•
Once I had chosen to say yes to adultery, I was faced with some tricky questions: (a) How could I be an adulteress (or are we saying adulterer these days?) and still feel like a basically good human being? (b) Was there a way to minimize the lying and sneaking and cheating while also making certain I didn’t get caught? (c) How many different men would it take to meet my need for sexual variety? And (d) What could I do to avoid the quite unwanted complication of falling in love with any or all of these men?
Now there are people all around us who maintain their sense of goodness by denying the negative aspects of themselves, by indulging in the blind belief that they harbor no wicked thoughts or malevolent feelings. I am proud to say I am not one of those people. Instead, I am well aware that each of us, including myself, contains both lightness and darkness, both good and evil. And I therefore believe that a “good” person is not one whose heart is pure, but one who stares into, and continually wrestles with, her heart of darkness (a stirring phrase taken from the fine novel of the same name by Joseph Conrad). Goodness, I tell my readers, is a struggle, not a settled state of grace. And even the best of us sometimes struggle and lose.
I suppose you could say I had lost the adultery struggle. On the extenuating other hand, however, I intended to commit adultery not in a spirit of self-indulgent lust but more in a spirit of intellectual inquiry. Indeed, it would not be farfetched to call it . . . research. If you add to this analysis the tit-for-tat factor (Jake had not been a man of total fidelity) and the helpful-to-my-readers factor (engaging in adultery would certainly broaden my range of expertise) and the preponderance-of-good-over-evil factor (in my wrestling matches with my heart of darkness I win about 92 percent—well, okay, 85 percent—of the time), my answer to question (a) is that I indeed could be an adulteress/adulterer and still feel like a basically good human being.
I also concluded that limiting my adulterous activities to a narrow—a very narrow—time frame would contribute both to my sense of goodness (I would not, after all, be making extracurricular sex a way of life) and to my ability to minimize the lying and sneaking and cheating (as well as the likelihood of getting caught). Furthermore, I decided that the best way to work adultery into my already tight and overprogrammed schedule was to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Frankly, I don’t understand why adultery is as popular as it is, considering how time-consuming it is. I mean, it isn’t just the time involved in actually having sexual relations. It’s all the support systems, like locating matching bras and panties, plus panty hose without a run in the thigh. Like getting your hair done, a pedicure, a manicure. Like applying lotion not only to your hands but to your heels and elbows as well, which, of course, we should all be doing anyway—but do we? And then there’s this constant searching for a working pay phone in order to call your lover without being overheard or (for the more paranoid) being tape-recorded by a less-than-trusting husband. There are so many time pressures on women today as they try to have it all (though, as I tell my readers, they can have it all but they can’t have it all at once) that I am slowly coming to the conclusion that one of the best arguments for marital fidelity is the incredible convenience of it.
Anyway, to get back to question (b), I decided that setting aside no more than a week, say, for adultery (who dreamed I could do it in less than twenty-four hours?) was the best way to limit my lying, sneaking, etc.
As for question (c)—and as I also tell my readers—there is nothing like sitting down and making a list, either lettered or numbered, to give you a sense of clarity and control. I therefore sat down last November and listed the types of men I wanted to carnally know, focusing initially on the generic, not the specific, and choosing the types that I chose for assorted complicated reasons that only my former analyst need comprehend: (1) a younger man; (2) a married man; (3) a black man; (4) a political activist; (5) a genius; (6) a celebrity; (7) a man of a different religious persuasion; and (8), I blush to add, an identical twin. Actually, I thought it might be nice to carnally know both identical twins, simultaneously, but although, like Publius Terentius Afer, nothing human is alien to me, I immediately banished that thought as . . . overreaching. Besides, the number of men on my list, counting only one twin, struck me as a little bit excessive, and I decided I had to . . . not prune, really, but consolidate. Which eventually I was able to do, having established that I could satisfy eight different needs with only three different men, all of whom—it conveniently turned out—were already uncarnally known to me.
There was Louis, a dedicated black activist who, at age twenty-nine, also met the younger-man requirement.
There was Philip, the world-famous TV pundit who had been flirting with me for years at my friend Nora’s New Year’s Day parties and who, if you didn’t listen too closely, could pass for a genius.
And there was Joseph Augustus Monti.
• • •
My concern about falling in love with the men with whom I committed adultery—question (d)—might strike you as rather outdated at a time in our social history when sex (despite its risks) has become regarded as a form of entertainment. Like bowling or bridge or going to the movies. Like ordering in a pizza with mushrooms and anchovies. No big deal. Nevertheless, I found it hard to imagine how people who take off their clothes and lie down together can “have sex” without “making love,” without feeling a tenderness, a connectedness, an involvement with each other that could lead to major emotional complications. But as I contemplated the three men I had selected to become my short-term lovers, I realized that the danger of love was remote. Like Elvis Presley, whom in my youth I had passionately disapproved of and just as passionately lusted after, these men spoke to my loins, not to my soul. I could not fall in love with Louis. I could not fall in love with Philip. And I could certainly not fall in love with Mr. Monti.
