Lily White (60 page)

That was all she got.

Jazz refused to meet without their lawyers present. Too emotional, for all of us. Sorry. That’s what he said when she called to say she would like to come over, to speak to him and Robin. Too emotional? Terry laughed. That’s not the reason. After another week on the case, tailing Jazz—just for practice, Terry told her—he had followed him and Robin to a doctor’s office. A gynecologist. Oh, obstetricians too. A little charm, no bribe necessary this time for the cute little technician in the medical laboratory the doctor sent his work to. No, charm was all it took to discover that, indeed, an R. R. White, age twenty-eight, was pregnant. It’s not “too emotional,” Terry said. “The skinny bitch is probably showing.”

Lee pushed her way past the two French-accented junior salesmen at Le Fourreur, past five astounded customers, past Dolly Young, past her father who pleaded, “I beg you, Lee, please don’t—” into Jazz’s office and slammed the door. “You’ve made my life a living hell!” she told him.

“Get out. This will count against you, you know, your not having the self-restraint—”

“I will make your life a living hell.”

“You already did. For years. You can’t anymore.”

“Item one: My sister is pregnant. She can have an abortion—”

“Stop that!”

“—or she can be an unmarried mother, because I will drag on this litigation forever. Living hell. When I can no longer afford my own lawyer, 1 will appear
pro se,
and by that time I’ll be such a genius at matrimonial law that I’ll make mincemeat out of that shyster you’ve retained. It will drag on for years.”

“Stop it!”

“You’ll be on your third illegitimate child by that time. And that’s just the beginning. I’ll bankrupt you. I’ll kill you with paper. You won’t have a dime left and Manny’s wife will have five sable coats and you’ll still owe him hundreds of thousands.”

“Do you think you can scare me?” Jazz demanded.

“I hope so, because if you’re not trembling in your Guccis now, you’re a fool. I don’t want alimony. This is what I want: I want you to speak to your parents. They don’t want Kent. Do you?” Jazz said nothing. “Well, I do. I want them to agree to name me guardian. I want him to live with me. As far as Val goes, I want child support and a guarantee you’ll split her educational costs with me fifty-fifty. I get custody.” She paused. “I get what I want. Or you get a life that won’t be worth living.”

On the first day of 1981, Lee and Will went to the beach, a spot not too far from Will’s house. The air was cold—freezing, in
fact—but there was hardly any wind, so they hunkered down against the dunes, looked across the powder sand to the churning gray ocean, and ate their sausage and pepper sandwiches with their gloves on.

“Brisk,” Will said. “Good for the head, good for the soul.”

“Brisk? You call this brisk? I call this glacial.” She picked up her coffee. “My face is too numb to tell if it’s dribbling down my chin and giving me second-degree burns, so let me know.” She took a sip.

“You’re fine so far.” He lifted his Styrofoam cup and touched it to hers. “Happy New Year, kid.”

“Happy New Year,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything self-pitying and small-minded about this year being better than last.”

“I admire your restraint.”

They set their cups in the sand and went back to their sandwiches, huge, drippy, comforting things. After a while, Lee felt warmer, heartier. She could be one of those Polar Bears, those mad, jolly people who dive into the Atlantic every winter at Coney Island, racing across the sand, rushing through the surf, and going under, only to emerge with a cheer and a huge grin. She turned to Will. “Did you have fun at the New Year’s Eve party last night with Maria?”

He set down his sandwich. “I wasn’t with Maria.”

“You told me …” He had mentioned in early December that he and Maria went to the same party every year for New Year’s Eve. Casual conversation, but meant, she knew, so she would not hold out false hopes.

“I know what I told you. It wasn’t the truth.”

“It wasn’t the truth?” She knew it was an odd question for a criminal lawyer to ask. She was trained to doubt. Yet she had never doubted that every word Will uttered was the absolute truth. “Where were you?”

“That’s a long story,” he said quietly. “A long and difficult story.”

Lee’s heart began to beat faster. Perhaps Maria had only gone out of town or come down with the flu, but the “difficult story” was that they had finally decided to marry. Not now, she prayed. Please, plan a June wedding and tell me about it in May. “Are you going to tell me the story?” she asked him.

“Yes. That’s why I thought we’d come here. No interruptions.”

“Okay.”

