The Wisdom of Perversity (10 page)

Jeff fast-forwarded. At one point, he pressed Play to check on his progress—they heard Noah and Julie greet Aunt Harriet—then resumed until he reached a point where they could listen in on Harriet's and Hy's tête-à-tête.

Jeff overshot a little. Hy was in midspeech. “Saul's my brother. I loaned him the money. I'll talk to him about it.”

“Goddamn it, Hy,” Harriet answered, her tone nakedly hostile. “Saul told me all about it. That you've lost money playing the stock market and need the two thousand back—”

“Two thousand seven hundred. And I didn't play the stock market. Don't tell me Saul told you I've been—”

“Maybe you've been playing the ponies like your father used to—”

“What!” Hy squealed with outrage. “I'm not a gambler. I don't have to explain to you or even Saul why I want to be paid back. The point is that it was a six-month loan and it's been a year and a half . . .” He sighed, exasperated. “Look, I'm not talking about this with my brother's wife. All right? It's not appropriate.”

“Why not? Why in God's name isn't it appropriate? Saul's lived with me as many years as he lived with you.
I've
known you for twenty years. If we're not family now I don't know when we'll be.”

“Harriet, what has the number of years we've known each other got to do with anything?”

“I'm talking about family—”

“Saul
is
my family. Our parents are dead. We have no aunts and uncles. He's my one and only blood relative. Saul
is
my family. I lent my brother money. I'll talk to him about it. That's it. Case closed.”

“No. The case is not closed.” Brian looked at Jeff to check if he was impressed as he was by Harriet's boldness in facing down the blustering Hy, transformed from a pathetic sick woman into an inspiring heroine. “The case is not closed, Hy, because Saul is too proud to tell you what's really going on. You ask him for the money and he'll give it to you, even if it means he has to lose the store. He'll give you the two thousand dollars without saying a word about the fact that I have breast cancer. Without letting you know that he has no idea what my treatment is going to—”

“What?” Hy interrupted, irritated. “What the hell did you just say?”

“I have a lump in my breast. It's cancer.” She hurled the diagnosis at Hy like a rebuke. The news silenced him. His quiet continued for five revolutions of the reels, a very long time for the surveillance team. Julie whispered, “Say something, Daddy.”

“Harriet,” he spoke at last, very gently. “When did this happen?”

“Um . . .” Harriet hesitated. “I guess I felt it—I don't know—truth is, I didn't want to know what it was. I felt it just before Christmas. That's when it was.”

“Two months ago? Why didn't you tell me right away? Who's treating you? My friend, David Newberg, is a top oncologist at Sloan Kettering. He doesn't treat breast, but he can get you in to to see one of the best in the country. I want you to see him on Monday—”

“No, no, Hy. I don't want to see anyone else,” Harriet said in a tone of profound hopelessness, then added nothing more, which seemed odd to Brian.

“Why not? Don't be ridiculous! You have to let me—”

“Thank you, Hy, but no,” she was certain this time. “I'm in the HIP plan through the city. They have certain doctors you're supposed to see and they're very good.”

“David will see you for free. Professional courtesy. I did his mother's whole mouth for nothing for exactly this kind of situation. Trust me on this—”

Jeff's door swung open with a bang.

Jeff poked the Stop button and tried to shield the machine from view while the children's heads turned in guilty unison. There, filling the doorway, was Richard Klein. He was in a tailored blue blazer, gray slacks, and a white Brooks Brothers shirt without a tie. Brian imagined he could smell Old Spice, although he was half a room away. “Happy birthday, Jeff!” he announced. “Hi there, boys and girls,” he added with a mischievous smile at the sight of four children on their knees hovering with an air of secrecy over something on the bed. “What you got there?” He turned to someone behind him and commented, “I think we interrupted something naughty.”

Sam the NBC page appeared, peering curiously over his benefactor's shoulder. “Hi, kids,” he called in. “Happy birthday, Jeff.”

Jeff stood up, revealing the object on the bed. “It's your present, Cousin Richard. I was showing them the portable tape recorder.”

