Lily White (46 page)

Time and again, Lee got annoyed with herself for comparing Jazz and Will, but she could not stop. She was dazzled at the differences between two men whose lives had been molded by old money. Jazz, at twenty-seven, was still the bright-eyed, high-spirited preppy who viewed the world as a fun place and Long Island as his own special playground. Will, at thirty-seven, was not the least bit bright-eyed. Lee could not imagine him that way, even as a child. He behaved as if he had seen it all and was faintly amused by it. But only faintly. He had a nice mouth, but it never smiled. She sensed there was sadness behind his elegant and wry facade, but since he played his personal cards so close to his exquisitely-fitting vest, she had no idea what the sadness was—or whether it was simply a romantic notion she had.

What she couldn’t get over is that he seemed made for her. Not the way Jazz was. Taylor made, she called Jazz, the way he cheered her by his very nature, the way his own self-assurance gave her a confidence in herself she had never before had—because why would such a man pick her unless she was, in fact, as wonderful as he kept telling her she was? And of course, the way he made love: Taylor made. Still, once they finished the business of marriage, the routine recounting of their day, the gossip about their extended families, they had very little to talk about.

But based on their common interests, she and Will Stewart could have sprung from the same egg. They discovered they listened to the same radio shows driving to and from the office. They were passionate about music. Lee gave Will a tape of Fats Waller playing stride piano, which he loved, and he introduced her to one of his favorites, the late-Renaissance composer Frescobaldi, and after she heard it, she told him: I owe you for this. They both cooked and gardened; they enjoyed obscure off-off Broadway plays; they were intensely political, and while she was a Democrat and he a Republican, they were moderates, so their arguments over lunch were more about style than ideology. One
weekend, shortly after she had once again taken up the crocheting she had learned from her Grandma Bella, she realized that making afghans was the sole interest she had that Will Stewart did not share, and that his abiding love of the New York Mets—he was at that moment at a game—was not going to be hers, ever.

Still, however close, theirs was an office friendship, and Will was her boss. Lee set down the plastic platter of tuna salad. “
How
am I screwing up?” she asked. Her answer was his glance, right at her stomach. She was barely six months pregnant but looked as though she was about to give birth to twin sumo wrestlers. “Being pregnant?”

“You don’t want to hear it.”

“Yes I do.”

“You’re not dealing with Manhattan juries anymore. Out here, they don’t like to see women in court trying murder cases. Okay, Huber told you that, you didn’t like it, and you fought him on it. Good. I’m glad you did. But they really don’t want to see pregnant women in court trying a case where she has to talk about a guy’s balls getting whacked off and shoved between his teeth.”

“But I’m being feminine!” Lee made a sweeping gesture with her hand, indicating her soft silk blouse and small, antique locket. “I don’t fucking shout!”

“You just did.”

“I mean in court. I’m polite, nice. You saw how feminine I was yesterday, didn’t you? What the hell else do they want from me?”

“They want you out of the courtroom and home taking care of your baby.”

“I don’t have a baby yet!” She rested her hand protectively on her mound of a stomach and felt a friendly kick of acknowledgment. “Look, Will, give it to me straight. Are you telling me I should stay out of court?”

“No.”

“Good, because if you did, I’d fight you on it.”

“I’m telling you that you have to adapt better. You’re not just another lawyer. You’re a pregnant woman in a traditional, middle-American community, and if you want them to approve of you, you need more than a little heart on a gold chain.”

“What do I need? A gingham pinafore?” She felt weary. Pregnancy exhaustion, trial fatigue, as well as the cosmic weariness that comes with the fear that you have made the wrong choice in life. Maybe she was not good enough for the job, and the whole time in Manhattan she had been flying with Melanie Tucker’s wings.

“You need to show the jury you’re one of them. The judge too.”

“I
am
one of them. There are seven women on the jury, and six of them have kids.”

“And not one of them spends her days going after a ball-chopping mob guy. So you’ve got to show them what you have in common with them. Not your locket. Your values. You and I both know we have to be strong to stomach what we see in this job, and we help ourselves by keeping an emotional distance by being cynical. Nothing surprises us, nothing gets to us. But there’s a difference between being strong and being tough. You’re not tough. Deep down, you’re shocked by what Eddie Marcantonio did to Nicky. Aren’t you?”

