Woman on Top

Woman on Top

Copyright © 2013 Deborah Schwartz

This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, incidents and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), places, incidents, and events, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

ISBN (print): 978-0-09858177-0-1

ISBN (ebook): 978-0-9858177-1-8

Cover Design:
www.svetlanadragicevic.yolasite.com

Conversion to eBook by
www.wordzworth.com

Laudan Press 2013

For my children

FALL 1994

CHAPTER 1

October

L
eonard told me that it was his mother’s fault, a result of the fact that she smoked throughout her pregnancy with him, that he would grow to a mere five feet five inches. Since I never saw a picture of her, I never knew if it was also her fault, although hardly preventable, that no woman on the streets of New York would ever turn her head if he walked by.

He had married a beautiful woman, his high school sweetheart, and considered their union as one of “Beauty and the Beast”. He had all the trappings of the little man, the Napoleon, who was to succeed grandly and existed to control those around him.

His wife had died after twenty-four years of marriage, although her cancer allowed her to linger for the final eighteen torturous months. But Leonard was not one to linger over anybody. Two months after her death he was reading the personal ads in
New York
magazine. It was there that he found mine.

Beautiful lawyer, 40 year old winsome widow in Ct. with two kids looking for love and laughter with a kind, professional man. Photo available.

Over the course of three weeks, I received forty letters in response to my ad. I threw away thirty-nine. The man who sent a picture of himself in a Speedo bathing suit with his muscular hairy chest bursting left nothing to my imagination. Several women failed to realize that a beautiful widow is a woman and sent me pictures of their cleavage. And, of course, the man incarcerated in Alabama who read
New York
magazine and sent a salacious letter was not what I had in mind when I placed the ad. Leonard’s letter arrived last, just when I had nearly given up all hope that a widow living in a small town in central Connecticut could ever find her next love.

The envelope was marked with the insignia from the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Dear Young Widow in Ct.

I read your ad on the plane going to a business meeting in Arizona. I am a young 50-year-old widower who lives in New Jersey. I am a very personable, warm, kind, very intelligent, loyal, romantic, energetic, very athletic, emotionally and financially secure person with a great sense of humor and a high degree of integrity. Women generally describe me as ‘very cute’.

I love kids and enjoy family, friends, travel, sports, music, and theater. I have never responded to an ad before but I was struck by your being a widow and a lawyer (describing yourself as beautiful also helped). I am a real estate investment banker with a large U.S. based company. I have three great children, a son who is in medical school, a daughter who is a teacher and a son at Cornell.

I am interested in meeting a person who is refined, very sweet, warm, intelligent, articulate and very attractive -a woman who I can admire and who is comfortable in jeans or black tie.

While you will meet men who are better looking (and who have better handwriting) you will not meet anyone who is more personable, or a nicer, higher quality person.

Since I have not responded to ads I do not have stock pictures to send. I therefore am sending a passport photo type picture I had taken - which honestly does not do me justice even though I do not claim to be Robert Redford.

If my letter merits your interest call me at the following number. The best time to reach me is between 9 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. during the week - anytime on the weekends (although I frequently travel to watch my son play college football). I am an early riser so you may call me after 6:30 a.m. - if I do not answer I am either traveling on business or out jogging.

I am a non-smoker. I hope to hear from you.

Sincerely,

Leonard

The picture had fallen out of the envelope and fluttered to the ground. As I picked it up, one look at the black and white photo revealed a man who could have claimed to resemble a blondish version of Edward G. Robinson but should have been flattered to have his name merely mentioned in the same sentence as Robert Redford. Yet, I was determined to press on because I had two precious children who needed me to do just that. After all, cancer had made me a widow at the age of thirty-five and it had been a long uphill climb since then.

Cancer ended Jake’s life; along the way it had ravaged mine. The fifteen months of Jake’s illness I had spent caring for him, having abandoned all other roles, and then I had lost that job too.

When I thought of Jake, I could only envision him sick, his body devastated. It was at least a year before I could picture his thick black hair, straight aquiline nose, large brown eyes, and full lips smiling. And then one night I had a wonderful dream of making love to a healthy Jake.