“That's your parents' present. I just helped get it. Sam here is going to help me get you a present of my own.” Klein strolled toward the bed, a broad smile aimed at Brian. “Hello, Brian.” Brian shifted behind Julie. Jeff had given no warning that he should expect Klein to show up today. It was a dreadful surprise.

Klein veered toward him, nudging past Julie. He stuck out his hand, saying in a wounded tone, “Brian, aren't you going to say hello to me?” Brian's heart was pounding. His legs yearned to run as fast as he could, but he couldn't order them to move. He was mortified Klein had singled him out; it seemed to announce to everyone what had happened in the NBC bathroom. Klein's showy greeting was a further proof to Brian that he, not the vice president, ought to be ashamed, that it was his secret, not Klein's.

“Here.” Klein stuck his chubby fingers almost directly under Brian's nose. “Shake hands.”

Embarrassment warmed Brian's face. Head down, he offered his hand limply. Klein grabbed it and jerked Brian into his fragrant shirt, exclaiming, “Whoops!” Klein bear-hugged Brian in a way that looked to the others as an attempt to steady himself. Brian felt a bulge at Klein's groin press against his belly, and his nose was dunked into the well of the adult's open collar. He did get a faint whiff of Old Spice while he was squeezed tight a second time, then was abruptly pushed away.

Klein stepped back, commenting, “I said ‘Let's shake,' not ‘Let's knock down Richard.' ” He winked at Noah, who lit up like a pinball machine. “Who are you?” Klein said, peering into little boy's eager face. “I don't know you, do I?”

“I'm Noah!” he shouted, showing all his crooked baby teeth.

“Well, how about you, Noah? Do you know how to shake?” Klein offered his hand.

Noah reached for it. The instant he did, Klein engulfed the little fingers in his fist and yanked Noah's against him. “Whoops!” Klein said, repeating his burlesque of being off balance while squeezing Noah's face tight to his groin, followed by the mock discard of pushing him away. “I said ‘Shake, Noah,' not ‘Let's crush Richard.' ”

Noah was overcome by appreciation for Klein's gag: he collapsed to the floor with laughter, doubled up into a fetal position.

“Noah,” Julie said. Her comment attracted Klein's attention. He buttoned his blazer while he studied Julie, pretty as a doll in her Mary Janes, bright red sweater and short pleated gray skirt.

“Who are you?” he asked solemnly.

“I'm Julie,” she said.

Klein offered his hand.

Julie stared at it suspiciously.

“Don't!” Noah managed to squeeze out between a cackle and a hiss.

“Don't be scared,” Klein coaxed Julie. “You know, we're practically related. You're Jeff's cousin and so am I.”

“Really?” Julie said, looking pleased by this information.

“Only I'm from his mother's side and you're from his father's, so though we're both Jeff's cousins, you're not my cousin. Does that make sense?” Klein asked with appealing innocence.

“Sure,” Julie said. Noah had stopped his hilarity and listened quietly from the floor.

“So let's shake hands, Not-Really-Cousin Julie,” Klein said. He stepped closer, offering his hand.

“Don't do it,” Noah said, grinning.

Brian, Jeff, and Sam watched grimly as if the outcome (would Klein pull the same trick on Julie?) were of great moment. Julie looked down at Klein's proffered hand, up to his earnest countenance, and back to his hand before she at last extended her own.

Klein reached for Julie's hand abruptly—Noah cried out with expectant glee—but he surprised by not surprising: he shook her hand gently. “Nice to meet you, Julie.” Klein stepped aside to introduce the page. “This is Sam, my Little Brother.” He grabbed Sam by the back of the neck, pulling him close, shaking the adolescent's blond head like a rag doll's. “Sam's a little older than all of you—he's seventeen—but he's still a kid at heart. Right, Sam?”

Sam grinned. His face was smooth and pink and hairless, the load of blond curls on top of his head like a baby's. To Brian, he looked like Ricky from
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.
“You bet, boss,” he answered. “I'm still a little boy, just like these guys.”

“Boss?” Noah asked Klein. “You're his boss?”

“Sam's taken a semester off before starting college to work at NBC as a page and I'm a vice president of NBC. So I must be his boss.”

