Firm Ambitions

by Michael A. Kahn

I looked up. It took a moment to come out of my reverie and notice how pretty she looked. “You look great, Mom.”

  She shrugged. “Halfway decent.”

  She was wearing a burgundy wool jersey cardigan over a white ribbed cotton turtleneck sweater. The cardigan was unbuttoned. Below she had on black, high-waisted, stretch stirrup pants with a black patent-leather belt.

  “You going out?”

  She nodded. Her smile seemed almost too buoyant.

  “Where you going?”

  “Miniature golf.”

  I was surprised. “Miniature golf?”

  She blushed. “Miniature golf.”

  “With Aunt Becky?” Her sister Becky was also a widow.

  “Not with Becky.” She paused, as if choosing her words carefully. “I’m going with a man.”

  It took a moment for it to register. “You mean a date?”

  “A date.”

  “Really?”

  “Maybe you know him. He’s a judge.”

  “A judge? You’re going out on a date with a judge?”

  “Rachel, sweetie, relax. He’s not married. His wife died of cancer a couple years ago. He seems like a nice man.”

  “Where did you meet him?” My emotions were swirling.

  “At the store.” My Aunt Becky owned a gift and card shop in Clayton, and my mother helped her run it. “He came in last week looking for a birthday gift for his secretary. And…” She shrugged and smiled.

  I forced a smile. “That’s nice.”

  The doorbell chimes sounded. We looked at each other, momentarily flustered. When my dates rang the doorbell in high school, my mother would send me upstairs before she answered the door. She would usher my date into the living room and give him the once-over. What was proper etiquette when the man at the door was going out on a date with your fifty-six-year-old mother?

  She took control of the situation. Smoothing her cardigan, she said, “I look okay?”

  “Beautiful. Which judge?”

  “Maury Bernstein.” She turned toward the door.

  Tex Bernstein? He had been the judge in one of my divorce cases. My mother is going out on a date with Tex Bernstein?

  His Honor stepped into the foyer with one hand behind his back. Sure enough, he was wearing snakeskin boots and a string tie. “Howdy, Sarah,” he said in that unmistakable twang. He brought his hand out from behind and handed her a long-stem red rose. “This here’s for you.”

  Good move, I conceded. I’m a total sucker for flowers. Still dazed, I smiled as I watched my mother take the rose from him.

  “Thank you, Maury,” Mother said. “It’s lovely.” She turned toward me. “This is my eldest daughter, Rachel. She’s a lawyer from Harvard. Rachel, do you know Maury Bernstein?”

  “She most certainly does,” he said, stepping over to shake my hands. “Mighty fine to see you, Counselor.” Tex gave me a radiant smile. He had large protruding ears and a bulbous nose. His bald head was gleaming, as if he had stopped on the way over to have it waxed and buffed.

  “Hi, Judge,” I said, still slightly dazed. My mother is going out on a date with Tex Bernstein?

  “Come on, Rachel,” he said, pretending to be peeved. “In your mama’s house I’m jes’ plain ole Maury.”

  The three of us struggled through a few minutes of overly animated small talk. I noted a fresh shaving nick on his chin and the scent of Old Spice after-shave lotion. I was pleased that he had shaved a second time that day for my mother, but I was also aware that my father’s brand had been Mennen.

  Maury turned to my mother. “Well, Sarah? Ready to saddle up and hit the trail?”

  My mother gave me a kiss. “I’ll see you later, sweetie.”

  “Bye, Mom. Goodbye…Maury. Have fun.”

  I walked back into the den shaking my head in bewilderment. Judge Bernstein. All the lawyers called him Tex. Behind his back, of course. Maury Bernstein was born and raised in a small town in the bootheel of Missouri. He came to St. Louis for law school, landed a job as an insurance claims adjuster after graduation, got active in Democratic politics, paid his dues, and eventually ascended to the bench. At that point, depending upon your view of the man, Maury Bernstein either dropped all pretense or became all pretense. Regardless, he traded in his wing-tips for boots, installed a Remington bronze sculpture in his chambers, put up a framed Lonesome Dove poster, hung a ten-gallon hat on the peg by the door, and became St. Louis County’s first Yiddishe cowboy circuit judge.

