Unreasonable Doubts

by Reyna Marder Gentin

  Deb had finally returned to work a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, but she was weak from the chemo, and she only stayed in the office for a few hours a day before going home to rest and be with Max. She never mentioned her prognosis, but she was brave beyond words and utterly determined. If anyone had a chance to push the limits of this disease, it was Deb. Despite what she had been through, she was still herself: sharp and funny and challenging. She was also occasionally melancholy and needed constant reassurance that she looked well and was thinking clearly, neither of which was always the case.

  Jakob had been working like a dog. He kept erratic hours and was traveling to such scintillating locales as Boise, Buffalo, and Duluth for his various cases. Somehow, although it confounded Liana, he managed to enjoy not only the intellectual aspects of his work but also the cutthroat politics of the firm, which inspired him on some level. When he wasn’t up to his elbows in document review or deposition prep, he was looking for ways to impress the partners who would soon determine whether he had a long-term future at the firm or whether he’d be searching for another position and almost starting over again from the lowest rung. Following Charlotte’s suggestion, Liana had persuaded Jakob to take a couple of days in Newport over Thanksgiving weekend; they were both frazzled, and Liana was convinced that some fall foliage and the romance of a B&B were just what they both needed to recharge and get back on track.

  They’d rented a car on the Saturday morning of Thanksgiving weekend, still feeling stuffed from the extravagant dinner Jakob’s mother had prepared on Thursday. It had been lovely. Liana was always grateful that the Weiss family included her mother; she couldn’t imagine spending the holiday apart from her, and Thanksgiving for two at her mother’s house sounded overwhelmingly depressing. They had overeaten as required—pumpkin soup, turkey with stuffing on the side (conforming to Jakob’s mother Arlene’s mandate, “Never cook the stuffing inside the turkey—you could get terribly sick from the bacteria”), corn fritters, sweet potatoes with pecans, and way too much dessert. Afterward, they had played a round-robin ping-pong tournament that Rebecca had orchestrated. It was Liana versus Jakob in the finals—they were very evenly matched, and Liana beat him twenty-five to twenty-three in overtime.

  “You only won because you distracted me with that lowcut shirt,” Jakob teased. “I could see your purple bra.”

  “Shut up,” Liana answered. “It’s not my fault if you can’t keep your eyes on the prize.”

  “I was hoping you were the prize,” Jakob retorted.

  “Shh, not in front of Rebecca,” she scolded.

  Liana helped Jakob’s mother and Rebecca clear up the table, rinsing off Jakob’s grandmother’s lovely white china with the tiny blue cornflower pattern and putting away the crystal glasses. “You don’t have to do the work, Liana,” Arlene said. “You’re supposed to be a guest.”

  “I hope I’m not a guest,” Liana said. Arlene put down the dishtowel she had been using to dry the silver and gave Liana a little squeeze around the waist. Liana figured that she meant it to be encouraging—a “you’ll be part of the family soon enough” gesture—and a wave of confusion washed over her.

  They woke up early on Saturday and left the city by eight o’clock so they would have as much of the day as possible in Rhode Island. For kicks, Jakob had rented a neon-yellow convertible, and they cruised up I-95 with the top down and Liana’s hair flying, feeling like they had taken a break not only from Manhattan but also from their ordinary life. The drive took a little over three hours, and they crossed into Newport over the Jamestown–Newport bridges singing “My Sweet Lord” at the top of their lungs.

  Liana had made a reservation at the Puritan Inn on Spring Street, a Victorian-style bed and breakfast that had originally been a private home in the nineteenth century. She hoped the place would appeal to Jakob’s love of history, and she thought that the room, with its antique oak bed and lace curtains, might be a good setting to rekindle—between her work and his, they had both been so tense. She was encouraged when Jakob’s face lit up seeing the wide front porch—before they even checked in, he grabbed her hand, and they commandeered two of the big white Adirondack rocking chairs.

  “I love a front porch. Did you notice the ceiling?” he asked. She looked up and was surprised to see that the wood panels overhead were painted a beautiful robin’s egg blue. “That’s called haint blue,” Jakob explained. “In South Carolina in the early nineteenth century, people believed that the blue would ward off evil spirits. Now painting porch ceilings blue has become popular all over the country.”

  “Well, I guess that’s a good omen for our weekend!” Liana said.

  After they brought their bags up to the room, they decided not to squander any of their limited time, and they walked to Bellevue Avenue, where they signed up for a tour of the Breakers, the most famous of Newport’s grand summer “cottages.”

  “Wouldn’t it be great to have a house like this someday?” Jakob said, surveying the mansion as they waited for the group to assemble.

  “A house like this? Earth to Jakob, Earth to Jakob! Is that why you are working like such a lunatic? Is this what you aspire to?”

  “I was kidding, Liana. I didn’t really mean ‘like this.’ I just meant a house like we grew up in, with some space, a yard. Kids.” Mercifully, Jakob didn’t wait for a response but took Liana’s hand and led her to where the group of tourists had gathered in the front hall.