Sam ducked his head to the right, escaping Klein's grip on his neck. He said, “Dick's not my real boss, but I do what he tells me.” Sam grinned at Klein. Klein laughed. Then Sam laughed.

The children did not laugh. If it was meant as a joke, they misunderstood. Especially Brian. He had retreated as far as he could, backing up all the way to Jeff's bed, and he was watching every move the adult made. Now he added Sam to his surveillance because he was sure, even then, before he knew anything, before he knew everything, Brian was sure that Sam always did exactly what Richard Klein wanted.

Witness for the Prosecution

February 2008

BEFORE JULIE ENTERED
Lincoln Center, she hid in the cold shadows of Sixty-fifth Street, near the underground garage entrance, shivering along with a few others of the addicted and the ashamed while she smoked her second cigarette from the first pack she had bought in fifteen years. Adding self-deception to sin, she had chosen a bright yellow American Spirit brand that claimed to be “additive-free.” She was a clear-eyed sucker. She knew the appealing package with an Indian in a headdress taking a toke on a long pipe was intended to provoke a perverse rebelliousness in teenagers and that the absurd claim of being “natural” allowed smokers to subconsciously convince themselves that these cigarettes weren't deadly. She was certain that she was shortening her life with each inhalation, which made each draw all the more delicious.

She smoked three before going upstairs to resume the represervation of Boris Aronson's production sketches at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Eleven years ago Amelia Waxman, a friend from her Hunter College days, had hired her to work part-time on the private collections, an interesting job that dovetailed nicely with Zack's attending preschool, helping pay the household bills and satisfying her need to fulfill some role other than mother and wife. Originally she had intended the work as temporary while she decided whether to get a graduate degree in art history or take up something entirely new. For a while she had a vague longing to be a psychologist. “Talking therapy is dead,” Gary said when she raised the idea. “It's all pills now.” He was right. She was on Zoloft and a hormone patch to keep hot flashes at bay. Besides Wellbutrin, Gary was taking Klonopin to help him fall asleep ever since he had been weaned from Ambien. Most of Julie's friends, at least all the ones she asked, admitted they were staving off anxiety or depression or both with the help of a pill. Yeah, talk was not cheap but definitely dead. Besides, how arrogant to think she could help anyone.

Other ambitions had faded as the years passed, especially after Amelia made her archival job permanent. Julie relished the quiet solitude of her windowless room, kept at a constant temperature and humidity for the sake of preservation, empty but for drawings and models of Broadway's golden days. She felt more at peace in that tomb than anywhere on earth. Gary complained endlessly about bad luck in his career, but it seemed to Julie they had always found a way to cobble together a prosperous middle-class New York life without much effort, thanks to Gary's “inheriting” his mother's obscenely inexpensive rent-controlled apartment, then getting a chance to buy it at the “insider's price” when it went co-op, in effect a fifty percent discount. Then there were the odd well-paying cases, especially his successful defense of the Freiberg widow against the charge that she had deliberately left her wealthy senile father-in-law sitting in their Westchester garage all night so that he died of exposure. Meanwhile her brother, Noah, cleverly managed Gary's profits, swelling them especially after 9/11, thanks to the Lower East Side real estate boom. He put the Widow Freiberg's fee into converting two Orchard Street tenements into tiny monstrously priced condos that tripled their nest egg, paid for Zack's outrageous thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year tuition and would put him through college. And with real estate going up and up with no end in sight, there might even be enough to pay for a generous retirement.

Julie didn't speak to her financial wunderkind brother often. She had phoned Noah yesterday, asking whether he would come to a Seder if she were to host it, but that was a pretext. When she was fourteen, attendance at family Seders had been halved by the horrendous quarrel between the Mark brothers (really between Harriet and her father) over Saul's failing to repay a four-thousand-dollar loan, and another consequence of that rupture was the blissful disappearance of Richard Klein from her life. In her twenties, following her mother's sudden death from an aneurism, Seders were inconveniently transferred to her mother's sister's house in suburban Chicago and then brought to a complete halt by her father's death nine years ago. She hadn't attempted to convene her own Seder and didn't really feel like putting one together now. Her true motive in placing the call was to find out if Noah remembered Sam Rydel or Richard Klein, assuming he had come across the latter's name. Two days since her discovery and Klein was still cited only as part of the background story of Rydel's success and philanthropy.

