“I’m not sure yet,” I said.
“Oh, Lynn,” she sighed. “How are things going? Are you okay?”
“I’m not really sure,” I said again.
She was silent a moment. “Now, don’t bite my head off…,” she began.
“Am I that cranky?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she said loyally. “It’s just that you maintain a dignified reticence on certain subjects.”
I laughed. “What is it?” I asked.
“The society is meeting again next week,” she said. “And I thought—”
“When?” I interrupted her.
She told me.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“Really?” She sounded surprised.
“Really,” I said. I mean, look where reticence had gotten me so far.
MEREDITH’S VOLVO, a college-graduation present from her father, was parked in front of the house when I got there. I felt the way you might feel if you were expecting chateaubriand at a restaurant and the waiter lifted the dome to reveal fried tofu instead. Not objectionable, but not what you were hoping for either. My expectations of a tolerably pleasant evening were dashed.
“Hi,” I said, smiling insincerely, a talent I seemed to be exercising quite a bit of late.
Jack and Meredith were sitting on the couch. Meredith was sipping out of a teacup filled with ocher-colored liquid. Nothing from our pantry, I was sure. Jack had a drink.
“Meredith has some news,” Jack said.
I did a quick calculation and decided that honesty was the best policy, or at least the one with the fewest risks. “So I’ve heard,” I said, still beaming. “Congratulations.”
“Mom told you,” Meredith acknowledged.
“Yes, this afternoon. That’s wonderful news. We’re very happy for you.”
Jack said nothing.
“Thanks,” Meredith said.
“Is Patrick here? Should we bring out the champagne?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what I’d walked in on. The mood seemed a trifle glum for a wedding announcement, but that might just have been Meredith.
“You know I don’t put that kind of poison in my body, Lynn,” Meredith said. “It destroys your brain cells.”
I couldn’t think how to respond to that. Jack was still silent. “Um, when’s the wedding?” I asked.
“We’re working that out.” She looked at Jack. “Aren’t we, Dad?”
He smiled thinly.
I attempted a rescue with the usual bride-y questions—“What are your plans?” “When did you decide?” “Have you told Justin’s family?”— but at best I got monosyllabic answers and a demeanor that boded ill for nuptial bliss. At length I sank back into the pillows, exhausted. Let them sit in silence if they wanted to. I couldn’t do any more.
“Well, I have to be going,” Meredith said as soon as I had ceased chattering. It was probably a rebuke, but I didn’t care.
“WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?” Jack asked me as soon as she had left. I’d been about to ask him the same question, but he jumped in first. “What did she mean about Janet?”
I thought longingly of a glass of sauvignon blanc but decided to save it as a reward for getting through the conversation. “She called me,” I said. “We had lunch.”
He looked at me as if I’d lost my senses. Maybe I had. “You have to do what you think best, but I really don’t feel comfortable about your socializing with Janet,” he said. “It sort of gives me the creeps.”
It sort of gave me the creeps, too. “I didn’t feel all that comfortable about it either,” I said. “But she said it was important.”
“I wonder why,” he said.
“Actually,” I said carefully, “I think she wanted to give notice that she expects us to pay for the wedding.”
He nodded. “I gathered from Merry that they’re envisioning something …”
“Baroque?” I suggested.
He smiled. “Vegetarian Baroque anyway. But very expensive nonetheless.”
“Well,” I said, “you’ll have to level with them sooner or later.”
Jack stopped smiling. “About what?”
“About our financial situation,” I said, my voice rising a little. “Until you conclude an agreement with the IRS, we still don’t know how much the tax liability will be. How can you afford to fund a lavish wedding?”
“She’s my daughter, Lynn.”
We were back in dangerous waters. “Of course you want to contribute to her wedding,” I told him, “but we can’t bankrupt ourselves to put on something we can’t afford. If you’re candid with Meredith, I’m sure she’ll understand.”
“I doubt that, based on this evening’s conversation,” he said dryly. “But in any case, this is one of the reasons we didn’t commingle our money. This is my problem, not yours.”
I was getting a little tired of hearing that. “I don’t agree with you,” I said. “And beside, what is this marriage about? We only share the good things and we deal with the bad ones on our own?”
“Don’t pick fights, Lynn.” he said grimly. “I’m trying to spare you. The money’s not the worst of it, anyway. The really sad thing is that she’s agreed to marry that muscle-bound half-wit. I thought she’d grow tired of him before now.”
I finally understood the source of the tension in the atmosphere when I’d walked in. “He’s probably not genius material,” I agreed, “but he seems devoted to Meredith. Plus he’s easygoing, and you know she’s a little … high-strung. He might be good for her.”
“He doesn’t read,” Jack said. “Probably not even the newspaper.”
“Probably not,” I said, suppressing a smile at the thought of Justin toiling over the San Jose Mercury, much less a dog-eared copy of War and Peace. “Although he might read the comics.”
“It’s not funny, Lynn,” Jack said.
