The Laws of Gravity

by Liz Rosenberg

  Flannery turned his attention back to the judge. “You’ll get your feet back under you. I haven’t worked for you all these years without learning how you operate. But you can’t become a humanist at the expense of being a great legal mind.”

  “I have never been a great legal mind,” Sol said. “I’m someone who’s done his job to the best of his ability.”

  “But Your Honor—” Flannery sputtered.

  Sol held up his hand to stop him. “And the best of my ability was never anything to write home about. Go find yourself another hero, Flannery. It’s hard enough just being a human being. I wish I’d had more practice at it.”

  That afternoon Sol drove the crowded expressway inch by inch, and then hazarded the fantastically crowded and gnarled twisting back streets of Brooklyn to visit his last remaining inmate at the Brooklyn Federal Detention Center. He himself, twenty years earlier, had sentenced her. She was in for capital crimes, or she’d have been away from Brooklyn Federal long ago. As it was, she was an anomaly in an aging federal prison that was most often used as a holding tank.

  By the time he arrived at the prison it was already pitch-dark in the early winter night. The only hint of brightness came from the colored lights strung on houses and apartments, reindeer with flashing red noses, traffic lights going from green to yellow to red in an endless circle. He could barely remember when Long Island was a place one could actually drive from one end to the other—the potato farms of his early marriage were long gone; even back then, cars and trucks were beginning to swell each of the veins that ran the length and breadth of this fish-shaped island. Parkways filled, new ones sprang up like weeds. These, too, came to a standstill, and still more farmland, more greenery, was torn away. More cars spilled into it and stalled in traffic. Eventually Long Island would turn into one enormous, overtaxed parking lot.

  Once inside Brooklyn Federal he relaxed. The ritual of unburdening began at once, the shedding of keys, penknives, loose change, the handing over of one’s identity, emptying of pockets. It reminded Sol of going to the synagogue mikvah, where he’d gone to take the ritual bath before his marriage to Sarah. One entered the mikvah as stripped of adornment, as naked and unburdened, as a newborn. So too would he leave it, when the Burial Society came to wrap his body in white linen.

  He gave over his belt, and removed his winter shoes for inspection before he was permitted entry. He sat without a wallet, without even a pencil. Sometimes he brought paperback books in a see-through bag, which were duly inspected and stamped. Today he had brought a candy bar and a self-help book for the woman—a volume Sarah had chosen. He could not bear to come empty-handed. It was a Jewish rule of visiting: Never go anywhere without some dessert wrapped up in a box with string. Neither the boxed treat nor the string was permitted here.

  His inmate in Brooklyn was Naveen Abou. She’d been barely out of her teens when he judged her case. A devout Muslim, she had strapped bombs across her body and headed into Times Square the day she turned eighteen, ready to greet Allah in glory. She had stopped at a fabric store, paused to finger the silks as a last gesture of affection for the things of this world—“I was saying good-bye with my fingertips,” she told the judge later—when her coat opened and the manager called the cops. Even then, she was obedient. She sat down on a hard chair and waited for them to arrest her. She could have blown up the manager and the store, but “it was a little shop,” she explained, “with only one man and his daughter working in it. That would have been murder, not jihad.”

  Her transformation inside Brooklyn Federal had been gradual and steady. First she gave up the name she had taken in her fiercer days, Mujahid, “freedom fighter.” She called herself Naveen, Pakistani for “new.” There had always been something childlike about her; she stood barely over five feet tall, and spoke with a lisp. It seemed as if she tried to use the letter s more than any other. “So you thee, Tholomon,” was how she began many sentences. She used his name repeatedly, affectionately. And she loved “thweets,” so he brought candy each time he visited. Naveen remained a devout Muslim, but now she focused on other aspects of Islam—on generosity toward others, for instance, and charity, festivals where people brought food for the poor. She talked about obedience, diligence; her greatest treasure was the leather-bound copy of the Koran she kept on a high shelf in her room. Her second-most-treasured book was Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

  Over time Sol had watched Naveen morph from a fiery, solitary teenager to a middle-aged spinster reaching out to others in small kindnesses—the only ones available now. She was often rebuffed. She spoke softly, and had a characteristic way of covering her mouth with her hand, as if to hide her lisp. She remained solitary by force and habit, not by choice. And she was wildly enthusiastic over the smallest things. For instance, she had stumbled on a way to order ordinary household products cheaply over the Internet—cellophane wrap and cleaners—and she had the judge fill out an order each visit. “Think of all the money you are thaving!” she would say, her eyes shining. “And you know, Tholomon, they are of very good quality.” Naveen greeted the candy bar and self-help book today with a cry of delight, covering her mouth.

