He and Glaser had had an unspoken rule from the beginning that there was a line surrounding the personal that was never crossed. For propriety’s sake, Glaser would inquire about “the wife,” and Smalley would reply that she was “good, thanks” and that Andy, too, was doing well—off to college now, calling home for money. Ha, ha. Great. And then the door came down. And it was the same way for Glaser, except that Glaser could talk about his women in endless, wonderful detail, since that didn’t qualify as personal to him.
“Over the weekend, I met a broad with the biggest boobs I ever saw on a woman less than five feet,” he would say. “Every time I tried to kiss her, I bounced away. I swear to God.” And Smalley would laugh. Or Glaser would say, “I was with a little chickie last night with legs so strong ... I swear to God, Smalley, I thought she was going to break my back, she squeezed me so fuckin’ hard. And she said she has a friend, in case you’re interested.”
“No, thanks,” Smalley would say.
“Just asking,” Glaser would reply with a grin a mile wide.
But there was no room in the car for talk about what really mattered: brothers and sisters and why we can barely tolerate them. Wives we make love to with no passion left inside us; kids that are a complete freakin’ mystery to us, or that we never get a chance to see because the mother lives in a fucking slum project in Newark. Jesus!
The fact that Glaser was Jewish was not a big subject of conversation either. He took a day off one time for Yom Kippur, only to go to a Yankees playoff game. He joked that he hadn’t set foot in a temple since his Bar Mitzvah, when he had walked out with his pockets stuffed with cash. But here stood Smalley with a yarmulke balanced on his head, some of his fellow cops doing the same. Glaser’s father wore a prayer shawl over his shoulders, rocking in his personal misery, frail and helpless. Glaser’s mother, supported by Samuel and Beth, cried and screamed for her lost son, her Charlie, as the Rabbi performed the ceremony of burial; the halting steps while the body was carried from the hearse to the grave, stopping three times for prayers, putting the casket down, picking it up again, finally passing around the shovel for everyone to toss dirt on the casket. Dust to dust. Jesus!
Just before the ceremony began at the gravesite, a limousine pulled up and six women got out, causing whispers among the family and others standing in the funeral party. Even the Rabbi paused. Smalley knew they were members of the WPW board. Jane Larson, Susan Hempten, Ellen Briars, Jenna Worley, Charmaine Devon, and last out of the limousine, Ari, elegant in a long black gown, with a hat and a veil that only she could wear and not look foolish or preening or phony. They had missed the service at the funeral parlor because their limo driver had gotten lost in Queens. They’d arrived after the hearse had left, hurried off to the cemetery, and gotten lost again. They wanted to pay their respects. It was symbolic, of course. None of them gave a rat’s ass about Glaser. But WPW was uneasy about where this Diana thing was headed. What did it mean for feminism? Who was next? About time, Smalley thought.
They greeted Glaser’s mother one by one, very respectfully, trying to explain who they were and why they were there. Unable to break through her fog of bereavement, they said they were friends, Charlie’s friends, from the city. The mother understood that much. Her Charlie had lots of women friends. And one who had not been so friendly.
They came over to Smalley, shaking his hand and saying a few words, appropriately solemn, retreating again to the limo. It was fine. Smalley had no problem with them.
Ari had been last in line. She had leaned close to him and lingered for just an infinitesimal second by his face, the scent of her rising into his nostrils, her warm breath on the side of his neck, her comforting hand on his shoulder, creating a surge of heat in him that seemed to burn through his body.
“I had to come,” she whispered.
What did she mean? What is the compelling force? What? From the very first moment he had felt drawn to her in a way that he really couldn’t explain—as if they really were two halves of a whole that had been ripped apart in some earlier lifetime. Wasn’t that how the old Greek, Plato, described being in love? When every cell in you cries out to be pressed against that person and none other in the entire world? When every inch of you craves that person’s touch? When the two souls yearn to join and become one soul, one body?
Is that what she meant?
Afterward, walking back to their car, Emily asked in her calm, clear voice, “Which one was Ari?”
The question sent another jolt through him that he had controlled only with the greatest effort.
“The one in the veil,” he said in his carefully measured way. “Why do you ask?”
“She called the other day and asked for you. She said she was helping you on the investigation. She and the others wanted to come to the funeral. She seemed very nice. We talked for quite a while ...”
Silence followed. All the way home there was a silence he desperately wanted to break—that she no doubt wanted him to break also, but he didn’t. Couldn’t.
Nothing had happened. True? He had indeed gone back to her apartment after finding Glaser’s body. Had a drink. She had kissed him. Her scent had lingered, as in the cemetery; her breath was warm on his face, his neck. But nothing happened. No sweaty grappling. No sex. No sex, Emily! Nothing to worry about.
Only it wasn’t quite true. Something had happened. He had started to cry at the feel of her lips on his cheek, her arm draped gently over his shoulders, the curve of her body pressed casually against the length of his. He had not cried since he was eleven, when he broke his arm in a football game and his father came over to where he was huddled in pain, bent down, and whispered in Smalley’s ear, “Stop it, you’re embarrassing me for Christ’s sake.”
