Lucky Leonardo (19 page)

Hal got the application package from Harriford, and it spoke to him. “This is for your own good,” he advised his hard-drinking daughter Joan, when the Harriford van came to the house to pick her up and whisk her off, to her utter, dumbstruck surprise. “It will give you a second chance to be a happy girl. Some day you'll thank me.”

By that time, Barbara was back from her business trip with her boss, and looking for a home/office to share with him. He gave preliminary approval to the plan, but delayed final approval pending review of the confidential report he had requisitioned from his lawyers regarding the enforceability of his pre-nuptial agreement with, and more generally the economic consequences of obtaining a divorce from, his then-current wife, whom he feared would not be inclined to take prisoners, or disinclined to use weapons of mass destruction, he said. This delay took some bloom off Barbara's rose.

In the interim she moved out of Stan's house and life, and put herself up in a downtown hotel room, and waited, which was not something she was used to doing with her men.

“I feel like a fucking call girl,” she confided to her mirror one morning when the lawyers' report still hadn't materialized and the interim was getting bigger and harder to straddle, prompting her to return to bed and ask her boss for a raise, which seemed to signal the beginning of the end.

“I'm sorry, honey,” she told Harvey on the phone when he said he'd been as good as she asked him to be, but wanted to come home. “I don't have a place for you right now. I promise I'll visit you soon. I love you…”

———

“He's good for the payments,” Chrissie promised, as they sat around Leonardo's kitchen table for another Sunday morning meeting in the tradition of the American family, Chrissie, Tom, Leonardo, Helen, and Mary Ellen. This was Chrissie's and the Corvette's first time home since she drove off in it to help her mother deal with the Roger LaFlamme situation two months before, on the eve of Leonardo's breakdown.

“Mom wanted to come down with us,” Chrissie said, “but she couldn't fit into the car.”

“She's fat?” Mary Ellen asked.

“Two seats,” Chrissie answered with a little chill.

“How's your mom?” Leonardo asked.

“Great,” Chrissie answered. “Can you believe she's dating Roger?”

“Great. How's Roger?”

“He's great. Mom's been a good influence on him. He just got promoted to assistant store manager.”

“Send him my regards.”

“I thought you didn't want to meet him.”

“No, that was…a different time.”

“You know,” Tom said, “there's a visible scratch on the rear right…”

“It's new…”

“No, it was there.”

Leonardo turned to Helen, who nodded her confirmation that it was there. “OK,” said Leonardo, “anything else?” It was unspoken but obvious that they were consummating his separation from Chrissie, and that a deep discount on the Corvette was the price to be paid. In lieu of palimony.

So be it.

Chrissie was great, but obviously not part of the solution. He wished her the best even with a slippery slug like Tom, and even with his car. Helen cried all night long in anticipation of losing the car, but was mostly dry-eyed and reconciled by the time it drove up. “We'll always have Paris,” she said to no one in particular as the late winter sun climbed through the bare branches of the apple tree in the backyard, and she made the coffee.

Chrissie sat close to Tom, and kept her distance from the others, like a college student returned to the family farm who holds her nose and can't believe this was ever her. Like what is Mary Ellen? Like how old is that old man? She and Helen eyed each other warily from across the table. Neither seemed interested in getting too conversational.

“I like your hair,” Chrissie said with respect to Helen's stylish new do.

“Nice boots,” Helen said in turn.

Mary Ellen stared at Chrissie like she'd never seen a pretty girl before.

Chrissie was definitely pretty, Leonardo saw for himself not for the first time but in all likelihood the last, with her girlish body in jeans and boots and a powder blue jersey. “I won't get this lucky again,” he thought, and felt old, and for a moment regretted what he could have done but didn't do, or didn't do enough of and couldn't do any more. The loss of a loved one, he felt.

She gave him a “Lenny, are you OK?” when she arrived, which he took to mean, “I hear you've had tough times, Lenny, and you certainly look like shit. Thank God I'm out of here.”

