Woman on Top (17 page)

I placed a call to the Club, asked for an application, and then asked three good friends, all three members and all three men, of course, to sponsor me.

Finally, I asked Janet, my former boss for legal advice.

After submitting my application, I let the Club know that if rejected, I’d pursue my legal options. I reminded them that the law delineates the circumstances when private clubs cannot discriminate on certain protected classifications, such as gender and race. They would have to let me in.

It wasn’t long before I was invited to a member cocktail party to meet the guys. They talked about golf and I smiled nicely. There were now eight hundred male members and one female - me.

Len’s club was filled with a different type of woman. When we arrived that night, sitting at the table were two investment bankers and their wives. Both women were bleached blondes, dressed in Escada suits, one bright orange and the other a blast of yellow, both cut very low to reveal large cleavage bursting out of push up bras. Large gold necklaces, enormous diamond earrings, heaps of makeup and perfect noses were the finishing touches to the twin fifty-year old Barbie dolls.

“Do I have to sit down?” I whispered to Len.

“You are being judgmental and narrow-minded,” he said.

“I have nothing to say to them. They are artifacts waiting to be admired. And your friends are just going to talk business. This is going to be so boring.”

“You need to know your role!” he scowled at me.

“Never,” I scowled back

•  •  •

My house sold rather quickly. We didn’t get much more than we had paid for it but I wanted out and took the offer. Getting a new job in New York also turned out to be relatively painless. A headhunter called with an opportunity similar to my current position. I submitted my resume, drove down for an interview and heard I’d been hired three weeks later.

And as the goodbye parties at work became more frequent, I looked forward to moving on. Once the General Counsel left and with Janet long gone, I had to report to a very difficult woman from the new management. The decision to move felt right.

Now began the Herculean task of sorting through fifteen years of collected memories in my basement in preparation for the move. On the next weekend Len and I went down there to tackle the job.

The basement was enormous. Every inch of the concrete floor and walls was covered with the treasures of my life. It was a dismal place, with no windows, but for me it was a comforting reminder of where I’d traveled before.

I had saved absolutely everything that my children had acquired or created, including every one of their school papers beginning in nursery school - drawings, homework, precious penmanship papers from when they had first learned to write their names, their clothes from the day they were born, their tiny shoes from when they first began to walk. There were stacks of boxes of Jake’s medical books, even his black medical bag from his residency. More boxes were filled with letters from my parents when I was at sleep away camp and acceptance letters to college. Rejection letters were nowhere to be found.

Slowly sifting through all of this, I felt a tremendous sense of continuity, understanding where I had come from and where I was now. My basement was me and all I had lived through.

Len kept urging me to discard; he obviously had no emotional attachments to all of this stuff. I tried to ignore him.

The first thing to go had not been from the basement, however, but from my bedroom closet. Two shopping bags were filled with two and three inch heel shoes to give to a charity for underprivileged women applying for office jobs. Jake was six-feet-five inches and those shoes were appreciated; Len was five-feet-five inches and refused to let me wear them.

“You realize that my company would pay you to have someone else do this with you?” he said to me as we sat there sorting.

“Why?”

“Because my time is valuable. They wouldn’t want me spending it like this.”

“But you sit for hours in front of the TV watching football!”

“That’s my relaxation so I can work better. Listen, I need to leave for a tennis lesson at home,” Len said.

“How am I going to do this by myself?” I asked him as he walked out.

On the Saturday evening before our move to New York, Jason and Elizabeth threw a farewell party for Chloe, Ben and me. Friends from work filled their home. Even Len reluctantly agreed to appear.

After an hour of eating from a buffet of Elizabeth’s homemade cooking, we gathered in their large living room.

“Please sit next to me. This move is so unnerving,” I said while settling down on their couch.

Len walked slowly to the back of the couch and stood off by himself. He had barely spoken to anyone the entire evening. Although my friends had arranged an evening to celebrate my family and me, Len was making sure to leave his sullen imprint on the party.

Neil, one of the senior lawyers at work, loved to dabble in poetry and we loved to indulge him. He sat facing the group.

“Ben, I’ve written something for you to read tonight,” Neil announced.

