The Laws of Gravity (33 page)

Sol felt only half-human by the time he got to the parking lot of Brooklyn Federal. The waiting room was cooled only by a standing fan. Technology fell back thirty years when you came to a prison. The computers were old and few and slow, Naveen had told him. The TV set in the women’s wing of the prison was ancient and given to fits of static. There were only five or six working stations—no HBO, of course, no cable, no anything on-demand.

But it was only a few minutes before Naveen appeared, dressed in long sleeves as usual, over long pants. Sol was surprised that he had not been led to her cell. He had the rare privilege of being able to visit his inmates where they lived. Had this been revoked now that he was retired? Did word travel that fast? He felt a flash of annoyance, which disappeared as soon as she took her seat on the other side of the glass divide. Naveen said, “They won’t allow me any guests, Tholomon.”

“Why not? What’s wrong?”

“In a moment. How are you? You look well. I think retirement is good for you.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I want to know what’s happening here with you. How long has this been going on?”

“A month.” Yet she looked radiantly happy, as young as the first time she was brought before him in court, more than a decade earlier. “You thee, Tholomon,” she said, “I’ve fallen in love. I am waiting for permission to marry.”

“Marry!” Sol exclaimed. He had come to think of Naveen as a sort of Muslim nun.

“Yeth,” she said. “He’s one of the inmates here. We met in a thtudy group. He is younger than I am. But only by a few years. He hath an old soul, I think.”

“What is the man’s name?” Sol asked.

“Mohammad,” she said. “It is quite complicated,” she said. “It hath to go through a special board of appealth. We had to fill out many formth. Next week we also have our interviews. Individually. Firtht Mohammad, then me. But we are both very sincere. I have hope.”

“I see,” Sol said. “And who is on this committee?”

Her face brightened. “That is why I wrote to you, Tholomon,” she said. “The man in charge is one of your colleagues at court.”

He winced, waiting for her to pronounce the inevitable name of DeNunzio. The man had his fingers in so many pies. This is what comes of burning bridges, Sol thought glumly. You simply never know. “Be nice to everyone,” his professor at law school had told them. First year. “Everyone, all the time.” Why hadn’t he listened?

He looked at her gravely, already shaking his head. But she seemed not to notice.

“Hith name is Tom Lieu,” she said. “Do you know him?”

Sol smiled, a rare open smile, one that made his homely face almost handsome. “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said. “Let me see. I would have a good deal of hope, if I were you.”

She clapped her hands, leaned forward, bumped her head against the Plexiglas, and rubbed her head, laughing. Then, as if answering his unspoken question, she said simply, “It will make all the differenth in the world, Tholomon. I will no longer feel alone. I’m a new person already. I never expected this.”

“Well, I don’t know what kind of ceremony the prison will permit,” he said. “But if I can, I will dance at your wedding.”

June Is the Start of Summer

The children stood in a clump with Daisy toward the front, one of the smallest in her class. They sounded like gerbils, if gerbils could sing, Nicole thought. “June, June, hooray it’s June! June is the start of summer,” they all sang, more or less together. A few of them made hand motions to go with the song—Daisy did it enthusiastically. She was wearing a white cotton dress, much like the one Nicole had on, gauzy and lightweight, for it was a hot day, and the elementary school multipurpose room was not air-conditioned.

One yellow-haired boy kept wandering to the side of the stage, not even bothering to move his mouth along with the others. Occasionally he took aim with an imaginary bow and arrow and shot into the audience. Then he’d wander back to the others. Jay was laughing so hard Nicole had to nudge him to be quiet. The boy’s grandmother sat right behind them. But she leaned forward to Jay and said, “He’s quite a pip.” She said it proudly.

After the school concert there was sugary punch and cookies, which the children served, glad to play at hosts. Then it was time for the children
to return to their classrooms. Daisy wanted to go home right then and there, but it wasn’t even noon yet, and Nicole ached to lie down.

“Just a couple hours more, Noodle Pie,” Nicole said, using an old nickname. “Then I’ll come back and get you.”

Daisy’s eyes filled. She had always been this way. Nicole dreaded coming to the school for any of her performances, the way her daughter carried on when it was time to go. “But all the other kids are going home!” she wailed.

This was not true. All of the other kids were lining up behind their teacher to begin the march back into the classroom. One lone girl was heading out the door with her mother, their two hands connected, swinging.

“Melissa’s going home with
her
mother,” Daisy insisted. “Why can’t I?”

“Because you can’t,” Jay said. “Isn’t Melissa the smart one?”

“She’s very smart,” Daisy admitted. “She’s already reading at the middle-school level.”

“Well, see, you need to stay here to
get
smart. That’s what an education is for.”

“We’re not going to do anything but watch a dumb movie,” Daisy said. “Mrs. Brown said.”

“She said you were going to watch a dumb movie?” Jay raised his eyebrows. “Remarkably honest woman, Mrs. Brown.—I’ve got to be pushing off,” he said. “My next practice starts at one o’clock.”

“Okay,” Daisy said. “But Mom doesn’t do
anything
. She just lies there. Why can’t she at least take me home?”

“You watch that mouth, young lady,” Jay said, no longer kidding around. His eyes had a steely look.

“Never mind,” Daisy said. “All right, all right. I’ll watch the stupid movie!” She clenched her fists.

“I’ll be back for you in just a couple of hours,” Nicole said. “Then we can watch our own movie. Your pick.”

