The Laws of Gravity

by Liz Rosenberg

  “No,” said Nicole. “No, of course not.”

  Peter stopped twisting his chair back and forth. His face showed visible relief. “All right, then,” he said. “That’s that.”

  “But I also don’t want to die and abandon my eight-year-old daughter,” she said. “Or Jay. So I can’t back down now, no matter what. This is the only chance I’ve got.”

  He gave a flicker of a smile. “And I just broke my own rule,” he said. “Asking a question to which I did not already know the answer.”

  NOVEMBER 2011

  Like a Dog

  Sarah had charge of the paperwork and government forms, while Abigail took care of everything else. She had found a nice apartment in Manhasset, thanks to Sarah’s synagogue connections. She had hired a nanny. At Sol’s house there were oceans of adoption paperwork to fill out, a list of rules and regulations as long as your arm, checks to write in advance, little gifts to wrap in pink and green—because Thailand had a different lucky color for each day of the week. Sarah wrapped key chains and American makeup, Hello Kitty T-shirts, and coin purses filled with pendants or little beaded bracelets.

  “Bribes,” the judge said grimly.

  “Not bribes—gifts,” Sarah said. “You don’t understand the culture.”

  “There’s a lot I don’t understand.”

  The agency had provided a list of cultural dos and don’ts that Sarah studied with great care. No touching any statues in a Buddhist temple. No blowing your nose loudly. Sitting in a temple with your feet pointing toward Buddha was considered an insult, but so was sitting with your feet pointing toward a person. If you picked your teeth, you were supposed to cover your mouth with your other hand.

  “I hope you’ll remember that one,” Sol said.

  “Very funny,” she snapped.

  Sarah kept the precious file folders inside an old backpack that must have been left over from Abigail’s early college days. It had paisley designs all over it, painted on fire-engine-red leather. It looked unlike anything else Sarah owned. “I can’t possibly confuse it with anyone else’s,” was all Sarah said. After a while, the red paisley bag seemed like an appendage to her body. She was afraid to carry it outside with her, but more afraid to leave it at home. She woke during the night asking Sol, “Where is the N16 form? What did I do with the FR886432 papers?”

  “You’re getting yourself too worked up over this,” Sol told her. “You’ll have a heart attack.”

  “I’m just being careful,” Sarah said. “If I ruin this for Abigail, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Then, the Friday right before they were to leave, disaster seemed to strike all at once. The judge had come home from court early. He wished he were accompanying his wife and child. He was anxious about long-distance travel. Even Myra, his cranky secretary, told him, “For God’s sake get out of the office.” She was a childless woman in her early forties, with waist-length black hair and a smoker’s husky voice. “There’s nothing that can’t wait till Monday,” she said. “Go. It’ll give me a chance to catch up. Kisses to the family. Tell them bon voyage.” She blew an air kiss into the atmosphere, like a smoke ring.

  Sol found Sarah practically in a puddle on the sewing room floor. The familiar red paisley leather backpack was wide open like a yelling mouth. Adoption papers spilled in a circle around it, tumbling out of their folders. The little canary-colored room, normally so tidy, looked as if it had been burglarized.

  “What’s going on?” Sol asked.

  Sarah was wild-eyed. He could not remember the last time he’d seen her like this. She was gasping like a fish. “I can’t find the N6 paper! I’ve looked all over.”

  “Calm down,” Sol said, sinking down beside her. That floor got harder every day, the carpet thinner under his flanks. “We’ll find it.”

  Sarah’s hands pawed through the papers. “I’m telling you, I’ve searched everywhere—I can’t find it! My body is going numb. I can’t feel my arms. We can’t go without the N6 form!”

  “Take it easy,” Sol said. “It’s just one more piece of paper.”

  “It’s the form giving permission to adopt from the INS,” she said hoarsely.

  “Jesus,” Sol said. He, too, began searching through the folders, but there no longer seemed to be any order to anything. “Call the adoption agency,” he said.

  “It’s Friday afternoon, after four o’clock. No one is going to be there. Oh, Sol. Sol. What have I done?”

