The Laws of Gravity

by Liz Rosenberg

  DeNunzio could be found there many afternoons, at the center of a knot of men, deep in disputation. DeNunzio had been a law professor at St. Joseph’s and some scent of academia clung to him, though he dressed better than any academic Sol had known. His suits were bespoke; he was given to electric blue shirts and expensive ties. He was a tall handsome man with sleek black hair, in his early fifties, but he seemed to hail from a much older generation. Perhaps even another century. He was soft-spoken; listeners had to bend their heads to hear each word.

  Sol did not especially like DeNunzio, but he respected him. DeNunzio had worked his way through Princeton University, coming from an immigrant Italian family in Elizabeth, New Jersey. First in his family to attend college, DeNunzio had a sharp, clear legal mind. He knew the law, and more than that, he could penetrate to the subtleties beneath and around the law. You watched him run his finger across a page of a legal brief, and it was like a man running his finger across water; you sensed the depths of something moving underneath the surface.

  So when Flannery came to Sol triumphantly waving Greene vs. Wiesenthal—the case Sol had quickly come to think of as simply “the blood case”—he was undecided about where to turn for a second opinion. It was a messy situation, the one dying cousin suing the other. There was the possibility of a breach of contract, and the larger question of whether one could force rescue. The case might or might not even be actionable. Sol studied the gathered materials and said, “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about it.”

  “What do you mean?” Flannery cried. “It’s the case of a lifetime! Here is a question of individual rights—our own particular bailiwick.” Over the years they had taken on a number of tough cases—a family fighting enforced seat belt use, another case about chlorinating the water in Bayville.

  Still, Sol said, “Hard cases make for bad law. The defendant has already requested a change of venue to Nassau. Now he’s making a motion to dismiss. His attorney insists that the letter he signed for his cousin is unenforceable. I’m inclined to agree.” He shrugged. “I’ll be honest, I don’t like it. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Flannery said. “Have you seen what’s on your calendar, Your Honor? One petty case after another. Most will never even make it to the courtroom. And the valedictory year is racing by.”

  “General jurisdiction ranges from the mundane to the complex,” the judge said. “It always has, always will. And half the cases settle before going to court. You know that.”

  “I do know it,” Flannery said stubbornly. “That’s why I say we take this on. This case is worth trying. It’s got meat on its bones.”

  “All I can promise is that I’ll consider it,” Sol said.

  Flannery began to protest. “Your Honor, this is our big chance.”

  Sol narrowed his eyes at his chief clerk. “I’m not looking for a big chance,” he said. He showed the clerk to the door.

  After he sat down again, alone, he pressed the button on his phone. Myra answered, sounding bored. “Yes?”

  “Myra, please keep Flannery out of my way for the rest of the day,” he said.

  “Gladly,” Myra said.

  The judge looked at the pile of papers on the blood case and sighed. He did not trust himself with this case—something made him hesitate. There was something ugly about it, something thorny. His closest friends among the judges had retired in the past few years—to Florida and the mountains of North Carolina. Should he go to Lieu or to DeNunzio for a second opinion? He had a feeling Lieu would advise against the case. DeNunzio was harder to read.

  Feeling vaguely guilty, as if he were betraying Tom Lieu, Sol made his way an hour later to the law library on the second floor. It was nearly empty. One new young clerk, his eyes as red as a rabbit’s from too much research, sat as if stapled into his seat in front of a computer in the corner. A pair of interns flirted over a pair of books at the center table. And there, in his corner of the room, sat DeNunzio, alone for a change. Sol nearly bolted. But DeNunzio spotted him immediately, as if he’d sensed him coming along the second-floor hallway.

  “Ah,” he said. “The Honorable Justice Solomon Richter”—gently mocking Flannery’s calling-out in court—“What can I do for you?”