“You have to admit they both have a certain”—I almost said obsession but thought better of it—“interest in health issues and the body. They’ll have lots to talk about. And they’ll probably live forever, and Meredith won’t be left a widow.”
Jack smiled. “You’re making fun of me. And them.”
“Neither,” I said, which wasn’t exactly true. “But you know it’s futile to make a fuss about it. Would you have listened to your father if he didn’t like the person you wanted to marry?”
“My father always approved of Janet,” he said.
Just what I wanted to hear. I said nothing.
“But I see your point,” he conceded. “I only hope he can support her.”
She’ll have to support herself, I thought, like all the rest of us. But I didn’t say it. “I’m pouring a glass of wine,” I told him. “Can I get you anything?”
“No thanks,” he said. “Oh, Lynn?” he said when I’d gone a few steps toward the kitchen.
“Yes?”
“Did Janet say what Valerio thinks of this marriage?”
Ha. “Um—I’m not sure he has an opinion,” I said.
Jack nodded thoughtfully. “That’s probably best,” he said.
20
To: Lynn Bartlett, Esq.
From: Alexei Strela, Ph.D.
Russian Joke: During his visit to the USSR, President Nixon was intrigued by a new telephone capable of connecting with hell. He spoke briefly with the devil, and the call cost him 27 cents. When he returned home, he found out that this same service was now available in the U.S. He tried it again and received a bill for $12,000.
Nixon, notoriously frugal, was distressed. “What happened? The same call only cost me 27 cents in the USSR!”
“Well,” said the operator, “over there it’s a local call.”
To: Alexei Strela, Ph.D.
From: Lynn Bartlett
A Nixon joke! I can’t believe it! I’m adding it to the collection.
Thank you for the expanded résumé and materials for your case. I’m impressed with that, too. I didn’t realize you’d gone to high school in the United States.
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To: Lynn Bartlett
From: Alexei Strela
What collection?
My father was a diplomat under the Soviet government. I know lots of Nixon jokes. Ford, Carter, and Reagan jokes, too.
To: Alexei Strela
From: Lynn
You’ve sent me five Russian jokes so far. That constitutes a collection, at least a small one.
That explains your perfect command of English anyway.
It must have been hard growing up in Washington during the Cold War.
To: Lynn
From: Alexei
Yeah.
I was starting to get the sense of Russian humor. It was self-deprecating with a twist, like the Nixon joke. I didn’t usually have such a personal correspondence with my clients, but it wasn’t outside the bounds of experience either. My capacity as biographer and chronicler of extraordinary achievements gave me a certain license to ask for details generally considered socially off-limits—salary, for example, or bonuses, or grades in grad school. Straying into emotional territory was something else, but some people you just clicked with in the weeks it took to develop a case.
To: Lynn
From: Alexei
Russian joke: A New Russian comes in to buy a car. He tells the salesman he wants a black Mercedes. The salesman finds exactly the car he wants, and the man pays for it in cash. As he is about to leave, the salesman asks him, “Didn’t you buy a car just like this from us last week?”
“Oh, yes, I did,” replies the New Russian, “but the ashtray got full.”
Lynn, there is something I need to talk to you about in person. Can I come to your office?
“What’s a New Russian?” I asked.
Alexei grimaced. “Just what I didn’t want to be,” he said. “I guess you’d say ‘nouveau riche’ here.”
I smiled. Since I knew how much Alexei was making at SLAC, I didn’t think there was the remotest possibility of that. “What did you want to see me about?” I asked him.
“Have you read about the International Linear Collider SLAC wants to build?”
I shook my head. “Uh, no.” To my shame, I passed right over articles about physics projects en route to topics more suitable for early-morning scrutiny. Virtually any topic fit that category.
He smiled, as if he’d read my mind. “Since they shut down the linear collider here in 1998, there’s been a lot of interest in building a huge new atom-smashing center that would take the work to the next level. There are lots of things we still don’t know in physics.”
“I’m with you,” I said. “Do they want you to work on it?”
“Yes,” he said. He looked unhappy.
“Is there a problem?”
“It’s a dream project,” he said. “And there could be unparalleled trickle-down benefits. Did you know the World Wide Web was born at a particle accelerator near Geneva, and the first Web site in the United States was at SLAC?” His eyes, so brown they were almost black, burned with intensity.
“Then why not go for it?” I asked. There had to be a catch, or he wouldn’t be talking it over with me.
He sat back in his chair. “It might be in Germany,” he said.
“Ah.”
“I mean, at this point it’s still a dream. The design and site haven’t been chosen. But Germany is the front-runner.”
“Well, you’re right to be concerned,” I told him. “If your primary residence isn’t the United States, you could lose your green card.”
“Which I don’t have yet,” he pointed out.
“Which you don’t have yet,” I agreed. “But you will.”
He smiled his unsettling languid smile. I had to fight the urge to smooth my hair and moisten my lips. Down, girl. “I like your confidence,” he said.
He should talk. “You have a good case,” I said, as blandly as I could manage. “Anyway,” I added, recovering, “you can just wait and see, can’t you, as long as it’s all still up in the air? Maybe they’ll build it in Stockton or someplace like that.”