• • •
Mr. Monti was not at all lovable when, the day after his appearance on our front porch, Marvin and I showed up at his office with the hundred and fifty thousand dollars and no Wally. “You wanted your money back and my client out of your life,” said Marvin reasonably. “Your money is here. My client is gone. Your terms have been met.”
Marvin stretched out his hands palms up, in a fair’s fair gesture that complemented the sweet reasonableness of his voice. Behind his horn-rims, his eyes gazed steadily at Mr. Monti, his whole manner suggesting that while the practice of law might, for some folks, be viciously adversarial, men of good will could surely work things out. Knowing Marvin’s reputation as one of the bigger barracudas in the Washington legal profession, I watched his genial performance with admiration. Only a slight tension in his tight runner’s body execrably clad in a discount Syms suit hinted at his ability—should sweet reason fail to prevail—to viciously tear out his adversary’s throat.
Most adversaries. Maybe not this one.
Mr. Monti leaned back in his desk chair and sighed. “You think so, huh?” he said softly. “You think that you can walk in here in those cheap hundred-and-forty-dollar shoes”—Marvin flushed with pleasure, having never spent more for shoes than $32.99 at Payless—“and sell me a bill of goods that my terms have been met?”
“That’s my understanding of—”
“Well, understand this, Kipper. I don’t just want your client out of my life. I want your client out of my life permanently.”
I decided that the moment called for a constructive intervention—something philosophical with a down-to-earth touch. I had on just the right outfit to strike that note—a black-and-white silk with a slit skirt to show off (let me not indulge in false modesty here) my fabulous legs. I was there without the approval, or even the knowledge, of my husband, and I can’t say that Marvin Kipper was thrilled with my presence. But, as I pointed out to him while we were riding up in the elevator together, “Marvin you can never tell when my grasp of the human condition will come in handy.”
I thought that time had come.
“Mr. Monti,” I said, “what, after all, do we mean by permanent? Even our greatest symbols of permanence are subject to change. In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, and we all have to live with that reality. Even you, Mr. Monti.”
“What’s your point, Mrs. Kovner?”
“That Wally is gone. That as far as any of us, in any ultimate sense, knows, he is gone permanently. And that, until he stops being gone, your terms have—in fact—been met.”
Mr. Monti rose from his chair, walked around his desk, and stood over me.
“I want it in writing,” he said to me, bringing his face quite rudely close to mine. “No, I want it in blood.” He smiled a dangerous smile and lowered his voice. “Symbolically speaking, of course.”
• • •
Symbolically speaking is not, believe me, the kind of verbal expression that leaps to the lips of Joseph Augustus Monti. He learned it, I regret to admit, from me. He learned it one evening last January, in that delicate period after Wally and Josephine had announced their decision to marry but before they’d announced that Wally would not be converting. Mr. and Mrs. Monti had invited, us four Kovners to dine with them, their three daughters, and two sons-in-law at their extensive and expensive spread in McLean, Virginia. Also in attendance were a professor from Georgetown University (I never quite caught his name but he bore an eerie resemblance to the somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and Father Pezzati, a cheerful, fat-cheeked, roly-poly priest. Wally had already met all the Montis, and all of us Kovners had already met Josephine, but this was the initial full-fledged family-to-family encounter, and I was eager for us to make a good first impression.
I was therefore relieved that Jeff, a tawny Michael Douglas type (What can I tell you? I’ve got two gorgeous sons), was looking untypically virtuous in pinstripes, having eschewed his signature chartreuse suspenders and diamond-stud earring for the occasion. We had picked him up at his Watergate apartment, and on the way out to McLean he had expressed his interest in “doing a deal” with the widely diversified Mr. Monti.
“The guy’s made a bundle,” Jeff informed us, “buying old rental properties real cheap, and then the neighborhood—whoosh—takes off, and he’s selling these suckers for five, six times his investment.” Jeff shook his head respectfully. “I don’t know where he gets his crystal ball, but I’d sure like to take a look in it sometimes.”
“Yes, but you won’t get into all that tonight,” I gently asked and/or suggested, never quite sure where Jeff’s hustling heart might lead him.
“Certainly not,” Jeff answered in a huffy there-she-goes-underestimating-me-again tone of voice. “I just intend to lay a little groundwork.”
Wally, looking divine in his gray tweed social-worker jacket and Mel’s Lethal Weapon longish wavy hair, greeted everyone with hugs, kisses, and handshakes and his big, broad, utterly irresistible smile. Jeff laid some groundwork with his “honored to meet you, sir,” greeting to Mr. Monti, accompanied by a smile which, though not as sincere as Wally’s, can certainly warm up a room.
Although the boys inherited their great bodies and strong, even features from their father, they definitely got their knock-’em-dead smiles from me. It’s not that Jake doesn’t have a perfectly pleasant one; it’s just that he often seems to be hoarding a portion of it for a more worthwhile occasion. Still, cautious smile, cautious blue suit, and all, he too, I thought, made a fine first impression. And, of course, I did my part as well, having enhanced my self-confidence with a trip to the hairdresser, where Lawrence of Elizabeth Arden clipped and colored my hair into a jaunty tangle of gold-streaked caramel curls.
In the interests of rapprochement, I had chosen to wear something with papal overtones—a bright-red dress with a high collar and long sleeves. It was by far the brightest item in the Montis’ vast living room, which was decorated entirely in beige and white. Very traditional. Very tasteful. Very damask and velvet. Very beige and white.
