Timeless

by Lucinda Franks

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  For my family—all fifty-one of you

  Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

  —Rumi, thirteenth-century Sufi poet

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Author’s Note

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Postlude

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  Photographs

  Also by Lucinda Franks

  A Note About the Author

  Copyright

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  It is always complex to write about someone you love. I am fortunate to have a husband who allowed me to do this: to talk about the personal life that he has kept so private during his forty-five years as a public figure; to divulge the unknown stories behind his major cases; to reveal the intimacies, the foibles, the highs, and the lows of our thirty-six years together.

  He has never been known to dwell on the emotional or the psychological—that has been my role. Instead, he is an architect of change who never stops improving the lives of others. For him, this book was a rendering of loyalty, an example of how to stand by relationships and make them right.

  I thank him for guiding me in so many ways: in sorting through the journals, sometimes barely legible, that I have kept since we met; in reading each chapter, and not just once; for the gift of his prodigious memory in helping me to re-create the moments of our life together.

  His was an act of love, and it is in tribute to him that this book is written.

  PRELUDE

  I can’t get enough of you. I switch from channel to channel, trying to catch you, trying to understand your baffling persona. The husband I know has the sweet cadence of an oboe, and the husband I don’t speaks with an Old Testament fury.

  I am transfixed by this other you, this scowling prosecutor who makes the most hardened reporters, merciless with others, pay obeisance. If only they knew that the scowl is aimed at no one, that instead it is a superficial tic, etched on your face by years of squinting into the sun on wartime destroyers.

  Out in the world, you leave a heavy footprint, but here at home you come so softly through our door, I can barely hear you. You greet me with that little smile—crescent moon against a sky of gold—then cast your eyes down and look up shyly, like a bird that cannot be caught.

  I, however, have walked happily into my cage. Recognized for my journalism, I could fly anywhere I wished. But you are a public icon, and my mission is clear. “Take care of him,” your cousins and friends warned me. “He is a national treasure.”

  How the odious matrons rebuked us! We felt young, so young, the day we met, years ago. I was twenty-six, and you were fifty-three. You were a cautious gentleman of considerable fame, and I, an undomesticated radical half your age. It was a time when such marriages were not done.

  The disapproval of our friends and family brought us closer together. We were so alike in dash and spirit, no stereotype could fit us. The years between us had closed. If one day the gap widened and we couldn’t love each other with our bodies, we’d love with our minds.

  We were parts missing from different eras, parts that fit together perfectly. We became giddy with the concept of agelessness. We were Mayans wrapped in solar winds, awaiting the birth of a universal consciousness. We were Greeks, receiving the enlightenment, the liberal revelation that was hidden from the masses.

  * * *

  Words by the millions have been printed about you, but none have revealed your real life, your secret life—that you belong to me.

  Last night the City of New York owned you, but now, as the sun rises, you are mine. Light falls upon your exquisite forehead, your extravagant Roman nose. The hand beneath your cheek rumples your lips. I gently place my fingers on your lids and feel the rapid flutter of your eyes. The wings of a hummingbird. Such are the things that make love ache.

  Only when I take your craggy hand, mine so soft and round against it, when I run my fingers over the sharpness of your bones, do I remember you are twice as old as I am, twice as worldly—and twice as close to life’s end.

  You are the first man I have truly loved; I could lose you tomorrow. Before I know who you truly are. Sometimes, my breath skips and this excites you: you think it is passion, but sometimes it is dread. If you knew these fears that can come over me, if they were let out into the universe, they might come true.

  Can I ever let go? When you give me pleasure, I worry it could be your death.

  At times I’ve felt your heart pounding so fast, it seems as if it will burst through your chest. Terrible things happen to older men in this situation. Two ancient popes expired in flagrante delicto. So did Nelson Rockefeller, and so, incredibly, did Attila the Hun.

  I always listen for your breathing. Once when I woke up, I couldn’t hear a thing; your chest was still, no heartbeat at all. I began thumping on your sternum. “Breathe … breathe!” I pleaded. You jumped up, gasping. You thought I was crazy.

  I intend to keep you alive. I will feed you what you love—white peaches dripping with juice, lobsters so fresh they snap up their tails. I will keep you moving and thinking and even teach you to shout and to curse. Everything you do will be of importance to me.

  I will make love stop time.

  * * *

  How strange and beautiful it is, falling in love with someone who has lived twice as long as I have. I believe that love is no accident, no whisper from a random universe. It comes from deeper channels of longing and recognition: a collection of tiny lights that gathered force long ago. The boy with long fingers sweeping the keys of a piano, an uncle’s laugh, a teacher who always listened. And the one who precedes them all. The father.

  The things about him you never forget: his hands circling your waist, flying perilously in the air, sun-blinded, grains of sand rubbing against your cheek; your chubby hand smoothing back the soft bristles of his hair so they spring up again like soldiers.

