by Diane Capri
Unusual for him to be away early in the morning. He sleeps late every day because he’s up so late at night. Being absent on Saturday for the lunch business was something he’d never done since he opened the restaurant. George thinks the owner needs to be visible, even though everyone loves Peter.
Ordered a Sapphire and tonic with lemon on the rocks, and sat thinking about where George could be, how Andy could possibly have committed suicide, and why.
An hour later, still no answers.
The drink made me sleepy. I’d looked everywhere and couldn’t find George. There was nothing else I could do at the moment. I walked slowly through the restaurant, still looking around, then back upstairs.
When I got into our bedroom, the heavily lined, floral damask drapes were drawn. The room was dark and there was George, snoring as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.
I was so relieved to find him, safely alive, that I didn’t feel the tears on my face. I lay down on top of the sheets and, worn out, fell fast asleep, too.
CHAPTER NINE
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 5:30 p.m.
January 22, 2000
A FEW HOURS LATER, I awoke disoriented and foggy. I turned over to reach for George and he wasn’t there.
Not again.
My eyes popped opened, immediately awake.
I hopped out of bed and walked into the hallway, slipping into my pink silk robe as I went toward the kitchen. George was seated at the table having coffee.
“Hello, sweetheart. How’d you sleep?”
Just like he hadn’t been gone all day; without a word as to where he’d spent his time. Instead of focusing on how relieved I was to see his sleep-rumpled self in his green summer cotton bathrobe and white silk pajamas, I lost it.
Almost vibrating with relief, masquerading as tension and anger, I said, much too sharply, “Where the hell have you been?”
“What do you mean? I left you a note.”
“Oh, really? Where’d you leave it, in the refrigerator?”
Sarcasm now, too. My relief sounded suspiciously like rage. It didn’t seem to bother him, though.
“No,” he said with exaggerated patience, like he was dealing with a mentally deficient person. He put his coffee cup down softly. “I left it on the table beside your pillow.”
I whirled around and marched back into our bedroom, over to my side of our king-sized bed, and looked down at the pedestal table holding my reading glasses, an alarm clock, a small crystal lamp and, damn damn damn, a handwritten note on one of George’s personal monogrammed cards propped up against the telephone.
In his strong, almost indecipherable scrawl, it said:
“Darling, Gone to breakfast. See you after the Blue Coat. Good luck. I love you.”
I read it. Then I picked it up between my thumb and forefinger as if it was some sort of nasty laboratory specimen.
It was his paper, his writing. The note had been about eight inches from my face when I woke up both this morning and just now.
I’d missed it.
I’d gotten all upset for no reason.
I hate to eat crow. I just hate it.
I carried the note with me back into the kitchen where George was still calmly having his coffee and reading today’s New York Times.
“Find it?” he asked, just a little too sweetly. I could almost see the canary feathers on his lips.
“I found it. I’d like to say I didn’t find it, but it was there. Next time, how about leaving notes on the kitchen table where you know I’ll be sure to look?” If I have to eat crow, I’m certainly not going to be gracious about it. “Let me share the paper.”
Like Mark Twain, I, too, have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
We drank coffee and read the paper. For about half an hour, I pouted silently, feeling very put-upon, which is why it took so long for me to remember to ask George if he’d heard about Andrews’s death.
I asked him just as he was sipping hot coffee and he almost choked.
“What? How? When?” He shouted when he’d quit coughing.
“I don’t know exactly when. I heard it on the news on my way back from the club. Why don’t we turn on the television? There’s bound to be more information by now.” I said, talking to his retreating back as he moved toward the television in the den.
By the time I joined him there, George had located the story on one of the all news channels. Each stated that General Andrews had been found at home, an apparent suicide. Chief Hathaway’s earlier statement repeated.
Nothing new except the very last sound bite: “A source close to the investigation told us the general left a suicide note, but we have not confirmed.”
Rehash of Thursday’s shooting of Craig Hamilton outside the capitol building followed. Since Thursday, authorities had confirmed that the shooter had indeed been trying to kill General Andrews, the reporter said. The shooter’s late night interview replayed. His face, eerily normal looking, appeared on the screen, while he explained his homicidal behavior in a calm and rational manner that chilled me to the bone.
“I expected him to come out of the car first. I’m sorry I hurt Mr. Hamilton. It was the general I was after. He has no right to kill unborn babies. No murderer will sit on the Supreme Court. Never.”
George flipped quickly through channels, shaking his head, distraught. “What is this country coming to? Why is it that people think they can just kill someone they don’t agree with? Why don’t people trust the process?”
“Jason says the whole process is the problem,” I told him.
“What?” He sounded startled.
I told him what Jason had said to me about Andrews’s appointment: that it was the result of an under-the-table deal, some sort of Faustian bargain between the President and Andrews.
“That’s true, Willa, but it’s not unprecedented. And most people have no idea how behind-the-scenes politics in judicial appointments work anyway. I meant people should trust the confirmation process.”
