an artist, a jewelry designer with her own studio in Dahlonaga, a thriving arts and crafts village complete with a town square surrounded by antique shops, art galleries, and a scattering of coffeehouses and restaurants. Originally the town had been the site of the great gold rush that hit the Georgia Mountains years before anyone thought there might be gold in the west. Although many Californians would hate to know it, the famous call “there’s gold in them thar hills” referred to Dahlonaga, Georgia. The dome of the Georgia State Capitol on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in downtown Atlanta shines brightly in the southern sun coated with pure Georgia gold. Every ounce of it came from Dahlonaga. Barbara Coffino used some of that gold to make her jewelry.
She was a little older and just a little heavier, but she was often told she looked like Debra Winger. She certainly had some of the actress’s sexy, self-confident attitude. Leonard did a Chekhov play with her during her first season with the Players. She played a Russian woman of high nobility, and her costume was a flowing gown with a high waist, plunging neckline, and significant cleavage. One night she came off stage and whispered in his ear, “You have to stop looking at me like that-or ask me out.”
Their affair began that night. He and Nina had been together for so long, since college. It’s not that they had grown apart, but the spark was not much more than an ember and the heat was on low flame. He couldn’t help himself. He wanted Barbara and she wanted him. Barbara was divorced. Leonard, of course, had a wife and family. That fact seemed to bother him more than her. Barbara was content to spend time with Leonard as the opportunity arose. She led a busy, independent life. She made no demands on him that he was unable to fulfill. She had no intention of breaking up his family or of ever marrying Leonard Martin or anyone. They didn’t sneak around. Leonard never told Nina he had to meet someone for dinner or go out of town on business. He was always home for dinner. He was his own boss, answerable only to his partners. He made his own schedule. He would drive the forty-five minutes to Dahlonaga, spend a morning or an afternoon with Barbara, then drive back. Sure, he told the small lies. He’d say to Nina he had to get going early for a morning meeting. Sometimes, when Nina would call to see if Leonard could meet her for lunch, he would beg off, using the excuse he had to be somewhere else or that he just couldn’t get away. Most of the time Nina thought he was looking at a piece of real estate for a client or for some other purpose. At least Leonard believed that was what she thought and she never gave him reason to believe otherwise. So he told the little lies, nothing big, nothing specific. He had no trouble telling them. If she didn’t know, she couldn’t be hurt. He almost convinced himself he was doing the noble thing. When he refused breakfast this morning it was not because he was driving to Dahlonaga. At least not until later. He hadn’t seen Barbara in more than a week. He looked forward to spending the morning in bed with her.
As Ellie and others were fond of observing, middle age brought unwanted physical change. Leonard’s waistline had grown apace with his escalating net worth. Throughout the Reagan boom and into the Clinton years his stock investments and property interests thrived. Each year brought larger bonuses and shame-faced trips to the tailor.
All in all, Leonard and Nina Martin thought they had a bit more than most-certainly more than folks who didn’t like work, or had no get-up-and-go. They enjoyed their church, and loved their friends, and though neither was ignorant, or dense, or callous, both considered themselves the most average of Americans.
Leonard’s cell phone rang just before noon. He would not have taken it, but the phone was nearby and he saw that the call came from Ellie’s cell. She rarely called him, and Leonard felt a sharp concern that something was wrong with the boys. The voice was Mark’s.
“We’re having a cookout, Grandpa. Mamma and Nana said they want you to come here right now and eat some burgers with us by the pool. Okay?”
It was then that Nina took the phone from Mark. She said, “How about it? You want some?”
“How come the boys are still there?”
“They’ve been here all morning, in the pool mostly. They look like a couple of prunes. Ellie went shopping, but she’s back and we’re going to have a cookout-delicious, juicy, rare burgers. I know how much you like that.”
The invitation was more than appealing-grilling outdoors with the boys running around making noise, Ellie talking sensibly as she had now for several months, and Nina looking hopeful and young. Just then he would have preferred to be home, but he couldn’t leave Dahlonaga.
“Sorry dear,” he said. “I can’t. See you tonight.”
