Firm Ambitions

by Michael A. Kahn

  “No.”

  “Have you told him you want a divorce?”

  She took a deep breath and exhaled. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wanted to meet with you before I told him.”

  “What made you finally decide to divorce him?”

  She tilted her head as she pondered the question. “I guess it started when they stole my ballerina over Christmas.”

  “Who?”

  “Burglars. They broke into our house while we were down at Sanibel. It was a totally professional job. They got in and got out without setting off the alarm. They took the usual stuff: color TV, stereo, the kids’ Apple computer, a couple paintings. Tommy’s parents called us the day after it happened. We came home the next day.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “The whole time I kept praying, ‘Please let my ballerina be there.’”

  “What kind of ballerina?”

  “She’s one of those beautiful Lladro porcelain figurines. I bought her in Chicago a few years ago.” She looked at me and sighed. “Oh, Rachel, she was so gorgeous, so graceful. She’s seated on the floor and slipping on one of her ballet shoes. I put her in the sunroom, which is where I have my coffee every morning after the kids go to school. Just looking at her made me feel better.”

  “They stole her?”

  She nodded sadly. “I was upset for weeks. It drove Tommy crazy. When he couldn’t stand it anymore he contacted a Lladro dealer in New York and had another one sent by overnight courier. But it was never the same. In fact, it was actually kind of worse.”

  “Why?”

  “I looked at the new ballerina, which looked almost exactly like the old one, and it made me realize what a pathetic person I’d become. When I was little I used to dream of becoming someone special when I grew up. Like a ballerina. Well, I obviously hadn’t. But surely I could do more in my life than stare at a porcelain copy of a porcelain copy of a little girl’s fantasy.”

  She paused to stub out her cigarette. I waited.

  “Everything seemed to come together on my fortieth birthday in February,” she said. “I remember looking at myself in the mirror that night while I stood there picking his hairs off my body. I said to myself, Eileen, you’re never going to be that ballerina, but you still have half your life ahead of you. You’ve followed all the rules. You did your homework. You got good grades. You stopped at all red lights. You always sent a thank-you card. When’s it supposed to be your turn?” She paused, with an expression of fierce determination. “That’s when I decided. Now. It’s my turn now.”

  “Is he seeing someone?”

  She nodded grimly and checked her watch. “Probably as we speak.”

  “Who?”

  She shrugged. “No one special. It never is. Tommy’s the king of the quickies. You know those motels where they rent rooms by the hour? Tommy needs a place where they rent by the minute.”

  “What about you? Are you seeing someone special?”

  She smiled with undisguised carnal pleasure. “Definitely.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He’s thirty years old and he’s gorgeous. He’s totally different from Tommy.” She leaned forward and raised her eyebrows in a lascivious manner. “Especially in the bedroom.”

  “Oh?” I said with a smile.

  “Let me tell you, Rachel, that man is hung like a bull, and he can last as long as I need. I’ve had more orgasms in an hour with Andros than I’ve had in a year with my husband.”

  “Andros?” I asked with surprise. “You mean the aerobics guy?”

  Eileen nodded proudly.

  I’d been hearing about Andros for months from my sister Ann. He was the crown prince of St. Louis exercise instructors. He had a place called Firm Ambitions in the Plaza Frontenac shopping mall, where he conducted aerobics and exercise classes a few hours each day. He also did personal workout sessions at the homes of dozens of clients, who were, for the most part, wealthy women between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five.

  I was especially intrigued because I would be seeing Eileen’s lover in action for the first time that night. Ann was an Andros fanatic. After dinner she was taking me to his high-impact aerobics class at Firm Ambitions.

  “Do you think your husband suspects anything?” I asked.

  “No. Andros and I are very careful about the whens and the wheres.”

  “What if he found out?”

  She laughed bitterly. “He’d kill me. He’d view it as a breach of our understanding.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I get the furs and the designer clothes and the Jag and two weeks at LaCosta every February. He gets the safaris and the gambling and the sport fucking. Meanwhile, I stay pure and raise the kids. Screwing Andros isn’t part of that deal.”

  I asked her some questions about Tommy Landau’s finances. As I expected, she knew very little beyond what Tommy told her, and Tommy told her very little. Over the past couple years she had glanced at a few of their financial statements when his lawyers had her sign various documents in connection with refinancings of some of his shopping centers. As she recalled, the assets on the financial statements included numerous limited partnerships, and the liabilities included millions of dollars in loans. From various overheard phone conversations at home, she had the sense that some of his shopping centers were having financial problems.

  I explained that we would need to hire a good forensic accountant to help make sense of her husband’s real estate holdings in order to be sure that she got her fair share of the property division. I concluded the meeting by describing the sequence of events from the filing of the petition to the date the judge issued the final order of dissolution.

  “Who’s Tommy likely to hire?” I asked.

  “Hard to say. Maybe his father, if that firm does divorce work. If not, maybe Charles Kimball.”

  “The Charles Kimball?” I asked, impressed.

  She nodded. “They go way back. All the way to when Tommy got kicked out of college.”

