The Laws of Gravity (23 page)

One afternoon when Julian wandered down for a second glass of black currant juice he stopped at the kitchen table and turned his round dark eyes—so much like his mother’s—directly on Nicole’s. “I want you to know,” he said, “that I miss you—that we
all
miss you. And I am completely on your side.”

“Oh, Julian,” she said, reaching out to brush the hair out of his eyes. “You’re too young to have to take sides.”

“Sometimes I wish I could just stay and live here with you in this house. It’s a whole lot more peaceful than mine.” He said it softly and matter-of-factly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nicole said. “Though you know you’re welcome here any time, all the time. You have an open invitation.” She wanted to ask more about what was going on at his home, but felt it impossible. Those dark brown eyes were trying to tell her—something—but Julian’s lips were clamped firmly shut, as if intent on making sure the mouth did not reveal what the eyes did. She ruffled his thick, wavy hair. “Love you, guy,” she said, and left the room. She sat on her bed and looked through her old picture albums. There were more pictures of Mimi than there were of herself. Mimi skinny right after a bout of mono in college. Mimi pregnant with Julian. Mimi clowning around onstage in front of a bunch of people somewhere. Mimi and Nicole, arm in arm on the beach, in matching polka-dot swimsuits. Mimi and Nicole in large floppy sun hats down in Florida. Nicole reached out one finger and touched her friend’s head. The photo was
slick and flat, nothing more than a sliver of plastic. Then Daisy knocked on her bedroom door to ask whether she and Julian could have hot chocolate, and Nicole jumped as if she’d been caught doing something shameful. She wedged the photo albums back into the bottom of her bookshelf, spines out, and went downstairs.

Nicole could hear the steady murmuring of her daughter’s voice, high-pitched and quick, and the answering, comforting rumble of Julian’s. His voice at age eleven was already deepening, he was shooting up in height, his face had lost all remnants of its baby look. He’d gotten new steel-rimmed glasses, which only added to the adult owlishness of his handsome face.

“I wish Julian lived with us,” Daisy said. “I wish he was my brother.” She’d been saying things like that since she was three or four: I wish Julian was my twin, I wish he lived across the street. But Nicole now felt the full poignancy of her daughter’s desire. If Julian had in fact been her brother, none of this would be happening. Families had their hierarchies of loyalty. Ari would never have considered turning down his brother Al for cord blood or anything else, as badly as they’d gotten along. It was strange, the way families worked. It was stranger still that they functioned at all.

She often thought that if the parents of her students had seen how easily she lost patience at home, they’d have thought twice before they’d entrusted their own children with her. Ms. Greene, as her students had called her, was considered calm, even-tempered. She had been a popular and much-requested teacher, she knew. She had a reputation for never raising her voice to a student. Thank heaven for doors that shut and walls that kept your private life from public view.

What she felt these days was just plain lonely. Empty. She’d never had an easy time making friends, and now it was worse. She had most in
common with the other patients in the oncologist’s waiting room; she’d shared detailed, touchingly intimate stories with the others who went through chemo. One of her favorite patients was a woman in her eighties whose goal was to see one last Super Bowl. Another was a trucker who had lost his right leg to cancer. They compared numbers and spoke in a language no one else could understand. T-cells and PETs; Kidrolase versus Leukeran; 6-MP or 6TG. When she met up with her fellow chemo patients on the second round, then the third, the fourth, it was like meeting up with old army buddies—and like old army buddies, they joked about old war wounds, the side effects that no one ever warned you about: aching teeth, loss of memory, arthritic pains, vertigo, and insomnia; a lingering metallic taste that spoiled your appetite for the things you’d loved best: coffee, chocolate. If you complained to the healthy people around you about these things, you’d never stop complaining, and they’d still have no idea what you were talking about.

But she was done with chemo now. That was one decision she could make without lawyers or a judge. That had been her New Year’s resolution. She’d been through six cycles. She wasn’t responding to any of it anyway, and they’d tried every new drug in the book. If she lost this case, if she was refused the cord blood and never could get well enough for a bone marrow transfusion, she would die in peace rather than keep subjecting herself to one procedure after another. She’d seen women in the infusion room lose parts of limbs, holding up bandaged stumps, death taking them one small bite at a time. She would not go through that. She could not put her family through that.

Jay said he understood, though she wasn’t sure he did. She was ready to walk away from all of it, including the fight over the cord blood. She was
only going through the motions now for Jay’s sake. By the time the court case was over it would likely be too late. She might not even make it to learn the outcome—she knew that now. When she looked in the mirror, her eyes had a hollow-socketed haunted look, as if someone else had moved in with her, behind her eyeballs. Death had already staked its claim. It was too early to be apparent to the others, but Nicole saw it—or imagined she did, the therapist reminded her.

“You have no reason to be this pessimistic,” he said. He was a nice man. He collected seashells; they were all over his office shelves, small ones, large conches, mostly delicate little spirals. Nicole supposed she should have requested a female therapist, but she feared that might make her miss Mimi even more. It would seem pathetic—paying some woman to be her friend.

“Why do you assume you are dying?” he asked her. “Is it possible that you secretly want to die?”

“No,” she said. “I secretly want to live.” This was why therapists kept boxes of tissues in their offices, discreetly scattered all over the room, like vases of flowers. She blew her nose into a tissue from the box on the little table to her right. “I assume I’m dying because I can see it in my own face. I’m just astonished that everyone else doesn’t see it, too.”