  Then, in a flash, you stand head-to-head, face-to-face. And he walks away, for you have become too mature, too near, a danger. Was it something you did? You are confused, guilty. An ineffable longing takes over and then eventually is forgotten.

  The years go by, and one day you meet him again—the thistly chin, the bright smile, and, behind his glasses, the love that was always there. He’s not your father, but he is everything you wanted him to be.

  * * *

  Seven months ago, every newspaper announced the news: Robert Morgenthau, New York County’s district attorney, and Lucinda Franks, a journalist, were married in thei
r home in Greenwich Village. The bride wore a flowing charmeuse dress and a cap made from the lace of her grandmother’s wedding gown.

  Now it is a time of grace. We do not sleep upon the pearly monogrammed sheets your cousin gave us. Instead, little white sheep leap about a meadow of baby-blue cotton, reminding us of our innocence, not our transgression.

  Each of us thinks the other is the delightfully eccentric one. Your taste in women does not run to dusky lavender lids, moist mulberry lips, ladies who mask themselves in false mystery. In fact, you hate me to wear makeup at all. Your preference is to see me in a T-shirt that tickles the flesh above my knees. Sometimes I feel like a wobbling blancmange.

  Our doorbell never rings. Most people leave us alone. We are, after all, a marriage that was never supposed to happen.

  But when you go to work, you are busy and famous, surrounded by supplicants. Every day, you are making history, while I make nothing. I am a Lilliputian standing in the shadow of the giant. A lazy Buick stalled on the berm, while you whiz by in your gleaming midnight Bentley. Unwritten stories are building up inside me, but when you leave me, all I want to do is re-create you in colors more intense than can be put on any page.

  Your success seems to make mine unnecessary, unwise even. What if I began to write again and failed? Or worse, succeeded? What if I joined you on your pedestal and then, God forbid, knocked you off? We have already disturbed the balance of nature; how far can we tempt fate?

  * * *

  Now, at last, you are stirring. “Who is this I see?” you say, yawning.

  “It’s your sweetheart,” I reply, edging close.

  “Oh, it’s my sweetheart! What? You’re wearing my knickers?” You hook your fingers under the waistband and snap it back.

  You know I wear your boxers. They’re a bit loose, but I wear them because they are yours.

  “You’re also wearing my undershirt.”

  These I love. They have a great deal of character. They are immortal, like the silky undergarments of royalty handed down through generations. The edges are frayed, maybe a hole here or there, but they are made of the best cotton, worn so thin they are kind to your skin. You never let anyone but me touch them.

  I put my lips to your good ear. “Don’t tell my husband we’re meeting this way,” I say and am gratified when you think my joke funny.

  But there’s a hint of worry in your gray-blue eyes. Do you imagine that some young guy will come along and steal me? Or has there been a threat on your life and you’re not telling me? Fear runs down my back. How many criminals have you put away? Hundreds? Thousands? How many want to pay you back, and who will succeed?

  “What do you love best about me?” When we play, it drives away the demons.

  “You have a beautiful back.” You lift up a handful of my long, messy hair, the color of honey, you say, and run your hands down my spine. “That’s why I married you. For your back.”

  “Really? What about my mind?”

  “That’s nice too.”

  I gently punch your arm.

  “No, I’ve never yet come into a room where you’re not the most beautiful one there—and the most intelligent … except when you’re not in the room because you’re late.”

  You slide your hands under my T-shirt, making me breathe sharply.

  “Did I tell you I had a great meal yesterday at that Chinese restaurant near the office?” you ask as you lay me down beneath you. “It was a pleasant change from Forlini’s. They had a giant crab that was delicious.”

  I laugh silently. I know you better than perhaps I should. For some odd reason, when you start to make love, you chat away as if we were sitting at the kitchen table. Are you afraid of sex, you, a boy whose family seldom hugged or touched?

  I cover your mouth, muffling your chatter, and plant little kisses down your belly. You are gripping my shoulders, and you aren’t talking anymore—and the phone rings. Your private line.

  Maybe we can make love quickly, before it stops ringing, break a record, but you have already lifted the receiver.

  “Ed, hello!” you boom. “No, it’s not too early.”

  Fuck the mayor of New York. Gleefully, I try to grab the phone, crowing, “Hi, Ed!” and you swat me away. Koch’s excited voice is like a clarion, pitched somewhere above the epiglottis, while my circumspect husband’s emanates from deep below his diaphragm. The two are equally stentorian, obstinate, and independent.

  I can hear Koch’s voice, talking about a “young rabble-rouser” who shot a guard at a warehouse. “I hear his lawyer wants a plea bargain.”

  “That could be.”

  “They’re claiming insanity! Well, if you ask me, all of these so-called revolutionaries are insane, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know exactly what they’re doing.”

