go-Go, South Beach, Miami.”

  He enjoyed that even more.

  Liddy watched in amazement as Stackallan fixed Judge Carson in a piercing blue-gray gaze, not unlike Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, and suddenly, as if overcome by the force, Judge Carson nodded.

  “I’ll allow.”

  Stackallan handed the tape to the clerk, who switched on the VHS player and pressed play.

  Liddy turned to Natalia P. Natalia P. did the worst impression of looking innocent Liddy had ever seen; then she gave up, stood, swore extravagantly in the general direction of her soon-to-be ex-husband, and hurried out of the courtroom as it reverberated to a tinny recording of Britney Spears. Judge Carson stared with interest at the grainy but unmistakeable figure of Natalia high kicking and shimmying under the flashing lights, accompanied by two Latino dancers in snakeskin trousers. Case dismissed.

  Liddy packed her briefcase. When she looked up, Stackallan was in front of her, his hand outstretched. She took it and shook it. And now, although she hated losing any case so much it was all something of a blur, she registered that his gaze was oddly mesmerizing in its intensity and his palm was strong and warm. Yes, he was, in fact, quite devilishly handsome.

  “Mr. Stackallan.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Murphy,” he said. “I take it you’re Irish. Were you born in the auld Emerald Isle?”

  “I was,” said Liddy.

  “Jinx. We should get to know each other better. Dinner, tonight?”

  “Pardon?”

  Liddy was genuinely shocked. The chutzpah. The sophistication. The assumption she would find him irresistible.

  “Le Petit Cochon. Eight o’clock?” (His French pronunciation was perfect.)

  “But how will you get a table?” she said, skipping straight to what seemed most improbable about the scenario to her.

  He scoffed and said, “Be there, wear a skirt. I’m sure your legs are fabulous.” Then he walked off, cologne and testosterone trailing behind him, pausing only to hold the room door open for Marisa, who had arrived, exhausted-looking and slightly out of breath, clutching a large bottle of calamine lotion.

  Liddy was affronted, and thrilled, and in a disorienting state of erotic excitement.

  “Was that Sebastian Stackallan?” asked Marisa.

  “It was,” Liddy replied. “Did you see the footage?”

  “No, but I heard! You win some, you lose some.” Marisa shrugged. “He’s good, that young man. And very . . . alluring.”

  Liddy turned to her in surprise.

  “Why?”

  “Good old-fashioned masculine appeal, perhaps? The way he talks? Those impeccable manners?” Marisa paused. “No, I tell you what it is. You look at him and you know he’s brilliant in the sack. In fact, I do know, because Judge Killane told me he was.”

  “What?” said Liddy. Susan Killane was a glamorous, but notoriously uptight, fifty-year-old recently appointed to the appellate court.

  “They’re in some sort of open relationship.”

  Liddy grimaced. She had never seen the point of open relationships. The idea seemed the ultimate oxymoron.

  “He just asked me out for dinner.”

  “Yo
u should definitely go,” said Marisa. “It’ll be good for you after all this business with Peter. You could even try having sex just for fun!”

  Liddy had never attempted a one-night stand, but she trusted Marisa’s advice in most things, so at lunchtime, instead of drafting a template document about custody of wedding presents, she went out and bought herself a new dress and tried on a pair of glittery Louboutins she could hardly walk in. The saleswoman warned her to descend stairs sideways and never to wear the shoes in the rain, as the red soles were notoriously slippery, but even after this Liddy bought them, teetering cautiously into the restaurant that night, feeling fantastically feminine and ready to have “fun.”

  Sebastian had not changed, which immediately made her feel at a disadvantage, but he seemed to appreciate her outfit, loosened his tie with his left hand, and ordered champagne, which she took as a positive sign. Liddy asked polite questions and made amusing comments and he seemed to find her charming and even brushed his hand against hers a couple of times, so she drank two glasses straight down in order to facilitate flirtation, which did not come easily to her. She stared at his mouth and wondered what would happen if she leaned across the table and kissed him. But she had been brought up a Catholic so she didn’t. Instead, the bubbles went straight to her head and, unfortunately, when the conversation meandered into the byways of another country, her unadulterated personality belched out of her mouth in words that were slurred.

  “I haven’t been to Ireland for years. I hated going back there when I was young. I had to sleep in my cousin Roisin’s bed, in her unwashed sheets, with her dolls staring down at me. She used to keep a pile of nail clippings under her pillow!”

  Sebastian did not seem to share her outrage (or interest in cousin Roisin’s cuticles).

  “Where is your family from?” he asked, suddenly glancing around the restaurant in the hope he might see someone, anyone, he knew.

  “Suburbs of Dublin. Elderly aunties in corporation houses, you know, picture of the pope next to JFK. And of course, once during the trip, there’d be the obligatory trudge round Glendalough in County Wicklow.”

  Sebastian perked up. “That’s where I grew up. My family home is near there.”

  “Interesting,” said Liddy, although she wasn’t interested at all. “All I remember about it is that it always rained. You know, people say that it always rains in Ireland and you think they’re making it up, but they’re not, because when I was there it always did. Shall we order?”

  “I don’t mind the weather,” he said. “I go back home every summer. I miss it. I miss the house and I miss the land. Don’t you feel any connection to the place you were born?”

  He began to sing.

  “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling . . .”

  His singing voice was as attractive as his speaking one. The couple at the next table stared admiringly.

  Liddy thought for a moment. Then she shook her head. (This made her feel a bit sick.)

  “Can we order some wine?” she said.

  “Are you even Irish at all?” said Sebastian, and there was a sudden edge to his voice that Liddy didn’t like. She picked up the bottle of champagne and poured the last glass out of it.