As I often advise my readers, compliments should be precise, never global. If possible, they should also be genuine. I found, as I looked around the room (so different from our own audaciously eclectic green, brown, gold, and rust interior), that I could sincerely praise the flower arrangements, which ranged from a single white rose set in an exquisite bud vase to masses of white tulips exuberantly bursting from a fat china tub. I also assumed, when I cooed to Mrs. Monti about the beauty of these flower arrangements, that I had embarked on a sweet and safe subject. I was wrong.
Mommy is great with flowers,” said Gloria, the oldest and most pregnant of the three Monti daughters. “But they’re always white. Look, I’m not saying use every color of the rainbow, but why not red roses, why not yellow tulips? Branch out, live a little, I keep telling her.”
“And I keep telling her,” said Mrs. Monti, her voice trembling with emotion, “that she’s got her own house to put red roses in. I don’t want them in mine.”
Annette, the middle and less pregnant of the daughters, shook her head with disgust. “But Mommy, you can’t just keep doing the same white flowers year after year, decade after decade. You’ll . . . you’ll stagnate.”
“Watch your mouth there, missy,” warned Mr. Monti, as he poured wine into glasses set on an ornate silver tray. “I don’t want to hear any ‘stagnates’ around here.”
A silence descended upon the room. When Mr. Monti had finished filling the glasses, he walked around handing out the drinks. “I’m only serving wine,” he said, “but you can have whiskey if you want.”
There were no requests for whiskey.
Josephine, the youngest and (please, God) the only non-pregnant Monti daughter, roused herself from her customary reticence to make her contribution to the great flower debate. “If Mommy likes white, I support her right to white.”
Father Pezzati who, as I eventually figured out, was not hard of hearing but merely inattentive, now eagerly joined the conversation. “Of course you do, my dear. Of course you do. I presume everyone in this room supports right to life.”
Without missing a beat, the Monti contingent murmured their assent. Particularly enthusiastic were the sounds coming from the beige-on-beige striped damask couch, upon which languished—like three variations on the Madonna theme—Mrs. Monti and her two pregnant daughters, all built on a heroic scale, with thick black hair, flawless complexions, and magnificently reconstructed (it takes one to know one) noses. It was clear that their capacity for challenge and dissent had completely exhausted itself on the flower issue. They were now eager to return to the familial harmony which, as Wally had told me, was never breached (at least until he came into the picture) on anything more controversial than tulips and roses. Mr. Monti liked his women docile and devout. And while he was willing to tolerate a brief debate on the merits of right to white, right to life was a closed subject in the Monti household.
But not, needless to say, in the Kovner household. The question was whether integrity required us to state our positions or whether, in the interest of Wally and Josephine’s future happiness, we should keep our mouths shut. Fortunately, the Georgetown professor leaped in with a lecture on when life begins. This, according to him, was not at conception but at the moment that you and your mate decide to conceive. Why this should be so was explained at great length, taking us through our drinks, the announcement that dinner was served, and the first coarse, a hearty cheese-encrusted onion soup. It was obvious, as we moved on to the beef Wellington and scalloped potatoes, that the Montis weren’t into nouvelle cuisine.
“If life begins with the intention to conceive,” said Jake, as he performed microsurgery on his beef, “I’d love to hear your definition of when life ends.” He addressed his comment to the professor but Father Pezzati replied instead.
“In the deepest sense, my son, life never ends.”
“Yeah,” said Annette’s husband, Victor, his sandy mustache quivering, his blue eyes alight with religious fervor, or maybe too much red wine. “That’s what immortality is all about.”
Gloria’s husband, Albert, who, like Victor, was employed by his father-in-law, was eager to add his insights to the subject. “You ask a question like that,” he reproached Jake, “and the next thing you know, you’re turning off the respirators, you’re taking out the food tubes, you’re playing God.”
“That’s exactly right,” said Mr. Monti.
Gloria patted Albert’s hand and looked proud. Mrs. Monti purred, “Such a bright boy.” Victor tilted his wineglass approvingly at Albert. Annette actually clapped.
There was a rustle from the far end of the table where Wally and Josephine, their dinners barely touched, their pinkies (his left, her right) tightly intertwined, had been sitting in a romantic stupor.
“Maybe God . . .” Josephine began, her huge eyes wide with anxiety, her free hand rummaging through her long Botticelli curls. “Maybe God . . .”
Josephine was the only blue-eyed, red-haired Monti; the only small-boned, delicate Monti; and the only Monti female with a heart-shaped face, a Michelle Pfeiffer mouth, and her own (tiny and flawless) original nose. Furthermore, she was soon to become the only Monti woman to finish college, having already made it into her junior year at Catholic University. Unfortunately, she had also been the most intimidated of the Monti women—until she and Wally had met in the stacks of the library and he had started urging her to express herself.
“Maybe God,” she began once again, “wants us to make these decisions. About the tubes. And the respirators. Maybe God wants us to take responsibility.”
I smiled a private smile, recognizing that one of my favorite phrases—“taking responsibility”—had made the trip from me to Wally to Josephine. Now that, I told myself, is what immortality is all about.
