That night in their motel room, as they settled onto opposite sides of the lumpy bed, Connie said, “I didn’t know I’d married Huck Finn.”
“Yes you did,” he replied.
Sam Truitt knew that Connie would have been happier married to a real estate developer who made millions building condos in protected wetlands, or an investment banker who knew the value of the deutsche mark when the markets opened each day-anyone whose net worth equaled her appetite for consumption.
To Truitt, status was achieved by deeds, not dollars. His love of the law was paramount over building a net worth. It also took priority over personal relations, something he acknowledged as a flaw in his character. When they first moved to Washington, he realized that he was more concerned about the needs of migrant workers than those of his newly migrated wife.
He accepted the fact that Connie grew less affectionate each year. Hell, he deserved it. Sam Truitt was, after all, a man who had difficulty expressing his emotions, much less fulfilling the emotional needs of another person. Who could blame Connie if she longed for a man who would pamper his wife instead of illegal aliens?
So Sam Truitt understood half a dozen years earlier when she had her first affair, with the tennis pro at the club, of all the mundane cliches. He responded with an affair of his own, an adoring law student, in violation of university rules and his own ethics. I’ll see your cliche and raise you another. They weathered those storms and stayed together.
At first, Connie had seemed happy when he received the Supreme Court appointment. No more faculty teas with their dreary gossip washed down by watery punch. Life in Washington would be different. But she must have been thinking of her father’s social whirl as a senator, always making the rounds of chic parties and Georgetown dinners. She was not prepared for the more monastic life of a Supreme Court justice. Boredom set in quickly. After not having worked for years, Connie began an interior decorating business. Now, her fondest hope was for the defeat of the Democratic president in the next election, both to punish him for appointing her husband, and to bring wealthy Republicans to town with an insatiable desire to redecorate.
His shin still throbbing, a truce having been declared by his retreat from the bedroom, Truitt was sitting at the small desk in the study when he heard Connie’s voice. “Did you hire the third law clerk, Sam?”
“Yes,” he called back, as he thumbed through the briefs for the first oral argument of the new term. “She’s a real winner. Lisa Premont.”
“Tell me about her.” Connie was moving around in the bedroom. They were talking to each other now separated by the landing at the top of the stairs-and years of missed connections.
“She’s from the West Coast. Berkeley, Stanford, then a year clerking on the D.C. circuit.”
“A California beach bunny?”
“She’s a fisherman’s daughter and smart as hell.”
“I’ll bet she’s pretty.”
He could lie, of course. “She looks like Howard Stern in drag.”
But the first time Connie had the clerks over for dinner, she’d brain him with a lamb chop. “As a matter of fact, she’s quite attractive,” he said.
“I thought you had a bounce in your step when you came home today.”
“I had to pee.”
She walked into his study from the master bedroom. She was wearing a sleeveless black silk cocktail dress, a triple strand of pearls, and matching earrings.
“My God, you’re beautiful,” he said.
“Look at you!” she cried. “You’re not ready.”
“Ready for what?” he asked, even though it occurred to him that she was dressed for a party while he was wearing a twenty-year-old Wake Forest sweatshirt with holes in both Ds of Demon Deacons.
“The reception at the Watergate. It starts at seven. Hurry up. I’ll find your tux.”
“What reception?”
“The benefit! The one Stephanie and Harold invited us to, bought our tickets, a thousand dollars each.”
“Not the one sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers,” he said, vaguely recalling having told his brother-in-law thanks but no thanks.
“Who cares who’s sponsoring? It’s for the hospital. It’s nonpolitical, nonsectarian, nonoffensive even to a holier-than-thou associate justice on the Supreme fucking Court.”
“I told Harold we couldn’t go,” he said guiltily, realizing he’d forgotten to tell Connie.
“What! Why?”
“NAM is amicus curiae in a major case on punitive damages, and they’re involved in another half dozen cases with cert petitions pending. Besides, I can’t accept a gift from a lobbyist.”
“You must be kidding. Do you think you’ll be compromised by eating their goat cheese on endive?”
“No, but my attendance makes it appear they have access to the Court.”
Holding her high-heeled black shoes in one hand, Connie waved her hairbrush at him with the other. “Don’t do this, Sam! Don’t do this to me. I’m going stir crazy in this damn shoe box.”
“I know it seems silly or quaint, or just plain stupid, but a Supreme Court Justice has to live like a monk.” He thought of the chief, who wasn’t right about many things, but on this one, he was. “Some justices won’t even attend the President’s State of the Union address because of separation of powers. Even those who go refuse to applaud.”
“You’re right, Sam. It is stupid. Now, are you getting dressed or not?”
He looked into her eyes, which were ablaze with hostility. All the disappointments and frustrations of a life that didn’t turn out the way she planned seemed to be reflected in her glare, in her bearing, in the way she pointed the hairbrush at him as if it were a Saturday night special manufactured by one of her brother-in-law’s clients.
“I can’t, Connie. I’m sorry, but I can’t”
She threw the hairbrush at him. He slipped his head to the side like a boxer dodging a punch, and the brush clattered against the wall. She hastily pulled on her shoes, smoothed her dress over her flat stomach, and looked at him, her upper lip quivering with anger. “All right, Mr. Supreme Court Justice,” she said, spitting out the words. “Be a monk. Be a bishop or a cardinal or the damn pope for all I care.”
She turned dramatically and left the room, looking like a leading lady playing her big scene in her shimmering black dress. She started down the narrow staircase, two flights to the ground, her stiletto heels clapping against the wooden stairs like rifle shots. “But I’ll tell you this,” she called out, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to be a nun!”