Woman on Top (25 page)

I looked at Len. Was he laughing? His comments all a joke?

“You’re buying her affections? It will say a lot about her if that works,” I said.

“Worked with you.”

“The past tense is appropriate.”

Len turned his head for a moment. Provoking a man with a killer instinct had to be risky.

“I wonder what I’ll do when Ben meets someone. I don’t have the means to bribe his future wife. We’ll actually have to rely on her loving Chloe and me enough to want to be with us.”

“Good luck with that.

We rode the rest of the way in the Lincoln Town Car in silence.

“So this is what it’s like to be more alone in a relationship than to be alone with oneself,” I explained to Sarah on the phone the next day.

“How is it living together?”

“Len has not stopped complaining since we moved into our apartment. He hates having to ride the crowded elevator and exercising in the small gym in the building with other people. At night, he says the sounds of the City, which are music to my ears, drive him crazy.”

“He’s not a City boy.”

“But he has barely moved any of his belongings into the apartment. That’s the most telling sign of all. If only Len could get a heart transplant, from someone nice.”

“Hah! But do you have the courage to leave him?” she asked.

“No, I don’t. If I were alone again, I would always be plagued by whether I had made the right decision.”

“You’re fighting against a man with more structural defects than just his heart. This one has a steely spine and what appears to be an empty soul. You’re going to drive him away eventually. He’ll break up with you,” she cautioned.

“I know that. Len needs peace in his home life so he can take on the world. There will never be peace at home with me there. It’s so funny. I walked the streets of New York with this knock ‘em dead diamond ring looking like the luckiest woman in the City. If people only knew.”

•  •  •

Len left work at four to watch Ben pitch in his first game for Barnes Academy. The game was scheduled to be played on a field adjacent to the Hudson on West 98
^th
street. The cars flew by on the West Side Highway during the rush hour exodus out of Manhattan.

As Ben took the mound and began his warm-ups, I started pacing by the benches.

“Kate, stop it. He can see you,” Len said.

“I can’t. I’m nervous.”

Len walked away from me, pacing on his own, anxiously watching Ben. He looked almost as jumpy as I was. Ben pitched, I paced and Len mumbled to himself, as was his habit, about the coach, the other team, the other players. In the end, Ben had a good outing striking out six and walking two.

Afterwards, as Ben parted from the team, Len put his arm around Ben’s shoulder.

“That was a good start. You held your own,” he said.

Ben smiled at him apparently enjoying the comfort of Len’s arm.

I drove through Central Park with Len in the front seat and Ben in the back. All of the windows were open, allowing the cool April breeze to relax three weary people after a tense game. I loudly honked at a woman on a bicycle as she rode directly in front of our car and then continued through the Park. The car was stopped at a red light where Central Park and Fifth Avenue intersect when the woman on the bicycle pulled up next to Len’s window, threw a handful of dirt in his face and took off.

Len slowly erupted, his body contorting first at the waist, the anger rising through his shoulders until his head was held rigid. His fury looked volcanic. I grabbed his jacket as he started to bolt out the door of the car after the woman.

“No! Don’t Len, please!” I yelled.

He ran up Fifth Avenue after her as fast as he could.

“He’ll kill her. We’ll have to get him out of jail.” I yelled to Ben.

Since traffic flowed down Fifth Avenue, I couldn’t follow Len. I crossed to Madison and started to drive uptown. Ben and I searched everywhere for Len. After only one block, we saw him walking desperately trying to catch his breath. He got in the car.

“I think I injured my leg running,” he said.

“What did you do to her?” I asked not really wanting to know the answer.

“She didn’t think I could outrun her bicycle, but I did of course. I caught up to her halfway up the block. She stopped, got off her bicycle and froze. The people on the street naturally thought I was attacking her so they stopped too.”

“So what’d you do to her?”

“I yelled at her. That’s it,” Len said.

“You mean you just told her not to do it again?”

“I wanted to scare the hell out of her. She was shaking in her boots.”

She was not the only one. Ben sat frozen and wide-eyed in the back seat trying to comprehend what had just happened. He had never seen anything like this.

Ben looked very relieved to say goodbye to us and head to his best friend’s apartment on the next block for a weekly sleepover.

Len and I rode the crowded elevator in our building in silence. Another couple exited at the same time and walked to the door adjacent to ours. We had never bumped into them before, a typical experience of apartment life in the City.

As we reached the alcove where our doors abutted, Len showed no apparent interest in speaking with them. He seemed to prefer never to venture outside his insular world of bankers where their net worth and connections to deals were well known to him.

“Hi, I’m Kate,” I said.

“Russell. And this is Gabrielle. Would you like to come in for a drink?”

Len gave me a ‘not in a million years’ look.

“That would be lovely.”

They had to have a decent bank account to be living in the building so I figured Len would survive.

“Please sit down,” Russell said as he ushered us into their very contemporary one bedroom apartment.

Len and I sat on the sprawling cream leather sofa. Gabri-elle curled her long thin legs up on a large matching leather chair while her thick blonde hair cascaded down her shoulders. Her skin tight black leather pants looked like they might rupture from the exertion. The cat jumped up on Gabrielle’s lap and nestled in.

“Wine?” Russell asked as he brought over a bottle of Grand Cru Burgundy.

Len smiled at the expensive bottle and relaxed a bit as he obviously approved of the choice. Quite a starting offer from Russell.