“God does not want us turning off respirators,” said Mr. Monti with the confidence of one who converses daily with the Lord.
“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” said Father Pezzati, “and unto God the things that are God’s. Life and death belong to God.”
“That is correct,” said Mr. Monti.
“Then how come,” asked. Josephine, “with all those shoot-outs and murders and stuff, you’re against gun control, Daddy?”
“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people,” said Mr. Monti. “Besides, the Bill of Rights guarantees the right of every citizen to bear arms.”
Jake got into the act. “That’s actually the gun lobby’s distortion of what the Bill of Rights . . .”
I silenced him with a quick kick to the ankle, just hard enough to get his attention but not hard enough to cause him—as has happened in the past—to yell “Ouch! Shit! Cut it out, Brenda.”
Josephine, terrified but persistent, was not yet finished. “And if death belongs to God, Daddy, how come you’re in favor of war?”
“That’s enough, Josephine,” Mr. Monti replied.
“And how come—”
“I said, enough!” Mr. Monti thundered.
“—how come you believe in the death penalty, Daddy?”
“What a coincidence,” I said, rushing in with one of my constructive interventions. “So do I. And speaking of penalties, what did you think of that foul they called against Georgetown last night in the last five seconds of the game? Was that highway robbery, or what?”
Sometimes I astonish myself. I mean, I never watch basketball but I can’t always tune out Wally and Jake’s morning-after rehash, which is how I learned about this injustice perpetrated against the Hoyas.
The conversation immediately lurched off in a new direction. The Hoyas, every man at the dinner table agreed, had been cheated out of their victory over Syracuse, and the outrage of it all took us through the salad and the home-baked apple pie à la mode. I didn’t know that anyone in America ate like that anymore.
After dinner we returned to the living room, where we broke up into separate chatty groups. I found myself in a white velvet chair, alone with Mr. Monti, who removed his eyeglasses, cleared his throat, and said, “Let me ask you something.”
“Go right ahead,” I told him, hoping he’d ask me for a low-cholesterol diet, or what I thought about full-grown daughters who still call their parents Mommy and Daddy.
“You write a column. You give all kinds of advice. You’re this big expert on people.”
“Well, I don’t claim to be a big expert. I just seem to have an empathic grasp of the . . .”
“Yeah, yeah. An empathic grasp. So just tell me this. Why, all of a sudden, after being a doll, an absolute doll, of a daughter, is Josephine questioning me, disagreeing with me, having all these—all these new opinions?”
“Perhaps she . . .”
“Is that what they teach you in college—disrespect?”
“Perhaps she . . .
“Or could it be your boy? Could it be your boy turning my daughter against me?”
Ordinarily, anyone making nasty remarks about my children (well, let’s be honest here—about Wally) would be the immediate recipient of the full, fierce force of my maternal fury. Instead, despite the fact that Mr. Monti was clearly a sexist and a tyrant, I found myself in touch with the loneliness, the pain, the feeling of abandonment, that quivered beneath his hostile inquiry. Furthermore, despite the fact that he was clearly a militarist, and maybe even a member of the NRA, I found myself in touch with the love he had for his wife and children and with his profound commitment to family life. I later realized that I felt in touch with these things not necessarily because they were there, but because I was finding him extraordinarily attractive.
Recollecting my earlier description of Mr. Monti, I must concede that I’ve made him sound like a slightly sleazy Mafia cliché. It is true that this is how I see him now. But let me not deny that there was a time when his body seemed less burly, his hair less glossy, his jewelry less shiny, his soul less slimy, a time when I was tantalized by his full lower lip and those liquid bedroomy eyes, a time when his restless, eloquent hands seemed made for making a woman’s body sing, not for fishing shrimps out of pesto sauce. Indeed, that night, the night of our first meeting, he was—to me—the spitting image of Joe Mantegna, not the violent Joe Mantegna of that third (and, in my view, quite disappointing) Godfather movie but the Joe Mantegna who, as the seductive con man in the fascinatingly enigmatic movie House of Games, asks Lindsay Crouse, “Do you want to make love with me?” And then tells her that what she craves is “somebody to come along. Somebody to possess you. To take you into a new thing.” And then, knowing perfectly well what her answer is going to be, inquires, “Would you like that? Do you want that?” I drew my chair a bit closer to Mr. Monti’s.
“Mr. Monti . . .” I said.
“Call me Joseph,” he said.
“Joe—I mean, Joseph,” I said, “I honestly think your daughter loves you a lot. But I also think she’s trying to be a separate person, independent from you, and that’s bound to create some temporary tension.”
“Temporary tension? When she talks like that it’s like she wants to kill me.”
I gave him the full eye-contact treatment and said, “Every child who breaks away must, in a sense, kill his parents,” I then leaned forward, smiled my two-hundred-watt smile, and added softly, “Symbolically speaking, of course.”
• • •
The evening ended with affectionate champagne toasts to the engaged couple, though there was a somewhat ominous note struck in Mr. Monti’s “Good luck. Good love. Many children. And, keep the faith.” With the meal I had packed away, I was grateful that my new winter coat still buttoned. Barely.
