Unreasonable Doubts

by Reyna Marder Gentin

  Office lobby in forty-five. Liana rolled out of bed, still sleepy. She had stayed up until two in the morning reading Eclipse, the third volume of the Twilight series, where Bella must choose between pledging her love to the gallant but undead Edward and becoming a vampire herself, or giving herself to Jacob, who appears to love her with fewer strings attached, although things are not always as they seem. Liana was Team Jacob all the way, but she was as drained by the struggle as Bella. She’d woken in the morning feeling that she would probably skip reading the final installment, unsure she could handle the drama.

  Her Jakob had pulled another all-nighter at the firm, his third in as many months. Liana figured at least she could steal a few minutes with him before she headed out to Long Island to see her mom. Often, Jakob would make the trek with her; today he had to work on some hideous document production in the office all day. Liana wasn’t sorry to be going by herself. Her mom had sounded somewhat wistful on the telephone lately. As an only child, Liana was accustomed to being the main support of her parents. After her father, Artie, passed away from a cardiac arrhythmia three years earlier at the age of sixty-seven, the electric current in his heart running amok, Phyllis had turned out to be much more independent than Liana had expected, and she was grateful. Still, it had to be terribly sad to be in the house by herself, surrounded by reminders of their life together and with so many years alone looming ahead of her.

  Liana pulled on a pair of jeans and a decent T-shirt just out of the laundry and mostly unwrinkled. Her mother hated when she looked like a slob—how many times growing up had Liana heard the declaration, “Your appearance is a reflection on me!” Even as an adult, she would often put on an outfit and judge how she looked through her mother’s somewhat critical eyes. She grabbed her backpack and headed over to the local bagel store. She bought Jakob two everything bagels with cream cheese, lox, and onion and then wondered if he kept a toothbrush in the office.

  Good thing he’s not kissing anyone at work.

  When she got to his building, Jakob was nowhere to be seen. Liana sat down on a chair in the lobby. She couldn’t go up to the firm; just being in the vicinity brought on the stomachache she had lived with the entire summer she had worked there. Jakob finally emerged from one of the elevator banks about ten minutes later and wrapped his arms tightly around her.

  “Hey, stop—you’re smooshing my bagels!” she said.

  “Is that what they call them these days?” he said, raising his eyebrows in a good Groucho Marx imitation and making a furtive move toward her breasts.

  “That’s not part of this breakfast delivery,” she said, slapping his hand away and attempting to sound offended through her smile.

  “Thanks for doing this,” Jakob said. “It’s been a rough couple of days.” He looked pasty and possibly unshowered, and Liana secretly hoped he could go home soon and freshen up.

  “Let’s sit outside in the sun; you could use an airing,” Liana suggested. They went out the big revolving doors and sat side by side on the low wall that surrounded the building—Liana was always reminded of a moat, keeping her from reaching her beloved who was locked up inside the castle.

  They ate in silence for a while, Jakob savoring his bagels as though he had not eaten in some time and Liana picking the chocolate chips out of her muffin and barely touching the rest. Although she knew it was irrational, she always lost her appetite when she was around the law firm.

  “Come up and say hi to the team, okay?” Jakob said.

  “No way!” Liana answered so quickly that it was clear she hadn’t given the suggestion a moment’s thought. “I’m not dressed,” she added, lamely.

  “It’s Sunday morning, Li—you don’t have to be dressed. Please, it’s helpful to me. Frank likes you, and the associates enjoy hearing about your job.” Jakob’s attempt at reasonable was coming across as utterly exasperated.

  “Be real, Jay—Frank likes anyone with two X chromosomes. And your coworkers don’t enjoy hearing about my job because they are interested in criminal defense work—I’m entertainment. Like a freak show. They think what I do is totally off the grid. Lower than low.”

  “Look, Li, there’s probably some truth to that. But do you think that’s what I think too? Sometimes I feel as if you’ve labeled me “law firm asshole” and lumped me in with everyone else. It’s not fair.” Jakob sounded more hurt than angry, and Liana wished she hadn’t gone down this road.

  Before she could respond, her cell rang.

