The Tenth Song Read online

  The woman put her arms around her, kissing her cheek: “Mazal tov! I just heard. Wonderful about your daughter’s engagement!”

  “Oh, how did you . . . ?”

  “Your friend Doris told me. So exciting!”

  Doris? “Yes, thanks so much,” Abigail said with an inward sigh, mentally adding her name and the vaguely remembered Doris’s to a guest list already bloated with people she had to invite or risk insulting. Suddenly, when a party was in the offing, people seemed to sniff it out, ratcheting up their friendliness quotient to be included.

  “Well, see you in shul!” Abigail waved, hurriedly leaving the store.

  As she walked toward the caterer, Abigail felt herself tense. She hoped there wouldn’t be a fight with Kayla, but there was no way she was going to insult Arthur Cohen (who was, after all, a fellow synagogue member and an old friend) by going elsewhere.

  She remembered Adam’s fiftieth birthday bash. Even though Abigail had done all the work, Kayla felt she had a right to decide the guest list. “You don’t want them. They are so boring,” she’d said, putting a line through Henrietta and Stephen.

  They were old, old friends, people she and Adam had known from the first week they’d moved to Boston. They had been to all each other’s milestone celebrations, shared Sabbath evening dinners, planned joint vacations. They were like family.

  “But we were invited to Stephen’s fiftieth!” Abigail protested.

  “Oh, he’s such a bag of wind. And she’s even worse . . .” Kayla scrunched up her pretty nose in distaste. “I thought we would just have—you know—the family,” she continued, crossing off another two of their oldest friends.

  Abigail said nothing but invited whom she pleased.

  It was a surprise party. She’d expected all the kids to arrange something special for Adam. Joshua, of course, did, preparing a heartfelt video in which he interviewed all their friends and relatives, putting together a lovely tribute. And Shoshana, even though she was eight months pregnant and had a toddler of two to look after, made all the flower arrangements, handwrote all the place cards, and baked hundreds of those sugar cookies she was famous for. Kayla, in contrast, breezed in the night of the party, an hour later than Abigail had asked her to come, wanting to know how she could help.

  “Nothing, darling. It’s all been arranged. I’m just so happy you’re here.” Abigail smiled at her sweetly, swallowing hard. “Daddy will be here soon. Would you be an angel and answer the door?”

  It was Stephen and Henrietta, followed by Arthur and Helen, and a few more of Kayla’s cross-offs. Kayla gave them a bare smile, then sulked the entire evening, until finally she left early without saying good-bye.

  “Her Majesty is not happy with her subjects,” Adam murmured dryly, when Abigail filled him in on the details.

  The next day, of course, Kayla was contrite and apologetic. “I just had something really private and special planned for Daddy. I had this whole speech. . . .”

  Abigail felt a pang of guilt. Perhaps she had ruined some lovely, special moment between father and daughter? Perhaps there had been an excellent reason for her bratty behavior? Perhaps Kayla was on a higher level—a place Abigail couldn’t see even in her imagination?

  Or perhaps not.

  As always, they both apologized, hugged, and let it pass. What was the name of that organization founded by a billionaire to help Bill Clinton out of the Monica Lewinsky morass? Getoverit.org? Or something like that. Exactly.

  For a moment, she thought about discussing this openly with her daughter. She rummaged through her purse for her cell phone, then suddenly remembered it was on her desk recharging.

  Just as well. She just wouldn’t bring the subject up. Kayla wouldn’t remember anyhow, she thought, recalling her sweet sixteen party. For months, every time the subject had come up, she’d feigned disinterest, saying it was silly and childish, like kids’ “theme” parties. And so Abigail had ordered a cake and invited the family and a handful of Kayla’s friends. But then after attending a friend’s sweet sixteen in a theme park, with a party held afterward in the Hilton ballroom in Back Bay, with a live performance by a popular local band, Kayla had changed her mind.

