Ms Demeanor E-Book

Elinor Lipman

• Herausgeber: Lightning Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 342

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

FINALIST FOR THE THURBER PRIZE 'A joyride with a potent dose of wry social commentary' New York Times 'I never miss one of Elinor Lipman's funny, delightful novels' Judy Blume authorAre You There God? Jane Morgan is a valued member of her law firm – or was, until a prudish neighbour, binoculars poised, observes her having sex on the roof of her Manhattan apartment building. Police are summoned, and a judge sentences her to six months of home confinement. With Jane now jobless and rootless, trapped at home, life looks bleak. Yes, her twin sister provides support and advice, but mostly of the unwelcome kind. So, when a doorman lets slip that Jane isn't the only resident of her building wearing an ankle monitor, she strikes up a friendship with fellow white-collar felon Perry Salisbury. As she tries to adapt to her new circumstances, she discovers she hasn't heard the end of that nosy neighbour – whose past isn't as decorous as her snitching would suggest. Why are police knocking on Jane's door again? Might her house arrest have a silver lining? Can two wrongs make a right?

Leseprobe

Praise for Ms. Demeanor

‘Ms. Demeanor is a complete and utter delight. Of course it is. What Elinor Lipman novel isn’t?’

Richard Russo

‘I love the wit, lightness of touch, dry, wry humour and optimism of Elinor Lipman’s writing’

Marian Keyes

‘I never miss one of Elinor Lipman’s funny, delightful novels’

Judy Blume

‘Charm and clever high-jinks with a potent dose of wry social commentary. It’s not every day that a reader gets to root for an unrepentant middle-aged woman. Lipman makes this envelope-pushing feel like a joyride – but don’t be fooled by all the fun. Barriers are being broken. That a scandalous woman’s happy ending feels so inevitable turns out to be its own triumph – as much a clap back to sexism as a celebration of guiltless pleasure’

New York Times

‘Who knew house arrest could be sexy and fun? Not me, at least not until I read Ms. Demeanor. Written with Elinor Lipman’s signature wit and charm, this breezy, engrossing novel tells the story of two people who make the most of their shared confinement’

Tom Perrotta

‘Best Lipman work yet! Ms. Demeanor cooks up a bounty of delights as sparkling as prosecco and as deeply satisfying and delicious as a five-star meal’

Caroline Leavitt

‍‘Flawless – has such a light hand while drawing the characters precisely. It’s wonderful. Her best to date’

Jane Hamilton

‘Lipman, a master chef of literary romantic comedy, cooks up a deliciously entertaining story whose ingredients include wit, sass, sex, and social satire. Ms. Demeanor is Lipman’s fourteenth novel and one of her best’

Wally Lamb

‘Elinor Lipman, she of the lightest touch and quickest wit, has written a novel to delight even the weariest, wariest soul of our times. Art, food, real estate – New York City rises enthusiastically to embrace the reader. And the characters rise to embrace each other. An enchantment that I, for one, really needed’

Cathleen Schine‍

BOOKS BY ELINOR LIPMAN

Into Love and Out Again

Then She Found Me

The Way Men Act

Isabel’s Bed

The Inn at Lake Devine

The Ladies’ Man

The Dearly Departed

The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

My Latest Grievance

The Family Man

Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus

The View from Penthouse B

I Can’t Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays

On Turpentine Lane

Good Riddance

Rachel to the Rescue

Published in 2023

by Lightning Books

Imprint of Eye Books Ltd

29A Barrow Street

Much Wenlock

Shropshire

TF13 6EN

www.eye-books.com

Copyright © Elinor Lipman 2023

First published by Harper Perennial in 2023

Cover by Ifan Bates

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. The events depicted in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781785633829

To the memory of Mameve Medwed,beloved best friend and most charitable critic

Contents

REGRETTABLYIT BEGINSTWO DISTINCT LITTLE GIRLSDO YOU KNOW MR. SALISBURY?AS OPPOSED TO SING SINGNOT WHAT I SIGNED UP FORLET’S GET THIS OVER WITHI’D RATHER NOT GO INTO ITPOULET À LA JANEI’LL FIGURE IT OUTPRETEND NO ONE’S WATCHINGSCENE OF THE CRIMEDINNER IS SERVEDNONE OF MY BUSINESSCOMPANYTHE LAY OF THE LANDWEIRD IF I COME TOO?I ONLY HAVE MYSELF TO BLAMENEW HORIZONSTMIIT’S TRICKY, THOUGHIN THE SAME BOATTHE PROS AND CONSAS READY AS I’LL EVER BEARE YOU SITTING DOWN?GOOD COP/BAD COPCOUNT ME INAND THE GOAL HERE IS WHAT?THE MISSION IS WHAT?HOLDING ME HARMLESSTHE MORNING AFTERSIDELONG GLANCESYOU MUST BE MRS. SALISBURYSTATES OF MINDCHRISTMAS MIRACLECASE CLOSEDA REUNION FOR SUREDOUBLE DATEMEMORANDUM AND ORDERWINDOW TABLEI SUPPOSE IT WOULDN’T KILL ME TO TAKE A LOOKWOMAN TO WOMANDREAM DRESSESTHANK YOU, FRANCES FITZROYLADIES’ LUNCHWE FOUR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

