Jack with a Twist (6 page)

And don’t think that I could identify them by their various married names. As I was informed by Jack’s mother one night during dinner at Park Avenue Café, the Solomon sisters do not change their names.

I did manage to work out a positively brilliant system for identifying them, though: I numbered them according to the birth order of the sister they were married to and then memorized what color sweater they were each wearing. So: brother-in-law #1—Adam, in the pale yellow Loro Piana, belongs with Patricia, Jack’s eldest sister; brother-in-law #2—Alan, in the light pink Loro Piana, belongs with Elizabeth, the middle sis; and brother-in-law #3—Aaron, in the baby blue Loro Piana, goes with Lisa, the youngest.

“So, have you two given any thought to a wedding date?” brother-in-law #1 asks. He’s Adam, and he goes with Patricia. It makes sense that Adam is #1 since Adam and Eve were the first man and woman. See how well my system works? Although, he looks closer to his late thirties than his mid-forties. Was it that #1 goes with the youngest sister and #3 goes with the eldest? Now that I think about it, maybe Aaron was supposed to be #1 since Hank Aaron holds the all-time Major League Baseball record for home runs. (And I know you’re thinking that Barry Bonds is now #1 in terms of home runs, but Jack says that for real baseball fans, that doesn’t count.)

This would be so much easier with name tags. Or if the proper brother-in-law was seated next to the appropriate sister. The Solomons do this strange table seating thing where you don’t actually sit with the person you came with. Jack and I are the only couple seated next to each other, and that’s just because this dinner is meant to celebrate our engagement. Everyone else is scattered about, with no regard whatsoever as to who goes with who. Jack’s mother said something about us all talking to each other and not to the same person we talk to every day, or some such nonsense like that.

“Mimi and I were just discussing the wedding date before we sat down to dinner,” my father says. Yes, my mother’s name is Miriam, but my father calls her Mimi. How embarrassing.

“Edward’s docket generally is lightest in winter,” Jack’s mother says.

“Jack and I were thinking spring,” I say, looking at Jack and squeezing his leg under the table. “Maybe April?”

“Lots of new appeals in spring,” Patricia says, “not the best time of year for a wedding in this family. Adam and I got married in February.” I wait for Patricia to look to her husband as she mentions him, thus putting my system back on track, but she doesn’t.

“That sounds beautiful,” my mother says, ever the people pleaser, “but since so much of my family will be flying in from Miami for the wedding, we really can’t take the risk that there’d be snow and they won’t be able to get here for the big day.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Jack’s mother says. Unfortunate? My mother looks immediately at me and I look at Jack. Jack looks down into his halibut and pretends he didn’t just hear his mother say that. Or that it didn’t really mean anything. Before meeting me, Jack had been engaged to a woman for three and a half years without ever having set a wedding date. You’d think his parents would be more appreciative of the fact that I’ve at least nailed their son down to a season.

“March could work,” brother-in-law #3 says, mouth full of salmon, “March is part spring, part winter.”

“Sometimes there’s still snow in March,” brother-in-law #1 says, as he motions to a servant for more wine to be poured.

“No, there’s not, Adam,” Elizabeth says, looking at light-blue Loro Piana. My system would be back on track, but for the fact that I’m not a hundred percent sure whether she actually just said
Adam,
or if she may have said
Aaron
instead. Or
Alan,
for that matter.

“Sometimes there is, Elizabeth,” Lisa says. “April sounds great, Brooke.”

“How is he going to have a wedding in April,” brother-in-law #2 says, nodding his head in the direction of Jack’s father, “when he’s working like an animal on his caseload?”

“Maybe he doesn’t have to work like an animal,” Elizabeth says, looking at her father. Edward clears his throat loudly.

“No, Adam’s right,” I say, trying to be diplomatic, “we can do March if that would work best.”

“I’m Aaron,” brother-in-law #1 says.

“Didn’t I say that?” I say, taking a huge gulp of wine.

“Yes,” Jack says, putting his arm around the back of my chair and brushing his fingers against my shoulder, “that’s what she said.”

“Anyway,” brother-in-law # 3 interjects, “the date is usually influenced by the venue. You have to pick from the dates that your venue has available.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” my father says.

“It’s not?” Joan asks, taking a sip of wine.

“Our rabbi is so happy to see our BB getting married that they’ll do anything we ask. They’re even going to give us a huge discount on the reception room at the temple,” my father proudly tells Jack’s dad. Bragging about the discounts he brokers is one of my father’s greatest pleasures in life. “And, of course, I’ll be supplying all of the meat—my best cuts, of course—so we’ve got the venue and the catering covered.”

