Commuters (13 page)

“
Maybe
I want both, but first I want to understand the options. Can you show me the salsa? Does it come with anything?”

“Does the
salsa
come with anything? Girl, it comes with the
chicken
.” Now it was the cook who was baffled. Avery just leaned against the counter, happy to be here. He’d steered them back to Myrtle and down to Flatbush, homing in on this place that now seemed like paradise, compared to the ugliness of the Blue Apple and their fight out on the street. At least forty whole chickens were cooking away behind the register, spit-roasting in various shades of dark, oily gold.

Avery savored this moment, with Nona taking forever to order—now she was hassling the cook about the different sizes of the salsa containers—before they would sit, alone at the tiny plastic table. Before their food would arrive, and they’d have a few minutes where he’d have to decide whether or not to go there again, back to the fight that hadn’t ended so much as come to a stop (there was a difference, he knew, and yeah, he knew that it was signifi
cant). Should he push her to say more? He could feel there was stuff Nona hadn’t said, about the money, things she was holding back. Which would feel worse: hearing now what they might be, or guessing at them later? This wary peace lulled him, as did the smoky char smell that filled the room. Probably it was all fine. Avery watched the chickens roast. They looked great: fresh and plump. In a minute, he’d ask this guy for the name of his local supplier.

Later today, he’d call Ricardo and go sign the damn lease.

It was mid-morning on Wednesday, in the first week of November. Winnie sat alone in the hushed conference room, waiting for Jerry to make his slow way back from the restroom. She resisted the urge to go into the hall to look for him—he would hate any sign that she thought he needed help, especially here. So instead, she fussed with the glass of water the receptionist had quickly placed in front of her after she’d asked—a polite college-age young man, which surprised Winnie—but why on earth hadn’t he set it on a coaster? Tiny beads of water ran down the outside of the chilled glass, pooling onto the smooth wood tabletop, and no matter how often Winnie lifted the glass and swiped at them with her bare hand, the wetness remained. One would think that a law firm as posh as McCann Dunham would know to have a few coasters around.

It had been a long time since Winnie had been on the sixty-fourth floor of any building. It was a shame about these translucent shades, pulled down all the way. What she wanted was to look out the windows, all the way down to Sixth Avenue and Radio City
Music Hall, and the tops of the taxicabs moving around like little yellow toys. Or would it be Fifty-fourth Street? Being up this high had disoriented her. Without moving, Winnie tried to picture the view across town—the ash-colored streets, those Gothic midtown churches, that museum tucked away and practically hidden, the one with the newer pictures. (Winnie much preferred the stately grandeur of the Met. Now
that
was the way a museum should look.) MoMA. The acronym came to her, but not the full name, and while she was puzzling it out, she heard voices outside the door.

Ed Weller and Jerry arrived, deep in conversation, and it was astonishing, the way Ed held the door for Jerry and guided him in, a hand on an elbow—astonishing, the way Jerry accepted the help so easily from his old friend and lawyer, the way he let himself be steered to the table, and his cane and chair arranged for him. All while Winnie was accepting Ed’s kiss, and smiling and nodding, she marveled at how it had been accomplished—Jerry’s submission. She would never have guessed another man could effect it, but maybe that was the answer in itself. He didn’t need to protect other men the way he felt he had to protect
her
: a woman, his wife. They all took seats now, at the table, as well as two junior lawyers who slipped into the room and flanked Ed Weller.

“Not a fun job for me, today,” Ed was saying. “But I’m glad you’re both here. We’ll turn this around. No question. The main thing is not to get downhearted. It’s a bad business, but we’ll turn it around.”

“I told Winnie about this fool motion having to do with the house,” Jerry said. “I told her, but I don’t like having to. Business is business; there’s no need to bring my family into the middle of it all.”

Winnie saw the two younger lawyers exchange a look. She shifted imperceptibly closer to Jerry. With a surprising rush of sisterly feeling, she found herself thinking of Beth Ann, Annette’s mother, and how good it was that the woman was no longer alive. What a sorrow it would have been to her, this ugly fight between father and daughter—and over what? Nothing. Work, money. Then again, of course with Beth Ann alive, none of this would be happening. It was because of her—because of Winnie—that this had all begun.

“It’s a tough situation,” Ed agreed. “But everyone involved knowing the facts is an important—”

“I told Winnie because I didn’t want her to hear anything from anyone else,” Jerry said. “Annette’s stepped way over the line, dragging this in. My house is my own concern and nobody else’s. Just do what it takes, Ed. Send me the bill and let’s be done with it.”

