Ark (18 page)

“No.”

Helen told Edmond that, should her sister return, he had to ring up before letting her in. The doorman lifted his hat and said he would. Then, pressing for the elevator, Helen reminded her daughter how her sister had plenty of friends around the city. She wouldn't be sleeping on the streets. She would find a warm bed tonight, a cup of peppermint tea, a loan for tomorrow and the day after that. She said to her daughter, “You have to watch out for people. They will try to squeeze everything out of you—” Then she grabbed Rebecca by the arm roughly, and pulled her inside the elevator.

IX. IN-COMING

 

Oliver hadn't seen his wife Sheila in six months. But she was now aboard a red-eye from Los Angeles to New York. And how long would she be staying? What had she told him? Two weeks? Less, maybe?

These days, Oliver and Sheila spoke by phone every few hours. All conversations centered on the business of the lawsuit. What was the key to winning? How could they prove Doris had forced Eliza to sign the new will? Sheila couldn't talk about any of it without skidding off into rage. She cursed and accused, made predictions and threats. It exhausted Oliver. In fact, days before Sheila's arrival in New York, he became sick. His stomach wasn't right. He was nauseous. He stayed in bed and slept, didn't go outside. He thought he should see a doctor. He hadn't had a physical in years. He would go, except he was so tired he didn't think he could make it uptown to his physician's.

Then, that morning, Sheila called Oliver just minutes after landing at JFK, and once he was off the phone he was suddenly up and hurrying around the apartment, straightening and dusting, throwing away weeks-old takeout containers from the refrigerator, cleaning the toilet and putting fresh sheets on the bed. For three days he'd been unable to move, and now he couldn't sit still. He was adjusting curtains when his wife knocked at the door. He let her in, and Sheila stepped right past her husband into the apartment. Pushing two large suitcases against a wall, she collapsed onto the sofa and began complaining about the state of airplane food.

“Worse than ever
and
it costs you.”

“Let me make you something. You want some eggs?”

“How about Egg Beaters?”

“I can separate the whites.”

“You have plain yogurt?”

“I can go out and buy some.”

“That's not necessary.”

“You should have everything you need. I'll go get yogurt. What else would you like? I can't believe I didn't do a shop.”

“You don't have to. I'm not even hungry.” Sheila massaged her scalp, her anxiety playing out through half-closed blue eyes. “I called Jerome five times. He won't get back to me.”

Looking under the coffee table for his shoes, Oliver said, “Uh-huh.”

“I need to be in touch with him.”

“You will be.”

“His testimony is everything.”

“I know, Sheila.”

“And I called Violet's apartment and spoke with her daughter. Seems she's flown home to Jamaica and has no plans of returning anytime soon. As far as witnesses, that only leaves us Jerome. You've got to call Rebecca. We need her help. She's friendly with him, right?”

“Who's friendly with who?” Oliver asked.

“Your daughter, Rebecca, is friendly with Jerome.”

“I know. So what?”

“So we'll ask her to help us with Jerome.”

“Oh, yeah. We can do that.”

Oliver appeared distracted. As it was, he was remembering a very strange incident. During his last two weeks at the loft—late at night, unable to sleep—he'd gone to have a bite of chicken in the kitchen when he'd heard noises coming from his father's studio, the light tap of a hammer and then the sound of someone speaking to himself. Oliver had gone to look, but he'd been unable to get into the studio. The doorway had been blocked by a refrigerator.

“So I call out. I say, ‘Is anyone in there?' And it's Jerome.”

“Jerome?”

“Yes. And he tells me not to worry. He's just doing a little work.”

“What?”

“Well, and I was so out of it, I didn't know if it was really him or if I was imagining things.”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing. That was it. I went back to bed.”

Sheila shook her hands in the air, and at once she began to shout at her husband. She couldn't believe it—why hadn't he told her about this before? Was he a moron? Jerome had been there to steal.

“No wonder he's not returning my calls. He's afraid. He thinks we're onto him.”

