Middle Age (63 page)

These children would love and respect their idealist father. Instead he’d fallen in love with good-looking Lee Ann Stacey, a Pi Phi at Penn, whose canny mother had “registered” her at Tiffany’s for wedding presents and whose insurance-executive father had insisted upon helping out the newlyweds with their first house . . . No wonder Volpe mocked him as “Mr. C.”

Roger was an initial, not an individual.
He didn’t know who the fuck he was
.

Middle Age: A Romance

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Roger recalled the mingled admiration and scorn his law school classmates felt for the idealists who’d declined jobs with law firms to work for

“worthy” causes. The deep-seated unspoken wish that they fail.

“Now I’m one of them? At my age? Jesus.”

It was like bringing your hand dangerously close to a grinder: if you’re not cautious, your hand will be sucked in, and if you can’t get your hand out, you will be sucked in.

O C , and dropped by Roger’s townhouse at 

Belle Meade Place, bringing a bottle of expensive French chardonnay from his wine cellar and an exquisitely prepared gourmet dinner from Salthill Seafood—“We never entertain any longer, you know. With Gussie away.” If this seemed to him an eccentric remark, Roger gave no sign. All of Salthill knew that Owen Cutler had become increasingly eccentric since his wife’s disappearance; he’d virtually retired from business, spending much of his time at home (“In case Gussie calls, or returns suddenly”) where, Roger had heard, he’d begun to raise tropical flowers. Roger had known the Cutlers for many years but in the way of affluent-suburban friendships he hadn’t known them well. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had a serious, protracted conversation with Owen Cutler until now, when Owen’s conversations were more serious than one wished, and far more protracted. “There’s a terrible rumor, Roger, you’ve probably heard, people are saying that I have had a hand in Gussie’s disappearance somehow,” Owen murmured, in a faltering voice of hurt, chagrin, shame, not meeting Roger’s eye, “but I have not. Roger, I swear
I have not
. Gussie had investments of her own she cashed in, she simply disappeared, she has
vanished
from the face of the earth
. The private detectives I’ve hired come up with
not
a clue
.” Roger sympathized with Owen, but dreaded his friend staying much later, and so had few questions to ask; but Owen continued to speak, in a piteous monologue, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes and sighing; at last saying, in a rush of words, “Roger, I—I don’t mean to offend you—

I would never wish to offend
you
—but were you and Gussie ever—close?

Were you ever—lovers?”

Roger should have been prepared for this, he’d heard that Owen had asked this question of others, but in fact he was shocked. Not just the question was blunt and unexpected but the proposition was distasteful: Roger Cavanagh and Augusta Cutler!

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J C O

The Salthill woman he’d loved, Roger wanted to tell Owen, was Marina Troy. Surely everyone knew?

Quickly Roger assured Owen no, he and Augusta were never lovers, only just friends.

“ ‘Just’ friends? But you were good friends, I think?”

“Of course, Owen. We were all good friends. I mean—we are all good friends.”

“Gussie was drawn to you, you know. Your ‘vigor’ she called it. Your

‘snaky’ eyes.” Seeing the look in Roger’s face, Owen said quickly, “I’m not sure what Gussie meant by that, you know how fanciful Gussie could be, but—she meant attractive, obviously. She found you very attractive, Roger.”

Roger sat wordless. What did you say, posed with such a revelation?

Thank you!
Or,
I’m sorry
.

“Gussie was even more intimate, I think, with Adam? Were you their confidant?”

“ ‘Confidant’? How?”

“A friend to whom they confided.
You
know.” Owen Cutler, his face abraded by worry, stress, time, smiled with ghastly intimacy at Roger, who stared at him uncomprehendingly. “Adam made Gussie very happy, I know. He was someone to whom she could talk, and unburden her heart.

Our wives have much to say, Roger, much to confide in others, if not to us.

I’m grateful to Adam for that. Truly, I’m
grateful
.”

When at last after midnight Owen Cutler left, Roger impulsively telephoned Naomi Volpe in Jersey City. Her phone rang, rang, rang!—God damn, her answering tape switched on. “Naomi! It’s ‘Mr. C.’ I’m missing you. Give me a call, huh?” Volpe was no more Roger Cavanagh’s type than Gussie Cutler but in his loneliness, he’d have settled for either female.