“That’s the plan,” Ed said mildly. “But we need to discuss another matter. The game has changed a bit, and you need to prepare yourselves—both of you.” Winnie ran cold at the way kind Ed Weller gave her a look. The look said
This will be hard on him
. “We heard from their lawyers early yesterday. I don’t know how much of this is coming from Annette—most likely someone cooked it up for her, so just keep that in mind, first of all.”

“What’s this now?” Jerry said.

One of the lawyers slid some papers out of a folder and was staring down at them.

“They’re filing a competency challenge, related to the property sale,” Ed said. “It’s going to be in a different court, so we’ll have the two matters running at the same time. Dan Wickham—you’ve spoken on the phone—has run up a list of our options, and we have
some strong ones, so I wanted to go over these. Let’s talk through what the—”

“Competency?” Jerry said, frowning.

“‘Petition to set aside deed based on defendant’s mental incompetence prior to and at the time of conveyance—’” Dan Wickham was reading from the papers in front of him, but Jerry’s strangled roar stopped him.

“It’ll get tossed,” Ed said, leaning across the table. “No question. I’ll testify myself, if I have to. I filed the sale, and there’s nothing about it that was improper.”

“Mental incompetence?” Winnie said, trying to laugh. “That can’t be what she—”

“Senility claims are pretty common,” said the other lawyer. “Mostly you see them in a probate case, but with a business dispute there isn’t as much precedent. Actually, it makes for an interesting—”

Winnie cut him off, hating the young man for saying
senility
. “What are the…grounds?” She came up with the term at the last moment. “There aren’t any grounds, of course. What can she possibly say?”

Ed looked at Jerry, who was silent, and then back at her. “There are various ways people challenge agency in the elderly. Is the person lucid? Acting of his own free will? Understands the terms of the deal? Sometimes, if they can’t prove full incompetence, they go for weakness of intellect.”

Winnie felt for Jerry’s hand, which stiffly clutched the chair arm. “Weakness of intellect,” she repeated. Worse by far than the news of this claim was Jerry’s stunned silence.

“Boilerplate,” one of the younger lawyers said dismissively.

“And we’ll knock that all down,” Ed said. “But there’s a mention in the paperwork of a prior history, so at some point, Jerry, I want to get a full rundown on the results of any tests and medication. And if there was a diagnosis, we’ll need—”

“All he takes is blood-pressure medicine,” Winnie protested. “How could that matter?”

The four men in the room didn’t say anything. Only after a minute did the phrase
prior history
hit her.

“I haven’t taken those drugs for a long time,” Jerry said, finally. Winnie turned to him, but he stared at the table. “Those other drugs. All that was a long time ago.”

“She claims that there were tests for pre-Alzheimer’s,” the other lawyer said, consulting his notes. “And a brief hospitalization for disorientation?”

Jerry shook his head. The younger man, thinking he was being contradicted, continued to read: “Treatment by at least two Chicago-area specialists, repeated CAT scans, and a past motion to prohibit driving, which the plaintiff—”

“Rob,” Ed said, silencing him. Ed, she saw, could tell that Winnie hadn’t known. His face was full of concern. “Why don’t we take a ten-minute break?”

Jerry said nothing. Ed looked at Winnie. A wild drumbeat of humiliation erupted in her, and she fought to keep her composure. Slowly, however, the shock and anger—
how could he not have told her?
—were eventually overcome by fear—
how bad was it?
Pre-Alzheimer’s. And then, though she couldn’t even look his way, a surge of wordless connection passed between her and Jerry. She knew, of course, why he hadn’t told her. Winnie put her hand briefly up to her face;
for better or worse,
she mouthed against her own palm.

“No,” she said, to the waiting lawyers. “No need for a break. So, what’s the next step? What strategies have you come up with, and what do you need from us?”

Dan Wickham, with visible relief, turned to the matter of describing the various legal motions by which Jerry’s representatives would block Annette’s representatives from pursuing the claim. There would be a series of challenges on the method of the suit itself—that the documentation wasn’t complete, that the time allotted for response was too short—and then, if necessary, depositions would be taken. Winnie borrowed a pen and jotted down some notes. Almost as an afterthought, the other lawyer mentioned that no major work on the property should be undertaken—no renovations, changes to the structure—until this was all sorted out.

Winnie picked up the wet glass and took a long, angry drink. She stared at the white water ring left on the table. Would it be a relief, to give up the pool? She could drop the whole matter, all the calls and the bills and all the ugliness brewing about that tree. But that would be giving in to Annette’s claims. To this idea of incompetence. So, instead, as they talked on and on, Winnie conjured with effort and deliberation the now-familiar image of the pool—not just the pool, but Jerry in it, relaxed and talkative, with none of the pain now radiating from the man who now sat still and silent by her side. It trembled and faltered, but she held that vision steady, a willful touchstone.

“You’ll come out to Hartfield,” Winnie said. “As much as possible. It’s too much effort, our driving into the city.”

