A Perfect Wife and Mother

by Peter Israel

  Richter turned him down.

  And that was all there was to it, Larry told me, has told everybody since. The way they left it, he was to call Richter if he decided to go forward. And if he didn’t? Then—according to Larry—they both agreed that their conversation would never have taken place.

  “Have you talked to him since?” I asked him, that same New Year’s morning.

  “Yeah, I have. But nothing substantive. He called a couple of times last week, wanted to know if I’d made up my mind. He sounded pretty eager. I got the feeling—not in so many words, but that they were already looking at The Cross. But I said I couldn’t do anything, not till this thing with Justie is resolved.”

  “This thing with Justin? Is that what you call it, this thing?”

  No answer.

  According to Larry, he told nobody about Richter, not even Joe Penzil. Not even me. He claims he tried telling me while I was in the hospital, the night I sent him away because of Harriet. Maybe he did, but all I remember is that guilty, sheepdog expression on his face. As far as Joe Penzil went, Joe did know he was under the gun, that The Cross was fucking him, but so did a lot of other people.

  “And what did Joe say?” I asked him.

  Joe’s advice had been not to do anything rash.

  “But you went ahead anyway?”

  “Georgie, how many times do I have to tell you? It was just a fishing expedition.”

  “And the next thing we know, Justin is missing, and now we get a phone call telling you to shut up?”

  “Jesus Christ, we don’t even know if the phone call’s connected. Maybe it’s our own paranoia. For all we know, it was another crank.”

  “But you think it’s connected yourself, don’t you?” I looked at him. “Well, don’t you?”

  No answer.

  But if it was paranoia then, it certainly wasn’t when the second call came, and the third. The telephone, which was my hope—I was absolutely convinced, Monday, that Harriet was going to call—has now become my enemy. I dread its ringing. Once I picked up on him myself. I was sure it was he, even though he hung up as soon as he heard my voice, and sure enough, within minutes, the phone rang again. This time Larry got it, and it was the same message, the same flat voice.

  They’ve sent the tapes off to some lab for voice analysis. I’ve only just found out about it, but apparently, for the last week or so, our phone has been tapped. It seems my dear husband authorized it, via Conforti, the local attorney, and “somehow” they neglected to tell me. Maybe it’s a good thing, although I don’t know what they expect to find from voice analysis that I can’t tell them—that the speaker was (is) white, American, male, working-class, somewhere between thirty and fifty.

  Small world.

  It’s Thursday now, two and a half weeks since Zoe was born, and I ought to be well on my way to recovering. Instead, I’m an emotional wreck. I’m going to see Craig. I called him yesterday, asked if he could fit me into my old Thursday time slot. Yes, he said. Only after I hung up did I wonder if he knows what’s happened to me.

  He must know. If he doesn’t, he must be the last person in the world not to.

  I asked Helen Penzil if she’d come sit with Zoe and the baby nurse while I’m gone. Crazy, I guess—why have a baby nurse in the first place?—but I haven’t been away from Zoe since she was born, and I wouldn’t leave her otherwise.

  So Helen is there, and I’m driving. Everybody was against it—Larry wanted to drive me in, my father offered to come out and get me, my mother insisted I take a taxi—but I don’t care. It’s my first time behind the wheel, my first outing of any kind, and even though I still hurt in my belly, the simple automatic gestures of driving are a kind of liberation. I’m going somewhere, actually doing something, and I guess it’s a measure of how the police can keep developments in a case under wraps when they want to that, when I emerge between the banks of rhododendrons that border our driveway, there’s no longer any gauntlet to run.

  It’s been ten days, ten whole days since the Christmas Kidnapping. That must make it old news.

  Strange, but when I finish telling Craig the story, I find myself tongue-tied. I have no opinions. What’s happened has happened. It just is. My son is missing, thanks in large part to his father, and that’s just the way it is.

  End of subject?

  We stare at each other.

  “I wonder,” Craig says finally, “if you’re not also a little relieved.”

  “Relieved?”

