by Sonia Taitz
But Martin, the three-year-old, had not even been admitted to the nearby Montessori, and his depressed mother had made no other arrangements. Thus Richard, unmarried, childless, and in his forties, had made his first acquaintance with the playground.
At first, Martin had refused to go anywhere at all with uncle Richard. Nor would he call him uncle Richard, as he’d been urged to by his mother on the phone. Even when Richard managed to strap Martin into his stroller (for which he was almost too big), wheeling him to a lovely playground on the Fifth Avenue side of the park, Martin had turned around and called his uncle “Big Stinky.” He had said it with real malice, and then repeated it louder, with a variation: “Big Stinky, I hate you so bad.”
After days of pushing this child in his stroller, Richard was exasperated. Martin wouldn’t get out, wouldn’t play in the sand, hang on the rope, climb on the rocks, or cross the little bridge. He wouldn’t do anything.
“Why won’t you play?” Richard kept asking. “Are you missing your mommy and daddy?” The answer: “Big Stinky, I hate you.”
Then one day, for a lark, Richard pushed the stroller in the opposite direction, toward the East River. He was thinking that the child might like to look at the birds by the waterside. Besides, Richard was becoming embarrassed by all the sitters looking at him, unable to make a dent in Martin’s obstinacy. Surprisingly, Martin did begin to look more game as they headed eastward, or at least more animated.
“Water park! Water park!” he screamed, kicking his large, heavy legs.
“Is there a—a water park there?” said Richard, leaning his long, Lincoln-esque face into the stroller. Martin stared into his uncle’s friendly, aqua eyes with their rectangular black flames and finally nodded. It was like that first providential moment between Helen Keller and her teacher.
“Where is it?” asked Richard eagerly.
From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw another associate he’d vaguely known from his old firm. Rhoda something, he thought, or was it Rhonda? She was wheeling a baby in an elaborate stroller, heading for the same playground. For a moment Richard thought of avoiding her. Associations to Abigail could sometimes be painful. But Martin’s wishes pulled him forward, and he went.
I’m starting to get old, thought Richard, sitting down on a bench as Martin played. It was hard to chase a little kid around, especially one like Martin. Poor guy—he probably missed his parents, and that’s what made him so hyper. Richard understood. Not that he’d stop taking him to the playground. It was the best thing for his body and his mind. Martin did seem to enjoy it more and more each day. On the other hand, he, Richard, was exhausted. His brother was sick. His sister-in-law a mess. Richard just wanted to rest. He could have used some love himself, someone to really talk to and be with.
Richard thought wistfully of Abigail Thomas. He missed the bold girl he had held in his arms not ten months ago. Why had she left him so abruptly? At first he had thought that he must have disappointed her in some way. But how? Had he said or done something? He remembered how unbelievably close they had felt together, as though they were destined to stay that way, to move through life in harmony. How could he be so wrong about someone? She hadn’t seemed to be a cold person rather the opposite—everything he knew about her spoke to a great and yielding heart.
But if so, why hadn’t she returned his calls? She had hurt him badly, and he simply did not know what to do.
He had even called her directly at home, hoping to get through without the screen of legal secretaries. A young man had picked up and curtly, proprietarily, gotten rid of him. That was clearly the problem. She had already moved on to someone else, and he, Richard, had been shoved out of the picture. How quickly people betray each other! Or worse—maybe he, Richard, had been a mere interlude in Abigail’s longstanding relationship with this other man. She had been weak then, lonely, tipsy, perhaps. Afterward, after him, she wanted simply to forget. He’d been a mistake, then. Nothing more.
Now Richard watched his nephew play in the park. It was amazing to see how the little boy had changed over the course of a few days. In his beloved, familiar park, Martin had come alive. He ran across a suspended wooden bridge, played tic-tac-toe with a giant yellow game board, and jumped into the sandbox, burying himself and tossing sand behind him like a digging dog.