1

regrettably

Let’s say there were two people, a man and a woman, lounging on the rooftop terrace of an apartment building in midtown Manhattan. She is thirty-nine, a lawyer. He, on the neighboring chaise longue, is twenty-six, a new associate in the same firm who has this night confessed to a crush that was not brushed aside as workplace guidelines required.

We’ll call him Noah, and we’ll call her me. It’s barely our first date, after a less-than-professional conversation in a long checkout line at Trader Joe’s. We have a drink or two at a nearby Mexican restaurant. We return to my building, specifically for me to show off its newest and proudest amenity, our tiled, furnished and landscaped roof with its view of Central Park one way and Times Square blinking to the south.

It is a June night with ideal 75-ish degree breezes blowing. Above us was not just a full moon but a blood moon, huge and red.

Man, woman, mojitos. One thing leads to another, just the way Miss Freitas warned in junior high sex ed. It is past the hour at which the building lights automatically go off.

Noah asks, after a long, companionable silence on our separate chaises, “Did you ever skinny dip?” It is, I assume, a purely academic question since there is no pool in my building. I say, “Once or twice.”

He then asks, “Do other people use the roof this late?”

I tell him I don’t know. This is the latest I’ve ever been up here.

“No pressure,” he assures me, “but do you mind if I take my clothes off? The breeze is beautiful. It’ll be like moonbathing.”

I don’t object. Workplace ethics aside, who wouldn’t be a little curious, given what sounded like anatomical pride. And who would know?

I could hear the squeak of the chaise as he lifted his butt, presumably to peel off whatever, if any, underwear a twenty-six-year-old wears.

I say, “If anyone at work ever found out…”

“I’m not stupid. No one ever will.” And then, “It feels great. It’s like the breezes are massaging me. If I fall asleep, wake me when you want me to leave.”

What could be more benign than that? No agenda, no pressure, no suggestion that I too might enjoy these tickling breezes on parts rarely exposed to the elements.

After a few more minutes, I volunteer, “Maybe just my dress.”

“Totally up to you.”

What makes my disrobing a bigger leap than I might otherwise have undertaken is that this halter dress is equipped with an interfacing that imparts built-in support. In other words, I am braless.

Why be a prude? The Eagle Scout’s eyes aren’t even open.

There I lie, my dress bunching around my waist, more suitable for a mammogram than moonbathing. It takes some sashaying in place, but I work everything down and off—everything—proving I am just as much a cool and carefree exhibitionist as any movie-star-handsome paralegal, thirteen years my junior.

Now what? Sit back and mimic his atmospheric gusto?

I hear, “Better not look,” followed by “Sorry!”

I do look. Even in the dark I can see his two hands trying to conceal a bobbing penis.

Not unflattered I say, “It’s not doing anyone any harm.” We are both silent until I ask, “Would you like me to touch it?”

Then we are, side by side on the narrow chaise, hip to hip. Did I not know fully that our kissing would make his condition more acute? I say, “Maybe we should go downstairs to my apartment.”

“Are you cold?”

I say no, hardly. I meant it would just be more comfortable. Just for…never mind. Don’t stop.

The exceedingly polite Noah asks with every advance, “Are you sure?”

Having broken my own loose rule about no sex until the fifth date; maybe second, third or fourth, depending, I intended to comply with the firm’s sexual harassment guidelines. Tomorrow, first thing, I’d disclose to H.R. in the strictest confidence that Noah and I were seeing each other. Yes, maybe delivered ex post facto, but disclosure nonetheless. Easy. No worries.

I was wrong, very. Because across the street, from a comparable elevation, a law-and-order prude of a Mother Superior couldn’t take her eyes off us.

She called 9-1-1, sounding frantic over a crime taking place on the floor directly opposite her— in public! She was appalled, disgusted, shocked. She was shaking! Send someone!

When the police arrived and asked, “What do you want us to do?” she could have said, “Just tell them never to do it again.”