  He nods. “You mentioned how guilty you felt at first. You said you felt responsible in the beginning. It was your fault for having hired Harriet in the first place.”

  “Oh sure!” I exclaim. “To find out that my son was really taken by the Mafia or some Colombian drug cartel instead of a twenty-one-year-old woman? That comes as a great relief.”

  Maybe I’m exaggerating a little—as always, Craig’s obtuseness irritates me beyond belief—but am I really? Yesterday morning, I heard Karnishak, the FBI man, say it right in Larry’s face: “If what you’re telling us now is true, Larry, then the list of possible perpetrators might be as long as your Rolodex.” Larry had been alluding to dirty money, but when Karnishak tried prodding him on details, Larry kept breaking it off to huddle with Conforti, the local attorney who’s supposedly representing us, and, once, for a phone conversation with Joe Penzil. I stood it as long as I could. Then, in front of everybody, I shouted at him, “How dare you? Isn’t it a little late to worry about incriminating yourself, or slandering somebody, or whatever it is you’re so worried about? Our son’s life is at stake!”

  I know he’s since talked to Richter, the Department of Justice lawyer, and that some kind of investigation is in progress. But so far it’s given nothing.

  Oh yes, great relief.

  But Craig only gazes at me, with all the affect of a Wrigley’s chewing gum ad.

  He actually does chew gum, on occasion.

  A reformed smoker? Who knows?

  “I feel like such a fool,” I say.

  “Why is that?”

  “I’ll tell you why.” I realize I’m gritting my teeth. “Do you know what my husband is saying now? That he’s taking ‘full responsibility.’ Oh yes. He admits that he brought it down on us—unintentionally, he says—and the only way he can live with that is by doing whatever he has to to get Justin released, whether that means keeping his mouth shut or pointing some fingers.”

  “But why should that make you feel foolish?”

  “Because they’ve taken over my house! The downstairs anyway. You should see them. They’ve turned the den into Mission Control, and he’s the one in charge. They’re all in there, he and the police, the FBI, the lawyer, all huddled together as though it’s first and ten at the Super Bowl—” I see him as I say it, head lowered, damned fingers twiddling at his hair—“except he’s the quarterback, and they’re all explaining the plays to him, his options.”

  “That sounds more like resentment to me,” Craig says mildly.

  “Resentment? Of course I resent it! I’m furious! I now think he did something crooked, whatever he says, and now we’re all paying for it. But there he is, Mr. Take-Charge, taking ‘full responsibility.’”

  Craig says nothing. I glare at him. I’ve already had this conversation with my father. He said, “There’s no law that says a psychoanalyst has to be a genius, Georgie,” and I said, “But there’s no law he has to be a schmuck either.” And a pretty one besides. Because he is pretty, in a very Wasp-y way. Not much older than I am, if at all. Sandy hair, blue eyes, the rugged, denim-shirted, tweed-jacketed type. Could be a model—for Wrigley’s.

  I had my father check him out at the beginning. He came out of Payne-Whitney, impeccable credentials.

  “I’ll tell you this much,” I snap at him. “If it weren’t for my son, Lawrence Elgin Coffey and I wouldn’t be living together right now.”

  The words bang off the walls. Did they penetrate? Or just carom off his head?

 
; He nods.

  “And how does that make you feel?” he says. “Resentful, angry, anything else?”

  I explode. “Is that all you can say? I mean, goddamn it, I’ve just made a fairly major revelation, and is that the best you can do: how does it make me feel? No, don’t tell me, you’re going to ask me what I would have you say, aren’t you?” Another nod, and this time the trace of a smile. “For God’s sake, is that why I’m paying you a hundred and twenty-five bucks an hour?”

  Even though Larry’s insurance covers it.

  Or used to.

  But suddenly, before he can say it—Why are you paying me a hundred and twenty-five bucks an hour?—I feel the tears welling. Welling? Gushing! I hate it, losing control, and in front of him, but I’m powerless to stop them. They flood out of me like a tapped well. It’s not him, it’s not Larry. It’s … it’s everything. Suddenly, oh God, I’m completely done in.

