Woman on Top (9 page)

Sarah became a social worker and married for the first time in her forties to a California man. She often returned to New York to see her family who still lived in her childhood apartment.

Now one of the people who knew me best was sitting across from me in a small crowded restaurant on Bleecker Street in the West Village.

“Hi sweetie. How are you?” Sarah said.

“I’m so happy you’re here. Just looking at your face provides continuity in my life.”

“Len’s not behaving?”

“Well, maybe you can psychobabble this man for me.”

Sarah sighed deeply and then let out a loud laugh.

“For you, and only you, my friend, I’m going to put on my demi-therapy hat and psychobabble both you and Len.”

The look on Sarah’s face changed. The girl I knew in elementary school assumed her professional profile.

“You know we were brought up in households where our brothers sucked all the air out of the room and we got no attention. Your mother worked all the time, her career was her world, your father was wonderful but had a serious heart condition from the time you were three, and your brother? A total mess. How old was he when he started seeing a psychiatrist, nine? So you used to go into your half of that divided bedroom, read books and tune out all of them,” Sarah sighed.

“I definitely wasn’t the center of the universe. I feel like my life began when I met Jake.”

“The message to a kid is that they’re not important. Ok, tell me why Jake married you?” Sarah asked.

“Why Jake married me? He loved me.”

“Why did Jake love you?” Sarah persisted.

I paused.

“Hey, come on. I never thought about why he loved me. I never had a reason to. I just fell into Jake and stayed there.”

“You just don’t get how much you bring to a relationship. So Len can take advantage of you and be as selfish as he wants.” Sarah frowned at me as she spoke.

I sat there feeling pretty damn angry with Len and myself. The only pure emotion I still knew was the unbound love for my children. My husband was dead. And who had come up with this ridiculous scheme of life anyway? Where love consumes you? Where that person dies?

The pensive look on Sarah’s face made it clear she was in her element and not done with me yet.

“When we were in high school all of our friends had so much money, huge apartments on Fifth Avenue, the Upper East Side, terraces, doormen, vacations at every school break in the Caribbean and Mexico. Jeff Brody had a Porsche in high school. And we were worried about our apartments being burglarized,” Sarah said as the waiter placed our food on the table. One could only imagine what he thought if he had heard any of our conversation.

“That might be part of your attraction to Len. You’ve never been shallow, the New York gold digger. So what’s going on here? We were so envious. Remember when the Carlsons went to Mexico for spring vacation in seventh grade? We set up towels and beach umbrellas on your living room carpet and put on our bathing suits.”

“Well, with Len I could easily live in a luxury doorman building on the Upper East Side. Everything I ever wanted, or so I thought, when I was fourteen,” I responded.

Sarah sat busy eating her lunch while I didn’t feel hungry anymore.

“One of Len’s friends told me, while warning me that I had to keep this to myself, Len is insecure and worried that I’ll run off with another guy. That’s why he’s glad I don’t live in New York. He prefers having me cloistered in the suburbs. I find that hard to believe,” I said.

“Believe it. Just because he’s rich and powerful in his day job, doesn’t mean he isn’t making up for how inadequate he feels.”

A calm came over me as some of the chaos of Len disappeared.

“Look,” Sarah implored, “It’s time to move on from the past, Jake’s death. Spend the time now to focus on what kind of man you need and want to love. And then take pleasure in all the things he would love about you.”

These words could only come from Sarah’s heart and I took them to mine. I might have resented them from someone else but I trusted her completely.

But the task was daunting. Jake’s love had come so easily. But why? How to find a love like that? Might as well ask me to figure out the cure to cancer.

CHAPTER 9

July

L
et’s go to Europe for two weeks. Your kids will be away then,” Len asked.

“I haven’t been to Europe in years. I’d love to.”

“Where would you like to go?” he asked.

“Italy! I’ve never been.”

“Then we’ll go to Italy. I was there with Judy but that’s where we’ll go. I’m that kind of guy.”

He made the plans. He was constantly making the plans and I just had to show up. And he said he loved how spontaneous I could be, ready to accompany him at a moment’s notice. He was often invited to the parties of wealthy businessmen and benefit dinners attended by socialites and movie stars. Just that week we had been to a benefit for Lincoln Center where I tried to act like having Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger at the next table was how I always spent my time in Montwood.

“Sometimes when I’m sitting in a board room, I laugh that this little guy from Jersey City is telling these multimillionaires what to do with their money,” Len had told me.

We flew first class to Rome over the July 4
^th
weekend. Len would not travel any other way and once I was used to it, I understood why perfectly. When we landed, Len immediately called his voice mail at the office. There were always at least three or four messages from anxious clients waiting for his judgment, his expertise, Len made it clear to me that he was absolutely indispensable to them and that he wouldn’t have it otherwise.

Len’s son, Peter, who was spending two weeks in Europe had left a message.

“Hi Dad, just wanted to let you know I’m in Rome. The trip is just great. I’ll leave you a message about my next stop. Hope you’re good and not working too hard.”

“You won’t believe it. Peter’s in Rome right now. I thought he would have left by now. He left a voice mail,” Len told me.

“What does that mean for us?” I asked.

I had not met Len’s children yet and he didn’t want them to know that I accompanied him to Europe. He had insisted that I tell my kids that I was traveling with a group but he didn’t have to know that I didn’t comply with his instructions. We scheduled the trip to coincide when Ben would be on a three-week bike trip in Vermont and Chloe a six-week teen tour out West.

We arrived at our hotel, the opulent St. Regis Grand Hotel, and as we checked in Len let me know that the hotel provided butler service.

“And what will this butler be available to do?”

“Anything your heart desires. Other than what I do.”