But no. She wanted us arrested! She’d seen our private parts! And here, if the officers didn’t believe her, the video on her phone! Is this not indecent exposure? Is this not lewd and lascivious behavior?

The officers crossed the street, badged my overnight doorman, asked if he could identify any of these people from the video, now transferred to their phones.

Whatever Andres said – maybe “Hard to tell with them moving. I think it’s Miss Morgan in 6-J” – up they went to the roof, knocked on the door, announced “Police!”

As we scrambled for our clothes, I yelled, “Give us a sec! I’m fine! We’re on a date,” and when we were both covered and upright, “Okay, you can come in now.”

They did. A man and a woman, unsmiling, both short, both solid. Noah volunteered, “If you need me to leave so she can confirm that she’s safe and this is all consensual—”

Both officers, I thought, were looking more apologetic than constabular. “No,” said the male officer, “We’re following up on a 9-1-1 call about a crime in progress.”

I told them I was a lawyer. What crime?

“Indecent exposure…” then, quietly, “Exposing genitals to the public.”

“This is private property, a co-op! I own shares in this building!”

He looked skyward. “Open air, exposed. The victim was able to videotape you. It’s as good as a public place.”

I said, “Victim! Isn’t being a peeping Tom a crime? I’ll countersue!”

“We’re obliged to follow up, Ma’am,” he said. “It’s about the victim’s mindset. To her, it was a shock.”

“She had palpitations,” said his partner.

“Where is she?” I asked, but it was obvious—surveilling us from the terrace directly across Seventh Avenue, with its show-off potted plants and trellises decorated for every stupid holiday.

I might as well have streaked down Fifth Avenue. In the wattage of a full moon we’d committed a lewd public act or two, considered by the traumatized killjoy across the street as gross indecency and “putting on a show.”

The summons brought us a day in court. Represented by a senior member of my firm, Noah got a fine. I, a litigator, represented myself, sure that any judge would find that two consenting adults having sex on private property had done no one any harm.

During my allocution, pre-sentencing, I couldn’t bring myself to apologize. I suggested that what happened on my terrace happened all over the city, all over the country, weather permitting, between consenting adults.

“Does that make it right?” the judge asked. “Her grandchildren could’ve been visiting.”

For my gross indecency, my apparent lack of remorse and (unstated) promiscuity, for workplace sexual harassment, not even charged but implied; for the grainy photo published in the New YorkPost, identifying me with the suffix J.D., he made an example of me, an officer of the court. He imposed a fine of $2,000 and one hundred and eighty freaking days of home confinement. Three already-miserable weeks later I received a letter of censure from the Bar Association with a notice that my hard-earned, income-granting, pride-affirming license to practice law had been suspended.

2

it begins

Who didn’t suggest that I view my sentence as a sabbatical, a much-needed rest from briefs and deadlines and clients? Would they like to try six months off without travel or passport, without weekends away, or nights out, with the only fresh air available from the roof that was the scene of their crime?

If I heard a note of disapproval in anyone’s helpful hint, I’d nip it in the bud. Bad behavior or just bad luck? Yes, I may have been having sex al fresco with someone – heaven forfend– I wasn’t married to, but it’s not a crime per se until observed by someone with a 9-1-1 trigger-happy finger.

“Doesn’t your building have a gym?” was a favorite palliative. It did, but only someone with the whole city at his or her disposal would consider an in-house gym to be a substitute for real life.

I made a list of might-do activities I could perform solo, indoors: read books; watch TV series that everyone had discussed with passion in the firm’s break room; learn to play an instrument, keep a journal, meditate, do jigsaw and crossword puzzles; relearn to knit; hook a rug, needlepoint a pillow; paint, write letters, write a novel, write poems; cook, bake, feed a sourdough starter. The culinary activities were inspired by my state-of-the-art kitchen, no credit to me, but to the previous owner’s expensive choices.

Those generous-for-Manhattan hundred square feet of kitchen were what gave my sister ideas on how to keep me busy – the word sister not telling the whole story because we are identical twins, Jane Morgan, J.D. and Jackleen Morgan, M.D., a dermatologist with a flourishing solo practice on the Upper East Side.

A factor in her efforts to support me was her belief that she was partially responsible for my home confinement. Having attended my hearing for moral support, dressed in a red suit and a feathered black fascinator, sitting directly and identically behind me, glaring at the judge…might he have noticed, she asked.

I knew her. I heard her self-blame not as guilt over her courtroom behavior, but as her life-long belief that she is the center of attention, that the male judge couldn’t help but notice her, intuit her judicial animus, and punish the nearest defendant for it.

