The Laws of Gravity (30 page)

He could not have said exactly what he was looking forward
to
. He had lost a principal clerk, a man he’d once considered his friend, and he had also finished his last case in a way that left a bitter taste in the mouth. He had always understood the limits of the law intellectually. But now he knew
them intimately, as if the rending had happened in his own family. It was humbling.

After almost fifty years working in one office or another, he was about to enter the world. And it was spring. The weeping willows by the town pond in Roslyn had turned a tender golden green. The trees were beginning to bud in his own backyard. He looked with new interest at Joe Iccarino next door, planting vegetables and herbs in neat, tiered rows. Maybe he would learn to garden.

His final case had been, in his own private estimation, an utter failure from beginning to end. The press took his side, made him out to be a hero, which only proved how moronic the press was these days. He should have found the loophole that would have permitted justice and mercy to slip through the net of law. His great nemesis, the
Newsday
journalist, was the only man who agreed with him.

“If, as Justice Solomon Richter wrote in his final opinion, the case of
Greene vs. Wiesenthal
was ‘morally indefensible,’ why could he not come to a decision less ‘revolting to every moral sense’? Where was the justice in Justice Richter’s ruling?” It was a wail of wounded outrage. Clearly, Katrina Turock had already dumped the writer and moved on.

He had waited to begin missing Flannery, like an amputee waiting for the stump to ache. It simply did not come. He, the judge, had misjudged his right-hand man.
Et quod vides perisse, perditum ducas.
“What you see is over, accept that it’s truly over.”

Ari Wiesenthal, to the very last, showed no sign of remorse, no hint that he might change his mind. When interviewed by the press, he said, “This is a very sobering experience. There’s nothing to rejoice about, but we feel that justice has been served.”

Nicole, of course, did not speak to the press. Her husband stood guard in front of their house like the angel with the flaming sword outside Eden. He had protected her from the beginning; surely he would protect her to the end. Sol sometimes allowed himself to hope that Ari might at the eleventh hour have a change of heart. Such things were possible. He kept his ear to the ground, but no such rumors reached him. In the eyes of the press, the judge was something venerable. To himself, he was a man who had become ensnared by the law. He could not find a way out of it or through it so that this woman might live.

But Sol kept quiet about his own doubts and regrets, for once determined to spare those around him. He would go quietly and with dignity. He declined a glitzy retirement party, even when pressed. DeNunzio persisted. “It doesn’t look good,” DeNunzio said the third time he called. “It looks like you’re turning your back on us. There is such a thing as collegiality.”

“There is also such a thing as going when it’s time to go.”

“Not the tune you were singing last year,” DeNunzio said. “When you came to me for help.”

“I don’t like big parties. Retirement parties least of all.”

“Who does?” DeNunzio said. “Still, you do it.”

“I don’t,” Sol said.

They did not part on good terms. Sol sensed he was burning bridges, but then, he was past worrying about all that, too. There were certain bridges he hoped never to cross again. Perhaps this is how dying people felt. One let go. The only melancholy he felt was over what must have seemed like the minutiae. Faces he would miss, morning banter with the staff. Simple pleasantries and human contacts. He would have to seek them out now, where for decades they had been given. The wisecracking mail
clerk; the Chinese woman in the cafeteria who always slid him an extra helping of rice pudding—they had never been part of his home life. He never discussed these people, or even thought much about them beyond the walls of the courthouse. So there was no way to begin talking about them now. And no point in grieving over them in any case.

Instead of a formal gathering catered by the court, Sol’s brother Arthur threw a small but elegant buffet luncheon at his two-bedroom apartment in Mineola. The chubby little man could cook. All those culinary classes had paid off. His wife Ruth dressed like a cross between a waitress and a hooker, in a short skirt with a frilly white apron, and went good-naturedly around the room, serving the tiny Manchego cheese tarts and tea sandwiches, the raspberry mousse desserts like jewels hidden in their ruffled, dark brown paper cups. This party was a casual affair to which Sol invited only the people he liked best from his days at court. For some reason his wife’s rabbi was there, too, though mostly he stayed out of the way in the kitchen, helping Abigail and Sarah fill the trays.

“He’s not going to pray over me, is he?” Sol muttered to his wife.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“Then why is he here?”

She shrugged, smiling, her eyes mysterious.

When moving day came around, Sol refused all outside help. He cleared out the office himself. A young judge would be moving in the next week. Chambers like his were in high demand and short supply. The new judge looked like a kid to him, fresh out of law school, but he was in his midforties; he just appeared younger, with a short-cut Afro, a gleaming smile and shy manner. He was a protégée of Tom Lieu.

Sol waited till the end of the day to collect his few remaining boxes. It was still early enough in spring so that darkness had mostly fallen by six that
evening. The sky was bluish black outside his window. The courthouse felt deserted, like an abandoned schoolhouse. Sol felt one quick, sharp pang of melancholy as he looked around his chambers. Already it felt like a stranger’s office, no longer his.

As if to confirm his suspicion, a timid knock came at the door. Sol sighed and opened it, only to find his brother Arthur standing there, stamping his feet, his black wool overcoat buttoned up high around his throat.

“I came to see if my big brother needed help,” he said. He was puffing from the exertion of walking down the hall.

Sol nodded, not wanting to show his relief. “Come in,” he said. “There isn’t much left.”

Arthur whistled. “You cleaned the place out.” He nodded. “Good.”

“Suppose you take this box”—Sol gestured at the lighter of the two—“and I’ll take that one.”

Arthur slapped his gloves together. “That’s it? Just two boxes?”

