Robert Tanenbaum: Irresistible Impulse

Freddy finished his routine, and told them what they were going to eat that evening. No menus at Freddy’s for regulars. He went back to his guard post, and Millie, his daughter, brought bread sticks and wine, the wine in an unlabeled bottle. Marlene drank off a glass of the potent red and felt herself relax. She looked around. Paoletti’s was neither a cop hangout nor a mob hangout, but a place where denizens of either subculture could enjoy civilized dining. No one had ever been shot or arrested in Paoletti’s. This evening two gangsters were entertaining their families at the next table, and beyond that one, by the wall, a couple of senior cops from the nearby police headquarters were finishing a meal.

Her eyes returned to her own table, where she found her husband looking at her and smiling.

“Back on earth?” he asked.

She smiled back. “Yeah. I was a little wound.”

“Like a cheap watch. You know, that’s what Harry’s getting at, Marlene. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about money or business plans. He doesn’t want you killing yourself. Or getting killed.”

Marlene poured another glass of wine. “I’m okay,” she said.

No, you’re not, thought Karp. You’re living the life of a cop without the social and legal underpinning that cops have. You’re doing stuff that’s barely within the compass of the law, and some things that I don’t want to know about because they’re frankly criminal, and I’m an officer of the court and I can’t know about them and it’s a darkness between us, and it’s going to wreck us. This, and similar thoughts, were Karp’s version of those speeches that people long married play out in their heads but do not say to the other, or say, and then the marriage collapses, or is put on a different and better footing. Karp was not ready to take the risk. What he ventured at this time was, “Your name came up today. Keegan asked about you. He wishes you not to shoot anyone in New York County.”

“Tell him I try to keep my blood lust under control. How is he?”

“Flourishing. He likes being the D.A., and he’s good at it. He thinks I’m working too hard, though.”

“Are you?”

“I will be. I’m going to try Rohbling myself.”

Marlene’s wineglass paused halfway to her lips. Her eyes narrowed. “You have to be joking.”

“No. No joke.”

“ Why are you doing this? A major trial? Now?”

“Because I think I’m the best person for the job,” said Karp, conscious of the pomposity of the phrase, but too tired to think of another. Besides which, it was true. He went on, “It’ll be a team effort, needless to say, but I want to run it.”

“This is because of his lawyer, isn’t it? What’s-his-face-”

“Waley,” said Karp. “No, it’s not-”

“Yes, it is. It’s yet another of your dick-measuring contests.”

“That’s nuts, Marlene. You know I’d always planned to take a couple of important cases a year. This is the one.”

Millie placed an immense plate of antipasto on the table, smiled at them, heard their usual comments about the impossibility of consuming so much antipasto, and left. The interruption was timed just right. Marlene did not utter the vicious one-liner that had poised itself on her tongue’s tip, but ate a stuffed mushroom, sighed deeply, and said, “I must be getting more mature. In former times, had you dropped one like that on me, darling, I would have accused you of planning this so as to put more pressure on me, knowing that I would pull time away from my work so that Lucy wouldn’t go down the tubes, even though I seem to recall that you just volunteered to spend more time with her.”

“Marlene, I-”

She stopped the attempt at rejoinder by holding up a hand in which flopped a round slice of provolone. “No, no, that’s what I would have said, when I still thought life made sense. What I am saying is as follows. I intend to eat this marvelous meal, drugging my higher faculties with food. I intend to get mildly drunk as well, which I recommend to you also. I intend further to drag you up to our luxurious SoHo loft, where I will attempt to get my monthly or maybe it’s my quarterly lay, after which I will recline in a hot, perfumed tub while you , my dear, get dressed and drive over to the office to get the kids.” “Sounds good,” said Karp, deadpan. “What’s the catch?”

Marlene’s morning meditation: a thundering speed bag, her flying gloves maintaining the rhythm independent of her conscious mind, which floated in what the Zen people call mushin , a no-thought realm supposedly good for the soul. A final slam, and the squeaking rattle of the punching bag shackle as the bag precessed into stillness. She stripped off her speed gloves and picked up the rope and skipped fast, snapping hard, both feet, alternate feet, five minutes with the sweat flying off her forehead in the air and blackening her gray T-shirt under the arms. By the time she hung it up, she could hear the twins burbling to each other in the nursery next door, and she let herself drift back into real life.

Boxing training was no affectation for Marlene: her father had briefly been a welterweight contender in the forties and had taught all six of his children to box. Marlene was the only one of the three girls who had taken to it, and she had kept it up over the years. Not a Jazzercise girl, Marlene.

She stripped off her sodden shorts and T-shirt, pulled a ragged terrycloth robe over her bare skin, and went into the nursery next door. It had once been Lucy’s playroom, another deeply felt injustice, but what could they do? The loft was large but not infinite, and Lucy was a little old now to need a separate playroom.

In the nursery she moved with dispatch. First, Zak out of the crib (because if she did Zik first, Zak would go crazy, whereas Zik would watch placidly as she tended Zak) and onto the changing table, crooning (Zak, did you sleep well? Yes, you did, yes, you did , didn’t wake up screaming even one little time, what a good-looking beautiful baby, what a yucky monster ugly baby, yes, you are , and so on) whipping the sodden Pamper off and into the waiting plastic bag, quick check for diaper rash, a blown raspberry on the hot little belly, squeals of delight, wipe-off with pre-moistened towelettes, dust with baby powder, new Pamper out, swick-swick, strip off p.j.’s, toss into hamper, into baby T-shirt, back into crib. Next!

Identical twins, Marlene had always thought, were among the most interesting things that could happen to a family, fascinating for the parents, but often a disaster to any other children. Who could compete for attention with such a show? Looking down at Zik as she serviced him (but in a slightly different way, with a different patter than she had used with his brother), she was struck by how differently he had played out the same genetic cards Zak had been dealt. His eyes: the same lovely mahogany, completely different expression. Zak’s eyes said, “Yumm-yumm! Gimme!” Zik’s said, “What’s your story?” Zak was violent motion, quick moods; Zik was a gentle prober, and placid. Now he was touching her lower lip as she taped his Pamper. Zak never did that; punch and slap, yes, but not this delicate palpation.

However, no time to dawdle in naughty maternal eroticism! One babe on each hip, she marched into the kitchen, punched up the lights and placed each boy in his own high chair. She could hear the roar of water from where her husband was up and taking his shower. Briefly, she considered slipping under the steaming spray with him, to renew the stolen passion of the night before, stolen, because the twins absolutely refused to allow them any sexual space. Since the evening they were brought home from the hospital, their subtle oedipal radar had detected even the most careful insinuation of moist organs, at which time both sirens would go off full blast, banishing romance and wakening Lucy. It was uncanny. On the other hand, on the occasions when they did manage a date, their sex had the furtive urgency of an illicit affair. Still reasonably good sex too, for a wonder, after nearly eleven years, Marlene thought, not like it was at first, when they and screwed themselves sore every night, but comfortable, pleasing, married, a checkpoint. (Is it still you ? Yes, it’s still me .)