by Cindy Rizzo
“Family of choice is the term, I believe,” said Ruth. “For many LGBT people, it’s the only family they have or can rely upon.”
Elizabeth smiled. “LGBT. Aren’t you up on all the current terminology? Must come from having children.”
“Yes, that and also wanting to be a responsible member of the community, just the way I’ve been as a Russian Jewish immigrant.”
“I have to admit, I’ve been somewhat remiss in that area. Remember when we’d sit for hours in that bookstore in Northampton, learning how to be lesbians from books?”
Ruth chuckled. “Well, at the risk of raising a sensitive topic, that wasn’t the only way we learned about being lesbians.”
Elizabeth was quiet for a few seconds. It had been her fault this time, harkening back to their relationship in college. She turned when she felt Ruth’s hand on her arm.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I promised myself that I’d stop apologizing to you, and now here I am about to say I’m sorry once again.”
“No, this time it was me. I was just trying to say that I haven’t been tuned in to anything having to do with the gay cause in a long time. People ask me, but I tell them I’m too busy. Truthfully, all of my so-called free time goes to Fowler or whatever social engagements I have to attend in connection with the company. What about you?”
“I can’t do too much because of my position. I’m always worried that I’ll have to recuse myself from some case because of a conflict of interest. So I’m careful. But there’s this little group of Russian gays and lesbians that’s started up here, both Jews and non-Jews. We do some social things together and try to stay connected with activists in Russia.”
“There’s a gay movement there?”
“It’s small and very cautious, but yes. I don’t know if I could ever be that brave.”
The word stopped them both. Ruth bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. Elizabeth had to remember to breathe as the memory of their first kiss flooded her consciousness. It was no use. They couldn’t escape their past. They couldn’t step around it as if it were some kind of muddy ground to be avoided after a rainstorm. Both of them were too easily slipping back into the muck no matter how much they tried not to.
“Let’s get some food into you,” Elizabeth said at last. “It’s ridiculously overpriced but you can’t argue with the view.”
Elizabeth always savored that first juicy bite of a cheeseburger. If she had one guilty pleasure when it came to food, this was it. She watched as Ruth devoured a chicken sandwich. They had seated themselves next to one another so that they could both look out past the West Side Highway to the Hudson River, its surface shimmering as the sun dipped lower.
“I guess I was really hungry,” said Ruth as she patted her lips with a napkin.
“Have some of these too.” Elizabeth moved her plate of French fries in Ruth’s direction.
“I wanted to ask you about something, but you should tell me if it’s not a subject you want to discuss with me.”
That could be many things, thought Elizabeth. She nodded for Ruth to continue.
“What happened with you and the woman in the picture from the Times Magazine article?”
Elizabeth put her burger back on the plate.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to get into it with me.”
Elizabeth sat back. There was no reason not to.
“It’s all right. Her name was, or is, Gretchen Czernak. We were together five years. I’m the one who ended it a few years ago.”
Ruth was quiet, but it was clear from her direct gaze that she wanted Elizabeth to go on. They’d both abandoned their food and any interest they had in the view.
“I thought it was time that I take a leap of faith and try to be in a real relationship.” She stopped herself from saying “again.” “Gretchen’s a lovely woman: attractive, smart, interesting. But for me, there was always an element of effort, of wanting something to fit with more ease than seemed possible. Even in the early months, it was clear to me that she felt more for me than I did for her, especially after she said ‘I love you’ and I was unable to reciprocate. In some ways it would have been easy to say it. I did love her, but when you say those words to someone, well…”
“It means you’re in love with them,” Ruth said.
“Yes, and I knew I wasn’t. Anyway, things were at a kind of a standstill, and then September 11th happened.”
Elizabeth recounted the events of that day and how grateful and relieved she’d been to find out Gretchen was alive.
“An event like that changes you. And I thought for a little while afterward that maybe I had at last fallen in love with Gretchen. But within a year, I felt like I was back to where I’d been beforehand.”
Ruth put her hand over Elizabeth’s. “We all thought that after that day the world could never be the same again. I remember reading an article that fall about this concept of social capital. The writer predicted that after September 11th the bonds between people living in the city would strengthen. It sure felt like it at the time. I was living near Gramercy Park then and everyone was talking and sharing food, checking up on one another. But once the holidays came and went, it seemed to fade away.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “and all we were left with was one collective case of PTSD and the requirement that we remove our shoes in the airport.” She shook her head. “Did you get caught up in it that day working in lower Manhattan?”
“I never made it there. I was alone at home. Lauren was already safely away at Brown, and Mark had left for school earlier that morning. He was a senior at Stuyvesant that year.”
“Stuyvesant High School? Isn’t it right down there?”
She nodded. “Yes, but everything seemed normal when I sent him off to school. I wasn’t sitting in trial that day, so I planned to do a little work at home and then walk down to the courthouse later to meet with my clerks.”