  Sol went to the little phone on the corner table—it, too, was canary yellow—and lifted the receiver. “Give me the number,” he ordered.

  “No one is going to be there,” Sarah repeated. “Let me call. I’ll call.” She had the agency’s number on speed dial. She listened to it ring once, twice. She held the phone out toward him, as if to dry it, tilting it. “See?” she said. “No one.”

  Just then someone answered. Sol heard the voice with a flood of relief in his own chest. He did not approve of this adoption, but he did not want it to fall apart at the eleventh hour. Feeling like a hypocrite, he said a small prayer. He promised to do tefillin, faithfully, if this thing would go all right. Every day, if necessary.

  “You do?” Sarah was saying. “You have a copy?” Sol was shocked by his own sense of relief. He wanted to run over and kiss her, kiss the ground, do something foolish.

  “Yes,” she said. “We have a fax.—I’m sorry you lost your keys, but thank God you were there.” She laughed. “Oh? I’m glad you found them! Then it’s a very good day, isn’t it? I’ll turn on the fax right now. Would you? Just till I’m sure it’s come in? Thank you so much—Jane, is it? Thanks so much.”

  She practically collapsed into Sol’s arms. “I could feel my body losing sensation. I’ve never been so frightened in my life, never.” He hurried downstairs and turned on the fax machine in the den. They sat in the kitchen to wait, and within two minutes heard the high, shrill familiar ringing sound of a fax coming through.

  “Don’t ever tell Abigail about this,” she said, flopping down opposite him.

  “I won’t,” he said.

  “Ever,” she said. “I’m supposed to be the capable one. That’s my only strength.”

  Sol was touched and taken aback. “You have many strengths,” he said.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Hypercompetently flying by the seat of my pants,” she said. “I’ve been doing it all my life.”

  That night Sarah made a traditional Shabbos supper—roast chicken, noodle kugel, kosher wine. She used the tablecloth her mother had cross-stitched in moss-green thread, the linen starched within an inch of its life.

  Abigail took all this in with a single sweeping glance. She had her mother’s way of absorbing the mood of a scene, her father’s way of keeping her own counsel.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked. “Is someone converting? Are we praying to the God of international long-distance flights?”

  “We just felt like celebrating,” Sarah said, going over to embrace her daughter, draw her into the dining room, take off her jacket, and smooth her hair, all in one fluid gesture. “We have a lot to be grateful for.” She had put all of the papers back into the files, the files back into the red backpack, which hung from her own dining room chair. She was not about to let it out of her sight again. And of course, five minutes after the fax arrived, they’d found the missing form in the back of a different file folder.

  They all lined up by the kitchen window for the lighting of the candles. It was a ritual they had not performed as a family in a long time. Sarah lit the candles, one after the other, five in all. She acted as if each candle was a separate person, someone she knew intimately. Sol knew she would use this moment to remember anyone in their extended circle who might be sick, or suffering, or in pain. He would not hurry her. He thought of his brother Arthur and wished he would lose some weight. He thought of Prissy Gardino, his court recorder, battling with her second bout of lung cancer. Of his wife and daughter about to leave for a foreign country,
to bring home a little stranger. Worry for him was a form of prayer. Keep them safe, he thought, reminding himself to think of the baby as well. Keep them all safe and bring them home safe.

  Sarah murmured the Hebrew blessing into her hands. The words were muffled by her fingers but grew clearer at the end: “Ner shel Shabbos Kodesh!”

  “Let’s eat!” Abigail said. “I’m starving.” She slowed down just when she reached her chair, and pulled it out slowly, looking around the room, neat as a pin. “This is the last time I’ll be eating here without Iris.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it all,” she said to her mother.

  A look passed between husband and wife. “Oh, it just happens,” Sarah said airily.

  “Well, I’ll never be able to,” Abigail said. “I hope you’re prepared to feed us.”

  “You’ll be surprised what you can do for a child,” her mother said. “Trust me.”