  “Yeah, hi, Mom. Yes, I’m going to the train right now—yes, I got to see Jakob for a little bit. Sure, I’ll take a taxi from the station; don’t worry. Okay—see you soon.”

  Jakob shook his head slowly, fatigue and disappointment written all over his face. He looked at his watch and then at the doors before turning back to Liana. “I’ve got to go back in,” he said. “Thanks for the bagels. I’ll see you tonight, whenever I get out of here.”

  “I’ll come up next time; I promise,” Liana said but so quietly she didn’t know if Jakob had heard. She watched him go back inside the building and across the floor to the elevator bank. Then she headed for the subway to Penn Station.

  When Liana got to her mother’s house, she found the front door unlocked and her mother in the shower.

  Good thing she lives in a safe neighborhood.

  Liana’s mind filled involuntarily with the scenes of carnage that leapt off her transcript pages at work. She opened the unlocked bathroom door and yelled in, “Ma, I’m here.”

  “Good,” her mother replied. “I’ll be out in a little bit. There’s coffee in the pot.” Liana went into the kitchen and poured herself a cup in her favorite mug. She sat down at the round kitchen table, the same one that had been there since her parents moved in when her mother was pregnant with Liana some thirty years before. The legs were black wrought iron, all curlicues, promising a fancy eating surface but delivering only a smooth dark brown wood veneer. Its surface unmarked, it bore no evidence of the years it had served as the central gathering place of Liana’s childhood for meals and arts and crafts projects, the rendezvous point of her teenaged friends at two in the morning when they’d had the munchies, and now as the last holdout of her aging mother’s campaign to stay in her home, alone, against her daughter’s wishes.

  In the three years since Liana’s father’s death, the kitchen table had increasingly become her mother’s anchor. Every inch of its surface was perpetually covered with various documents, which were merely pushed aside when she ate a meal. The projects were narrowly focused—telephone bills and scraps of paper would attest to an argument she’d had with AT&T over a surcharge; recipes or book reviews were cut out for Liana but not for herself. As her knees had started to stiffen, Phyllis would use the sturdy table to help get herself out of her chair, propelling herself toward the kettle on the stove and a cup of mango tea. Now Liana sat at the table, sipping her coffee, wondering if there was any specific reason her mother had been so melancholy the last few times she’d spoken with her.

  Phyllis finally emerged, dressed in a pink terry robe and with her wet hair combed back from her forehead. “What can I get you to eat?” she said, without even the preamble of a “good morning.”

  “Nothing, Ma. I just got here. I brought Jakob breakfast at work; I had a muffin. Sit down with me.”

  “How is Jakob? I feel like I haven’t seen him in ages,” her mother said.

  “You and me both,” Liana answered. When her mother looked at her expectantly for more details, Liana continued, “He’s okay. He’s working like a dog, but he likes it. I wish we had more time for each other.”

  “And how’s work going for you?” Phyllis asked.

  Liana considered her mother’s question for a moment. “I’m not sure. My boss and I have a difference of opinion on the best way to approach the clients. We’ll see who’s right, I guess.” There didn’t seem much point in worrying her mother by getting into specifics.

  Besides, exactly how would I
explain Danny Shea to her? I find my rapist intriguing? Sometimes I dream about him?

  Liana finished the last few sips of coffee left in her mug and looked up at her mother, who had her elbows on the table, head tilted to one side, lips pursed, and brow furrowed. It was an expression Liana called her mother’s “thinking face,” and it was often followed by sage maternal advice. Liana hoped this was one of those occasions.

  “Well, Liana, I’m your mother, and by me you are perfect and can do no wrong. But if you don’t mind me saying so, the real question is not whether your boyfriend is happy with you or your boss is happy with you but whether you are happy with yourself. I’m not pretending it’s easy, but if you are in a good place, everything else will follow.”

  How does she do that? I never said word one about being unhappy.

  Her mother reached for a bowl of roasted almonds that had been hidden behind a stack of mail on the table, popped a few in her mouth, crunching them noisily, and pushed the bowl toward Liana. When it became apparent to both of them that Liana wasn’t going to attempt either to answer her mother’s question or eat the almonds, Phyllis got up from her chair.

