“Dear God,” Sol said. He dropped his fork with a clatter onto his plate.
Abigail reached over and put her small hand on his wrist. Her skin was cool and calming to the touch. Even as a little child, she’d had that soothing effect on him.
“I made a savory pâté for an after-dinner treat,” Sarah said. She rushed to the sideboard and lifted it in the air.
Arthur put one fat freckled hand on his heart. “My dear,” he said. “After dinner. How European of us.” He leaned forward to investigate. “I’d almost call it a timbale,” he said. “What’s in it?”
“Beef, veal, butter, spices,” Sarah intoned. She raised a knife to cut it. “Wait,” she said, putting the hand back down again. “I’ll show you the recipe.”
“I would love to see it,” Arthur said. “It’s glorious. Glossy. Beautiful.”
“I found it online,” she said.
“See how golden brown the pastry is on top,” Arthur said. “Look, dear.” He turned to his wife, Ruth. She still sulked.
“I’m not a chef,” Ruth said. “It looks okay.”
“Let me go get my camera,” Arthur begged. “I want to take a picture before you slice into it.”
“All right,” Sarah said. “It is rather pretty.”
Sarah frowned down at the recipe. “I can’t read anything without my glasses. Tomas, would you be a dear and go get my glasses from the kitchen?”
“Does it have potato in it?” Flannery asked. “If it has potato it’s more of a shepherd’s pie.”
“If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a wagon,” Ruth said.
Tomas called back to Sarah from the kitchen, “Where do you keep your glasses?”
“I’ll help—” Abigail began to rise, but Sol snapped, “Sit! For God’s sake, why are we making such a stink about this!”
Arthur came back just then, aiming his camera. “Smile,” he said. “Everyone crowd together and say, ‘Pâté!’” He quickly changed his mind. “No. Let’s all say—let me think. It’s a sort of cross between a pâté and a terrine. Did you chill the butter?”
“For two hours,” Sarah said. “Was that long enough?” She lowered the knife again.
“Lean in a little closer,” Arthur said. “But don’t cover the crust.”
“Just cut it! Cut the goddamn meat loaf!” Sol exploded.
Sarah burst into tears.
“You are so nasty!” Ruth announced. “There’s no fool like an old fool.”
“What would you know?” Sol said. “You’re an old sales clerk who dresses like a dead teenager.”
“Dad!” Abigail said, outraged. Flannery laughed then tried to straighten his face again.
“Do I?—Do I look—like that?” Ruth demanded of her husband.
Arthur rubbed small circles on her back and said, “You look like a movie star. A glamorous movie star.” He lumbered out of the dining room and brought back a box of tissues. He pulled one tissue out for his wife, and then slid the whole box over toward Sarah. “Sarah, my darling,” he said. “I don’t know how you put up with him all these years.”
Sarah blew her nose, shaking her head. “Neither do I.”
“There is no way to win in this world,” Tomas said. “When you are too young they don’t want you. When you become seasoned they throw you out. ‘It so happens I am tired of being a man. It so happens I enter the shops and movie theaters, marchito, impenetrable, como un cisne de fieltro.’”
“What are you jabbering about?” Sol demanded.
“He’s quoting Neruda,” Abigail explained. “A Chilean poet. Don’t you dare pick on Tomas!”
“You’re tired of being a man?” Ruth shrilled. “What do you want to be, a little girl?”
Sarah announced, “I am going to go wash my face. When I come back I want everyone to be normal and I want everything to be normal, and then I will serve this stupid meat loaf. And then we can have cake. All right?”
“I apologize,” Sol said meekly.
“As well you might,” Arthur said.
“I didn’t mean it,” Sol said to Ruth. “Everyone knows you’re a knockout.”
“Screw you,” Ruth said, but she looked pleased. “What kinda cake?” she asked.
Arthur stopped by Sol’s house the next day holding a Bloomingdale’s bag.
“Happy birthday, big brother,” Arthur said. He stood in the front hall in his tan jacket with a plaid collar. He looked like he should be wearing knickers, a fat newsboy from the 1930s. He thrust the bag toward Sol.