  “Did Kimball represent him in the rape trial?”

  She nodded. “And in the cocaine case. Got him off both times. Tommy’s pretty loyal to him.”

  “With good reason,” I said as I walked her to the door. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Drop those documents off tomorrow, if you can. Especially the tax returns. We’ll plan to meet next week before I file the petition.”

  After Eileen left I dictated the notes of our meeting and asked my secretary to set up a new divorce file. Your last divorce file, I told myself as I took a sip of coffee. The property issues were going to be dull and complex, especially the valuation of Tommy Landau’s equity positions in each of his strip shopping centers. But, I reminded myself, dull wasn’t necessarily bad. The case of Landau v. Landau would be a peaceful change after several months of Big Macs and Big Sals. And the Andros angle at least added a tinge of excitement. Maybe. Don’t get your hopes up, I cautioned myself. The only reason you agreed to take this case was that Ann begged you to.

  I nodded in resignation. How could I say no to my sister?

  I should have, of course. But I didn’t realize that until much later. Neither did Ann. And by the time we both did, it was far too late.

  Chapter Two

  I stared uncertainly at the plate in front of me. “What kind of Jewish mother are you?” I finally asked.

  “It’s good for you,” my mother said as she joined me at the kitchen table.

  “You used to make me brisket and kasha with shells.”

  “Not anymore. Too much fat and cholesterol. And anyway, brisket before an exercise class? It’ll sit like lead in your stomach.”

  I looked down at the plate again. “What is this, Mom?”

  “My own concoction.”

  “Does it have a name.”

  “No
t yet. Try it.”

  I did. “Not bad,” I said with a surprised smile. “This is tofu?”

  “With red peppers and onions.”

  “And mushrooms?”

  “Right.”

  I took another taste. “Ginger?”

  She nodded proudly. “Fresh.”

  “What gives it the color?”

  “Soy sauce.”

  I nodded approvingly. “It’s pretty good, Mom.”

  She gave me a maternal smile. “What did I tell you, sweetie?”

  “You’d better keep this recipe a secret, though. Otherwise,” I said with a wink, “you’ll get drummed out of the temple sisterhood.”

  “You’d be surprised what Yiddishe mamas are eating these days.” She checked her watch. “When is Ann picking you up?”

  “Five after seven.”

  “I have fruit compote. You have enough time. How about some herbal tea?”

  “Sure.” Life back home, I said to myself with a contented sigh.

  Back when I left home for college fourteen years ago I vowed that I would never return to St. Louis. Then again, I also vowed that I would never become a lawyer. In the familiar words of some pundit—perhaps Yogi Berra, himself a native St. Louisan—never say never.

  At the start of freshman year of college, my two role models were Rosie in The African Queen and Albert Schweitzer in Gabon. I planned to become a Jewish Katharine Hepburn, MD—heading down the Yulanga River with a stethoscope and a doctor’s bag and Robert Redford cast in the role of my Charlie Allnut. Those plans changed junior year in a course called organic chemistry. So it goes.

  When I graduated from law school I moved to Chicago and joined Abbott & Windsor, the third-oldest and second-largest law firm in the Midwest. After a few years in that pinstriped sweatshop I left LaSalle Street to open my own office on West Washington Avenue. Several years later, business was doing just fine at the Law Offices of Rachel Gold. Indeed, I was so busy that I was starting to think about hiring an associate and a paralegal to help out.

  And then my father died. Suddenly. Of a massive coronary occlusion. The day after Thanksgiving.

  My mother found him on the kitchen floor that morning. I was up in the bedroom at the time, putting on my jogging shoes—I had come home for the long holiday weekend. Somehow I knew that my father was dead the moment I heard my mother moan, “Oh, no.”

  I remember dashing downstairs, one shoe on, the other in my hand. My mother was kneeling next to my father, who was facedown on the floor. The sports section of the Post-Dispatch was clutched in his left hand, his reading glasses were hanging from one ear. The mug of coffee on the kitchen table was cold. So was my father. The paramedics told us that he’d been dead for more than an hour when my mother found him.

  That was the worst part—that no one was with my father when death jumped him from behind, throttling down so fiercely that he couldn’t even cry out for help. He struggled alone, no one there to hold him as he died. That vision haunts me still.

  I moved back home in January. Literally back home—into the house and into the bedroom where I grew up. My mother didn’t want to live alone in the house. I agreed to stay with her while I looked for a permanent place to live and she decided whether to move in with her sister, my Aunt Becky, in a townhouse near the Jewish Community Center off Lindbergh.

  ***

  Although my mother and I were in our fourth month of what we both knew was only a temporary arrangement, we were certainly getting along better than the last time we lived together under that roof. We divided up the chores, took turns making dinner, and otherwise tried to live as much like normal housemates as a mother and her recently returned adult daughter can.

  “After you get back from this class,” my mother said as we sipped our tea, “I want you to tell me what you think of this Andros.”

  “Ann thinks he walks on water.”

  “I know.”

  I looked at my mother. “Am I missing something?”