Noah apparently hadn't remembered Sam. When she commented that Gary was very busy with the
Rydel
case, he mumbled, “There's always some sex abuse shit going on. There are so many sick fucks out there. Speaking of sick fucks, I've got a contractor on the other line I've got to kill. Talk to you later.”

She was relieved. No need to make up a story to discourage her brother from mentioning the coincidence to Gary. She loved Noah, especially admired his self-confidence, but there was no subtlety in him. When he wept over their mother's early death (Noah was only thirteen), they were efficient tears that actually drained him of pain.

She shouldn't have worried, she decided afterward. Why would Noah remember Sam or Klein? He had been very young, five and six, when they had their encounters with those monsters.

Being at work, as always, was soothing, a real pleasure handling Aronson's sketches for
Fiddler on the Roof.
They were lovely variants on Chagall: pretty childlike colors, shtetl homes as cunning and quaint as dollhouses. She remembered the production vividly. She was nine and it was her first Broadway show and a pure joy. She had adored Tevye, wished her pompous and unaffectionate father were more like him. And she particularly admired Hodel, the noble daughter who followed her betrothed, the handsome revolutionary, into exile in Siberia. For two years, she tried to imitate the actress's posture, as severe as a ballerina's, her manner dignified. Julie too longed to love a brave man of convictions, to help him triumph over injustice. People would laugh now, but that's how she saw Gary when they first met. He was a Legal Aid lawyer, denouncing rogue DAs, battling what he labeled a police state, under the guise of a war against drugs, instituting apartheid against inner-city black youth.

For an hour, she removed sketches from old encapsulating polyester sleeves that were now thought to contain a trace of acid and transferred them into the absolute safety of Solandar boxes. At ten thirty, Julie pulled off her white cotton gloves, dashing outside for two more cigarettes that she gulped desperately while shivering on Sixty-fifth Street. She popped a Certs and stopped in the bathroom to wash off the cigarette smell from her hands.
You have to quit,
she told the guilty face in the mirror for the hundredth time that morning. Highlighted by Lincoln Center's halogen spots in the restrooms, she poked at her short gray hair and wondered why she resisted dyeing it. When she used to be salt-and-pepper that was her favorite phase: mature but not decrepit. She was the only woman in her set who wasn't coloring out the gray; Amelia scolded her about it at least once a month, but she still resisted. It seemed like a futile effort, a drop in the bucket of deterioration.

Age was a reason to quit smoking. A single cigarette at fifty-three had to be more dangerous than hundreds consumed in her twenties. Perhaps that last one, inhaled with the Hudson's cold wind, would activate a cancer cell in her breasts, too tired now to fight, no longer needed for nurture. The irony was that Gary had quit, really and truly quit, while she and Zack had taken it up. She must stop. How could she confront Zack about his smoking—she hadn't; nor had she snitched on him to Gary—while she was weak? She felt guilty sitting on the closed toilet seat at home, guilty blowing smoke at the window, guilty as she hurried away from the sight line of her doorman while on a trumped-up errand for a “forgotten” supermarket item to sneak a cigarette between the corner deli and her apartment building. She felt guilty and also very glad to have such a respectable secret.

“Gary called on the landline while you were in the bathroom,” Amelia said as a greeting when she returned. “Said your cell went straight to voice mail. Are you okay?” she asked. “You were in there for a while.”

“I went out for some air.” Julie averted her head in case the dank smell lingered on her breath. “What did Gary want?”

“Not to worry, he said, nothing's wrong but he did want to talk to you ASAP. Want to call from my office?” Amelia offered her privacy. She was a doll. All of Julie's friends, and the women she knew casually from Zack's school, as well as the wives of Gary's friends, all were free of her faults. They were openhearted with Julie. They gossiped freely and in glorious detail about their marriages and children, while she offered dry facts with none of her true feelings—except when she rejoiced in Zack. She certainly wasn't going to be graphic about her disgust with Gary's B-cup breasts and pleated folds of belly fat. And to confide any disappointment in Zack, such as discovering he smoked, hurt too keenly, as if the confession made his fault real. She couldn't shake the superstitious belief that if she never spoke of it, then the pain would not exist, would never have existed.