  He was not sure how it came about, but after the usual chitchat, and after placing a large order for plastic wrap (Three for the price of one! she enthused), he began talking around this last case. He presented it simply as a matter of a family where one member needed something from another, and a life was at stake. He could share none of the specific details, of course. He changed some of the facts and kept the rest sketchy. He was afraid, even so, that the story would distress her. Naveen listened and her large dark eyes filled till they were overbrimming. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve—she wore long sleeves and a head covering all year round. Yet she preferred sandals even in winter. She wore prison shoes only to walk out in the yard, and only because it was required. She stared down at her feet now, the long brown toes red with cold, and shook her head. “It is very thad, Tholomon,” she said. “It mutht be very hard for all of you.”

  “It’s not an easy case,” Sol admitted. “She reminds me too much of my own daughter.”

  “Is there no way to thpeak to the family privately?” she asked. “Perhaps they can be reconthiled.—And you know, Tholomon,” she added, “I will pray for you. And I will pray for every one of them.”

  “We’ll need it,” the judge growled, to cover the fact that he was touched by her concern.

  “Ah. Well, Tholomon, you at least can thstill be reconthiled. Keep praying, and never give up hope.” Her face brightened. “And once thith is over,” she said, “you can retire in peath and quiet. You can thpend more time with your new grandchild.” Her eyes shone at him. “Now show me the pictures of the little girl. I will thee if I can get permission to make something for her, maybe a little head scarf.”

  “Don’t go to any trouble,” Sol said.

  She looked around the bare cell, smiling. “Here, there ith no trouble,” she said. “I have you to thank for that.” She nudged him with one sandaled foot and laughed.

  HANUKKAH 2011

  Traditions

  There was a long-held family tradition of gathering at Aunt Patti’s house for the eighth night of Hanukkah, the final night of the holiday. Nicole had celebrated at her Aunt Patti’s as long as she could remember, even as a little girl. Never a cook—normally she’d order in soggy pizzas or greasy Chinese food and pronounce them delicious—Aunt Patti on this one night of the year grated potatoes from scratch, fried onions in chicken fat, turned the latkes herself, served separate bowls of sour cream and apple sauce. Half the potato pancakes came out scorched, the others raw in the middle, but it was the tradition that mattered, the gathering of family—along with a few of her old actor friends, most of them gay, Jewish, and without a place to go. Just watching their great-aunt Patti lurch around the kitchen, cursing like a sailor, was always entertainment enough for Julian and Daisy.

  Because Patti hated sentimen
tality, and also because she was cheap, she insisted on joke presents—some awful piece of kitsch that no one could possibly want: cheap plastic Christmas platters, tacky posters from old Broadway shows, the ugliest hats imaginable. They took turns passing from household to household an exceptionally large and hideous salt-and-pepper shaker in the shape of a chicken. Whoever won this gift had to care for it till the following Hanukkah, when it could be dumped into someone else’s hands.

  Nicole had gotten the ceramic chicken the year before, and while she had always hated the thing, for some reason this year she was loath to part with it. And the idea of giving—and getting—tacky, useless, ugly things was beginning to bother eight-year-old Daisy. “Why can’t we give nice presents like everybody else?” she asked plaintively.

  “We do with each other, sweetie,” Nicole said. If anything, she over-compensated by buying too much too lavishly. She’d stored up so many gifts in the months leading up to Hanukkah, it was hard not to make every night look like Christmas morning—exactly what she and Jay wanted to avoid. She had bought and hidden enough gifts, she thought grimly, that some of them would end up being given out posthumously. She was always unearthing old gifts from the dark corners of the backs of closets.

