The Laws of Gravity
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 Liz Rosenberg
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Amazon Publishing
PO Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781611099546
ISBN-10: 1611099544
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012922282
AS PROMISED, TO MY MOTHER.
What thou lovest well remains.
ONTENTS
O
CTOBER 2010
Halloween: I Told You I Was Sick
M
IDSUMMER 2011
Your Sister Rose
S
EPTEMBER 2011
The Matriarch of the Family
S
EPTEMBER 2011
The Age of Mandatory Retirement
O
CTOBER 2011
They Tried to Kill Us, We Won, Let’s Eat
O
CTOBER 2011
Good News, Bad News
D
ECEMBER 2011
Let the Games Begin
M
ID
-D
ECEMBER 2011
In the Middle of the Longest Night
L
ATE
D
ECEMBER 2011
Doing the Job to the Best of Your Ability
F
EBRUARY 2012
The Last and Only Chance
F
EBRUARY 2012
Julian Takes the Stand
J
UNE 2012
June Is the Start of Summer
A
UGUST 21–22, 2012
You Shall Not Boil a Kid in Its Mother’s Milk.
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my wonderful agent, Jenny Bent, for performing miracles every day. My brilliant and indefatigable editor, Kelli Martin, a cheerleader and wise advisor—every writer deserves an editor like her, but not everyone is so lucky. To the Dream Team at Amazon Publishing, working their magic. Deep gratitude to the late Justice John Flaherty of Pennsylvania, who took an early interest in this book, and whose support and generosity were unflagging. I quote from his legal opinions here, but any mistakes or missteps are my own. Thanks to the staff at the Supreme Courts of New York at Mineola and Riverhead for patiently answering so many questions. A long-overdue thanks to my late great friends and soul mates, the fiction writer Sheila Schwartz and the poet Jason Shinder. To Lucie Brock-Broido and Marie Howe, from whom I have here shamelessly borrowed stories about Jason. Thanks to Carrie Feron, for my start in adult fiction, and to Denise Silvestri, who believed in this book and promised to keep it by her bedside. Thanks to family and friends who stood by me and made all the difference. Long-standing thanks to Binghamton University, and the students who inspire me. To the Kates cousins, who are nothing like Ari. To my sister Ellen, always. Above all, above everything, I want to thank my children, Eli and Lily, and my beloved husband, David. You make getting up in the morning worthwhile; you make life whole. And finally, to all who struggle and lose and all who struggle and win—my heart is with you.
AY 1982
The Cousins
The two cousins sat in the sunlight of a May afternoon, overlooking the edge of a suburban backyard. Ari Wiesenthal was seven, a sturdy-looking boy who wore a distracted look and seemed to have a permanent frown line between his eyes. His hair was dark brown, but moppy—somewhere between wavy and curly. Nicole was only four. She was as slight and airy as he was solid, with a pair of long, thin dancer’s legs. For a child so young, she was eerily beautiful; red haired, her eyes deep brown and level. She was barefoot, wearing a sweatshirt over a pair of flowered shorts.
Their two chairs were angled toward each other. They were child-size versions of Adirondack chairs, and the dew still gleamed on the forest-green wood. The chairs had broad curving arms, and on each arm sat a highball glass with a straw sticking out of it, so the children looked like adults having miniature cocktails. The two sisters, their mothers, joked about it, looking out the kitchen window. Salt and pepper. The Inseparables. Their children sat with their legs crossed, mirroring each other. They could sit like this and talk for an hour at least, calmly and quietly.
The cousins had been this close from the time they were toddlers: Ari and Nikki. One brown head; one dark red with threads of strawberry blonde and gold and blood red running through it. Ari’s toy poodles, the older dog, London, and Florence the puppy, lay sleeping at their feet.
Ari’s mother was telling her younger sister a funny story. She was short, stocky, dark-haired, and dramatic. Suburbia bored her. Telling outrageous stories—at least half of them lies—was how she kept herself sane.
“It was a dinky little diner,” she said. “And they were already asking people to make their early reservations for Thanksgiving. In
May
, for Pete’s sake! They had up a little sign by the cash register. So on my way out I announced,
I
would like to make a reservation for Thanksgiving dinner.”
“You didn’t,” said her sister, shaking her head disapprovingly. She was as fair and thin as her sister was dark and voluptuous.
“Yes, I did. The cashier asked, How large is your party?—Oh, I said. Just one. Party of one. But I like to plan ahead!”
The two sisters burst out laughing.
As if on cue, a large brown-and-black mongrel charged around the corner, growling and snapping his jaws. Forever after Ari, the boy cousin, would associate the sound of women laughing together with danger.
The strange dog lunged straight for the toy poodles, as if he’d heard them trash-talking him down the hill, and had come to kill both. His eyes were a bright yellowish color, closer to a bird of prey’s than a dog’s. He sprang at them, snarling, jaw flecked with foam. He lowered his head, fur bristling like a military crew cut. The poodles woke, hysterically yapping. The strange dog floated forward, sank his teeth into the smaller one’s neck, then her foreleg, and there was a sudden flurry, a terrifying storm of sharp pained yelps and flying blood and leaping fur.
Nikki looked to Ari for direction, as she always did. Ari was paralyzed. He could not move, his hands frozen to the sides of the wooden chair. Nicole jumped to her feet, screaming shrilly, but she dashed straight for the strange dog, hauling him off the two barking poodles. Ari stared at Nicole’s thin bare feet, planted apart on the wood deck. Her red hair was glowing, her mouth was trembling; he had never seen anyone look so
alive
. The mongrel abruptly changed his objective and sank his teeth into Nicole’s wrist. The dog’s tail went as rigid as if it had been made of stone. Nikki was shrieking but stood guard over the two smaller dogs.
At the same instant three things happened. The sliding door from the kitchen to the deck rolled open like thunder; Nikki’s mother yanked a dish towel from the kitchen drawer and ran out to wrap up her sobbing daughter’s hand. The mongrel changed direction again and began to gallop back down the hill, his tail flat. And Ari scooped Nikki into his arms and carried her into the house, her blood running in a line down his arm, like a wavy red ribbon heading toward an uncertain future. His face was as white as paper.
Later that night Ari’s father, Charlie Wiesenthal, drove up and down the streets of Little Neck in his old Chevy hunting for the dog. If he saw it, he told anyone who would listen, he would kill it on sight. He would run it over with his car. His intentions were murderous. But no one ever saw the strange animal again. Florence, the puppy, walked with a limp after that, though she long outlived the other poodle, London, and never ceased to mourn him—not even after they brought home a cat to keep her company. And four-year-old Nicole was left with a scar shining on her right wrist like a thin white zipper, small and elegant.