  Nicole came downstairs and planted a kiss on her husband Jay’s blond head. His hair was so curly it had always reminded her of Jason and the golden fleece. She handed him a small piece of paper. Jay was watching a college football game, but he clicked off the sound and looked up at her immediately, his light blue eyes attentive. “What is this, a shopping list? Is there something you need me to get?”

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “I’ll go right away.”

  She put one hand on his shoulder and laughed. “There’s no great rush.”

  He picked up the paper and looked at it. First he looked puzzled. Then his expression darkened. His shoulders drew in. “Please tell me,” he said, “this is not what it looks like.”

  “Shhh,” she said. Daisy was upstairs playing with her best school friend, Claudia. They were playing some noisy make-believe game. Still, their girl had supersonic hearing, like a bat.

  He read off the list of women’s names. “Jesus,” he said.

  “I just want you to know that there are some nice women out there in the world,” she said. “You know, in case worse comes to worst.”

  “For God’s sake, Nikki.” His eyes were pleading. He stuck his hand out sideways, holding the list between thumb and forefinger, like something contaminated. The football game flickered on the muted TV. Someone had just done something. They were showing it again, the ball flying out of bounds.

  She took the list from Jay and sat in his lap. She wrapped her arms around him, but read the list over his shoulder. “Shelley Needham,” she said. “The girl’s basketball coach is a very nice woman. Daisy adores her.”

  He laughed bitterly, but did not push her away. “Shelley Needham is gay,” he said.

  She leaned her head back. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, Shelley’s life partner Gloria seems pretty sure. They just bought a house together in Northport.”

  “Okay,” she said, “what about Maura Carter?”

  “What about her,” he said tonelessly. He was watching the silent TV. The strain of the past several months was starting to show. He was going gray at the top of his hair, the gold color losing some of its luster.

  “She’s attractive, she’s lonely, she’s a nice person. You always say that yourself.”

  “She looks like a rodent,” Jay said. “Her pigtails stick up on either side, exactly like a rat’s ears. Why are we even discussing this? You are the only one I want. You are the only woman I have ever wanted.” He kissed her neck. He put one hand on the small of her back.

  She wriggled out of his arms. “Jay, listen to me,” she said. “I can’t stand the idea of you being lonely the rest of your life. It’s not right. And Daisy is going to need a mother.”

  “Daisy has a mother,” he said stubbornly.

  “Okay, Jay, but at some point you’re going to need to move on.”

  “Move on?” He lifted the remote and clicked off the TV. The screen went grayish black. “Listen to me, Nicole. If anything happens to you—and I do not believe that it will, we’re going to win this case and get you the cord blood you need and then you’re going to be back on track—but if anything should happen, don’t expect heroics. If you go anywhere without me, I’m going to cry like a dog. That’s it. Like a goddamn dog.”

  Sarah phoned the judge from Los Angeles to say that their connecting flight had been delayed, and they were still having trouble locating the baggage. Sol should plan on coming to the airport at least four hours later than he’d intended. “And by this,” she said, “I do not mean that I want you to get there six hours early.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said—but Sarah was right, as usual. He always worried that some road would be closed, the expressway would be backed up, he’d be sent to the Van Wyck or some other crazy route, and find himself driving around in circles. He hated rushing to get to airports and train stations. He had planned to leave several hours early, just in case.

  “I promise not to leave till after noon,” he said.

  “Two o’clock would be better, but okay,” she said. “If there are any further delays, I can still reach you there at the house. I wish to heaven you’d get a cell phone. You must be the last man on earth without one.”

  “Call if there are any problems,” he said. “I’ll wait here by the phone.”

  “It’ll take an extra hour to get through customs,” she said. “So don’t panic. They’re being very careful these days coming into the United States.”

  “Well, that’s one dangerous-looking baby you’ve got there.” He’d seen the photos on the computer, e-mailed by Sarah with subject labels like “First bath!” “Beautiful in red dress!” “Clapping hands!” Being a grandparent apparently brought on the exclamation points. Sol wished he could feel as excited. What he saw in the photos was a hopelessly scrawny little being with a solemn expression, often worried, with one eyebrow curved in a fishhook. She looked undernourished and possibly ill—though that might have been the effect of the bilious green shade of the umbrella stroller they had purchased in Thailand. A top-of-the-line Maclaren awaited her in America—the judge had already loaded it into the back of his Volvo.