  There’s nothing “wrong” with him, I told myself as I heard his car pull way. After all, he’s got a reputation as a hardworking, honest judge. Not particularly bright. Actually, I admitted as I recalled the last motion I argued before him, sort of dense.

  But don’t forget, I reminded myself, he brought your mother a red rose.

  It was hard enough dealing with my mother going out on a date. Going out with a judge, however, made it seem even stranger. And having that judge be Tex Bernstein made it surreal. Back when I was ten, I was in the supermarket with my mother one day and saw my third-grade teacher selecting a head of lettuce in the produce section. Up until that very moment it hadn’t even occurred to me that my teacher had an existence outside the school. Same with Tex Bernstein. Now he was on a date with my mother.

  ***

  And then Ann arrived.

  I told her about Mom’s date. She seemed only mildly curious, but that was probably because she was much more concerned about why I was so anxious to see her. So I told her.

  “I feel like such a fool,” she said, more to herself than me.

  I didn’t say anything. I was keenly aware that I was the big sister. She was sitting on the couch across from me, her head turned toward the fireplace, her arms crossed in front of her chest, her legs pressed together. She frowned at the fireplace. “I feel like one of those sluts back in high school. A total loser.”

  I wanted to say something comforting, but it seemed that anything I could say would only make it worse. In the Gold family mythology, I was the smart one and Ann was the flighty one. Back when I was little, my mother put me to bed every night with fairy tales about college and medical school. “Someday you’ll be somebody,” she would whisper as she kissed me good night. “Not a doormat like your poor father. ‘Dr. Gold,’ they’ll all say. ‘Please help us, Dr. Gold.’” Ann was allowed to be the girl of the family, the one my mother sent to the Barbizon School of Modeling. She went through high school with a C average and dropped out of the University of Missouri after her sophomore year to marry her ZBT boyfriend, who was graduating that year.

  “Ann,” I said gently, “you’re probably going to be contacted by the police. I assume they’ll talk to every woman in his photo album.”

  She looked at me with a frown. “What?”

  “I said the police are going to talk to every woman in his photo album.”

  She nodded dully and turned back toward the fireplace. “Is Eileen in there, too?” she asked without looking at me.

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head in resignation. “Who else?”

  “I don’t know any other names. I recognized some from the aerobics class.”

  “God, how many girls are in there?”

  “A lot,” I said.

  “What’s a lot?”

  “Twenty. Maybe thirty.”

  She looked at me. “All the same?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Naked. Posed like hookers. Squeezing their tits. Sucking his cock.”

  I nodded.

  She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and took a deep breath. “And now the police have them.” She looked at me and shook her head. “Talk about humiliation—a bunch of cops drooling over those pictures. Jesus Christ.”

  I moved over to the couch. I took her hand and held it in both of mine
.

  After a while she sighed. “I really did it this time, huh?”

  She looked at me. We shared a pair of sad smiles.

  “Look for the silver lining,” I said. “That’s what Dad always told us.”

  “There’s no silver lining here.”

  “Well,” I finally said with a sheepish look, “all things considered, I’d rather be you than Andros right now.”

  “I guess,” she said with a reluctant smile.

  “And I’d rather be you than Eileen Landau, too.”

  “Was she really there when he died?”

  I nodded.

  She shuddered. “Death by cyanide. Totally gruesome.”

  “That’s the way it sounded.”

  “Was Christine Maxwell in the album?”

  “I didn’t see her in there. Why?”

  She shrugged. “Just curious. Are you going to the funeral tomorrow morning?”

  “Probably. Benny wants to go, too.”

  She smiled. “Benny? God, that’ll be perfect for him.”