“You shouldn’t have,” Sol said.
“It’s nothing big,” Arthur said. “But I’ve been looking for this for a while.” He set down the bag at his feet and picked out one smaller flat object, wrapped in blue foil paper. Obviously a book.
When Sol tore off the wrapping and saw the cover, his heart gave an unexpected leap. It was an old hardcover of his favorite childhood novel, Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons. He had not seen the book in forty years at least. Here again was the familiar beige cloth cover, covered with a map that suggested a river. He opened it and found it signed by the author in a strong and loopy hand.
“Thank you,” Sol said. Without thinking about it, he pressed the book to his chest.
Arthur took a seat. He rested his checked cap on one round knee. He pointed at the book in Sol’s hand. “If you remember that book at all, you remember it is full of small adventures. The very ordinary things of life. Ginger beer. Outings by the river. You were always trying to set things floating in the Brooklyn Bay, wearing that sailor’s cap. You named your toy boat the Kinship, remember?” He laughed.
“What is your point,” Sol said. “That I am about to enter my second childhood?”
Arthur pursed his lips. “Children know what’s essential: friendships, our families. Those are the things that matter. We love what we love. Our hobbies—building toy boats, trying to figure out how to fit ships inside of bottles. Playing stickball. Listening to radios late into the night.” He was citing all the things he had watched Solomon do, of course. “I used to spend hours on my back gazing up at clouds. Full of wonder. I was so sure I would see God come striding around the corner of a glorious sunset one day.”
“And did you?” Sol asked.
“Not yet,” said Arthur. He leaned forward in the chair, shifting his weight, trying to get comfortable. “Sol, all I am trying to say is that no one is taking your life away. Maybe they are giving it back. You’ve been driven so hard for so long. Ease up a little. Now you can pay attention again to the things that matter most.”
“Is that it?” Sol said. “Is the lecture over?”
Arthur got to his feet. “It’s over.” He groaned a little, straightening up. “Enjoy the book, big brother.” He held his arms out and tottered forward. Sol accepted the embrace. He felt himself fall into it, falling back into memory, like the cream-colored book he was still clutching in one hand.
“You were always the nice one of the family,” Sol said.
“You were always the smart one,” Arthur said. “We each have our cross to bear,” he added and patted him on the cheek. Three soft pats, like being touched by bread dough. “Ah, Solly,” he said. “It is never too late to be grateful for your life.”
OCTOBER 2011
They Tried to Kill Us, We Won, Let’s Eat
Nicole knew that their family lawyer, Peter Allister, had an innocent crush on her. He was easy on the eyes himself—he looked like the aging Robert Redford, a splash of the Sundance Kid about him. His eyes were a piercing blue. A shock of whitish-blond hair fell over his forehead. When he walked through a room, female heads turned.
Nicole watched it happen now as he stepped into the reception area to bring her back to his private office. It was decorated, if that was the word, with glass-cased chunks of rocks that he’d collected from rock-climbing expeditions, each crystal box lit from below by fancy track lighting. On one of those rock-climbing adventures years ago he’d slipped and fallen several feet, and as a re
sult he walked with a slight limp—adding to the general romance and ruggedness of his appearance.
When he sat and faced her now, though, there was not much romantic bravado, and no smile. He searched her face, the brilliant blue eyes scanning her like a lighthouse beam.
“How you feeling?” he asked. He had a ream of papers in his hand and glanced down at them.
“All right,” she said.
He looked up.
“Not so great,” she admitted.
“I bet not,” he said. “Well—let me tell you, I think our chances are very slim. It’s a tough case. In fact I’m wondering if we have a chance to legally survive a motion to dismiss. They may toss it. It’s all luck of the draw, really.”
“But you’re willing to give it a try?” she asked.
He nodded brusquely. “I am.”
She hesitated. “Can I ask how much it will cost?” Her hand crept to her throat. This was where she had first felt the lump; somehow her fingers went back again and again to the spot of their own accord. Last thing at night, first thing when she woke.