“Yes,” Ed said. “Of course.” Then he nodded at the other lawyers, who shook hands with Winnie and Jerry, and quickly left
the room. Winnie could hear their voices, jovial and unconcerned, echo down the hall.

“I need to visit the restroom,” Jerry said, and she held the door while Ed steadied him.

As soon as Jerry was out of earshot, Winnie turned to Ed. “Tell me,” she said. “How bad is this?”

By the way he instantly dropped his voice to respond, she had her answer. “It’s not good,” he admitted. “The case itself is weak, no question. But it will stir up a lot of unpleasantness—personal information, details about his health, then and now. He’ll hate that—anybody would, of course. The other thing is, I imagine the news will get out.”

“Because of the house? Nobody could honestly believe that Jerry didn’t know what he was doing when he bought our house.”

“It’s the family-feud aspect. Father vs. daughter. TrevisCorp is a well-known company, and once this comes out, the infighting will be an irresistible angle for the local Chicago papers. Less so here.”

Winnie flinched, and Ed switched back into his lighter mode. “At least we can all get a good lunch out of it. You might give me ten minutes, and I’ll meet you both in the foyer. L’Auberge fit us in at the last minute—Jerry will get a kick out of it. We ate there once twenty years ago, and he had a field day because they forgot my salad or something. He had the manager out to us, on the double—”

“That’s so kind, Ed. I just don’t think we’re up for it today.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s me, really. I tire out so quickly these days. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh, of course, of course. Rain check.” They could see Jerry making his slow, stubborn way down the long hall.

“Where is that L’Auberge, though? Nearby? I’m sure it sounds familiar.” Distracted, Ed told her—Fifty-third Street—his eyes on Jerry’s approach. He moved to shake hands with his old friend, and Winnie observed the smooth return of the lawyer’s calm demeanor, a natural pose of carelessness—
this is nothing, don’t worry a minute, we’ll take care of everything
—that somehow managed to be soothing despite it all.

The funny thing was, she and Jerry had crossed paths—barely—sixty years ago. For about a year and a half, Winnie had attended Mary Edward College, a middling women’s school now long folded, in upstate New York. It was the only year of Winnie’s life that she had been away from Hartfield. She had studied literature; she hadn’t wanted to go. But after her mother had begun the long, slow descent of illness, the house was crowded and uncomfortable, and both parents seemed to want her away. When her roommate Beezie Collins became engaged to Dick Trevis, of the Chicago Trevises, Winnie became caught up, mostly by proximity, in the endless round of parties, dances, and introductions that made up a wedding of that sort back then. (The next year, her own to George—studying medicine at nearby SUNY Buffalo—would be a sober, positively shotgun affair in comparison.) Dick’s cousin Jerry had attended several events. Winnie wanted to say that she remembered him vividly, and in an undated photo she dug up of Beezie’s wedding-party lineup, there he was, next to his brother Frank—short and unsmiling, in an ill-fitting cutaway suit. She herself was standing at the far end of the bridal party, in a pretty
gown she didn’t remember the color of, holding a puffy bouquet of hydrangeas.

Jerry maintained a long, detailed recollection about dancing with Winnie at the reception—specifically, of asking her onto the floor twice in a row, a noted faux-pas—but she wouldn’t put it past him to embellish the memory. It was enough for Winnie that they shared this odd piece of the past, even if it hadn’t produced any lasting connection. She would go on to drop out of college to marry George, and Jerry would meet Beth Ann at a cotillion the year afterward, and as far as Winnie was concerned, the Trevis family faded from all significance (she and Beezie exchanged Christmas letters for some time, and then stopped) until March of this year. Just seven months ago.

Danny and Yi-Lun had pleaded with her to join them for any part of their twice-yearly three-week stay in a time-shared house on a beach near Jacksonville. Why anyone who lived in San Francisco would fly to
Florida
yearly for a vacation was a question that was never sufficiently answered, at least so far as Winnie or Rachel could see—but Yi-Lun had family in the area, and she wanted their son, Matthew, to spend time with them. Fair enough, but Winnie had begged off the two years previous. How could she have gone anywhere? With Bob in the hospital for those many months—and then the long year of rehab—she was on the run, almost every day, picking up the girls or dropping them off, seeing to school matters and doctors’ visits and dinner preparation and whatever else Rachel needed her for. This March, though, she had little excuse—even Rachel had urged her to go.
You need a rest,
her daughter had said, and Winnie couldn’t disagree. The visit had been lovely: sea breezes blowing through the window of her first-
floor room, ruffling the pages of a satisfyingly quiet Anne Tyler novel; hours of Scrabble, Danny’s childhood favorite; long walks on the beach with Matthew.