  I reach for the box of tissues on the end table next to me, blow hard, wad them in my fist because I know there’s no place to throw them, but this only helps momentarily. Then I’m off again, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “I’m sorry,” I blubber, lips quivering. “I can’t help it. It’s just that I feel … I feel so damn … so goddamn … helpless.”

  Eureka, Georgia! Out with it, girl!

  Because this—my own helplessness … well, it has to be my oldest theme. Certainly it predates Craig. Greenberg used to say, “Of course you feel helpless, you’re a woman.” (Greenberg, needless to say, was a woman too.) In the past, though, it’s always tied into Daddy, all the fallen hero stuff, and how, lest the helplessness overwhelm me, I’ve always felt compelled to prop him up in my mind no matter what. But this time, it’s … it’s everything. It’s the feeling of having to try to hold everything together, all by myself. It’s me waiting by the phone, and Larry “taking charge,” and somewhere my son, Justin Coffey, my helpless little boy with the dark mournful eyes. And, oh God, how helpless I am now to help him!

  I see Craig glance surreptitiously at his watch. If he says it—“Well, that’s all we’ll have time for today”—I think it’s in me to wring his neck, but of course he doesn’t. He just nods at me one last time and scrapes back his chair. I cry my way out of his office instead, and still when I’m driving, fighting the rush-hour mob through the Lincoln Tunnel and west. When I get home, it’s already dark, I struggle up the front steps, in the door and up the stairs, gasping for breath, to where an astonished Helen Penzil is standing up in the nursery, and the baby nurse stands too, their mouths ajar. “Georgia, what’s wrong?” “Nothing,” I manage, and I snatch my Zoe into my arms, warm bundle, and clutch her, hug her, and I guess I’m still crying. Or all over again.

  Oh please, God, let it end. Please, please, dear God, let it just end.

  3 January

  “Hey there, Mr. Chairman! Happy New Year and good evening. You all set for next week?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “What’s wrong? My clients are hot to trot. They’ll be here Monday or Tuesday. You’re going to be a very rich man.”

  “I may not make it till Monday or Tuesday, the way things are going.”

  “Oh, come on, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m not in the mood for your humor, Counselor.”

  “Humor? I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t know what’s going on. The shit’s hit the fan, that’s what.”

  “Have you forgotten something? I’ve been away on vacation. Even hard-working lawyers are entitled to a few days off.”

  “You’d have had to be in Timbuktu not to have heard.”

  “Heard what?”

  “The Coffey kid?”

  “Oh yeah, seems to me I did hear something about that. The Christmas Kidnapping. I thought that was a little extreme on your part. Ingenious, but a little—”

  “On my part? What the fuck are you talking about? I told you, I’m not in the mood.”

  “I’m not joking, Leon. It stands to reason. The last time we spoke, it was because Mr. Coffey was shooting his mouth off to the wrong people. If I’m not mistaken, I was the one who found out, and I was the one, out of the goodness of my heart, who told you about it. The next thing that happens, the boy has been taken. If it wasn’t you, it was one hell of a coincidence.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Are you saying—?”

  “I could even prove it if I had to.”

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “Because we’re in deep shit, all of us. It’s all about to blow up in our face.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just had a visitor, that’s all. Let’s say it was the ghost of J. Edgar. Seems our friend—Coffey—has been shooting his mouth off again, only this time he’s named names. Seems the son of a bitch got some threatening phone calls, somebody telling him to keep his mouth shut, and now there’s a fucking list out, and guess who’s on top of the list?”

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  “Jesus Christ. I mean, I’m very sorry to hear that, Leon. What did you tell your visitor?”

  “Him? Fuck him. I told him the man’s paranoid, that there’s no substance to his allegations. I told him I run a reputable company, that we deal with reputable people.”

  “Good. Did you see the list?”

  “Sure I saw it. Everybody on it’s been alerted.”