  Sol had no choice but to take the leather chair catty-corner to DeNunzio, Sol’s chair a shade smaller, a shade shorter—were these things deliberate? Sol wondered. With a sinking feeling he offered up a few pages of the numerous Greene vs. Wiesenthal motion papers that Flannery had given him.

  “You’d like me to take a look?” DeNunzio said in his soft voice.

  Sol almost said no. He hung on to the papers a few seconds longer than made any sense. But there was something in the sharpness of DeNunzio’s eye that moved him. Did he serve justice or didn’t he? Did he, Solomon Richter, desire to do the right thing, even the difficult thing, or would he slouch his way through these final months of public trust? He had earned his reputation on thorny cases like these. He’d upheld the rights of a deeply religious woman to refuse a needed blood transfusion. He had visited her in the hospital on her deathbed. But she died at peace with herself; he could not regret what he’d done.

  “Give me a little time to study these,” DeNunzio said. “I take it it’s a difficult case.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a case at all,” Sol answered.

  “All right, then.” DeNunzio was already bundling the papers into his sleek tan Italian briefcase. There was no fishing them out now. Sol sensed that both Myra and Flannery would have been disappointed in him. God knew he was old enough to make up his own mind. He turned, like a schoolboy ordered out of the principal’s office.

  “We’ll talk again,” DeNunzio said, as a principal might have done.

  Sol spent the day in an uneasy truce with himself. If DeNunzio said there was no case, then it was off his shoulders. He could move on to simpler matters, clearer and easier decisions. Not risk making a fool of himself here at the tail end of his career. The closer he drew to retirement, the less real his life’s work seemed to him, as if none of it had ever happened. That’s how easy it was, he thought, to lose one’s footing in the world.

  Sol knew how it was with blood relations. He himself had labored for seven years in family court, and he’d considered them the worst part of his working life. If people could only hear what went on behind the closed doors, the pulled curtains of suburbia. No wonder Judge Lieu was always crying out, “More civility! More civility!” The family was the last remaining savage tribe.

  Finally, around four thirty in the afternoon, as the sun was sinking toward its wintry grave, the phone rang. It was DeNunzio. “Come up to my office,” DeNunzio said in his soft, even voice. He never had a secretary make a phone call for him. When he ran for election for judge, he bragged, “I answer my own phones”—and it was true. He was not a delegator. He saved the best and worst work for himself.

  DeNunzio’s office was on the fourth floor, his courtroom the largest in the building, his chambers window with the widest view. A legal clerk had once been shot and killed there after hours by a jealous lover. Other judges would have avoided it. Not DeNunzio. He simply had it redecorated. His beige carpet was so thick, Sol felt his feet sinking at every step. He took the chair that DeNunzio gestured toward. It swung left, and he put his feet down to steady himself. DeNunzio was smiling, a tolerant smile, as if he were used to such shenanigans.

  “Looks justiciable to me,” he said, handing the papers back to Sol, neatly held together with a paper clip and slipped inside a file folder. The file folder made Sol homesick for Sarah and her common sense. You did not find much of it out in the so-called real world. Sol thought it was why many men his age had so few friends. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of men who would ever say anything sensible to him: his brother Arthur, his neighbor Joe Iccarino, one or two inmates. But for the most part he turned to the women in his life for conversation, comfort, advice—Sarah or Abigail, or even Myra, for that matter. There was
something almost feminine about DeNunzio—which may have led Sol to this judge’s chambers in the first place.

  DeNunzio placed the briefs where they both could see them. “There’s an ipso facto contract, and wherever there is a legal contract, you have a shot at an interesting legal argument. The motion to dismiss can be denied. I’m not sure there’s much doubt which way this will go, but you’ve always been interested in these cases. One might even say you’ve made your name on them. I’d say you’ve got a nice big fat one right up your alley.” He tapped the pages with one tapered forefinger.

  “Legally, then, you think the case has merit?”

  DeNunzio shrugged. “That’s for higher minds than ours to say. But I don’t think there’s much chance of it being overturned.” He leaned forward. “Why not?” he urged. “Why not go for it?”

