Three Women (17 page)

Suzanne

Alexa appeared at Suzanne’s office. “Suze, we better have lunch together—somewhere with a bit of privacy.”

“Sorry, I can’t today. I just moved my mother in, and I have to interview some possible caretakers from an agency. How about we talk for a couple of minutes here?”

Alexa shut the door, looking around in the hall first. Suzanne assumed this was about Alexa’s battle to get tenure in the political science department, but Alexa looked at her accusingly. “Is it true you’re taking the Rodriguez appeal? Tell me it isn’t true.”

“News travels fast. I only decided last week to consider it. I’ve only begun to review the transcripts.” Suzanne sat down, trying to glance surreptitiously at her watch.

Alexa was a stocky blond woman who wore voluminous clothing, as if she were fifty pounds heavier than her real weight. She had a pretty face, round and motherly, and had recently married a chiropractor. “Suze, you can’t do it. It’s dirt. Dragging those children and their families through that trauma again. Let some cold-blooded shyster have it.”

“Alexa, I don’t think she’s guilty.”

“How can you believe her instead of twenty children?”

“I’ll be able to answer that question better, after I’ve read through
the records. I haven’t committed myself yet. I need to know if there are genuine grounds for appeal.”

“That woman abused little children left in her care. If you get her off on some technicality, how could you live with yourself?”

“I can’t really discuss the case until I know the facts and the context. I’m not convinced she abused anyone. Have you read the transcripts?”

“I’ve read the papers. I think she should be hanged. The sexual abuse of children is one of the worst crimes an adult can commit, girlfriend, and you know that in your conscience.”

“But sending a woman to prison for thirty years for a crime she didn’t commit is also a terrible abuse, Alexa. Suppose somebody heard you calling a student Girlfriend and decided you were having an affair with her?” Suzanne stood. “I really have to keep that appointment at the agency. I can’t leave my mother home alone. Elena’s with her today, but most days she works as a receptionist.”

Striding down the hall with Alexa bobbing beside her, she was annoyed. Everybody assumed Maxine Rodriguez was guilty. Perhaps she had even assumed that herself before she had met the woman out at Framingham last week. Maxine came across as a dedicated woman whose life had been destroyed. She was gaunt and distraught, desperate, but Suzanne felt that pull, something that often made her take a chance on a client whose case felt reasonably hopeless. Suzanne had not decided to take on the case. The court of appeals had refused to review the previous appeal. She would need new grounds. However, in the advances of appellate court opinions she had been scanning just the week before, she had read an opinion overturning a similar case on the grounds that the children’s testimony had been rehearsed, prepared, essentially scripted for them. Alexa’s using guilt on her for considering the case made her even more determined to examine the record with care. Alexa was her friend, but she was also prejudging. Children were the sentimental heroes of this story, but Maxine also had rights and feelings and a life cut off at the roots.

Suzanne stood in the doorway of Rachel’s old room, where Elena was staying. Elena was being difficult about sharing the room with Rachel, who was home between returning from school and going off to Israel. Elena kept demanding Suzanne move out of her office and let Rachel
stay there. “Look. I’m a lawyer. This is my law office. It is not anyone’s bedroom. You’ve been staying in Rachel’s room, and now Grandma is in the room downstairs. The two of you will just have to share a bedroom until Rachel leaves. It’s only ten days, Elena. Try to be reasonable about this.”

“I do not share a bedroom. I do not share a bed with a woman, even if she is my sister. I am not a child, and I need privacy.”

“Well, there isn’t any to be had.”

“Why don’t you sleep in here with her?”

“Elena, I’m glad to have you here, but you moved back simply to have a place to live. I also have Beverly now. I am not moving out of my office and I am not moving out of my room. I just rearranged and rebuilt half the house. I’m not about to rearrange the other half.”

“Fine! I’ll find someplace nice and private to stay. You’ll see!”

“Elena, if you want to stay with a friend for the next ten days, that’s fine with me. But we all have to make allowances for each other.”

“You make me feel like I don’t matter!”

“Elena, of course you matter very much to me. But you know that I have classes to teach, people depending on me to get them out of prison or to win appeals, your grandmother helpless downstairs. I have to live my life. I can’t just sacrifice it to you.”

