Lily White

by Susan Isaacs

  “You’re overruled!” McCloskey barked. Then he flapped his hand to us: Out!

  “If I have to,” Holly told him, “I’ll go to the press.”

  “You go to the press, Ms. Nuñez, and you’re out of this office. As it is, you’re skating on thin ice. Very, very thin.” He jerked his head in the direction of the door: Get out! I waited to hear Holly’s response. I didn’t. I saw it: She left.

  “Reconsider, Jerry,” I pleaded.

  “There’s nothing to reconsider.”

  “To do this to someone for politics? How can you? It’s not even good politics.”

  “Nothing the Boss does is good politics to you, and believe you me, he’s well aware of it.”

  “Jerry, don’t take it out on Mary Dean. Take it out on me.”

  He rose from his desk, strode more manfully than he ever had in his life and yanked open the door. “We are,” he said, smiling.

  Twenty-four

  They were only three: herself, Val, and Kent. Nevertheless, Lee bought a frame house in Port Washington so spacious that during the presidency of William Howard Taft, its first owners—a family by the name of Palmer—lived there with their five children; after a few years, they invited Mrs. Palmer’s twin sister and her husband and their twin boys to move in, and then Mr. Palmer’s bachelor twin as well. During the Depression, its second owner, Mrs. Schottland, a widow with three children, took in four boarders.

  The first time Lee walked through the place with the real estate agent, she could almost hear the contemptuous questions people would ask: Lee, are you crazy? A white elephant like this? It’s you and Kent and Valerie. However, she first saw the house on a late afternoon. Sun passed through a stained-glass window and broke into rich and melting colors on the wide-planked oak floor. She realized that although the objections were prudent, no one was making them. She was alone. And she wanted this house.

  So she told the realtor the place was not for her. Sorry, I know I did say Victorian. But the size of this thing! Out of the question. It makes no sense for a divorcée. The following day, the sellers—Bill and Mopsy Tuccio, who were moving to Santa Fe in two weeks—came down another ten percent. The next day, they all shook hands and Lee bought their dining room table, which could seat twenty, and the five turn-of-the-century rocking chairs on the great wraparound porch. The Tuccios threw in their glider. We always sat in it after dinner in the summer, Bill told her. The whole family in that old thing. Back and forth, back and forth. Great being all together, the family. Mopsy gave him a subtle cut-it-out poke and Lee a too sunny smile. Family.

  Americans are often uneasy about family. Occasionally unhinged. Give them a holiday gathering of their nearest and dearest, and a strong minority will renew their prescriptions for Xanax. Offer them more than a modicum of mother love, and thirty percent of them will move cross-country. Yet the moment Americans acquire their fifth freedom—from family—what do they do? Of course: seek out a family.

  The aroma of turkey must be inhaled by a large group. A chorale of “Ooh”s is a necessary accompaniment to fireworks. And there is little to equal the comfort of being shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder around a bowl of eggnog. Cro-Magnons did not huddle around fires merely to form an alliance against saber-toothed tigers. They needed to feel they were a clan. For Americans, reared on Hallmark commercials, preferring as they do sentimentality to sentiment, to be simply one or two or three is not only to lack the crucial support of community. No: Painful as isolation itself feels, it is nearly as disturbing to be perceived as being alone. The question must arise: What have you done to make yourself unpopular?

  So for her own sake and sanity as well as Val’s and Kent’s, Lee bought a house that demanded to be filled. For their first Thanksgiving, she invited Will, Chuckie Phalen, two of Chuckie’s bachelor pals from TJ’s, Melanie Tucker from the Manhattan D.A.’s Office, as well as Lee’s new next-door neighbors, the Rothenbergs, and Lulu Martin, an emergency room nurse she met and with whom she became friendly when Kent, trying to help the movers, dropped a carton of books and broke his foot.

  Hearing Lee was searching for a full-time housekeeper, a colleague who also did pro bono work for the county’s coalition against domestic abuse introduced her to Puella Thorne, a former battered housewife. Puella, in addition to pressing criminal charges, had sued her husband so effectively that he had skipped town—leaving her with a seven-month-old son and a twenty-thousand-dollar debt. She and her baby, Harley, joined Lee’s family at the table for Christmas dinner.

