Rabbi Gabrielle's Defiance (30 page)

"Yes," he grinned with a playful jog of his
head.

"You're invited, of course, but only if you
bring Lawrence. Secretly I'm counting on you guys to produce most
of the meal. Any thoughts about that?"

He nodded, his eyebrows rising with
interest.

"I'm inviting people close to me. The
Silvers, of course, but I'm sure they'll want to continue with all
their in-laws, children, and grandchildren. I'll phone Lydia and
she can bring Judy. And my old friend, Zoe, and her daughter,
Clementine, from New York. They're enthusiastic about the idea.
Perhaps I can persuade Asa and Anina."

Chuck liked being with Gabby and the idea of
spending the first night of Passover with her was delightful. His
sister, Lydia, and Zoe Mountolive and her daughter functioned as
her East Coast family. The thought struck him that perhaps there
was a hidden reason why she had decided to convene her friends for
this particular Passover. He had pivoted around to depart just when
she satisfied his curiosity. "I'm also planning to invite my
friend, Kye Naah. It's about time you guys meet him."

That bombshell required a moment's hesitation
before he wagged his head in approval, saying to himself, "So
Pesach
at Gabby's is a trial balloon!
There's more to this than politics!”

***

On evenings when Gabby had no official
synagogue business, Kye visited her at home. He worked on a laptop
connected to a remote server while she poured over DNC documents.
They established a pattern early, sipping tea or munching take-out
foods he usually picked up while traveling in his new mobile
office. Twice, he parked the mobile web trailer in her driveway to
provide hands-on experience navigating the Internet from its mobile
control center.

Gabby liked to lounge around at home in
fleece clothing and oversized sport socks. Sometimes Kye added a
sleeveless leather vest over his T-shirt, yet always left his arms
uncovered. She had difficulty picturing him in anything but
stonewashed indigo jeans.

One evening, during a break, she pushed away
from the dining room table and sauntered on stocking feet behind
the wingtip lounge chair where he was hunched over his laptop. His
eyes remained on a combination of video and text material scrolling
over his screen and he failed to notice her. It was only when her
hand dropped over the back of his neck and began massaging that his
fingers stopped their dash over the keyboard. She kneaded her
knuckles into the vertebrae.

"Where'd you learn how to do that?" he asked,
half craning his neck.

"From my father, who should have been a
surgeon, but spent his medical career practicing internal medicine.
Dad would massage my neck when I was feeling blue."

"Are you feeling blue now?" he lowered his
head to expose more of his neck.

For an instant her fingers ceased moving,
then resumed. "Not particularly. I'm just overwhelmed and scared.
I'm converting my congregants into enemies. My stock there goes
down daily while Lyle waits for my decision. I can remain
indecisive only so long. But once I give Lyle the green light, all
hell will break out."

His hand reached behind his neck to take
hers. "But I'm going to be there for you. I'm committing everything
I have left of Politics. The blitz we'll put on will dazzle the
public."

"And if I decide not to run, what then,
Kye?"

"I don't want to think about that."

"Our friendship will end, won't it?"

"I won't let that happen. I love being with
you. Running in the forest. Or just having you nearby when I'm
working."

Her fingers returned to his neck, but this
time ranged out and along his jaw, massaging the flesh of his
cheeks, then encircling his eyes. As he relaxed backward he exposed
his forehead to receive a gentle kiss from her lips.

"I like that, too," he whispered.

"And I like doing it," she replied, planting
a second kiss upon his forehead, her fingers now massaging his
temples. Possessed by an idea, she suddenly pulled herself erect.
"By the way, I forgot to invite you to my
seder
here the night before Disney comes to Ohav
Shalom. It's traditional for Jews to celebrate Passover in their
homes. I usually spend the first night with special friends, but
this year I want to have my own seder, with my close friends, not
theirs. And you, of course."

"But isn't Passover for Jews?" he inquired,
now twisting fully in his seat to study her.

"It's the only Jewish festival to which
Gentiles are customarily invited. The freedom theme of Passover is
universal, which I hope to make clear on television the following
evening. I want you to come both here and to the synagogue."

"That's a hard invitation to turn down. How
many people are lucky enough to attend a seder with Rabbi Gabrielle
Lewyn?"