“Martin, my love, have fun, but watch you don’t get sand in that little girl’s eye.”
“All right, uncle Richard. You are my goodie.”
What an improvement! Richard sighed with deep satisfaction, then strolled over to the water fountain near the exit to take a long drink. As he lifted his head, he saw the associate again. Rona something. That was it. Miller? Not a bad attorney; she’d worked with him on a few cases at Fletcher, Caplan.
Should he be brave and ask her about Abigail? Rona and she were probably still colleagues, and he could pretend to a merely professional interest in the both of them. But just as Richard began moving toward Rona, she strapped her child into its stroller and began walking purposefully in the other direction. Of course, he could not follow her. Martin was fixated on the way he could spin a steel wheel around, as though he were driving a car.
“Uncle Richard, come watch me!”
“Yes, love, I’m coming.”
He followed the little boy, watching him do all his favorite activities, and some new ones, until it was time to go home.
31
A few days later, Tim came back to see Arlie.
“Ms. Thomas is not home,” Arlie said, her tone measured. She stood at the doorway, blocking his entry.
“I know she’s not, Arlie. I called her earlier. She said she was heading over to the east side to visit a friend.”
“Yes, a friend did call her,” said Arlie. “She also have a baby, Ms. Thomas tell me. I think they going to the park over there for a play date.”
“May I please come in for a minute?”
“I have work to do, you know.”
“But the baby’s not even here.”
“I still have the washing and ironing.”
“I—I’ve been thinking about you.”
“That’s good. Go home and think some more.”
“Please. I won’t stay long.” Arlie looked at him doubtfully. Finally, she opened the door and let him in. Tim walked over to the living room and sat down on the sofa. Arlie remained standing.
“Don’t you ever do any work?” she said, her voice low and unemotional.
“Sure I do, but I’m in computers and I’m a freelancer, a consultant. I can basically call the shots in terms of my hours.”
“I did some computer myself back in Guyana. Word processing, we called it. Had a nice office job with an actuarial firm. Our biggest client was in that bauxite business, very important, you know bauxite? Industrial uses and all that.”
“Was that before or after your marriage?”
“You don’t know much about me at all,” she said curtly.
“Well, I do know a thing or two,” he said, trying to put his arm around her.
“Very little,” she retorted, pulling away. “But you know, when I come here, I had no papers, so that’s why I became a nanny, because you can get sponsored. And I sort of fall into it, deeper and deeper. It’s hard, hard work, you know. Sometimes I wonder if I want my own child anymore.”
“Oh, Arlie,” said Tim, “you were made for it.”
“For child-caring? Then why do you look down on me for my work, then?”
“What makes you think I look down on you?”
“Hm!” she snorted. “I’m good as you, even if you do have more dollars,” she said, starting to speak with an edge in her voice. “Smart as you, yes, and maybe more hardworking. You think it’s so easy? Look at how Abigail admire me, look to me for answers she don’t know! But I think about what happened with us, and I think you don’t know me at all.”
“I’d like to know you better,” said Tim.
Arlie did not look at him.
“Know this,” she said at last. “I was married, divorced, and hurt.”
“So was I,” he answered simply.
“Don’t ever compare yourself to me! I might lose my job for you and your games. Be fired by my boss.”
“Don’t think of Abigail that way. She’s just a real person like you or me. She’s a new mother; she’s not going to fire you.”
“Hm. You’re probably right. I had my time to be a mother, too, you know. But the marriage wasn’t good. Right from the beginning, Marwan had no respect. He was tight with his money, too, and he called it ‘his’ money—like I don’t have any. And when I was pregnant, he made me feel so bad, so bad. Like now I was really a slave. So I got rid of the baby, and I left him.”
“Arlie, I’m sorry,” Tim ventured. He wanted to say more, to comfort her, but for once he could not find the words. His glibness was failing him, and he felt a melting sense of humility before her.
“You like kids? Ever have any?” Arlie now seemed in charge of the conversation.