  She pursed her lips and looked at me. “Just tell me what you think of him,” she said quietly.

  “Okay. Do you know anything about his background?”

  “There was a profile of him in the Everyday section about two years ago,” she said, her brows furrowing in concentration.

  I leaned back to listen. If there was a newspaper article, my mother would have read it and remembered it. She reads two newspapers cover to cover and has a near-photographic memory for everything she reads. Although she came to the United States from Lithuania when she was three and was never able to finish high school because she had to support her family after her mother died, she is one of the smartest and best-informed people I have ever known. While she has no patience for fiction (“With all my real problem,” she tells me, “who’s got time to worry over pretend ones?”), she devours her newspapers and news magazines. Don’t ever play her in Trivial Pursuit.

  “He’s an immigrant from some country in the Middle East,” my mother said. “Saudi Arabia, I think. Or maybe Iraq. After he moved here he got his start in one of those health-club chains.”

  “Vic Tanny?”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s the one with that pretty Olympic swimmer, what’s her name? Gateway. Gateway Health Clubs. That’s where he started. He got to be their most popular aerobics teacher, and then he went off on his own.”

  We heard the front door open. “Anyone home?” my sister called.

  “In here, doll baby,” my mother answered.

  Ann came in and gave my mother a kiss.

  People say that I’m my mother’s daughter and Ann takes after our father. We both have my mother’s high cheekbones, but Ann inherited our father’s broad nose, bowed upper lip, and dark blue eyes. Although she and I are almost exactly my mother’s height, Ann is a little stocky, like our father. She inherited his straight hair, too, which I used to pine for back when I was a teenager. Every night before bed in high school I would wrap my hair tight around an empty orange juice can in an effort to get rid of the curls—an effort doomed in the St. Louis humidity. Now, however, both of us have dark curls—mine compliments of my mother’s genes, along with the red highlights, Ann’s, compliments of her stylist at Jon ’N Company, who perms in the curls and paints in the blond highlights every six weeks.

  “You almost ready?” Ann said to me.

  I stood up. “All set.”

  She looked at my outfit and raised her eyebrows. “Okay,” she said with just a touch of disdain.

  We were quite a contrast. My sister was in a hot pink spandex bodysuit with an emerald thong bikini bottom stretched over the spandex. She looked like a cast member from Barbarella. I definitely did not. Assuming that the principal focus of an aerobics class would be the aerobics part, I had actually dressed for exercise.

  My mother walked with us to the door. “What about my silver dress with the beads?” she asked Ann. “I just got it back from the cleaners.”

  Ann mulled it over for a moment and nodded. “Perfect. I’ll pick it up when I drop Rachel off after class.”

  Ann and her husband, Richie the orthodontist, were leaving in a week for their annual four-day trip to Las Vegas. She needed an extra outfit for Barry Manilow. Ann and Richie always go to Las Vegas with the same two couples, and Ann schedules their trip each year to coincide with Barry Manilow’s appearance at the Dunes—a fact that continues to make me wonder whether we could possibly have come from the same gene pool.

  ***

  “Thanks for seeing Ellen today,” Ann said on the drive to Plaza Frontenac.

  “No problem.”

  “She told me she feels a hundred percent better already.”

  “It helps to talk to a lawyer. You feel like you’ve shifted some of the burden to another person.”

  “He’s such a shit.”

  “I barely know him.�
��

  “He’s been cheating on her for years. I don’t know why she waited as long as she did.”

  I remained silent. I had to. The conversation was edging into the realm of attorney-client communications.

  “So is there another man?” she asked. “God, for her sake I hope there is.” She glanced over at me.

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “Come on,” she prodded. “I’m your sister.”

  “And she’s my client.” I shrugged helplessly. “You know how it works, Ann. What she tells me is privileged. I can’t tell even you.”

  She glanced over and smiled. “Is it someone I know?”

  “Ann,” I warned.

  “Okay, okay.”

  “I hate to say it,” Ann said as she turned into the shopping center parking area, “but I think she married him for the money. Or for his name.”

  “It’s usually not that simple,” I said.

  She snorted. “What other possible reason could there be?”

  I shrugged. “From what I’ve seen, people get married for reasons they rarely understand at the time.”

  We found a parking place on the front lot of Plaza Frontenac. She turned off the engine and looked over at me with a grin.

  “What?” I finally asked.

  “It’s not Steve Rosenthal, is it?”

  I shook my head with feigned irritation. “For God’s sake, Ann.”

  She rolled her eyes. Okay, okay.”

  ***

  “Silicon Valley.”

  That’s what Ann calls the high-impact aerobics class at Firm Ambitions. The reasons—large matched pairs of them—were obvious throughout the room, especially when the women (including my sister) were on their backs doing warm-ups.

  All four walls were mirrored. I watched as the women checked their hair in the mirror or applied lipstick. Many were wearing heavy makeup. All were wearing high-fashion spandex exercise outfits. I looked completely out of place in my sweatpants, T-shirt, gym socks, and 100-percent natural (i.e., gravity-friendly) breasts.