  “Good.”

  “For the time being. But if I had the kid, what do you think I’d be doing, playing fucking gin rummy with him? Do you think any of this would have happened?”

  “No. But who do you think has him then, Leon? If you don’t.”

  “How should I know? The papers are talking about this girl, the baby-sitter.”

  “I saw the papers too, Leon. But I’m asking you. Who do you think has him?”

  “Beats me.”

  “You disappoint me. I’m terribly disappointed. All this time, I thought we were pretty close friends.”

  “Friends? What are you talking about?”

  “Who’s your silent partner, Leon?”

  “My si—? You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “I know that’s what you’ve always said. But this is a new ballgame.”

  “I can’t tell you. I made a deal.”

  “That’s okay. I just wanted to see where your loyalties are today, now that you’re the one who’s under the gun. It doesn’t matter anyway. I know who he is, Leon.”

  “You WHAT? For Christ’s sake, don’t fuck with me, I—”

  “Holbrook, Leon. Francis Hale Holbrook. We’re all friends, Leon. I’ve known him for years.”

  “Son of a bitch. How’d you find out? Did he tell you?”

  “Nobody told me. It’s the kind of thing I make it my business to find out. I’ve known all along.”

  “For Christ’s sake.”

  “Think back, Leon. Nine, ten years ago, your illustrious company was moribund. The competition was killing you. Everything the Crosses tried turned to shit. We talked at the time, you and I. We kicked around a number of solutions. I even encouraged you to buy in yourself. A year or two goes by, and suddenly you’re the rising star, on your way to chairman in a company which has always had a Shaw or a Cross at the top. And suddenly you’ve got money to burn, you’re rolling in cash, and everybody’s saying, good as Leon is, The Cross must be doing it with mirrors. I said to myself: good as Leon is, he must have gotten backing. Maybe my nose was out of joint that you’d never come back to me. But I made it a point of honor to find out.”

  “A point of honor? Jesus Christ, I thought we were friends! Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “That’s not how you wanted it. But now I find myself in a curious position. I can kill this deal if I want to, which I don’t. Or maybe, just maybe, I can save it. Tell me, when’s the last time you talked to him?”

  “Talked to who?”

  “Your partner.”

  “The fuck. I can’t even
raise him on the phone. I’ve left messages everywhere I can think of.”

  “I see. And he’s left you holding the bag, hasn’t he?”

  “You’re damn right.”

  “With a kidnapping investigation on top of everything else? Well, I’ve got my own theory as to what’s happened. I—”

  “What’s your theory?”

  “Never mind. But let’s put our cards on the table, Mr. Chairman. What’s in it for me?”

  “What do you mean, what’s in it for you? If the deal goes through, you’re going to collect a fat fee from your clients.”

  “Leon, let’s not waste our time! If you win, you and Holbrook are in the nine figures. If you lose, God knows where it’ll end up. You could even go to jail, my friend.”

  “Jail! Come on, let’s not exaggerate, I didn’t—”

  “Listen to me now. I think I can stop it. I can see a way to make us all whole. The deal, the Coffey kid, everything.”

  “You can? If you really can, then what the fuck are you wasting time talking to me for?”

  “Because it’s going to cost me. Because I want to be compensated for my efforts.”

  “What? Oh, sure. We’ll take care of you. If you make it happen, we’ll take care of you.”

  “Ten points, Leon.”

  “Ten points? What ten points?”

  “Ten percent of yours. Yours and his. That’s what I want.”

  “You’re kidding! You’ve got to be kidding! Jesus Christ, you’d blackmail your own mother!”

  “I’d prefer for services rendered, Leon. And I’d say I’m being very conservative. Think about it. What’s to prevent me from asking fifty percent? Wouldn’t you rather have half a loaf than nothing?”

  “Jesus. I’ve gotta talk to Frank.”

  “I thought you just said you couldn’t reach him. You’re not conning me, are you?”

  “No, no. No, for Christ’s sake! I just can’t speak for him.”