The Laws of Gravity

by Liz Rosenberg

  “I don’t think you can say ‘detest,’” Sarah said. “But I get the idea.”

  “How about ‘despise’?”

  She pointed at the sheaf of papers in his hand. “Start fresh. You have nobody to impress; just be as clear as possible. Tear up the old draft. Write it down pretty much the way you just said it to me, add anything else you think you’ve left out, and let Ned take care of the legal language. It’s a hard thing, Solly. I’m sorry your last case had to be so hard.”

  She hardly ever called him Solly. Only in their tenderest moments. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “This is why you were such a good teacher.”

  She looked at him over her glasses, her eyes wide. “Was I?”

  “Oh, Sarah,” he said. “Love of my life. If you knew even the half of it.”

  FEBRUARY 2012

  The Decision

  “All rise,” Zimmer, the part clerk, said. “All manner of Men who stand bound by recognizance or who otherwise have proceedings before the Honorable, the Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, here holden this day for Nassau County, may now appear and they shall be heard.”

  Sol walked from his chambers into the short hall connecting it to his courtroom. He felt like a schoolboy his very last day of school. Done, finished. The absolute familiarity of the hallway made it seem unfamiliar. His robes swayed around his ankles as he turned the corner and entered the courtroom for the last time. Carter Johnson opened the door for him.

  The faces inside were by now also familiar. Ari sat beside Katrina Turock and one of her young assistants, both of them wearing suits with short, slit skirts and high heels. Nicole sat between her lawyer and her husband, Jay.

  Sol supposed that if he had not seen her week after week, he might have realized how much the plaintiff’s condition had deteriorated over the past months. Perhaps it was the pale blue sweater she was wearing, belted, over a long skirt, that seemed nearly to match the pale bluish tint of her skin, but he saw it with his own eyes. The process had begun with or without his decision. The sweater was short-sleeved and her arms hung thin and without muscle tone. The lipstick she wore only seemed to emphasize the prominence of her teeth, as if the skull was beginning to show through the mask of her face. She looked more frightened than Sol had expected, and her fear infected him. Always, she reminded him of his own Abigail—even now, when she was so sick and so colorless, she appeared like the ghost of one he loved. What if it were his daughter, Abigail, dying? Or his little granddaughter, Iris? What did it take to save a life? He thought for one brief, heart-stopping moment, as he took the stand and looked down at his clerks, the court recorder and Carter Johnson, the defendant and plaintiff, all looking up at him, that he could still change his mind: rule in her favor and let all hell break loose. His career was over anyway, what did it matter? But to do this would only prolong the inevitable; Turock would take it to the next court up. Nicole would die, was already dying. If he wanted to save people, he should have become a doctor, a miracle worker. As in every other case, he must follow the law. He looked down at the papers in his hands and read:

  “The Plaintiff, Nicole Greene, suffers from a rare form of leukemia and lymphoma and the prognosis for her survival is dim unless she receives a cord blood transplant from a compatible donor, paving the way for a bone marrow transplant and further treatment. Finding a compatible cord blood donor is especially difficult in her case. After a nationwide search and numerous tests, it has been determined that the Defendant possesses the suitable match from his son Julian’s cord blood. Mr. Wiesenthal refuses the necessary transplant and before this Court is a request for a mandatory injunction that would compel the Defendant to relinquish cord blood against his will.

  “The Plaintiff poses the question of whether, in order to save the life of one of its members by the only means available, society may infringe upon one’s right to his ‘bodily security,’ and further urges, that since the cord blood exists independent of the body, there is no danger involved either to the Defendant or to the Defendant’s son. In brief, the immediate risk to the Plaintiff is in no way matched by an immediate threat to the Defendant.

  “Common law has consistently held to a rule that provides that no human being is under legal compulsion to give aid or to take action to save or rescue another. Precedent was set in England in 1594 when Thomas Aiken witnessed his neighbor fall through the ice and drown, and failed to rescue the man. He could not be prosecuted under a duty to rescue. Volumes have been written about this rule, and its seeming anomaly in a society that believes that justice travels hand in hand with mercy.

