Woman on Top (7 page)

“This is for you,” he said as he handed me a large red Cartier box.

Inside lay a stunning woven gold necklace. Jake and I never had much money and jewelry was never on the list of things I desired.

“You’re spoiling me.”

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“I love it. I just can’t believe it.”

When we had sex that night, I discovered that Len was possibly teachable after all, as he concentrated on pleasing me. But his learning curve had been so very steep, which left me wondering who else might be coaching him.

We met in motels all along the various highways between our homes and quickly learned the price and quality of each one. It wasn’t long before I could easily have written a lover’s guidebook to the motels of the Tri-State area. One night during the week and one night on the weekend we would meet for dinner and then tear each other’s clothes off in a motel, while other nights we would pull over to the side of the road and do it.

It seemed like we were back in high school, only Len had never done this in high school. After dinner on a freezing cold night, we pulled into the parking lot of some dreary industrial park. The car windows were completely fogged from the heat generated.

“I wonder if they have surveillance cameras in these lots? We’re going to get caught and my face will be on the front page of
The Daily
News,” he said.

“The worst part will be when New Yorkers wonder why an investment banker couldn’t spring for a cheap motel room.”

“That’s it. I’m not doing this in a car anymore.”

And we didn’t. We made love in every hotel and motel from his house to mine. The worst was The Cliffside about forty minutes from my house. No one ever stayed there overnight; the place was made for having sex and getting out. The rug and bedspread looked so dirty and the bathroom so grimy, we pulled off the covers, made love and left. We never used the bathroom or let our bare feet touch the floor.

“I’d like you to come to my house this weekend,” he said late one night on the phone. “My friends don’t think I should invite women to the house because they’re worried about the gold diggers out there. It’s a nine thousand square foot house so I haven’t invited any women over. You’d be the first.”

The house sat at the end of a long stone driveway, a sort of treasure at the end of a long hunt. Large and made entirely of imported Italian stone, it captivated those who dared to take the journey, and yet somehow managed to blend into its woodsy background.

It was obvious, even to the untrained eye, that much time and money was spent in its upkeep, as junipers and rose bushes danced in the whistling wind, and tall blades of perfect green grass stood at attention as Len drove by. A look around the back revealed a huge backyard, equipped with a kidney shaped swimming pool, Jacuzzi, and a small pond with a flowing waterfall stocked with red Koi fish.

Inside, the brick house opened up to a high ceilinged room that seemed to glisten with sunlight in every corner. Polished marble floors, the color of white pearls with overtones of cream and silver, covered a maze-like stream of endless rooms, each decorated in its own unique style. The style appeared eclectic with Len’s antiques set amidst contemporary furniture and Leroy Neiman type paintings. In the basement, Len set up a private gym.

“I prefer not to exercise with other people,” he explained.

Money had definitely been thrown down in his house, just not always well.

“This is my office and where I spend most of my time when I’m home,” he said as he showed me around. “When I worked in my home office, Judy usually watched TV in the family room. I wasn’t here that much anyway. But she went to bed early and I always went to sleep very late. I’ve never needed much rest.

“We were like two ships passing in the night except that I always saved Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons for Judy,” he added.

I stood there trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a home like this. But not under the terms that Judy lived there.

•  •  •

If you asked Chloe to look back, she probably would have a hard time remembering the first time that she ever laid eyes on Len. Just fourteen at the time, her world revolved around not much more than herself, her social life, and how long it was possible to hide behind the closed doors of her room without needing food, money or a ride to one of her friends’ houses. That Passover, the night that she first met Len, really had no importance to her at all.

Although we had never been religious, I relished the opportunity to demonstrate we were a real family. Not a second rate, single mother one. My mother and I had been preparing a feast featuring brisket, matzoh ball soup and flourless chocolate cake for four days.

The dining room was set to near perfection with our Royal Derby China, Tiffany silver and Waterford crystal for the adults, and a variety of Passover toys and books for the kids.

We were expecting twenty people, a collection of work friends and family, and of course, Len. This was Len’s first time meeting the people most important to me. Having everyone encounter Len at once seemed a gentler way for Chloe and Ben to experience him. But I felt nervous about the impression that he would make. And yet, my worries once again took second place to his.

“I told my Jewish friends I had to work on a deal and would be not available for the first night of Passover, but could come the second night,” he said when I invited him to my house.

“So your friends and family still don’t know I exist?”

“Appearances mean everything to me,” Len explained. “And please, don’t ever tell them the date when we actually met.”

“This might be good blackmail material one day. Well, you are about to meet my family and some of my closest friends,” I replied.

“It’ll be fine. I’ve been to a Seder before. I do have Jewish friends.”

All of my guests arrived by five-thirty that night and proceeded to mingle in the family room until the food was finished being prepared. My friends brought bottles of wine and various desserts. Len arrived bearing a stunning silver plated Passover plate.

My colleagues and I had vowed to lay off of the office talk for the sake of their long-suffering spouses, but of course were unable to do so.

“The statute is clear in that any provider such as a doctor who chooses to join a network must accept the terms of participation offered. Its purpose is to keep the managed care organization’s costs in control. The question of whether a statute like this is preempted by ERISA will have to be decided one day,” Janet, my boss and mentor was explaining.