  Lee might have been able to pull off a Chanukah party that year too, but she had by then pretty much forgotten that she had a religion. However, right after New Year’s, she got to chatting with a couple ahead of her on line at the movie on Main Street. They had a son Val’s age and mentioned he was enrolled in Sunday school at the local synagogue and actually looked forward to going. The following morning, Lee walked into aJewish house of worship for the first time in her life. After a surprisingly lively discussion with the rabbi on medieval codifications of rabbinic law, she enrolled Valerie Weissberg-Weiss-White Taylor.

  The Sunday school pleased not only the daughter but the mother, not least because Lee knew that not only would Jazz have to pick up Val at a synagogue—dressed, at Purim, as Queen Esther—but that the child, theatrical to the core of her almost-five-year-old soul, would perform Hebrew ditties for Grandpa Leonard and Grandma Sylvia, singing not just well but loud. Over and over. That Passover, Lee attended her first Seder: her own. Twenty-six people squeezed around the table for twenty. Later, she confided to Will that as she lit the candles, she thought about her grandmother. There was a grin on Bella’s face. Not from pious pleasure—she hadn’t been so pious—but because through her granddaughter Ms. White she had finally outfoxed her husband, Nat the Commie, who had hated God and wouldn’t allow Him in the house.

  There were too few feasts, though, and too many endless days, spent rushing from court to office and home to dinner, then racing out to a Bar Association program, a PTA emergency session on drinking fountains, or a support group for families of Down’s syndrome adults. In the years after Jazz left her for Robin, what Lee missed most was not the conversation, not the sex, definitely not the fur, but the very fact of marriage: a union of two adults. Another body at whom to direct a casual comment while watching the evening news. Someone willing to take responsibility for choosing a new car or a plumber. Someone to share the burdens. True, Puella could drive car pools, offer milk and cookies after school, even prepare dinner when Lee was on trial—a luxury Lee was well aware most single mothers could not afford. True, Will became Val’s confidant about her dreams of acting. And he spent so much time with her family that Kent took to calling him “Daddy.” Yet Lee knew she was solely in charge of Val and Kent. No days off: Except for alternate weekends and two weeks vacation, she had to put in the time.

  There was no: Hey, how about taking Val to the park for an hour so I can do the crossword puzzle? No: Why don’t you take Kent with you when you’re looking at snow-blowers so I can soak in the tub without someone banging at my door?

  For an entire decade, Lee was always tired and usually exhausted. She took to wearing black panty hose because she often did not have the energy to shave her legs. She had time to read only half of the Times, so she relied on public radio to inform her about foreign affairs and Will Stewart to keep her informed of business and economic news, a proposition she knew was risky; even though he was a moderate, he was still a Republican. She lacked the concentration to read fiction. She went to museums only with Val and Kent, so she saw too many dinosaur bones, too much Matisse. She, the music lover, the Bach buff, the jazz aficionado, the rock and roller who could at one time quote every word of “Midnight Train to Georgia” and “Pride and Joy” and thum-thum the bass line to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” did not even hear of Bob Marley’s death until nine years after it had occurred.

  Some nights, Lee was so weary she fell into bed without ta
king off her makeup or brushing her teeth or even getting into a nightgown. Yet once under the covers, she would turn from her left to her right, then back again, trying to recall which was her good side, unable to sleep for hours. She heard the wind, the scratching of a blue spruce against her window, the almost inaudible whir of her alarm clock, the snorts and deep sleep-breathing of her three dogs. Those nights, she thought of nothing, or everything. Her heart banged as if a momentous occasion were seconds away. Or if sleep was kind enough to take her before midnight, it never held her long. She would wake at four in the morning, her mind ragingly alert, racing from stir-frying parboiled carrots to the laws governing extradition from Canada to buying paper hats for Val’s birthday party in school. Winter, summer, year after year, she played and replayed every scene in her marriage that featured a joint appearance by Robin and Jazz. Had those memories been a videotape, it would have disintegrated into shreds.