“You know how much you mean to me, Lee. Your friendship.” Uh-oh, she thought. It’s coming. She nodded, trying to seem pleased that Will valued her enough to really hurt her. “For me anyway, it’s a lifelong friendship.”

“For me, too,” she said.

“So let me tell you.” She waited, but he did not say anything. Clearly, this was going to be painful for him. She could leave now, rush away, not have to listen, but he had driven his car to the beach, and he had the keys. And it was a stick shift. She wondered if it would be rude to take another bite of her sandwich. She laid her fingers on the warm, greasy, paper-wrapped mess and decided it would be. “I’m gay,” Will said.

“Gay.?”

“As in homosexual.”

Gay, she thought. Oh. No wonder his sports clothes are always so perfect. Suits are one thing, but those slacks, those sweaters. Then a wave of grief crashed down upon her, the realization that she would never have what she now most wanted. What a man! She could love him. She already did.

Suddenly she became aware of what a horrible moment this must be for him, waiting to see how she would react. “I didn’t know,” she said brightly.

Too brightly. “Lee? Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’m very, very surprised.”

“Surprised or shocked?”

“Shocked.” Will looked out at the ocean. “Don’t be sorry you told me. You’re my friend and I love you. I understand how courageous it was for you to confide in me.” She rubbed his sleeve with her glove: I’m with you, pal. She left a blotch that looked suspiciously like a mushed-up string of red pepper. “I assume this is absolutely confidential, that I’m not Step One in your plan to come out?”

“God, no!”

“Then I will keep it in absolute confidence for the rest of my life.”

Again, Will’s eyes searched the ocean. They looked watery to her, but it might have been the cold. “I started college in 1958. No one came out then, or at least, hardly anyone.”

“Did you know you were gay then?”

“I knew I was gay by the time I was twelve. I didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t know it had a name, and to tell you the truth, I didn’t know there was anybody else in the world who felt the way I did.”

“It must have been a terrible burden.”

“It was. But on the other hand, I was this bright, healthy kid. Not a great athlete, not what they expected from a black kid in Glen Cove in those days. But good enough not to feel I stood out. And I was smart. Very smart, very reflective. When you’re a teenager, that’s a blessing and a curse, but at least I was able to begin to understand what I was and realize I wasn’t the first boy in the world who didn’t care what the girls were wearing underneath their outfits.”

“But you checked out the outfits.”

“Yes, I did.”

“When did you first have sex?”

“I was fifteen.”

“And? Was it okay? Traumatic?”

“It was fine. Very romantic. A lot of candles and massage oil. It was an affair that continued for four years. That’s why I went to Columbia. So I could stay in New York, be near him.”

“Who was he?”

“My parents’ employer.” Will came close to smiling as Lee’s mouth widened into a huge O. “Clement Giddings. Clem. It sounds like a banjo player, but he was the most urbane man I ever met.”

“I don’t buy it!” she said angrily. “He was using his power and position to get a boy—”

“Grow up, Lily. He didn’t seduce me. I seduced him. Not that he wasn’t open to seduction.”

“You were still a kid.”

“I was. And he was very good to me. Not a great lover, but you’re not looking for finesse at fifteen. And a decent man. Not a warm man, not a friendly man, but decent. He paid for college, even after I told him I’d found someone else.”

“Who was that?”

“No one. A lot of different guys. I didn’t want to be stuck with a forty-eight-year-old man who had never worked for a living except to catalogue his wine collection and who had a wife and two really stinky, obnoxious kids. He offered to pay for graduate school, too, by the way.”

“You must have been something.”

“I was. His white dream come true.”

“Your parents …?”

“They didn’t have a clue. They still don’t.”

“I didn’t have a clue.”

“I know. I’m good at what I do. I’m sorry I have to do it. But by the time it was no longer necessary—in terms of cultural acceptance of men living an openly gay lifestyle—I was stuck in a suburban subculture where if I came out …” He paused to collect
his thoughts. “Not completely stuck. I could have left, gone to the city. It was my choice not to. I like it here.”

“So do I.”

“But there are drawbacks. You can understand, being a woman who works in what is largely a man’s sphere: You have to be twice as good as any man to get anything close to equal credit.”

“That is a drawback.”

“As a black man, twice as good isn’t enough. I have to be four times as good. I really believe that. I’ve
lived
that. And I knew that, practicing law on Long Island, being in the D.A.’s Office, dealing with the cops and all, if I came out, four times as good wouldn’t be enough. I’d have to be eight times as good as any white lawyer. And you know what? I’m just not that good.”