“Well,” I said evenly, “that didn’t seem to be going so well, either. Citizens were worried enough about the process to protest, picket and shoot at Andrews.”
I shivered again as I glanced at the shooter’s placid face, still on the television screen.
I told him what I’d heard the television analysts say when Margaret and I watched the last day of hearings in my chambers. “More than two thousand names of law school faculty members who spoke against Andrews were listed in the Congressional Record, even more than spoke against Bork when he was defeated.”
George gave me a weary look. “I know,” he said. “I’ve seen countless advertisements in the papers addressed to senators by citizens against Andrews.”
Gently, I laid my hand on his back, helpless to make him feel better. “Sweetheart, the process wasn’t working. People were protesting, but their voices seemed to remain unheeded. Every day in my courtroom I hear about tragedies like this. People just don’t have unlimited patience to wait while the wheels of the process grind along so slowly. ”
George hung his head, his arms resting on his thighs. “But Andrews should have known better. He should have waited. Supreme Court Justices aren’t confirmed by sound bites. Even if he wasn’t confirmed, there’s no disgrace in that. There’s a long history of nominees who weren’t confirmed. More than twenty percent aren’t. Not being confirmed is no reason to kill yourself.”
He was blaming himself. Perhaps he should have expected something like this, but like me, he hadn’t.
“Maybe Andy just didn’t like his odds,” I suggested. “Maybe he couldn’t face defeat.”
My suggestion didn’t seem to make George feel better.
No further information about Andrews’s death was to be had on any station. When the stories degenerated to the brawl in George’s restaurant last night, with witnesses describing the verbal volleys between Warwick and Andrews, and George’s more physical approach, George finall
y turned off the set and we sat together on the upholstered love seat in the quiet room, Harry and Bess lying near the door.
After a while, George turned toward me, took my hand and gazed steadily into my eyes. What he said next, his calm demeanor and lucid comments, gave me the same chill I’d felt when the shooter explained his motives.
“You know he didn’t kill himself, don’t you? There’s no way Andy would have done that. Someone murdered him.”
Fear sucked away my breath. “George, you don’t know that. If they say it was suicide, they believe it.”
He looked down and played with my wedding ring, twisting it around on my left hand. “No. If they say it was suicide, they want the public to believe it. That doesn’t mean it’s true.”
My heart pounded harder and I wanted to draw my hand away, make him stop talking about this. “Why would you think he didn’t kill himself? You’ve barely talked to Andy in years.”
“Because I know Andy and I know he would never, never kill himself.” He dropped my cold hand, as if it was too hot to hold.
“Goddamn it!” he shouted.
Then, he threw the remote control across the room and stalked out while I stared after him, completely bewildered.
CHAPTER TEN
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 7:00 p.m.
January 22, 2000
I WALKED OVER AND picked up the remote off the floor. It’s amazing how tough those things are, I thought. It didn’t even crack.
I heard George slamming drawers in his dressing room and then leave by the front door.
He left? He just left?
I couldn’t believe it. My legs dropped me down on the loveseat again.
Who was this man inhabiting George’s body? My George never lost his control, but I had seen this stranger lose it twice in the last twenty-four hours.
George had put so much of himself into this fight, felt so strongly about it, spent so much energy and time on it. I had hardly seen him in the past few weeks and when he was home, he was so preoccupied that he either spoke of nothing else, or didn’t speak at all.
But I know George didn’t plan to win the battle by losing the general. For once, what he affectionately calls my Mighty Mouse routine, my desire to fix everything that comes my way whether people ask for my help or not, failed me. As much as I loved George, and wanted to help him, there wasn’t anything I could do to fix this. I had no choice but to wait it out and hope that when the dust settled, George and I could find each other again.
The dogs didn’t know what to do, either. Both of them came over and put their heads in my lap. I rubbed their ears as I tried to comfort us all.
After a while, when I finally acknowledged that George wasn’t coming right back, I turned to my all purpose solution for whatever emotional disturbance ails me: my work.
Donned black jeans and a cream T-shirt and went into my study to wrestle with Newton v. The Whitman Esquire Review while I did what wives had done for centuries, what Deborah Andrews had done for decades: I waited for my husband to come home.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 9:00 p.m.
January 22, 2000
THE NEWTON FILE HADN’T gotten any smaller since I’d left my briefcase next to Aunt Minnie’s chair yesterday. I told myself that the only way to get started was to start, although it was hard to muster any enthusiasm for the project. Concentration was tough because I listened for George to return.
The case involved an obnoxious abuse of privacy by a newspaper that was, to my mind, better left to sink into the pit of sordid, unnoticed comment. This might have happened. Except that Nelson Newton had decided, literally, to make a federal case out of it.
Both parties involved in the case left a lot to be desired. The plaintiff, Nelson Newton, was a notorious local lawyer with political aspirations.
Politics as a motive for unsavory behavior seemed to be consuming my work life as well as my home life, I noted sourly.