“Hi, Jules,” Gary answered. “Wait. I'm on the other line. Hang on,” he said and then added emphatically, “Don't hang up!” The line went dead. Her throat was dry with anxiety. What is it? Could he have found out about her connection to Rydel and Klein? Not from her. She had never breathed a word about either of them. She intended to tell him what had happened when they were first dating but couldn't figure out when was the right time. Certainly not before they made love. And then, since sex with Gary felt good, normal and comfortable, why add an aftertaste of illness to their love? Soon after, Gary stampeded her into marriage and she stopped thinking about what had been done to her in the excitement of making a home together. Not a willful amnesia. She did not forget. She archived it, like memories of other men and earlier romances, something you don't unpack in front of your husband, especially when, after a blissfully contented year, shortly after their first anniversary, the shameful longings came back. And then Zack arrived. Tell him after Zack? What if Gary blew up? No. She had at last found a man with whom she could live a normal life and she wasn't going to mess that up.

And their lives
were
good. Except for Zack's exposure to adult vices, things were better than ever. Gary was a success. He had even quit smoking. And she would soon be back on the straight and narrow herself. “Honey,” Gary's voice returned in a hushed, solemn whisper. “Did you know your cousin Jeff was an original investor of the American Broadcasting Academy? He was on the board for five years.”

She shut her eyes against panic. “The what?”

Gary sighed, the long-suffering complaint of a man saddled with an inattentive wife. “I was talking about the
Rydel
case the other day. Remember? I mentioned he's the president of this somewhat sleazy so-called school—actually it's flat-out sleazy—that lures credulous working-class kids into student loans with promises of jobs in radio and TV? Your cousin Jeff was on the board for five years back in the eighties. You know why? Because it was founded by a relative of his, Richard Klein. I guess he's also a relative by marriage to you. Did you ever meet him?” He waited for her to comment. She waited too. “Honey, you there?”

She opened her eyes. She swallowed to get the spooked sound out of her voice. “I don't know anything about what Jeff is doing. I haven't talked to him since my father died.”

“I know that!” Gary sighed, suppressing exasperation as best he could. “Look, there are rumors from the DA's office that there are new accusations about to come out about this Richard Klein and I just found out Klein's not only a blood cousin of Jeff's, he was also important to him. Helped his career. At least when Jeff was starting out.”

“I don't . . . know . . . about that,” she stammered. She didn't. If Klein had been a booster of Jeff that was news to her. “New accusations about what?”

“That Klein also molested kids. Boys and girls. Back in the eighties and nineties. At Huck Finn Days and at the academy. They're just rumors now, I can't get a DA to confirm, and probably they're all past the statute of limitation. And Klein's old. He's eighty-four, very ill, maybe not worth prosecuting.”

“There's a statue of limitation on . . .” Julie hesitated.

“Stat
ute
of limitation,” Gary corrected her. “Yeah. Look, here's what I know. First thing this morning I finished a draft of a column I really like and the point I make is that whatever the truth of these disgusting molestation charges, the broadcasting academy is a rip-off. So before handing in the column, I do my due diligence, checking the board of the academy—and Jeff's name pops up big-time. Earlier in my research, I had noticed he was a donor to Huck Finn, but that didn't set off an alarm. Like all Hollywood big shots, Jeff gives to lots of charities and he wasn't on the board or active in any way. But being an original investor in the broadcasting academy and sitting on its board for five years, that's a real connection and an endorsement. I tried to reach you, couldn't, and then I found out on the academy's website that way back in 1983 Jeff gave the commencement speech there. That's a really big endorsement. So then I found the text of Jeff's speech on the website. In his speech, Jeff said the founder, his cousin Richard Klein, put him through college and got him his start in show business. So then I look up your cousin, and since his mother's maiden name was Klein and she had a brother, I assume Richard Klein is Jeff's mother's brother's son. He was Jeff's first cousin. He's really nothing to you. So . . . you never met Klein at some family thing? I mean, when your dad was still talking to his brother?”