A Conflict of Interest

by Adam Mitzner

  “Yes. I told you. I have a client down here.”

  My mother leads me into her house, the first time I’ve been back since my father’s death. Oddly, it seems larger than the last time, although that may be because it was filled with people then, and before that it had always been occupied by my father too.

  It’s strange to be back. I can’t shake the feeling that any moment my father will emerge from the bedroom wearing his red and blue pajama nightshirt, which was more of a dress, actually, and was his standard uniform at home, not unlike the one Scrooge wears.

  “Have you eaten dinner?” I ask. “I’ll take you out.”

  “Oh, thank you, but I just had some pasta. I can make you something if you’d like.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll just have some cereal.”

  We reassemble in her kitchen, me with a bowl of Frosted Flakes, while she has a glass of chardonnay.

  “Are they stale?” my mother asks.

  “No. They’re fine. I don’t think there’s an expiration date on Frosted Flakes.”

  I take a visual inventory of my mother’s condition. She’s a very attractive woman, always has been and, likely, always will be. She’s tall, five-nine she tells people, but I suspect she’s an inch or maybe two taller than that. Her hair is now blond, but it suits her, not at all brassy looking, and her only wrinkles are the crow’s-feet at the corner of her eyes, which most people think make her look more attractive. She’s always been extremely fit, even without adhering to any type of exercise regimen, so much so that she sometimes looks too thin, although she would say there’s no such thing.

  There’s a part of me that would like her to appear more bereaved, but then I realize I’m being unfair. After all, I look the same as I normally do too, and it doesn’t mean that I’m not still in mourning.

  “So, what’s your case about?” she asks.

  The question surprises me. As I told Elizabeth, my mother almost never asks about my work. I hesitate for a moment to see if she’s going to say something to reveal she already knows Michael Ohlig is my client. When she doesn’t, I assume I’m just being paranoid and proceed to answer her question, although with as little detail as possible.

  “It’s a stock trading case.”

  “Did the guy do it?”

  I laugh dismissively. “Sorry, no exception to the attorney-client privilege for moms.”

  “Who am I going to tell?”

  “That’s not the point. Let’s talk about something that won’t get me disbarred. Okay? So, how have you been?”

  “I’m hanging in there. Everyone says you’ve got to take it one day at a time. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Can’t argue with that advice. What are you doing each day at a time?”

  “Same thing as always. Luckily for me, there always seems to be something to do. I play bridge with these other ladies on Wednesdays and Fridays, and I was just asked to help plan the Halloween party at the clubhouse. So, I’m keeping busy. I sometimes wonder how your father would have been without me if I was the one who died first.” Her eyes roll down and to the right, which I learned in a deposition seminar is a sign of engaging in an internal monologue, but then she gives her head a slight shake, pushing whatever she was considering out of her mind.

  “I know, Mom. I think about Dad all the time. Every time Charlotte does something, I can imagine how happy it would have made him, and then I feel this wave of sadness because I can’t tell him.”

  “I just wasn’t prepared. Not that you’re ever prepared, but …” She chuckles, more to herself than to me. “You know, I don’t even know how to pump gas. That’s something your father always did.”

  “I’ll show you,” I say, even though I know that wasn’t her point. “I know it doesn’t feel like this now, but you have a lot of life ahead of you. Dad would want you to be happy, to do the things you want to do.”

  “Like what?” she says, almost as a challenge.

  “You always said you wanted to travel, right? So, now you can.”

  It was a constant complaint of my mother’s during my childhood—that she could never get my father to take a vacation. He was a one-man operation in the store and claimed he couldn’t trust anyone else to run it, even for a few days. Vacations were put on hold until “someday.”

  My mother sits there, staring into her glass for a long time before finally saying, “Alex, do you think your father was happy?”

  “Yes,” I say, out of reflex more than anything else. In truth, I always felt that my father was a difficult man to read. Some of that I attributed to sons never truly knowing their fathers, but her posing the question means that she also found him to be something of a mystery.

  “No, really,” she presses me.

  I sigh, signaling that I’ll take the question more seriously, although I’m still going to answer it the same way. “I know without a shadow of a doubt that he loved you very much. And me, too. He often said that was all that mattered in life. Loving your family. So, on the measure that he deemed most important, he was the happiest person I know.”

  She shows a wan smile.

  “I’m glad you think that,” she says.

  “It sounds like you disagree.”

  “I just don’t know. Can you imagine anything sadder than that? I was married to the man for more than thirty-five years, and I don’t know if he was happy.”

  For a moment I wonder if Elizabeth would say the same thing about me, and then an equally jarring thought strikes me—I’d say the same thing about her. I really have no idea if Elizabeth is happy.

  “He was,” I say, as if my father’s happiness is a fact not open to dispute.

  “Did you know that when your father was a boy, maybe ten years old, your grandparents sent him to foster care because they couldn’t afford to feed him?”

  “Uncle Sam too?”

  “No. Can you believe that? They decided that they could feed one of their sons, but not the other, so you father pulled the short straw. I’m not sure how long he was there, but at least a year.”

  “How could I have never heard that before?”