My parents and I don’t know why Jackleen sees herself as the more important, grander twin. Is it nomenclature? Me, Jane, she Jackleen, “Jacqueline” on her birth certificate, shortened and made cuter in high school? True, she’s a doctor, but I’m a lawyer! We earned the same ribbons in high school sports and went to the same college. As to her airs of superiority and her bossiness, when challenged, she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

But my bad luck has brought out the best in Jackleen. Without mentioning money, without asking me directly how I was paying my bills, she was finding ways to underwrite my unemployed existence. It wasn’t the unvarnished writing of checks, but support both subtle and unsubtle, literal and figurative. She is ambitious on my behalf, and with her practice thriving, she is generous; so generous that I’ve stopped mentioning things I want or need, her retention so good that the book or earrings or slow cooker I’ve admired show up within days. I don’t love being a charity case, but having turned myself into an unemployed outlaw, I’m in no position to reject her noblesse oblige. And the friends with all the suggestions about how to fill my hours, who might visit or send a note, a book, a bottle of wine? Where are they now?

Since the first week of my confinement, Jackleen and I talk daily, and have a standing Sunday night dinner, always her treat, a bounty of extras delivered so I’ll have leftovers. The day she suggested we forgo our usual take-out, I sensed she was up to something and asked why.

She missed my cooking! Why order in when we could have one of my brilliant meals? More transparent compliments followed: what I produced was creative and delicious. And my gorgeous kitchen! Was I using it to its full capacity? She wished her kitchen had that double oven, these six burners, that trash compactor.

I said, “But you never cook. You keep boxes of shoes in your oven. What’s really up?”

She said, “I have an idea. I’ll tell you over dinner tomorrow! Order anything and everything you want,” she said, her Fresh Direct password texted as we spoke.

I was susceptible. I had no income. I paid my maintenance and utilities from savings; didn’t want to touch my 401K or take handouts from my parents.

Sunday night arrived with the many indulgences I’d ordered, starting with Maine lobsters. She complimented every morsel – the salad with its radishes and heirloom tomatoes; the corn, the melted butter, the reduced-fat Cape Cod Potato Chips. She praised not just my culinary expertise and presentation, but the courage it took to plunge the lobsters into boiling water. Maybe she was a New Englander, too, but clearly I’d been the one who’d gotten the cooking gene!

She was a doctor. Did I have to point out that we had identical DNA? “What’s up – really?” I asked.

She put down her lobster tail, fork embedded for the extrication. I knew, didn’t I, that she’d been to a derm conference in L.A. the previous week? On the second day, she’d heard a Beverly Hills dermatologist rave about his genius hire of a nutritionist for his boutique practice. “Word will get around,” he told the breakout session. Dr. So-and-So’s practice comes with food advocacy! The patient leaves, maybe glowing after a chemical peel, with a list of healthy oils and omega-3 fatty acids, guaranteed to increase her collagen production. Her friends think, wow she looks great. Do any of their friends’ doctors offer this service? No! They switch to you!

“Are you going to follow his advice?” I asked innocently, pretending it wasn’t a pitch to me.

She said no, not hiring a nutritionist. Maybe…a food guide and recipe curator?

“Me?”

“You’d be great!”

Zero appeal notwithstanding, I asked, “Are you talking about putting recipes on your website?”

“Or a booklet. Or maybe just a handout, something like ‘Eat your way to more beautiful skin.’ You’ll test the recipes, and of course they’ll do double duty as your lunches and dinners.”

That part was good, the financing of my meals.

Jackleen continued, “We’ll call it Skinutrition. One word. I coined it myself.”

“Just recipes, right?”

“We’ll see…but definitely with a narrative. You’ll tell our story—the one that says cooking has been in our DNA for generations.”

She knew me so well. She knew how to get my attention. “Great Aunt Margaret?” I asked.

“Great Aunt Margaret,” she confirmed.

Great-great Aunt Margaret, actually. Her time in the sun was, by today’s standards, quiet and sweet. Jackleen and I, our mother and our maternal grandmother, had been raised on a short, disarming chapter titled “Father Hires a Cook,” in the once-ubiquitous and best-selling 1935 memoir, Life with Father, by Clarence Day, yet a hand-me-down family favorite.

My mother and I, especially, loved the whole idea of our Margaret, the Days’ longtime cook, portrayed in every adaptation—radio, Broadway, movie, TV! Her manner was humble, her devotion legendary, her stews unequaled.

I didn’t answer Jackleen right away; didn’t tell her that she’d gotten my attention with the mention of our distant relative who’d been played by an unglamorous British silent film star in the movie version. I’d said only, “I have to think it over.”