“With kissing in it?” Daisy asked.

“Lots of kissing,” Nicole promised.

“Not too much,” Jay said.

Daisy rolled her eyes, but she leaned forward to hug her father good-bye. Mrs. Brown was already signaling from across the cafeteria/auditorium. She was a pretty woman, fashionably dressed, with brown hair, sharp features, and a warm smile. She was a relaxed teacher, gentle with everyone, which meant she got a lot of the “bad” kids—meaning the kids with ITPs, the autistic kids, the troubled kids, one boy who was deaf, one girl who was blind. “Quite a crowd,” Jay commented, the first time he dropped Daisy off at school. “They just need the halt and the lame.”

“Jeremy walks with a limp,” Daisy said. “What’s a halt?”

“Never mind,” Nicole had said. “Mrs. Brown is a brilliant teacher. I wish I’d had half her patience.”

Daisy reached out and threw both arms around her mother’s waist now. She was surprisingly strong and wiry. She hung on for dear life. “I’m not going to let you go,” she said. She burrowed her head into Nicole’s thin chest.

But then the principal, Tom Corgel, blew his whistle. “Okay, parents!” he announced. “Time for your kids to get back to work!” He glanced at Nicole apologetically. Everyone in the school had read about her in the papers. But rules were rules. Daisy reluctantly let go.

“Don’t be late, okay?” the little girl said. “I want you standing right outside the door when I get out. Right where I can see you.”

“Bossy mossy,” Jay said.

“I’ll be there,” Nicole said. “Count on it.”

Nikki felt limp as a rag by the time Jay dropped her off at the house. “You sure you don’t want me to call Claudia’s mom, see if Daisy can go home with her today?” Jay asked.

“I’m sure,” she said. “Besides, I promised.”

“Want me to take the rest of the day off?”

“
No
,” she said. “Quit making me feel sicker than I am.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up one hand in a don’t-beat-me-up gesture. “You’re sure you’re okay with picking Daisy up from school? We can make other arrangements till school lets out.”

“It’s what I live for,” Nicole said. This used to be said as a joke line, as in, doing the dishes, the laundry. But, she realized with a jolt, it was now actually true. This is what she was living for. The ordinary things other people take for granted, being able to do something, anything, for the people she loved. Making a bed. Picking up a few groceries. Opening a can of soup. Every time she rolled a pair of Jay’s socks from the laundry, she told herself, This is one thing Jay Greene doesn’t have to do.

They were at the house now, and she leaned forward for her good-bye kiss. He surprised her by kissing her long and passionately.

“Wow,” she said.

She was looking into his round blue eyes, so clear and large and loving and troubled. Jay pretended to be more happy-go-lucky than he felt. “I’m shallow,” he used to tell her. “That’s why most things don’t bother me.” But
that was far from true. All these years later, she still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of her fathomless husband. He was still surprising her.

She climbed the steps to their little purple house, and managed to turn and wave jauntily before staggering out onto the back patio and falling into the chaise lounge, where she slept fitfully, but almost at once.

Over the next few weeks her condition declined, precipitously once school was out for the year, as if her body had been hanging on till then, the way a car will go and go and then the engine dies as soon as it hits the home driveway. Before she had been losing ground bit by bit; now it was like sliding down the steep part of the chute. Mimi was away on one of her comedy conventions. She’d offered to cancel the trip, but Nicole insisted she go. Nicole was practically living on the back patio now—the bed was too uncomfortable, and she was up and down six or seven times a night. Sometimes she would wake to find Jay sleeping on a cheap plastic chaise lounge next to her, holding her hand. “We could get a better chaise lounge at least,” she told him. “Maybe we can find a king-size.”

“I wish,” he said.

They were putting off the inevitable—moving a hospital bed into the house, or worse still, moving her into hospice. There seemed something prosthetic about the first, and something so final about the second. Selfishly, she thought, she wanted to die at home, if she could manage it. But she might not manage it. Her doctors had made that clear, even the nice oncologist who was half in love with her, and kept trying to stress the positives. For now, she was safely ensconced on the back patio. It felt like
she was living outdoors, amid all the green leaves and flowers she loved, but the patio was air-conditioned and shady. A bottle of water lay close at hand. An untouched bowl of applesauce. Her cell phone.

Jay was out helping a colleague who was moving to Greenport, the next town over. Daisy was safely at camp for the day. The front doorbell woke her. It was an effort to put down the book she’d meant to be reading, facedown so she would not lose her place, to rise from the chair, push open the sliding doors, and walk through the small house to the other side. Mimi was standing there, back from her weeks away at a comedy conference. She looked like a mirage.

“Oh, Mimi,” Nicole said. “I missed you, girl.”

Mimi saw her through the screen door like a ghost. The screen made her figure blurrier, and so did the tears that swam in her eyes. Nicole was wearing something white and gauzy—maybe a nightgown, maybe a dress, it was hard to tell. Her body was no longer shaped like her own body. It was simultaneously too thin and bloated. Her head was wrapped in a large colorful scarf that for an instant looked like some kind of exotic crown, as if she had been made queen of a foreign country. Her eyes looked so dark they seemed like black holes in her head. Mimi opened her mouth but nothing came out.

“You look different,” Nicole said. “You’ve cut your hair.”

Mimi’s hand went up automatically to touch it, as if she had to check and make sure that yes, she had chopped off her hair. It was as short as a boy’s now, and curly in the back. She no longer had time or patience to fuss with it.