  Of course, things were arranged: the band, the hall, the works, all at the very last minute. Kayla had been adorably grateful and happy. She had enjoyed every minute. And Abigail, exhausted, had spent the next week in bed. Now, except for the caterer and the guest list, Abigail was perfectly happy to do anything her daughter wanted—if only Kayla would say what that was. On time.

  Oh my goodness, she scolded herself. The bride is too pretty. Was this stuff worth worrying about? You have a beautiful daughter. A Harvard Law School student. A girl who is engaged to a Jewish mother’s dream. A nachas bonanza. Give it a rest!

  Maybe she’d just buy a few cranberry candles and show them to Kayla.

  But first—she wanted to settle with the caterer.

  “Hi, Gayle,” she said, walking into the catering and takeout shop. “Is your dad in?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Samuels!” The girl looked up from her computer, hastily slamming it shut. Her face turned the color of the tomato salsa featured in the refrigerator case, Abigail thought, wondering if it had been that color when she walked in, and she just hadn’t noticed. She stood staring in wonder, watching the color deepen to scarlet. “Oh, I’ll . . . just get Dad,” the girl said, fleeing.

  A tiny stab of unease suddenly pierced Abigail Samuels. A prescient moment, absolutely baseless, began to send a wave of nausea and nervous tension through her body. She was the kind of person who always unconsciously identified with the person she was with—a remnant of her childhood inferiority complex, which insisted she be a chameleon to court favor. Everyone had to love her. And if you were just like the person you were with at the moment, it helped.

  “Oh, Albert.”

  His face was pleasant but not welcoming, with a strange crease of discomfort between the brows. “Abigail.”

  There was an awkward silence as she tried to figure out where she was and what had happened. Did she owe him money? Adam always paid the bills and paid them promptly. Perhaps Kayla had slipped and told one of her friends about the outside catering, and word had gotten back to him? But she was here now, ready to order . . .

  “I’m—so sorry,” he finally said.

  Like a character in a bad play, she looked behind her to see who he could be talking to. There was no one there.

  “What’s wrong, Al?”

  His face took on a sense of shock. “It was on the Internet. Gayle showed it to me . . .” He paused, horrified as the realization struck that he would be the one breaking this kind of news to a person he knew and liked, the kind of news that should be heard among your own people, in your own home, surrounded by people you loved.

  2

  The only way a blunt cut looked good on anyone was if it was done perfectly, Kayla Samuels thought, trying to coax some of her recalcitrant wisps into sweeping inward just below her chin, very Posh Spice. This was the third hairdresser she had gone to in the last six months trying to achieve that effortlessly perfect look that went so well with business suits. It had been to no avail. No matter their reputation, Boston hairdressers were all ridiculously overpriced provincial hacks, she thought. To the simple fact that the cut imposed unrealistic demands on her naturally curly hair, which was constantly looking for ways to bolt its man-made confines, she gave no quarter. It was her hair, and it would obey.

  She sat down on the steps of the gothic brick building housing law-school classrooms, looking at her watch. He was already ten minutes late. Given that her fiancé, Seth, was an annoying stickler for punctuality, this surprised her, even evoking a mild concern. What could be keeping him? she wondered, caressing the fine leather of the briefcase in her lap, a gift from her thrilled parents when the Harvard acceptance letter arrived. She opened it, taking out her compact and staring at her nose. To her horror, she saw that her freckles were visible. She hurriedl
y covered them with makeup. There was nothing that made her look less like a lawyer than freckles, except if it was curly hair as Seth always said.

  For months she had been resisting his advice to go to a real salon in Manhattan to get it properly straightened. But she realized now that she had absolutely no choice. She couldn’t very well go to her own engagement party looking like a “crash and burn One L.”