It had been snowing lightly on the way out to McLean, the flakes melting as they hit the ground, but by the time we said our goodbyes the temperature had dropped and the snow was falling hard. In the hopes of saving my hairdo, I pulled my handy fold-up umbrella out of my purse and was starting to open it up in the hall when Mr. Monti stopped me with a “No. You shouldn’t do that. It’s very bad luck to open umbrellas indoors.”
I had been looking forward to a group analysis of the evening on the trip home, but with near-blizzard conditions assaulting Route 123, I had my hands full helping Jake drive. “Slower, please, darling,” I suggested. And, “Why don’t we just stay in the right-hand lane?” And, “Watch that guy in the Buick—he’s driving as if he’s drunk.” And, a little testily, I admit, “Sweetheart, must you tailgate? In this weather? When it’s so easy to skid? When just one little skid and next thing you know we’ll wind up in one of those hideous twenty-car pile-ups?”
Despite the limitations placed on our conversation by my navigational duties—and by the car radio, which Jake plays at top volume whenever I start navigating—we did have the chance to unanimously agree that Mr. Monti was definitely no pussycat. It was then that Wally presented me with a remarkable new item of information. “And can you believe,” he said, “that there are two of them? He’s got an identical twin who lives in New York.”
• • •
There was a picture of the identical twin—Vincent Theodore Monti—in Mr. Monti’s office. He was indeed a replica of Joseph Augustus Monti except, or perhaps I imagined this, for the look of compassion in his eyes. Joseph Augustus Monti was, I had by now decided, compassionless. Nevertheless, Marvin Kipper—without any further assistance from me—eventually succeeded in striking a deal with him, agreeing that Mr. Monti could take back his money and still retain his right to accuse Wally of the theft, in return for which Mr. Monti agreed not to go to the police with his accusations unless Wally reappeared in Josephine’s life.
Marvin wasn’t, he reassured me as we left Mr. Monti’s office, selling out Wally. He was simply, as lawyers are wont to do, buying time.
“You know that Mr. Monti took the money himself,” I (just for the record) reminded Marvin.
“I know that Wally told you that Mr. Monti took the money,” Marvin replied. “Now”—he pecked my cheek—“I gotta run.”
Mr. Monti’s office is on K Street, within walking distance of my ophthalmologist, gynecologist, and periodontist, all of whom practice out of office buildings on 19th Street between K and L. (It’s incredible how much time you can save by selecting geographically compatible doctors.) Miraculously (well, not so miraculously—most of their, patients were out of town on vacation) I had been able to call first thing in the morning and line up consecutive afternoon appointments, allowing half an hour between each appointment for the usual waiting-room time. (I can’t tell you how much satisfaction I get from being able to schedule so efficiently!) Anyway, I had brought along a novel (The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton—well worth a reread, and if you’ve never read it before, a must) to keep me occupied when I wasn’t checking out glaucoma, cervical cancer, and gum surgery. But I couldn’t concentrate on Wharton. I knew that the trace with Mr. Monti was only temporary. I also knew that Wally would not relinquish Josephine. Furthermore, even if I could mobilize my skills as a detective (I do have certain talents in that area) and prove beyond a doubt that Mr. Monti and not Wally had stolen the money, I feared that Mr. Monti would keep pounding and pounding and pounding away at my family.
If only, I thought (the first intimations of murder piercing my consciousness), I could just snap my fingers and make him disappear.
• • •
When Jake and I had dinner that evening—cold poached salmon with mustard-dill sauce, in our air-conditioned kitchen; it was much too sultry to try to eat on the porch—I let him tell me all about Marvin’s meeting with Mr. Monti. Marvin, who knows when to keep his mouth shut, hadn’t mentioned my presence at that meeting, which greatly contributed to the serenity and pleasure of our meal. When I (partially) described what Wally had told me late last night, before he departed—that it had to have been Mr. Monti who had taken the money and placed it in his car—Jake was his usual irritatingly sanguine self. “It sounds as if Mr. Monti is having a temporary aberration,” he said. “Watch—in a couple of days he’ll calm down.”
“This is not a calm man,” I reminded him, sipping the soothing California Chardonnay.
“True,” said Jake. “But I don’t think he’s a crazy man either.”
“Or dangerous?” I asked slyly.
“Or dangerous.” These last words, delivered in Jake’s flat and-that’s-that manner, tempted me to describe the rest of what Wally had told me during last night’s conversation: That (though Wally wasn’t quite sure how) Mr. Monti was involved with Jake’s malpractice suits. And that (though I’d have to ask Jeff for the details—Wally did not want to tattle) Mr. Monti was doing Jeff in financially.
“That’ll show you, you dumb insensitive bastard” was the mean-spirited subtext of my wish to tell Jake. But I controlled myself. I controlled myself because, first of all, I didn’t want to pass on that Information until I had thought about how it ought to be handled. And, second of all, I knew that whatever way I wanted to handle it, Jake would definitely disapprove. And, third of all, the kinder, gentler part of me didn’t want to spoil Jake’s mellow mood.
