A MONTH OR SO after I landed at Ridgewood, Iris dropped by with an armful of brochures and paint samples. She was excited, but also a little nervous. “We found a contractor. Do you want to see the color scheme we’re considering?”
We were sprucing up the condo because we’d finally decided to put it on the market. Surprisingly, I didn’t have much emotion about it, particularly. Maybe it was just a case of not letting myself feel it. Because if I allow myself to go too far down that road, I have to face the fact that that Ridgewood is probably my last place … if I am lucky. More than any attachment to the condo, that is the hard thing to swallow. But it is also not something I can change. So, when my kids tentatively, gently raised the idea of selling, I focused on the practicalities. I realized it made no sense to keep paying the condo fees and taxes.
I said, “That’s great honey. I hope the contractor isn’t too expensive?”
“He is an old friend of Jimmy’s. He’s giving us the ‘family price.’” Iris smiled. “How about we look at these over lunch at that new cafe on Central Street?” She winked. “You mentioned to Charlie you had a coupon?”
But I didn’t want to go. “Thanks, but can I take a rain check?”
Iris was immediately alert. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
I just wasn’t in the mood. Maybe my feelings about losing the condo and the independence it represented were deeper than I cared to acknowledge. Or maybe—just everything. Lately, I had been roiled with emotions I thought I’d dealt with long ago, anger and sadness bubbling up like a fresh spring. Plus, I’d slept badly. I didn’t have the energy to summon the positive and healthy and forward-looking attitude I tried to embody when I was with Iris.
I gestured away her concern. “I’m fine. Just feeling a little out of sorts.” I could see in her eyes a familiar mixture: worry, wondering how worried she should be, wondering if she should say something and risk annoying me.
I held up my hands. “Honey, don’t fret. I promise everything is okay. Take Jimmy. Or go with a friend. We’ll do it another time.”
She leaned forward and her eyes moved over my face, evaluating. “You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Really. I think I’ll just take a nap before lunch.” She looked at me for another moment, then bent to kiss me. “Okay. I’ll call you later.”
I put my feet up and closed my eyes.
The knock surprised me. I startled, dropping my feet to the floor. When I shuffled over and peered through the peephole, there was Katherine, smiling. I hadn’t seen her in several days.
I opened the door, feeling awkward. Like I’d told Iris, I wasn’t in the mood for company. Especially Katherine’s. But despite myself, when I saw her face, I felt a faint surge of friendship. I said, “Hello stranger.”
“I hope in this case you won’t ‘beware of strangers bearing gifts.’” She had one hand on her walker, and with the other she offered me a bakery box containing two luscious-looking croissants. As she held it out, I noticed her left hand trembled, and her color seemed off. But the social code of Ridgewood dictates that one does not mention such things, and as a nurse, I’d learned long ago not to ask unless I wanted to hear more than I’d bargained for. And her smile was bright, the waves in her silver hair as carefully done as ever.
It reminded me of the first time she had visited, bearing a muffin. Then I realized. I glanced at the clock. Yep, the timing was correct. I turned to her and said, “Let me guess. You want to watch The Young and the Restless?”
She nodded sheepishly. “Nathaniel has a cold and is cranky. And to make it worse, he’s on the phone with his brother, who is so hard of hearing that Nathaniel has to shout. It makes it hard to catch the whispered secrets on the television. But mainly, I really needed to get out of the apartment.” She pulled her mouth to the side and lifted her eyebrows.
Despite myself, the humor on her face lifted my spirits. I led the way to the living room and gestured her to sit. “Should I make us some tea?”
But she had already picked up the remote and was aiming it at the television. She made polite responses to my attempts at conversation, but Katherine was clearly most interested in finding the correct channel. Apparently she was more of a fan than I realized. I set some plates by the croissants on the side table and noted in the bright light of my living room that yes, her color was definitely off. Still, I decided to mind my own business and settled into my chair as she adjusted the sound. I claimed my croissant, savoring the flaky layers that shattered at first bite.
But I hadn’t watched the program in a while, and my pleasure drained away as I figured out what was happening. There was one plotline in particular that troubled me, a complicated story of personal vendettas and lies. At the heart of it, someone was bribing a lawyer.
I fidgeted in my chair.
A commercial blinked on. Katherine muted the program and turned to me. “Interesting twist. Though I have to say that there are times when the writers should do more homework, make the plots more realistic. I feel like they just take on a convenient target.”
I swallowed. “What do you mean?”
“That part about lawyers. Everyone loves to hate lawyers—and it seems like the program has gone for that kind of story a lot over the years. It’s just lazy.”
I said, slowly, “Well, they probably figure that lawyers have power and that power corrupts. And lawyers are exposed to lots of criminals. It might make it easy for their moral compass to be shifted a few degrees.” My heart rate was rising, and I could feel my pulse in my throat.
