“Misery likes company. You’ve found some miserable friends.” He passed her, angrily, wanting only to sleep. “You know that’s not my thing.”
Carl’s wife hadn’t reacted well to living far from her friends and family in New York, and Carl could have reacted better to her. Now long-divorced, Carl drove across a small bridge from the Bronx to Manhattan. Blazing fall colors on the New Jersey cliffs painted the Hudson blood orange.
“I felt slimy just listening to Steve Cohen,” Rick said, “‘Brian was my best friend, he taught me everything.’” He roofed his eyes with his hand. “‘Oh, and where is that federal judge whose ass I can kiss?’”
“Do you think Steve Cohen could have been involved in Jordan Connors’ operation?” Carl asked. “Maybe he had something to do with Brian’s death.”
“We’ve got nothing on Brian’s death and even less on Steve Cohen. Tackiness isn’t a criminal offense, last I checked.”
“That’s a damn shame,” Carl said. “It would bring a certain satisfaction to lead that guy away in handcuffs.”
CHAPTER 4
At dusk, the dining room lay shrouded in shadow. Light from the adjacent kitchen illuminated a vast array of food on the dining room table, which the caterers had moved to one wall to make room for the guests. Through a haze of Klonopin, Jessica watched the faces of friends and family who had come back to the house after the funeral to share the beginning of shivah. They stood, hands clasped in a large circle, while the Jewish Prayer for the Dead droned.
Jessica felt her mother’s cold, wrinkled hand wrapped around her own. Jessica’s father stood on her other side, eighty-two years old and withered from the days when he’d so intimidated Jessica. She’d been their miracle baby, born when her mother was already in her early forties and her father was fifty. He’d always been larger than life to Jessica, but now that she needed his protection, he had no strength left to give. That didn’t stop her from imagining his criticism: The lox isn’t cut thinly enough, the bagels aren’t hand thrown. And why are you so damn skinny? Am I going to have to stop my life in West Palm to rescue you? As if he were a ventriloquist speaking through her, the berating thoughts inside Jessica’s own head always seemed to have his voice. Even when he was thousands of miles away.
The prayer over, Jessica’s parents released her, and the buzz of conversation resumed. The guests converged on the food. She swayed on her feet, light-headed. She felt Nicole’s palm on her arm. “You have to eat something, Jessica.”
“She hasn’t had anything to eat or drink all day,” Jessica’s mother chipped in as if Jessica weren’t there. Jessica’s father harrumphed in agreement or maybe oblivion, chomping his dentures on an everything bagel, cream cheese coating the corner of his lips.
“I’m okay,” Jessica said, not sure whether anyone heard her or whether she’d only imagined herself saying the words.
Time floated by. She sat in the family room, a homey space of intentionally mismatched country furniture, a fireplace, and a flat-screen on the wall over it. Nicole had brought her a glass of juice. It waited untouched on the antique end table next to Jessica. She couldn’t bear to drink it. She pulled her feet up beside her on the thick couch, its soft greens, browns, and ample cushions the closest thing to a cocoon she could find.
Guests came and went. After a while, the hum of voices softened as the crowd thinned, and goodbye hugs interrupted her dark fugue every few moments. Jessica managed her best schooled smile each time, her lips pulled upward. But all the while, she was with Brian, reliving their life together, needing him, missing him, conjuring him. She was at dinner with him, where the waiters greeted him, knowing his name. She was with him as he helped the landscaper with his immigration papers, patiently explaining concepts that he’d needed to research himself because immigration wasn’t even his area of law. Then there was the time when one of Emily’s friends had lost everything in an apartment fire and Brian donated a thousand dollars to the family’s Kickstarter campaign. Jessica would never have thought of doing something like that. A hundred dollars, maybe. But Brian was truly her better half, a mensch, smarter than her, funnier, connecting with people in a way that had never come naturally to her. She had loved being by his side, enjoying the sunshine he brought.