The defendant, The Whitman Esquire Review, was a radical alternative scandal tabloid that, but for the First Amendment, would have been put out of business long ago by an outraged public interested in decency.
It was a mark of our decline as a society that Americans consumed the tabloid’s salacious details with the same guilty pleasure that we devoured more than twenty quarts of ice cream every year.
Unlike when I practiced law and could choose my cases, as a judge I couldn’t reject matters I found distasteful. This dispute, over the extremely radical practice of “outing,” didn’t belong in the public forum of my courtroom.
“Outing” was a nice name for the outrageous practice of printing true information disclosing sexual preferences that law-abiding citizens preferred to keep private.
Such information wasn’t meant for public consumption, in my view.
I had trouble not only with what The Review chose to say, but also with their right to say it. Everyone was entitled to some privacy. And those involved should get to decide both whether their most personal secrets get shared and with whom.
That said, a trial was not a process designed to protect anyone’s privacy. Trials are open to the public and frequently reported in the mainstream media. If The Review should not have printed the offending piece in the first place, as Newton claimed, airing the dispute in a public trial certainly wasn’t going to put the cat back in the bag.
I picked up the last of six pleadings files looking for the final pre-trial order I had entered on the case outlining the parties’ expectations for proofs at trial. Broadly speaking, this was a defamation case; count one alleged libel and slander, and count two alleged breach of the private facts tort, claiming obliquely that The Review and published private matter about Newton without his consent.
The case was in federal court because the parties were citizens of different states. Newton was a Florida citizen and The Review was incorporated and had its principal place of business in San Francisco.
The Review, Newton claimed, had wrongfully reprinted anonymous local gossip in a blind column labeled About Town. Newton alleged that everyone in his business circle knew the offending story was about him, causing him great personal harm.
What Newton didn’t say was that the story would likely cost him votes if he ran for mayor, which, rumor was, he planned to do in the next election. Newton claimed that The Review printed pure gossip with malice, that is, with reckless disregard for its truth or falsity, and that the story had harmed him to the tune of $25 million.
Usually, my work absorbed all of my attention. I served the judicial system and, thus, did something important to society. But tonight, the only thing important to me was George. Absently, I rubbed the purple lump on my head and tried to concentrate.
The Review denied any wrongdoing and stood by their story, which had appeared in the popular but gossipy “Mr. Tampa Knows Best” column. Truth, they said, was Mr. Tampa’s absolute defense
The idea struck me as absurd, even if it might be legally correct. Sometimes truth was the most hurtful thing one could disclose about another, I knew.
Alternatively, The Review argued that it printed the story without malice and was not liable because Mr. Newton is and has been a public figure.
Well, I wasn’t so sure about that, but I had ruled earlier in the case that whether Newton was a public figure or not was for the jury to decide. Public figures, too, should be allowed a personal life.
Since trial court judges are not required to be without opinions, I had mine about the case and the practice of outing. Aside from the titillation factor, what possible difference could an individual’s sexual orientation make to the public at large? Even if Nelson Newton is gay, which he denied, so what?
The world wouldn’t stop. Being gay is not a crime. It wasn’t even a problem with his marriage, since Newton wasn’t married. Not now anyway. Wife number four left him just before the story appeared. Indeed, that was one of the facts cited in support of the tru
th of the story by the paper.
Thumbing through the stuffed file folders, I noticed two things that exacerbated my headache: the witness lists took up three single spaced pages and Newton was representing himself.
He might, as the old adage goes, have a fool for a client but what it meant to me was a longer than normal trial with many more opportunities for reversible error and a serious strain on my limited judicial resources.
I’ve had cases with Nelson Newton before. He can’t say his name in less than twenty minutes. Just the thought of him representing himself through three pages of witnesses made me tired.
I pulled out the offending news story that became indelibly imprinted on my brain in the next few weeks and read it again.
What prominent Tampa lawyer lost wife number four and won’t get married for a fifth time because he likes men better? Those in the know have seen him in the locker room with his hands where they shouldn’t be. Shame on you, Mr. N., for staying in the closet. You should have the courage to be who you are.
The item contained few facts. I wasn’t sure how The Review planned to prove the story was true and I wasn’t really interested. Federal judges shouldn’t become embroiled in personal privacy issues like this one.
The Review, a very radical gay paper, had been publishing a series of articles “outing” gays all over the country, and particularly on October 11, dubbed “National Coming Out Day.” They employed stringers in each major market to add what they called “local color” to the stories.
“Mr. N” was only one of several items The Review had published along similar lines, but Newton was the only subject who had sued in my courtroom. If avoiding unfavorable publicity was Newton’s true goal, making the case a media event in Tampa wasn’t the way to do it.
Had Newton been a different sort of guy, I’d believe his motives pure. To educate the public, say, or to promote privacy rights, which I, for one, believed in.
But this was Nelson Newton—a publicity hound of long duration. He had a hidden agenda here. And I didn’t like being used to foster it, whatever it was.