  This Hanukkah would be different from all the others. There would be no loud, raucous family gathering at Aunt Patti’s. Patti understood that the two families could not be in one house at the same time. To Nicole’s surprise, however, it was her own family who received the invitation for the eighth night. Ari wasn’t in the mood for a big party, he’d told his mother, and had already made plans to go skiing in Vermont.

  “It’ll be terrific,” Aunt Patti assured Nicole over the phone. “It seems like no one I know has any place to go this year. We’re all getting old. Maybe I’ll include that new black family that just moved into the neighborhood. They won’t be getting other invites. I think they’re being boycotted from the neighborhood. From the Christmas caroling, too.”

  “Are you sure?” Nicole said.

  “Well, no, I can’t be sure,” Patti said. “Those singers are so desperate for attention they might be willing to perform for schvartzes. Half the carolers are Jewish anyway. Toss a stick in this neighborhood and you hit another Jew.”

  “I mean about Ari and his family. Are you sure they don’t want to come for the eighth night?”

  “Ari made it very clear,” Aunt Patti said. She sounded edgy, which meant her feelings had been hurt. “Loud and clear. He’s skiing at some overpriced resort.”

  “Okay,” Nicole said. “Well—I have one favor to ask this year.”

  “Ask away,” Patti said.

  “Can I…can I keep the ceramic chicken?”

  To her surprise, Aunt Patti didn’t mock her. She didn’t hesitate—as if she had expected the request. “You hang on to it,” she said. “You can always give it back next year.”

  “All right,” Nicole said. “Next year.—What I can bring instead?”

  “Find something really tacky,” she said. “And bring along some Manischewitz wine. The cheap stuff. Maybe a bottle of Cherry Heering. This year I won’t have Ari sneaking in any fancy wines, looking down his nose at me.”

  “Nothing but the worst for you,” Nicole promised.

  “Thanks, doll,” Patti said. “I knew you’d understand.”

  Patti’s house was controlled chaos at the calmest of times. On this eighth night of Hanukkah she’d hung multiple plastic mini-Santas around her living room, and was wearing a silver tiara that lit up at the ends, flashing purple, yellow, and green. Her theater friends milled around, arranging plastic flowers in cheap glass vases. Eight-year-old Daisy wore a wine-colored velvet dress with a lace collar. This was, strictly speaking, against the rules, but the friends oohed and ahhed over her. “Oh, she is gorgeous,” one man said. “Look at that glorious red hair. I’ve never seen anything so stunning.” And a small man, a former children’s show host wearing a red velvet jumpsuit, said, “Look, we practically match.”

  Daisy smiled politely, and asked Nicole in a low voice, “Are you sure Julian isn’t coming?”

  “I’m sure,” Nicole said. How many weeks had it been since she’d even laid eyes on her best friend—eight weeks, ten? Ever since she’d let that first phone call go unanswered, she had ignored all subsequent calls, increasingly pleading on Mimi’s part, increasingly desperate—but Nikki could not bring herself to breach the silence. The court case required all the energy she had to spare. And eventually, the phone calls stopped coming. They had never before gone eight or ten days without seeing each other. Mimi’s absence had become a chronic, nagging ache lodged behind Nikki’s breastbone. A few times every single day she saw or heard something and thought, I have to tell Mimi that! And then thought, Oh. No. The way amputees feel phantom pain long after the limb is gone. She never got used to it.

  “Maybe they’ll show up later?” Daisy insisted.

  “Afraid not this year, sugar plum,” Nicole said. She could not bear the disappointment in her daughter’s face. She was tempted to lie and say, Yes, maybe they’ll come. Let me call Mimi. Let’s make it happen.

  “Lucky thing, too,” Jay said. He’d already started into the Cherry Heering, mixing it with vodka. “I could do some serious damage to that bastard’s BMW.”

  “Julian is not a bastard,” Daisy said with some spirit. “And he doesn’t drive yet.”

  “Daddy didn’t mean Julian. And he’s just kidding,” Nicole said.

  “Well, it’s not funny,” Daisy said. “Plus he used a bad word, too.” She went off into a corner to sulk and play with Aunt Patti’s china figurines.