His expression told me he had been to Stockton.
“Or not,” I said hurriedly. “My advice would be to proceed as planned and see where you are when some decision is made. But you’re right to be concerned.”
“Okay,” he said.
I expected him to take his leave now that he’d learned what he came for, but he stayed in his chair, looking around. “Nice office,” he observed, although this was already his third visit.
“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t add that it probably wouldn’t be mine much longer. That sort of information does not inspire confidence in clients.
He seemed to be searching for something—in his pockets, on the surface of my desk. I waited.
“Sorry,” he said. “I used to smoke, and when I get nervous, the urge comes back.”
“I don’t have any cigarettes,” I told him. I wondered what he was nervous about.
He laughed. “Neither do I. I shouldn’t smoke them now anyway. But when I first came here, people used to stop me on the street and urge me to quit. They seemed angry. I couldn’t believe it. In Russia everybody smokes.”
“That’s the Bay Area,” I said. “There’s a sort of tendency to reprove people for activities that aren’t supposed to be healthy. Sometimes people will even scold you in restaurants for eating red meat. They probably mean well, but it’s annoying.”
“I’m familiar with a paternalistic society,” he said levelly. He shifted in the chair in a way that made me aware of his physical presence. He sighed. “I have an offer from Cooper Livingston in New York. They want me to create and trade derivatives once I have clear permanent resident status. I could start at about three hundred thousand dollars a year.”
“That’s wonderful,” I told him. “You’ll make more, if the economy comes back,” I observed. I knew what people could make in the field. Derivatives no longer enjoyed the innocent reputation they once had, but as a means of risk management, they were probably here to stay. People with the intense mathematical background necessary to understand them, much less formulate them, were in big demand. “An embarrassment of riches,” I added. “And no problem with your green card.”
“It’s selling out,” he said flatly.
“You mean as opposed to discovering the true nature of dark matter or something like that?”
He looked amused. “I thought you didn’t read about that kind of stuff,” he said.
“You’re forgetting the Discovery Channel and PBS,” I reminded him. “Anyway, it seems to me it’s only a sellout if you really don’t want to do it.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he said.
“You don’t want to be a New Russian in America,” I said, recalling his joke. I was trying to keep it light. It wasn’t part of my job description to pry into his life, intriguing as it was.
“My father was in the war,” he said suddenly.
I nodded. I knew what “the war” meant, though someone twenty-five might not.
“He hated Stalin, and he was nearsighted and not very strong, but he put his life on the line anyway. After he retired, after the breakup of the country made his pension worthless, I wanted to bring him and my mother here. He refused. He said he didn’t want to give up seven centuries of culture and his homeland for an SUV and a condo in Florida. I didn’t make that choice, but I admire him.” He ran his hands through his hair. “You said ‘an embarrassment of riches.’ You probably can’t see it, but all this … affluence”—he waved an arm around my office, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t referring to that—“takes getting used to, when you’ve been conditioned not to … approve, I guess you’d say. There’s too much of everything.” He shrugged. “Things are going that way in Russia, too, so maybe it’s just human nature. But I feel guilty about accepting the rewards when I haven’t made the sacrifices.”
“I think some ambivalence is natural,” I said. “A lot of ambivalence, actually. I mean, I saw an ad for Las Vegas that said, ‘S
even Deadly Sins—One Convenient Location.’ Do I want to lay my life on the line for anybody attracted by a slogan like that? I don’t even think they should be allowed to vote.”
He laughed. “That’s not a very democratic sentiment.”
“I know,” I admitted.
“There is one thing, though,” he said.
“What?”
“My father said that one of the happiest days of his life was the day he met up with the Americans at the Elbe.”
Germany again. “That should count for something, shouldn’t it?” I asked him.
He looked at me. “I’d like to think so,” he said.
21
Naoko Watanabe summoned me to her office to give me, finally, the news I’d been dreading. Because she was Japanese, friendly, and uncomfortable with disagreeable topics, it took longer than it might have to get to the point.
“I’m so sorry,” she said at last, offering me tea in her tiny, spare office. “The decision came from much higher up. From Tokyo.” She sighed. “It’s regrettable. I know none of this was your fault.”
I nodded, and we sipped our tea in silence.
“We might still be able to use you for extraordinary-ability petitions,” she said. “Quite frankly, no one else seems to know what to do with them. But the head office felt that the bulk of our business should go to a larger, more established firm.”
That probably meant Elson Larimer. “I understand,” I told her.
“I hope you do,” she said. “I feel terrible about it. I know what a bad time this must be for you.”
All this sympathy made me wonder if things weren’t worse than even I realized. “Well, thank you,” I said.
She looked into her lap. “Your partner told me there were some problems in your personal life,” she said. “But even with assurances that we would be well served—”
“What?” I said, my jaw dropping. “What do you mean?”
Her expression told me I had interjected the very note of discord she’d been hoping to avoid.
Secret Lives of Second Wives Page 13