And now, out of the blue, how many years later, along came this woman who was more beautiful, educated, sophisticated, and elegant than any woman he had met in his puny little existence. In her presence, with her gently touching him, he had started crying and almost couldn’t stop. He should never have gone there! It was as if he’d had an emotional fucking breakdown. But why? What could she offer him?
Life?
Hope?
Was that all?
So he and Emily drove home in silence and he dropped her off and went back to work.
“I may be late tonight,” he said.
And she said, “Okay, let me know if you want me to hold dinner.”
Then Emily walked away, head held high, toward the house that was exactly like the others on the block: small, made of red brick, with a sharply angled roof and a tiny plot of ground in the front and back. She was blameless: a perfect wife, mother. Perfect.
“Don’t you ever fucking forget that,” Smalley said to himself as he stepped on the accelerator and drove off. He had work to do. Glaser’s persistence had apparently paid off. He had learned something about Diana that had gotten him excited, that he had wanted to tell Smalley, but never got to. What was it?
Thank God, he had plenty of work to do.
* * * *
In the limousine driving back to New York, Ari also was quiet as the others talked.
Jenna sat in the front seat on a cell phone with her office, fuming because she hadn’t expected to be gone this long “in the middle of a work day, for God’s sake,” launching a litany of complaints about the “nitwit,” “shit-for-brains,” “goddamned imbecile” of a driver who had gotten lost again and then plunged their car into mind-bending traffic. He sat a few feet away with his ears and the back of his neck turning red at the stream of insults flowing from the pristine mouth of this mistress of Wall Street. Of the group, she had least wanted to go on today’s “solidarity expedition,” as she derisively put it. Of course, in theory Jenna saw the purpose of having as many members of the WPW board attend as possible, but Glaser was a major pig as far as she was concerned. She was not yet convinced that Diana hadn’t done women a favor by cutting his balls off—assuming it had been Diana who had done the deed, as someone
had pointed out on the conference call while they planned this excursion. Had it been Maggie who said that?
Glaser had interviewed Jenna by himself and showed by his smirk that he liked how she wore a silk blouse open at the neck and how her breasts—still so firm at age 32—resided for comfort, not support, in an insubstantial lacy pink brassiere. Had he never seen underwear before? Never seen a woman cross her legs? At the conclusion of the interview, he had written his personal cell number on the back of his card and told her to “call him, any time.” Smirk. As if she would ever be interested in a cop, for the love of God.
Imagine.
Charmaine and Susan were finally done commiserating over the fact that the board at its last meeting had voted unanimously (with them abstaining) not to permit Susan to have a film crew present from the Dr. Suzy show if she was going to also attend as a member of WPW. Now they had moved on to the subject of that night’s show. Judith had arranged for a member of the Eumenides to appear for an interview. Not just any member, either—but one of those man-killers who allegedly had been present the day of the assault on the two men on lower Broadway. Of course, she couldn’t appear in person without getting arrested, so arrangements had been made to use a remote audio/video feed. Her voice would be disguised, of course, and she would sit in a way that showed only her shadow in profile. The victim of that beating was still in a coma, although there was some growing hope for a recovery. Who cares? She was ready to answer questions for as long as callers wanted about the Eumenides and the new militancy of the movement—women who saw the benefits that a taste of fear could give to their side.
While Susan and Charmaine discussed logistics, Ellen sat quietly beside Jane, leaning toward her as though for support. She had started weeping when they first passed through the gates of the cemetery and the flat expanse of the place became visible in all its grotesque wonder: the rows upon rows of gravestones, hundreds of them as far as the eye could see, the occasional marble or granite mausoleums; families grouped together for eternity and burial societies of one sort or another, all crowded among elm trees that had been planted many years before and were now slowly succumbing to disease. Ellen had said that it was the memory of her parents, both of whom had died within the last several years and were buried in another flat place like this one somewhere else in Queens. But Ari knew that wasn’t the problem. The limousine had picked up Ellen and Jane at her office where they had been meeting, no doubt going over the papers that Jane had drafted to start a divorce proceeding: the complaint, the ritual allegations that the law demands, the request for custody of the children; support, maintenance, and the division of all they had gathered in their years together; the stripping bare of their lives and the lives of their children. It was like a death. Ari knew that better than anyone, except maybe Jane.
“He wants to meet with me,” Ellen said now in a quiet voice. “Friday for lunch, he wants to take me out someplace quiet where we can talk. ‘We have to talk,’ he says. ‘Where the fuck were you for the last year’, I wanted to ask him! ‘For the last two years, when I begged you to talk to me?’”
Jane nodded her head, her face twisted in a grimace at the tangible misery Ellen was feeling. There were times, Ari thought, when Jane looked just like her mother, Martha, and this was one of them. And perhaps she was feeling a sense of distress herself? There was a rumor that she and Maggie had a little thing going on, although nothing official yet. Maggie had left for the country already, choosing to avoid this gesture by WPW. And Jane had not offered any explanation except that Maggie needed to get away from the city. Really needed to. Time alone. Space. The warning signs of a relationship in trouble. So soon? Not fair, Ari thought. Not fair.