  “Take it easy on the booze, okay?” Nicole said to Jay. She of course could not drink. Everything mixed badly with her medications, which mixed badly with each other. Her veins always felt like they were filled with ice water these days.

  The new black neighbors showed up a little after seven, looking confused. The house had so many tacky decorations, it was hard to tell which holiday was being celebrated. They had brought along an elegant stained-glass menorah in a Saks Fifth Avenue box.

  “I’m so sorry,” the man said to Aunt Patti. “We had heard you—we had thought—maybe you’d like to exchange this for something else.” He turned to his wife, a tall, regal-looking woman in a red coat, holding the hands of her two solemn-looking daughters, toddler twins. “You still have the gift receipt?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I can run back home and get it.”

  “I’m a Jew!” Aunt Patti said. She roared it so loudly that the whole house went temporarily silent. “This is a Hanukkah party, isn’t it? Come on in. Wait till you taste my latkes. Delicious! No one makes anything like them.”

  “That’s for sure,” Jay muttered under his breath.

  “But you might want to run home and get that gift receipt anyway. This thing looks expensive.”

  The wife hesitated, still holding both her girls’ hands, already turning back to the door.

  “Kidding!” Aunt Patti bellowed. “It’s beautiful. You shouldn’t have. Everyone, these are our new neighbors, the Rogerses. The Rogerses, everyone.” She handed the menorah, still inside its box, to Nicole, and whispered sotto voce, “Put this in the back bedroom. Maybe I can exchange it without a receipt.”

  Late, long after the menorah candles had burned out and the tacky gifts had been opened and distributed, long after Aunt Patti had sung “Happy Birthday to Jesus”—luckily, the Rogerses were gone by then—the doorbell rang. It was after ten o’clock. No one made a move for the door. Aunt Patti made a quick scan of the room with her uneven round brown eyes, and then, when the knocking began, said, “Oh shit,” and hobbled to the entrance.

  Mimi was first through the door. She held a bundled-up Arianna in her arms, looking something like a pink marshmallow Peep. Rianna had lost her baby look, Nicole thought; she had moved straight through toddlerhood and somehow already looked like a little girl, with her father’s strong features and dark
complexion. Mimi and Rianna were covered with snow—the sky had begun to drop large, wet flakes about an hour earlier; guests were making jokes about curling up in various corners and spending the night.

  “Are we too late?” Mimi asked. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t get Ari moving—” And then she stopped, having spotted Nicole and her family. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. Her arms tightened on her baby daughter, either to protect the little girl or to gain protection from her.

  Nicole’s heart leaped into her mouth. She stepped forward automatically, her arms rising, forming an embrace in the air. There was her best friend Mimi, her darling, standing at the door, snowy, bedraggled, and wet, her daughter in her arms, looking like a modern-day Madonna. Nicole hoped that her auburn wig hadn’t come crooked. She wished she had dressed a little better; she could not for the life of her have said what she had on without looking down at herself, and she could not bring herself to take her eyes even for an instant off Mimi’s face. Mimi. She looked thinner, she’d cut her hair shorter. The beloved face she had not seen in months—longer than they’d ever been apart since the day they met. All these thoughts went through Nicole’s head in less than ten seconds. Her arms rose to make a half circle with which to embrace Mimi, and hung there, futile, when Ari crashed drunkenly through the door, reeling sideways.

  “I am so sorry,” Mimi said. She spoke to Aunt Patti, but didn’t take her eyes off Nicole. “I didn’t know about any of this. Ari didn’t tell me—”

  Julian loped past his father. “Hey!” he said joyfully. “Daisy, you’re here!” He lifted her off her feet and swung her around in a circle. She shrieked and protested, laughing, her narrow feet pointed like a ballerina’s as they swung.

  “See, Mom?” Daisy said. “See?”

  “Ari,” said Aunt Patti, her eyes blazing, “what are you doing here?”

  He brushed past her, his arms loaded with packages. “I belong here, remember?” He sat down heavily on the sofa, next to the man in the red velvet suit. “And you,” he said. “One of Santa’s faggot elves, I take it.”