“I wouldn’t stoop to that,” Bradford Coleman said quietly, “and I think you know that. I wish you worked in our office, instead of for the public defender. I’d like to be on the same side of a case with you sometime. We could do one hell of a lot of damage to the opposition.”
She had to smile at what he said, and she was flattered by his words, but she didn’t go to dinner. She knew he was a widower and he had kids, and she knew he was universally liked. But all she could see when she saw him was her opponent. She never allowed herself to see more than that, until they were once again adversaries in a notorious case that had been smeared all over the papers. It was a big murder case, and unfortunately, the press had grabbed on to it, and were making as much of it as they could, and it was very ugly. A young girl was involved, accused of murdering her mother’s lover. She said the lover had tried to rape her, but there was no evidence of it, and the mother sided against her. The testimony was long and arduous in that trial, the lawyers’ tactics brutal, and then halfway through the trial, Bradford Coleman had come to her, quietly, simply, and told her that due to new evidence, he had come to believe that her client wasn’t guilty. He asked for a recess, and became the champion of the young girl’s cause. It was his skill and his careful investigation that had freed the girl, Pilar always said, not her own work. She had gotten nowhere. And it was then that they had finally had dinner. After three long years. Nothing ever came easily to them, or quickly.
His children had been thirteen and ten by then. Nancy was thirteen, and Todd ten, and from the moment they met Pilar, they resisted the idea that she was going out with their father. Their mother had been dead for five years and they had had Brad exclusively to themselves ever since then. They had no intention of giving him up, even part time, to another woman. At first, the children made life difficult for them, and although Brad and Pilar really were just friends, the children still sensed that something more might develop, and they wanted to stop it. Brad was deeply saddened by their attitude, but Pilar was only sorry for him. Whether it be her or someone else, he needed something more in his life than his work and his children. And the more she came to know him, the more she respected him, the more impressed she was with his mind and his skill and his soul, his unfailing sense of fairness and integrity. He was even more remarkable than people had told her.
And before she knew it, she was head over heels in love with him and he with her, and they had no idea what to do about his children.
“Never mind your children, what about my work? I can’t take cases against you anymore, Brad. It wouldn’t be ethical … or good for us.” Eventually, he agreed with her, and they disqualified themselves when they were slated against each other on a case, and within a year, she went into general private practice and she loved it. He eventually went into private practice as well, and their lives were busy and full, and in the end, even the children got used to their relationship. And little by little, the children grew fond of her, and came to accept her. It had been a long, hard war to win them over to her, but when Nancy was sixteen and Todd thirteen, three years after their romance had begun, Pilar Graham moved in with Bradford Coleman.
They bought a new house in Montecito eventually, and the children grew up. Nancy went off to college, and Todd to boarding school, and by then friends had stopped asking them when they were going to get married. They saw no need for it. They had his children, and Pilar had never wanted any of her own. She felt no need to have a piece of paper to prove anything, Pilar explained when pressed. As far as she was concerned, she was married to Brad in her heart, and that was the only place that mattered.
They went on that way, comfortably, for thirteen years, and when Brad was sixty-one, and Pilar forty-two, he was appointed judge of the Superior Court of Santa Barbara. And suddenly they both realized that it could become awkward for him to be living with a woman to whom he wasn’t married. Particularly if the press made an issue of it, which they might. They’d already made several comments.
Pilar looked crestfallen as they discussed it one morning over breakfast. “Do you think I should move out?”
He sat back in his chair, holding the New York Times and looking amused as he looked at her. She was as pretty at forty-two as she had been at twenty-six, the first time she was his opponent in the courtroom. “Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”
“Well, I don’t want to cause trouble for you.” She looked very upset as she poured them both another cup of coffee.
“Can’t you think of another solution, counselor? I can.”
“What?” She looked blank. She really couldn’t.
“I’m glad you’re not my attorney, Ms. Graham. Has it ever occurred to you that we could get married? Or if you still have an aversion to that idea, I don’t know why our living together has to create any real scandal. I’m sure judges are allowed to live with people too. They’re only human.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you.” He had such a spotless reputation, it seemed foolish to hurt it.
“Then what about marriage?”
She was silent for a long time as she looked out at the sea. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it … or not in a long time anyway. Have you?”
“No, because you never wanted to. But I could have.” He had always wanted to marry her, but she had always been so determined to stay free, to be two separate entities side by side or intertwined, but not “swallowed up by each other” or “devoured,” as she used to put it. And at first, of course, his children might have objected, but no more. Nancy had married the year before and was twenty-six years old by then, and Todd was twenty-three, a grown man, and working in Chicago. “Would it be so terrible to be married now?” he asked with a shy smile, and Pilar hesitated before she answered.
“At our age?” She looked genuinely startled, as though he had suggested something truly odd, like leaping out of an airplane with a parachute, something she had never even considered.