  “You did,” she says, smiling. “Your father referred to it as going to camp. He thought of it as an adventure. He got out of the Lower East Side, spent some time in the country. Made new friends. If your father could convince himself that being sent to foster care—which back then probably looked pretty grim—was camp, I always thought he could delude himself about anything.”

  “I don’t think he was deluded about loving you, if that’s what you’re getting at. You could see it in his eyes, Mom. He would light up when you entered the room. Did I ever tell you what he said to me right before Elizabeth and I got married?” She shakes her head no. “It was at the rehearsal dinner. If you remember, Dad had a little more to drink than he usually did. We were talking in the corner and he said that his greatest hope was that I’d found someone I could love as much as he loved you. I said that I thought I had, and all of a sudden he seemed concerned for me. He said, ‘With your mother, I don’t think it, I live it. Every single day I can’t believe how lucky I am to be with her.’”

  My mother’s eyes are moist. At first I thought they were tears of joy, but now I’m concerned that I’ve upset her.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you’d be pleased that he felt that way,” I say.

  “No, I’m okay. That was a very nice story.”

  10

  I enter the Four Seasons lobby at nine-thirty, and see Abby sitting at the bar. A nearly empty glass of scotch rests in front of her.

  She’s changed out of her suit and is now wearing blue jeans and a black top, which stretches across her breasts. I’ve never seen her in jeans before, and even with her sitting down, I can tell that she looks good in them.

  “I was hoping you’d find me here. How’s your mom?”

  “She’s good. A little weepy at times.”

  “It must be hard for her to suddenly be all alone.”

  I ch
uckle. “I think so, but when I told Paul Harris that my parents had been married for thirty-five years, he joked that my father must be enjoying the solitude.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  She says this with a serious stare, which shames me, although I’m sure that wasn’t her intent. “No. If there’s a heaven, I’m sure my father won’t think he’s in it until she’s with him.”

  “That’s sweet,” she says, now with an inviting smile, “and also as it should be. No wonder your mom is lonely.”

  “The funny thing is that I never thought the feeling was totally mutual. I know she loved him, but he always had this gaga thing in his eyes over her. Sometimes I think she felt like she got a little bait and switched by him.”

  “How so?”

  “When they got married, she was twenty-two, and still living at home, and he was thirty-one, working on Madison Avenue, and had his own apartment in Manhattan. My mom is the type who’s impressed by that sort of thing. If you saw them together, you’d know what I was talking about. Everyone says that back then she was model beautiful; they say it now too, and even being charitable about it, my father wasn’t much of a looker. My father used to joke that everyone thought that she married him for his money, until they found out he didn’t have any.”

  She laughs. “I guess I don’t have to ask which side of the family you favor.”

  “Should I take that as a compliment?”

  “Take it however you’d like.”

  The way she says this, unabashedly flirtatiously, makes me wonder how many drinks she’s already had. When I took my seat at the bar, I assumed she was on her first, but it now occurs to me that she could be working on her second. Given that Abby can’t be more than 115 pounds, two scotches likely puts her well above the legal limit.

  “Regardless how you meant it, it was a running joke in my family. My mom would always say that I’m all Greene—the only thing Miller about me is my name.”

  “I’m sure your dad loved hearing that.”

  I chuckle. “He actually agreed. It was kind of hard for him not to. I’m about half a foot taller than him and have most of my mother’s features and coloring.”

  “Who’s responsible for the dimples?”

  Now I know she’s flirting. “Mom again.”

  “Pete,” she calls to the bartender, a guy with a shaved head, and then she turns back to me. “I peg you as a scotch man. Am I right?”

  “Scotch would be great,” I confirm.

  “Pete, a scotch for my boss. Single malt, of course,” she says laughing.

  “Of course. And shaken, not stirred,” I add, but only for her ears, not Pete’s.

  “Here you go,” Pete says a moment later. “Another one for you, Abby?”

  “No, I’m going to wait for the boss to catch up.”

  We make small talk about how the meeting with Ohlig went while I work on my drink. I haven’t even returned the glass to the bar after taking my final swig before Pete’s back, asking if we’d like another round.

  “Absolutely,” Abby says.

  “Take it easy on me,” I say. “I hardly ever drink anymore.”

  “You’re only a few years older than me,” she laughs, “so don’t act like you’re such an old man.”

  The bar begins to fill up. Midway through my second drink, two men and a woman begin to set up their instruments, along with some speakers, in the corner. Pete makes his way over to us after servicing a loud group of Asian businessmen on the other end of the bar.

  “Another round?” he asks.

  I still have a finger’s width left in my glass, but Abby’s glass has been empty since my first sip.

  “Yes,” she says. “For both of us.”

  “I do believe that you’re trying to get me drunk, Ms. Sloane.”

  Her response is that high-wattage smile. Then she turns away from me and says, “Pete, we’re going to move to a table, if that’s okay.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he says. “The band can get pretty loud. I’ll bring your drinks.”

  Abby leads me to a table for four in the corner of the bar, the spot farthest away from the band. She takes the seat against the wall, and motions for me to choose the chair to her immediate left, rather than the one across from her.

  “This way we won’t have to talk so loud when the band starts up,” she says by way of explanation.