“A temple?” Jack’s father says. His voice is big and strong and everyone seems to notice at the same time that this is the first word he’s uttered during this entire debate. Which only makes his few words that much more powerful and scary. I can tell that this is a strategy he uses with attorneys in his courtroom—lying in wait until you’re ready to pounce and make your word gospel. Which, if you’re an appellate court judge, is pretty much any time you speak. I look at Jack and he’s still got his head down in his plate. Man, he must
really
love his halibut. “Joan and I were thinking about a New York City hotel wedding. Weren’t we, dear?”

“We love the Pierre,” Joan says softly. I look at my mother and she is trying to maintain a gracious smile with her mouth frozen in place and teeth gritted together.

“Jackie?” I say.

“We like the Pierre, too,” Jack says, looking up from his plate, “remember, we went to that charity event there this summer?”

“I forget,” I say. Jack regales the table with a story about how we couldn’t find a cab after the charity event and ended up taking a horse-drawn carriage at 1:00 a.m. all the way down Fifth Avenue from 59th Street to 23rd. I take the cocktail napkin that has been underneath my wineglass since we came from the salon to the dining room out from under my wineglass. It’s an ivory napkin with a large
S
embossed on the front. I tear it into two pieces. And then into four.

“But, Edward,” my mother says, smile still firmly in place as she places her hand gently on Jack’s father’s arm, “two Jewish kids getting married. Wouldn’t it be lovely to celebrate such a mitzvah in a temple?”

“Joan and I would be glad to contribute to costs,” Edward says quietly to my mother. And then louder, to the whole table: “In fact, it would be an honor, wouldn’t it dear?”

“An honor,” Joan parrots back. I tear my napkin into eighths.

“Absolutely not,” my father bellows, his Brooklyn accent even more prominent than usual. “BB’s our only daughter. We’ve been waiting our whole life for this day. The wedding’s on Mimi and me. We’ll do whatever our BB wants. Do you want a hotel wedding, BB?”

“Well,” I start to say, beginning to take my father’s defense, “I did always dream of—”

“Then it’s settled,” my father says, still a little too loudly, “we’ll start looking at hotels next week.”

I suppose that in my heart of hearts, I knew that this was how it would go down. Why on earth would I have thought that our parents would get along? Jack’s father is a Circuit Court judge and his mother is active in charity work, while my father is a kosher butcher and my mother is active in her mah-jongg game.

Is it too late to elope?

B
ack at work. Thank God. I may not have a wedding dress, and the first meeting of the parents may have gotten off to a bit of a rocky start, but at least work is the one thing I understand, the one thing that’s under my control. The one area where I know that nothing will go wrong. Especially since today is the initial conference on Monique’s case—the first case
ever
where I get the chance to take the lead. Luckily for me, the case is pretty open and shut, so I barely need to prepare for this morning’s court date. Granted, I seem to have hit a
tiny
stumbling block on this case—a pesky little countersuit by Monique’s husband filed this morning right before I left to go to court—but the case is still pretty straightforward and I should have things squared away with the judge in no time at all. And before the
New York Post
can blow up this morning’s “blind item” about Monique into a full-fledged article. Hopefully, while I’m at federal court dealing with the dissolution of partnership case, all of the reporters will be over at family court, poking around for the divorce case that doesn’t exist. Yet. I should have this thing settled before they even realize that they’re in the wrong courthouse.

It’s refreshing to be doing something this morning that I have power over. Especially since last night, after we got back from dinner at his parents’s house, I had to calmly explain to Jack—who under normal circumstances is an absolutely perfect fiancé—that he needs to take my side whenever there is a disagreement amongst the families. But it’s not like we got into a fight about it or anything. We are not one of those couples who ever fight. Which is surprising since we’re both lawyers, but it’s true. We never fight. Not at all adversarial. We’re just
not
one of those couples you see who compete with one another. In fact, if we were a Hollywood couple, it wouldn’t matter
at all
who won an Oscar first or who made more money per picture—we wouldn’t get a divorce over it or even have a cross word over it—because we are simply not competitive with each other in the slightest bit and we most certainly never fight.

“How dare you not take my side in front of your parents!” I said last night, the second we walked back in the door to our apartment after dinner at Jack’s parents’ house. Okay, so I may have been screaming it at the time, but you get where I was going with that one. That was the most calm as I could muster, given the circumstances.

“Sides?” my perfect fiancé said. “It’s not about sides, sweetie. It’s about our families coming together.”

“You’re right, honey,” I said, “it’s not about sides.” And Jack was
so
right. It is
so not
about sides at all. It’s about our families merging into one. Even if his family does outnumber mine by an alarming ratio of four to one. “Right, Jack. I just meant that you need to agree with everything I say in front of your parents.”