Len had secured reservations at La Pergola for our first dinner. The elegant, expensive restaurant with gorgeous views of Rome served food that rivaled anything we had tasted in New York.

“This meal, this restaurant is dazzling. I don’t know what to say but thank you.”

Len leaned back in his chair. His mind seemed to be constantly churning. And yet, at this moment, he looked truly relaxed. The wheels slowing down for one evening.

As we lay in our enormous bed our first night, I kept thinking about the butler. Butler’s had simply never been within my reach or desire.

“I can’t think of a single thing I would need the butler for. What a waste,” I said.

“Believe me, there are plenty of people in this hotel directing the butlers to run around for whatever suits their fancy at any moment.”

“At this moment? I don’t fancy anything the butler could do for me,” I said as I slowly pressed my naked body against Len’s.

“Then it would be my pleasure to take care of your needs. I prefer the woman on top, only in bed of course. Climb on top of me Signorina. You don’t need a butler after all, do you?”

Our days in Rome proved to be comical. While I marveled at the masterpieces by Michelangelo and Bernini in St. Peter’s, Len stood watch, an unlikely addition to the Swiss Guards, on the lookout for Peter. While I gawked at the Coliseum, Len, no less a Roman emperor in his own mind, gazed mightily over the crowds. Was his son walking where he, Len, would easily have ordered to have his enemies fed to the lions?

“Let’s get out of Rome. I’m uncomfortable,” Len said the day before we were scheduled to depart.

“I’ve never been to Florence. Of course.”

That same day, Peter left another message,

“Hi Dad, I am leaving Rome and on my way to London today. Amazing time in Rome. Speak to you soon.”

We ate and drank our way through Tuscany. Len had hired both a driver and a guide but we sat in the back seat of the Mercedes and necked for hours. We ate al fresco in small villages, stuffing ourselves with linguine primavera and sloshing down the local Frascati. We saw little of the ride to Florence and only surfaced as we began to climb the hill to our beautiful hotel, the Villa San Michele, once a monastery designed by Michelangelo.

The view of all of Florence from the balcony of the Villa was spectacular.

“Thank you for showing this to me. Florence is everything I’ve imagined. And it makes me realize how much I’ve been missing all of these years,” I said at dinner that night. “Did you travel when you were growing up?” he asked. “We went to Miami once or twice. The one big trip was to London when I was eleven and my brother was thirteen. When we arrived my parents said they were tired and needed a nap. My brother and I were allowed to wander into London alone. We were New York kids and if we could survive there, well….”

“So we went walking around Piccadilly Circus and Covent Garden for about an hour. And then as usual, we had a fight and my brother took off. So there I was, eleven years old, my first day in London and all alone. Fortunately, I really was a New York kid. I got in a cab and told him to take me to the Intercontinental.”

“There’s not a chance in hell I would have allowed that with my kids,” Len barked.

“Me either. But my brother and I were on our own a lot in those days.”

“Did you travel in high school and college?” Len asked.

“Yes, but when I got married right after college Jake and I had very little money since he was in training. So we rarely went anywhere. And since Jake’s death I’ve been so consumed with taking care of my kids and trying to do my job that my world has been so limited. This trip makes me feel like I’m waking up out of a long slumber.”

Len leaned back in his chair and looked pleased with himself.

The next day we walked the streets for hours, in and out of the Uffizi, the Galleria dell’ Accademia to see The Justin, the Duomo, until we couldn’t walk another step. But there was one very big incentive that kept us going that day. Len was addicted to ice cream and uncontrollable in his desire for it. When we stopped for gelato he ordered six flavors, including his three favorites, pistacchio, cassata siciliana, and pera, and tried each one.

We roamed around Florence for an hour searching for a particular vendor. Once found, Len seemed compelled to indulge in every flavor he had never tasted before. He finally stopped at eleven. On several of them, he had asked for panna, a scandalous fresh whipped cream.

“Look at how big my belly is! How could I have eaten all of that gelato?” He sulked as we slowly made our way back to our hotel.

On our last night in Florence I took Len out to a five-course dinner at Bevo Vino as a small gesture to thank him for our trip. The restaurant was described as a local favorite in a guidebook. It was a small charming place hidden on a side street crowded with locals, wrought iron furniture and gaily-painted walls right out of a post card. We ate ourselves silly and drank a glass or two of wine with each of the courses.

Around midnight, stuffed and drunk, we staggered back into our room and I slid into bed. While Len went into the bathroom, I called room service and asked them to deliver Len’s three favorite flavors of gelato as quickly as possible.

Room service arrived immediately and as I hurriedly took the tray from the young man, I thanked him and ushered him back into the darkness of the night. Naked in bed, I covered my breasts with a thin layer of the gelato just as Len emerged from the bathroom to his great surprise and delight. He began to slowly lick off his second dessert. We made love and Len fell asleep within seconds, spread out on the bed face up, as content as a man could be.

•  •  •

Len’s tuxedo looked snug as we walked into the wedding of his niece on Long Island. My tight sequin dress had a jewel neckline and multiple crisscrossed spaghetti straps. Len’s eyes seemed to crisscross when he first saw me in it. Was he stifling his anger at my display or actually pleased for once?

I’d be meeting his children for the first time, all three of them in one shot. Three young adults whose mother had died less than a year ago. I wasn’t sure how they’d react to me and I wasn’t sure how I’d respond.

Len and I never discussed whether or not he wanted to take on Chloe and Ben. He knew that if he wanted to be with me, how he treated Chloe and Ben would be critical.

But his grown kids? Did they need me? Would they resent me? And Len made it clear he didn’t want me infringing on his sole command of the control panel of the lives he needed to govern. Even his grown adult children fell into his domain.