  One L. The first year of law school in that private language that conjured up harried, privileged, and near-neurotic inductees into a secret society. But it hadn’t been so bad. Paper Chase and Scott Turow’s One L were really history. There was a gentler, kinder cloud hanging over Harvard Law these days. A new dean had banished the ogres and injected some Technicolor into the aging sepia overtones of a school drowning in tradition. The curriculum had undergone the most radical changes in a hundred years, making Harvard Law less “the factory” its cynical graduates had nicknamed it—a mass-production line for legal hacks to defend corporate sharks—and more, as the new dean said, a place for: “engagement with the world . . . a place . . . for people who love ideas, because ideas make a difference.”

  Even the old campus buildings—she looked behind her at stately Austin Hall where Professor Dumbledore would have felt at home—were soon going to be relics, overtaken by the new Northwest Corner expansion, which would transform the musty halls of power into a magnificent modern enterprise.

  Although Yale was still being listed on Web sites as the premier law school in America, no one actually believed that.

  She remembered her first day of classes, standing in the hallway outside Ames Moot Court in Austin Hall waiting to be officially “welcomed.” Leaning shyly against the wall, she took a leisurely survey of her fellow students. They stood in conversation knots: skullcaps talking to skullcaps; stiletto heels talking to preppies; Midwesterners talking to people from New Jersey. Chosen from over seven thousand applicants, the privileged five hundred or so of the entering class of 2006 would soon be divided into sections. She wondered which of them would constitute her friends, competitors, and classmates for the most challenging year of her life.

  She saw him standing in the middle of a group of laughing men and women, people magically at ease, filled with the open friendliness that comes from extreme self-confidence. He was tall and slim, with shining blond hair that caught the light, distracting her from whatever blah, blah was being said. When they were finally divided into sections, she was disappointed to find he wasn’t in hers.

  She soon forgot about it. She had no time for a social life anyway, she told herself, as the incredible pace of study, classwork, and exams swung into full gear. She was overwhelmed, wracked with doubts, wondering when and if she would finally crash-land into the side of the mountain she was trying so desperately to clear. More than that, the coursework itself began to fill her heart with fears. Torts, especially, gave her nightmares, filled as it was with way-out scenarios of horrible things one person did to another intentionally or unintentionally. Take the case of the poor woman who was on a subway on the way to the beach when someone dropped firecrackers on the tracks, resulting in a huge scale hitting her on the head from the other side of the platform. Life, Kayla began to realize, was totally unpredictable. And so was the law.

  She didn’t dare admit any of this, of course. She felt isolated and lonely, walking a fine line in class between showing off and shirking participation. And while she met people, and joined study groups, she never felt she was making new friends. Everyone seemed to have an agenda, the same agenda: to live through year one and pass all their courses. To that end, it was a community of moles, blindly dedicated to self-preservation, competing for sustenance, i.e., help with notes and outlines, and a good word from any professor. They were in a race, charging toward the finish line and the honors that came with the best grades. She had no illusion of being a worthy contender. She just wanted to keep her head above water.

  In the middle of her first year, after four months of hibernation, her best friend, Shana, insisted on fixing her up on a blind date.

  “He’s my boyfriend Mark’s second cousin. He’s twenty-eight. He was a few years ahead of us at Hebrew Day School. He’s also just started Harvard Law. He has a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, in anthropology and international relations.”

  “A state school?”

  “His parents are wealthy, but cheap, Mark’s mother says. He managed to get into the MBA program at Stanford and wound up winning the Siebel Scholars jackpot, $25,000 a year for the remainder of the program!”

  “He’s got an MBA from Stanford? So what’s he doing in law school?”

  “Mark says he went to work for a high-tech company in Silicon Valley but didn’t like it. But he stayed there a few years to make enough money to partially fund law school.”

  “Sounds indecisive. Or is he just one of those perpetual students?”

  “Are you kidding me? With an MBA from Stanford and a law degree from Harvard, he’ll be able to write his own ticket! Not to mention he looks like Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise. Stop being stubborn! You’ll kiss my feet when you meet him.”