A , Abigail Des Pres dropped by the Shaker Square office to take Roger to lunch (Roger politely declined) and to smile at him wistfully. “You’re drifting away from Salthill, Roger. Like Marina Troy.”

Roger said sharply, “No. Not like Marina Troy.”

Was he rude to beautiful Abigail, Salthill’s most eligible cocktease-divorcée? He hoped so.

Middle Age: A Romance

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

A    a paradigm of warfare “by other means.” Maybe this was why Roger had liked it, as a younger man. Now he wished he could talk to his adversaries. Elroy Jackson’s accusers. He believed he might reason with them, for surely they were reasonable men? (Everyone involved in the Jackson trial, prosecution and defense, and judge, happened to be male.) One of the names that leapt out at him from court documents was “Calvin Ransom”: an acquaintance of Roger’s from Columbia Law. Ransom had been an assistant district attorney in Hunterdon County in 8, and had helped to prepare the state’s case against Jackson and Jackson’s “co-defendant.” More recently, Ransom had the title of Hunterdon County comptroller; he’d become an elected official, a Republican. That figured, Roger thought. He recalled Ransom as an ambitious law student, not unlike Roger Cavanagh. They hadn’t been friends but they’d been friendly acquaintances and had respected each other, or so Roger wanted to think.

“He’d talk to me frankly. No bullshit with
me
.”

Trying to make an appointment to meet with Calvin Ransom wasn’t easy, however. And when they did meet, in Ransom’s executive office in a handsome new municipal building in Flemington, New Jersey, Roger was offended to learn, from Ransom’s secretary, that Ransom had allotted only a half-hour for him.

A half-hour! The prick.

Since volunteering to work with the Project, Roger was beginning to understand why Naomi Volpe, like a few other colleagues, was often so impatient, rude. Why a fury burnt in her like a gas jet that could suddenly flare up.

And here was Calvin Ransom, a two-bit success in New Jersey political circles, probably a multi-millionaire, what’s a comptroller but a guy with deep pockets and developers throwing money at him in a county like Hunterdon, New Jersey, formerly farmland and up for grabs, the new American suburban-paradise. Ransom shook hands vigorously with Roger, plump-porcine, with glinting metal glasses and a guarded manner; immediately Roger distrusted him, detested him, and hoped to Christ Ransom wasn’t feeling the same way about him. Like mirror-twins they were, except Roger still had his hair, was twenty pounds lighter, and in the

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J C O

abject position of asking for help. When he brought up the subject of Elroy Jackson, Jr., a glaze passed over Ransom’s face.
Bored! A man is going
to die and this fucker is bored
. Roger had an impulse to sink his fist in the other’s soft-looking middle but retained his air of smiling, affable courtesy.

Quickly he explained his involvement in the case and his hope of freeing Jackson and he saw that Calvin Ransom was listening with only a modicum of attention, though not daring to exhibit actual rudeness, yet. His strategy was to let Roger talk. And talk. Finally Roger said, “Cal, frankly I’m stunned by this. I’m new at investigating cases like this, criminal cases, death-penalty issues. I’m just a volunteer, I’m still with my law firm. What I’m discovering! Not just errors in Elroy Jackson’s trial but what looks like deliberate decisions by the prosecution to withhold exculpatory evidence.

The original police report, and witnesses favorable to the defendant not brought into the trial, and—” Calvin Ransom said coldly, “A jury found Jackson guilty. A jury sentenced him to death. Appeal is automatic. The man has been assured the protection of the law.” Ransom spoke in a polite flat TV-politician voice of judiciously restrained contempt.

Roger said, “ ‘Protection’ of the law! The law has screwed this man. A black man—”

“They were all black. Both sides. The kid who was shot in the face was black. Wasn’t he?”

“Hispanic, but what’s that got to do with it? Elroy Jackson got a lousy break. Like getting hit by lightning. He wasn’t smart enough to deal with what happened and his attorney was a moron—you know ‘Boomer’

Spires? He must be a local courthouse character, lots of laughs?”

Ransom shrugged. “Boomer” Spires was an embarrassment out of the Hunterdon County comptroller’s past.

