Part 25 (1/2)
WITHIN TWO YEARS of recruiting me to the work on intellectual property, Fran suffered a recurrence of the breast cancer that she had beaten into remission a few years before. The news weighed heavily: her mother, sister, grandmother-virtually every female in her family-had succ.u.mbed to the same disease. As her treatment, and the illness itself, progressed, she was less and less present. For a time, I depended on her guidance over the phone and tried to cheer her on through that same thin connection, but she was failing rapidly.
When I was up for partner in my fourth year at the end of 1988, she came into the office for the first time in months to cast her vote. She had lost a lot of weight and was very frail, but her spark was still there. That night, she and her husband, Bob, took me to dinner at La Cote Basque. It was my first time at a restaurant of such stellar opulence, and I was thrilled by the experience, though sad to see that Fran could barely eat. The outcome of the partners.h.i.+p vote was still under wraps, so it wasn't obvious yet that there was reason to party, but Fran couldn't wait. ”You'll have to pretend that you don't know what I'm going to tell you, but tonight we celebrate!”
Later, as we stood at the curb while Bob was getting the car, Fran looked me up and down. ”If you're going to become a partner, you'll have to dress the part. Fendi is your client now. You should represent them appropriately. You need to buy a Fendi fur coat.”
”Fran, I don't want a fur coat!” She sounded like my mother complaining about the way I dressed. I already had a wonderful relations.h.i.+p with the Fendi family, and it didn't depend on my wearing haute couture. Alessandro, the young lawyer who was apprenticing to the family business, had become a good friend over months of daily phone calls between New York and Rome, at all hours, irrespective of my time zone or his. Eventually, I helped to smooth the way for him and his wife, Fe, to move to the United States, and after some initial reluctance they would become confirmed New Yorkers, deeply in love with their adopted home and pa.s.sionate in their support of its cultural life.
It was Alessandro's grandmother Adele who, with her husband, had established the Fendi name as the epitome of Italian luxury, quality, and design. It was she too who had groomed each of her five daughters to a.s.sume a different facet of the financial or creative management, their husbands in turn also drawn into the family business. Alessandro was therefore perfectly at ease working with a.s.sertive women, and I instinctively warmed to a business environment bound together by strong family ties. It was a natural collaboration.
Princeton and Yale had furnished me my first glimpses of how the extremely privileged lived. Working at Pavia & Harcourt would give me an even better look, with invitations to social events hosted by wealthy clients, where a kid from the Bronx would incredulously find herself rubbing shoulders with the likes of Raquel Welch and Luciano Pavarotti. Still, I felt much more like an observer than a partic.i.p.ant in the splendor. The Fendis' friends.h.i.+p pulled back the curtain onto a more private world of luxury and exquisite taste. When I visited their place in Rome and vacationed with them across Europe, my eyes were opened not only to the finest of modern Italian design and a glorious cla.s.sical legacy but to an entirely different sensibility. Spirited through celebrations of theatrical enchantment, I collected dreams to last a lifetime. Perhaps also a certain understanding, and with it the confidence that comes of having seen life from all sides.
What mattered most of all, though, was that they became family. Alessandro is a brother to me. He'll jump to my defense ferociously-I daresay he'd offer to meet you with pistols at dawn if my honor was at stake. I, in turn, wouldn't pause to draw breath before boarding the next flight to be by his side in a moment of need. Just as I never hesitated to invite his parents, Paola and Ciro, to Co-op City for Thanksgiving dinner at my mother's.
CHAPTER Twenty-Eight
A COUPLE OF WEEKS after my celebratory dinner with Fran and her husband, George Pavia called me into his office so he and Dave Botwinik could tell me, this time officially, that the firm's partners had elected me to members.h.i.+p. The good news came with a curious proviso, words that have stuck in my mind. ”It's clear that you won't stay in private practice forever,” George said. ”We know you're destined for the bench someday. Dave is even convinced you'll go all the way to the Supreme Court. But with this offer, we ask only that you remain with us as long as you continue in private practice.”
To offer a partners.h.i.+p to someone not planning to stick around was unusually generous, especially in a firm so small that each partner is an integral part of the team. I accepted with enormous grat.i.tude but also obvious mortification at Dave's fantastical prophecy. If he could have known that I'd dreamed of becoming a judge since childhood, I might have taken it as an affectionate but overheated compliment. In fact, though, I had long refrained from verbalizing the ambition, understanding that any federal judges.h.i.+p would require a rare alignment of political forces, as well as no small bit of luck. Dave may have intuited the direction of my dreams-as I would soon see, there was at least one other thing I kept mum about that was more obvious than I'd imagined-but even so, his talking about the Supreme Court like that made me wince, the way you might when an uncle exaggerates your accomplishments. It was awkward to hear such a naive thought from someone I respected so deeply, and I felt embarra.s.sed for my Rabbi. I also felt strangely exposed standing there as colleagues alluded casually to my secret pipe dream in the same breath they were marking the professional milestone of my making partner, and even more so with the shadow of Fran's death looming.