“It could cost a fortune,” he said, then seeing the frightened look on her face he added, “but it won’t. It’s my firm, I call the shots. We’ll work something out with court costs if it comes to that, but basically, I’d say money’s the least of your worries. I just don’t want to lead you on with false hope as to the probable outcome.”
“I appreciate your honesty,” she said. Then she added, because he looked as if he didn’t believe her, “I get tired of lying, and tired of being lied to.”
“Well, I’ll try to be straightforward,” he said. “I’ll get this filed in the Suffolk Supreme Court in Riverhead right away. I’ll give you a call as soon as I know anything. All right?” he said. “Anything else?”
“No,” she said. “Peter—I’m very grateful.”
He waved that away. “Don’t be grateful till I accomplish something,” he said. “Meanwhile, try to take it easy. Don’t worry about anything unless you have to.—Now I’d better run. Got a meeting to get to.”
He was already halfway out of his chair, but he took her hand when she put it out to shake his, and he held on to it for a half instant longer than he absolutely had to. She was surprised by the warmth of his grasp—and then it was gone, and he was striding out of the room, favoring his good right leg over his left.
She took a little more time to get her pocketbook back over her shoulder, button up the lightweight jacket she was wearing. It was a warm fall day, she could see sunlight through his window, and the usual crush of traffic outside on the Turnpike. She’d have to hurry to get Daisy picked up from school on time.
Daisy hated to wait—she got a look of panic on her sharp little face when Nicole was one of the last mothers to arrive. “I like you to be early,” Daisy had said the night before. “Please, tomorrow, can you be a little early?” So Nicole worked her day around that promise—it was a good way to organize a day, better than most. She would get there ten minutes early, fifteen, maybe, and read in the car while she waited. Or stand out on the blacktop by the door, so Daisy could see her face right away. Who was she fighting for, if not for Daisy? Then again, wasn’t Ari fighting to protect his own two children? Funny how it boiled down to that. Trying to get to the bottom of a family schism was like peeling an onion—by the time you got to the end of it, there might be nothing left. And yet, here she was.
She looked around Peter’s well-appointed office. “It’s a start,” she said aloud. She talked to herself more and more these days, as if cancer had given her permission to be eccentric. Her brakes had gone out, no question about it. “Now we’ll see what happens when the car starts rolling downhill.”
It rolled faster than she expected. Less than two weeks later, Peter was on the phone, giving her what he obviously considered to be the bad news. He spoke quietly, as if softening his voice could soften the blow.
“Your cousin has requested a change of venue,” he said. “Says he can’t get a fair trial in Suffolk, apparently there was a similar case a year ago. Prejudicial publicity. So he’s requested that we move the case to Nassau—I suspect his lawyer knows someone or something about the Mineola Courts that we don’t. The Supreme Court judges in Suffolk are a little more open to scientific cases. I was hoping we might keep it out east.”
“What if we refuse the move?” Nicole asked.
Peter sounded impatient. “If we oppose the motion to change venue, that could drag out the decision for several more months. I don’t think your situation can wait. They’re bluffing, in a way, counting on that.”
“Then the hell with it,” Nicole said. “Let’s agree to Mineola. You said it was a gamble either way.”
“It is,” Peter said.
“All right. So let’s go for it.”
“I agree with you,” Peter said. “In addition, they’ve made one mistake they hadn’t calculated on.”
“What’s that?”
“They’ve pissed me off now,” he said. “And I am a far more effective lawyer when I’m angry.”
That same afternoon Mimi called “just to talk, and because I miss you”—this was the message she left on Nikki’s answering machine. Nicole was home, she recognized the caller ID even before Mimi began talking—Mimi had her own distinctive ring tone on their phone that played “You Are My Sunshine,” an old joke between them. But Nicole let the machine pick up. She did not think she had ever, in the fifteen years she had known Mimi, let a call from her best friend go unanswered. But right now she was too wiped out to talk. This trial was taking everything out of her, and it hadn’t even begun yet, not the ugly part.