  “Well, for one thing,” Sol said. “I’m due to retire in December. This case could drag on into next year.”

  DeNunzio waved away the objection. He wore a gold ring with a seal on it, as if he were a pope. “An extension is easily granted in these situations,” he said. “You can’t swap judges in the middle of a case. Let me make a phone call to my friend Pescatori in New York. We went to Princeton together. There shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “I ran against Pescatori back in eighty-two,” Sol said. “It’s unlikely he’ll grant me any favors.”

  DeNunzio shrugged and smiled. “Who says this is a favor?” he said. “Pescatori might not see it that way. Besides, if I tell you this thing will go through—it will go.” He held out his hand, and for one brief instant Sol wondered if he was supposed to kiss the ring, the way you would with the pope. Instead they shook on it.

  “Thank you,” Sol said.

  “Good luck,” DeNunzio answered.

  “I have something to tell you about Abigail,” Sarah said that evening without preamble. Sol had not even had time to take off his coat. In the morning, frost had coated the lawn. By evening, he drove through a summer storm. Climate changes, volcanoes, everything upside down. He’d thought to outwit the weather by avoiding the parkway. Instead he’d been crawling down Jericho Turnpike for what seemed like hours, skidding in puddles, gripping the steering wheel so hard that even now his fingers could not unclench themselves. Sarah had begun a conversation the exact same way about a month earlier, only that time she had said, “Tomas is gone.”

  “Gone, as in—”

  “He’s not dead, if that’s what you mean.”

  “He walked out on her?”

  “Let’s just say that they agree to disagree.”

  In Solomon’s opinion, Tomas’s departure was good news. He had never approved of the relationship; too haphazard, too unsettled.

  “She’s going to have a baby,” Sarah said now.

  “She’s pregnant?” he asked. “The son of a bitch knocked her up and then left?”

  “No!—She’s not exactly pregnant,” Sarah said. “That’s the thing.”

  “Not exactly pregnant,” the judge said. “Tell me how that works.”

  “She’s adopting,” Sarah said. “She just got the phone call last week—she was going to tell us.”

  “She was going to tell us—when?” said the judge. “When the kid arrived with a suitcase in its hand? Where is it from?”

  “It’s not an it, it’s a she. She’s nearly a year old. And she’s from Thailand. Her name is going to be Iris.”

  Sol sat with both hands on his knees. He felt like a statue. He felt he looked like a statue. He could not identify all the emotions he was feeling. Chief among them was confusion. “Thailand,” he said.

  He knew little about the country, except that it bordered on Cambodia, somewhere near Laos and Vietnam. He had lived through the era of the Vietnam War as a lawyer—too old to be drafted, too young to be indifferent. His image of Southeast Asian children was limited to a vision of one small child running down the street, burning, her mouth twisted open in fear and pain. A famous news photo at the time. He rubbed the palms of his hands over his kneecaps and stood up. He shuffled in his slippers past Sarah and into the kitchen. “I need a drink,” he said.

  “I already poured you one,” she called after him.

  A half tumbler of whiskey sat waiting on the kitchen table. Unless she had been drinking, too—but that was unlikely. For one thing, Sarah seldom drank. For another, there would have been lipstick around the rim of the glass. She thought he didn’t notice that kind of thing, but he did.

  “I’m not sure I approve,” Sol said, after he had taken a slug of the whiskey. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  “Well, I think it’s a great idea. And so does Abigail. And that’s what matters.” She sat across from him defiantly, and drew a cup of tea closer to her.

  He looked up and nodded sardonically. “I see,” he said. “How long have you known?”

  Sarah flushed a little but held her ground. “Nothing for sure,” she said. “I had my suspicions. Abigail and I had a few talks—they were very general. She’s not getting any younger, Sol, and she desperately wants a family.”