“Is there an age limit on it now? I had no idea,” he teased, and she smiled.
“Okay, okay …” She sighed and leaned back in her chair again. “I don’t know … it just scares me. Everything has been so wonderful for all these years, why change it now? What if it ruins everything?”
“You always say that. But why would it do that? Would you change? Would I?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at him seriously. “Would you?”
“Why should I, Pilar? I love you. I’d like nothing better than to marry you, and maybe this is just the excuse we needed.”
“But why? Other than your appointment to the bench, of course. What’s the point? What difference will it make to anyone? And why is it anyone’s business?”
“It isn’t. It’s our business. But I want you to be my wife.” He leaned toward her and took her hands in his and then he kissed her. “I love you, Pilar Graham. I will love you till the day I die. I would like you to become my wife, whether I am on the bench or not. What do you think about that?”
“I think you’re crazy.” She smiled at him, and then kissed him again. “Too much stress at the office. Besides, I like being a little out of the ordinary. I liked having gray hair when I was twenty-five, I never minded not having children when everyone else had one in a backpack and another one in a stroller, I like working for a living, and I don’t mind not being married.”
“Why not? You should be ashamed to be living in sin like this. Have you no conscience?”
“None whatsoever. They forced me to give it up when I passed the bar.”
“I always knew that about you. Well, give it some thought now,” he had suggested casually. And that had been just before Christmas. And for the next six months they had discussed it and talked about it, and argued over it, and he had finally sworn that he wouldn’t marry her if she begged him. And one evening in May she totally amazed him.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said as she made him an espresso after dinner.
“About what?” He didn’t know what she was saying.
“About us.” He waited for a beat, suddenly worried. She was very independent, and she was capable of anything, any wild decision she had come to on her own and then decided was important. “I think we should get married.” She looked matter-of-fact and handed him his coffee, but he was too startled to take it as he stared at her.
“You what? After all those arguments you gave me over Christmas … what in God’s name made you change your mind?”
“Nothing. I just decided that you might be right, and it might be time.” She had thought about it a lot, and it was hard to admit to him that somewhere deep inside of her there was suddenly a yearning … to be his … to be part of him … forever …
“Whatever made you think that?”
“I don’t know.” She looked noncommittal and he grinned.
“You’re crazy, you know. Completely crazy. And I love you.” He came around the counter and took her in his arms and kissed her. “I love you very, very much, whether you marry me or not. Do you want some more time to think about this?”
“I think you’d better not give me much time.” She grinned. “I might change my mind. I think we’d better get it over with quickly.” She made it sound difficult and painful.
“I promise I’ll make it as easy as I can.” He was ecstatic. They picked a date in June and called the children, who were thrilled, too, and they promised to come, whenever it was. They seemed sincerely happy for them. They picked ten couples who meant a great deal to them, and a few unattached friends, her law partners, two of his colleagues, among them Marina Goletti, Pilar’s best friend, to perform the ceremony, and of course, Pilar’s mother. Both of Brad’s parents had been dead for years and Pilar’s mother was a widow. She lived and worked in New York, but she had promised to come out for the wedding, “if you go through with it,” she said skeptically, which suitably annoyed her daughter.
But true to his word, Brad handled everything, and had his secretary send out the invitations. All Pilar had to do was find a dress, and she, her stepdaughter, Nancy, and Marina Goletti went shopping for it. Pilar was so unglued by the whole idea that the other two almost had to try dresses on for her. But in the end, she found a beautiful Mary McFadden gown of tiny ivory silk pleats, and she looked like a Greek goddess when she put it on. And when the day came, she wore her hair up, with soft tendrils falling near her face, and tiny white flowers woven into it. She looked exquisite, and as she turned to their guests after the ceremony, she looked ecstatic.
“See, it wasn’t so bad,” Brad whispered to her, as they stood slightly apart, watching their friends have a good time. As always, there was a silent, peaceful bond between them. They had an understanding that had surpassed everything for the past thirteen years; opposition and stress and fear and loneliness and hatred. It was a band of love that brought them together and kept them there, against life’s winds, safe in each other’s harbor. “Did you do it for me, or for them?” he asked gently.
“It’s funny,” she said quietly. “I did it for myself, in the end.” She hadn’t meant to tell him that, but it seemed right now. “All of a sudden I just needed to be married to you, and I knew it.”
“That’s a nice thing to say.” He took a step closer to her and held her close to him. “I needed to be married to you, too, Pilar. I have for a long time. But I didn’t want to press you.”
“You’ve always been so good to me about that. It means a lot to me. I guess I just needed time.” She smiled sheepishly and he laughed. It was a good thing she had never wanted children. If they had to wait another thirteen years for them, it could have been quite a problem.
“This is the right time,” he said gently. “This is when it was meant to be. I love you.” As he said it, he looked down at her, puzzled. “Who are you, by the way? Mrs. Coleman? Or Miss Graham?”