But her memories of Brian looped around, always ending with their last time together. Five days ago, jogging, orange and yellow leaves splashing down around them from the tall trees that lined the road near their house. She’d inhaled deeply, appreciating the thick must of autumn, grateful for the life she’d manifested and dreading winter only for its indoor treadmills and StairMasters. She’d mused, a silent joke: it would soon be time to “manifest” a trip to the Caribbean. She didn’t really take the Law of Attraction stuff that seriously. Yet she didn’t dismiss it either. She found the ideas comforting.
But the thought of vacation led her mind back to the Emily situation, about how they’d have to take their trips during school holidays now, surrounded by crowds who flooded airports and resorts during those weeks. She was having a tough time feeling good about all the things that came with having a child full time, inconveniences that were only gradually becoming apparent. She tried to repress her anger; the wicked stepmother was a no-win role. But the lack of a child of her own made all the changes feel like an irritating blouse tag at the back of her neck, invisibly scraping at her simmering resentment. It was unjust. Still, as she’d heard on a recent podcast, you either rowed with the rapids or crashed into the rocks. That had struck a chord with her. She had a bad habit of fighting anything in her life that wasn’t perfect. If she was powerless over 99 percent of her life like the podcast said, she was wasting too much energy fighting back, and to no purpose.
Sun flashed between breaks in the trees, casting a golden glow over the country-club golf course. The semirural road was silent except for the sound of Jessica’s and Brian’s feet and the two sets of paws that pounded behind them. Hazel and Nuke, Jessica’s muscular Labrador retrievers, one chocolate and one black, kept a steady pace.
For the first fifteen minutes of the run, Brian had talked about a lead-poisoning case. An entire housing project had been built on a site contaminated by a nearby lead factory. Two generations of kids who grew up there had developed learning disabilities and other medical problems. Brian had come a long way from the malpractice cases like the one that had originally brought them together. He’d said that if he won the case, he could retire early on his fee and help those poor people too. Not that Jessica believed him when he said he’d buy a beach bar on a Caribbean island and chill out for the rest of his life.
Brian had been working closely with the congressman who had referred the case to him and Steve. Jessica knew he got a kick out of having the respect of powerful people and wasn’t about to give all that up. Brian had come from a lower-middle-class family, his father a journeyman printer back when newspapers were printed with machine-applied ink rollers. Brian’s mother had been a homemaker, a great cook of traditional Jewish dishes like stuffed cabbage and kugel, but not known for much else. She’d died two years after Brian’s father, neither of them making it to seventy. Brian had grown up in a cramped Queens apartment and attended deficient New York City public schools. To Brian’s family, a “good job” meant one with union benefits. No, Jessica smiled to herself, she didn’t believe Brian would retire when he had just begun to realize his dreams. Having a comfortable home in the suburbs and gaining the respect of people he read about in the newspaper meant a lot to him.
At the sound of a car approaching, Brian pulled ahead of Jessica to run single file until it passed. She watched, appreciating him. She’d never stopped appreciating him—six feet tall with a lean body from his morning runs and power meetings at the Sports Club. He wasn’t handsome in a hunky sort of way, which had made her underestimate him at first. His generally unruly hair had started to recede and his face hadn’t been chiseled in perfect proportion lik
e some of the frat boys at her college, but he had a sexual charisma combined with a stunning intelligence that went beyond his looks.
Until Brian, Jessica had dated for years without getting into a relationship. She’d had the “patience of a saint,” her friends used to say, although patience really had nothing to do with it. Brian had been brilliant with a promising future, a good sense of humor, and what turned out to be incredible skill in bed. She’d been lucky to put off sex long enough for him to fall in love with her before they made love. Otherwise his skill in bed might have shifted the power so much that she could have strayed into obsession before he’d become equally obsessed with her, the surest way to lose a potential mate, especially a man like Brian. Instead, she’d hit the jackpot, marrying a man who still made her shiver when he brushed his fingertips against her arm. They’d lived together for over five years and been happily married for the last two of them.