Rachel was far more accepting of the situation. They were packing up some of her things for storage and others to go with her to Israel, or to follow her.

“I’m so sorry it doesn’t even look like your room any longer,” Suzanne said. “Nothing seems to be working out to anybody’s satisfaction.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll never live in this room again.”

“Rachel, why do you say that?”

“We’re getting married, you know that. You don’t expect Michael to move in here.”

“In Israel.”

“We want to be married in Jerusalem. What could be more special? You’ll fly over with Grandma. Elena if she wants to come. Daddy for sure and maybe his family.”

On one hand, Suzanne was glad that Rachel was not marrying right away. They had time to reconsider. More selfishly, if she had to manage a wedding right now, she would explode. She could not imagine where
the time and energy would come from. On the other hand she wished Rachel were not going anyplace, particularly into danger. The logistics of a wedding that far away (all those expensive plane fares and hotels) made her taste anxiety in her throat like acid.

“Wouldn’t you rather put off worrying about marriage until after you get done with your year in Israel and get married when you come back home? You have a lot to learn this year and a whole new culture to get used to, without having to learn how to be married to each other.”

“We know we want to marry, Mother.” Rachel gave her a sweet smile. “We won’t change our minds. We’ve been talking about marriage for months.”

Suzanne found herself quietly weeping as she packed Rachel’s clothing for a year’s storage. They had never been separated by such distances, thousands of miles. When Rachel had gone to Europe, it had been with Suzanne, who loved traveling with her younger daughter. Rachel was a patient traveler. Unlike Suzanne herself, she did not mind when a plane or train was late or when they had to wait to get into a hotel room. She liked almost everything except men bothering her in the street. She liked strange foods (she had not been eating kosher yet); she liked museums; she liked city streets and markets and churches and shuls; she liked mountains and seas and rivers and forests. Rachel didn’t complain about the blistering heat in Arles or the early snow in Bergen. She didn’t mind the traffic jam on M-1 outside Heathrow so that they almost missed their plane trying to return a rental car to someplace with ambiguous signs. She liked traveling by plane, she liked traveling by train, she liked taking the underground or the metro or whatever. She was a perfect equable traveling companion. They would never travel together again, she thought, wiping her streaming eyes.

They were both in an elegiac mood. Do you remember, was the theme of their chatter. Suzanne was glad she had some time to spend with Rachel in between the end of school and the beginning of summer quarter. She had not planned to teach this summer, but after Beverly had her stroke, she volunteered, convinced she would need the money. She had not guessed the half of it. She would need to put a lot of work into Maxine’s case, which she had almost decided to take. It was a political hot potato, and although Suzanne’s appeal would be strictly on procedural grounds, she did not doubt that the ambitions of the state
attorney general and the lieutenant governor were as relevant to the case as any of the children’s well-rehearsed testimony.

“Do you remember how you used to cry when moths got into the apartment on Rutland Street and died there?”

“Oh, Mother, I’m sure I didn’t go around weeping about moths. But I do remember when Big Boy got sick and died, how terrible that was.”

Then a little later, “Mother. Do you remember how we rented a little house with Daddy up in Maine? It was out on a rocky peninsula. Once with a friend I tried to find it, but I discovered that Maine has maybe two hundred rocky peninsulas, and I couldn’t remember where it was.”

“It was on a peninsula near Bath. Called something like Five Towns. You were almost six….”

“You and Daddy seemed so together. When I remember it, everybody is always laughing. Everybody is glowing and happy.”

“It was just a week. You can be happy with anyone for a week, I guess. I just wish I could make Beverly happier.”

“I think she needs more and brighter lights in there. It’s hard enough for her to read without sitting in twilight.”

“More light.” Suzanne was pitifully eager for any ideas that might help. Rachel had concrete suggestions about improving Beverly’s situation: get her a computer with an extra large screen. One with big keys. Then she can communicate more easily when she’s tired and she can find stimulation on-line.

To Suzanne’s surprise, Beverly did not reject the idea. “Can learn!” She hit her chest with her left hand. “Learn!”