  “Shana, I appreciate it. But I just don’t think dating and law school are ever going to mix. First of all, there is no time! Second of all, there is no way you can fit a male Harvard Law student and his ego into the same part of the city, let alone the same restaurant! Besides, if he’s as gorgeous as all that, he’s probably gone out with every single available Jewish princess in Brookline already.”

  This turned out to be true. It also turned to be irrelevant.

  She looked down at her engagement ring. The stone wasn’t large, but it was absolutely flawless. And the setting, a custom-made platinum band with two small rubies, was special.

  She leaned back on the steps, looking at her watch again. He was now twenty minutes late. A sudden chill gust made her fingertips tingle. She zipped up her jacket, sorry she hadn’t worn a warmer one. She folded her arms across her chest and closed her eyes. Her lids felt warm.

  Somehow, she’d gotten through her first year. The second year had been easier.

  For one thing, unlike her first year, which was pretty much mapped out with requirements, she had had the opportunity to choose her classes. Her first instinct had been to enroll in Child Advocacy; Child Exploitation, Pornography, and the Internet; Law and Social Change; or Bioethics. But following a long and heated argument, Seth had talked her out of it. “When the recruiters start wining and dining you, what are you going to offer them? Little Orphan Annie law? If you want to pay back the thousands of dollars a year for your student loans, you better take Bankruptcy, Corporation and Taxation, and Securities and Regulation. And throw in Business Strategies for Lawyers for fun.”

  She didn’t remind him that she, at least, didn’t have thousands of dollars in student loans. In fact, she had no loans at all, a sore point between them since his parents had refused “on principle” to help him pay his tuition. While he had some money saved from his high-tech days, it was not nearly enough for three years at $42,000 a year plus living expenses, forcing him into serious hock.

  But whenever the subject came up, Seth declared that not only did he understand his parents, he even agreed with them, defending them, Kayla thought, a little too passionately.

  “I’m going to do the same with my kids . . .”

  “Our kids . . .”

  “Our kids. Why should anyone think they deserve a free ride through life? Besides, how can you connect with clients who have money problems if you’ve never experienced any? You live such a sheltered existence, Kayla, and your parents are such enablers!”

  “And your parents are cheapskates, and snobs, and social climbers . . .” she’d replied with hurtful accuracy, thinking it wasn’t her fault if her parents were too rich for her to apply for a scholarship. Why should she be punished by being forced to take expensive, interest-bearing loans from strangers; people who would not be as understanding as Daddy whe
n or if she had cash-flow problems?

  They didn’t speak for days. Although she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t in Harvard Law just for the money, she had to be honest: She wanted the American life. The good life. The life of her parents. The life she was used to. Although she knew her parents would pay for her education and would be generous when it came to a down payment on her first home, after that, it would be considered in bad taste to ask them for anything. And even though she knew Seth would likely be earning a top living in one of the best law firms, she also knew that both their tastes were very, very expensive. In addition, the statistics about divorce were not encouraging. She wanted to be able to depend on herself.

  The recruiters, she knew, held the key to all her dreams. They’d be looking for the top students in the areas that made the top money. Harvard Law had often been accused of training lawyers to serve the upper 10 percent of the nation’s earners. Kayla knew that for many of her classmates, that was not so much an insult as a description of aspirations.

  Going against her instincts, she’d enrolled in Civil Procedures; Legislation and Regulation; Bankruptcy; Administrative Law; and three other courses that were sure to be difficult and time-consuming and consummately boring. At least, she had no interest in them. Seven classes was a ridiculous workload. She knew it would be torture. She also knew she’d do well. She always did. Now she was beginning her third year, and the recruiters were knocking on her door.

  She jumped up. He was now officially twenty-five unforgivable minutes late. At this point, she was really more alarmed than angry. That was really not like him. She dialed his number for the third time. Again, it was busy. She hated that, hated that he was involved with someone else when he should have been there with her, on time. Unless, of course, he’d been in a car accident, and the phone was lying in the gutter beeping away just as the ambulance drove off with him. But in that case, it would just ring until the voice message came on.