I'm Glad I Did (21 page)

IN THE SHORT TIME
it took to get home, my resolve to recruit Janny to represent the brother she'd disowned had almost melted away completely. I kept picturing her enraged reaction, her disgust at yet another secret I'd kept from her, that harsh and dismissive voice. I was so nervous, I almost couldn't open my own front door. My hands were clammy and trembling. On my third try, the key finally clicked in the lock. There was laughter coming from the dining room. I headed for it to find Jeff and Janny having dinner.

My mother's face broke into a wide smile. “JJ, how wonderful to see you. You haven't been home for dinner in what seems like forever. Take Dad's place. He'll be back in time for dessert.”

There was no time for gentle lead-ins, so I just came out
with it. “Mom,” I said, “I have something to tell you. I've spent some time with Uncle Bernie this summer.”

Janny's eyes turned to steel. She threw her napkin on her plate. “I knew it.” She groaned.

“Please,” I continued, “before you get upset and start scolding me, just let me finish. He's been very kind to me, but now he's in a jam. Something awful has happened, and he needs your help.”

Janny's face registered zero sympathy. “Something awful always seems to happen to Bernie,” she stated. “He creates awful. It's his specialty.”

“Please, Mom.” The words lodged in my throat. “He's been arrested. The police think he's involved in a murder. Your friend Frank McGrath is working the case.”

“Holy crap,” Jeff muttered.

My mother shot him a glare. She turned to me and paused as she struggled to find the words she needed. “I understand,” she said. “He's got you all involved, Justice. It's what he does. He sucks people into his vortex and then destroys them. I vowed I'd never let him do that to my family or me. So you'll understand if I insist that he let him get himself out of whatever he's gotten into.”

Unbelievable
, I thought. If only she could see herself. She was the one who was always spouting clichés, like “ninety percent of the law is compassion.” It was so hypocritical. I knew I had to pull out all the stops, even if it meant a low blow. “Is that what you think Grandma and Grandpa would have wanted you to do?” I asked, my voice rising. “Would they have wanted you to desert your brother when he needed you most?”

“This topic is closed,” Janny retorted. “Now if you—”

“JJ has a point, Mom,” Jeffrey interrupted quietly. “He's your
brother
.”

Janny and I both stared at him.

Every now and then—about as often as, say, a total eclipse of the sun—my brother will demonstrate that he's something more than a brown-nosing schmuck who lives for getting the best of me. Then again, revealing one's true self, or at least another side of one's self, seemed to be a recent recurring theme in my life.

My mother looked so distraught that for a moment, I felt a twinge of regret. Keeping Bernie out of her life was almost a religious commitment. Finally she stood up and smoothed the skirt of her navy sheath dress. “You're right, JJ,” she said. Once again, her voice was calm and professional. She had shifted into lawyer mode. “Both of you are right. I know neither of you would abandon the other in a time of need. Jeffrey, please get my purse and jacket. They're in the bedroom.”

My brother nodded and scooted out of the dining room.

Janny leveled her gaze at me. “I don't have a good feeling about this,” she said softly, “but you made your point very well.”

“Thanks,” I said. There wasn't anything more to add. I followed her into the hall.

The front door opened, and Jules walked in, his face weary from the New York heat and a full day in court. When he saw me, he perked up. “JJ! What a treat. What brings you here before eleven?”

“She came here to tell us about Bernie,” Janny explained without any preliminaries. “He's in police custody.”

“What else is new?” Jules asked with a chuckle.

“It's not funny, Jules,” she snapped. “They think maybe he killed somebody.”

Jeff arrived and handed over her jacket and purse.

Jules rubbed his chin. “I see,” he said after a moment. It seemed he'd snapped into legal mode, too. Then he laid a hand on Janny's arm in as intimate a way as I'd ever seen. “Did he?”

“I don't know,” Janny replied, her voice fragile. “All I know is that he needs me.”

I headed back to Bernie's apartment while Janny raced to catch a cab down to the police station. When I rang the bell, Luke opened the door and put a finger to his lips. Marla had fallen asleep on the couch, no doubt trying to escape the horrible reality of her situation. All five feet ten of her was curled up into a fetal position. She had cried off all her eye makeup. Right now, she almost looked like a little kid.

Before I could whisper an apology to Luke for dragging him into this mess tonight, he kissed me. I kissed him back. Then we sat down across from Marla in silence.

An hour later, we finally heard a key turning in the door. When it opened, Marla was startled back into consciousness. At the sight of Bernie, she flew off the sofa and into his arms and covered his face with kisses.

“Calm down, babe,” he murmured with a gravelly laugh. “Everything's okay.”

We stood there awkwardly for a moment. Janny appeared
behind him, zeroed in on me, and waved me toward the door. She didn't even seem to see Luke. Maybe she just didn't want to be bothered with any more surprises.

Bernie unwrapped Marla's arms and turned to his sister. “My wife, Marla; my sister, Janice Green,” he explained. “I can't thank you enough for getting me out of there, Janny. I owe you. You, too, Justice, baby.”

“Anyone could have done it,” Janny demurred. “JJ could have gotten you out herself. They didn't have enough to hold you. They're just flailing around, looking for a suspect. They hoped they could keep you talking until you incriminated yourself.” She strode toward the door. “You're innocent, so you'll be fine. You hadn't even seen this woman in years, correct?” Her eyes flashed back to me. “We'll be going now. Call me if you need me.”