Then suddenly the preparations were all made, the time was used up and Rachel left for New York, where she was meeting Michael to fly to Israel together. It had been hanging over Suzanne for months, for weeks, for days. All at once the day, the hour arrived and she saw off her daughter. Rachel looked so small and vulnerable heading for the plane. She appeared very serious, with a briefcase in one hand, pulling a carry-on with the other. Rachel had worn that same expression since she was a toddler making mud pies and sand castles in the park. Suzanne could see Rachel with her sturdy little legs stuck before her in a V looking at a doll in her lap with that full measuring stare. Rachel had been born good-natured and serious, in equal measures. That night, Suzanne wept
again, intermittently. Beverly held her hand in her good hand. “Will…do…fine.”

“She may. I don’t know if I will. I’m closer to Rachel than to Elena. Rachel always preferred to be with me rather than her father. We never had the same kinds of bitter gouging fights I’d still have with Elena if I let it happen.”

“You love, both…diff…rent ways.”

They had a rare moment of communication, even if the content was simple reassurance. Rachel was too young to marry. Why couldn’t she wait? Why did she want to join her life to that rather innocuous stiff young man?

Suzanne often found her own house uncomfortable lately. Elena’s music, Beverly’s needs. She hired a woman to come in for Beverly eight hours a day Monday through Friday, to take her out for a walk when weather permitted, make her lunch, whatever. One of Beverly’s main problems was boredom. She was not about to park herself in front of the TV and watch soap operas all day. She would watch the news and CNN for a while, even a cooking show occasionally. Suzanne found that ridiculous, as Beverly had never cooked anything more complicated than a hot dog. Her usual style was to open a can of soup. Spaghetti was pasta boiled too long with a can of tomato sauce or tomato soup dumped over it. Maybe cooking shows were like sitcoms to Beverly, a series of jokes.

Suzanne was helping Jake find an apartment. The move was happening. He would be here most of the time for the next few years. He was fully capable of finding his own housing, but it distracted her from her continuing funk over Rachel. It was mildly amusing to look at places to live, and probably she would be spending some evenings and weekend afternoons there, so she might as well help in the search. Both of them put in such long hours, and had so many meetings to attend, that working on the apartment problem was a convenient excuse to spend time together out of bed.

“All right, I’ll be on the board. But it may be pretty nominal, Jake. I haven’t got days or even hours to give.”

“You might find it more interesting than you suppose.”

It was Jake she found interesting, and if the price of peace between them was to go on his board, she did not like it, but she acquiesced.
The sex was strong. She enjoyed surprising herself and sometimes surprising him. It was Tuesday and she had an appointment at three, but she was free until then. They had looked at two places, one ridiculously overpriced and the other, possible but small, cramped. “But I don’t need much space,” he said. “I travel light and I live lightly. Some books, a bed, a computer on a good desk, music and a little kitchen and I’m set. I’d rather live in a smaller place I can afford.” He was tight in surprising ways, she noticed. He hated to waste money. Maybe that came from running a political organization on erratic contributions. He had the recycling habit. When he wasn’t using the computer and actually had to write on paper with a pen, he used the backs of circulars and form letters. When something broke, her impulse was to discard it and his was to tinker with it. The too small apartment was in Brookline ten blocks from her house. “You want to stop by my house? I think we can grab a little privacy.”

It was eleven-forty-five when they arrived. “I think it would be nice to take Beverly out for lunch today,” Suzanne said to the West Indian aide, Sylvia. Sylvia was just a few inches taller than Beverly but had eighty pounds on her. She was a broadly built woman with light brown skin and hair cut really short. She was skilled at getting Beverly to do what was needed. Suzanne handed Sylvia two twenties and Sylvia set about to bundle Beverly out to the Greek place, the diner, or the Jewish deli, as Beverly chose. It would take them at least an hour and a half, including the time to toddle down the block.

They had just got into bed in the otherwise empty house when Suzanne heard voices and footsteps. After they made love, when they got up to shower, she looked out and saw Jim’s car in the yard. Marta seldom came back during the week. Monday through Wednesday were booked-solid days, so she usually didn’t get in till seven or eight. Suzanne opened the back door and softly climbed the steps partway to listen. Yes, it was Elena’s voice. What were they doing back at Marta’s in the middle of the day?