  “He’ll be charged appropriately,” you say. “Bye, Ed, thanks.”

  “It isn’t one of my friends, is it, this shooter?” I ask, after you hang up.

  “I don’t exactly know who your friends are,” you answer pointedly and are up out of bed before I can stop you.

  “Yes you do. You know they’re not violent; I mean, except accidentally, when they blow up some symbol of capitalist hegemony.”

  You give me a mordant look and then busy yourself rummaging through your sock drawer. “I can’t find any matching ones!”

  I retrieve two black socks. I know where they all are; sometimes it’s just too boring to put them together.

  “I’m so proud of you,” I say sweetly. “I know this guy has to pay the penalty, but I wonder if there are mitigating circumstances, like maybe genuine idealism. And I know you’ll do what’s right; you don’t let anybody dictate to you.”

  “Except you,” you say drolly. “Now where’s my watch!”

  “Sweetheart,” I say with a laugh, “look on your wrist.”

  “What would I do without you?” you ask, grinning.

  I pick out a nice pink-striped shirt. “Let me make you an egg,” I suggest, though we both know I have not bothered to learn an art so bourgeois as cooking.

  “I’ll stop and pick up a bagel,” you say, looking away. “I have to get to work.”

  “I can make some hash brownies for you to take to the office,” I reply, only half kidding since you have no idea how well I can bake them. There happens to be a little bell jar in the kitchen, inherited from my last boyfriend, who was an antiwar draft dodger, filled with hay-green stuff you’ve never asked about. I don’t use it, but perversely I don’t get rid of it either. Do you think it’s dried rosemary?

  “Take me to work in your pocket,” I say, straightening your lapels. “You can let me out when nobody’s looking. I could be very useful as a spy … as protection. I could keep watch for attackers.”

  “I’ll be fine, sweetheart, don’t you worry now.”

  You kiss my cheek, pat my bottom, and then you’re gone.

  A haiku floating in the emptiness.

  We are half of a wedding invitation torn in two. What will you take with you when you finally leave me? Twenty, thirty years? Who knows then the length of my own days? For having found you, I have become you. You left me too soon this morning, making me feel unloved, making me love you that much more.

  I go to the bed and bury myself in the tangle of covers on your side. Your pillow is still warm. It smells like moss and wilting lilies. I close my eyes and begin to drift off.

  * * *

  We are walking in a glen and come upon a lush, innocent meadow of buttercups and clover. We stop to kiss, and I lean into you, taking your mouth in mine, but you are not leaning into me, you keep falling backward, and I look down and see we are standing on the edge of a cliff we had never noticed. I try to stop you, twist my waist to gain the strength, but I can’t, and you keep falling back and back. Then, suddenly, you push me away hard, sending me back onto the ground, to safety. And you are gone. I look down in time to see you falling through the air, calling my name, and then breaking into pieces at the bottom. B
lood filling the ditch. Your face erased, your legs splayed, and, slowly, blood seeping into the dirt.

  O Lord, let me die before you.

  1

  The last thing I wanted to do was to marry my husband. Bob Morgenthau was a widower almost three decades older, came with five children, a cat, and two dogs, and resided in a suburban house barely touched since the death of his wife five years before. It looked like this: On the lowboy in the hall was a mound of unopened mail that a casual breeze could have sent cascading to the floor. The chintz sofa with its fat golden flowers had gone vapid, the illusion of a spring bounty passed to winter gorse. Little crystal bowls were filled with shriveled nuts.

  Not only that, this man, the stereotype of the bourgeoisie, had the power to put me in jail.

  And this was supposed to be the man of my dreams?

  I had barely escaped incarceration anyway, emptying balloons of pig’s blood on draft files in various cities, trespassing on government property, and chaining myself to the wrought-iron White House fence.

  We couldn’t have been more different. In 1961, he had become the formidable U.S. attorney under JFK, sending away members of the Mafia, corrupt politicians, corporate thieves. In 1961, I was pubescent, a budding radical drawn to the black civil rights movement.

  By the 1970s, I had become a young woman in a state of rage. I felt a gnawing shame whenever I thought of Vietnam, which was much of the time. An ethos of death permeated my generation. We all knew or knew of someone killed in this excruciatingly stupid war, and our heads were filled with images of what we had done: the ears of Vietnamese women sliced off for souvenirs, babies in flames, faces bubbled black with napalm. That old American men (our parents) had sent fifty thousand young American men (their sons) to die alone a million miles away because of this fallacious domino theory that had quickly collapsed on itself made me crazy. That long after we were losing the war we were still dropping almost three million tons of bombs on Cambodia made me crazy. That we had killed student protesters for no good reason made me especially crazy. I hated my country. If you were intelligent and young, you were trying to figure out how to be sane in an insane world.