Leonardo and Helen teared-up for their respective reasons as Tom and Chrissie disappeared over the horizon in, and with title to, the Corvette. In an effort to cheer her up, and maybe get her out of the house, Leonardo asked Helen if she'd be interested in trying her hand at funeral work, and was pleased when she did and found it satisfying, stimulating a spot inside of her she hadn't touched while stirring the lattes. She called it performance art, on her resumes and in her letters home. She even looked for opportunities downstairs in the preparation rooms, which were beyond Leonardo's range.

“No dead body experiences for me,” he advised. “I'm only in it for the spiritual part.”

In general, he was recuperating.

———

On Harvey's birthday, a few days later, ex-Barbara called Leonardo out of the clear blue sky. “I heard you've had it rough,” she said.

“I'm doing better,” he answered. “How about yourself? Still with the tuba player?”

“No, no, he's ancient history. Right now I'm alone, a single woman struggling to make her way in the city. God help me, but I don't even have a job.”

“What happened?”

“My boss was a shit.”

“Sorry.”

“I'm suing him for everything he's worth.”

“Oh.”

“Sexual harassment. Breach of contract. Defamation. You name it. I like the litigation.”

“Oh.”

“But Lenny, my point is why don't you give Harvey a call. He misses you.”

Good-bye Marge Blitz.

On a dark and drizzly Sunday morning at the end of April—two weeks after Barbara called Leonardo, and Leonardo called Harvey and had a good chat, and said, “I love you” to his son, and made some plans for the future—when all the flowering plants in the greater Boston area were on the brink of blooming but needed a sip of sunshine to get themselves off, and all the people were grousing about the Red Sox, Marge Blitz drove from breakfast cocktails at Janet Casey's waterfront condo to the cemetery where Brockleman was buried. She remembered his plot location from Kurt's video, and walked her way to it along the cemetery's twisting path, past mourners at a burial in progress and scattered graveside visitors, looking as wild-eyed and irreconciled as any of them.

She carried flowers as a subterfuge. Her intent was to verify that the soil above Brockleman was firm and unbroken. Kurt had refused this assignment, prompting her to smack him across the face with her fist, and, when he fell in a heap, to kick him with her sharp-pointed shoes.

“I knew she was gone,” Janet said afterward, “but I didn't know how far or where to…”

“You didn't call the police?”

“To say what? That there was a crazy woman driving around someplace in eastern Massachusetts?”

Marge reached Brockleman's grave, and kneeled down to study the grass and feel for heat and tremors, reminiscent of Selma in Kurt's graveside video plus ninety pounds. Brockleman's ghost had been visiting Marge with increasing frequency, first in dreams, but then as she lay awake without sleep, and following her as she paced through her rooms, as she ran outside to escape, as she drove through the night.

It was a vicious cycle of visitations, because the more he visited the more she drank and the less she slept and the more vivid and insinuating he became. He pushed her to extreme resorts: she thought or wished or had seen on late-night television that proof of a quiet grave disrupts the ghost, makes him feel locked out from his home, uprooted, in exile, and, from her lips to Brockleman's ghost's ears, possibly suicidal.

“Aha,” said Marge, as she moved her hands over the smooth, undisturbed grass atop Brockleman's remains.

Selma herself maintained ties. She re-visited the site a few times over the winter, to apologize to Brockleman for her weakness and duplicity and cry herself back into disarray. She was there regularly now that the weather was improving, and was making friends with some of the other graveside regulars. They would visit their person's plot, say what they had to say, scream if they had to scream, then head in a convoy to Dunkin' Donuts for coffee. If only the stones could talk. Or give love in return. Or forgive.

When Selma arrived that morning she recognized Marge walking ahead of her along the path. “Yes,” Selma said as she recalled how Marge had induced her to bear false witness. “Yes,” Selma said as she recalled how Marge had greased the skids of the track going directly to hell, and welcomed her aboard. “Yes,” Selma said as the opportunity to thank Marge in person presented itself.

Selma followed Marge to the grave, stealthy like a predatory cat, and when Marge bent to the ground to feel for ruptures, Selma burst upon her from behind. “You perverse bitch,” Selma screamed. “Get away from that grave…”

Marge never looked back to see who or what might be there, because she knew. She upped and ran straight down the hill with her heart pounding and her eyes popping as though chased by a battalion of bats. She guzzled her gin as she ignited her engine and screeched across the cemetery's dirt parking lot. She fishtailed onto the road and pushed pedal to metal on the straight-away, about a coffin length ahead of Brockleman's angry ghost, by her estimation.