***

As corporate counsel to Dominion Mutual
Insurance's operations in the Mid-Atlantic States, Horace Corcoran
hired litigating counsel to defend multi-million dollar claims
against the company. But like most insurance companies, Dominion
preferred to minimize the cost of litigation and settle out of
court. Senior executives at Dominion's national headquarters in St.
Louis offered the Morgensterns seven and a half million dollars to
make their lawsuit disappear. But attorneys for the Morgenstern
family refused to consider a sum so far short of the forty-six
millions demanded. To plot their strategy, Corcoran called a
meeting at Dominion's Charles Street offices in Baltimore City.
Stan Melkin requested Shirley Delinsky and Marvin Jankelrod to
accompany him.

A battery of young lawyers from Jameson, Crew
and Gottwin, who had been hired to shepherd the Morgenstern case to
its resolution, clustered around their team leader, Delmont D'Foro,
a silver-haired personal injury specialist with a reputation for
playing hardball in the courtroom. Dominion Mutual executives
seated themselves on the opposite side, while Stan Melkin and his
associates squeezed into the tight space at the foot of the table.
Like an island archipelago, piles of documents dotted the tabletop.
The temperature, a Spartan 68-degrees Fahrenheit, discouraged the
participants from stripping down to shirt-sleeves.

"How far away from the seven and a half
million offer are we?" Stan Melkin directed his question to Delmont
D'Foro.

D'Foro furrowed his brow and shook a weary
head, slurping his speech. "Anybody here know this fellow Marc
Sutterfeld? He must have taken Negotiation Strategies 101. Employs
some of the oldest tricks in town. When I told him by phone we were
thinking of a settlement in the neighborhood of seven million, he
snapped back at me in a wheezing voice. His sports metaphors give
me diarrhea. 'What are ya talkin' 'bout, Mr. D'Foro? Mexican pesos
or Italian lire? I'm legally bound to forward your offer to my
clients, but I doubt it will raise them from the dugout onto the
field. I wouldn't waste another quarter to call until you're ready
to play ball in our league. I got one kid who's singing in the
celestial choir right now and another who will never be a high
school cheerleader or the homecoming queen, if you catch my drift.
Tybee Morgenstern won't make a pretty picture before a jury.' I'm
afraid, Mr. Melkin, Dominion Mutual has only two and a half big-Ms
before we hit the ceiling of your E&O coverage, then the ball's
in entirely in yawh court. So instead of you ask'n me, I should be
ask'n you."

Stan curled his lips, glancing to Shirley and
Marvin on his left. "Looks as if we've got ourselves a dog fight on
our hands, precisely what Ohav Shalom doesn't want." And returning
to D'Foro he asked, "I presume your team has had an opportunity to
review the case thoroughly."

D'Foro's red-headed associate, freckled like
a brown-trout and looking young enough to be a college
undergraduate, spoke for his boss. "As you all know, the law of
torts is relatively simple. The prosecution will attempt to
establish that reasonable precaution was not taken. We will prove
that Congregation Ohav Shalom rabbis acted within the standards of
the rabbinical profession. Objective minds should be able to sort
this out. Unfortunately, juries are not always objective,
especially when children are victims."

"Have we any reason to believe the family
might waive its right to a jury trial?" Marvin Jankelrod asked. "To
preserve privacy sometimes a family prefers to go before a single
judge. That might suit Tybee Morgenstern's interests."

"Sutterfeld has a reputation for courtroom
theatrics. He'll want to parade a maimed child before the jury,
knowing we won't dare submit her to hard cross-examination. I fear
we must prepare for the worst. Of course, there's still the option
of raising our offer."

For the first time since formal introductions
had been made, Horace Corcoran registered his thoughts. "We're near
the ceiling of this company's liability. From what you say,
Delmont, that barely gets us to first base and there's still a long
way around the diamond. Juries think insurance companies are made
out of money. Look around, we're not plush. Everybody wants us to
settle for outrageous sums. For an insurance company, that's death
by a thousand stabs. Rack up a string of high-priced settlements
and we're out of business."