She sat up straighter. “People have no idea how difficult the job is.” She lifted her eyebrows at me in assumed complicity. “Believe me, I know. People on the outside are always ready to jump in, criticizing, acting like they know what justice should look like, when they don’t have all the facts.”
I opened my mouth, trying to figure out how to protest, when the program came on again, and Katherine immediately clicked the remote to bring back the sound.
The screen was filled with the image of a judge entering the courtroom. Then the trial began. The ne’er-do-well son of an important family, prominent in the social universe of the program’s fictional town, had been accused of assault by a woman of “poor reputation.” I squirmed as the defendant claimed that any “out-of-character” behavior in the past was due to his former addiction, but that it didn’t matter anyway because the woman was lying. The woman jumped in outrage, but the judge shut her down, and her own lawyer—the one who’d been bribed—sat mute and ineffective. In the end the judge gave the assaulter the lightest of all possible sentences. He referenced the accused’s good family and his bright future (“I trust he will go on to do great things once this unfortunate incident is behind him …”) as well as the “he said, she said” nature of the accusations. The woman—whose “loose behavior” had been prominently featured—ran out of the courtroom in tears. The last scene in the episode featured the victim, her face forlorn and mascara streaked, stumbling onto a bridge.
Katherine clicked it off and turned to me, smiling. “Well, I guess it turned out all right in the end.”
I stared at her, trying to focus. To be watching this with Katherine, in my apartment, was so absurd a circumstance, it was worthy of a soap opera plot line itself. But this was real life. My life.
I swallowed “Turned out all right?”
“Yes, you know. Justice was served. The kid was from a good family, after all, and it’s not like he got off scot-free. Hopefully community service will teach him to be more careful.”
“But … what about the woman? What about what he did?”
She shrugged. “Well, anything that woman says has to be taken with a grain of salt. She already has a baby and doesn’t know who the father is, and we know in the past she used men for whatever she could get.”
Blood thundered in my temples. I sputtered, “But … none of that proves he didn’t do it. It was all glossed over. Her lawyer took a bribe instead of defending her. No one at the trial even attempted to get to the truth.”
She waved her hand. “No doubt the young man learned his lesson, so what was the use of putting someone like him in prison? It’s important that people believe in the system, and the general public would not appreciate nuance. Her lawyer had probably saved her reputation from further damage …” She warmed to her subject, parroting the lawyer in the program. “It was just a case of ‘he said, she said,’ after all.”
I was astonished. I couldn’t even begin to untangle the circularity of this argument.
She glanced at me and her face changed. “Frannie? Are you all right?”
I had no idea what to say. Confront her? Tell her what her husband had done? Did she know?
I stood and hobbled to the window.
“Frannie?” She sounded concerned, puzzled.
I tried to keep my voice even. “It sounds like you are excusing bad behavior so long as the person has connections.” I trailed off, stunned and inarticulate in the face of the poisonous attitudes contained in her comments.
I returned to my chair. “Imagine if it had been Lisa who was attacked. I’m sure you wouldn’t be okay with this sort of outcome, even if her attacker had been someone from a ‘good family.’ The young woman was so devastated it looked like she was going to throw herself off the bridge. Do you think that’s okay?”
“No, of course not!” She looked genuinely shocked. “Suicide is never okay! I believe it is a sin against creation.”
I looked at her, beyond stunned. I had been expecting her to comment on the sentence for the attacker … but she was judging the actions of the despairing young woman? The cluelessness of asserting such moral certitude when she was in the process of defending corruption struck me momentarily speechless.
She leaned forward, her eyes troubled. “Oh Frannie, I’ve disappointed you. I’m sorry. Really. I guess I did come off as unsympathetic. It’s just that I feel like I need to defend the system from people who don’t understand a lawyer’s job.”
“Are you saying that it is part of a lawyer’s job to take bribes?”
She flushed a vivid pink, and her eyes opened wide. “Frannie!” She pressed her open hand against her chest. “Of course not! How could you even suggest such a thing?”
How could I indeed? I stared at her, trying to figure out if her response was straightforward outrage, a blatant charade, or a more complicated reaction, a response to a potential rift in the tightly woven fabric of her self-deception?
Katherine swallowed and then offered diplomatically. “To tell you the truth, I guess my reaction comes mostly from the fact that soap operas are more fun if you take sides—sort of like my version of sports!” She smiled, trying to get me to return it. When I didn’t, the corners of her mouth sank, and she leaned in closer. “Of course, in real life, in a real trial—when the people were real and not characters in a story—of course I would be sympathetic to the young woman. As you say, I have a stepdaughter to think of, and the world isn’t always kind to us females.” Then, having struck this ringing blow for feminism, she looked at me and leaned back. “I can tell you were a good nurse—you are so compassionate. You remind me how easy it is to be sucked in and get on my high horse.”