  “Look, Sebastian,” she said, propping her elbow on the table and resting her chin in her palm in what she hoped was a coquettish manner, “we’re different sorts of Irish. I mean, your great-great-great-uncle Stackallan was no doubt herding my great-great-great-uncle Murphy onto some godforsaken coffin ship. Right? You’re the ‘it’s not a home, it’s my history’ type and I’m the ‘survival of the fittest, make a new life in the New World’ type.”

  At this moment, the waiter materialized and launched into a description of the specials in a French accent that sounded like he had learned it at drama school.

  “I’m just having one course. Dover sole,” said Sebastian quickly.

  “Really?” said Liddy, who was starving as well as inebriated. “I thought the calamari special sounded good.” She ordered it as a main.

  Sebastian did not ask for the wine list.

  “And a glass of the house red,” he said.

  “Make that a bottle,” said Liddy defiantly.

  There was a long pause. Liddy was aware that the date was not going well. Sebastian was tapping his knife against his fork in an extremely irritating manner. Because of starvation and inebriation, when she looked at his face it moved in and out of focus, but, even fuzzy, she could tell he was bored. She attempted to get the evening back on track.

  “My boyfriend and I are on a break,” she announced somewhat primly. Then she hiccupped.

  Sebastian put the knife down. “Let me guess,” he said meaningfully. “He doesn’t know if he wants to marry you, right?”

  Liddy said yes, then thought she sounded pathetic. “I don’t know if I like him anymore,” she added. “He’s older than me.”

  “Five years either way is the max age difference, if you ask me. It’s unnatural to want to go to bed with Granddad. Or Baby, if you look at it the other way round.”

  “Peter’s forty-three. He’s not Granddad. He’s mature.”

  “Really?” said Sebastian in the withering tone she had heard earlier in the day. “Then why doesn’t he know what he wants?”

  The waiter delivered their food. Liddy took her first mouthful before her plate was on the table.

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s an academic.”

  Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Of course. Don’t marry him.”

  “Why?”

  “You and I, we work fifteen hours most days. In your case, that’s partly because the professor doesn’t, but what’ll happen when you have kids? How will you ever get off the treadmill?”

  “I’m not going to give up work when I have kids.”

  “Why not?” said Sebastian. “I hear that raising a family can make a person very happy,” and Liddy actually groaned, and put her head in both hands, and had a vision of a different life, a life of privilege and comfort, a life that several of her contemporaries were starting to choose (which she had previously dismissed as acts of desperation but now saw could be love). These women married men, often inferior to them in qualifications or career prospects, who were devoted husbands and gave them good-looking children and shared years with them that were as full and busy as they wanted them to be, before embarking on late-blooming second careers, frequently in nonprofit organizations.

  Liddy gripped her hands tight around her face and she felt a silent scream. “I can’t,” she whispered. “Is that what you’d want your wife to do?”

  She went back to eating.

  “I’m not a marrying man,” Sebastian announced, “but if I were, I’d be a provider. I would not like my children brought up by some nanny while my workaholic wife ran round with a briefcase in one hand and a baby bottle in the other!”

  Liddy spluttered, sending fragments of calamari over the tablecloth. “You are a . . . Neanderthal . . .” she said, coughing.

  Sebastian wiped his cutlery with his napkin. “Yeah. Right. You know the problem with women like you? You have some . . . thing about all this going on in your head, but, guess what, Ms. Murphy, it’s okay to let someone take care of you.”

  As that someone was clearly never going to be Sebastian Stackallan, Liddy knew that “sex for fun” was most definitely off the menu. But still she found it difficult not to take it personally.

  It took them precisely seven minutes to eat their food in silence, split the bill, and head out of the restaurant. Sebastian made some attempt at chivalrously waving down a cab, but when she asked him if he wanted to share it, he refused before she had finished speaking. She clambered into the backseat, but the heel of her right Louboutin caught in a grate and came off her foot just as Sebastian slammed the door firmly and banged on the cab window. The driver roared off
and Liddy did not ask him to turn back. She looked down at her naked foot and sighed. Oh, Cinderella, she thought, you’ve got a lot to answer for. The appalling vista of endless unsatisfactory evenings like this opened up before her, and she decided to keep the remaining shoe on a prominent shelf in her apartment as a reminder that she must wait for the One. In the meantime, she would forget everything about the experience (the art of forgetting was something Liddy had found easy to master), forswear all men for a while, especially handsome princes, and if anyone mentioned Sebastian Stackallan she would say she was immune to his Celtic charms because of their shared DNA.

  The cab pulled up on Third Avenue and she got out, barefoot, and began to weave her way unsteadily along the sidewalk. She was already dreading tomorrow’s hangover, which would not even be leavened by the memory of a night of gymnastic sexual excess. “Liddy!” called a voice ahead of her, and she saw Peter sitting on her steps. He rose to his feet and pulled a small box out of his pocket and she knew what was going to happen next, so she stopped, and her first instinct was to shout no, but then she looked at the solitary shoe in her hand.

  “I can’t live without you,” he said, so to stop him begging she said yes before any question had been asked, but she did not move toward him until she had put some conditions in place. They would get married before the end of the year, somewhere exotic, on their own, they would have a baby, and they would buy a place in Brooklyn, for she had noticed that was what her friends who had babies often did.

  “Yes, yes, I like Brooklyn,” he said. Then she threw the shoe in the trash. Years later, she would remember that Peter had never actually asked her to marry him and expressed more enthusiasm for Brooklyn than the baby, and she would regret that she had not exploited her advantage by defining a minimum number of offspring. But that day, she let him into the apartment, ran him a bath, and ripped up her repeat prescription for the pill. Only then did she open the small box and see the exquisite belle epoque ring with a sapphire cluster setting he had chosen with his mother the previous weekend; it was perfect, and she allowed him to kiss her perfectly too.