Maybe they did and just couldn’t admit it. Daisy didn’t want to snuggle as much anymore—though this might have been a function of her growing up. Nicole didn’t think so. Daisy still climbed into her father’s lap at night to watch TV; it was her father she requested to put her to bed, while it had always been Mommy this and Mommy that. So much so that it was almost a family joke. And Jay treated Nicole as something breakable. Even his touch on the rare nights they made love was lighter, less certain, as if he sensed she was merely renting her body now, not fully occupying it.

But there were still good days. Sunny days, even in the depths of winter. Snow days curiously airy and empty and free of school when she and Jay and Daisy all stayed home, huddled around the fireplace in their little purple house, light bouncing blindingly off the snow. She loved her house, she loved her people crowded around her. On such a day she could almost forget that she was dying. One of her favorite poets had written, “There are good days, and there are fair days.” Any day she didn’t have to drag herself to the courthouse in Mineola she counted as a pretty fair day. Even the infusion room was better than that. She could not bear the hours spent with her cousin Ari sitting like a statue. He never looked at her. She hated that Turock woman. Even Peter no longer provided good company; she suspected his interest in her and in the case was flagging. For a man who had never lost a major case, he was closing in on his first defeat, and it made him cranky and impatient. The judge himself regarded her, or so she imagined, with some strange combination of pity and horror. It seemed to her that he avoided eye contact as much as he could, and she had watched enough televised court cases to know this was a bad sign.

Even now, a few journalists hung around the cavernous lobby, buzzing in circles like the last bees of summer, hoping she’d change her mind and grant an interview, hoping the judge would break down and open his chambers, or at the very least, that they could scoop his decision, which, Nicole thought, must surely be coming any time now. She thought of these journalists as early-bird vultures. She was tired. She was ready to let them land. And when she thought of the inevitable it was no longer with fear, but only with a piercing sadness. If that was the price of love, it was worth paying.

Flannery waylaid the judge one day in late February. There had been a thaw and the world seemed to be melting at their feet. Snowdrops and crocuses appeared, where only yesterday there had been nothing but a crust of dirty traffic-blackened snow.

“I’ve never asked you for a favor,” Flannery said, as soon as Sol walked in. “Never a personal favor, in all these years.”

The judge hung up his cashmere winter coat, and then sat down, facing his court clerk. Flannery seemed to be aging and shrinking before his eyes.

“What do you need?” the judge said.

“I’ve met someone,” Flannery said. When Sol continued to look at him uncomprehendingly, he added, “An extraordinarily beautiful and cultured woman, a widow who recently moved up here from Clearwater, Florida. She’s a few years younger than I am, still working.”

“How much younger?” the judge asked.

“In her forties,” Flannery admitted. “But wise beyond her years.—What’s more,” he added, “she is extremely interested in politics and current affairs, which is highly unusual, especially for a woman with school-age children.”

“I can imagine,” the judge said drily.

Flannery began to walk around the chambers in small circles. The last time Sol had seen him act this way was when his cat had died, years earlier.

“Unfortunately, I am not the only suitor,” Flannery said. The slight Irish lilt in his voice had become more pronounced as he worked himself up. “The lady is much sought-after,” Flannery said. “Beautiful, intelligent, well-en—” Flannery began to make a rolling gesture with both hands in front of his chest.

The judge snorted.

“I was going to say, well-
informed
,” the clerk said, offended.

“I’m sure you’ll win her over,” Sol said. “You have more charm than a barrel of monkeys.”

Flannery stopped circling and looked dead-on at the judge. “I don’t wish to be a laughingstock,” he said. “Not to you, Your Honor, nor to anyone else.”

“Of course not,” Sol said. “Sorry.”

“I want to make an impression,” said Flannery. “I
need
to make an impression.”

Sol sensed he was treading on thin ice, and wisely said nothing.

Flannery said, “You know I’ve been a confirmed bachelor all these years. Lonely as it’s been, I’ve occasionally found female company”—Sol knew his chief clerk wasn’t above calling an occasional escort service between lady friends—“but I never found my true match. I know you think I’m just a romantic Irishman, but I’ve fallen head over heels. Bridget is unlike any woman I’ve ever met in all my life. I consider her perfection itself.”

Sol, who did not trust himself to speak, merely nodded.

“She is hesitant because she’s had two bad marriages, and as I say, there are other men courting her, somewhat my junior. And she is—” He waved his hand over his head.

“Crazy?” Sol suggested.

“Statuesque. Bridget is a tall woman, over five foot nine in her stocking feet. She is sensitive to appearances. Doesn’t want to look foolish, that sort of thing. She reads two newspapers a day, every day. The
New York Times
, of course, and then also…” He hesitated briefly. “
Newsday
.”

Sol finally saw where all of this had been leading.

“I have never asked you a personal favor in all the years we’ve worked together. But I need to come out right in this woman’s eyes.”

“What is it exactly you’re asking for?” Sol said.

“I’d like you to open this whole case to the press. Let it be televised, if they wish. I want you to have the advantage of presenting our side of things, not to let conjecture and rumor ruin years of work, years of the most sterling reputation in the Supreme Court of New York State.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Sol said. “What’s your second choice?” Sol suspected Flannery would have come up with a backup plan.

“Allow me to speak to the press,” Flannery said. “Stephanie can’t handle this. She’s close to a nervous breakdown. I won’t reveal anything you wish to keep concealed. Simply matters of public record—when the case is going to be on the calendar, procedural matters, a brief overview of legal philosophy. Your Honor, I could be—as, I hope I may say, I
have
been, on many occasions, in my labors over countless years—your voice.”

“Granted,” Sol said.

Flannery stared at him, his lips parted.

“I’m saying yes. Fine,” Sol clarified.

Flannery’s eyes squeezed shut, and to Sol’s dismay, the chief clerk began to weep. He grasped the judge’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you!” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”