Jake seemed like an island of tranquility in this world, and once I landed on that island I couldn’t imagine life anywhere else. Jake and I were married the following May, for better or for worse. Our marriage lasted twelve years, deprived of the next forty years we craved.

•  •  •

I called Leonard at 9:30 the night I received his letter.

“Hi, this is the winsome widow in Connecticut you wrote to.”

The phone went quiet.

“Oh, hi. So you got my letter,” he finally said.

“Yes. I really liked it. My name is Kate.”

“I liked your ad. You said you’re a lawyer. What area do you practice in? Oh, and you can call me Len.”

“Healthcare. I’m a healthcare lawyer.”

“And your kids, how old are they?”

“Chloe is thirteen and Ben is ten. They’re genuinely great kids, ” I promised.

“Mine are great too. I’m very close to them. Very close.”

“How old are yours?” I asked.

“Jennifer is twenty-six, Dale is twenty-four and Peter is twenty-one.”

My mind wandered. Why had he answered a personal ad if he was truly the man he portrayed in his letter? Countless people told me not to bother with personal ads, usually considered mating grounds for the desperate with nowhere else to turn. New York men portrayed as gobbled up like turkey at Thanksgiving within minutes of exiting a marriage by hordes of starving women. None of this would stop me. I wanted to know the man described in that letter.

“When did your husband die?” he asked using the softened tone I had learned to expect whenever anyone inquired about Jake’s death.

“Five years ago.”

I looked up at the white stucco ceiling and then at the equally white walls, as they seemed to close in around the bed that I was laying on, the bed that Jake and I used to share. The phone became a tape recorder as I repeated, for what seemed like the hundredth time, a quick rundown of my past. The same speech that I had delivered numerous times to strangers with whom I ventured out on dates, to see if they could be my match.

“After Jake’s death I had to take the Bar because I needed to get a job. My kids were so young at the time. I had graduated from law school eight years earlier and for those eight years I never opened a law book.”

The sigh that Len emitted felt so predictable it led to me releasing one of my own.

“That must have been difficult,” he replied.

I figured “No shit,” would lessen my chances of ever meeting him, so I continued on with my speech. I breathed in.

“I’ve dated a lot but I don’t know. This one guy, a lawyer, I dated for two months turned out not to be such a nice guy and the guy after that was too weak. What I’m honestly looking for is what I had with my husband. I wan—need to have that again.”

Len remained silent. I took the time to count the pictures on my walls. What was he thinking? Had he hung up the phone?

“Listen,” he said, “we should meet. You live in Connecticut, right? We should meet somewhere halfway.”

Breathe out. Other men from New York, blind dates through friends, had told me that we should meet the next time I came to town. New York talk for “see you… maybe.” Len and I made plans to meet the following week at a restaurant that I found in the Connecticut edition of
Zagat.
After we hung up, I lay in the comfort of my dark room in the loving arms of my bed. Listening to the silence of the night in my small town, I read his letter over and over again, not quite believing my good fortune.

On the Wednesday night that followed, wearing my lucky Donna Karan navy blue boucle suit with navy heels, I pulled into the gravel parking lot of the restaurant. I had last worn the suit to interview for my current job. Quickly remembering to check my hair in the mirror at roughly the same time that I found a parking space, I nearly caused an accident in the midst of this sudden impulse.

A few seconds later, with the car in a safe position, the mirror reflected the sophisticated New Yorker that I used to be and was now desperately trying to portray. I smiled in relief. Len was not about to meet a woman cloistered in Connecticut after the death of her husband.

The walk toward the restaurant seemed to take an eternity. A man passed by me and in the dark of the parking lot I could see only that he appeared tall, good looking. It probably wasn’t him. The restaurant’s small wooden façade stood as the marker of a land far away, and a land into which I was not eager to venture.

With every step that I took, the dread that I felt about meeting Len increased. My expectations were high and for that one moment, I simply did not feel like I had the guts to go through with it. There have been many times in my life where the bad events and feelings lost their foul veneer. This could be one of them. Being single was not as bad as they say.