  Every night, she thought about Will.

  Now and then she thought about Terry Salazar. A little more than a year after their affair began, she read an article in a magazine in the dentist’s office, yet another of those how-to-stop-humiliating-yourself-over-a-worthless-man advisories. Flushed with assertiveness, pumped with nitrous oxide and novocaine, Lee drove to Terry’s office and gave him an ultimatum: No more sex on his white couch or white rug or white desk. If he wanted to see her, it would be at a nonsleazy motel. Naturally—being a feminist—she would pay half. Fine, Terry said, glancing at his watch. But shit, we only have an hour. Got a stakeout in Roslyn Harbor. Husband onto dyke wife and aerobics instructor. Hey, he added, inserting his hand between the buttons of her silk blouse, running his fingers along the edge of her bra, why don’t we go to the Regal Motor Inn. About seven minutes from here. She realized from his very exactness what a patsy she had been, willing to abrade her knees, her ass, on his stiff, dry polyester rug. He had not dared been so cheap with his other women. He had probably used the Regal for so many other extramarital assignations they all but hung a plaque with his name on it over Room 204.

  Terry was neither interesting nor nice. He was, however, a fine lover. Or—as Lee realized in the fourth year of their affair, not precisely a lover. A sex partner. He was always ready, usually raunchy, never not in the mood. And while not genuinely intelligent, Terry was shrewd enough to allow Lee to separate their work from their play. While he was working on one of her cases, he was all business. Or mostly business. He might stare at her thighs if her suit skirt was snug, or find an excuse to read a report over her shoulder, standing too close for propriety, but he never touched her unless she signaled that she was ready to begin. Nonetheless, after five years, he displayed a casualness with Lee, a comfortable slouch when sitting in her office, a lack of the hired hand’s deference, that suggested a familiarity beyond the usual criminal lawyer-detective informality. Lee realized that Chuckie had guessed. So had Sandi. And although they said nothing, she knew that they did not approve.

  In the sixth year of their affair, after three hours at the Regal that left them amazed at their prowess and barely able to stand, Terry finally offered to leave his wife. “Listen, the marriage stinks. It’s stunk for years. We don’t have to be doing it at a place like this. We could be together.”

  “You cheat on me now, when we’re only having an affair.”

  “I do not!”

  “You lie too. If you married me, you’d feel obligated to screw around twice as much. You’d be a lox. Totally useless. And I’d be stuck with your dirty laundry.”

  “This is what you’d be stuck with,” he said, grabbing her hand, putting it on his penis, which once again, miraculously, was showing signs of life. “Think about it. We could have a lot of fun.”

  Driving home that evening, she was amused: Think about it. She could find only two pros about marriage to Terry: She could get regular sex and have an excuse to buy new pots. The cons? As if she would let him live under the same roof as Val and Kent. Puella would watch him swagger into the house and would quit five minutes later. The entire bar of the County of Nassau would laugh itself sick. Will … She couldn’t even bring herself to contemplate Will’s reaction. Think about it!

  Indeed, she thought about it for more than a year. She had twice fallen asleep in Terry’s arms, and he was surprisingly nice to wake up to. He kissed the top of her head and said “Hi!” as if he hadn’t seen her in ages. She liked his easy, masculine competence: He could change a tire in three minutes, fix a sparking electrical outlet, pacify an armed opponent with easy words or a karate kick. It pleased her immensely that he was the sort of man who always carried a Swiss Army knife. But in the end it came down to this: She did not love him. She did not want him to sit at the head of her table, with all the people in the world she loved gathered round, and carve her Thanksgiving turkey. Telling Terry her decision was not a problem, because after that brief offer in the motel, he never again alluded to any marriage except his own dysfunctional one.