I didn’t ask the most obvious questions – why go to this trouble? – because I knew she would say, “It’ll be a great patient perk” rather than the truth: that her younger-by-nine-minutes sister needed something to keep her busier than her police procedurals on BritBox.

I kept ordering with her blessing from Fresh Direct and Whole Foods, using her passwords, forwarding the emailed receipts, as if my food bills were accruing to some legitimate business account benefiting Jacqueline Morgan, M.D. FAAD, FAACS.

I’ve left out the biggest credit to Jackleen of all, the highest test of loyalty, which is also the most painful and public thing that my felony produced: the black and white photo of me in carnal action, in the New York Post, under the headline “Lewd & Law-scivious!” True, you couldn’t see my face, and there was a black bar over my naked rear end, but I was identified by name and occupation. Potentially embarrassing to her why? Because if it had been her picture in the Post, would I worry that clients and casual acquaintances might mistake me for her? Those stupid alliterative names – which J was this one, on top of a supine man, acting out public indecency? Which one was the lawyer and which one was the doctor? Different haircuts not withstanding, at thirty-nine – unfortunately not my body of ten years ago – and blurry, we remain pretty much identical. I looked up the Post’s circulation: 230,634. Did I know one of them? It didn’t matter. I had a listed landline, and for two weeks after the picture ran, men called, asking for Attorney Jane Morgan. All claimed impressive physical attributes I’d surely enjoy, had pressing legal problems such as separations and divorces, and all wanted to make evening appointments.

The photograph caused some tension at home with Jackleen’s overly protective boyfriend, who bought all the offending copies at their corner newsstand, so no one else could. His disapproval and her defense of me started a rent in the fabric of their otherwise harmonious cohabitation. Jane, she argued, had done nothing that any hotblooded thirty-something in New York wouldn’t have done! A gross miscarriage of justice meets yellow journalism! He’d better not say one word that suggested otherwise! And if she was putting food on my table, tough luck! It wasn’t his money or his business.

Not that we needed more bonding or a common enemy, but she and I had been awarded one for life, my nemesis, the woman who called 9-1-1 in the first place. Jackleen and I never missed an opportunity to rail, “Did she who lives in a penthouse need the few bucks she’d probably been paid by the Post to further grind her deeply offended heel into my neck while zealously recording what she couldn’t bear to witness? Hypocrite! What is wrong with people?”

3

two distinct little girls

When Jackleen and I were twelve, our mother went back to work, afternoons, teaching arts and crafts at the Harrow Girls’ Club. We were deemed old enough to be home alone and to use the stove unsupervised. Instructions awaited us on the round maple kitchen table: “J or J: preheat oven to 350º at 5. Chopped beef is in Pyrex bowl. Add egg, ½ cup breadcrumbs, mustard, ketchup, salt, pepper. Put in loaf pan. Bake 35-40 mins. Scrub 4 potatoes. Put in at same time ”

Meatloaf on Monday, chicken Tuesday, pork chops with cream of mushroom soup on Wednesday, spaghetti on Thursday, hot dogs and beans on Friday. If not baked potatoes then mashed, peeled between One Life to Live and General Hospital.

Back from the bus stop, our mother would rush into the kitchen, tie her apron over her blouse and skirt, round out the meal with a can of peas, a frozen package of broccoli or supermarket coleslaw.

Despite the “J or J” of the salutation, dinner became my chore alone. Jackleen wasn’t willing to swap her table-clearing and dishwashing for the task that took me away from our favorite soaps.

My parents had met mistakenly at her mother’s wake, my father offering his hand and condolences to a very pretty mourner, unaware till he glanced at the open casket that he was not at his elderly male colleague’s memorial service, one flight up.

He was thirty-nine, never married, an associate professor of art history, later the department chairman, admired by many students at the all-women’s Macmillan College, famously too decent to seduce or be seduced.

He was a fond and proud father in a distracted way, his head in clouds and the Renaissance, reading and studying, squinting at slides. When we visited the campus as preschoolers, we’d color or read in his office, a plum corner one, under the eaves in the college library. He’d select a book, big enough to span both laps. We’d been shown how to turn pages gingerly, from the corner with our clean hands, because there were masterpieces on every page. Bruegel was our favorite; all those little people!

Occasional lunches in the faculty dining room gave us a taste of celebrity. Who is Jane and who is Jackie? was everyone’s favorite question. Our father or Jacqueline herself would correct the uncalled-for nicknaming. The woman behind the grill would ask, “The usual, ladies?” which thrilled us. Yes, the usual! Grilled cheese and French fries. And we hadn’t been there for weeks!

We were present the day a colleague stopped by our table, tray in hand, and said to our father, “I note that whenever I see your girls, they’re dressed identically.”

