Sam was disappointed in Harry but not, as he thought about it, surprised. He had always felt that Harry, like most lawyers, had at best an arm’s-length relationship with the truth. He was coming round to Will’s position. Will said truth was irrelevant to lawyers. “Justice in America,” he said, “is politics, and trials are elections. Two lawyers argue different versions of a story and then ask a dozen ill-informed citizens to vote on the one they like best.” When the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore, Will felt vindicated. “How is this different from a stuffed ballot box?” he said to Harry. “Your ox was gored this time,” Harry said. “Next time, it will be someone else’s.” He looked at his oldest younger brother with affection. “Who knew you were an idealist?”
Harry’s balkiness troubled Sam. He decided he should talk to him in person, drop by his office, late in the day. He wouldn’t call first; Harry would put him off. They could go for a beer. Harry might even invite him home afterward to have dinner with Lea and the girls. He’d like that. Susanna was pregnant. She was having a girl. He didn’t know anything about girls who weren’t Susanna. “Will your daughter be like you?” he had asked her. “Are you like your father?” she said.
Late, on a snowy February afternoon, Sam took the subway up to 116th Street. Walking across campus, he wondered if Harry would be unhappy to see him. He had been cranky ever since their DNA conversation, distracted and short-tempered. He cut short phone calls. He didn’t have time for lunch. He broke their squash dates, and not because he regularly lost. Harry always went into combat thinking he’d win. Afraid to ask Lea, Sam asked his mother what was up.
“I think he’s having what is commonly referred to as a midlife crisis,” she said. “He’s turned forty, the age of disappointment.”
“What does that mean?” There was a querulous edge to Sam’s question, creeping disappointment already getting the jump on him.
“Men at forty are often disappointed with their lives and with themselves, not because they haven’t achieved what they wanted to, but because they have and it tastes like ashes.”
“Did Dad have one?” Sam asked.
“Why would Dad have one?” she asked.
“Why don’t you ever answer a personal question?” Sam asked.
“You wouldn’t want to know the answer once you knew it,” Eleanor said. “I’ve always thought curiosity was jealousy in sheep’s clothing. The will to possess or control or annihilate.” Sam stared at his mother.
As he stood outside Harry’s office, Sam could hear two voices inside, Harry’s and a woman’s. He knocked before he could hear what they were saying. “What do you want,” Harry called out, his voice deep and brusque, a judge’s voice. “I don’t have office hours today.”
“It’s me, Sam,” Sam said.
There was no response for several seconds. “What are you doing here?” Harry said.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Just a minute. We’re winding up,” Harry said.
After three or four minutes, the door opened and a young, redheaded woman came out. She looked as though she’d been crying. Harry called after her.
“We can review this again tomorrow,” he said. He turned to Sam. “She wrote an execrable paper and now she’s crying about the grade.”
Sam met his brother’s gaze. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “You’re messing around.”
“What are you saying?” Harry said.
“Don’t mess with me, Harry. I saw it all.”
“Christ,” Harry said. “Come on in.”
“Just tell me she isn’t pregnant,” Sam said. “No more bastards in the family.”
“Her husband found out.”
“How?”
“She told him,” Harry said.
“That’ll do it,” Sam said.
Harry was silent.
“Didn’t you take the course? Can’t she get you for sexual harassment?” Sam said.
“Goddammit,” Harry said. “You’re a real son of a bitch.”
“Don’t go high-minded on me. You’re the asshole here.”
“She’s faculty, a historian. We team taught the last few years.”
“Is she pregnant?” Sam asked.
Harry didn’t answer.
“So this is why you’re no longer interested in the Wolinskis,” Sam said. “Identifying with Dad, are you? He’d have been about forty then?”
“You’re preaching to me?” Harry said. “What about Andrew?”
“I didn’t get anyone pregnant until we’d broken up.”
“What do I do?” Harry said. His face crumpled.
“You tell her it’s over. You tell her if she has the baby and the baby is yours and not her husband’s, you’ll pay child support, but that’s it. You’ll tell her you won’t be in her life or the baby’s. Don’t suggest abortion; if she brings it up, tell her it’s her decision and it may be the right one for her. Tell her you’ll pay for it, if she wants it, so she doesn’t have to use her insurance. Tell her you made a mistake, tell her you love your wife and children, tell her you’re not going to leave them. Tell her you won’t see her anymore.”
Harry didn’t say anything.
“Don’t tell me you’re in love with her,” Sam said.
Harry shook his head. “She’s so young, so undemanding.”
“She looks like Lea. Except the red hair.”
“She looks like Lea? She looks nothing like Lea.”
“What were you thinking? Bartenders, waitresses, secretaries, trainers, never your colleagues, never your colleagues’ wives.”
“Do I tell Lea?” Harry looked like he might cry.
“No blurting to clear your conscience. And if Lea asks, you lie to her too unless your historian says she’s going to tell her. If you do wind up telling her”—Sam shot Harry a squint-eyed look—“tell her you were at a party and drunk and stupid and careless. It meant nothing to you, it means nothing to you. She and the girls are your world.”
“How do you know all this?” Harry said.
“I’ve never been faithful, not since I left Princeton. I didn’t love Andrew, not ‘truly madly deeply,’ but even if I did, I don’t think I could be faithful. I don’t like being tied down. Susanna is the only person outside the family I love and I can’t marry her. All very self-serving, I know. I think Will is the only one of us capable of being faithful to the end. Maybe Jack. His trumpet comes first.”
“Is Tom messing around?” Harry asked.
“No, but he could. With Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa. He’d say he was furthering the cause. Caroline might believe him. A woman born to suffer.”
“You don’t think well of any of us, do you?” Harry said.
“I’d die for you, for any one of you. Isn’t that enough?”
—
Jim Cardozo died six months after Anne moved out, in early February 2003. He died at the kitchen table. He’d been reading the Times. When he didn’t show up for his afternoon appointments, his secretary called Anne. Anne was distraught and at first blamed herself. Mrs. Lehman, canny as always, offered consolation. “Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love. Shakespeare.”
The autopsy showed three of the arteries to his heart were blocked. “He should have had open-heart surgery,” Dr. Schwinn told her. “Didn’t he ever have an EKG? A stress test?”
Anne shook her head. “He never went to a doctor, not even for a flu shot,” she said.
Nathan was bereft. He too blamed himself. “I shouldn’t have told him to stop doing surgery. That’s what he lived for,” he said to his mother. “That and, of course, us.”
“No,” she said. “He should have gotten checkups.”
“His colleagues should have seen how ill he was,” Nathan said.
“I think he knew he had a blockage,” Anne said. “He gave up at some point, with himself, with me.” She smiled at Nathan, a small, sad smile. “Never with you. You were the bright spot always, the best thing that ever happened to him and me. You must know that.”