She looked up at the clear sky above the Hudson River. “It was such a beautiful day.” She shook her head. “The next thing I knew Bennett was on the phone, frantic. He told me that both buildings had been hit and I ran to turn on the TV. We were beside ourselves about Mark, and to make matters worse, Helena was down in that area working on an apartment. Bennett said he was going out to find them just as we saw on TV that the first building had fallen. I tried Mark’s cell, but nothing was going through.”
“You must have been…”
“The same as you were about Gretchen. It turned out that Mark and many of the other students could see everything that was happening from their classroom window. After the first building collapsed, they were evacuated. He barely escaped being caught up in the force of the cloud from the second one. I guess based on your experience, you know how relieved I was when he got home.”
“And Helena?”
“Turns out she was across the highway in Battery Park City. Close by, but far enough out of the danger zone. She stopped at my house first to check on Mark and then we all ended up there for the night. I don’t think anyone wanted to leave him for a second.”
Elizabeth was suddenly exhausted. She looked out across the river at the buildings on the New Jersey side, struck by the fact that she and Ruth had shared such similar emotions that day.
“So can I ask you how you finally ended things with Gretchen?”
Elizabeth turned back toward Ruth. For some reason that wasn’t completely clear, this story was important to her.
“Well, as I said, the effects of September 11th turned out to be temporary. Gretchen wanted us to live together. She was hoping to move in with me. But I made a hundred excuses about why the time wasn’t right or how unnecessary it was. She had a key to my place and could come by whenever she wanted. But of course, that was her whole argument in favor. She didn’t think it made sense to continue t
o have a separate apartment. The truth was, by then, I was pulling away, growing more emotionally distant from her, using work as an excuse. My uncle made the decision to retire in 2003 and we went public with his intention a year in advance. I never wanted that photo in the Times Magazine article. It was so misleading and all it served to do was give Gretchen a sense of false hope.”
Ruth tugged at Elizabeth’s wrist.
“Come let’s walk. We can watch the sunset and you can finish.”
“Ruth, this was not my finest moment. It wasn’t the best way to handle things, drawing the end out like a slow leak. Finally Gretchen confronted me in tears, wanting me to explain what was going on. I told her it had been over for me for a while. Such a tired line. Probably the result of spending too much time watching sappy movies when I was a teenager.”
Ruth placed her hand on Elizabeth’s back. It felt so good, so right. Elizabeth had to stop herself from folding her body into Ruth’s.
“Are you still in contact with her?”
“No. I found out recently she was offered a full professorship at Washington University in St. Louis and took it, presumably to be near her brother. Besides, even if she had stayed in New York, I’d be the last person she’d want to have anything to do with. And yes, the irony of the situation is not lost on me.”
“I didn’t say…”
“You know what Margaret used to call Gretchen? Ruth Lite.”
“Oh, Elizabeth, you know Margaret. What did you used to say about her? No pause button.”
“Except in this case she was right. Gretchen was enough like you to capture my interest, but not enough to hold it. She lacked, I don’t know, an inner strength of some kind. She couldn’t deal with Margaret at all. Which of course just made Margaret…”
“Turn up the volume, right?”
“Yes, up to the torture zone. You never let her get away with it, even when you were still in your quiet and shy period.”
“It was the only way to gain her respect.”
“Which Gretchen never earned. And I noticed. Also, she was a little bit of a princess. She couldn’t boil water or negotiate her way around the city. She hated New York. And the movies, she never wanted to go.”
“Tragic,” said Ruth, who then smiled at her. “I believe that’s a major violation in the Elizabeth Morrison Book of Life.”
“Sadly that’s true. I tried to tell myself that none of it mattered, but you can only lie to yourself for so long.”
“You get no argument from me on that point. It all eventually floats to the top.”
They watched the sun sink lower behind the New Jersey side of the river. It was a magnificent sight—the large ball of bright orange creating bands of more muted colors stretching up into the sky. Elizabeth took a small step so that the side of her body touched Ruth’s. Ruth raised her arm and placed it around Elizabeth’s shoulders pulling her even closer. Neither of them took their eyes off the horizon. Elizabeth wondered if Ruth could hear her heart beating.
It was Ruth who finally spoke.
“So a few weeks after September 11th, I called Morrison Publishing and asked for you. I had to make sure you were still alive, even though I was certain if anything had happened to you, I would have seen it in the papers. I managed to get all the way to your assistant even though I wouldn’t give anyone my name. She said you were in a meeting and could she take a message. Of course, that’s when I hung up.”
Elizabeth let out a staccato burst of laughter.
“Oh Ruth, Ruth, Ruth. We are both so pitiful. I did the exact same thing. I called the courthouse and was told you were in a pretrial hearing, whatever that is.”
“Motions,” she said.
“Yes, of course. How fitting. Going through the motions.”