“Yes. No, I’ve never had my own. I—I teach a class once a week, in my spare time. I teach kids to use the computer.” He paused for a moment.
“My ex-wife was a beautiful, dark-haired woman,” he continued. “Like Abigail, and even—even more like you, Arlie, when I think about it. Anyway, we kept imagining that we would have all these gorgeous kids. But after a while it appeared that I couldn’t have any. It was a fantasy. Impossible. So she left me.”
After a long silence, Arlie turned around to face him.
“Listen to me, Tim. I don’t know what happened with you and that woman. Was she white?”
“Yes.”
“Tim, I feel you are as potent as a rhino. Your body has great energy. When we were together before, I felt all your seeds racing, racing.”
“Good god!” said Tim. “You felt my what! Aren’t you on the pill or something?”
“Naturally, I have an intrauterine device, or I would have kicked you hard in your handsome face when you touched me the first time. But look how you jump when you think you could get me pregnant. Yes, Arlie is a fertile woman. Be sure of that! I can have a baby anytime.
“But it’s all right,” she continued, after a pause. “I don’t want no baby right now. But for the rest, sure, I will give you what you need for now. I need things too, you know? But don’t be disrespecting me anymore, eh?”
“All right,” he said, his voice small.
“You’re a little needy boy, but you don’t know how to give, not really. But I’ll teach you. For a start, leave my boss alone. Don’t keep acting like her partner. She’s not for you. I’ve been thinking hard about it.”
“Leave Abigail alone? What do you mean?”
“You can be her jokey-jokey friend, but stop thinking you can ever be her man. You act just like a nanny to her. Feed her, hold her hand, keep her safe in the hospital. She lost her mother, she does need that.”
“But we—I’ve just told her father we were practically engaged. . . .”
“You lying all the time now anyway, so forget about that. She has a man already. The man who gave her a baby. And I think she love him—could be that’s why she has no room for you. Yes. He gave her that baby and she growing to love that baby like a fool. I think from the beginning, she want that child. She didn’t kill it when she was carrying, did she? Did she have her abortion like Arlie? And she such a worker all the time? No, she start to love the man who made her stop and grow. I can tell, all of it, how my boss always looking at her baby’s eyes. She see more than a baby there. She searching for the love that she felt. She searching for it.”
“He’s searching for her, too,” Tim conceded, after a long pause.
“You have a sense of it? As a man you feel it?” Arlie sounded impressed.
“No. He actually—he called here, but I have to admit I never got around to giving Abigail the message.”
“When was that?”
“About a week ago. You know, when we were—you know—first together, and I got the phone a couple of times? That was him.”
“I thought those were just wrong numbers. And anyway, I was not myself. But that was him, you think—and still you never tell her? You are selfish like Marwan. But you have your sweetness, too. Your eyes are good. Your touch is like magic, and right now you are going to love me more and more, do you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“I’m not talking above your head, too smart for you?”
“No, I think I get it.”
“Good. So now I’ll teach you a lesson to bring you to my level. Take off your clothes and lie flat.”
Tim complied at once. He lay there, nude and humble, looking up with innocent hope. Never, since he’d been a child, had he felt so vulnerable and at the same time so trusting. Yes, he was falling, and he was rising to her level.
“Close your eyes now,” said Arlie.
Then she lifted her skirt, mounted him, and rode Tim until he felt he was almost dead. Throughout it all, he hadn’t made a move. He couldn’t have.
Afterward, Arlie dug out a crumpled roll of tens from a pocket in the skirt. She offered them to Tim, who was still trying to catch his breath below her.
“Money-back guarantee,” she said, again expressionless.
“You’re angry at me—still?” he gasped.
“We both want the same things, so don’t play the big shot. And don’t pay me money ever again. I’m not less than you.”
“No, of course not,” he said, still trying to breathe.
They were silent for a moment. Then Arlie dismounted.