Roger heard himself arguing with law-student earnestness as Ransom, seated behind a massive desk, arms behind his solid-looking neck, pretended to listen. “You can see how this was rigged, Cal. A federal court will find for us. I’m not accusing you, Cal, but the prosecutor’s office, you were just assisting. The shooter, the actual killer, who’s serving a twenty-five-year sentence at Rahway, found out when he was arrested that another guy, Jackson, whom he knew, ran from the crime scene outside the store, and the cops shot him, so the shooter, who turns state’s evidence, cuts a deal with your office because his attorney is seven times smarter than ‘Boomer’ and he pleads to reduced charges and doesn’t testify, so there’s no cross-examination. There’s the error I’m singling out. And there are others—” Roger heard his aggrieved voice, and saw the resentful glaze
Middle Age: A Romance

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in Calvin Ransom’s face, and knew he’d crossed over into a territory foreign to him. To be “involved”—to care passionately about someone, something not yourself—this wasn’t Roger Cavanagh’s nature; and yet, here he was.

Ransom said, with a smile, “Since when are you a crusader, Cavanagh?

It’s a little late, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you, Ransom.”

Roger left the comptroller’s office before his half-hour was up. He felt the horror of it, that officers of the court, men like Calvin Ransom, men like himself, would wish to send an innocent man to death.
This is the enemy
.
They would kill for their profession
. Though afterward, driving back to Salthill, he’d tell himself it was a damned good feeling for once, to acknowledge you hate another’s guts, and are hated in turn.



“ W   ? Fossils?”

In December, in Naomi Volpe’s flat in Jersey City where Roger hadn’t been in weeks. In this inelegant setting of thrown-together furnishings, crammed bookshelves, a startlingly large TV on a squat Formica table, unpacked cartons from previous moves. There was a look to the flat as if a strong wind had blown through it. There were odors of cigarette smoke, food, insecticide. (Roaches? Maybe it was a good idea that Roger never stayed the night.) Roger had had to call Volpe several times before she called him back with the excuse she’d been away, in Washington, D.C., on an assignment; Roger happened to know that Volpe hadn’t been out of town for so long, but he wasn’t going to press the issue. That Volpe should wish to make excuses to him, that she would offer them with a modicum of apology, was enormously flattering.

There was this unexpected side of Naomi Volpe, sometimes: what you might call
feminine
.

Just to be standing in Volpe’s flat in Jersey City, in a no-man’s-land of rental properties bordering the warehouse district, was sexually arousing to Roger. He had powerful erotic memories of the previous times he’d been in this flat. Then, Volpe had led Roger immediately into her unadorned bedroom; he’d had only a vague awareness of the flat’s other rooms. This time he stood in Volpe’s narrow rectangular living room as Volpe searched in the kitchen for clean glasses, for drinks; the occasion was far more social, and congenial; still, Roger was excited, and beginning

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to be impatient. He scrutinized a wall of cheaply framed but striking photographs of what appeared to be the mouths and interiors of caves, and of cuneiform-like shapes in rock. Taken where? The Southwest? Europe?

There was a teasing familiarity to these stylized shapes, Roger was certain he recognized.

He didn’t intend to betray his irritation with Volpe, that she’d been negligent in returning his calls when he’d wanted so badly to see her. He wasn’t going to appear jealous! Not Mr. C.

Volpe hadn’t kissed Roger when he stepped into her flat but she hadn’t stiff-armed him, either. She’d let him kiss her, and run his hands hungrily over her body. Her mood was unusually subdued, distracted. Even her spiky hair was flattened. The nose ring had vanished from her nostril as if it had never been. Clearly she wasn’t picking up on her lover’s mood, she had other things on her mind. When Roger told her of visiting that prick Calvin Ransom and of some new developments in the Jackson case she listened with a creased brow but said little. She hadn’t shared in Roger’s denunciation of Ransom, she’d shrugged as if to say
So? He’s the enemy,
what can you expect
.

“Female genitalia,” Volpe said matter-of-factly, indicating the framed photographs as she gave Roger his drink, “thirty-thousand-year-old cave carvings, in Les Eyzies. Beautiful, aren’t they?”

Roger stared at the photographs, a flush rising into his face. Female genitalia! Of course, he could see it now: simple stylized forms, geometri-cal, Platonic. Pelvic bones, labias and vaginas and vulvae, clitorises. There were hundreds of these. Thousands! Whoever the primitive sculptors were, male or female, they’d been fascinated by their subject as a child might be fascinated by her genitalia. Here was a lost prehistoric world—