Brenda Janowitz: Jack With a Twist

“Listen to me, Brooke. Go to this luncheon. If you miss it, you’ll never get back together with Jack, and the fact is that you guys belong together.”

“No,” I say, looking down at my hands, “that’s just it. We don’t belong together. Not by a long shot.”

“Yes,” he says, “you do. And everyone around you can see it. Half of the reason I hired you was because Dani Lewis over at Gilson, Hecht told me about the two of you at dinner one night. She said that you guys were in love and that firm policy would make one of you leave Gilson, Hecht. I actually wanted Jack to come, but Dani Lewis wouldn’t even hear of me recruiting him, and since we’re old friends from law school, I didn’t even try. So we interviewed you and Rosalyn fell in love with you the minute you walked through the door. It was just a bonus that you happened to be a great lawyer, too.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” I say.

“You should be with Jack,” he says, “everyone knows it. I just don’t know why you don’t.”

Column Five

You didn’t hear it from us…

ARE Monique de Vouvray and Jean Luc Renault headed for a reconciliation?

Insiders say that Renault’s moved back into their shared Upper East Side brownstone and things are better than ever for the glamorous couple.

But if things are so perfect with the two, then why have they fired their entire house staff of twenty-two?

What do you call a ballroom filled with thousands of lawyers and judges?

A: The Federal Bar Council Luncheon honoring the Honorable Edward Solomon.

B: My worst nightmare.

C: [Insert your own cheesy lawyer joke here.]

Enormous signs announcing the Federal Bar Council Luncheon point us toward the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, where Noah is forcing me to eat lunch today against my will. You can spare me the free salad and piece of catering-hall salmon. I, myself, have never wanted to work through a lunch before so badly in my life.

I walk in the door, flanked on either side by Noah and Rosalyn, both of whom are sworn not to leave my side the entire luncheon. Inside of two minutes there, Noah spots an in-house attorney from Healthy Foods and darts away with a pocket full of business cards to network.

“I’m much tougher than Noah,” Rosalyn tells me. “You really only need me to protect you.”

I give Rosalyn a smile and she holds my hand as we find our firm’s table—Table Thirty-six. Rosalyn and I sit down and order iced teas just as Vanessa walks over to us.

“I’m at Table Thirty-seven!” she announces to Rosalyn and me, “how funny!”

And you thought I wouldn’t see anyone from Gilson, Hecht.

I shoot a look of horror in Vanessa’s direction, and she assures me that even though Gilson, Hecht bought ten tables, all of which are scattered about the room, it doesn’t matter anyway, since Jack is seated on the dais with his father.

A half hour later, the salads are set on the table and the program begins. Noah sits down and mouths the words I’m sorry to me from across the table, but I pretend to be far too engrossed in my seven grain roll to take notice.

Jack’s father’s law clerk gives a stirring introduction—full of the equal parts fear and ego that you’d expect from a Third Circuit law clerk—and then Jack takes the microphone.

“Thank you all for being here,” he begins and launches into his introduction. He looks around the room until he finds my table. Our eyes meet and Jack loses his train of thought for a moment. I wonder if anyone’s noticed, but then Rosalyn gently grabs my hand under the table and I realize that everyone’s staring at me.

“Ah, where was I?” he says. “Yes, with my father’s father. That’s right. Isaac Solomon was one of eight children born to his parents. He was the first of all of his siblings to come to America from Poland. He and my grandmother were only eighteen years old when they arrived at Ellis Island. He worked his fingers to the bone just so that he could afford to bring the rest of his family to this country. And because of that, there was never any money for my father when he was growing up.

“Seeing all of the struggles his own parents faced in being immigrants coming to America, my father decided, sometime in elementary school—was it elementary school, Dad? Is that how this story goes?—that he wanted to be a lawyer, so that no one could ever take advantage of him in the way that people had taken advantage of his own immigrant parents.

“My father’s mother worked as a housekeeper to a wealthy family who helped get my father a full scholarship to Andover, and from there it was easy for him to get a full scholarship to Harvard. From Harvard undergrad, it was then on to Harvard Law, where he met Judge Martin, and together, they were the only two Jews in their class at Harvard. Imagine that.”

Huge peals of laughter come from the more Jewish law firms, while the more white-shoe law firms smile tightly.

As Jack goes into his father’s career path from large law firm to United States Attorney’s office to the bench, I take a sip of my iced tea and then place my cold hand on my forehead.

“We can leave when he’s done speaking,” Rosalyn whispers to me. “The second the crowd starts to applaud, let’s you and I sneak out the back.”

“Thank you,” I whisper back. I look up and see Noah staring at the two of us sternly.

“Shhh,” he hisses, finger over his lips.

“He’s an amazing attorney, and an even better judge, and I know that that’s why everyone in this room respects him. He’s my father, and I love him,” Jack says, to a round of roaring applause. The judges on the dais all begin shaking Judge Solomon’s hand and patting him on the back.

“I think I’ve had enough,” I whisper to Rosalyn and we both get up quietly and walk out of the room. I don’t even look at Noah—I know he would disapprove of my leaving, so there’s no sense in turning around to see his disappointed face.

“Wanna go get a drink?” Rosalyn asks me as we leave the ballroom. “I think you could use a drink.”

“I think I’d actually just like to go home,” I say, feeling suddenly totally exhausted. “I’m ready to go home. If you think that would be okay, that is.”

“Of course,” she says and we walk out of the hotel. “I’m going to go back to the office for a bit. Let’s go get cabs.” We get on the taxi line and in seconds, two taxis pull up to the curb to let off passengers, as if on cue. Rosalyn and I say our goodbyes as we open the doors to our respective cabs. A woman wearing a large scarf wrapped around her head and enormous Chanel sunglasses that hide half of her face comes out of the cab that’s in front of me, and I realize that it’s Monique, wearing the same get-up she was in that day I saw her at the divorce attorney’s office.

“Monique?” I say, “is that you?” I’m not sure who’s more surprised to see the other at the Waldorf in the middle of the day—her or me.

“Brooke,” Monique says, “what are you doing here in the middle of a workday?”

“The Federal Bar Council luncheon is today,” I say and hope that she doesn’t think that I was playing hooky from work on a day that the newspapers announced that she was getting a divorce from her husband. “But, I’m on top of it, you don’t have to worry.”

“On top of what?” Monique asks me, eyes darting around furtively.

“Let’s go inside,” I say, realizing that she’s checking the area for paparazzi and that I should probably be doing the same. When I got to work this morning, the place was swarming with media. Reporters immediately recognized me from the first New York Post article the second I stepped out of my taxicab and stuck microphones and cameras in my face as they asked me about the status of the Monique/Jean Luc divorce. I managed to eke out a tiny “No comment” as I pushed my way through the crowd to my office building, where the doorman grabbed my arm and pulled me into the building, like a lifeguard helping a little kid out of the adult pool.