  Pete brings over our drinks, but I’m now acutely aware that the scotch is not the most intoxicating part of this evening. Not by a long shot.

  It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve been in such close proximity to a new sexual encounter, and the thrill of that feeling overwhelms me. I wonder, if push came to shove, if Abby told me that she was mine for the offering, whether I would be able to resist.

  The very fact I’m considering this issue is more than enough of a warning that I shouldn’t be here. Nothing good ever comes from ordering a third scotch. But the high I’m feeling is too strong not to want it to continue. I won’t let it get too far, I tell myself, pushing out of my mind that the mere utterance of such a phrase is a clear sign that it’s already gone too far.

  It’s not just my marriage that concerns me. I know that the firm will consider my sexual involvement with a subordinate—especially a subordinate coming up for partner—to be a capital offense. I’ve seen us counsel too many Fortune 500 companies to sack high-ranking people over office affairs to think that there’d be any leniency shown to me.

  Rather than listen to my inner voice of reason, I raise my glass. “To …”

  “To Batman,” she says with another one of her smiles.

  “To Batman,” and I touch my glass to hers.

  “So, how do you think I’d be as a superhero?” she asks.

  “Am I now supposed to wonder what your superpowers are?”

  “I’ll leave that to your imagination. But I will tell you that, as for the costume, I see a lot of spandex and knee-high red boots.”

  “Now there’s an image. But what about your secret identity?”

  “I don’t think I need one. I’d just be Abby Sloane, superhero. I mean, I never understood why Superman ever pretended to be Clark Kent in the first place. Think about it, if you were Superman, why would you pretend to be a loser?”

  “Oh no,” I say, as if I’m about to impart critical information. “You have it all wrong. Superman isn’t pretending to be Clark Kent. That’s really who he is, deep down, at his core. He knows Lois Lane is in love with Superman, but to him that’s like when a woman wants you for your money. Superman wants Lois Lane to love the real him, and that’s Clark.”

  “I should have known better than to get into a comic book discussion with you. So, are you also going to tell me that Bruce Wayne is who Batman really is at his core?”

  “Since you’re asking,” I say with a smile because I know she’s not really interested in the answer, “no. In fact, it’s actually the opposite.”

  “How so, professor?”

  “Well, the Batman dichotomy is a crazy vigilante—that’s the Batman side—and the rich playboy, who is Bruce Wayne. No one pretends to be a crazy vigilante who fights arch criminals. If you go into that line of work, you’re pretty much a true believer. Which means that, at his core, Bruce Wayne is really Batman. The Bruce Wayne persona is the real disguise.”

  Abby laughs out loud. Now she clearly seems drunk to me. She leans back in her seat, causing her long hair to cascade around her face.

  “This is way too existential a discussion to comfortably follow given my current state of inebriation,” she says. “But riddle me this: which Alex Miller is with me now? The real one or the secret identity?”

  It’s a good question, one that I’d thought about before, but without ever coming to a satisfactory answer. When am I really me?

  11

  We leave Florida the next morning, booked on a 10:00 A.M. flight. Although I’m sure Ohlig is sorry to see Abby go, he points out that he has a wife and friends who do
not charge him a thousand bucks an hour for the pleasure of their company.

  After clearing security at the West Palm airport, I excuse myself from Abby for a moment and call home, even though there’s no reason for me to be checking in. I called Elizabeth from the car last night on the way back from my mother’s house and told her I was going to sleep when I got back to the hotel. But my evening with Abby has shaken me, and I feel the need to be pulled back into my real life.

  Elizabeth answers the phone sounding concerned. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Everything’s fine. I’m at the airport. I’m going to go straight into the office today, but I’ll be home tonight.”

  “Oh, I was worried. You usually don’t call me during the day. I don’t know, I thought maybe something was wrong with your mother.”

  “No. She’s good. I didn’t mean to worry you. I was just calling to say hello.”

  “Well, hello to you too then,” she says cheerfully. “Want to talk to the cannoli?”

  She means Charlotte, a long-standing joke, a line from The Godfather. When Charlotte was a baby and we travelled, I’d always say to Elizabeth, “I’ll take the bags, and you take the cannoli.”

  “Hi Daddy!” Charlotte screams. I sometimes think that Charlotte believes I won’t be able to hear her unless she shouts into the phone.

  “Hi baby. How are you today?”

  “Good,” she says, and then demonstrates just how much of her mother’s daughter she is. “Daddy, why are you calling? We talked last night.”

  “Just to say I love you.”

  “Oh. I love you too, Daddy. Here’s Mommy.”

  Elizabeth takes the phone back. “I think you worried her too,” she says, laughing.

  For me, however, it’s hardly a laughing matter. My father worked long hours, the necessity of which I never questioned growing up, but now I see it more as a choice he made. It’s not my place to judge him for it, at least not without all the facts. I don’t know if the store could have survived without him putting in such long hours, and it would certainly make me a hypocrite to criticize him now when his work put me through college and law school. But the fact remains that my daughter will someday think about my choices in the same light and wonder if I really needed to be at the firm all that time, or if I was avoiding something at home that I didn’t want to face.