“I'm sure you're wrong.”

“Oh you're sure, are you? How well do you know Jerome? Have you ever been to his apartment? Have you met his family, his friends? What's his last name?”

Oliver tried to remember. He couldn't. “He was working.”

“Working? What would he be working on?”

“I have no idea.”

Sheila waved Oliver off with a sweep of her arm.

Oliver said, “You know what, I'll go get those egg whites. You're tired. Take a nap. I'll be back soon.”

And he left the apartment. He felt instantly set free. Had he been breathing the last ten minutes? His heart rate was returning to normal now. But his wife should sleep. What would he do? For weeks he had been meaning to go look in on Laura Saks.

His ex-fiancée welcomed him into her Columbus Avenue apartment. In the living room, a bottle of white wine was open on the table. The dogs were at the daycare on Seventy-Fourth. Laura's tan-colored dress was one that Oliver had bought her twenty years before. It was long and slimming, a little fancy for the occasion. But Oliver had come without giving much notice. He apologized.

“My wife just got to town. I needed a little space.”

Laura liked that. She leaned back on the sofa, her upper lip rising to reveal dark pink gums. Her brown hair was damp and held back in a white elastic band, which she adjusted twice before taking up her wineglass and toasting.

“To an afternoon of leisure.”

“Yes,” Oliver said. “To that.”

His wife had drained him, and it showed. Oliver sat in a chair with his legs stuck out straight and his body lifeless. “You're good to take me in.”

“That's what old friends do.”

Oliver flashed her a grin. He was at ease in Laura's company, and in this apartment where he had spent so many nights. Nothing had changed here except for the hallways outside the front door, which had been given a makeover to match the rise in the economy.

“So your wife,” Laura was saying, her legs crossed and body slanted across the sofa, “she showed up and you took off.”

“Yes. She came in the door from the airport, and she hadn't sat down before she was going on and on about the lawsuit. It's all she wants talks about. I mean, how about a kiss hello? Maybe she asks me how I'm doing. We talk about where we'll have dinner tonight, where we'll walk, what we'll see. But I get none of that.”

Laura smiled through pursed lips while her small shoulders dipped inward. Oh, she knew just what he meant. Two months before, Sheila had emailed her.

“She did?”

“Yes, Oliver, you gave her my email.”

“It's hard to remember much these days.”

Well, she forgave him for giving out her personal contact information without asking first. But he should be aware, he'd sent Laura down a difficult road. What had Sheila wanted? Just to know if Laura had ever seen Doris do anything in the past that a judge would find interesting. Something cruel or perverse.

“And I tell her I'll think about it. But by the next day, Sheila's sent me a new email. This one's about Ben. Surely, in all my years of knowing him, I've seen your dad take a pool cue to one of you or bump a driver on the LIE. I tell her I'll think about that, too. But then two, maybe three minutes later, I get a third email. Now she's asking about you and your mother. Would I be willing to go before a grand jury and discuss how you two had been as close as a mother and son could be? Would I talk about how good Eliza had been to you? How much she had loved her only son? I started receiving a new email every day. She didn't let up for weeks.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Well, I want to help. But she's so abrasive.”

“That same person is in my apartment. I have to go back there and deal with her.”

“And she won't give you a kiss hello.”

“Not one.”

“She won't want to have any fun, either.”

“No fun.”

“Just work, and work, and work, Oliver.”

“That's right, Laura,” he said. Then, screwing up one side of his face, he asked Laura if he could go into her bedroom and take a nap. “I'm so wiped.”

“Oh, sure. Of course,” Laura said, surprised by the request. “Just give me a minute to change the sheets.”

“No,” Oliver said, “I don't care about the sheets. But would you wake me in an hour? I shouldn't be away any longer than that.”

Laura nodded. “One hour. You got it.”

At noon, Laura woke Oliver. He took a taxi back to his neighborhood. At the Food Emporium, he bought Egg Beaters, yogurt, a whole chicken, skim milk, and a box of chocolate donuts. He picked up a regular coffee and a buttered bagel for his doorman, checked the mailbox, and thought how good it was that Sheila had had a rest. He, too, was feeling more awake.