He’d smiled and nodded, processing her observation as a compliment.

“And their names are?” she’d asked.

He’d told her: Jane and Jacqueline.

Wincing, she’d explained that she’d published papers on twins, on independence and selfhood. Monozygotic twins were of special fascination. It was best for them, for their sense of identity, to be treated as individuals, to foster friendships as singletons. To enjoy separate playdates. And very important: He should refer to us as “Jane and Jacqueline” rather than “the twins.”

He may have been too polite to say, “Sally and I know all of this. She was a teacher herself. We’ve read extensively about twins since the first ultrasound. As for the clothing, surely you must know that well-meaning relatives sent nothing but matching outfits.”

He thanked her; probably repeated the conversation to my mother, who might’ve asked, “We do, don’t we, view them and treat them as two distinct little girls?”

We were distinct: good soldier versus luminary; secretary-treasurer versus class president. Despite my near-equally good grades, despite the shared, avid hours of TV, Jackleen was the high achiever and I the…what? The people-pleaser. The helpmeet; the daughter who not only preheated the oven, but also turned ingredients into suppers.

Appreciated by my parents? Yes. A smile or wink bestowed after saying grace over dinner, as if thanking not only God but me for these fruits of the table? True. A dividend paid on my weekly allowance as well? Yes.

I’d ask Jackleen in private to stop bragging about my ability to put a pan of Shake ’n’ Bake drumsticks in the oven. “Jane is a great cook,” she’d say to some fifteen-year-old boy for whom “great” or “good” cook or “couldn’t boil an egg,” figured nowhere on his list of girlfriend prerequisites. I like to think she wasn’t purposely undermining me; wasn’t putting an unspoken “plain” before the “Jane.”

I’d amused various acquaintances over the years by describing the lockstep menu we’d been raised on. “Wait!” my audience would exclaim. “Every week the same exact meals? Pork chops every Tuesday? You’re kidding!” Ironically, it was Jackleen who advised me to find a better, more engaging conversational gambit. “Time to retire that story,” she said more than once.

I finally did. Being an identical twin was enough to drop into a conversation, especially with men. Besides, who dwells on her after-school chores, especially after reaching adulthood, graduating from law school, clerking for a judge, joining a firm, and passing the bar?

Not me, not for decades.

4

do you know mr. salisbury?

My home confinement began on July 4th, a date that mocked the concept of liberty and independence. On that holiday night, I avoided my previously favorite building amenity, the landscaped roof with its fig trees and flowering bushes, expecting it to be crowded with neighbors who knew me only as the building’s outlaw. So instead of watching the sky bursting with fireworks, I remained downstairs, putting talcum powder between my chafed skin and my ankle monitor.

Were there friends, acquaintances, partners, associates or clients keeping in touch? Not so far. Shouldn’t Noah have found some way to sneak me an apology – written, oral, electronic, parole conditions notwithstanding? When my thoughts ran in that direction I scolded myself. Jane! He’s twenty-seven! It’s his fault! Who in their right mind strips naked on the roof of a mid-town Manhattan apartment building in broad moonlight? And there I was, the reluctant nudist, punished to the maximum extent of the law, one ankle bracelet short of an orange jumpsuit. Forget Noah! You don’t even want to hear from that exhibitionist!

My monitor allowed me to traverse my entire building, a decent range if I didn’t think about the twenty-three square miles of Manhattan beyond my front door. I’d moved into 6-J only six workaholic weeks before, failing to mingle or join the co-op’s various boards and committees. If ever there was a time to turn neighbors into friends, it was now. But introducing myself to strangers? I considered making amends, modeled after letters I’d received from old boyfriends in twelve-step programs, along the lines of You may have heard of my home confinement. I apologize to every one of you, and take full responsibility for my white-collar, nonviolent “crime.” Please join me for wine and hors d’oeuvres on Monday night, 6 p.m, apartment 6-J.

I never wrote or sent such a thing, resentful that not one neighbor had seen fit to extend a hand or a banana bread first.

My parents wanted to help, with anything, any way. They were retired, looking for projects, looking for ways to boost their sorrier daughter’s mood. Would I like them to visit? If I couldn’t come to Harrow, then they’d be on the next train to New York!

Did I ever think I’d be saying to anyone, let alone my parents, “I’ll have to ask my parole officer”?

“There must be a special dispensation for parents,” my mother said.

In truth, there was nothing to ask. They certainly could have visited if I’d wanted house guests, desperate to be helpful, emptying my dishwasher at 7 a.m., refolding the contents of my linen closet, asking if I had spackle for the tub and WD-40 for the hinges. I said it was too soon. I needed to prove to my parole officer that I was – what sounded believable and inoffensive? – adjusting to my new reality.