“Ellen,” Jane said gently, with a soft, deep voice that was so much like her mother’s. “There’s no need to rush this.”
“I don’t feel like I’m rushing. I feel like I have delayed too long.”
“I know you do. But maybe you should at least see what he has to say. Maybe he wants to try to change.”
“People don’t change,” Ellen said. “Isn’t that what Martha used to say? Isn’t that what you say also?”
Jane stared out the window as the limousine moved slowly toward Manhattan, climbed the approach to the Triborough Bridge and then eased into a broad curve with the skyline of Manhattan on the left, glistening in the sunlight like Oz. Again, there was a certain line to her cheek, a concerned intelligence embedded in the very flesh that reminded Ari fondly of Martha.
“She did say that,” Jane replied finally. “But she also said that sometimes we can find ourselves. Sometimes we are lost, and then we are found.”
That was Martha all right: words not quite Biblical, but with a Biblical ring, taking you up sharply and soothing you at the same time. Sometimes we’re lost!
“Okay. If you say so,” Ellen replied quietly.
“No, not because I say so. And not for your husband, or even for your kids. For you, Ellen. Because once you start this, you can never retrieve it, never take back the words.”
Ellen paused, her forehead wrinkling in thought.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll talk to him.”
“So I’ll call off the process servers. We had them scheduled for Saturday morning.”
“No! I don’t want anything called off. If there is such an amazing breakthrough at our little lunch, I’ll call you.”
“Whatever you say,” Jane replied. She looked out the window as the car sped through the side streets to drop her off first at her office.
What was Jane thinking about? Ari wondered. Was she also lost and in the process of finding herself? Was she dreaming of Maggie, or regretting her years with David? Was there, perhaps, some part of her life that she wished she could retrieve?
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Jane had an appointment with a new client at 8:30 on Friday morning, and arranged to rent a car and drive up to Maggie’s place afterward. Most of her clients were women, but occasionally men sought her out, as they had Martha, either because they just wanted someone with a good reputation as a lawyer, or because they felt they’d get an advantage by using a female lawyer in a matrimonial. Martha always found a way to get rid of the latter type as soon as possible. Since the client couldn’t meet with her on Thursday, Jane had decided to see him first thing on Friday morning, even though that meant she’d had to push back leaving New York for Maggie’s house by half a day. But some things are important and this was one of them, Jane reasoned.
The guy, MacLean Jackson (“call me Mac”), had been recommended by Jenna. She was his stockbroker and swore he was one of the nicest guys she knew. His connection to Jenna meant that he certainly had money. She had heard Jenna say that she didn’t handle a portfolio that was less than $2,000,000. But more than that, he was on the upward arc of his career as an investment banker, and Jane hoped she could get other business from him—lucrative commercial litigation work that didn’t involve the daily bouts of misery she had to deal with in Martha’s old practice. All business, nothing personal—she could use some of that!
Jane had wanted to like Mac. In their initial phone conversation, he said the right things and this air of decency was initially confirmed when he came to her office. Well-dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, and red and blue silk tie, fingernails manicured with a clear polish, his brown hair cut short and brushed straight back, he was politely deferential. But it soon became apparent that the “super nice guy” was a bit of a schemer and everything he did was thought over thoroughly beforehand. He carried a briefcase neatly packed with “evidence” to show that his wife, Rebecca, was at fault for everything wrong with their marriage. She suffered from depression, although she stubbornly refused to go to the therapist that he had found for her. She had decided to dose herself with an array of prescription drugs to treat the problem, but they made her tired all the time and prevented her from taking care of their two little boys, ages two and four. He now had to bathe them when he got home from work, a
nd discipline them because they were increasingly ill behaved. Recently, she had come under the influence of a West Side “food coach,” a health food healer-type who preached the holistic approach. As a result, Rebecca had changed her diet, started taking over-the-counter vitamins and herbs and gone off her medication, with predictable results. She had become irritable, obstreperous and unreasonable, and just a week ago had requested that he move out at the earliest opportunity. Of course, as he explained to Jane, she had no grounds to get him to leave, but he was willing to do so on the proper terms set forth in an agreement.
At this point, he opened up a manila folder that contained Excel spreadsheets with his calculations. His brokerage account, funded by an inheritance from his parents, was separate property and beyond his wife’s grasp. Everything else—which was not all that much at this stage of his career—he was willing to split fifty-fifty. He would pay the statutory child support, commit to paying for summer camp and eventually college, assuming he had a say in where the boys went. He would “give her” custody. As for maintenance, his wife had an exaggerated view of her ability to support herself, puffed up by her “Coach”. So he proposed a front-end loaded schedule of alimony payments that would reduce after two years and end totally after five. This would appeal to her misplaced belief that she would be self-supporting after a year or two back in the workforce. Good luck.
He talked on and on to convince Jane that he was dead-on right and one of the nicest, most reasonable clients she could ever hope to have. From time to time, she nodded and said what she knew he wanted to hear, just to be done with the conference and get on the road to Maggie’s. When he finally finished making all his points, she asked him for a retainer fee of twice what she usually charged, trying to get him to turn her down. He swallowed hard and wrote the check.
Praise Her, Praise Diana Page 29