The Transformation of Things

by Jillian Cantor

  The

  Transformation

  of Things

  JILLIAN CANTOR

  For my children: May all your best dreams come true.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for The Transformation of Things

  By Jillian Cantor

  A+ AUTHOR INSIGHTS, EXTRAS & MORE

  Reader’s Guide Questions

  Q&A with Jillian Cantor

  Deleted Scenes

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  One

  When I first heard the news about Will, I was at the Pierce Avenue Salon, getting my hair washed. I had my head back in the sink, the roar of water rushing through my ears, the annoying voice of Jo, my hairdresser for the four years I’d lived in Deerfield, ringing against the water. She was saying something about her kids. My head was pounding from the sound of her voice, and I had my eyes closed, which is why I didn’t notice it at first, the big flat-screen TV that hung up in front of me.

  I heard the water turn off, in mid-rinse, so I opened my eyes. “Isn’t that your husband?” Jo asked.

  “What?” The idea seemed ridiculous. There was no way Will would be at Pierce Avenue in the middle of the day, on a weekday. Will was a judge, the youngest judge to have ever been elected to the bench in Deerfield County. Which, he once told me, meant he had to work the hardest, meant he had something to prove.

  Since he’d been elected three years ago, I’d barely seen him,except for five-minute sex at six A.M., once a month when I was ovulating. We were trying to have a baby, though we’d never admitted to each other that we weren’t trying very hard.

  I was only thirty-three. I still had time. Why rush things? It was Will who was dying for the pitter-patter of little feet—little feet he’d never be around to hear. So each month when my period arrived without delay, I couldn’t help but feel a little relieved, even though I feigned mock disappointment for Will’s benefit.

  “No,” Jo said. “Up there. On the news.”

  I sat up too quickly, and I felt a wave of dizziness wash over me as I saw the shiny newscaster, Gary Adams, talking with a smile so wide and so white that he looked more like a puppet than a human being. I’d interviewed him once, in my former life, before Will and I had moved to Deerfield, when I’d worked as a writer for City Style magazine. He was just as annoying in real life as he was on TV, and after he’d called me doll three too many times, I’d been ready to scream.

  Jo grabbed the remote from behind the sink, rewound back sixty seconds, and turned it up.

  And then I saw it, incredibly, the picture of Will up on the screen. It was his professional headshot, the one of him in his black robe, where he looked both exceedingly handsome and way too serious. “Judge William Levenworth,” Gary was saying. “Indicted by a federal grand jury this morning for bribery.”

  Gary was still talking, but I didn’t hear it. It was as if the water were still rushing through my ears, and the world was thick and heavy and cloudy all around me. “Mrs. Levenworth.” I heard Jo’s voice, but it sounded very, very far away. “Mrs. Levenworth. Are you okay? Are you all right?”

  There must be some mistake. There was no way that Will had been indicted. What the hell did that even mean exactly anyway? I vaguely remembered reading something about a state senator who’d been indicted recently, but I hadn’t paid too much attention to it. Still, I knew it wasn’t good. “Mrs. Levenworth!” Jo’s normally annoying voice was punctuated with an extra bit of shrillness. “Mrs. Levenworth!”

  I took a deep breath. “I think I should go,” I said. “I’ll call and reschedule.”

  I stood up, un-Velcro-ed the shiny black robe that was supposed to keep me dry, and when I did, my wet hair plopped against my back with a thud. I felt dizzy again, and the room swirled around me, the din of the salon, the rainbow colors of shampoo all lined up in neat rows by the sink. “At least let me dry it for you,” I heard Jo saying. “You’ll freeze.”

  I grabbed on to the edge of the sink to steady myself for a second. “I’ll be fine,” I heard myself saying, though I wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, if I was really speaking them. It was early October and pleasant enough, in the low sixties—the perfect time of year in Deerfield. The time of year when the leaves changed color and littered the winding hilly streets—the time of year that usually made me a little gleeful that we’d moved to the suburbs.

  I opened my purse, fished out a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to Jo. “Here you go,” I said. My motions were clumsy, and the money slipped to the ground, but before she even bent to pick it up, I started running, through the rows of hair chairs and mirrors, past the waiting area and the anxious stares of the women sipping lattes, and into the parking lot, filled nearly to the brim with shiny, expensive cars.

  I hopped into my black Mercedes SUV, as if it were pouring rain outside and I was seeking some sort of refuge. I slammed the door shut behind me.

  Inside the safety of my car, I combed my hair with my fingers, and I tried to scrunch it as if I’d intentionally left it wet, so it would curl. It still felt a little soapy, but I did the best I could with it in the rearview mirror.

  As I drove, I thought about my last conversation with Will, last night at dinner. There was no indication anything was askew, that he was about to be indicted. Though our conversations didn’t necessarily indicate much anymore.

  “Janice brought her baby by this afternoon,” he said, taking a sip of his wine and chewing carefully on his salad of organic greens and vegetables that I’d prepared after a trip to the farmers’ market.