The faster she drove, the closer he felt. She was drinking and screaming and swatting him away from her hair, and swerving all over the road. She speed-dialed Kurt, and got his tape. “Kurt,” she recorded for posterity at ninety miles an hour, “I'm being chased by Brockleman's ghost. I think I can out-maneuver him…” Followed by the sound of a total crack-up as she went off-road and into a bridge abutment, like a bird who didn't see the picture window. Apparently the mother turtle didn't want anything to do with her.

Kurt made funeral arrangements from his hospital bed. “The good news,” he said to his friends who came by to express sympathy, “is that Attorney Brockleman's ghost won't have to keep chasing her, and can finally get some rest.”

“Unless,” said one of his friends, “Marge's ghost attacks Attorney Brockleman's ghost…”

“Oooh,” said Kurt, with a little shiver, at this vision of eternity.

Two soggy mornings after Marge intersected with the bridge abutment, the parties and lawyers of
Binh et al. v. DeltaTek et al.
showed up en masse to Martin Drunkmiller's harbor-view conference room for their previously scheduled mediation session, as directed by the Superior Court judge who said he was damn tired of being sucked into their weekly pissing contests, or words to that effect.

There was Drunkmiller, with his round-faced lieutenant, Remington, and their clients Susan H. and Eugene Binh, with Eugene drooling through the wires which held together his jaw, but otherwise motionless in his wheelchair. A sight to see, as was intended by Drunkmiller. “Be the vegetable,” he directed Eugene in rehearsal.

Drunkmiller's script also called for Susan H. to look like Eugene's hurt and loving wife, cruelly denied her conjugal entitlements, but she blew her cover in the first scene, during coffee and Danish, when she pushed and pushed on his wheelchair but couldn't make it go because the brake was on, which she didn't know anything about since she had never touched the chair before.

“Your chair must be broken, sweetheart,” she said with a very tight jaw herself.

“The damn brake is on for Christ sake, you…,” Eugene replied with audible enunciation over the grate of his wires, improvising.

Mulverne and Janet Casey stood with their son-of-a-bitch New York-style lawyer Paul E. Greene in a little conversational triangle at arm's length from the pastries, which only Janet was eating. Mulverne didn't look well. “Just a cold,” he told Janet when she picked him up at his house. “One day it's mild and sunny, and the next day it's frozen rain and I get caught without an overcoat.”

“Do you have fever?”

“Nah,” said Mulverne who was old school when it came to sucking it up, but whose face looked pale and puffy like a bird whose sucking up included bad worms for breakfast, and on the ride over he flapped his hands up and down to get Janet to lower the volume on her aggressive driving, which was a worrisome first as far as she was concerned and started her thinking about her resume.

“Remember,” Paul E. said, “the mediator may tell you that mediation is a time for the lawyers to give their mouths a rest, and for the opposing parties to talk directly to each other because it gives them a chance to open up and get things off their chest, and lets them find a human meeting point without all the legalities and technicalities. But that's crap. You keep it zipped and let me do the talking because if you admit something in here I promise you they'll shove it up your ass in open court the next chance they get no matter how many times they solemnly swear that nothing leaves this room.”

“You're very cynical, Paul,” Mulverne responded in a weak voice, like he was familiar with cynicism and knew it wasn't the only path. “That's why I hired you.”

Janet nodded.

Abigail hovered over the food, fighting the mean restrictions propounded by her new diet, thinking one little cheese Danish wouldn't hurt anybody, while explaining to Leonardo why she was optimistic that his medical malpractice insurance carrier would come around. The carrier denied coverage on the basis of its interpretation of policy exclusions applicable to Treatment (as defined) of Non-Patients (as defined) exclusive of Included Emergencies (as defined). If the facts were different, they said with the institutional equivalent of compassion, you might have coverage, but they aren't so you don't. Sorry.