Once the car passed, Brian fell back into place beside her, and she’d dared to mention (she couldn’t help herself) the issue that had been on her mind constantly as of late: having a baby.
Brian spoke easily, his breath measured, the pace they ran together easier for him than her. “Listen, Jess, I’ve got my hands full with Emily right now. This isn’t the time.”
Jessica’s words came out between thick breaths, her immediate anger and the run clipping them short. “You’re out of town half the time … it should be me worrying about whether my hands are full.”
Brian’s words hardened into commands. “Don’t start, please.”
She’d wanted to pitch a fit. He acted as if she didn’t care for Emily, even love her. She’d taken care of Emily two weekends a month for years already. But one day, Brian had just come home and announced that his incorrigible teenage daughter would be living with them full time.
Overnight, Jessica had acquired a sixteen-year-old who made messes, texted eighteen hours a day, argued constantly, and had to be driven from place to place, even to school at 8:00 a.m. because she always missed the school bus. Then every weekend, she went back to Manhattan, back to the delinquents Lauren let her hang out with. When she returned to Westchester each Sunday, kicking and screaming, it took Jessica three days to get her reacclimated to school and a normal life away from Lauren’s marginal Manhattan neighborhood. And just when Emily began acting like a human being again, she went home for the weekend and the cycle started all over.
Jessica forced words out, both intimidated by Brian’s temper and breathless from the pace that kept getting quicker, “Lauren practically parachuted Emily down on us … and now … we can’t have our own children?”
Brian shot her a seething eyeful.
She added, “Inheriting a teenager is not the same as having one of our own. I’m thirty-two. If we wait too long—”
“Goddammit, Jessica,” Brian raised his voice, “I don’t need this shit right now. I’ve gotta be at the airport in an hour, so give it a fucking break, okay?”
She’d been ready to say one more thing, but before she could speak, Brian put an extra kick into his pace and left her staring at his back as he stretched out the distance between them and disappeared around a bend. Shame flooded her, as if she were a girl rejected after a one-night hookup. She felt the deepest echo of old pain, muscle memory that didn’t produce pictures of events, only the deep stab of long-buried feelings.
The shame subsided as she jogged home, but then an even worse thought surfaced: he was making her into Lauren. She’d heard him use that same tone of voice with Lauren on the telephone before they’d separated. She’d made sure to overhear their calls on a few occasions, walking quietly near a closed bathroom door, or passing through to the kitchen in her California apartment when he was speaking in the living room. She’d felt reassured by what she’d heard, that it was only a matter of time for his marriage with Lauren to end. She’d heard the disdain in his voice, the anger of someone trapped in a cage.
She started to weep as she ran, trying to talk herself through it: you’re not going to lose him, stupid woman.
Twenty-five minutes later when she arrived home, he was already packed and headed to the car, his hair still wet. He nudged past her, anger in his eyes. He never even said goodbye. It was the first time he’d gone on a business trip angry, without them making up first. That would have been painful enough to put her in bed for the rest of the morning, if she’d allowed herself. But she’d never expected those angry words to be the last words she’d ever hear, that his disdainful tone would resonate in her head for the rest of her life. There would be no flowers or gifts to dull the memory of it. No long talks to reach a better understanding. No intense lovemaking to bury it. Brian was dead.
***
Steve Cohen stood over Jessica. “Jess?”
She emerged from her memories as if stepping into a Taser-field of pain. She reached her hand up to his. “Steve.”
“Does Brian have a password on the PC downstairs?”
“Oh, um, sure. Five-six-one-A-G-F-dollar sign.”
Steve patted her hand and made his way past groups of mourners toward Brian’s basement office. She looked around from her seat on the couch, seeking out her mother, the bearer of pills, the pill expert after fifty years with Jessica’s father. Instead, Mr. Manley, a large bespectacled man of close to sixty, approached.
The guidance counselor from the local high school had a deep, comforting voice. “Mrs. Silverman, I’m so sorry.”
Looking up, she put out her hand to shake his. “Thank you for coming.”
