Saving Grace (42 page)

“That’s not doing better. You misjudge him, Gracie. If only you would trust what you know, instead of what you hear. You know him better than any of
them.”

“Do I? I’m not sure.”

“Whatever they say he did, whatever mistakes he made, your father is a thoroughly decent man. And you know that, Gracie.” Lily took her daughter’s hand and squeezed it hard. “You know it.”

* * *

Jonathan’s trial had progressed to the stage of pretrial hearings, which required his presence in court. He did not so much participate as audit, politely attendant but disengaged. All decisions he left to Christopher Leeds, except one. Leeds argued strenuously for a postponement on the grounds of Lily’s ill health; Jonathan refused.

“What’s the point?” he whispered as they stood in the corridor awaiting the start of a hearing. “She’s not getting any better.”

“The point is, you’re useless to me in this state. Your body’s here, but your mind’s a million miles away. The prosecution won’t object. Ms. Buscaglio as much as told me, ‘Ask and ye shall receive.’ Why not, for heaven’s sake?”

“Because I want it resolved. I want an end to it, and so does Lily.”

“I’ll go to the judge,” Leeds threatened. “I’ll get a ruling that you’re temporarily incapable of assisting in your own defense.”

“You do and I’ll fire your ass.”

“Which would just prove my point. What would firing me accomplish? You’ve got no money. Who’s going to defend you, some pimply-faced P.D. fresh out of law school? You want to spend the rest of your life in prison?”

“Of course not!”

“Sometimes I wonder if that’s not just what you crave, a nice safe cell where nothing more can happen to you.”

“Stick to the law, Christopher. You’d make a lousy shrink.” The case was called, and they went inside.

Afterward, Christopher Leeds drove up to Highview to call on Lily. She received him in her bedroom and heard him out, and he thought from the way she nodded as he spoke that he had won her over. But when he finished, Lily said, “I won’t let my husband go through this ordeal alone.”

“But he is alone. You can’t come to court, and your children, quite properly, won’t leave you.”

“But I’m here when he comes home. We talk. Later,” Lily said gently, “he won’t have even that.”

Frail and gaunt, her golden hair replaced by a wig, she was so shockingly unlike the lovely woman of just a few months ago that it nearly broke his calcified lawyer’s heart. For Jonathan’s sake, Leeds tried once more. “Don’t you see, Lily, he’s so distracted and distressed over you, he can’t think straight.”

She put her hand on his, and hers was as dry as parchment. “But he
is
thinking straight, Christopher. We both are. Straighter than we have in years.”

* * *

“Maybe he’s right,” Jonathan said later, watching from the bedroom window as the lawyer, his head sunk between his shoulder blades, walked slowly to his car. “What’s going to happen will happen. Why waste precious time in court that could be spent together?”

“Doing what? Reminiscing about our salad days? No, Jonathan. For as long as I have left, I want to be part of your life, your real life.”

Though many things were said between them that once would not have been, some things remained unspeakable. The worst was Jonathan’s growing fear that the trial would last longer than she would. From week to week he watched her grow weaker, until she could no longer get out of bed unassisted. Pain etched fine lines on her flawless face. It came and went, assaulting in modulated waves like labor contractions, rising to a similar intensity. In these peaks of pain, Lily abandoned herself as women do in childbirth; she lost all inhibitions, howled and screamed and soiled the bedclothes with vomit and urine, as if she were struggling to give birth to death.

Jonathan began to feel he could bear her death better than her pain. He begged her to take more morphine, but she resisted; the drug made her groggy and increased her nausea. Dr. Barrows told him that marijuana could relieve the nausea, so Jonathan went out one night and bought a couple of lids. He rolled a dozen joints and put them in a box on her night table. Sometimes he smoked with her and they got stoned together, just like old times. But when the pain was at its worst, she banished him from the room and would have no one but Clara or the nurse he had engaged for her. Closed doors could not block out the sound of her retching. Gracie wept in sympathy, and Paul stalked the house with a Walkman glued to his ears. Jonathan thought of his promise. How much more could she endure? How much more could they?

The hearings concluded, and jury selection was set to begin in ten days. Christopher Leeds came to the house to see Jonathan, bearing a bouquet of asters and mums and a jar of his wife’s strawberry preserves for Lily. They sat in Jonathan’s study and Leeds said, “There have been some developments. Our discussions with the Eastborough Democratic party have reached the point where they’re willing to accept a voluntary suspension, with pay and benefits, pending the conclusion of your trial.” He paused for comment. Jonathan stared blankly, rubbing his brandy snifter along his lower lip. “It means, among other things, that your health insurance continues,” Leeds said. “I don’t have to tell you how important that is.”

Jonathan stirred. “Is that why? Did you bring her into it?”

“I didn’t have to. They know.”

“So they did it for Lily.”

“No doubt her condition affected them.”

“Tell them to go to hell. We don’t need their charity. Tell them it’s too little, too late.”

“I already accepted.”

“You had no right.”

“Shut up, Jonathan,” Leeds said equably. “You’re in no position to take that attitude. Besides, they’re entitled to care about Lily. You have to allow other people their decent impulses.”

This drew a tight smile out of Jonathan, and a tacit concession. “What’s the other development?”

“Ms. Buscaglio called again.”

“What’s the offer?” he asked, without much interest.

“Reduced charges and a recommendation for leniency in sentencing.”

“In return for...
 
?”

“Basically for what you offered that day in Rayburn’s office. A full admission of guilt.”

He was quiet for a while. “What do they mean by leniency?”

“We didn’t get into that. I wanted to find out first if you’re interested.” Leeds’s eyes, magnified behind monkish glasses, gave out nothing.

“What’s your advice, counselor?”