Jake had come home from Children’s Hospital feeling really great, having reconstructed the severely damaged esophagus of a three-year-old girl named Lily Lopez, who was, he said, a honey and the sweetest little kid and doing just fine. He was high on fixing Lily and continued happily high on the Chardonnay, and he looked so yummy in his white shorts (he has even better legs than I do) and sleeveless shirt that I decided to try—by an act of sheer will—to put aside my anxieties and enjoy my husband.
“Enjoy your husband,” usually followed by an exclamation point, is a bit of advice I frequently offer my readers. In the daily grind of marriage, I note, we tend to forget that—once upon a time—we had some excellent reasons for deciding to marry the man we are currently married to. Try to remember those reasons, I urge, and try to find in the person he is today some of those once beloved and admirable qualities. Mix with a video rental of The Philadelphia Story, add a pint of rum-raisin ice cream, and . . . enjoy.
Although I continue to believe that this is one of my better ideas, I’ve received some discouraging mail from a number of readers. The most memorable letter came from a “Grateful in Glendale,” who wrote:
DEAR BRENDA:
When I tried to recall some of my husband’s beloved and admirable qualities, I realized that he never had any and still doesn’t. Who knows why anyone marries anyone? I did try watching The Philadelphia Story with him, but this only ruined the movie for me. On the other hand, I had never tasted rum-raisin ice cream before, and thanks to your tip I’ve discovered what a terrific taste sensation it is.
Jake and I skipped the rum-raisin and opened up another bottle of Chardonnay. “So what else was doing at Children’s today?” I asked him.
With Jake this is always a good question. While normally not a talkative, man, he becomes positively gabby about perforated intestines and intra-abdominal bleeding, about solid tumors and undescended testicles, about hernias and blockages and—his personal favorite—biliary atresia, which, he has taught me over the years, means very serious trouble with the bile ducts. In fact, as Jake was eager to report, his other operation that day was removing and replacing the shut-down ducts of a six-week-old baby boy. “Simeon Andrew Davenport Kaminsky,” he said, shaking his head in bemusement. “Why do they do that? His name weighs more than he does. Real cute baby, though. He’s real, real cute.”
I find it touching that supercritical Jake is so fond of all the children he operates on. Their parents are, of course, a whole other story. But from snarling, belligerent teenage punk to nonstop-screaming baby, he has never met a patient he didn’t like. It is for them that Jake displays the full, unstinting voltage of his smile. It is for them that he exhibits a depth of patience and psychological sensitivity which, around our house, tends to range between slight and nonexistent. Back when I was a volunteer at Children’s, I’d occasionally get to see Jake do his stuff, like the day he worked over a shivering six-year-old boy, a Bobby Something, who was scheduled for in-and-out hernia surgery.
When Bobby arrived that morning in the reception area, Jake was absorbed in tossing a softball around—up in the air, under his leg, behind his back, under his arm—so totally into his ball game (at least it seemed that way) that it took him a couple of moments to notice Bobby.
“You again? What are you doing here?”
“I’m having an operation.”
“Oh, wow. Who’s going to do it?”
“I am? You’re sate? Who said so?”
Bobby, began to giggle, feeling gratifyingly superior to this dumb doctor. “You said so!”
Jake reluctantly set down the ball. “Oh, yeah, I remember now. Well, I guess I better put on my baseball uniform.”
“Your baseball uniform? You’re going to wear a . . .”
Jake doesn’t actually own a baseball uniform but he is in possession of a full gorilla suit, mask included, which he has on occasion donned for a needy patient. Contrary to rumor, however, he has never performed surgery in his gorilla suit. Yet. But there’s no question that he is willing to make an absolute fool of himself if it helps a scared little kid feel a little less scared. When I think of Jake’s beloved and admirable qualities, this is high on my list.
Along with kissing. Which, as we came to the end of our second bottle of Chardonnay (I swear they’re making the bottles smaller these days), Jake enthusiastically embarked upon.
Jake is a world-class kisser. He likes doing it. He likes taking his time doing it. He never rushes ahead to the main event. He kissed me in the kitchen, and up the stairs, and into our bedroom with that same fine combination of intensity and tenderness that made me, when I was eighteen, so eager and so willing to take off my panties.
It still does.
• • •
I woke up the next morning stretching and purring like Scarlett O’Hara after her night of ecstasy with Rhett. I felt as if I’d been stripped and stained and polished, then slowly and thoroughly buffed to a golden glow. Despite or perhaps because of this, I also felt significantly guilty, I mean, what kind of woman—what kind of Jewish woman?—so totally abandons herself to the pleasures of the flesh that she actually forgets that her family is threatened?
At breakfast I tried, as you may recall, to talk to Jake in depth about Mr. Monti, hoping the past night’s stripping and staining and polishing, etc., had co-opted him. No such luck. He was up. He was out. He didn’t wish to discuss it. So I was left on my own to channel the full force of my intellect into strategies for defeating Mr. Monti. As I showered and dressed for the 98-degree weather, I daydreamed of how convenient it would be if Mr. Monti—his arteries choked with apple pie and pâté—should happen to drop dead of a coronary. Or if Mr. Monti—off on one of his trips in his corporate jet—should happen to slam into a fog-shrouded mountain. Or if Mr. Monti . . . Oh, well. Enjoyable though I found them, these fantasies were not resolving the problem. I slipped into my sandals and telephoned Jeff.