By one thirty Mark and Scott had stomach pain. By two they were throwing up. As the afternoon wore on their rising fever frightened Ellie and Nina. They put the boys in Ellie’s van and headed for North Fulton Regional Hospital, less than fifteen minutes away. “Mom,” said Ellie as she turned the car north on Alpharetta Highway, “I don’t feel well either.” Nina Martin didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to worry her daughter. But Nina’s effort to stay calm failed minutes later, when she fell to her knees in the hospital parking lot and vomited all over herself.
Leonard was still in Dahlonaga when Nick called, asked him where he was, and then, without waiting to be answered, told Leonard to get to the hospital as fast as he possibly could. When he arrived, police from the City of Alpharetta, and Fulton County cops, were crawling all over the North Fulton grounds. State Troopers too. Leonard parked and made his way to the main reception desk. He gave his name and two women quickly approached. They identified themselves as employees of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The first-dark, dumpy, and sweet-voiced-said, “Mr. Martin, do you know what your wife and family ate this morning? What they had for lunch? Did you eat the same food yourself?”
“We’ll need to examine you too,” said the other, slimmer, pale, and gruff. “Make sure you check with us before you leave.”
“What’s going on here?” he said.
A tall man in a white coat appeared. “What’s your name?” he asked, and when Leonard told him, he took Leonard firmly by the arm, saying, “Please come with me.” They walked down a noisy, crowded hallway, chaos gaining a foothold around them. It was almost four o’clock. The man in the coat told Leonard that both boys had died an hour before. Then he dropped him off in a bad-smelling room where Nina lay beside two other women, all slack, pallid, unconscious. He sat there for twenty minutes and then found Ellie four rooms down. She was in and out of consciousness, sometimes moaning, sometimes saying, “Daddy, where are the boys?”
Nina died at four thirty, her moist hand limp in Leonard’s. Ellie finally went at five seventeen.
At six, Leonard attempted to leave. Police still surrounded the building. Official-looking people rushed through the halls. One of them seemed to know who he was and led him to an examination room. A doctor showed up minutes later and worked him over, asking questions he did not hear, or did not understand. And then he was outside, sitting in his car, staring at glints of the late afternoon southern sun in the hospital’s dark reflective glass.
He remembered talk of a virus, bacteria, something-people may have mentioned meat. It had no particular meaning. He’d been sitting in the car for an hour before a Georgia State Trooper asked if he was feeling all right.
He did not know how he got home, but Carter was in the driveway when he did-skinny frame more insubstantial than ever, all too likely, it seemed to Leonard, to blow away in the slightest breeze, reddened eyes sunk impossibly deep in colorless hollows. They’d missed each other, somehow, at North Fulton. Carter followed him into the house, into the darkening living room, neither speaking nor moving where they sat. And then the phone started ringing.
People said Harvey Daniels took it the worst. From the moment they met he’d mistaken Lenny for his older brother-the one his parents neglected to provide; the strong, good-natured gentleman brute who’d be there when little Harvey cried for protection. Harvey knew from the instant he got the news that Leonard Martin was lost to him. He wept so inconsolably that Ginny, his wife, had him put on medication. And she kept him from daily haunting the Martin house, sensibly aware that Leonard had enough to carry.
Nick Stevenson was another matter. Now silver-haired, he’d long ago assumed the pose of a good grandee-a sometime southern progressive, a symbol of lawyerly elegance. He avoided the really taxing work, the mind- numbing legal cogitating that Harvey seemed to enjoy, the hard-boiled wrangling Leonard always seemed made for. He mobilized good looks, good golf, and good manners to constantly expand a roster of platinum-plated clients. He did his share of the thinking too, but mostly on a strategic level-who needed what from whom. His honesty no longer set off jokes; it was no longer quite so obsessive. But his handshake was absolutely firm and everyone in Atlanta knew it. There was a vault-full of equity in that.
He wept at the news, as did his wife, their kids, and their eldest grandchild-all of whom held the Martins closer than most of their larger family. But grief did not disable Nick. It turned him into a battle wagon. He thrust