“Have you lived here long?” I asked.

“Gabrielle and I moved in together about a year ago.”

Len and Russell began a modest exchange of information about their work.

“I started the company thirty years ago and it’s my baby,” Russell said.

I looked at Gabrielle, who must have been an infant at that time. She sat very quietly as she and the cat engaged in synchronized gazing at Russell. He seemed to glow in their attention.

Maybe that’s what Len needed. A much younger woman who would look up to him, listen to his every word, follow all of his advice. But one reason older men chased women like Gabrielle, to validate their sexual identity, could not possibly be an issue for Len.

I walked over to their large living room window to compare their view to ours.

“What does Kate do?” Russell asked Len.

As I turned around Len responded, “She’s a healthcare lawyer.”

Was that even a tiny hint of pride in Len’s face? But Russell gave Len a “bet you got your hands full look”.

“Gabrielle, what do you do?” I asked.

“I work at the Georgette Klinger spa,” she said.

“Len gave me a facial there as a present. I loved it.”

“I tweeze eyebrows.”

Something told me that Russell didn’t care much what Gabrielle did for a living. This was about how she made him feel in the eyes of others at an age he might fear becoming invisible to women.

Len stood up.

“I have work to do tonight. Thank you for the wine,” he said as he ushered me to the door.

“It was lovely to meet you both,” I added.

Russell appeared disappointed at our quick exit.

“Let’s do this again,” I offered knowing well that Len would be fuming at my words.

When we entered our apartment, Len looked at me sternly.

“What’s the matter now?”

“You should learn how to act like Gabrielle,” he said.

“A lap cat who’s in it for the money? My advice to Gabri-elle is that if she’s going to do it for the money, go big. In New York, there are much bigger fish than Russell.”

We woke up Saturday morning to heavy rain and wind. I was cuddled under the down comforter as Len returned from the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bed next to me.

“I need to tell you something. You know the company that I invested so much of my money in. It may be in trouble. I may not have nearly what I thought I had,” he said looking me squarely in the eyes.

My mind was racing. Maybe he couldn’t afford the apartment on 79
^th
Street because of this? Had the heavens sent me a test: could I love Len without his money? Or maybe the company wasn’t in trouble?

CHAPTER 30

May

L
en moved out in early May after a horrible fight. Jason and Elizabeth came to spend the night with us in the apartment and Len simply wouldn’t talk with them. My friends had been my lifeline for years and he was obviously attempting to cut them off.

“How could you do this?” I screamed.

The more upset I got, the more Len steeled himself.

“I learned to control my rage growing up. If I ever let go, I’ll probably kill someone,” he had told me once.

I believed him. His anger avoidance seemed a good hedge against acting out on his destructive instincts.

After he left, Ben cried for hours. He may have heard the fighting but that probably was not what hurt the most. He probably liked having a man in certain parts of his life to take control as much as I had at one point.

“I feel like Daddy died all over again,” he sobbed.

Len moved back in within the week. I emailed my former boss and good friend Janet hoping for some of her priceless wisdom.

“Should I give Len a second chance?”

I awaited her response which I knew would consist of one part Oliver Wendell Holmes and one part Thelma and Louise.

“Let me start with a reasoned approach. As a general rule, I think people are entitled to second chances,” she wrote back. “I’ve been given more than a few myself - and I suspect so have you. I’m grateful, and I’ll bet you are too. That said, not everyone is worthy of a second chance in every situation. I guess the determinative factor for me is the likelihood of success (however defined) the second time around. Some things can’t be changed or improved e.g. no matter how many chances I’d be a lousy singer, painter, dancer. For some people a loving faithful nature, is the same, I think. Who can say on what side of that line anyone fails? Past behavior is an imperfect predictor, but the greater number of mistakes, the less likelihood of staying the course, I’d say. How many screw-ups are we talking about? And how much is it worth to you? I’d be more willing to give a great love another go, and less willing to reconnect with someone about whom I had misgivings even without the screw ups.

Despite the fact you need to make your own decisions, if you really want to know what I think about Len, I’d say run for the hills and hide! Change your phone number, take a very long vacation and don’t tell him where you’re going. Consider moving. You get the idea. But you decide what you want, but don’t take revenge and don’t take him back to avoid being alone. Lots of love, Janet.”

Janet’s advice was to run for the hills. Since that night at Passover when she first met Len, Janet had not rendered her verdict on him. Until now. As I read the counsel from a precious friend, I realized I wasn’t listening anymore. I was in too deep with Len.

FALL 1997

CHAPTER 31

September

A
t the end of the summer Chloe left for Brown, the same college where Jake and I had gone twenty-five years earlier. My heart was pounding as I delivered our child to the campus where I first noticed her father walking by. Len and I kept the peace for one day so I could send Chloe feeling secure and prepared for her acclimation, although only a minor adjustment after her year in Spain.

Len’s hostile behavior over the past few months had me thinking about his greatest passion, his deals. I tried to learn about Len’s work sitting in the den with him, when he allowed me to, listening to several conference calls with his colleagues. That same deal making mentality had obviously seeped into Len’s idea of a relationship with any woman post Judy.

Using my very limited understanding, I attempted to apply the structure of his work to our relationship since he certainly, as it was second nature by now, had done the same. I knew he’d be laughing in my face if I conveyed this information to him. But who cared at this point? Len’s modus operandi was getting into focus and it scared the hell out of me.