I was completely at a loss as to what to say. She patted my hand. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. Her fingers curled around my hand, and she squeezed gently. “And … are we okay?”
I blinked at her, trying to focus. “Um, yes. I … I just …” My cell bleeped, and a picture of Iris lit the screen. I practically dropped the phone I snatched it up so quickly. “Hi!” I cried to Iris, enthusiastically. “Yes, I’m ready to discuss the new counters.”
Iris said, “Um, Mom?”
I interrupted, “Honey, can you hang on one second? Katherine is here with me …”
“But Mom …”
“Okay. I’ll call you right back.”
I put the phone in my pocket and turned to Katherine. I had regained my composure, at least enough to know I could not continue the conversation with her. I needed her gone. Now. So I could process this. So I could scream. I inhaled deeply, more in control of myself.
“I’m sorry, but Iris needs me to help with some renovation decisions. Did I tell you we’re putting my old condo on the market?” I stood to send a clear signal that our get-together was ending.
I must be a better actress than I’d thought, because she seemed completely unaware of how flustered I was. Either that or she had cultivated whatever armor was necessary to keep such conversations from leaving a mark. “Oh, no need to apologize. I barged in on you, after all.” She leaned into her walker to stand up. “In fact,” she offered, “I was a decorator for years. I’d be happy to help if you’d like any assistance.”
“Thank you …” I moved toward the door. “But in this case my creative daughter has definite ideas. It is why I want to jump at this chance to offer an opinion.”
She smiled at that. “I understand completely.” She gave me a look that seemed to say, “Let’s put any unpleasantness behind us,” and then replied, “Your Iris is so creative, but people aren’t always good at seeing the viewpoints of others.”
The absurdity of that comment, coming as it did from someone who had just demonstrated such utter cluelessness and self-delusion, led me to the most surprising thing of all in a morning full of surprises. I started laughing. In fact, as my guffaw burst out, I realized I was on the edge of one of those near-hysterical bouts, laughter as a response to the absurd. I bit the inside of my cheeks to keep myself from sliding into a howl.
Puzzlement passed over Katherine’s expression, and I saw the question rise in her eyes, wondering if I was having some sort of an attack. Seeing this, I swallowed hard and managed to shake my head and regain my composure. I flattened my hand against my midsection. “Oh my.” I exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry. It’s just, well, if you had any idea about how your comment regarding Iris intersected with our history …” I let my voice trail off. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Of course not!” she exclaimed, as if she couldn’t imagine me ever being rude. Then she smiled warmly. “I’d love to hear more family stories. Iris seems like such an interesting person.” A moment before, this would have added to my absurd laughter, but suddenly, the full understanding of what it would mean if Iris knew I had become friends with the wife of the judge who she considered responsible for Bethany’s death descended like a wet shroud. I swallowed again, this time against tears. What was happening to me, rapid cycling through emotions like this?
Katherine continued to look worried. I reassured her. “Really, I’m fine.” I mustered a fake smile. I seemed to be reassuring people of my emotional fitness a lot lately.
She nodded. “If you’re sure …” she said, and opened the door.
After she left, I returned to my chair, drained. I felt like I was observing myself from a great distance: watching dark clouds develop on the horizon, or the thickening bands of a storm in a distant state flash across the map on the weather channel. I looked down at Katherine’s untouched croissant. She must have known about the investigations.
How could she not have?
I’d been telling myself that she somehow had maintained a protected, vaporous remove. A scrupulous ignorance. But it had been in all the papers. She had to have known at least something.
I wondered how I would have reacted if Calvin had been accused of doing something so wrong. In my heart of hearts, I had to admit I probably would have stayed with him, publicly anyway. Especially if there were journalists nosing around, as there were around Nathaniel. But in private? I would have excoriated him. And after the hubbub died down, I probably would have divorced him.
But maybe I’m kidding myself. How many excuses do people make for those they love? Maybe he just denied it, and she believed him. And why not?
The stern voice of Sister Marie-Clotilde, the principal of my old convent school, echoed inside my head: “Refusing to see sin is the same as sin.” In her uncompromising view, forgiving the people we love is one thing. Looking the other way and enabling them to do evil—especially evil we benefit from—is another. Those nuns who survived being sent from France to the North Dakota prairie, and warmed with little more than their faith, had backbones of steel. There was no room for shades of gray in their moral repertoire. She would have scoffed at such a failure of conscience.
Then again, mere humans rarely measured up to the frosty standards of the good sister. She didn’t really have the capacity for overlooking errors that loving someone requires.
The next day there was a note slipped under my door. It was from Katherine. In shaky handwriting it said, “I want to thank you for your friendship. I’m afraid I’m not feeling great lately—some old trouble acting up, nothing to worry about—but I might not be able to come down to the dining room so much in the next few days, and I wanted to tell you how much I value you. Thank you for being such a good person.”
I stared at the note and realized my hand was shaking too.