  “Ernest Weinrib defends a duty of easy rescue, which would require help provided that (a) the situation is an emergency, and (b) the help would involve no risk and little other cost for the one who gives the help. Does this represent a viable alternative to more conventional forms of legal duties to rescue?

  “The Talmud observes: ‘How do we know that if someone sees his fellow drowning in the river or a wild beast dragging him off, or bandits coming upon him, that he is duty bound to save him? Because it is stated: ‘Do not stand by your brother’s blood.’ (Sanhedrin 73a).

  “Indeed, the common law appears on its surface to be revolting to every moral sense. Further inspection, however, demonstrates that the rule is founded on the very essence of a free society.”

  Katrina Turock capped her pen and sat up straighter. Ari Wiesenthal, not understanding the import of what the judge had just said, continued to slump beside her. His expensive suit looked rumpled, as if he had slept in it.

  “Our society, contrary to many others and contrary to religiously based law, has as its first principle respect for the individual, and a belief that government and law exist to protect the individual and his or her rights. Whether we personally like it or not, the defendant has the legal right to refuse relinquishing the cord blood. Would the court also force his son to undergo a medical procedure, such as a bone marrow or liver transplant? Can the law rule that a part of an individual’s body should be removed and given to another so that the other could live? To do so would defeat the sanctity of the individual. Forcible extraction of body parts in order to privilege the life of one over another causes revulsion to the judicial mind, and raises the specter of the swastika, the gulag, and other horrors.”

  Jay, the husband, threw a desperate look at the judge, but Nicole herself gazed past him, over his right shoulder, either not understanding or past caring what he was saying. A dark-haired woman the judge had never seen before sat next to Nicole, holding her other hand. At least the plaintiff was not alone.

  “Ours is a court of equity,” said the judge. “Equity follows the law but acts on the person. There is no question that this case acts not only on the person of Nicole Greene but on the very fiber of family relations and human decency. Every case involves people. The law is the energy of the living world, and it flows from and to the people.

  “The defendant, Ari Wiesenthal, declares in effect that he can do wrong and not be liable to the person he has wronged. He thus urges a momentous exception to the accepted proposition that in law there can be no wrong without remedy. The remedy in this case rests entirely in his hands, and the court would urge him to consider this long and carefully. He must take full responsibility for his decision. He dare not refuse lightly. But for our law to compel the Defendant forcibly would change every concept and principle upon which our society stands. Morally, the decision rests with the Defendant, and in the view of the court, the refusal of the Defendant is morally indefensible. He must live with the ramifications of a choice that dooms a family member, a choice made even against the will of his own young son. The power to change still resides with him.”

  The judge let his words rest a moment, as he let his gaze rest on Ari Wiesenthal. Ari’s arms were folded tightly across his chest, his eyes were closed; his face was drawn and tight. This was easy for no one, Sol thought. He might as well get it over with.

  “This court makes no commen
t on the law regarding the Plaintiff’s rights in an action at law for damages, but has no choice but to deny the requested equitable relief. An Order will be entered denying the request for a mandatory injunction.”

  He banged the gavel down once. “Case dismissed.”

  Jay began to weep and gathered his wife into his arms as if she were a bundle of flowers, kissing her face and hair. She no longer looked frightened; if he didn’t know better, in the glimpse Sol had through the husband’s embrace, she seemed instead almost relieved. The resemblance to his own red-haired daughter made him weak at the knees. How had this happened, how? A beaming Katrina Turock stuck out her hand to shake Ari’s, but he looked uncomprehendingly past it to the weeping man and his cousin, stunned. It looked for all the world as if he, and not she, had been handed a death sentence.