  “Oh.” I nodded and chewed. Janice was Will’s clerk, or she had been before she’d had the baby and gone on an extended, if not totally permanent, maternity leave.

  “She was cute,” Will said.

  “All babies are cute,” I said.

  “Pudgy little cheeks,” he said. He looked up and stared at me for a moment, and something he was about to say caught in his throat, until he stopped himself.

  “What?” I said, wanting to egg him on, wanting him to say something, anything.

  “Nothing.” He shook his head and finished off his wine. “I’ve got work to do.” He stood up and walked his empty salad bowl over to the sink.

  “I rented some movies,” I said. I wanted him to stay, wanted him to wrap me up in his arms on the couch, something he hadn’t done in so long, years maybe. I’d gone into the video store on a whim on the way back from the farmers’ market, hoping that Will might have some time to watch something with me. “Do you want me to wait for you to watch?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I have an early day tomorrow.”

  “We could watch them tomorrow night.”

  He shook his head again. “I’ll be home late tomorrow.”

  Of course you wil
l, I thought, feeling close to tears as I put the disc in the DVD player and sat down on the couch myself.

  And now in the car, I felt close to tears again, felt this whirlwind of colors, emotions in my head, like the fall leaves that littered the ground, swirling and dying in the wind. I was almost grateful for the sound of the ambulance, for the need to pull over for a minute to let it pass, so I could take a deep breath and compose myself before driving the rest of the way home.

  Exactly ten minutes after leaving the salon, I pulled into my driveway, and I checked my hair in the mirror. Frizzy and half dry. Not my best look. And then I opened the garage door and saw Will’s car, a dark gray BMW, sitting there in the second bay: bright and shiny and sparkling clean, looking as new as the day he’d bought it two years earlier. It always amazed me, the way Will found the time to take care of his car, keep it waxed and sparkling, when he barely ever had time to make it home for dinner on a weeknight.

  Will was sitting in the kitchen when I walked in—the kitchen that I’d painstakingly redecorated over the past few years, replete with black granite counters, cherry handcrafted cabinetry, and bamboo floors.

  Being a judge’s wife, a pillar of the community, had come surprisingly naturally to me. Our house was immaculate, beautiful, and modern. I’d created a very successful charity auction that earned enough money for breast cancer research to make me feel like I was actually doing something useful. I played doubles tennis at the country club, and I was a member of the exclusive Deerfield Ladies Lunch Club.

  And now here he was, Will, slumped against the mahogany chair I’d ordered from the Crate and Barrel catalog, his head leaning in his hands, looking nothing like he did in the photo from TV. His blue eyes were red-rimmed, his brown wavy hair was disheveled, his red tie was loosened, and the top of his white starched shirt was unbuttoned. His suit jacket hung on the chair behind him.

  I felt this deep and incredible ache for him in my gut, an ache that made me forget, for a few seconds, about the loneliness I usually felt when we were both home, in this house.

  He looked up, suddenly noticing me watching him. “You heard?” he whispered.

  “On the news,” I said.

  “Oh shit.” He laid his head down on the table in his hands. “It’s on the news.”

  I sat down, and I wanted to hug him, wanted to hold myself close to him and bury my head in chest. I wanted to smell just the faintest hint of his pine aftershave, a smell that once made me feel intoxicated. But I didn’t move. I just sat there. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, after a few moments of silence.

  He lifted his head up. “There was nothing to tell,” he said. “I thought it would go away.” And you don’t tell me anything anymore, I silently added, which was probably the real reason. “It’s lies,” he said. “All of it.” I nodded. “I never accepted any bribes. You know that, right, Jen?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Of course I know that.” I stared at him closely, this man, my husband of five years, whose life moved next to mine, around and around and around, barely, if ever, moving together. And I wasn’t quite sure what I really knew and what I didn’t.

  I had a lot of questions: Why would he be indicted for bribery if he hadn’t done anything wrong? What did it mean exactly to be indicted anyway? But I couldn’t find any words to actually ask him. I knew it would all pour out of him so painstakingly, as if each word was killing him, just a little bit, to choke out; as if each word was breaking him. And I couldn’t bear to watch it.

  “I’m going to fight this,” he said. “I’m not going to resign. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Of course you’re not,” I said, as if it was the most obvious conclusion.

  He stood up. “I’m going to go call Danny.” Danny Halloway was a lawyer who’d worked with Will at Farnesworth, Fenley, and Grimes (FF&G) before Will had left to become a judge. Danny was short with bright red hair and freckles, with a sort of young Ron Howard look to him. But anyone who mistook his benign appearance to mean an easy target was sorely mistaken. Danny, like Will, had been made a partner at the law firm before the age of thirty. He and his wife, Kat, had also been our closest friends when we’d lived in the city.

  I thought about Danny and Kat—it had been a while since I’d seen them together. Maybe they should’ve been a strange fit—his gentle quietness and her loud affection—but you could always see the way they loved each other, every second that they were together, in the way they looked at each other, in the way they clung to each other in small moments.

