Love Is a Rebellious Bird

by Elayne Klasson

  “What’s her name?” I asked. “The paralegal.”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s important to me.”

  “Meredith,” you said, and your head dipped even lower. “She’s young and naïve and going through a hard time. She works the night shift so she can stay home days with her kid. He’s still small. A baby really.”

  “Your fancy law firm sounds like a sweatshop. Around-the-clock paralegals.”

  “It is like a sweatshop, you’re right. The associates constantly have to prove themselves. I collapse when I finally get home after midnight. Then I get up a few hours later and do it again. You have no idea how much I was looking forward to getting away, to seeing you. We keep a brutal schedule at the office, especially now, on this case. But if it goes well, some people have told me I could make partner. It would be some kind of record, as young as I am. It’s that big a case.”

  “What’s this got to do with Meredith?”

  “I never see anyone outside the firm. There’s no time. She’s there late, working with me, so sometimes, after we finish, we go and get something to eat. She understands the craziness right now—until this case goes to trial. I feel like an asshole about it, but somehow, we slipped into a fairly inappropriate affair. It’s a cliché, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe. But I guess I’m a cliché, too,” I said. “Divorced, lonely woman. Waiting for you to get into town.”

  “Judith. You’re no cliché. All these years. We’ve shared everything. You know everything about me. You’re the person who gets me most of all. You can’t imagine how I was looking forward to seeing you. And, being with you. Finally.” You touched my arm tentatively. “God, I want you, Rocket.”

  I looked out toward Union Square, just below us. It was early November, but San Francisco was brightly lit and decorated for the holidays. There was a giant Christmas tree in the plaza, and this year, for the first time, a huge menorah. I thought that the smartest thing I could do would be to get my coat, walk out, and drive home. But I didn’t. The kids were at their father’s house. My place would be dark and lonely. I had a negligee in my overnight bag, and the unexplored sex between us was too powerful to walk away from. I looked down at you on the silk couch.

  “Please, Judith,” you begged. “Let’s see what happens between us. I promise I won’t lie to you anymore. Give us a chance at least.”

  At this point, I would like to describe the wonderful night of romance that happened between us that night in November. I wish I could report that the passion was so overwhelming, our lives were changed forever. But, alas, that is not what happened. Not then.

  The passion was there, but you, poor Elliot, your body failed you. For hours, we touched and caressed. We were no strangers to this touching. For years, in high school and even college, we had participated in such frenzied hours of touching, then stopped short. It was the times: I was conflicted back then. Now, with our arousal so high, both of us flushed and sweaty and tired, but with nothing to hold us back, it was clear that consummation was still not to be.

  “It’s happened before,” you finally said, rolling over in the bed. “But only when it’s been with someone incredibly important. I’m so sorry.”

  I wanted to ask if it happened with Meredith, but I just sighed and wished I hadn’t given up smoking back when I was pregnant with the twins. It would be heavenly to light up and inhale deeply now.

  “It’s almost funny, right? We’ve wanted this for such a long time, and now that we can …”

  You made many more visits to California. The depositions went on for months. And of course, finally, there was sex. After that first disastrous weekend, we took time and rediscovered each other’s bodies, the bodies that we’d rubbed and teased and aroused so many years earlier. Foreplay had been going on since we were sixteen. You were the boy I’d loved since childhood, as well as the brilliant man with tired lines around his eyes and strong, hard muscles that I could not stop stroking. I saw all of you, the vulnerable ten-year-old boy and the accomplished man in his thirties. All of these Elliots were at last, unbelievably, in bed with me. Physically, I felt a freedom with you that I’d never felt before. I felt you truly knew me and I you.

  These times together became like mini honeymoons. The rest of your team began staying at a hotel in the financial district, closer to the offices they used. You told them that you worked better at the Union Square hotel and insisted on staying there, even paying your own bill instead of putting it on your expense account. We hid ourselves away from the world those weekends, eating good food and drinking lovely wines. We were what we had always been: friends who could talk about anything. Only now we were lovers as well. I shut my mind to Meredith’s existence and this was made easier because, after that first night, you didn’t mention her again. “Just someone in the office,” you’d said then, reducing her to a convenient diversion. And I didn’t ask more.

  You talked about the case and about the government and corporate lawyers you faced at long conference tables. I talked about my week at the County Social Services Department where I tried to find homes for children who had nowhere to go and about the sad parade of poor people coming in and out of my office. Our worlds could not have been more different and yet we gave each other our full and undivided attention, both of us interested in and finding value in what the other was doing.

  The antitrust case you were working on was huge. It consumed you. It was going to make or break one of the biggest technology corporations in America. Although you started on the case as a relatively junior member of the legal team, gradually you were given greater responsibility in gathering evidence and taking depositions. The experience clerking at the Supreme Court with antitrust cases gave you the advantage of having analyzed both the government’s as well as corporate arguments in similar suits. You became invaluable to your firm’s defense of the California tech giant.