She felt angry and bitter, though she knew none of this was her friend’s fault. Somehow that didn’t help. She didn’t know what she would have said if she had picked up. That Daisy was trick-or-treating with someone else this year? Someone she didn’t love one-tenth as much as Julian. That she, Nicole herself, felt like an orphan for the first time in her life, though her parents had been dead for years? She let the song play through four rings, then sat listening to Mimi’s voice, its familiar hesitations, the slight nasal quality and tentative laugh in between the hesitations. The voice she would recognize ten thousand years from now. Mimi ended by saying, “I’m babbling here in the hope you might just pick up. So, here’s a short summary of every Jewish holiday: ‘They tried to kill us. We survived. Now, let’s eat.’—Okay, so call me back soon, sweetie.”
But Nicole did not call her back, not then, not soon. The silence stretched between them, a yawning abyss. And that seemed a kind of early death.
OCTOBER 2011
Good News, Bad News
The Supreme Court chambers in Mineola divided into two basic camps, if you didn’t count the justices who simply hid in their chambers, uninvolved, and there were many of those. But among those inclined toward socializing, about half of the justices went down into the basement coffee shop, mostly the younger ones. You could hear the buzz of conversation and the clink of cups and cutlery before you’d stepped off the elevator; the smell of toast and coffee drifted out to meet you.
The fare in the coffee shop was basic: grilled cheese sandwiches, wraps, bagels, coffee, fruit, and dessert. The same ancient Chinese woman had been managing the place for ages. Judge Lieu, the most popular of the senior judges, held informal court here, sitting at one of the longer wood-veneer tables. It normally sat eight, but if one pushed in another smaller table right against it, it could fit as many as twelve. There were smaller tables, of course, for friends, coworkers, court-bound families, knots of secretaries, and loners. But Judge Thomas Lieu, even when he sat entirely alone, drinking the green tea he favored, sat at one corner of the long table that ran down the center of the room.
Judge Lieu was Vietnamese. He was a small man, his features so sharply chiseled they seemed carved with a knife, and his hair was still jet-black though he was in his midsixties. He was athletic, a sixth-degree black belt in tae kwon do, known for his long
-distance running. Now and again you’d see him out running in a pair of gray sweat shorts and a sweat-soaked gray T-shirt, five or six miles from the center of Mineola, sprinting down Old Country Road with the traffic, or downhill on one of the smaller streets. Then he’d shower in the court officers’ locker room, and dress in his dark suit again before driving home to his house in Oyster Bay.
Lieu was a quiet, thoughtful man. He’d made his name in family court, where he listened and sighed and said, “Terrible, terrible sadness,” or “More civilities, please!” when tempers flared. He addressed everyone as sir or ma’am, including the janitorial staff. He was immensely popular with the younger judges, especially the women. Even those who appeared before him remarked that no matter how crowded the courtroom, they felt as if they were alone with Judge Lieu, and that his remarks were meant especially for them.
He had a melancholy streak that he hid behind a small, sad smile. He was a great kidder, always telling jokes and teasing the younger judges and lawyers. Women were drawn to him. He had been married for twenty years, and then one day his wife—a doctor with a family practice in Syosset—walked out, taking the two smaller children, leaving Lieu to the company of his eldest son, who had just entered high school. It was around this time that he left family court and became an elected member of the New York Supreme Court, the first Vietnamese to succeed in a power cartel run almost entirely by Italians.
One by one, the two younger children fled their mother’s house and came to join him in Oyster Bay. He never spoke of his own private life. Sol learned all of this second- and thirdhand. Tom Lieu had a way not merely of removing but of erasing himself from all conversations. That may have been one reason why he became a father confessor to so many colleagues and coworkers. He was modest to a fault. The basement coffee shop suited him.
A very different group of judges socialized up in the posh space of the new law library. Here the scent was of new leather and lemon furniture polish. There were comfortable sofas, easy chairs, gold-embossed law books, and plush wall-to-wall carpeting. This was where Judge Michael DeNunzio held court unofficially. Unlike the basement, people didn’t casually drop by for chitchat. Most sat at the computer desks, doing research, taking notes, scurrying back and forth on soft-soled shoes, the women secretaries and paralegals teetering in the thick carpeting on too-high heels.
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