Leeds laced his fingers and gazed into them. A snifter of brandy sat untouched on the table beside his club chair. Jonathan’s study was redolent with an almost sybaritic atmosphere of leather and smoke, old books, cognac, and Persian carpets. Fleishman was a man, thought Christopher Leeds, who liked his comforts, who, more than most, defined himself by what he had. Though it was not his habit to indulge in negative thinking, he couldn’t help wondering how such a man would fare in a prison cell.

He said, “It’s a chance to avoid the possibility of a substantial prison term. We both know what that means, given the circumstances. But you would have to plead guilty. I cannot tell you to do that.”

It was a measure of how profoundly Jonathan’s life had changed that this prospect, which months ago had so appalled and disgusted him, should now hold a powerful attraction. He thought for a long time.

“If I agreed, would they allow me to postpone prison till Lily...
 
till Lily’s situation is resolved?”

Leeds said gently, “I think that’s obtainable.”

“What are my chances if we go to trial?”

“Hard to say. It depends on three witnesses and an X factor.”

“The witnesses being Michael, Solly, and Tortelli.”

“Correct. Of course, Messrs. Kavin and Lebenthal are guilty by their own admission of the very crimes of which they accuse you, and that will help us. But if the jury sees Tortelli’s testimony as corroborating theirs, it will go hard on us.”

“And the X factor is the jury?”

“No, Jonathan. It’s you.”

“What’s that mean?”

Leeds walked over to the desk and stood with his back to it, facing Jonathan, hands linked behind him in a courtroom pose. “When I took this case, you were full of the fighting spirit, chomping at the bit. Now we’re down to the wire, and suddenly you’re pulling up.

“Lord knows I’m not blaming you, Jonathan. In all the years I’ve been practicing, I never saw such an avalanche of troubles fall on one man. You told Lucas Rayburn that he couldn’t hurt you anymore, and right now you’re so numb you probably believe that. But I am here to tell you, my friend, that one day the anesthesia will wear off, and you are going to wake up and find yourself someplace you never wanted to be. And you’re going to say, ‘How the hell did I get here?’ “

Jonathan lit a cigarette. “You’re telling me to take the deal.”

“No, I’m not. If you want to fight, we’ll give them one hell of a fight; but I can’t win without you, my friend. You want to cut a deal, that’s okay too—but you’ve got to go all the way.”

“All the way? What haven’t you told me?”

Leeds returned to his seat and said with a slight shrug, “You’d have to cooperate. Name names and testify.”

“That wasn’t the deal I offered! I made it clear—no names, no testifying against others.”

“That’s the only way they’ll do it.”

Jonathan laughed mirthlessly. “I should have known there’d be a catch 22. No way, Christopher. Tell them no.”

“Maybe you should talk to Lily first.”

“I know what she’ll say.”

“Are you sure?” Leeds said sternly. “She has her children to consider. You do, too.”

“My daughter once said something to me I’ll never forget. She said that whenever I do something for my family’s sake, it’s the wrong thing.”

Christopher Leeds cocked his head. “Harsh words from a daughter.”

“Harsh?” Jonathan considered. “I don’t know. Accurate.”

Nonetheless, he was tempted, and not by the vague offer of leniency. Lucas had been right: something in him longed for confession. For the first time in his life, Jonathan regretted not being Catholic. With Jews, he thought, you go to them with a tale of guilt, and they’ll talk and tell stories about their Uncle Nate who had the same problem once, and their Tante Faigele, and then they’ll throw in some dybbuks and golems and the angel of death for good measure; so by the time you leave, your head is spinning, plus you’ve still got the same problem you came in with. Catholicism seemed to him a much more efficient religion. Confession, penance, and absolution all under one roof, like a car wash.

In bed that night, he told Lily about Buscaglio’s offer and asked her, “What should I do?”

Lily said, “You know what to do.”

“I wish to God I did. If it was just a matter of pleading guilty, I could live with it. At least it would spare us all the expense and agony of a trial.”

“Do you know things that would be useful to them?”

“I know things that would make their hair curl. I know how the system works. I know all the players.”

“Can you see yourself standing in court testifying against them?”

“No.”

She smiled. “There you are, then.”

“Christopher said consider the children.”

Lily raised herself painfully onto one elbow. “Look at me.”

He gazed up at her face, which had not lost its beauty in his eyes.

“Don’t think about the children. The children will survive. And for God’s sake, don’t do what you think is best for me. Just do the right thing, Jonathan.”

“And all will turn out for the best in this best of all possible worlds? Ah, Lily, have you gone soft on me?”

“Best isn’t an option. This is strictly a salvage operation. It would comfort me,” she said, “to know you’ll be okay.”

Between love and regret, his heart was rent. “What am I going to do... ”he began, and could not finish.

Lily put her thin arms around his neck, her mouth to his ear. “You’ll do fine, love. I know you.”

The autumn wind knocked hard against the windowpanes, fluttering the curtains. The temperature had dropped and snow was in the air. They fell asleep in each other’s arms, like young lovers. Jonathan dreamed it was summer and he was drifting in a gondola down a canal in a city of white stone. In the dream, Lily was with him: one of her hands held his, the other trailed through the water. But when he awoke, Lily had gone.

31

THE FUNERAL WAS PRIVATE, BUT MANY came who were not invited. Jonathan posted himself just inside the parlor door, greeting visitors, shaking hands. He and Lily had stood in so many reception lines in their lives that, even as he accepted condolences for her loss, he kept imagining her by his side. Each time he turned to her and saw Gracie standing in her place, he felt a shock of reawakening that mimicked the first shock.

It all still seemed so tentative. Yesterday morning when he had awakened, the sense of her absence was so palpable that even as he gazed at her, lying beside him with her eyes wide open and free of pain, it seemed to him that she had just risen and gone into the next room.