“Yes you are.”

“Thank you. But not eight times. A flash of sheer brilliance once or twice a year, yes, but nothing I could sustain.”

Lee glanced down at her sandwich. It was probably cold. She took a bite. Cold but good. “What about Maria?” she asked.

“She’s a professional educator in a private girls’ school. She’s a lesbian. She lives with a woman. We met at a gay Valentine’s Day party in the city one of my friends threw. She’s wonderfully intelligent, cultured, attractive, and black. The minute we looked at each other, we knew.”

“The perfect couple.”

“The perfect black couple. ‘Aren’t they stunning together? Aren’t they nice? And
so
well-spoken!’”

“So you don’t really love her?”

“No, but I like her enormously. She’s an amazing person.”

“And last night?”

“What? Oh, New Year’s Eve. I was home. Alone. I stuffed a Cornish hen and opened a split of champagne and had a party.”

“You don’t have anyone in particular?”

“I have someone in particular. Unfortunately, he has someone
in particular, someone he’s been living with for ten years, so I suppose that makes me his little bonbon on the side. I have a studio in the city. We see each other one or two nights a week. Usually one.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s an architect. Very arty. Long, flowing hair, quivering nostrils. I can laugh about him when I’m not with him.”

“Thank you for telling me, Will.” He nodded and got busy putting their lunch in the plastic bag it had come in. She had not finished her sandwich but decided it would be churlish to stick her hand in the bag and grab it back. “I know you felt you had to say something because you sensed I had a crush on you and you didn’t want it to ruin the friendship.” He looked at her, almost boyishly embarrassed at being caught. “Well, I had—or have—a crush. I’ll get over it. And thank you for valuing our friendship so much. I realize what a risk you took.”

“Lee.”

“What?”

“I know you. It was never a risk.”

On February 29, 1981, the Honorable Anthony J. Paterno of Nassau County’s Domestic Relations Court ruled, in the matter of
Taylor
v.
White,
that inasmuch as both parties agree that Ms. Lee White will be the custodial parent, all issues arising from the pending litigation are rendered moot and that custody of Valerie Belinda Taylor, an infant, will be with the child’s mother. So Ordered. Submit Judgment.

P
risons are harrowing places. At night, amid the snores and sleep screams of fellow inmates, I don’t know anyone who’s so strong that she wouldn’t think, even for a moment: I would be better off dead. And the days aren’t a hell of a lot better. With no sharp objects, no pills, no tall buildings from which to jump, no car exhaust to inhale, the inevitable jailhouse means to the end is hanging. So Mary Dean was not exceptional. Suicide attempts are so common in jails that most places have a super-sharp blade called a 911 tool, which cuts through the bed-sheets inmates use to hang themselves. The guards are so accustomed to these incidents they refer to them casually as “hang-ups.” If there is no damage—I’m not talking emotional here, I’m talking if the inmate can breathe and walk—he or she is expected to be in line when the next meal rolls around.

There was no way I could be casual about it. That Thursday, right after Barbara Duberstein’s call, I sat at my desk, shaking
inside. What had gone wrong? Mary had not been pushed into confessing, had she? She had jumped. She had insisted, damn it! But had she insisted because I’d manipulated her into insisting? I tried to soothe myself by thinking she had to have known what she was getting into: Between the assault charge in Maryland and her various arrests for prostitution, she was no stranger to the inside of a cell. There were no surprises here for her. Were there? No, Norman had been innocent and she was guilty. Justice had been served. I had done what I had to do, period.

My serenity lasted about three seconds. Sooner or later, most criminal lawyers come across a client who tries to kill himself. And you have to be either stupid or a first-class putz if you don’t ask yourself: Could I have done anything at all to stop it? Your heart is a stone if an incident like that doesn’t summon up a time in your own life when you felt death might be preferable to the pain of living. But what made me tremble so was that of all the people who had sat in that armchair on the other side of my desk, Mary was the most likely to want to live. Sweet and stupid and blissfully amoral, delighted by her own beauty, by flamboyant dresses and ten-cents-off coupons for Niagara Spray Starch, madly in love with Norman, Mary was all loud colors and bright sunshine. Of course, I knew she wouldn’t thrive in jail. No one would. But to try to hang herself?