“Wait,” Bernie said.

Janny paused at the door and sighed dramatically. “Yes?”

“I have … I have something to say, and you all need to hear it.” Bernie sat down in an armchair and rubbed his temples. He winced for a second, as if hit by an invisible fist, then waved us over. “Please sit down. It'll just take a few minutes.”

My heart thudded. This was bad. I could feel it. I settled in on the couch next to Luke. Janny remained standing, of course. Marla sat on the armchair across from Bernie.

His gaze swept over all of us. “Janny, this matter isn't over yet. I think I may be calling on you again.” I'd never heard him sound so weak or vulnerable. He turned to Marla. “Marla, I love you with all my heart, but I haven't been honest with you. I … I'd been seeing
Dulcie Brown. I was having a relationship with her. It was so wrong, and I am so sorry.”

Marla's lips pressed into a tight line. Luke and I sat there, stunned and embarrassed. “Tell me the whole story, Bernard,” Marla demanded. “Don't leave anything out on anyone's account.”

Bernie walked puposefully over to his wife. “I ran into her going into the Brill Building a year or so ago. She was applying for a custodial job. I helped her get it. I felt in some way I had to make up for abandoning her when she had her drug problem. I was the one who pushed George to drop her later. It always preyed on me. Something about her got to me … I don't know. Maybe I confused pity with affection. I'm sorry, Marla.”

Marla's eyes were brimming but she held back the tears. She stood up and faced him down, seeming to tower over him, her back ramrod straight. “Do you screw everyone you feel sorry for, Bernard?”

His shoulders sagged. “Babe, you have every right to be furious, but I'm begging you to forgive me. I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Just give me that chance.”

I cringed, horrified but unable to look away. All I could think was,
I'm never inviting Luke to a family dinner again
.

Bernie's eyes grew moist. “I swear, baby, I was going to end it.”

“By killing her?” she demanded.

“My God, of course not,” he gasped. He looked up, searching her eyes. “I had nothing to do with that. I realized I couldn't go on with it. The guilt was unbearable.”

When Bernie actually got down on his knees in front of her, I could feel my face turning red. I was beyond mortified for the both of them. Grown-ups should not behave this way.

“I'm begging you to give me another chance, baby,” he pleaded. “I'll do anything you want me to do to make you trust me again.”

Marla wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand like a little girl. It was as if they had both forgotten that we were there. Maybe they had.

“I love you, Bernie,” she whispered. “You know that. Everybody may think I'm just your status symbol wife, that I'm with you for the stuff, the money, but you're everything to me. I was crazy in love with you when I married you, and you know it.”

“Are you still in love with me?” Bernie asked, his voice thick.

She nodded, unable to speak. Bernie swept her into his arms and kissed her with desperate passion. I'd never wanted so badly to disappear, get vaporized by an A-bomb or gobbled up by King Kong. Anything would have been better than sitting these two strip naked emotionally. After they broke apart, there was an endless moment of silence. Embarrassment hung in the air like the smoke from one of Bernie's Cuban cigars.

Someone had to say something, and I elected myself. “Well, Luke,” I announced with as much phony perkiness as I could muster, “what better time could there be to introduce you to my mom?”

After the shock of the previous night, it amazed me that the sun rose the next day. It appeared that life would go on. I was still haunted by the scene in Bernie's apartment, not to mention the taxi home with Janny. Excruciating was too mild a word for the interrogation; it was closer to how I imagined testifying in court. She grilled me about Bernie like the lawyer she was, prying out the truth whenever I hesitated or attempted to conceal anything. To her credit, she didn't question me about Luke. And at the end, she'd also taken my hand and held it tightly.

The last thing she said to me before bed was, “How could you be so brave and so thoughtless?”

“I learned that from you,” I told her. That was the truth, too.

THE WORKDAY, WHILE SLOW
torture, was uneventful. I managed to avoid Bobby. Now I was even trying to avoid Rona, who kept looking at me with a worried expression. I wondered
if you could fire someone who wasn't getting paid. Then
I
began to have a worried expression. At 6
P.M
. on the nose, I rode in Nick's office down to the seventh floor.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said as soon as the door closed, “I've got something to run by you. Dulcie Brown's daughter came by to ask me where you worked. She wants to talk to you. I didn't tell her anything, but I got her number if you want it.”

I hesitated while he opened the doors. “Thanks, Nick,” I said. “You did the right thing. I'd rather call her.”

Nick handed me the slip of paper with Rosetta's number.

I bounded into room 717, but before I could say a word, Luke swept me into his arms and kissed me. Once again, I tasted Dr. Brown's on his lips. I almost forgot why I was so eager to talk to him until he pulled away and saw the crumpled piece of paper in my hand.

“Rosetta Brown came by,” I explained.

Before we called and arranged to meet Rosetta outside of Birdland at seven o'clock sharp, we ran through various scenarios as to why she wanted to see us after she'd been so negative. Maybe she wanted to see the memoir. Maybe she wanted to know if Dulcie had left her anything. Maybe it was something as simple as that she felt she owed us an apology.