  “I can’t wait to see you,” Sarah said. “And Abigail sends her love.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “You’re going to adore Iris,” Sarah said. “You’ll surprise yourself.”

  “Mm,” said Sol, unwilling to perjure himself. “Travel safe.”

  He could hear Abigail in the background, calling “Love you, Dad!”

  “Okay,” he said. He was famous within the family for never responding to an “I love you” with one of his own. But there they were, still three thousand miles away, an entire continent between them, about to climb into a piece of steel machinery that was supposed to fly them home. “I love you, too,” he said.

  What if Sarah was wrong about him as a grandfather? he thought. What if he didn’t adore his granddaughter? What if he didn’t even like her? It was like adopting a young dog from the pound instead of a puppy. They’d missed the first year of her life—first smile, first step. Some things were hardwired. But they would never know with this baby what that hardwiring might be. Possible genetic defects. Personality disorders, disease, psychological history. Who knew what led a mother to abandon her child?

  And then there was the matter of foreignness. Iris looked nothing like any of them. Her skin was a dark yellowish color, her eyes unreadable slits in all the photos Sarah sent. In the orphanage she wore a plain off-white nightdress that hung straight to the floor; her hair had been close-cropped, the front cut into a severe V. She looked like a little Buddhist monk. It took Sol a long time to warm up to people. What if he never warmed up to this girl at all? What if he felt like a stranger holding her, taking her out in public, giving her a bath?

  He instructed himself to get a grip. He had a cup of tea and a bowl of oatmeal, steel-cut, cooked from scratch. Yet once the oatmeal was cooked and in the bowl, covered with a dollop of yogurt, he barely touched it. He drank his tea plain, without cream, without sugar. He remembered his gran
dmother holding a sugar cube between her teeth, sipping hot bitter tea from a glass. He had fond memories of her, though she had been a tough balabust, a force to contend with. He remembered her running her rough hands through his hair. She would let him roll out his own batch of noodles and bake them, though somehow they never ate those noodles—grimy from the dirt of his hands. They were too special to eat, she told him. Once, a wasp had been flying around his head in the Bucks County boardinghouse, and she killed it with her own forefinger, jabbing it down on the windowsill. That was courage, he thought. That was a true grandparent.

  He read the New York Times and Newsday cover to cover. It was a Thursday. He did the crosswords in pen. Then, still at a loss for a way to kill some time, he took out the book Arthur had given him for his birthday, Swallows and Amazons. It was as enchanting as he remembered. Only the illustrations seemed different—they had once loomed so large, and now he found tiny figures, some of them barely more than sketches. He fell asleep in the middle of chapter four, the book hanging from his hand, and was awakened by the sound of the doorbell. He marked his place in the book with a scrap of the New York Times and went to open the door.

  No one was there. At least, that was his first impression. He looked out into a blue morning, milder than one had any right to expect in late November, the sun climbing. Then he looked down. Sitting in a vivid green stroller, all by herself, was an Asian baby girl with the most exquisite face he had ever seen, the color of gold, with a pair of sparkling eyes so dark they looked almost black.

  “Oh, God,” Sol said. “Oh, my God.”

  Abigail and Sarah, laughing, popped out of their hiding places, but his eyes were riveted on Iris. He never would have believed this. It was love at first sight.

  DECEMBER 2011

  Let the Games Begin

  DeNunzio had been correct. Sol’s extension glided through the Office of Court Administration without a hitch, more quickly than things usually moved in judicial administrative affairs. The letter came stamped with a dark blue OCA seal on the letterhead, and Albert Pescatori’s signature at the bottom. Solomon Richter’s tenure as Supreme Court judge was extended till the end of Greene vs. Wiesenthal, with a deadline generously set at two years in the future. Sol could have seen it as a new lease on his working life, but he was surprisingly depressed by the whole thing—the case itself, the ease with which this exception had gone through by the hand of his former adversary, a man he did not admire.