“How about lunch today?”
“What did I do wrong now?”
“That’s between you and your conscience,” I said briskly. “See you at the Four Seasons at twelve-thirty.”
I arrived at 12:15 and settled into a private corner of the upstairs restaurant, which, with its plants and flowers and homey groupings of overstuffed couches and black wicker chairs, is my favorite place in Washington to have lunch. You can order a fresh fruit platter which almost always includes plump raspberries and blackberries, or an inventive warm salad of greens and pasta and seafood, and never gain an ounce unless you lose control and follow it up with their deeply, evil flourless chocolate cake. Besides, there is valet parking, which is guaranteed to do wonders for my digestion.
I am always fifteen minutes early. Jeff is always fifteen minutes late. He headed for my corner with that slow and slouchy it-don’t-worry-me walk, his jacket slung nonchalantly over one shoulder. He smelled delicious as he bent down to kiss me.
After the waitress had given Jeff his Campari and orange juice and me a frosty glass of spiced iced tea, I brought him up to date on Wally’s current difficulties with Mr. Monti. I waited for him to confide in me, and when he didn’t, I added, “Wally said Mr. Monti is also leaning on you.”
Jeff put on his glasses and studied the menu for an inordinately long time.
“Do you want to say something?” I asked.
“The smoked salmon looks good.”
“I mean about Mr. Monti.”
“I know what you mean, Mom.” Jeff had reverted to his old nervous habit of running the tip of his thumb up and down, up and down, up and down the cleft in his chin. I quietly reached over and pulled his hand away.
“I remember you talked a few times about wanting to maybe do a deal with Mr. Monti. Did you? Do it, I mean?”
“Yeah. I did. In fact, we went into a high-ticket project together.”
“A high-ticket project?”
“Very high-ticket.”
“You must be richer than I thought.”
“Creative financings Mom. There’s a lot of creative financing in this business.”
“Yeah, well . . . Mr. Monti said we were almost relatives. He said relatives had to help each other. And trust each other.”
“So he trusted you?”
Jeff got very busy trying to balance his knife on his spoon, and his fork on his knife. Then he said, “That isn’t the problem, Mom. The problem is that I trusted him.”
“Jeff,” I told him, well aware that I shouldn’t, but doing it anyway, “that was a big mistake. A big mistake.”
Now of course he already knew this—better than I did—so why in God’s name did I have to point it out? Don’t belabor the obvious, I strongly believe and always urge upon my readers. But who among us, especially with our children, is able to exercise that kind of restraint?
I hoped that Jeff would somehow not notice my lapse.
He noticed.
“A big mistake, Mom? Why, thank you so much. What a helpful insight. Will there be others? I can hardly wait.”
“Honey, I am really sorry I said that.”
“You’re always sorry. And you always say it.”
“I’m sitting my wrists. I’m groveling. I’m begging on bended knee. Will you please please please please please accept my apology?”
I have to point out that apologizing is one of the things I do terrifically well. I mean, why not? As I often tell my readers, the capacity to fully and freely admit that you are wrong is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition of healthy adulthood. And if some folks do not feel they are receiving a full apology unless it comes with groveling, begging, etc., I say give it to them.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, the waitress—a shapely brunette with long legs and short hair—took our order, brought us our, lunches, and replenished our drinks. “Is there anything else whatsoever you would like me to do for you?” she inquired huskily, directing her question to Jeff and hinting at sweets far far beyond the flourless chocolate cake.
“Not at the moment, thanks,” Jeff answered, tossing her a conspiratorial smile. “But promise that you’ll come back and ask me later.”
Jeff is so good at this lady-killer stuff that he can do it in his sleep, which—as I examined him more closely—it was clear he could desperately use. I also noticed that underneath the tan, his feline face had a slightly greenish tinge. He started rubbing his cleft again. I took his hand from his chin and gave it a pat. “lust tell me this,” I said to him. “On a scale from one to ten, exactly how much trouble are you in?”
“Eleven, Mom,” he answered and then my cocky firstborn son began to cry.
• • •
The last time I saw Jeff cry was in seventh grade, when he was suspended from Georgetown Day School for cheating on a chemistry exam. He swore, and I believed him, that he had only sought outside help on one of the questions. He then defended himself by observing that since the chem exam had twenty questions his dishonesty quotient was merely 5 percent.
Jeff was not an easy child to raise. A moral corner-cutter with a fast mouth, he had many close encounters with die authorities. For all I know, he still does. He certainly still displays a devotion to hedonism that the rest of his hardworking family does not share—doing dubious deals, dancing and drinking half the night away, and wasting his substance upon glitzy, shallow women who could never be the mothers of my grandchildren. In addition (though I don’t mean to sound petty) Jeff is never on time, he never phones when he says he is going to phone, and people tell me (I won’t say who, but I’ve got my ways of knowing) that he almost never bothers to use his seat belt. I guess the good news about Jeff is that after a trip two years ago to the Sibley Emergency Room, he no longer snorts, smokes, or swallows controlled substances. That afternoon at the restaurant, he finally opened up and proceeded to inform me of the bad news.