  This case stretched on for eighteen months. You flew from New York to Northern California at least once, sometimes twice, a month. It was a grueling schedule, but you seemed to thrive on the pace, always enthusiastic about the work, even when you’d taken a red-eye from New York, going straight to JFK on Wednesday after having worked a full day in Manhattan. You’d be in San Francisco several days, working hellish hours, before I arrived on Friday evenings. For a single mother raising twins, these weekends in San Francisco were exciting breaks from ordinary life. I no longer stared bleakly at the growing pile of dirty school and soccer clothes, at the stack of bills that never got completely paid, or at empty weekends when Seth had the children. Instead, I circled the dates of your visits on my calendar and cheerfully got Miriam and Evan ready to go to their father’s house. This was the love affair I’d dreamed about. Even better. This boy I’d loved had grown into an exciting and brilliant man, one who always seemed delighted to see me.

  We couldn’t get enough of each other, now that we were finally together. “It’s so wonderful,” you said over and over. “You’re so wonderful. Now, at this time in our lives, it’s as if we’ve never been apart.”

  In our room, after we’d made love, I’d ask about the case. Your work fascinated me. I suppose being close to such power was exciting for me to hear about. Your firm represented the richest companies in the world. I don’t remember feeling critical of the work you did. It seemed glamorous. But sometimes, not often, I would remember back to what we used to talk about in Chicago. You’d once been so passionate about social justice, about helping the underdogs. Back then in our Jewish youth group, we had sung songs of change. Our hearts were bursting with compassion for the poor and those without a voice. Yet you told me that the year before, you had successfully defended a multinational corporation accused of starving third world babies through its aggressive marketing of prepared formula, instead of mother’s milk. Public health advocates were outraged that uneducated women in Africa had been swayed by clever advertising to switch from breastfeeding to the less safe and nutritious ca
ns of formula. Your team had helped this company avoid paying out huge damages to poor women. What about this current antitrust suit? Could it really be good for our country and the economy to allow a few corporate giants to gobble up the competition? I asked you questions tentatively, wanting to learn from your explanations, waiting for you to make it right.

  You were not defensive about your choices. Clerking for the athlete-judge had convinced you that in order to be a successful lawyer, your job was not to take moral positions, but to provide the best legal advice possible. You had reverence for the law and the law became your god. You studied every possible argument and precedent and gave your clients, whoever they were, your very best. Sometimes when we were not together, I worried about those articles I’d read condemning the producers of baby formula, accusing them of causing the deaths of thousands of African infants from intestinal disease because of dirty water, the only water available, which mothers used to mix formula, instead of staying with breast milk. Usually, though, I put those stories from my mind, thinking that the issues must be more complicated than the newspaper accounts were describing. The press simplified issues.

  I believed that you were incapable of representing truly bad guys. There was something so pure about your description of the cases, past and present. I listened to your voice and your accounts of the depositions. In your voice and telling, it did not seem possible that the clients you represented could be anything but world leaders concerned with the greater good. Of course there was a great deal of wealth in your world. You were beginning to make big money and to act like someone with money. I noticed how you took luxury for granted, the monogrammed shirts, the hotel and restaurants, the enormous tips doled out so casually.

  When February arrived that year, you realized you’d be in California on the fourteenth. “It’s your birthday the next weekend I come out there,” you said. You never once forgot. “Is there somewhere special you’d like to go?”

  “You’ve already taken me to so many special places,” I answered. “I’ve never eaten in so many terrific restaurants.”

  “Yeah,” you said. “But what else would you like to do? What are your favorite places? Somewhere you’d like to go with Evan and Miriam?”

  I closed my eyes and thought for a while. “I wish we could go down the coast,” I finally replied. “We love driving through Big Sur. Such a beautiful ride, green-blue ocean on one side, the mountains on the other. My favorite part is just past San Luis Obispo. San Simeon, where Hearst Castle is. The hills there are golden in summer, lush green in winter. There are sycamore groves along the rivers and then the live oaks, lone trees with huge, gnarly branches at the tops of hills, like you see in cowboy movies. We should go there, Elliot. You’ve never met the kids. Miriam would show you how to ride a horse and you could be a cowboy.”

  “I’d like to be a cowboy.” You laughed. “I wish the firm didn’t always keep me on such a tight leash.” Then you added, “Maybe someday, though.”

  That next weekend, you handed me an envelope at dinner. “Happy Birthday. And Happy Valentine’s Day to my valentine.”

  Inside the envelope was a gift certificate for a week at a guest ranch. It was outside Solvang, in the central coast region, not far from the area I’d spoken to him about. The gift certificate was for three people. I looked up, puzzled.

  “Three?” I asked.

  “One of my clients owns this place. This ranch. He’s always talking about it. When you said it was your favorite part of California, I thought about it. There are cottages and horses and a lake with fishing. He says it’s a kid’s paradise and they’ll love it. They have a hay ride and a small farm with baby animals. I thought maybe you and the kids could go during their spring vacation. Could you get the time off?”

  “Me and the kids?” I asked, trying not to let my disappointment show. “You wouldn’t come?”