He stuck his key in the lock. The door was open. He would have to remind his wife that this was New York City and that he knew stories, stories he would rather not repeat but would be forced to if she didn't start locking the front door. He hung his jacket on the stand. He called out to Sheila, but she didn't answer. Was she still asleep?

But then, what in God's name was this? For a moment, Oliver felt a sort of relapse of the symptoms he'd been experiencing in the days before Sheila's arrival. That total loss of energy, the nausea. He stared out at the living room. Stacks of papers were everywhere, forming neat piles, some very tall. They were labeled with index cards: “Original Will,” “New Will,” “Doris,” “Sondra,” “Ben,” “Eliza,” “Jerome,” “Lawyers,” “SoHo,” “Southampton.” A fax machine was on the floor, spitting out paper. Next to it was a narrow wooden table with a brand-new desktop computer on top. A dry-erase board with the words
HOW
TO
WIN
THE
CASE
written on it in red marker hung from the wall.

Suddenly, the front door slammed. Sheila came walking in with a large box in her arms. She dropped it on a chair and heaved. “Thing weighs a ton,” she said.

“What the hell is that?”

“It's a printer. It was on sale.”

Oliver looked for a place to sit down and gather his thoughts, but even the couch was covered in papers. He said, “What have you done to my apartment?”

“You don't like it?”

“Like it? It looks like a war room.”

“It is a war room.” Sheila was busting the printer out of its box. By the looks of her, she relished the feeling of ripping open cardboard.

“These wires! Why are there so many?”

“We'll cover up the wires.”

“How long was I even gone?” Oliver looked at his watch. “Four hours? You did all this in four hours?”

“This is just the beginning, Oliver. Three file cabinets are being delivered tomorrow. And I got you a desk of your own. I've been thinking about our diet, too. No more dairy or carbs. I've got to find someone to play racquetball with. You should start running. We've got to get our energy up. If we see every part of our lives, every action, every decision, as affecting the outcome of the lawsuit, if we can get ourselves to that place, there's no chance we lose.”

Out the window, Oliver saw the Morgan Library, where J.P. had lived. He said, “I know I've come down in the world, Sheila, but it doesn't mean I have to live in a goddamn office.”

“Oh, please, Oliver. Forget how you once had it. Since selling my house, I've been living in a motel. I can't even afford a hotel. How do you think that feels? I'm sixty-three and I don't know how I'll pay for the rest of my life. But that's the past. We've got a lawsuit to win.”

“I know we do.”

“And if you think it'll just happen without us putting everything we've got into it, then you're wrong.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now come on already. Focus.”

They went to work. Sheila spent her days reading through documents and taking notes. The fax machine was going twenty-four-seven. Oliver felt unsure of his role. Afraid that he was interrupting his wife, he would ask her what he should be doing. She would assign him tasks:

“Take these papers and organize them chronologically.” “Put the blue pens with the blue pens and the black pens with the black and the red pens with the pens. I need them separated. It's essential for my underlining.” “Go out and get us two turkey sandwiches with lettuce and tomato from the deli, no cheese and no mayo, and some espresso shots from the Italian bakery.”

They were menial jobs, which never took Oliver more than an hour. Then he'd have to go back to Sheila and ask her what he should be doing now. Most the time, Sheila would hum, and her eyes would roll into the corners, and she'd say, “Take a little break. Ten minutes and I'll have you going again.” It seemed like she would prefer to do the work on her own. At times, Oliver considered asking his wife if he should even be there. He was probably just slowing her down. But then, he didn't want her to think he wasn't invested, or that he'd rather be someplace else. In the afternoons, he would tell Sheila that he was going up to Central Park to run, and instead he would visit Laura's apartment and drink wine and reminisce. Why hadn't it worked out for them? They had been close so many times.

“I fell out of love,” Oliver told her.