“Tell us about him or her!”

“A woman. Diane. I’ve only met her once, a drop-in visit and random phone calls.”

“Is she nice?”

I said, “We don’t sit around and chat.”

“It breaks my heart,” my mother whispered.

I didn’t say, that’s exactly why I’d dread a visit – long faces delivering pep talks. I’d be the one doing the cheering up.

I said, “It’s not bad. I’m catching up on sleep. I’m reading. I ordered a yoga mat. And I might be testing recipes for Jackleen’s website.” Unseen, neither FaceTiming nor Skyping, I curled my lip.

When I’d asked Parole Officer Diane during her first visit if she’d like coffee or tea or Diet Coke or anything, she looked startled.

“No? Not allowed?”

“The people I usually deal with…they don’t offer refreshments. I take cream, no sugar.”

In case it was she whom I’d be appealing to for an off-premise dentist appointment or haircut, I reminded her that I was an attorney, and so very white-collar and law-abiding that I’d never break a rule or violate my parole – earning me a look that said, Ya think I don’t hear that every day?

I asked if she knew what my nothing of a crime was. She did. Gross indecency.

“Ridiculous, don’t you think? It was pitch-black up there, private property, and one thing leads to another, especially after a long dry spell, socially speaking—”

By that time, her hands were up in a surrender, fending off my testimony. “I’m not the judge,” were the words she spoke, but what she really meant was, And don’t mistake me for a chum.

The doorman wanted to help. It wasn’t turncoat Andres, the night doorman who hadn’t met my eye since turning me over to the cops, but the ever-cheerful and obliging Roland, who asked as I picked up my mail, “Miss Morgan? Do you know Mr. Salisbury?”

“Who?”

“West elevator?” He pointed. “9-C?”

I said I didn’t know him. Should I?

I could tell he was already sorry he’d broached the subject. “I thought you might know him,” he murmured, then darted to the front door ahead of a returning couple and their two rhinestone-collared dogs.

I hung back until the couple had passed and graced me with a wince of a smile. I joined Roland at the front door and asked, “What did you want to tell me about this Salisbury guy?”

Roland said, “Don’t tell him how you know, okay?”

“Know what?”

He lifted his pant leg six inches, pointed to his ankle, then motioned toward mine.

“He has a monitor?”

Roland nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“White-collar,” he whispered. “I heard embezzlement. But a nice guy.”

I asked if he’d told Mr. Salisbury that there was another person in the building…in a similar situation.

“He just gets his mail. He doesn’t stop by to shoot the breeze.”

“Would you consider…maybe next time he’s picking up his mail, you could say—”

“No way! I’d be in trouble for telling you this much!”

“Young? Old?”

“I don’t know…forty?”

“Wife? Husband? Partner?”

“Don’t know. At least not living here.”

Over the next twenty-four hours I weighed several outreach options: Would a glass of wine with a neighbor constitute “knowingly communicating and interacting with someone convicted of a felony” in violation of my parole? Maybe Mr. Salisbury would welcome a friend in the building, too. What was the big deal, knocking on someone’s door with a plate of brownies? I was motivated and I wasn’t shy. Given my own rap sheet, I might allow “nice guy” to cancel out the “embezzlement” part of the appraisal? And would two ankle monitors in the same room trigger acoustic feedback?

5

as opposed to sing sing

I abandoned the idea of introducing myself via hand-written note because every draft sounded either flirty or like an invitation to recidivism. Instead I called downstairs during Roland’s shift and asked if he’d give Mr. Salisbury a ring to tell him I’d be dropping by.

An unhappy pause was followed by, “He’s gonna ask why.”

“Say you don’t know. Say you’re calling because you don’t give out phone numbers.”

“We don’t.”

Sensing that another house rule was about to be invoked or invented, and with December only five months away, I played the Christmas tip card. “Can you do me this one small favor? I won’t forget it.”

Another pause. “He’s always home. Just knock. And maybe don’t say how you found out.”

I’d already Googled Perry Salisbury. Theft in the fourth degree. It could be another miscarriage of justice, a big nothing, a misunderstanding; something borrowed and not returned, a bogus charge by a jealous co-worker or jilted lover. And if it were, conversely, bad, deserving of his punishment – well, hadn’t I gotten an A in criminal law?

I baked my best brownies, the chewy ones, cut them into sixteen squares while still warm, put the whole batch on a plate, and myself in a skirt. I wasn’t trying to dress up; I’d be baring my legs as a statement, the way a woman undergoing chemotherapy might eschew a wig. My forthrightly exposed ankle monitor would say, I, too, am a felon under home confinement. May I come in?