  The last time we’d been to their house in the city was just after the birth of their younger daughter, Arabella, and even though Kat was swollen and tired-looking, Danny had been sitting next to her on the couch, his arm around her, their thighs touching. Danny looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and she said it right back, in the way she reached up and innocently tousled his red hair.

  Will walked toward his study, the study I’d meticulously decorated with a black leather sofa and thick, dark cherry desk and bookshelves, sitting against a light cherrywood floor. The room was very dark, very judgelike, but I always thought the beige damask curtains lightened it up just enough to make it homey. I’d been so proud of the way it had turned out, the way it looked like something formal and gracious enough to have made its way into a design magazine. And Will had given me nothing more than “It’s nice.” He followed this with “You know I really don’t care much about curtains,” because I’d pressed him to give me an opinion on something specific, pointing toward the window treatments.

  I stood in the doorway, staring at those curtains now. “Have you talked to Danny lately?” I asked, thinking that it had been a month or two, at least, since I’d last called Kat.

  He shook his head, and I watched as he dialed Danny’s number. In another lifetime, Will and Danny had been best friends, and Danny was a great lawyer. If anyone would know what to do, it would be Danny, even if they hadn’t talked in a while.

  “Danny,” I heard Will say, his voice gasping out, almost as if he was choking. “It’s Will.”

  And from the look on Will’s face, I knew that Danny was saying that he’d already heard, that maybe he’d seen it on the news the way I had. Will put his head down on the desk, hanging on to the phone with his right hand and holding on to his head with his left. “Okay,” I heard him say. “Yes, okay. Okay. I will.” He hung up.

  “What did Danny say?” I asked.

  He lifted his head up slowly from the desk and looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time, seeing me standing there for the first time. “He wants me to come down to the office.”

  “Now?” I asked. Will seemed to be in no shape to go anywhere.

  “Yes.” He nodded. He looked at me for a moment, and I had a feeling he was considering asking me to go with him. But then he stood up, grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair, and breezed by me. “Don’t wait up,” he called out behind him. “I’ll be home late.”

  He didn’t wait for my response, and as I heard the door slam to the garage, I stood there for a moment, listening, waiting, for something else. But as always, the only thing resonating through our giant, well-decorated house was silence.

  Two

  To be indicted is to be charged formally for committing a criminal act.

  It was right there in the Deerfield Daily the next morning, right alongside Will’s picture, with the headline that read: “Young Judge Indicted for Bribery.” The definition of indicted, along with that of federal grand jury (a group of jurors who decide if someone should be tried for a crime), sat in a little blurb box off to the side, as if the editor at the Deerfield Daily was expecting his readers not to know these things. And why would they? People didn’t get indicted in Deerfield.

  Well, actually, some people did—Will was the second in as many months. That state senator I’d remembered had been from Deerfield, too. The article also mentioned this, although it failed to say what had h
appened to the senator, which is what I was dying to know as I perused the article. But the Deerfield Daily, like most small-town suburban papers, was not known for its stellar reporting.

  The town of Deerfield sat in the heart of Deerfield County, just around thirty minutes from Philadelphia. Deerfield County was filled with mostly middle-and upper-middle-class suburbs, but the actual town of Deerfield itself was the wealthy upper-class center—made up of expensive shopping plazas, developments of large, newer homes—or McMansions, as my sister, Kelly, liked to call them—and a world-class country club with a Jack Nicklaus golf course. Needless to say, I was sure that my neighbors, like me, would not be up on their criminal terms, even if some state senator had already been indicted last month.

  Right next to the oh-so-helpful definition box, there was another box, a fact box, that offered these little tidbits:

  Judge William Kenneth Levenworth:

  Elected to the bench three years ago.

  The youngest judge ever elected in Deerfield

  County at the age of thirty-four.

  The only judge in Deerfield County ever to be indicted.

  Formally charged with bribery, obstruction of

  justice, and conspiracy.

  If convicted, could serve up to twenty-five years

  in prison and/or be fined $750,000.

  Twenty-five years in prison. My stomach felt like it was capsizing, and my head was throbbing to the point where I had to close my eyes in an attempt to make it stop, to contain the ache. Will couldn’t really go to prison. Could he?

  I took a deep breath, and I read the article. The gist of what it said was this: that Will had allegedly accepted $250,000 from a lawyer to decide in favor of his client. The writer used the word allegedly about twenty times in one paragraph—everything about Will was alleged, a word that seemed both like a redundancy and a relief to me all at once.

  The article didn’t say the name of the lawyer, because he hadn’t been charged with anything yet, but it wouldn’t have mattered to me anyway. I never kept track of Will’s cases or verdicts. And it wasn’t something he ever talked about at home. Work was at work (and he was almost always at work). But at home, he was in his study, washing his car, watching football, or, on Friday nights, sharing dinner with me at the club. We ate steak or lobster, made small talk about the neighbors or the new paint samples. We each had a glass of wine. And that was that.