“I hadn’t thought about that. I’m not sure that at my age I could change it. Forty-two years as Graham is a little hard to wipe out in a single afternoon.” She saw something sad but resigned in his eyes then. “But on the other hand … maybe in another thirteen years … tell you what, why not go for the big time?”
“Coleman?” He looked amazed and touched. It had been an extraordinary day in their household.
“Mrs. Coleman,” she said softly. “Pilar Coleman.” She smiled at him, looking like a young girl, and he kissed her again and then led her back to their friends in the midst of celebration.
“Congratulations, Pilar,” her mother said, as she smiled at her over a glass of champagne, which she held in a graceful hand. Elizabeth Graham was still beautiful at sixty-seven. She had been practicing neurology in New York for nearly forty years, and she had no other children. Pilar’s father had been a justice of the New York Court of Appeals, and had been killed at the height of his career in a plane crash, while Pilar was in law school.
“You surprised us all today,” her mother said coolly, and Pilar smiled at her. She had matured enough over the years not to take the bait or lose her temper when her mother goaded her, which she seemed to do fairly often.
“Life is full of wonderful surprises.” Pilar smiled at Brad, and over his shoulder at Marina. Since the first moment they’d met, when Pilar came to Santa Barbara, Marina Goletti had been like a mother to her, and it meant a lot to Pilar that it had been Marina who performed their wedding. She was one of Brad’s colleagues on the bench, but she had been Pilar’s friend long, long before that. They had worked together in the public defender’s office for six months, and then Marina had become a judge. But by then, she was already a dear friend, and a substitute for the mother Pilar had never been close to.
Pilar’s relationship with her mother had always been strained, and it was no secret to anyone that Pilar had almost never seen her parents. They were busy with their careers, and Pilar had found herself sent away to boarding school at the age of seven. She was brought home on holidays and “grilled,” as she had described it to Brad, about what she had learned, how fluent was her French, and would she please explain the reason for her most recent math grade. They were strangers to her, although her father had at least made some small effort during their vacations. But even he had very little to say to her, he was far too involved in his work, as was her mother. She had made it clear to Pilar at an early age that what she did with her patients was far more important than any involvement she might have with her only daughter.
“I could never understand why they had children,” she had told Brad from the first. “I was never sure if I was a mistake, or just an experiment that hadn’t worked out for them. But whatever I was, it was always clear that I was not exactly what they had wanted. My father was relieved when I went into law. I think it was the first time he was actually reassured that they hadn’t made a terrible mistake having me in the first place. They didn’t even bother to come to my graduations before that. And of course my mother was furious that I wasn’t interested in medicine, but I can’t say she ever made it very appealing.” In effect, Pilar had grown up in schools. She had once jokingly said to one of her law partners that she was institutionalised, just like some of the people she had defended who had grown up in prisons. And for whatever reason, the coolness of her parents’ relationship, their indifference to her, and the politics of her own times had made marriage unappealing to her, and having children something she would never even consider. She didn’t want anyone to live a life like hers, and she had no idea how to bring a child up herself. She had had no example in her own childhood. In fact, it had amazed her when she first saw Brad with his children. He was so natural with them, so open, so unafraid, they talked about everything, and he was so demonstrative, and so easily able to show emotion. Pilar couldn’t even imagine having a relationship like that with anyone, certainly not a child, until little by little, Brad had helped her to open up to what she felt, and share it with those she cared about. In time, she had grown to be completely at ease with his children, and with
him. But it still never led her to want children of her own. And seeing her mother now, even on her wedding day, reminded her again of how deeply her parents had failed her.
“You look lovely today, Pilar,” her mother said awkwardly, almost as though she were speaking to an acquaintance, or a stranger. She was completely unable to let anyone in on the deep mystery of her feelings, or whether she even had any to begin with. “It’s a shame you and Brad are too old to have children.”
Pilar looked at her in complete amazement, unable to believe what she’d just heard. “I can’t believe you said that,” Pilar said so softly that even Brad didn’t hear her. “How dare you make assumptions about our life, or our future?” Her eyes blazed as, from the distance, Marina watched her.
“You know as well as I do that, clinically, you’re hardly a reasonable age to start having children.” Her mother looked cool and professional as Pilar lost the battle over her emotions.
“Women my age have children every day,” Pilar blazed, annoyed at herself for taking the bait again. The last thing in the world she wanted was to have a baby. But on the other hand, her mother had no right to assume that she wouldn’t, or worse yet, shouldn’t. After the little she’d done for her over the years, the least she could do was offer her privacy, and the right to her own choices and opinions.
“Perhaps in California they do, Pilar. But I see those babies every day, damaged, retarded, children with Down syndrome, some with severe abnormalities and complications. Believe me, you don’t want that.”
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