“What will happen to Emily now? She’s doing much better in school …” Mr. Manley appeared to get lost in his own thoughts and his voice drifted. “Such a shame to uproot her now.”
“Yes.” Jessica paused and closed her eyes, the lids too heavy to hold open. What would happen to Emily? Despite what she’d said during her last argument with Brian, things had begun to get better with Emily over the six weeks she’d been living with them. Feeling guilty for putting the whole burden on Jessica, Brian had virtual-commuted more when he wasn’t away on a case. Emily had taken to doing her homework downstairs in Brian’s home office while he worked on the PC. It brought a warm, companionable feeling to the house even though Jessica had felt a little left out sometimes. Brian had showered Jessica with affection for chauffeuring Emily around their suburban community and engaging her in shopping trips and mani-pedis, things Lauren would never do with her.
The whole situation wouldn’t have been bad at all if she’d been the only mother raising Emily. The real problem with being a stepmother was that she wasn’t the one Emily loved. It was mostly a thankless role. Emily could never be Jessica’s and that made giving so much to Emily feel more like unrequited love than parenthood. Brian had told her that being the biological parent of a teenager wasn’t much better. He pointed out how many times Emily had shouted I hate you! when Brian set rules she didn’t like. Jessica knew he had a point.
Jessica opened her eyes, remembering Mr. Manley’s question about Emily’s future, one to which she had no answer. But he was gone. She’d closed her eyes for longer than she’d realized, resulting in an untethered fast-forward. In Mr. Manley’s place, Hazel and Nuke sat and stared up at her. She unfolded her legs. “I need to feed them.”
“I can do that, honey,” Jessica’s mother said from beside her on the couch.
When had she sat there? Jessica thought about asking for another Klonopin, but decided to do a trial run on clarity. “No, I’ll do it.”
The dogs leading the way, she passed through the sprinkling of people who chatted in tight clusters. The bright whiteness of the kitchen brought her closer to a sober surface. She squatted to retrieve a bulk-size bag of dog food from under a counter, scooped generous portions into the dog bowls, and brought the water bowl to the sink for refilling.
A window above the sink overlooked the front lawn and circular driveway
where several people mingled. It was dark. She could mainly only see large movements of the body, but she recognized Emily, standing alone, hugging herself as her van-load of friends pulled away. A lit-up end of a cigarette rose and fell, carried by the shadow of Emily’s arm. Jessica couldn’t believe she was doing that. The thought struck Jessica hard: Emily’s life hung in the balance of what happened next. She could go back to her working mother who couldn’t control her, to a city school where she cut classes more than she went, to the dangerous boys in Lauren’s iffy neighborhood, to drinking and probably smoking weed and who knew what else … or Jessica could do something about it, the way Brian would have wanted her to.
She knew Lauren wouldn’t take Brian’s parental wants seriously, even in death. Lauren always seemed to have a smirk on her face whenever she saw Brian and Jessica, as if their entire life was a joke to her. Lauren was all bluster and self-righteousness, but Jessica was sure she was really riddled with guilt that she’d totally failed with Emily, while Brian and Jessica had begun to succeed. Just thinking about it made Jessica feel a steadying sense of purpose. She began to rehearse in her mind what she’d say to Lauren, nervous of being shot down but determined. She could at least offer to keep Emily and see what happened. So be it if Lauren responded with her typical sarcastic, condescending attitude. Jessica was doing this for Brian.
CHAPTER 5
Steve’s wife, Nicole, stood at the center of a small group of state senators and a US congressman who all listened, enraptured, to her retelling of a hedge fund deal that only Nicole could make interesting. Lauren thought Nicole could have held their attention with her tits and ass alone, but the politicians were just as hot for the money she wielded as a donation-bundler. When Brian first met Steve and Nicole, he’d told Lauren all about Nicole’s dinner parties where she collected huge checks—Lauren thought with an inner smile, “yuge” checks—to political action committees.
Widows-in-Law Page 3