"Don't assume that Ohav Shalom will make up
the shortfall or longfall as the case may be," Stan Melkin added.
"We pay our bills from cash flow generated by membership dues. The
endowment is already committed. The only way to come up with the
sum suggested here is to sell our synagogue building for
condominium development. I can't imagine a jury sending Ohav Shalom
into Quonset huts and tents."

"So that drives us back to a jury trial,"
D'Foro stated flatly, as though it were no revelation to him. "This
isn't going to be a picnic, but our arguments are strong. It's
essential Ohav Shalom doesn't appear insensitive to the family's
suffering. That would be counterproductive." He addressed Stan
Melkin, "I suppose you're reconciled to the inevitability of this
case?"

"Have I an alternative? This isn't going to
please our rabbis. I've had talks with our Senior Rabbi, Gabrielle
Lewyn. She's conflicted. On the one hand, she wants the
Morgensterns to be compensated for their losses. But on the other,
she is adamant that neither she nor her colleague, Rabbi Folkman,
have been negligent. Before a jury, she can be very convincing. I
don't wish to lecture to a roomful of smart lawyers, but we all
know that more often than not, the system works. We'll just have to
see how badly the Almighty wants Ohav Shalom to survive."

Since Dominion Mutual was paying handsomely
for his lawyer's time, Horace Corcoran rose to end the meeting and
recite words often used when talking with his hired counsel. "I
guess we all know what we must do next. Let me remind you that the
court has given us a preliminary trial date, subject, of course, to
a cleared docket. I'm surprised it's so early next month. Judges
like to expedite settlements, and the earlier they come to trial,
the sooner they usually get settled. But perhaps not this
time."

CHAPTER NINE

PESACH

To celebrate Passover with Gabby, Zoe
Mountolive, the New York lawyer who defended Noah Zentner in one of
the nation's most celebrated cases of rape, and her 15-year-old
daughter, Clementine, arrived on Saturday afternoon and encamped in
Gabby's guest room. This friendship had begun in a professional
capacity; Zoe as defense counsel and Gabby as witness in the
Baltimore trial, but continued long after the sad event receded
into history. As single women navigating the shoals of middle age,
they shared their fears and dreams. Zoe paraded before Gabby's
judgment a host of male companions and related the horrors of
bringing up an artistic, rebellious teenage girl in New York City.
Gabby vented frustrations at what sometimes felt to her like being
a hired gun to a well-meaning, respectful, but exceedingly
demanding congregation. In need of relief from mothering
Clementine, Zoe would often ship her daughter off to Washington to
spend long weekends with "Aunt Gabby," a relationship that both the
child and surrogate aunt enjoyed immensely. Together, they visited
museums, played tennis, hiked in the Allegheny Mountains beyond
Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, and bicycled by the Potomac River.
Communication barred between mother and daughter flowed easily
between Gabby and Clementine.

Chuck Browner and his latest companion,
Lawrence Bourne, arrived at Gabby's townhouse midday Sunday,
bringing sufficient food to provision a cavalry regiment. They
immediately established themselves in Gabby's kitchen, chopping
vegetables and skinning chickens. Gabby took responsibility for
providing the traditional seder foods: harosetz, matza balls for
soup, bitter herbs, parsley, boiled eggs, and gefilta fish – from a
bottle, definitely not from scratch; white fish and pike. From time
to time, Zoe and Clementine breezed into the kitchen, sampled the
cooking, then helped Gabby set her table with a formal tablecloth
and heirloom silverware. Lydia Browner, Gabby's tennis coach and
sometimes doubles partner, arrived shortly after 4 p.m. with her
roommate, Daisy Seasongood, a prominent actress most often cast in
the role of wife or jilted lover in regional theater productions,
notably Washington's Arena Stage. Over the years, Lydia had
maintained her near perfect figure while a few crow's-feet wrinkles
near the eyes revealed her age. Gabby knew that despite her
athletic ability, Lydia had no mind for numbers. She collected
shoes, toothpaste tubes, and countless household items in lavish,
unusable quantities. It came as no surprise that she brought to the
seder a full case of California Chardonnay, enough wine, quipped
Gabby, to intoxicate the Ten Tribes of Israel lost somewhere after
the Northern Kingdom of Israel went into exile in Assyria.