Ben looked startled. But he stood up and, with his always game smile displaying shiny silver braces on his teeth, took the paper from Neil. Ben began to read.

Although I loved my life in Montwood

It’s a pretty sleepy place

And I did my share of drifting

Into mental cyberspace.

I have learned the Tao of baseball

Touched the soul of water polo.

I’m at one with inner football

And the zen of flying solo.

Now Len’s my Svengali,

On the arbitrage of sport

He’s got me buying baseball futures

And selling Knick’s seats short.

I’ve imagined playing hockey

With my mother’s friends from work

They may skate like tax accountants

But the rules they play will get-ya

They hit the puck with gavels

Tied to ten foot wooden poles

They send the fights to arbitration

And negotiate the goals.

I have skied the Alps with Tomba

I’ve roped steers in Yellowknife.

I’ve jumped buses with Knievel

And I’ve nearly lost my life.

I have weathered icy blizzards

On a Himalayan ledge.

You can find my face in Webster’s

Under ‘Living on the Edge’.

But when I tell my story

Of each new hair-raising feat,

My family says that my sister

Will always have my record beat.

I have imagined disappointments

Like the game at Fenway Park

Where I’m the winning run on third

And I steal on a lark.

I beat the pitcher cleanly

And the crowd begins to shout,

But the plate ump isn’t looking

And he claims that I am out.

It’s reconsidered two years later,

And they reinstate the run,

‘Cause I’m the Commissioner of Baseball

It’s what my mother would have done.

And now my life is changing,

And I can’t predict the way.

But regardless of the circumstance,

I’ll always come to play.

I’ll take on any challenge

For my life’s been truly blessed.

I have learned from all the masters,

And I’ve played with all the best.

Almost everyone clapped and cheered loudly for Neil’s rhymes and for Ben’s poise while reading. I sat there feeling sad, second-guessing the decision to leave our small town and these dear friends. Len remained silent and grim faced. He looked uncomfortable and out of place. Moving to New York didn’t seem like such a good idea after all.

On a beautiful day several weeks later, Chloe, Ben and I walked through our home one last time. For Chloe, the typical teenaged girl, this was a moment for melodrama. She was beside herself. Ben, keeping his feelings to himself that day, just walked out of the house. For me, the house was so imbued with Jake’s bad luck, I was happy to bid it goodbye as if living somewhere else could reverse the curse.

“When I grow up, I’m going to buy this house back for myself,” Chloe vowed. “And I’m going to live here with my husband and children.”

Then with one final closing of our front door, we closed a chapter of our lives that ended with Jake’s death.

We drove that afternoon to New York City in a subdued mood, silently hoping that this was the right decision. By selling an affordable house in Connecticut and renting in unaffordable Manhattan, I was no longer feeling as financially secure.

SUMMER 1996

CHAPTER 21

July

T
he wedding reception for the son of one of Len’s colleagues was held under a tent in the backyard of the family estate in Alpine. It was a warm summer night and the guests mingled on the lawn behind the enormous dark brick house. There were no familiar faces around so I uncharacteristically stuck next to Len. He told me that Judy never left his side at social gatherings.

Just the week before, as we were walking to Times Square to hail a cab uptown after seeing the Broadway show “Rent”, a homeless man standing next to me began to scream obscenities. I stopped midsentence, grabbed Len’s arm and melted into his side. He held onto me and smiled.

“Miss independence, huh?” he said.

The more the man yelled, the tighter I clung to Len. As I buried my face into his shoulder, Len gripped me around the waist. He loved it when I needed him and worked hard to cultivate my dependence on him. He often asked me when I would quit working altogether.

And now, because I knew no one at this wedding, I shadowed Len around the tent. Finally, the waiters ushered the wedding guests to their tables.

The man sitting next to me belted down a gin and tonic. He asked the waiter for another one.

“Good evening,” he said.

“Hi. I’m Kate.”

“Donald.”

“Do you live in Alpine? It’s really beautiful here.”

“Alpine? Alpine is fine.”

The waiter arrived with his gin and tonic and Donald took a long swig of it.

“The shops in nearby towns are full of rich kids demanding to have everything bought for them. Brats. Women in their forties have been dumped by their husbands who want a younger woman. They’re miserable,” he said.