  Ari had begun parking farther and farther away from the courthouse. At the start of the case he’d slipped his BMW into whatever spot was closest to the big, squat-looking building—not as impressive as you’d hope a Supreme Court might be. It looked like an ordinary dull office building. Even the Glen Cove City Central School offices near his house had a much finer edifice, complete with ivy-covered walls and a long, wide walkway leading up to marble stairs. If not for the official Supreme Court seals over the front entrance, you could have been walking into almost any public building—an airport, corporate headquarters, one of those large auto-supply centers he used to visit with his father on the Lower East Side.

  But as the case went on, Ari came to regard the building with dread. He even dreamed about it, nightmares in which he wandered around the halls, lost, trying to make a phone call from one broken pay phone after another. It frightened him in real life. He hated the long dreary walk approaching the front stairs. He had learned to avoid glancing at the white-and-red Long Island News van parked near the curb. A burning rose in his stomach as the familiar statue of Columbus approached, as the American flag drew bigger and closer. That was how it felt to Ari—as if the building were striding toward him, not as if he walked toward the building.

  So he’d begun to park a few blocks down, on a neighboring street. Then he parked a few blocks farther away, telling himself he needed the exercise. If it rained, he brought an umbrella. If the sun shone, he wore sunglasses. Lately he’d taken to parking in a strip mall a quarter of a mile away from the courthouse, a run-down open-air mall containing nothing but an empty storefront, a Dunkin’ Donuts, a dry cleaner, and a real estate office that never seemed to get any business. His own office was thriving, despite the bad press.

  “The only bad publicity is no publicity,” his partner told him. “We’re in people’s minds now. They see the name, they remember it.” But Ari noticed they’d pushed his large, framed, smiling photograph to one of the back offices, and replaced it with an oil painting of seagulls.

  On the morning of the judge’s decision—a mild February day, warm enough to lull you into thinking spring had come—Ari had parked the BMW between the cleaner’s and the real estate office, stopped, and bought himself a coffee and a bag of doughnut holes. He threw both away before he even left the strip mall. His mouth felt dry; he could not swallow. He squared his shoulders, in imitation of his father, and trudged toward his fate.

  Two hours later, when he should have felt vindicated, when it was all over and he had run the final gauntlet of the cameras and reporters—there was no keeping them off this one last time—the walk back to his car seemed to stretch for miles. Jay’s sobs echoed in his ears. His wife and son’s betrayal still stung him, but what he pictured most vividly was his cousin Nicole, staring straight ahead, with that strange look of triumph and release on her face. She seemed to be gasping for air slightly, but that was not uncommon for her these days. She was drowning in her own death. He saw it. He might as well have said yes to the contract and walked away a hero, he thought. She’d never have lived past the filling out of the paperwork releasing the cord blood.

  But then again, she might. He did not want to be both a villain and a fool. The nausea that had been with him all day worsened as he approached his car. It churned at the back of his throat. He feared he would actually be sick.

  The sugary, powdery smell from the Dunkin’ Donuts was so potent that he hurried into his car, put it into reverse, and drove straight back into a smiling woman standing behind his car. She appeared out of nowhere. He had a vivid image of her, smiling, falling straight down, and then there was a horrible crunching sound, as of bones splintering. No cry, no call for help.

  He slammed on the brakes and leaped out of the car, expecting to see blood splattered all over the lot. His life was over. In ruins. He had managed to murder two women in a single day. With a macabre burst of memory he found himself thinking of the old fairy tale “Seven at One Blow.” He tottered back behind his car, bracing himself for the worst, and found a life-size cardboard image of a female realtor mounted on a shattered piece of wood. The name of the real estate agency he’d parked near was emblazoned over her chest like a Miss America banner. Her image was cracked, split in two diagonally, but she was still smiling.