She did not want to give him the easy answer he was looking for. But when she thought about it, letting him finish his sandwich in silence, she had to answer: “Yes. It’s horrible.”

“Then let the judge and jury see that. You don’t have to go into a phony feminine swoon. Let them see the person who grew up around here and is appalled to find Mafiosi butchering each other and then—just as bad—
driving on the grass
in Eisenhower Park to leave the body. Your shock is real, and you’ve got to use everything you have. Use your shock. Use your normal, human
response: Yuck! And I’d like to hear one reference during the trial to the fact that you were born and grew up here on the Island, and one more during your summation. More than that would be overkill. Trust me, Lee, I do it all the time. It calms their prejudices: Oh, local kid made good. Not some slick piece of work from the city. One of us. Makes them feel safe.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t thank me. I’m here for more than lunch.”

“You know,” Lee said to her witness that afternoon in court, Detective-Sergeant Brody, “when I was growing up here”—she would have sworn the twelve jurors and two alternates sat up straighter—“we used to go to Eisenhower Park and run in the wooded area all the time. Wasn’t it a terrible risk that some child would find Nicky Gaudioso’s Lincoln Continental?” She wrapped her arms protectively on her pregnant belly. “And if they opened the trunk …” She closed her eyes, and thought of one particular close-up of Nicky’s face, and a genuine shudder passed through her.

Use everything you have, Will Stewart had said. Chuckie Phalen lost
People
v.
Marcantonio.

Lee was due to give birth on June 21, 1977, and since by the weekend following the trial she needed either Jazz or a derrick to pull her out of a chair, she began her maternity leave. In truth, her only regret in leaving the office was not being able to see Will every day. While she liked some of her colleagues and the cops she dealt with, the camaraderie she had felt in Manhattan, that elation that filled her at ten-thirty at night when some Homicide detective came in carrying a couple of six-packs and everyone gathered around to shoot the shit, did not come to pass in the Nassau County D.A.’s. No, this was the suburbs. Lawyers worked hard and went home to their wives to discuss whether to invest in an underground sprinkler system, while they waited
for the charcoal to heat up so they could grill their marinated chicken thighs and vegetable kebabs.

Jazz called her almost hourly. Anything yet? Nothing, just Braxton Hicks contractions, she reported. They had been to natural childbirth classes and took comfort that by breathing properly and knowing what would happen, they would be in control. She did not feel in control. There was so much pressure on her bladder that if she sneezed or laughed she wet her pants. Not that she was laughing much. The start of the tenth month of pregnancy is not a good time to begin asking oneself: Have I made a mistake?

She never felt that way at night, when Jazz came flying through the door, all smiles and kisses, telling her to stop it, she did
not
look like a manatee; she was still a fantastic piece of ass. As they watched TV together, he would massage her feet and ankles on their brand-new cushy couch, and she would think: This is what love is.

But days were different. She had too much time to think. It bothered her a little that she, an ex-radical, had gotten co-opted into the system without even a peep from her conscience. Living in a rose-covered cottage and leafing through books of afghan patterns. Working for the government. If her conscience was not sticking it to her, then shouldn’t her pride be giving her the business? Had her beliefs in her college years been that shallow? Or was she being too hard on herself? Was the lawyer who stood up and said “Lee White for the People, Your Honor” indeed the woman the Cornell revolutionary once dreamed of becoming?

What bothered her even more during those endless daylight hours was Jazz. When he was not with her, she wondered: Who is he? She had fallen in love first with a barefoot boy in a pizza parlor and, second, with a man utterly at ease with himself. How she had marveled at his simple acceptance of the fact that the world was his oyster and, then, at his invitation to come join him
on the half-shell and spend her life with him. Come on, the invitation read. You don’t have to prove yourself all the time. You don’t have to push. You’re with me. We’re in like Flynn. More in, because Flynn is an arriviste and you and I, babe, belong.

“Don’t you think,” Lee asked Robin, “that Mom and Dad won?”

“Won what?”