When she finally lost her fight the following spring, the loss devastated everyone. Each death of someone close to me has come as a slap, reminding me again of my own mortality, compelling me to ask: What am I accomplis.h.i.+ng? Is my life meaningful? When Abuelita died, I felt spurred to study even harder in college. When it was Nelson's time, I could no longer put off thinking about life beyond the DA's Office. Fran had entrusted me with the groundbreaking work in intellectual property that would become her legacy, and when she died, I threw myself into it with my best single-mindedness. Still, to see her go at fifty-seven, only one year younger than I am now, fired my habitual sense that I might not have enough time to make a real run at my ultimate goal.
I've lived most of my life inescapably aware that it is precious and finite. The reality of diabetes always lurked in the back of my mind, and early on I accepted the probability that I would die young. There was no point fretting about it; I have never worried about what I can't control. But nor could I waste what time I had; some inner metronome has continued to set a beat I am unable to refuse. Now diabetes has become more manageable, and I no longer fear falling short in the tally of years. But the habit of living as if in the shadow of death has remained with me, and I consider that, too, a gift.
ON A GLORIOUS DAY at the end of June, a group of friends were celebrating my thirty-seventh birthday with a barbecue in my backyard. I was lucky to have stumbled on the apartment right down the block from my old place and Dawn's, lucky to have grabbed it at a discount before the co-op conversion was even concluded, and luckier still that Dave Botwinik helped me find an unusually affordable loan for the down payment. Best of all, the backyard was perfect for parties.
Everyone was taken care of. All their gla.s.ses were filled. Let them dance, I thought. Exhausted, I needed to lie down for a few minutes. I didn't feel right, light-headed, but once supine I couldn't get my body to move. Eventually, I managed to drag myself off the bed, opening the screen door to the backyard. But that was as far as I could get. I needed to sit down right there. Fortunately, there was a step. And there was Theresa. She was talking to me, but I couldn't make out the words. She came closer, still talking gibberish. There was something in her hand that I wanted badly. I needed it. I grabbed for it, but my aim was shaky. I smashed the piece of birthday cake into my mouth. Theresa stood there with her own mouth open in shock. I must have looked pretty disconcerting with frosting smeared all over my face.
When I recovered and we talked about what had happened, Theresa told me that although she was vaguely aware that I was diabetic, she had no knowledge of what a sugar low looked like. Friends who saw me lie down just a.s.sumed that I'd had a few too many. But I was so busy playing host that I hadn't had even one yet. The card I'd been given as a child was still in my wallet, carried around for all these years. I'd made it to my thirty-seventh birthday with no occasion for someone to pull it out. It said:
I HAVE DIABETES
I AM NOT drunk. If I am unconscious or acting strangely, I may have low blood sugar.
EMERGENCY TREATMENT
I need sugar immediately. If I am able to swallow, give me candy, soda pop, fruit juice or table sugar. If I cannot swallow or do not recover within 15 minutes, call a doctor or the closest emergency medical help and tell them I have diabetes.
Very few of my friends were aware of my being a type 1 diabetic and completely dependent on insulin shots. Not that I was aware of hiding it. I would have said that I was being politely discreet, but the truth is my secrecy was a deeply ingrained habit. I was averse to any revelations that might have seemed a play for pity. And managing this disease all my life had been the hallmark of the self-reliance that had saved me as a child, even if it may have partly cost me a marriage. I didn't need anyone's help with it. But in truth, I was more vulnerable than I was willing to admit.
The secrecy wasn't simply in my nature. When I was young, disabilities and illnesses of all sorts were governed by a code of silence. Such things were private matters, and you didn't speak about them outside the family. I wouldn't have dreamed of giving myself a shot in public, though I rarely had to worry about that because I was only taking one shot a day, first thing in the morning. If the situation somehow arose, traveling or spending a night away from home, my mother would tell me to go do it in the bathroom.
When I was a teenager, there was nothing to be gained by advertising that I was carrying around needles and syringes in a neighborhood where so many people were using heroin. Walking to work at Prospect Hospital one day, I tripped and spilled the contents of my bag at the feet of a police officer. There on the sidewalk lay my ”works”; I happened to be carrying a syringe and needle, having planned to spend the night at Abuelita's. ”Oh, no, no,” said the cop incredulously as I explained, scooping everything up as fast as I could with trembling hands. My explanation carried no weight; neither did my bottle of insulin. What crazy story would a junkie come up with next? I had to persuade him to walk with me to the hospital so my supervisor could vouch for me. I was completely terrified: an arrest would have dimmed any hope of college, let alone law school.