  Bree, their impossibly chipper young docent, led them through a fraction of the seventy gigantic and ornately decorated rooms, pointing out the architectural quirks and telling mildly amusing anecdotes about the Vanderbilts, the family that had built the house in 1893. Compared to her cramped apartment, Liana felt as if she had landed in outer space as they drifted from dining room to sitting room to parlor to library to great hall.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Bree belted out intermittently, and the adults looked just as fearful as the few children who had been forced to tag along. When they entered the music room, Jakob zoned in on the French mahogany piano standing in the corner of the room near the marble fireplace. As Bree ushered the group into the billiard room, he pulled Liana over to the piano bench with him and started to play a jazzy version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.” The acoustics in the room were, unsurprisingly, magnificent. Jakob sang to Liana, and for a moment, she was back on the booze cruise the summer they had met, utterly astonished at the strength of her feelings for this boy. They were lost in the music and in each other when Bree sprinted into the room and screeched, “I told you not to touch anything!” Still laughing and having had enough of Bree and the others, Liana and Jakob snuck out a side door as the tourists made their way into the kitchen.

  They found themselves in the gardens, secluded and peaceful. The trees were exuberantly parading their colors while simultaneously beginning to lose their leaves—one phase of life transitioning into another. Liana and Jakob sat down on a bench, and he put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in close to his side. When the laughter finally subsided, Jakob said, “That was the most fun we’ve had in a long time.”

  “I know,” Liana agreed. “Why do you think that is?”

  “Oh, Li.” He sighed. Although Jakob had not taken his arm from around her, he shifted just enough so she felt his withdrawal. “You just have no idea what my life is like these days, and when I try to talk to you about it, you don’t really listen.”

  Stung, Liana wasn’t sure what to say. She fought the urge to be defensive, to shut out his words. But she knew he was right. When he tried to talk to her about the substance of his work, which he found engaging, her brain reflexively turned off. And when he talked about the partners and the intrigue and the backbiting, it was all so repulsive to her she couldn’t engage enough to be helpful to him

  “Can you try me again?” Liana asked, her voice, barely audible, catching in her throat. “I’m listening now.”

  “Okay, so here it is.” Jakob’s tone was
affectionate, but Liana detected the underlying frustration. “I spend all of each and every day trying to figure out how I’m going to succeed in this job. It isn’t a passing thought—it’s a constant, all-consuming strategizing about how to make myself indispensable to the egomaniacs who run the firm, how to ingratiate myself with the demanding clients, how to squeeze in the most billable hours, how to make sure I’m included in the right meetings and on the right committees and copied on the right emails. You have no idea of the pressure I’m under. Maybe I’m not as good as I should be at managing my priorities, but for me this job is all-consuming right now.”

  Liana was grateful that Jakob had given her another chance to understand what he was going through, but she still wasn’t sure where that left them.

  Do stressed-out midlevel associates with no free time marry their girlfriends and then continue on as stressed-out midlevel married associates? Will I end up like Charlotte?

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m listening, and I understand that your job is outrageously demanding and it’s taking pretty much everything you’ve got to make a go of it. I’ll try to be less high maintenance. Let’s at least make the most of this weekend.” Jakob took Liana’s hands in his and pulled her gently to her feet, then wrapped his arms around her.

  “It’ll all be good, Li—let’s just let things play out. I need you by my side.”

  After lunch, they strolled along the Cliff Walk, looking out at the Atlantic Ocean, Liana stumbling every now and then and Jakob there to catch her before she fell. When they got tired of maneuvering among the Thanksgiving weekend crowds, they walked along the cobblestone streets of colonial Newport, stopping every thirty feet or so to read the plaques affixed to the old houses that explained who had once lived there. They didn’t talk much, but Liana was just glad to be near Jakob—he had always had a calming effect on her. Nothing had really changed about that.

  They were meandering down Spring Street toward their hotel at close to five in the afternoon, and it was beginning to get dark, when Liana noticed people strolling in through the front doors of a stately building, some dressed nicely, some in jeans and sweatshirts.

  “Oh, look!” she said. “That’s the Touro Synagogue—it’s the oldest congregation in America. I read all about it on the Internet. It was founded by Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the mid-seventeenth century—it’s the sister congregation of the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue on West Seventieth Street, near my apartment. After the Revolutionary War, George Washington visited and wrote a famous letter to the congregation affirming the country’s commitment to the right to freely practice one’s religion.’”

  “Check you out—you did your homework,” Jakob said, impressed.

  “Let’s go have a look,” she said. But Liana’s interest was more than academic. Just as she envied the Darchei Tikvah regulars their faith and sense of belonging, she felt the pull again here as she watched the congregants making their way into the sanctuary. Something about the rituals and the sense of community suggested both a stability and balance that Liana felt were just out of her reach.

  “Why is everyone coming at this hour?” Jakob asked. Liana looked at her watch and then up at the sky, where she could see some stars on the verge of poking out.

  “Shabbat is almost over,” she said. “We can catch Havdalah. Come, I bet it will be beautiful.”

  “We’re not exactly dressed,” Jakob said, gesturing toward their beat-up sneakers.

  “It’s okay; there are plenty of people gathering near the doors. They’re used to tourists here.” They made their way quickly, so as not to miss the short ceremony that marked the conclusion of the Sabbath.