At approximately 5 p.m., I knocked on the white door of 9-C. I knew from Google Images that I had the right guy, this pleasant-enough-looking fellow with gray-brown-hair, a few days’ growth of beard à la mode, and black-framed, fashionably retro eyeglasses. His t-shirt was silkscreened with a likeness of Bob Dylan. Faded jeans covered his telltale ankles.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I’m Jane Morgan. I live on the east side of the building. I made brownies. No nuts.”

He said, “Thanks, but maybe you want—” he pointed to the apartment across the hall. “They’re new. Are you on the hospitality committee?”

I said, “You’re Perry Salisbury? I was hoping to talk to you—”

“About?”

I had an answer ready, a deliberately vague “…about my situation.”

“If you’re collecting for something—”

“I’m not. It’s social.”

When he still held his ground, I repeated, “It’s a social call. Two minutes. Then we’ll both get on with our busy lives.” He opened the door wider and stepped aside. I didn’t have to go far to recognize the layout, a reverse of mine: coat closet on the left, kitchen on the right. He took the plate, and with no discernible enthusiasm, set it on the hall table as if I’d handed him a leaflet he’d never read.

What was I waiting for? I raised my foot a few inches and asked, “Do you know what this is?”

Finally, a reaction. He took his glasses off; actually whipped them off in a satisfying fashion, squinted at my monitor and asked, “Is that the real thing?”

“Of course it’s real…and not many people know what it is.”

He put his glasses back on and gave me an appraising stare. “What’s your name again?”

“Jane Morgan. On home confinement in Apartment 6-J.”

I couldn’t tell whether those two words had been the bomb I’d hoped to drop. I said, “I should’ve danced around the topic a little longer. Maybe you don’t want anyone to know about…” I pointed toward his covered ankle.

“No. Sorry. A curve ball. Let’s start over… Coffee? Tea? Wine?”

“Wine, for sure.”

He cocked his head toward the living room. I helped myself to one of the two armchairs, leather, manly, over-sized. I heard the pop of a cork, the opening and closing of a cupboard. He returned with two filled, beautiful etched wine glasses, surely antique. I took one, raised it, and said, “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. Okay to ask what you did?”

“What I do?”

“No, what earned you that…thing.”

I’d had weeks between incident and confinement to coin the least sexually charged nickname for my crime. “Deliberate exposure,” I said, with all the regret I could conjure for a made-up legal term.

“Of what?”

I said with some delicacy, “My body.”

“That’s a crime? Was this a round-up on a nude beach or something?”

“No: a round-up on the roof.” I pointed upward. “This one.”

“Someone in the building squealed?”

“No, someone across the street, watching from her roof, freaking out. She called 9-1-1. Two cops came and wrote out a summons.”

He asked if I’d been sunbathing, because…so what? That’s against a law?

I said not sunbathing. It was night, very late. I was with someone.

“And the other guy? Or woman? Do they live here, too?”

“No! And no sentence for him; just fined!He was younger, and I was supposed to know better.”

“Because?”

I hated this part, so in one prestissimo summary I explained, “I’m a lawyer and he’s an associate at my firm. My ex-firm. On top of indecent exposure, and despite never making a move, I was committing sexual harassment, having failed to disclose what I didn’t know was going to happen after I left the office and ran into said colleague at the market.”

“Harsh,” he said.

“Very. And you?”

He asked if I knew what an art handler does. Before I could answer, he launched into a job description. “You move art around. You hang it up. You take it down. You unpack it and eventually repack it, and probably crate it. You wear an apron and gloves. During auctions, if you go to them or watch online, we’re the ones in black aprons and white gloves on either side of the lot being sold.”

“Which auction house?”

“Fortunately or unfortunately, Gladstone’s.”

“And something happened there?”

“Such as ‘theft by unauthorized taking or transfer?’ Yes.”

I said, echoing Roland, “I’m thinking it was more white-collar than criminal.”

“As opposed to robbing a bank? True.”

“So, not…unauthorized theft of an old master?”

“You mean, was there a big heist? No – the smallest heist you could ever come up with.”

Small? I wondered. Like a coin? A ring? A rare stamp worth a million dollars?

“I slipped a lid into my pocket.”

“Did you say ‘lid?’”

“A teapot lid.”

First thought: Was it an inside job where one thief distracts by taking something of little value while his accomplice grabs a Monet or a Manet?

No it wasn’t, because Perry was saying, “I thought it would be perfect for my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was porcelain, decorated with bands of twenty-four karat gold.”

I said I didn’t understand. All he wanted was the lid?