Elizabeth sat at the small round table in the corner of her office across from Reese. She’d moved their meetings away from the imposing dark wood barrier of her desk to an area where they could be on a more equal footing, to the extent that was even possible. She was working to bring Reese closer to her in every way—physically, professionally, and personally. If she was going to broach the topic of what Ruth had called “chosen family” she thought she needed to tone down the whole Queen Elizabeth persona.
It was increasingly clear that Reese had become so much more to her than an employee or even a protégé. Elizabeth cared deeply about whether Reese was happy in all aspects of her life. It was as close to a definition of maternal love as she could come up with. And each day it felt more and more genuine and real.
Reese looked up from the notes she’d been taking. “I need to switch the monthly fiction catalogue meeting from next Tuesday. I told Jaret I’d go with her to this ACLU thing. Her law firm bought a table that they need to fill.”
“Next Tuesday? It’s a dinner?”
“Yes. Her firm, Beyer Novack, does some pro bono work with them. You know how these charity events go.”
“Unfortunately, yes. Just out of curiosity, where is this dinner?”
“I think somewhere near South Street Seaport, why?”
Elizabeth leaned back and sighed. “Because Ruth asked me to go with her to that same event and I told her I’d think about it.”
“Really? Why don’t you? I mean, if you can. I’d be so grateful if you were there. These things can be mega-boring, especially with lawyers. And I have to sit there all night and play the part of the good little wifey.”
Elizabeth smiled. “At least you know the part you’re playing. I’m at a loss to figure out mine.”
“Are you seeing each other regularly? Like dating?”
“Reese, I’ve tried on every word to describe what’s going on between us and none of them fits, especially not dating. But also, not friend, certainly not lover. We’re in this place that defies definition.”
“Why can’t that be okay for now?”
“It could be, if it was someone else. But not with Ruth.”
“Well, maybe this dinner will help clarify things one way or the other.”
“I think that’s what I’m afraid of. The whole reason she’s going is because her daughter is an attorney for the ACLU and she’s being recognized for her work on a case. Her ex-husband will be there along with his wife and other friends. It’s a big step.”
“But maybe a necessary one.”
Elizabeth had settled on a reliable summer-weight, little black dress: knee length, tight fitting, and with a short strand of pearls accenting the top. She decided to wear her hair down to soften the look. This event was not a command performance for Queen Elizabeth.
Max pulled the car in front of Ruth’s building in Tribeca and got out to open the door for her. Elizabeth observed her from the backseat of the car. She was dressed in a pair of fancier black slacks and a creme-colored notched collar jacket with thin black piping, a silk white blouse underneath. Elizabeth couldn’t take her eyes off her.
She watched as Ruth put out her hand to Max, who looked a little confused, but then offered his in return. “Hi. I’m Ruth Abramson. Thank you so much for driving all the way over here to get me.”
“Uh, Ms. Morrison said you were coming with her tonight.”
“Actually, Max,” said Elizabeth, “I’m going with Ruth. Hi there. You look wonderful. That’s a beautiful jacket.”
After thanking Max one more time, Ruth bent down and got in the car. As she took her seat, she turned and leaned toward Elizabeth but then drew back.
She stopped herself from kissing me hello, thought Elizabeth. A feeling of surprise was quickly replaced with one of disappointment.
“Wow,” said Ruth, breathing out the word. “You look… You’re stunning.”
“Well, I didn’t want the people in your life to think you were bringing some vagabond to this event.”
The venue was typical for this kind of thing—large chandeliers and round tables set for ten. Three bars were set up against walls. Thankfully, there were no name tags, just a little white card Ruth had been handed with their table number.
“Mom, Mom, over here!”
Ruth pointed to their left. “Oh there’s Lauren.”
The hair was Ruth’s—dark, thick, and wavy—but the face was Bennett’s, at least that’s what Elizabeth thought from the pictures she’d seen. She’d know for sure in a few minutes.
“Mom, cool jacket.”
Ruth turned to Elizabeth. “She was with me when I bought it. It pays to have a daughter with a little fashion sense. Lauren, this is Elizabeth Morrison.”
Lauren’s smile filled her face. She grasped Elizabeth’s arms. “Wow, you’re gorgeous. Even better than in your pictures.”
Ruth cleared her throat.
“And this is Helena and Bennett. I’d like you both to meet Elizabeth Morrison.”
Lauren’s face was indeed Bennett’s. The light eyes, mouth broader than Ruth’s, and wider nose. He wasn’t very tall. In her heels, she matched his height. He still had a beard, but it was trimmed back with flecks of gray. Helena was quite striking. Chestnut hair with reddish highlights reached past her shoulders. The forest-green sleeveless dress suited her color well. She greeted Elizabeth with a light kiss on the cheek.
A few seconds later, she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see a tall man with close-cropped hair and another man beside him.
“Ah, the mysterious Elizabeth Morrison, we meet at last,” he said. The voice was familiar, but Elizabeth couldn’t place it.
“Paul. Kosei,” said Ruth as she leaned over to hug the two men who had joined them. “I’m so glad you’re here.”