  “Come here; I want to show you something.” Liana assumed it was a new leak or a running toilet that needed fixing; now that her father was gone, everything in the house seemed to be slowly falling apart. After some problem was pointed out to Liana, she would get Jakob to come over and try to address it. He wasn’t much handier than she was, although he generally had a better sense of when you needed a professional to take over. So Liana was more than a little shocked when her mother sat down at the foot of her bed and pulled open the drawer of the mahogany dresser on the opposite wall, revealing a manila packet of about twenty loose eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs of Liana’s father and herself, impossibly young and painfully beautiful, on their wedding day. It was as though the photographs had magically appeared from another era; Liana could barely catch her breath.

  She had never seen the photographs of her parents’ small wedding in 1972. There was her mother, achingly lovely and hopeful, in a pale pink sleeveless dress with what she termed a “petal” neckline but which looked to Liana like a charming banana being peeled. Artie was dashing and confident, with a full head of thick wavy black hair that Liana had never seen in person. While he was on leave from his service in the finance corps of the army during the Vietnam War, they were wed in the rabbi’s study at Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, surrounded only by their parents and siblings and a stubborn aunt who refused to be kept away.

  “These are amazing, Ma. But why are you showing them to me?” Liana asked. “Why didn’t you ever show them to me before?” Her parents’ marriage had not always been smooth sailing. They’d argued, and there had been mornings when Liana found her father sleeping on the couch in the den. Nonetheless, they’d stayed together. Liana hadn’t known the details, and she didn’t want to know now.

  Her mother looked up from the photographs, the young faces so simple in the purity of the love at that moment.

  “I wasn’t hiding them. I just have a lot of conflicting emotions, and these photographs only tell a part of the story.” She pulled out one photograph from the pile in which she and Artie were gazing into each other’s eyes, totally immersed in one another as though they were the only two people on the planet. “A marriage is made up of millions of moments, good and bad, and a photograph only captures one slice of time. Wedding photographs are the worst kind of skewed representation—a fantasy we indulge in that marriage is easy and beautiful and unchanging. Of course there are those idyllic moments, but marriage can also be wrenching and turbulent. You have to be ready for it all.”

  “And what if one of us is ready and the other isn’t sure?” Liana asked.

  Phyllis took off her glasses and wiped them on her bathrobe. “They say you shouldn’t have children to try to save a marriage. I say you shouldn’t get married to save a relationship. Your father and I had issues, but we loved each other. We were married for thirty-seven relatively happy years, and I would do it all again tomorrow. But for a relationship to be successful, you have to give it everything you’ve got. A good marriage, in my opinion, is not based on grand romantic gestures, or even great sex, although that helps.”

  “Ma, please stop!” Liana squealed, her hands jumping up to cover her ears.

  “Oh, grow up, sweetheart,” Phyllis said. “For a marriage to work, you have to reach the moment when Jakob’s happiness is more important to you than your own, and vice versa.”

  Her mother’s words brought Liana back to Jakob’s definition of love—“to do something just because it makes the other person happy”—and then she pictured herself stubbornly refusing to go up to his office that morning.

  Maybe Jakob understands love better than I do.

  She felt like crying. But Liana hated being that vulnerable, even in front of her mother. She took a deep breath and managed, “I’m sure that’s good advice, Ma. Don’t worry—I’ll give you plenty of time to find a dress.”

  CHAPTER 7

  She had just dumped the fake orange powder that posed as cheese into her knock-off Kraft macaroni dinner when the telephone rang. Seeing Jakob’s office telephone number on the caller ID, Liana answered, “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Can I help you?”

  “Hi, babe.” Jakob sounded slightly harried, as he always did these days, whether he was at work or not. Still, she felt her heart flutter just hearing his voice.

  “Want to hang out? I’m making boxed macaroni and cheese like I’m in third grade. It’s one of my signature dishes,” Liana said. She was in a good mood, relaxing in her sweats and a slightly ratty Yale sweatshirt, and she could think of nothing in the world she wanted more than to have Jakob come over.