“That’s it.”

“Good for you,” Arthur said again. He bent from the knees, the way he’d been taught, and lifted the box. “Not too terrible,” he said. “Where do we go from here?”

“Out,” Sol said. “Follow me.”

Before he could get out the door, Arthur bumped him lightly with his left shoulder. His arms were full. This was the closest he could get to throwing an arm around his brother. “So…how you holding up?”

“Fine,” Sol admitted. “I don’t know. I feel—lighter. Maybe it will all blow up next week when reality sets in.”

“I don’t think so,” Arthur said. “You’ve got little Iris in your life now. You’ll have your hands full.”

Sol nodded. He would never admit how he doted on this granddaughter, barely a toddler now, with her long head and serious black eyes. Everything about her enraptured him, even the way she stored a mouthful of bread in her cheek an hour after he had given it to her. Apparently food hoarding was not uncommon among the orphans. He’d heard of children storing sandwiches in their toy cupboards, secreting candy bars under their beds. He would spend more time with her now that he was retired. He could take over on the nights when Sarah was going to her Jewish classes, he told Abigail, save her some babysitting money.

“Okay,” she had agreed, surprised.

“I want to help out,” he said.

“That’s very nice of you, Pop.”

“Don’t expect me to do anything but spoil her.”

“I don’t.” She laughed.

Sol paused at the threshold of his chambers. Empty rooms always looked smaller. His chambers seemed to have shrunk like something in
Alice in Wonderland
. There were holes left in the walls where he had hung his diplomas, patches of peeling paint. He had left behind everything he intended—office supplies, the coatrack he had used for thirty years, all of the filing cabinets cleared out and ready to be refilled by the next generation. By Monday the room would be repainted and cleaned.

“Go ahead,” he told his brother. “I’ll get the light.” And by pressing down with his elbow on the switch, he turned the lights out on his long, illustrious career.

A few days later his sister-in-law Ruth called, shrill on the answering machine. Sarah was out, Sol doing the dishes, so when he heard Ruth’s voice he decided to ignore it, till he caught the pitch of hysteria. “Sol, please call me,” she said. “Please, right away! Here, I’m going to give you the hospital number—” Sol rushed to the phone, his hands soapy, while she fumbled in the background. He snatched up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Thank God!” she yelled, straight into his ear. Her volume actually increased once he picked up the phone.

“What’s going on?” He could hear a commotion at the other end.

“It’s Arthur,” she said, sobbing. “He’s had a stroke. We’re at Long Island Jewish Emergency.”

“I’m on my way,” Sol said, and hung up. He drove straight to the hospital, his hands still soapy, shaking on the wheel.

By the time he got there, Arthur had been moved to the ICU. A white curtain separated him from the rest of the world. He was attached to a variety of machines and tubes, nearly all of them beeping or clicking. His eyes were closed, but he looked younger than he had in years. No lines marred the broad expanse of his white forehead. Ruth was weeping; she was dressed in an old coat and wore no makeup. She looked like an ordinary aging housewife, which endeared her to Sol with an unexpected lurch of his heart. As he came into the ICU room, she leaped for Sol’s hand and clung to it.

“We were having lunch at that new French place in Roslyn,” she explained. “La something. Arthur had been wanting to try it, and it’s just a week”—she tried to stifle her sobs—“just a week to our anniversary. We were having a nice lunch, Arthur was enjoying himself, when all of a
sudden he said, ‘I feel funny,’ and lurched over sideways. I thought he was kidding at first. I said, ‘Arthur, quit kidding around. The French don’t have no sense of humor.’

“Then he opened his mouth and nothing came out. I could see from the look in his eyes he was scared. So we called nine-one-one and they came right away and I told them—to take him here. I always heard it was a good place.” She released his hand and blew her nose into a clutch of Kleenex. “If anything should happen to my Arthur! I should never have let him eat the goose liver pâté! Never!”

“Now, now,” Sol said, awkwardly patting her on the arm. He had never been physically affectionate with Ruth—or with any women except his wife and daughter. He just didn’t know how. “You’re not even sure it’s a stroke. Wait and see what the doctors say.”

“But what if it
is
a stroke?” Ruth persisted. She had always been stubborn, a little bull terrier.

“Then we’ll deal with it. People recover from strokes all the time,” Sol said. “Arthur is tougher than he looks. You wait and see.”

“They recover?”

“Sure they do. All the time.” He was lying through his teeth. He had no idea about strokes. His own uncle Mortie had died of one. So had his cousin Sadie, when she was only in her fifties. In his experience, that’s what happened. People had a stroke out of nowhere, maybe two, sometimes they eked along for a few weeks, and then they died. How old was Arthur? Sixty-eight. That was still considered young, these days.

“Have you called your son?” he asked Ruth.

“He’s very concerned. But this is tax season. He told me to call the minute we have any news.”

Schmuck, thought Sol. Aloud he said, “Look, I’m going to step out into the waiting room just for a minute and call Sarah, let her know where I am. Then I’ll be right back. She can call Abigail. I’m sure they’ll all want to see Arthur.”

“You’ll come right back?” Ruth asked. She seemed resigned to being deserted by the world. Her bulgy eyes were red and tear-filled.

“I’ll be back.”

“You’re not leaving?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he told her.

She clawed at his hand again. Her fingernails were painted bright red. “You’re a good guy,” she said. “Some people say you’re a mean bastard, but I was never one of those. I know you got a good heart, like your brother. I know you twos love each other.”

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

“How about a double martini straight up,” she said. She opened her mouth to pantomime a laugh, but nothing came out.