  They stood at the very back. The interior of the synagogue was starkly beautiful. White walls accented in a pale bluish-green set off brown wooden benches, while silver chandeliers with real flickering candles hung from the ceiling. Arched windows lined the walls, both on the ground floor and in the women’s gallery above. As they took it all in, a young rabbi made his way to the middle of the sanctuary. He held a silver cup filled with wine, and he handed an elaborately braided six-wick candle to a little girl of about seven with a full head of red curls. The rabbi lit the candle and leaned toward the girl.

  “Hold the candle as high as the man you dream you will marry is tall,” he said in a stage whisper. The little girl looked around the room, locked her eyes on Jakob, and reached her arm up as high as it could go. The rabbi said the blessings over the wine and the flame and the spices as the men and women passed around small mesh bags filled with cloves and cinnamon sticks and everyone breathed in the sweet scent, prolonging the joy of the Sabbath for a few seconds more. Then the congregants and tourists ambled out of the building, back to homes or hotels, returning to the workweek.

  When the room had emptied out, Liana and Jakob wandered up to the front of the sanctuary and sat down on a wooden bench near the ark that held the Torah scrolls. He held her hand, and she settled her head on his chest. “Wouldn’t this be a great place for a destination wedding? It’s so historical,” he mused.

  “Oh, Jake,” she said. Liana felt him struggling with himself, deciding whether to tell her what he was thinking or just let the awkward moment pass.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” she said.

  “Liana, I’m not oblivious to your feelings, and I know you’re unsettled about a lot of stuff right now. But I need us to be committed and supportive of each other in every aspect of our lives. Part of that is your understanding that my career is important to me and you wanting to help me succeed. Maybe I’m crazy, but sometimes I feel like you’re not all in, not a hundred percent.”

  He put his hands gently on both of her shoulders and looked at her for a minute tenderly before continuing. “I’m in love with you, Liana, and I want you to be with me, by my side, forever. Is that a crime?”

  She forced a smile but could not stop the tears which were now freely flowing down her cheeks.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m no expert on crime.”

  That night, they made love in the big antique oak bed, urgently yet tentatively, as though they were afraid to hurt each other further.

  In the morning when Liana awoke, she found Jakob dressed and sitting in the upholstered chair next to the bed, intently typing on his iPad. She came and stood next to him, looking over his shoulder. “It’s a shit show at work,” he said. “I know we were supposed to have today to relax, but I’m going to be uptight because I know I should be in the office,” he said.

  “It’s okay, Jay,” she said. “Let’s just have breakfast, and then we can go back.”

  He got up and held her close to him, whispering in her ear, “It’s all for you, babe. I swear.”

  “I know,” she said. But she wasn’t sure what she knew anymore.

  CHAPTER 13

  Bam! Bam! Bam! The sound of the gavel reverberated throughout the courtroom.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen: The Justices of the Court. Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye: All persons having business before this Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, held in and for the Second Judicial Department of the State of New York, let them draw near, give their attention, and they shall be heard.”

  Liana loved the formality of the opening of the court session. Sometimes, during the arguments, the proceedings more closely resembled a nursery school classroom, with the judges and the attorneys bullying, cajoling, whining; but the day always started off with a promise of grandeur. The court had scheduled oral argument in Danny Shea’s case for December 20, 2012, the last day before the Christmas–New Year’s break. There was an air of restlessness among both bench and bar, and Liana hoped that the judges would give her case the hearing it deserved. She had been disappointed when she saw the makeup of the panel—Justices Brady, Lincoln, Aubrey, and Simon. Three out of four women judges for a rape case did not bode well. On the other hand, all of them were pretty middle of the road—none were former prosecutors or former legal aid attorneys but had instead been in
private practice before they were appointed to the bench. And none of them were rookies—they wouldn’t be afraid to take a tough stand.

  She had been anticipating this day for months. Despite her self-imposed vow to represent Danny Shea free of any emotional investment, Liana had strayed from the purely professional to the somewhat personal. He had grown on her. On the plus side, Gerry had noticed Liana’s positive attitude, the long hours she put in, the diligent research, and the polished brief she produced. Liana’s less than strictly aboveboard interest in Shea was well hidden, apparent only to herself in sporadic moments of honest reflection and occasionally to Deb, when Liana let down her guard. But today, in court, she was all business. She had prepared thoroughly for her argument, and she was ready to fight.

  Shea’s case was second on the court’s calendar, and the room was crowded with attorneys awaiting their arguments. Liana didn’t mind having an audience; it kept her on her toes. And she liked being second—she would watch the judges carefully during the initial argument to see what sort of mood they were in and how familiar they were with the details of the case. The presiding judge always made the same claim during the introductory remarks: “Counselors, we are a ‘hot bench.’ We know the facts of your case. Please proceed directly to the argument of your legal claims.” But the truth was there was always one judge who had slept through the fact section of the brief or who was willfully misconstruing some fact to work to the detriment of the defendant. Liana knew she had to be vigilant, because if the judges got the facts wrong, it made no difference how strong you were on the law.