  “I wish I could. I’m stuck here for a few more hours. I’m just going to grab a sandwich downstairs in the cafeteria. Listen, Li, you never let me know whether you’re coming this weekend,” Jakob said.

  For a few seconds, Liana’s mind went completely blank. She had been so focused for the past few weeks on Danny Shea’s case that almost everything else had dropped out of the picture. She looked at the calendar on the wall in her kitchen and saw written under the date for Friday, August 3, Atlanta? and it all came rushing back to her. Jakob’s cousin Zach was getting married, and Jakob’s entire family was going—his parents, his younger brother and sister, and his grandmother. Jakob’s aunt and uncle had taken pains to make sure that Liana knew she was invited too—the envelope for the gaudy invitation had read, in purple calligraphy, “The Weiss Family and Liana Cohen.” Liana had delayed making a decision, and now the weekend was upon her.

  “Oh, Jakob. I’m so sorry. Your parents must think I’m such a doofus. I meant to let them know; I just got so wrapped up in stuff that I completely forgot,” Liana said.

  “Does that mean you’ll come? Please say yes.”

  “Well,” Liana said, “who am I to say no to an all-expense-paid romantic weekend in a fancy hotel—it’s in a fancy hotel, right?” she teased.

  “Yes,” Jakob answered, “the hotel will be very nice—it’s the five-star Mandarin Oriental.” He paused. “The romance I can’t guarantee. This is going to sound incredibly retro, I know, but since Rebecca is still at an ‘impressionable age,’ we’re doing it dormitory style, girls in one room and boys in the other. You’ll be with my mom and my sister and my grandma, and I’ll be with my dad and my brother.” Liana could sense Jakob holding his breath on the other end of the telephone as he waited for her reaction.

  She laughed out loud. “That sounds like a hoot. I’m in. Besides, you know I love a good wedding.”

  “Oh, this one should be a doozy. The girl Zach is marrying is a Southern belle gone traditional Jew. And I’m told they are pulling out all the stops in both regards. Weirdly, her family has some Louisville connection; I’m pretty sure they are flying your Rabbi Nacht down to perform the ceremony.”

  “Wow,” Liana said, “an
other good reason to go. Listen, although I don’t think it’s possible to overcook this mac and cheese, I’m getting hungry. Love you; I’ll talk to you later.”

  “I love you too,” Jakob said. Sometimes, things were simple like that.

  Liana was amazed at how incredibly gigantic and spread out the Atlanta airport was. She was glad she didn’t have to navigate it herself and could just stick with Jakob and his family, following them from baggage claim to the taxi stand and then into the Mandarin Oriental, which was by far the nicest hotel she had ever stayed in. Jakob’s parents had splurged and taken two interconnecting two-bedroom suites so that they could all sleep comfortably. Liana entered the girls’ room and lay down on one of the beds.

  “I think I’m going to stay here for the rest of my life,” she told Jakob’s grandmother. “I might actually die here.”

  “I think you’d get tired of living like this,” Grandma answered.

  “Have you seen the way I live now?” Liana asked her.

  Liana went in to inspect the bathroom and check out the “free” toiletries and saw that there was a telephone installed in the frosted glass stall that separated the toilet from the rest of the facilities. She immediately called Jakob’s room, planning to say “pizza delivery” and hang up like a ten-year-old if Jakob’s brother or father answered. But Jakob picked up on the second ring. “Hey, where are you?” Liana asked.

  “What do you mean? You just called my room.”

  “No, I mean are you in the toilet stall?”

  “How could I be talking to you if I was in the toilet stall?”

  “Go in there; you’ll see.”

  A few seconds later, Jakob said, “Okay. I’m on the phone with you while I’m in the toilet stall. Are you happy now? Should I take a leak?”

  “No!” Liana shrieked. “I’ve always thought when I strike it rich, I’ll have a phone installed next to the toilet,” Liana said dreamily.

  “Are you planning on striking it rich at the Public Defender’s Office?” Jakob retorted. “Shut up,” Liana said with fake annoyance, then hung up the phone.