Oliver's Story

Phil was right. Plunging into other people's legal problems, I found an outlet for the anger I'd begun to feel. Someone somehow screwed me, so I thought. Something in the world's administration, the Establishment of Heaven. And I felt I should be doing things to set it right.

More and more I found myself attracted to 'miscarriages of justice'. And, man, right then our garden had a lot of nasty weeds.

Owing to Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436), I was a very busy boy. The Supreme Court now acknowledged that a suspect had to be informed he could be silent till he got a lawyer. I don't know just how many had been previously hustled off to judgment — but I suddenly was angry for them all. Like LeRoy Seeger, who already was in Attica when I got his case through Civil Liberties.

Lee had been convicted on the basis of a signed confession deftly (ah — but legally?) elicited from him after a long interrogation. By the time he wrote his name he wasn't sure what he was doing except maybe now they'd let him sleep. His retrial was one of the major New York cases to invoke Miranda. And we got him sprung. A little retroactive justice.

'Thank you, man,' he said to me, and turned to kiss his tearful wife.

'Stay loose,' I answered, moving off, incapable of sharing LeRoy Seeger's happiness. Besides, he had a wife. And anyway, the world was full of what in lawyers' slang we call 'screwees'.

Like Sandy Webber, who was dueling with his draft board to get CO. status. They were vacillating. Sandy wasn't Quaker, so it wasn't clear that it was 'deeply held belief and not just cowardice that made him want to not make war. Although it looked precarious, he wouldn't go to Canada. He wanted the acknowledgment that he could own his conscience. He was gentle. And his girl was scared as hell for him. One of his friends was doing time in Lewisburg and not enjoying it.

Let's split to Montreal, she said. I want to stay and fight, he said.

We did. We lost. Then we appealed and won. He was glad to get three years of washing dishes in a hospital.

'You were just fantastic,' Sandy and his lady sang, embracing me together. I answered, 'Keep the faith.' And started walking off to slay more dragons. I looked back just once and saw them dancing on the sidewalk. And wished that I could smile.

Oh, I was very angry.

I worked as late as possible. I didn't like to leave the office. Everything in our apartment somehow emanated Jenny. The piano. And her books. The furniture we picked together. Yeah, I sort of told myself that I should move. But I got me home so late it didn't seem to matter. Gradually I got accustomed to my solo dinners in our quiet kitchen, playing tapes alone at night — although I never sat in Jenny's reading chair. I had even almost taught myself to get to sleep in our so-empty bed. And so I didn't think I had to leave the place.

Until I opened up a door.

It was Jenny's closet, which I had avoided till that day. But somehow, foolishly, I opened it. And saw her clothing. Jenny's dresses and her blouses and her scarves. Her sweaters — even one from high school she'd refused to toss away and used to wear, as mangy as it was, around the house. All of it was there and Jenny wasn't. I can't tell you what I thought as I stood staring at those silk and woolen souvenirs. Like maybe if I touched that ancient sweater I might feel a molecule of living Jenny.

I closed the door and never opened it again.

Two weeks later Philip Cavilleri quietly packed all her stuff and took it off. He mumbled that he knew this Catholic group that helped the poor. And just before he left for Cranston in his borrowed baker's truck, he said in valediction, 'I won't visit you again unless you move.'

Funny. Once he had despoiled the house of everything that wakened Jenny in the mind, I found a new apartment in a week. Small and prisonlike (the first-floor windows in New York have iron bars, remember?), it was the not-quite basement of a brownstone where a rich producer lived. His fancy gold-knobbed door was up a flight of steps, so people headed for his orgies never bothered me. Also it was closer to the office and just half a block from Central Park. Obviously, signs were pointing to my imminent recovery.

Still I have a serious confession.

Even though I'm in new quarters all refurnished with new posters and a brand-new bed, and friends; more often say, 'You're looking good, old buddy,' there is something that I've kept of Jenny, who was once my wife.

In the bottom drawer of the desk at home are Jenny's glasses. Yes. Both pairs of Jenny's glasses.

Because a glance at them reminds me of the lovely eyes that looked through them to look through me.

But otherwise, as anyone who sees me never hesitates to say, I'm in terrific shape.

 

'Hi, my name is Phil. I'm into baking cookies.'

Incredible! The way he'd caught the lingo, you would think that cupcakes were his hobby, not his livelihood.

'Hi there, Phil, I'm Jan. Your friend is cute.'

'And so is yours,' said Phil, as if to all this bullshit born.

This scintillating repartee was taking place in Maxwell's Prune, a very fancy singles bar at Sixty-fourth and First. Well, actually, its name is Maxwell's Plum, but my pervasive cynicism shrivels up the fruit of everybody else's optimism. Simply put, I hate the joint. I can't abide those self-styled beautiful young swingers chattering euphorically. And coming on like they were millionaires or literary critics. Or even really single.

'This is Oliver,' said Philip Cavilleri, suit by Robert Hall, coiffure by Dom of Cranston, cashmere sweater by Cardin (through Filene's basement).

'Hi, Ol,' said Jan. 'You're very cute. Are you a cookie-lover too?'

She maybe was a model. What the magazines call statuesque. To me she looked like a giraffe.

And of course she had a roly-poly friend. Marjory, who giggled when presented.

'Do you come here often?' queried Jan, the statuesque giraffe.

'Never,' I replied.

'Yeah, that's what everybody says. I only come on weekends. I'm from out of town.'

'What a coincidence,' said Phil, 'I also hail from out of town.'

'And you?' said Jan to me.

'I'm out to lunch,' I said.

'No shit,' said Jan.

'He means,' my colleague Philip interposed, 'we'd like to ask you both to dinner.'

'Cool,' said Jan.

We dined in some place down the block called Flora's Rib Cage.

'Very in,' said Jan.

But I might add not very inexpensive. Phil outwrestled me 1:0 get the check (although he couldn't hide his shock upon perusing it). He grandiosely paid it with his Master Charge. I imagined he would have to sell enormous quantities of cookies for this gesture …

'Are you very rich?' said giggly Marge to Phil.

'Well, let us say I am a man of means,' the Duke of Cranston answered, adding, 'though I'm not as cultured as my son-in-law.'

There was a little pause. Ah, quite a sticky wicket, this.

'Son-in-law?' said Jan. 'You two are, you know …?' And she waved her bony, long-nailed hand in interrogatory-circles.

Phil did not know how to answer, so I helped him, nodding yes.

'Hey, wow,' said Jan, 'that's far-out wild. But where's your wives?'

'Well … uh,' said Phil, 'they're … '