  “We’re her family,” Sol said. Sarah didn’t bother to answer. She looked at him over the rim of her teacup, just her sharp brown eyes showing. “And a single woman with an adopted daughter is not a traditional family.”

  “Traditional is a matter of perspective,” Sarah said. “And let me remind you, buster, this will not be her adopted daughter. This will be her daughter, period. And your granddaughter.”

  The judge let this sink in. He tilted his head right, and then left, as he often did in court, unconsciously, weighing out a situation. He curled his fingers over his mouth, another habitual gesture, to hide his expression.

  “When does this baby arrive?” he asked.

  “In about three weeks,” Sarah said. “We’re scheduled to leave in late November. They don’t give you much advance warning.” She held up one hand. “Not you. I know you’re busy with the court. I’ll go. She needs me. A mother is not the same as a husband, but it’s something. We’ll only be gone about ten days. I’ll leave you plenty of food in the freezer. We still have that lasagna from a few weeks ago, I’ll make a few of your favorites. Maybe a pot roast.”

  “I am not worried about food,” Sol said. “For Christ’s sake.”

  “And I’m sure Arthur and Ruth will have you over for dinner. Maybe the Iccarinos, too.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” The judge frowned.

  “Well, when Abigail calls, it would be nice if you could act delighted,” she said. “She’s scared to death to tell you.”

  “Delighted might be stretching it,” Sol said.

  “I would settle for happy.”

  “Happy…and surprised, I take it.”

  “Yes, she wanted to tell you herself.”

  “Thank you for the advance warning,” Sol said.

  “A baby! Isn’t that wonderful,” Sol said on the phone to his daughter a few days later. Abigail had called after supper.

  “You mean it?” Abigail said.

  “Oh, yes,” the judge said.

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You know I’m adopting.”

  “You hear so many good things about adoption lately.”

  “Mom told you, didn’t she? That’s why you’re so enthusiastic.”

  “No, no,” her father protested. “Not a word. I’m just—so surprised.”

  “You’ll be glad to have a grandchild, finally.”

  “I’ll love her like my own.”

  This was the wrong thing to say, apparently. There was the briefest possible silence.

  “I mean, she’ll be our own. Of course we’ll love her.” He could not resist. “Are you sure you’ve thought this all through carefully?”

  Abigail laughed drily. “Now, that sounds more like the father I know,” she said.

  “Don’t get excited,” Peter Allister said. “But I have a bit of good news.”

  Nicole was ba
ck in his office, looking into the piercing blue eyes of her lawyer.

  “They’ve agreed to take on the case in the Mineola Supreme Court. Judge Richter denied the motion to dismiss. We’re going to trial.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Okay. Wow.” She tried to smile but felt, actually, as if she’d been knocked sideways.

  Peter held up one hand. “It’s a situation with a judge, not a jury, you understand. You can’t hope for sympathy from fellow mothers, or men who—well, men who might want to take your side. This judge is a tough old bird, ready to retire soon. His name is Solomon Richter. And”—he took a deep breath—“he’s famous for upholding the rights of the individual. Which is not good for us, in this case. We’re trying to force one individual—your cousin—to give up something that belongs to him, and bring the weight of the legal system to make him do so against his will. I’ve read several of the cases that Judge Richter has been involved in—and his written opinions.” Peter managed a wry smile.

  “You’re saying he’s likely to judge against us.”

  “I’m not saying anything. In thirty years of practicing law,” Peter said, “I’ve learned never to predict human behavior. People will surprise you. But yes, Nicole. I’m trying to warn you not to get your hopes up too high.”

  He sat back in his chair and swiveled it back and forth a little to each side, twisting like a boy on a swing. “You also need to prepare yourself for all the possible publicity. The media gets a hold of a story like this, they’re likely to run with it. No one but the judge can keep them out—and I’m not convinced even Judge Richter can control it. It could turn into a circus. I’m having serious second thoughts about the wisdom of pressing on. Do you really want to be the center of a media blitz for an unlikely outcome?”