  He dragged it upright and leaned it against the real estate office. No one had seen him, no one else had noticed. What kind of a moron puts something like that out in a parking lot, he thought, but he was already back in the car, his gloved hands shaking so badly he could not drive. He sat for several minutes, his heart still slamming, adrenaline coursing through his system like a poison. When he looked down at his gloves—they were high-quality Italian black leather gloves, decorated all over with tiny holes, like hundreds of puncture wounds—he saw the strange black-gloved hands of a killer.

  SPRING 2012

  The Hardest Thing

  Of course Daisy knew that her mother was sick—she was not stupid, and besides it had now been in all the papers. Nicole could not prevent Daisy’s friends from talking about that. She couldn’t stop the teachers from cornering Daisy in the hall and murmuring their concern. Nor could she do anything to blunt Daisy’s own powers of observation. If she had a doctor’s appointment, Daisy seemed almost to smell it; if Nicole felt tired, or depressed, or frightened, or in pain, Daisy would offer to rub her shoulders or her back. She did not want her daughter to become her keeper, and Daisy was inclined that way, always had been. She bandaged Barbies, put them into their Barbie beds, and took their temperatures with a play thermometer. Daisy took the ones with half-chewed arms from the discards of her friends, and tried to nurse them back to health. As a result she had an odd assortment of dolls, to say the least. Jay and Nicole secretly called them One-Legged Barbie, Bite Victim Barbie (a friend’s dog had left bite marks all over one arm), Amputee Ken, and so on. Nicole tried to be grateful for the times her daughter hung on her neck, and not to feel hurt when, as happened more and more these days, Daisy stayed away, tiptoeing out of the room to the safety of her father’s robust good health and lively company.

  With Jay she had the opposite problem. He was always on her, at her, he seemed to need to be touching her, as if to reassure himself that she was still there. They still hungered for each other, but she found herself exhausted and depleted afterward, as if she might never rise back up again into her body. He seemed to harbor the illusion that he could love her back to health. But she hurt a good deal of the time. Her chest ached, her stomach throbbed, all of her joints felt rusty. Her mouth and throat stung from sores.

  These days she preferred to lie snuggled up against him, or simply holding his hand, that last bastion of strength and safety. She would will herself to stay up all night long, at least one night, gazing into his sleeping face. But then, sometime around four or five in the morning, close to dawn, she would give herself over to sleep, and when she woke again, Jay and Daisy were already gone for the day.

  At least now she had Mimi to talk to again, or more important, to listen to—her beautiful corny jokes, the sound of her calm voice at the other end of a phone. An oasis in a desert. Her best friend was back in place, and
that was serious comfort. Mimi, Jay, Daisy, Julian. But it was a lonely business, this dying. You had to leave the world unescorted—no matter how much the people around you loved you, no matter how hard they clung to you, or you to them. The clinging sometimes made it worse. Nicole turned to the company of acquaintances when the pain of leaving all this behind overwhelmed her, where there were no threads to disentangle, no ties to bind her. She stayed in touch with Ruby, Darnell’s mother. Darnell and Daisy were as unalike as two third-graders could be, but ever since kindergarten they had gotten along—and they had always ended up in the same class. Darnell acted out a lot—“He doesn’t always listen,” Daisy would report disapprovingly—but he was sweet-tempered, and as Daisy said, “He’s funny.” The class clown, just as Ruby had predicted all those years ago.

  If Ruby also remembered talking about the woman who had been diagnosed with cancer when her child was in kindergarten and died a few years later, she never mentioned it. Nor did she try to pretend that Nicole was healthy, or just “tuckered out,” as many of the other mothers did. They’d invent some excuse for the way Nicole looked, or simply sidle away, avoiding her on the school playground where she came to pick Daisy up. She didn’t have the energy to stand there for hours, like the other mothers, so she just sank down on the edge of the sandlot, watching Daisy run. Sometimes playing on the swings with her best friend, Claudia, sometimes chasing Darnell through the jungle gym. Nicole would lie in bed all day, reserving her strength so she could get up and do that one simple task, to be a human being for her daughter after school.