  “I doubt I could get away. But, listen, I’d be so happy thinking of you and the twins having a great week there. You’d tell me all about it and show me pictures. Do you have a movie camera? I’ll get you one. Make a movie of all of you on horseback,” you said.

  “Elliot, how could I accept such an expensive gift from you? These dude ranch places cost a fortune.”

  “I’m telling you, Judith, my client made all the arrangements. He said he’d been wanting to say thank you for some extra work I did for him. I’m just passing on the gift to you. Please let me. I’ll treat him to something when he’s in New York. Tickets for a Broadway show, maybe. He’s so rich, it’s nothing to him, I promise you.”

  It would be a dream week for the kids, I knew that. Of course, I wished he’d made arrangements for something that he and I could do, a romantic getaway, but this seemed almost as wonderful. I imagined how excited Miriam and Evan would be. And he made it sound as if it was nothing, just like two tickets to a Broadway show. How could I turn it down? So, I accepted this gift and the kids and I went to the ranch outside Solvang. We had a taste of luxury that week, the special sort of luxury where rich people pretend to be roughing it. The cottages were furnished in designer plaids, wood laid perfectly in the fireplace, so that one match was all it took to start a cozy fire. The barn was immaculate and the horses so well trained, anyone sitting on their backs looked like an expert. Miriam called them “push-button” horses, but she was in heaven. All the riding she wanted. The trail rides, led by friendly but laconic cowboys, took us through country so magnificent, we did indeed feel we were starring in a cowboy movie.

  Evan caught trout and bass in the well-stocked lake, and the ranch’s chef cleaned and served them to us at dinner. In the sunny afternoons, the children swam with other guests’ kids, and I read books beside the pool, uninterrupted by any responsibility. At night, there were family activities organized by the staff: line dancing, cowboy poetry readings, talks by naturalists. The most popular evening, as far as I could tell, was bingo. At this event, wealthy guests bought bingo cards for a dollar each, lining up as many as five cards in front of them. At the beginning of the night, the winner of each game got a T-shirt with the ranch logo. Later in the evening, the prizes became increasingly exciting—pots of cash, based on the money collected from the guests when they bought the cards. I learned that rich people can be very competitive bingo players, their eyes focused intensely on their multiple cards as they scanned for the number called. Idle chitchat was not allowed. These rich people wanted to win. However, one night, eight-year-old Evan won the last game, loudly calling out “Bingo!” and waiting breathlessly while the pretty young staff member checked his card and verified his win. He received a pot of nearly two hundred dollars. He was rich. For the rest of the week, everyone on the ranch said, “Congrats, buddy,” when they saw Evan and he glowed.

  When we checked out after the glorious week, I asked if the owner was on the property. I wanted to say thank you in person and tell him how the children had loved the place. The desk clerk looked at me, puzzled.

  “The owner? There isn’t really an owner,” she said. “We’re part of a large corporation. Based in Boston. They have a lot of properties. Resorts all over the world.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and saw that you now lived in a world where giving gifts such as a week at an elegant dude ranch was merely a small token. You had wanted to give me this present and concocted the story about knowing the owner. I was very naïve about your world, as well as the cases you defended. Unfortunately, these were not the only things I was naïve about.

  We had many idyllic weekends during those months you worked in San Francisco. Our time together that year was lovely, so uncomplicated. Until one beautiful Friday evening the next December, a warm and clear night, when you took me to a restaurant on the water. We’d begun to think of it as “our” restaurant, the staff recognizing us and giving us special treatment. We were taken to a window table. “No fog,” our waiter said. “You and your lovely lady can have the perfect table for the perfect view.” You smiled and looked out at the glittering lights
outlining the Bay Bridge. I knew the case was drawing to a close and I knew we were both thinking about it.

  “What a city,” you said. “You’ve taught me to appreciate San Francisco. I love New York, but it’s so much more livable out here. We’ve had a good time here, haven’t we?”

  When we got back to our room after that waterfront dinner, we made love and I remember thinking that all those years of waiting for you made our lovemaking now even more delicious. My eyes were beginning to close, when I sensed you leaning on one elbow and looking down at me with a serious expression.

  “What?” I asked. “You look sad.”

  “We need to talk,” you said quietly. “About Meredith.”

  Meredith. How shocking to hear you speak her name out loud after over a year. Why had she entered our room? I was immediately awake, my heart pounding.

  “What do we have to talk about?” I asked, the sex and the red wine no longer making me drowsy. I switched on the bedside table lamp; you shielded your eyes from the sudden light.

  “There’s something about Meredith I haven’t told you.”

  Meredith. Would you stop repeating her name? I had allowed myself to form no real picture of her. She was a weak, poorly defined image, a faint, insignificant presence in your life. She ran to the copier. She spoke quietly and did your bidding. She was forgettable and I had forgotten her.

  “Okay,” I said. “What about her?” Please, I said to myself. Let him tell me she quit, left her job as a paralegal at the firm and went somewhere far away.

  “She’s been sick,” you said and swallowed. “She had cancer once, a few years ago when she was really young. Before I knew her. And she had to have a hysterectomy. Now the cancer is back. She’s really ill.”