My perfect fiancé looked back at me and furrowed his brow.

But, today in court, I will be in control. After all, I am a tough, no-nonsense attorney who does not take “no” for an answer. I am confident, intelligent and self-possessed. I am woman, hear me roar. See, with my can-do attitude, there is no way that I can lose in court today. Especially since it’s only an initial conference where we just cover administrative matters, so there’s actually no winning or losing to be had. And this isn’t the sort of case that
ever
goes to trial for actual winning or losing. It’s more of a transactional thing. Also, the judge assigned to my case is an old law school buddy of Jack’s dad.

But, I’ll still roar if need be.

As I enter the judge’s courtroom, I take a peek at the docket and notice something very odd. When I got notice of the countersuit, Monique’s husband had checked off the box to indicate that he’d be handling the matter
pro se,
meaning that he’d be his own attorney. It made sense to me at the time since a dissolution of partnership is so routine, but today he has a law firm representing him.

My old law firm.

“This must be a typo,” I say to the court deputy sitting at a long table in the front of the courtroom. When I say this to him, a
tiny
voice inside me realizes that it must be true, that my old law firm will, in fact, be opposing me in my first big case that I take the lead on. Which would also be the reason why Monique didn’t hire Vanessa. She knew that her husband would be using Gilson, Hecht. Still, I think that it can’t hurt to ask the deputy, maybe even flirt a bit, and earn myself a few brownie points with the judge’s staff.

“No typo,” he says, without even looking up from his coffee, donut and
New York Law Journal.

“I’m representing Monique deVouvray and her husband is opposing the action
pro se.
”

“Pro se?”
he says, looking very annoyed that I’ve distracted him from his breakfast. This is probably not the way to earn brownie points. I lean over his desk so as to show some cleavage, but it doesn’t really work since I’m wearing a turtleneck sweater. Maybe he’ll applaud the effort, anyway, though.

“You know what?” I say, not wanting to piss off the man who controls the court’s calendar—and my fate on this case for the next couple of months. “Don’t even worry about it. I’ll just figure it out when you call me.”

“You must be Brooke,” a thick Southern drawl from behind me says. I turn around to see Miranda Foxley, an associate at Gilson, Hecht. I’ve never met her before, but her reputation precedes her. Word on the street—or at the Park Avenue law firms, as the case may be—is that she left her last law firm because she slept with a married partner. Happy as I am to see that the case is staffed only with a junior associate, and not a partner, it dawns on me that the whole flirt-with-the-staff-of-chambers strategy isn’t really going to work if Miranda Foxley is my opposing counsel.

Standing five foot ten, Miranda looks more like a model than an actual lawyer. Her blazing red hair flows loosely around her shoulders, down her back and it makes my hand instinctively fly up to my own locks since it reminds me that I chopped my own long hair off just a few months ago. Which doesn’t really matter today anyway, since I have it back in a bun to look professional for court, but still. And she’s unbelievably—annoyingly—thin. I could never understand how Southern women could ever be thin with all of that delicious comfort food they grow up with in the South, but Miranda is. I guess that she is able to ignore a buttered biscuit and fried chicken in a way that I never could.

Today she’s got on a fitted salmon-colored Nanette Lepore suit with a little silk camisole underneath that’s bordered with lace. I’m in my most conservative charcoal-gray suit with a black turtleneck sweater, black opaque stockings and black pumps. The contrast is striking—she’s Susan Dey in
LA Law
and I’m Marcia Clark before the makeover. I bet Miranda’s even got garters on under that pastel-colored number.

Thank God I still have an in with the judge by way of my future father-in-law.

“Jack told me all about you,” she coos. I hate that she knows my fiancé. Visions of them cavorting naked in conference rooms while working on a “document production” fill my mind.

“He did?” I say, smoothing back my hair with the back of my hand, wishing I’d worn it down today.

“See? No typo,” the deputy informs me. “You’re appearing against Gilson, Hecht today.”

“Yes,” I say, “thank you.” And then, under my breath, “I can see that.”

Our case is called at 11:00 a.m. and Miranda and I make our way into chambers. Judge Martin sits behind a massive mahogany desk with case files piled high on either side. The bank of windows is right behind his shiny bald head and I almost have to squint as I sit down in my chair. He looks much older than Jack’s father does and I wonder if that’s because he was ahead of Jack’s dad in law school or if that’s because of his huge pot belly and the two hundred and fifty pounds he’s carrying around.

Note to self: Must start wedding diet, stat.

“First,” Judge Martin begins, “at the outset, I’d like to tell you, Ms. Foxley, that although I do not personally know Ms. Miller, I do know her future father-in-law and, as such, I will be attending her wedding to his son. I don’t think that this should present a problem, but, before we go any further, we should discuss right now whether or not you’ll be making a motion for me to recuse myself from this matter.”