  I nodded. “He told me he felt himself, quote, duty bound as a warm, sensitive New Age man to be available at the funeral home to succor any woman looking for consolation, close quote.”

  “Succor, eh?” It made her laugh. “Sounds like Benny thinks he might get lucky.”

  “Probably. Hey, you want some tea?”

  “I need something stronger than that.”

  “How about grain alcohol and an IV tube.”

  She smiled. “It’s a deal.”

  I stood up. “Come on in the kitchen.”

  ***

  Ann took another sip of wine. “I was so upset when I found out Eileen was having an affair with him.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Debbie told me.”

  “When?”

  “One night in Las Vegas. We were up in the room alone. The men were down in the casino and Janet was off getting a massage. Debbie had no idea about Andros and me. None. She’s just a gossip. She was telling me about her lunch date with Eileen at the Ritz the day before we all left for Vegas. Eileen had started off telling her about the divorce. They got to talking about husbands, about men, you know, the usual. That’s when Eileen told her about her affair with Andros. She swore Debbie to secrecy. She told Debbie that she was meeting him in a hotel room after lunch that day. Oh, Rachel, I was totally devastated. What made it even worse was that I knew exactly what I had done the day before we left for Vegas. I had spent the morning in bed with that goddamn son of a bitch. Can you believe it? He screwed me in the morning and screwed her in the afternoon. I bet he fed us both the same line of bullshit.”

  “Did you say anything to Debbie?”

  Ann shrugged helplessly. “What was I going to say? I was dying inside, but I didn’t let on. When she went to the bathroom I poured myself a glass of vodka, downed it in three gulps, and vowed that I’d never have anything to do with that bastard ever again.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “That’s why this stuff with the photo album is such a nightmare. It’s like having someone dig up a corpse right after I buried it.”

  I nodded sympathetically, although the lawyer side of my brain was clicking away. “So you were still seeing him back when you took me to his class.”

  “Oh, yeah. We were in the middle of a hot and heavy love affair, or so I thought. He was probably screwing three other girls from the class at the same time. Jesus Christ.”

  She finished her wine and poured another glass. I took a sip of tea and watched her. “He didn’t seem your type,” I finally said.

  She gave me a sharp look. “And what’s my type?” There was an edge in her voice.

  I shrugged. “I kind of thought Richie was your type.”

  “Well,” she said with a glum smile, “Andros certainly wasn’t Richie. That’s for sure.”

  “When did you start seeing him?”

  She leaned back in her chair and brushed back a lock of curly hair. “Three weeks after Dad died,” she said.

  I waited, sipping my tea.

  She had a wistful look. “I started thinking about having an affair the week we sat shiva at my house. Isn’t that terrible?”

  Sitting shiva is the Jewish version of an Irish wake, except it begins after the funeral, lasts for seven days, and is held in the home of one of the family members.

  “Death triggers strange thoughts,” I said.

  Ann frowned as she tried to remember. “Actually, I probably started thinking about it at the end of the funeral service. Richie was one of the pallbearers.” She stared at her wineglass. “I remember it so clearly. I was watching him carry Dad’s casket out. All of a sudden I realized how much Richie and I were like Dad and Mom. I don’t mean that he acts like Dad, or even looks that much like him, which he doesn’t. It was just that—I don’t know, it sort of struck me how much our marriage was like Mom and Dad’s. ‘My God,’ I said to myself as I sat in that chapel, ‘we’re going to be just like them.’”

  She took a sip of wine. “Let’s face it, Rachel, Mom and Dad didn’t exactly have the most exciting marriage in the world. I mean, Dad was sweet and all, but you’ve got to admit, he wasn’t Warren Beatty.” She sighed. “Dad was more like—well, he was like Richie: predictable, reliable, predictable, dependable.” She leaned back in her chair. “Totally predictable.”

  I reached across the table and placed my hand over hers.