“Won the war with us. We’ve become everything they wanted us to be.”

Robin bit her rose petal of a lower lip. Her work at the day care center was voluntary, and she had stopped going in afternoons in order to be with Lee. When Robin announced her decision, Lee had been first appalled, then fearful of wounding her sister by explaining her need for privacy. After that she became angry, because she always had to tread softly where Robin was concerned; any serious obstacle to what sensitive Robin wanted might catapult her back into the darkness of drugs. But in the end, Lee found herself grateful for her sister’s company. She was lonely, and frightened about going into labor alone. She had a recurring daydream of experiencing a fierce contraction and running for the phone to call Jazz and the obstetrician but stumbling, crashing to the floor, striking her head or breaking both legs, and lying, helpless, screaming out in pain for hours—and having the baby come out stillborn. So she felt safe with her sister in the house. Also, she found it fun to have a friend to talk to, especially a nonlawyer who was smart but who didn’t always have a smart rejoinder.

“They didn’t win with me,” Robin said. “I’m not what they want me to be.”

“Sure you are,” Lee said.

“No. Only to the extent that I’m not a junkie now. I didn’t finish college. I have a menial job—”

“It’s a good job. You love being with kids.”

“Not to wipe fifteen asses three times a day. That sounds terrible. I
do
like the job, and I know that if I went back to school, I’d major in education. But right now … I guess I’m doing the best I can.”

“You’re doing wonderfully.”

Robin retied the ribbons of her cork-platform espadrilles. She had become her mother’s shopping companion. Lee had observed to Jazz that her sister was the best-dressed day care worker in America.

Certainly the best-looking, Lee ruminated. Now that Robin was off drugs and had had her teeth capped, her fragile prettiness had bloomed into beauty. She had her mother’s willowy figure and fair coloring, but with finer, sweeter features, as if a Pre-Raphaelite painter had given Sylvia a makeover. “I’m doing all right,” Robin said. “
You’re
doing wonderfully. You have it all.”

“All by Mom and Dad’s standards. A husband, a house in the suburbs. I mean, what was the point of all my rebellion? I married the man of their dreams, and I’m about to give them a grandchild who they’re praying won’t have a nose like Grandpa Nat, and I’m living in a rose-covered cottage two and a half minutes from their house. If they had given me a blueprint, I couldn’t have met their specifications any better.”

“You became a lawyer.”

“I had to do
something
after college. No one was pounding on my door, shouting marriage proposals.”

“Give me a break!” Robin said. “You could have gotten some normal kind of job.” Having arranged the bows on her espadrilles to droop with the proper degree of casualness, Robin was now running her fingers up her shin, over and over, searching for a near-invisible blonde hair her razor might have missed. Lee could not get over how someone as intelligent as her sister could be so utterly serious about fluff. “Anyway, you’re the one who chose this life, with Jazz, living here. You’re just pissed off that
it’s what Mom and Daddy wanted for you. But you shouldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s what everyone in the world wants. Love, marriage, a beautiful house. Ask yourself this: What would I rather have than love, marriage, and a beautiful house?”

“Nothing,” Lee admitted. She glanced around the living room, with its comfortable overstuffed chairs and warm wood tables. The afternoon sun streamed through windows framed by ruby roses. “I can’t believe we lucked into this place, can you?” Robin smiled, a fuller smile than in the past. Besides her teeth being fixed, she was also happier. “What’s so amusing?”

“You’re so sophisticated,” Robin said.

“Sophisticated? Every time Mom looks at me, it’s like she can’t decide who to call first: a wardrobe consultant or a plastic surgeon. I mean, I’m one notch above dowdy.”

“I mean intellectually sophisticated. You question everything. And whenever you talk about your job, you always wind up talking about how you didn’t trust what some cop swore up and down to, or you didn’t trust some lawyer, or even—before you started doing only murder cases—that you didn’t believe what the victim of a crime was saying.”

“So?”

“So you’re funny.” Robin lowered her head and chuckled. Then she looked back up at Lee. “Listen. This is just between us, okay? But do you think a gem like this house just
happens
to become available the day you decide Okay, fine, I’ll move to the suburbs?”