“I have no objections, Your Honor,” Miranda says with her thick Southern accent. I’m certain that she’s putting the accent on even thicker for the judge’s benefit. “I know that you and Judge Solomon were both Harvard Law, class of 1962.” Why didn’t
I
think to do a Westlaw background search on Judge Martin?

Or, had she done one on Jack’s father?

“Ms. Miller, I assume that you don’t have a problem with me being on this case?”

“Of course not,” I say, glowing at the mention of my wedding. Surely, by my wedding day, I will have won this case by a landslide and by spring, Judge Martin will be at my rehearsal dinner giving a toast:
Beauty and brains, the total package, that’s our Brooke.

If I were Miranda, I might have considered a motion to recuse Judge Martin from the case. It is
so clear
that I already have an advantage here. It’s obvious that the man
already
thinks of me as his surrogate daughter. And, I’m litigating against an associate who is junior to me. This case is going to be so easy that it’s almost unfair. But far be it from me to point that out.

Judge Martin glances over the court papers. “So, we seem to have a little bit of a disagreement here.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Miranda pipes in, sitting up straighter in her chair. “My client is countersuing. He helped build his wife’s business and he is not going to allow her to cut him off from its future profits. It was his personal savings that first—”

“I wasn’t aware that we’d be arguing our cases today, Your Honor,” I say with an innocent smile, cutting Miranda off. Normally, I wouldn’t be so bold as to say something like that, but on a case that I had with Jack three years ago, a similar situation arose where opposing counsel began posturing on his client’s behalf before the case even began and that was what Jack said to shut him down immediately. It worked like a charm in that initial conference—simultaneously shutting up opposing counsel and currying favor with the judge—and I was hoping for a similar result.

I wish Jack was here with me right now. If he were here, he’d put the fear of God into this little Southern belle and we could probably force a settlement right now. Since leaving Gilson, Hecht, the one thing I miss most is working on all of my cases with Jack. Not only is he an amazing attorney, but he also used to give me something nice to stare at when I was bored to tears at these things.

“Ms. Miller is correct, Ms. Foxley,” Judge Martin says, “this is just to set up our court calendar. I won’t have you posturing on your client’s behalf. Unless you’re ready to talk settlement already?”

“No, sir,” Miranda says, looking down at her papers and straightening them out.

“We are ready to talk settlement whenever you are, Your Honor,” I say. “In fact, we really were expecting a very basic dissolution of partnership. Totally by the books. We weren’t at all expecting a contentious litigation.”

Wow, didn’t that sound, like, totally dramatic? I’ll have to remember to tell Jack about that little zinger later.

“Counselor?” Judge Martin says, looking at Miranda for a response.

“Sorry, Your Honor. My client is firm. He wants to proceed with litigation.”

“So, then let’s set up a calendar for the discovery process,” Judge Martin says, taking out his calendar, a huge red leather book that he places on his desk with a big slam.

“Would it be all right to take a very brief recess?” Miranda asks. This is highly unusual. An initial court conference is generally so brief that there’s no time to take a break.

I give a disapproving glance in Judge Martin’s direction, indicating that I do not want to take a break and that I’m ready to continue with the conference. He already took my side when Miranda started posturing and I just know that he won’t allow a recess if I indicate to him that I don’t want one. The control I’m
already
exerting over this case is embarrassing. I’ve got this guy eating out of the palm of my hand. But, it’s okay, since I’ll only be using my superpowers of litigation for good.

“I’ll allow it,” Judge Martin says. “Let’s take five minutes.” He must have misconstrued my disapproving glance as saying: I really need to go to the ladies’ room.

Anyway, a five-minute recess will give me enough time to call Jack and get some tips on how to deal with Miranda. You’re not allowed to bring cell phones into a federal courthouse, but Jack showed me a tiny trick that’s hardly even
that
illegal to sneak your phone in to court—you just turn your phone off as you go through security and hide it in an inside pocket.

Granted, I’m still not allowed to tell him that Monique is my client, but I can ask him about litigation strategy without revealing anything about the case. After all, asking him for tips on how to deal with an annoying adversary (with a totally put-on Southern accent) is not a breach of my ethical duties to my client.

I dial the number and hear the familiar ring tone for Jack’s cell phone. It’s the song “Hello, I Love You” by the Doors. I have the same one on mine. As I hear it ringing, I can hear the actual phone coming down the hallway.

“What are you doing here?” I say, as Jack rounds the corner, practically walking into me in his effort to covertly answer his phone while avoiding the glare of any federal marshals lurking in the hallway who might confiscate it.