  She tried to find a man. Really tried. She was certain that somewhere out there was someone just right for her. Well, in order to face grim-faced judges and glowering jurors, even the most cynical trial lawyer must, at heart, be an optimist. Lee was. She accepted every blind date arranged by friends, neighbors, and colleagues. You never know when it will happen, she told herself. She cut no corners on these occasions, always flossing first, always making up before a magnifying mirror in bright light, always opening the door with a welcoming smile. Thus she spent evenings with a drunken physicist, a cocaine-addicted journalist, an anti-Semitic swimming pool contractor, a forty-seven-year-old endodontist who referred to his mother as Mommy. She met men who became nasty when she refused to have sex with them after a three-hour acquaintance, men who told her she was too smart for her own good, men so busy fulminating over their former wives that they never asked her a single question about her life. True, she was introduced to a number of men who were decent and courteous, but few of them interested her. One of them, a veterinarian, admired her beagle and reminded her of John Lennon. But after three dates he stopped calling. When she screwed up the courage to phone him, he sheepishly explained he had, uh, um, gotten engaged. One of those love-at-first-sight things. His fiancée, Lee later found out, was twenty-six.

  For a little more than a year, in the mid-eighties, Lee went out with Robert Mandelbaum, a pathologist from New Jersey whom she met when he was testifying for Chuckie as an expert witness in a murder case. For the first few months she was so grateful that, unlike many medical examiners, Robert did not expound on putrefying limbs over dinner that she was able to ignore the fact that she did not enjoy his company. He’s perfect, she reported to Will. A widower, so there’s no ex-wife he hates. I’m so tired of going out and hearing about some greedy, self-involved, manipulative, shitty mother-bitch-whore. Robert’s a genuinely nice guy. We go hiking a lot. He’s going to teach me and Val to cross-country ski. He loves music. He plays the cello in an amateur string quartet. He has a wonderful dog, a sweet, stupid Irish setter. A few weeks later, Will observed: You talk more about the dog than you do about the guy. Lee tried very hard to love Robert, or even to like him. She could not. During sex, she twice caught herself yawning and tried to hide it by rolling her head and moaning, pretending she was writhing in passion. She found herself faking ardor and could not believe that a doctor trained to notice the most minute evidence on the human body could not pick up that he left her cold. Will told her: All he probably notices is you’re not dead, which ipso facto makes you hot stuff. After a year, she admitted to herself and then to Will that Robert’s wife must have died of boredom.

  I have to face facts, she told Will shortly after she stopped seeing Robert. I’m no bargain. She was grateful that Will immediately sprang to her defense, telling her how intelligent, pretty, good-natured, and fun—You’re a good time, Lee!—she was. So she prosecuted. Just imagine you’re a man telling a friend about me: She’s a lawyer, so she can never let you have the best of an argument. A re
al ball-breaker. She makes a decent living, but that house! Crazy, huge old place that sucks money out of her checking account. And who lives there with her? Her kid. Pretty but, you know, wants to be an actress and has a scene every fifteen minutes. Then there’s her ex-husband’s something … brother I think. How she got stuck with him I don’t know. A retard. Big guy, too, but he can’t stay home alone. Needs a baby-sitter the times she goes out with the daughter. Then she’s got this maid, this scrawny, white-trash woman who’s always blasting Pentecostal preachers on the radio. The maid lives there full-time with her son, nine or ten years old, who’s got Coke-bottle glasses and keeps bumping into walls because he’s looking down at his accordion all the time. He’s not bad, but who the hell wants to hear an accordion eighteen hours a day? Oh, and she’s got three dogs: One of them has only three legs. A stray she found, hit by a car. Ugly! You should see the way it hops around: freaky, disgusting.

  Will, Lee said, name me one man who would want to marry all that.

  “All that” isn’t who they’d be marrying. It’s you. And you’re going to find someone, he assured her. Don’t worry.

  Do you think I stacked the deck against myself? I mean, subconsciously created a situation that no man in his right mind could possibly want?

  I think you’ve created something for yourself. Something you had to have: a family. Look, happily ever after doesn’t happen all the time. So what are you supposed to do when it doesn’t? Keep looking at your watch until you’re eighty, saying: Gee, he should be coming any second—I’ll be glad when he does, because then my life can have meaning? Or do you make a life that has meaning for you?