• • •
Jeff told me that back in January, soon after the Monti-Kovner family dinner, he called Mr. Monti and said he would like some advice. Asking for advice, my shrewd but currently quite chastened son informed me, was the best way to ease into asking for bigger favors. Which he did.
“You’ve made some brilliant real estate moves,” Jeff said to Mr. Monti when they met and had ordered their second round of drinks. “I’m into a little real estate myself.”
“A profitable business,” said Mr. Monti. “Even in these tough times. But if, and only if, you know how to figure it.”
“That’s just it,” said Jeff. “With prices so low now, I’d like to buy some properties in the District, but the neighborhoods I’m looking at could go either way—up or down—and frankly, sir, I don’t know how to figure it.”
“Help me, O Real Estate Maven,” was Jeff’s unexpressed but unmistakable plea. Mr. Joseph Monti, for his own unsavory reasons (I’ll get to them soon), chose to oblige.
“There’s a very sweet deal coming up with a block of buildings in Anacostia,” he told Jeff, who, as he listened to Mr. Monti describe it, almost fell off his bar stool with excitement.
According to Mr. Monti’s source—a person he characterized as “my own Deep Throat”—an urban revitalization project was coming up in . . . he mentioned a section of Anacostia. “Some office buildings, a Cineplex, a mini shopping mall—the works. If you owned in this location you could sell and quadruple your money in just a few months.”
“And who,” Jeff asked him breathlessly, “gets to own?”
“Could be us, kid,” Mr. Monti replied. “Sixteen buildings are up for sale, and I’ll cut you in on eight—if you can find four hundred thou for the down payments.”
Jeff gasped. “I don’t have that kind of money,” he said. “I was thinking of something smaller. A whole lot smaller.”
“Never think small,” Mr. Monti said. “Let’s examine your resources—all of them.”
At the end of the examination Mr. Monti offered to lend Jeff most of the money he needed for the down payments, with Jeff putting up as collateral the two houses he owned out in Rockville (bought, he explained to me, after a fabulous day at the races and on which, he explained to me, he still owed plenty), his Watergate condo (bought, he explained to me, in the wake of a brilliant stock-market killing and on which, he explained to me, he still owed plenty), his brand-new Jaguar (bought, he explained to me, with the winnings from a high-stakes poker game and on which, he explained to me, he still owed plenty), and the twenty-five thousand dollars that his grandfather had left to him (but which he would not come into until he was thirty).
In the contract Mr. Monti. drew up, it said that his loan to Jeff was “payable in full upon demand.” But, he assured Jeff, “that’s just a formality, to keep my accountants happy. Listen, we’re practically relatives—you shouldn’t give the matter a second thought.”
The buildings were purchased in March. They figured to sell them in early June when the project went public. That’s also when Jeff intended to pay off the loan. But in May, Mr. Monti found out—though he neglected to notify Jeff—that the urban renewal project was dead in the water. Mr. Monti unloaded his buildings. Jeff did not.
“And then,” Jeff said to me, “you know what he did? He called in my loan. He said he wanted payment in full, immediately.”
What a surprise, I was tempted to say. I didn’t. I bit my tongue and said, “What a shame!” instead.
I completely understood why Jeff had made this high-flying deal with Mr. Monti. My boy was greedy. I also had some thoughts about why Mr. Monti had chosen to do what he’d done to Jeff.
I think he had lent Jeff the money as a way of trying to get his hooks into Wally, who was far more independent than he liked the men in his daughters’ lives to be. By helping Jeff make money, he would be saying to Wally, “Look what I’ve done for your brother. I’ll do it for you—if you’ll submit to me.”
And when Wally didn’t submit» when Wally appeared to mock and defy him on this stupendously supercharged issue of conversion, take-no-prisoners Joseph Monti took his revenge by striking out at Jeff.
Trying to look on the bright side, I said to Jeff, “You’ve still got the Anacostia buildings. Couldn’t you fix them up—make something out of them?”
Jeff groaned. “I said I had trouble figuring out if a neighborhood’s going up or going down. Well, I’m not having any trouble trying to figure this neighborhood out. It’s going down. Fast.”
He groaned again. “And Mom, so am I So am I.”
• • •
I once got a touching letter from an “Inadequate in Islip,” who wrote:
DEAR BRENDA:
When it comes to the daily disasters of life I do great like you wouldn’t believe. If my furnace conks out, if my tire goes flat, if my water, pipes freeze and burst, I am cheerful and calm and on top of things because I always can say to myself, Could be worse. My problem is that when it is worse, when disaster really strikes, I fall apart at the seams and am incapable of rising to the occasion. I am not pleased, for instance, with the way I behaved when my husband embezzled this money from his company, and ran away with the bookkeeper on exactly the day I had surgery for my . . .
I won’t go into the rest of the letter (which was quite poignant) or my reply (which was quite constructive). I simply want to say that although I, too, bring my can-do attitude to things like broken furnaces and flat tires, I find them harder to cope with than the big stuff. Indeed, unlike “Inadequate in Islip,” I’m at my best when disaster really strikes.
Leaning over and giving Jeff a reassuring hug, I said in a voice of absolute conviction, “Don’t worry, darling. Don’t worry. I promise that we’re going to straighten this out.”
Now all I had to figure out was how.