“The language is labyrinthic,” Abigail explained to Leonardo, with an inflection of professional admiration in her voice for an insurance company at the top of its game. “I got lost and scared in the dark passages. But,” she added, “it's one thing for them to write a nifty denial letter, and quite another for them to justify their denial to a jury. I've had productive calls with their adjuster…”

“Great,” Leonardo responded.

“He recognizes the exposure. In the remote event we make progress today, I'll give him a call.”

“Great,” Leonardo responded.

Leonardo's mind was drifting toward the Marge Blitz 2:00 pm funeral, which he wanted to work. Helen was working it, and he loved to work a funeral with Helen, loved her austere funeral persona, loved how they performed smoothly and gracefully as a duo, walking down the aisle in grave synchronization, exchanging glances of deep regret which brought tears to the eyes of the observant. It was killing him—mildly irritating him, to be more reflective of his emerging equilibrium—to be stuck inside of mediation, at the insistence of hard-hearted strangers.

Janet Casey and Mulverne also had an interest in Marge's funeral. “Chances are,” Mulverne said, “her damn investigation gets buried with her.”

“May it rest in peace,” said Janet.

———

Enter the mediator, a breezy, handsome sort whose name was left on the list after the other names were eliminated, so it wasn't like they were in love with him. He called the room to order, gently and without seeking to impose his views on the subject, like order was a matter of personal choice and he could live with disorder if that's what the parties preferred because he was just here to help them recognize and achieve whatever it was they wanted to recognize and achieve, because he wasn't the judge, and he wasn't judging them.

He had them sign an agreement promising that they wouldn't sue him no matter what, and then he sent each group down the hall to its own separate conference room, to confer and stew. They were encouraged to take their coffee and pastry with them.

He moved from room to room on pace with the minute hand of a clock, too slowly for the human eye to see progress, but after an hour had visited all the stops including the pit stop and was starting a new tour around the dial, listening to each group's protestation of innocence with the sincerity of a shrink except for his recurrent raised eyebrow which sent the message that he could not control his facial reaction to bull shit.

“I'm trying to understand what happened in the last few minutes before the, uh, glass impact,” he said to them on his first go-around. “I'm wondering what you might do differently if you could re-play it,” he asked when he returned.

“Not have Ben out there to break the fall,” Mulverne groused despite his attorney's warning to keep it zipped.

Leonardo felt the need for a stretch and soda. In between mediator visits, while Abigail was calling for her messages, he left his team's assigned room and ambled back to the main conference room and at first thought he was alone in the room. No people sounds. No motion. But as he closed on the food spread he realized he had company. Eugene Binh was wheeled up to the big picture window, facing the rippling water and glowering sky like Zeus parked atop Mt. Olympus. Leonardo wondered how Eugene felt about the big span of plate glass.

“Hello, Eugene,” Leonardo offered.

“Dr. Cook?” Eugene asked, despite his wired jaw.

“Yes.” Leonardo answered. He walked to a spot at the window where he could be seen by Eugene's immobilized head. “Eugene,” he said, “I've worried about you. I'm sorry you were hurt. I'm sorry things turned out as they did. I know we're opponents in the litigation, but from the bottom of my heart I can tell you that I tried to help. I can tell you that I feel your pain. I hope you fully recover, emotionally and physically…”

“No hard feelings,” Eugene replied, clear enough.

Mulverne entered the room doing his cranky old bird imitation. He beaked and feathered his way to the food, not acknowledging Leonardo or Eugene. He lifted a can of Coke, popped it, took a deep gulp and gave back a deep belch.

“Hello, Mr. Mulverne,” said Leonardo from across the room.

“Dr. Cook,” Mulverne replied, “how nice to see you again. I hear you have a new job.”

“Yes.”

“Funeral director?”

“Assistant funeral director.”

“Temporary?”

“For now.”

“Good for you, Dr. Cook. And how's the family?”

Leonardo was working on a shield of taciturnity, offering generosity to the world in exchange for sun in the morning, but hadn't reinforced all the soft spots just yet. “Are you referring to my broken-up traditional family or my intact alternative one?” he asked back.

“To tell you the truth, Dr. Cook, I was just making light conversation.”

“Oh. In that case thank you for asking.”