  She closed her eyes. “Sometimes when I’m with Richie I feel like I’m living in the middle of a rerun that I’ve already seen a thousand times. When we go out to a restaurant, I know exactly what he’s going to order—everything from the Bud Light and shrimp cocktail at the start to the cup of decaf with Sweet’n Low at the end.” She opened her eyes and shook her head sadly. “It’s the same when we make love. I know every single thing he’s going to do, from the way he turns on his side toward me when we get into bed until he falls asleep. Everything. I know when he’s going to touch my boobs. I even know which one. Everything. We’ve been doing it the same way, for ten years. Not just sex. Everything in our relationship. You know what I felt like sometimes?”

  “What?” Ann hadn’t talked to me this way in years.

  “Like the train in that children’s book I used to read to the kids when they were little.” She paused for another sip of wine. “This little locomotive goes back and forth over the same tracks, day in and day out for years and years, until one day she decides she has to break loose.”

  “And what happens?”

  “She has fun at first, running through the meadows, smelling flowers, playing tag with the butterflies. But then she realizes that it’s more complicated than flowers and tag. She gets scared, she gets in trouble, she almost gets destroyed. In the end, she flees back to that old familiar track. She hugs the track, just as grateful as can be. She promises that she’ll never ever leave that railroad track again for the rest of her life.”

  “What an appalling story,” I said.

  Ann nodded. “I thought it was totally depressing, but the kids loved it. They made me read that book over and over again. I got so sick of it I threw it out one night after they were in bed.” She sighed. “They’ll probably turn out just like Richie. He’ll never leave the track. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking while I watched Richie in his boring blue suit help carry out the casket. I guess that’s when I started thinking about Andros.”

  “But it must have been thrilling for you at first.”

  “Oh, yes. Believe me, that man was nothing like Richie. He was an animal. Anytime, anywhere, he was always ready. He had a perpetual hard-on.” She giggled lecherously. “I don’t think Richie and I have made love anywhere but in our bed for at least five years.” She shook her head in disappointment, her smile gone. “Not anywhere but my side of the bed. But with Andros, I don’t think we m
ade love in a bed even half the time. He used to come over to the house on Monday mornings for a personal fitness session. It was some session. We did it in every room in the house. In the shower, against a wall, in the car, in the backyard, you name it. We did things I’d never done before.” She blushed at the memory. “I was like a drug addict. If I didn’t get my Andros fix every couple of days I’d start to have withdrawal pains.”

  “How did you handle the rest of your life?”

  She rolled her eyes. “My life turned into a soap opera. I wanted him all to myself. I started thinking insane things, like leaving Richie for him. I thought I loved him. I made him tell me he loved me. Like a fool, I believed it. Then I found out he was screwing Eileen at the same time he was telling me he loved me. I couldn’t believe it. At first I was in shock.” She shook her head. “I was so naive, Rachel. I went crazy. I wanted to kill him. I mean it.”

  “Did you confront him?”

  “Not to his face. I sent him a really nasty letter. That was the last contact I had with him.”

  “What did you say in the letter?” I asked, the lawyer side of my brain going on red alert.

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “I wrote the letter, drove right over to the post office, and mailed it. I was seething.”

  “Where did you mail it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To what address?”

  “His home address. Why?”

  “I’m just thinking of the homicide investigation. They’re going to match your name to your pictures in the album. If he saved that letter, it could make the police suspicious.”

  “I don’t think he saved that letter, Rachel. I sure wouldn’t if I got something like that in the mail.”

  “Keep your fingers crossed.”

  She checked her watch. “Listen, I better get home.”

  We both stood up.

  “Thanks for listening to me,” she said with a sad smile.

  I pushed a curl off her forehead. “I love you, Ann.”

  We hugged.

  “When’s Mom supposed to come home?” she asked as we walked to the front door arm in arm.

  “She didn’t say. They’re playing miniature golf. I bet they go somewhere for pie and coffee afterward. That’s a mom sort of thing. They’ll probably be home by eleven.”