A brilliant woman who had clerked at the Supreme Court, first in her class at law school and a former partner in a firm, she personified women’s accomplishments over the last decades. Len’s world was not populated with women like this and he said little but kept a sweet, patronizing smile pasted on his face. Len seemed so out of his element since my female friends would never find it necessary to defer to Wall Street men. Never.

When everyone was seated around the table, I asked Chloe to help me get the salt water, parsley and other fixings we would need for the Seder.

“He’s ugly. How could you possibly date him?” she whispered to me in the kitchen.

I peeked into the dining room to take another look at him. I cared for Len at this point and quite frankly no longer thought about what he looked like. ‘It’s her age,’ I thought and shrugged it off.

No one else said a word to me regarding anything about Len, no gushing and no criticism. I assumed the jury was still deliberating.

Cleaning up, shuffling between the kitchen and the dining room, I felt so proud of the people in my world. A world where money and power were not the primary motivation for getting up in the morning.

Len walked into the kitchen and pulled me outside as he prepared to go home.

“Would you like to go the Caribbean for a long romantic weekend?”

Caught off guard, I had to pinch myself to see if the two glasses of Sauvignon Blanc were playing tricks on me.

“I’d love to,” I told him and then ran back into the house before he could withdraw the offer.

We flew to Anguilla at the end of April. As we buckled our seat belts on the flight from New York to Puerto Rico, Len appeared fidgety.

“I hate takeoff and landing.” he said when he noticed me watching him.

“But you fly all the time for work.”

“I’m superstitious. So I have these rituals and they seem to guarantee the safety of my flights. Judy was terrified of flying and we both had grown used to our mutual panic each time we flew,” he said. His eyes had a vulnerable look for once.

The plane from Puerto Rico to Anguilla was on an old tiny Cessna.

“I don’t fly small planes. Ever,” Len said. He held my hand tightly the entire flight.

We landed in Anguilla at night and the warm breezes enveloped us as we walked outside of the small airport. I took a deep breath of the Caribbean air and a longing look at the palm trees. This felt natural, like we’d done it many times before.

Len had made reservations at the Malliouhana, a posh resort, for four days. We checked in and as we casually walked along the stone paths to our room, a bellboy passed by. He stopped and smiled at Len.

“Welcome back sir.”

The comment stopped Len in his tracks.

Len scowled at him and then inspected my face.

“I’ve never been here before,” he said and continued walking.

If I said something, if we had an argument, would we have to leave this beautiful island? I didn’t say a word.

The room, enormous and decorated in Moroccan furnishings, sat directly on the beach. In the bathroom, the size of my bedroom at home, a double Jacuzzi abutted a glass wall. I walked around the room nonchalantly as if accustomed to living a grand life and Montwood was a distant memory.

Len ordered a bottle of sparkling wine and then checked his voice mail at work. He seemed tightly wound at the moment and I wasn’t sure how long it would take to relax him. Sex would be a good place to begin.

So we made love three times a day, tenderly and passionately. He was learning. We snorkeled off a fifty foot private boat he rented for the day, lay on the beach for hours and talked, swam in the warm Cerulean blue water, took baths together in the Jacuzzi, ate dinners around the island in romantic outdoor restaurants under the stars and danced in the moonlight.

“This is the first time in twenty years that I’ve been in the ocean or snorkeled,” he said on our second day.

Each evening before dinner, Len arranged for us to have massages in our room. The first night two women arrived, set up their tables side by side, and Len and I lay naked on the tables, covered by small plush white towels.

After a few minutes of pressing her hands into my sundrenched body, my masseuse stopped.

“You know, I just gave a massage to Claudia Schiffer. She’s in the next room.”

I giggled.

“You’re kidding, aren’t you? Is she gorgeous?” I asked.

This woman had just massaged the perfect body of one of the world’s top supermodels.

“Will you please let Ms. Schiffer know tomorrow that you’ve massaged my body?” Len said.

That night at dinner I got my first glimpse of her as she dined with David Copperfield.

As we lay in bed on the last morning of our stay, I felt completely exhausted from so much passion.

“I can’t handle any more,” I said.

“Finally!”

He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me. He had mastered yet another discipline and was relishing yet another success.

“These have been the best four days of my life,” Len whispered as he held me tightly.

I didn’t respond as I made a mental list of the best days of my life. All of them had been spent with Jake, Chloe and Ben.

“There will be some surprises for you in this relationship. Good ones,” he said as we road back to the airport.

“I hate surprises. Tell me now.”

“I’m actually six feet tall. That’s one of them.”

He smiled at me, so pleased with himself.

WINTER 1988

CHAPTER 7

February

T
reatment began with a routine that was to last us throughout the course of chemotherapy. After seeing Henry briefly, we walked down a long dreary gray cement underground tunnel in the basement of the hospital to a clinic where they administered the chemotherapy.

Jake was infused with the chemo at nine in the morning. The first time Jake looked helpless, as if he were surrendering himself. The two drugs most likely to cause nausea would kick in around seven p.m., then again about midnight. At six in the evening I would give Jake anti-nausea and sleeping pills. He would fall asleep quickly, wake up at eight or nine, vomit three times over the course of an hour, then feel relief for several hours.

Jake went back to work and looked fine. We wondered about the cumulative effect of chemotherapy but the only thing we felt truly fearful about at this point was whether one of the kids’ friends would expose Jake to chicken pox which he never had as a child. Neither Chloe nor Ben had ever had it, and if Jake were exposed to it while his immune system compromised, he could die of complications.