“Something else,” she said, in a new tone of voice, brisk and cheerful. “You say you teach computer information technology. Can you show me some lessons? I forget since the last eight years I’m in this country. But I learn very well, very fast. So teach it to me now. I’d like to have some kind of office, part-time work, like you, you know? Can you train me?”
“Sure,” said Tim, his natural generosity returning as her lecture ended. “I’m supposed to be a pretty good teacher.”
“My weekends are free,” she said.
“You don’t have to pay me, either,” he added.
“I wasn’t going to,” said Arlie, allowing herself a big smile.
32
Over at the firm of Fletcher, Caplan, Mr. Fudim was shaking his head. What a mess he had to clean up. Abigail Thomas had shown some promise at the beginning, but he’d been right to doubt her. He should have doubted her a lot more.
And now the kid’s career was going to have to take a sudden, jolting nosedive. It was tragic, he thought, that she had hoped to become the first full-time mother partner. Deluded. For all her sassy bluster, she didn’t have the goods for that kind of professional promotion. She’d been nothing but weak and emotional.
Instead of raising Abigail Thomas to their level, the partnership, instead, was preparing to force her resignation for “unprofessional behavior.” Thanks to him. But he had to give some of the credit to Dave Biddle-Kammerman, too. That new partner had given his all to the firm (he hadn’t missed a day since his twins were born). And he’d been at the forefront of Thomas’s career U-turn. Earning his keep, Dave had been busy behind the scenes, catching on as the girl went rogue on the Cranebill case and fighting her bad instincts at every opportunity.
Damage control was the name of the game. Mr. Fudim was happy to have someone in the office who knew who was who and what was what. The picture Dave Biddle-Kammerman painted wasn’t very pretty. But it could be altered—or it could be erased. In short, Abigail Thomas would have to go.
Over the past few weeks, it had become clear that MacAdam v. Cranebill was going to be settled in the plaintiff’s favor—that is, against their client. This was a disastrous end to the matter, one that would mean the loss of Hutton Cranebill as a deep pocket for the firm. Every area of the practice would suffer thanks to this unruly senior associate.
The camera that had allegedly fallen fr
om the plane was, of course, the source of the problem. When young Carl (another rotten apple) had deposed her, Mrs. MacAdam had boasted that she had friends everywhere who would vouch for her character, industry, and green thumb. More catastrophically, she had claimed the existence of a camera whose presence “proved” that Cranebill’s fast-food subsidiary had been spying on her crossbred rosemary and basil plants. (The telephoto lens had also gotten a good shot of her cucumber-pepper seedlings, she’d added.) Whether Mrs. MacAdam really had those shots or not—and any one of her friends could have found it and kept safe it for her, as evidence—the threat alone had cowed Cranebill into buckling.
Firing Carl and discreetly shredding his deposition, while naturally satisfying, had done the firm no real good. The camera was out of the bag, as it were, and even though Dave Biddle-Kammerman had of course tried to deny the presence of the damning evidence (a common practice, and one that had led to a partner’s quitting years before), such tricks were pointless now, in light of MacAdam’s confirmed knowledge and probable possession.
Dave had made clear to Fudim that Abigail Thomas was “clearly the one responsible for this debacle.” She’d been the one to go down there, find Jackson Moss, and relate the parameters of the investigation to this local investigator. Jackson, too, had patently mishandled sensitive evidence. He must have found that camera; he, like MacAdam, knew lots of people. In places so primitive, adversarial lines never remained as clear as they should.
Finding this “smoking gun”—with a tip, or slip, from either side—could have been a wonderful windfall. Had Dave been the one in contact with Jackson, Fudim mused, things would have gone very differently. Even before the find, Dave would have insisted that Jackson’s job was to prove that there was no camera. Things disappeared all the time, particularly when they had probative weight, and it would have been ridiculously easy to lose this busted hunk of metal—or at least rip its memory out. But Dave “strongly suspected” that with Abigail at the helm, Jackson had received no such direction.
