Chapter 9 Why Might an Older Man Recommend Lolita to His Much Younger Lover?
Why Might an Older Man Recommend Lolita to His Much Younger Lover?
It was Dennis who thought I might get a kick out of Lolita. Those were the words he used when he suggested the novel: I’d get a kick out of it. I read it that winter.
It was an afternoon in April, the very day after I had stopped seeing him, that—still furious with him, a woman scorned—I got the tattoo.
“You took advantage of my disadvantage.”
Lolita herself says that. She says it to Humbert Humbert.
I see the tattoo more often in the summer than the winter, because in the winter I’m wearing sweaters and shirts with long sleeves.
But even on the coldest days between January and March, I spot it.
There it is when I shower or take a bath or get dressed or undressed.
There it is when I wrap my naked arm around my naked husband’s neck or back when he’s inside me.
Sometimes, strangers ask me what it says, because it’s difficult to read if you don’t lean into me or ask me to parade it for you.
Often, it’s other people with tattoos who inquire.
I read them the quote and, afterward, only the most inquisitive or least well socialized press for the story behind it.
Or writers. They’ll ask. Always.
I had been to my father’s office at MetLife at least a half dozen times in my life, and the law firm’s conference room where I was deposed in the looming civil suit was not dissimilar to the ones I had walked past at the insurance company.
Dark paneled walls on three sides, windows overlooking Park Avenue on the fourth, a long, thick table that appeared as heavy as a flatbed truck.
The chairs were leather and deep, and they swiveled.
If I hadn’t been nervous or if I’d been alone, very likely I would have used my feet to spin around a few times.
Maybe many times. Almost every chair at the long table was taken.
My father was not representing me, of course, but he was a member of the defense team so he could be protected by the bubble of attorney-client privilege—and, thus, be in the room with me during the deposition.
My mother, however, was not allowed in. There were two lawyers defending the country club, two more defending the driving range net company, and another pair representing the plaintiffs, all of them men, and the attorney my father had retained for me, a fellow his age whom he had known since law school named Cleon Barker.
There was also a paralegal who had a half decade and change on me and a feeble little mustache the color of corn silk.
We were at the firm where Barker was a partner.
I had been told I needn’t fear that either of Kenny Foster’s parents would be in attendance, and, indeed, they were not.
Thank God. My father’s friend had prepped me on the sorts of things I’d be asked, and I’d found him reassuring.
His first years out of law school, he’d been a civil rights lawyer and had known Martin Luther King Jr. He was, my father said, the first Black partner at this firm, which he viewed as a testimony to Barker’s brilliance—the unspoken assumption being that his friend had to be both smarter and work harder than the white lawyers at the firm who craved that sort of plum.
The firm was one of the old, elite white-shoe practices, a moniker that was derived from an earlier era when the attorneys might have worn white buckskin shoes.
(That didn’t mean that the lawyers back in the day weren’t also racist, anti-Semitic, elitist, and socially smug—and, invariably, as white as new golf balls.
Often, they were all those things.) The only woman in the room, other than me, was the stenographer, though a female secretary had seated us and brought in coffee and soft drinks for everyone, and emptied the ashtrays before we began.
It was the first week in January 1979, and so my mother, alone in the reception area, wasn’t wearing any of her Capezio kitten-heel pumps—she must have had five or six pairs in a rainbow of colors—but waited for us all instead in Frye boots that almost reached her knees.
I was wearing a pair, too, though mine looked more distressed.
The men on both sides of the litigation were in similar dark suits, but their shirts tended toward shades of pastel that were mod, their neckties awash in paisleys and sailboats.
I had peed before we started, but no more than ten minutes into the questioning, all of which had been prosaic and harmless, I had to pee again out of anxiety and fear, and so I answered most of the questions with an ever-increasing pressure in my bladder and a desire to excuse myself.
But answer them I did. Mostly they were about my background as a golfer, how long I had been playing the sport, and why I enjoyed it.
About fifteen minutes in, that all changed.
“Let’s move to August 3, 1978,” said a lawyer named Burt Montgomery, one of the two lawyers for the Foster family. The date was almost exactly five months earlier. “You were at the Tallmadge Country Club, right, Mira?”
“Yes.”
“Do you recall the weather?”
I remembered the beachy smell of the Coppertone I was wearing. “It was sunny. There was a little breeze, but not much.”
“What were your plans that day?”
“I was driving a bucket of balls at the practice net after lunch, and then I was going to play a round of golf.”
“How often did you drive at the club?”
“Probably four days a week. A bucket or two at a time.”
“That’s a lot, right?” the lawyer asked. He had a voice that was soothing. He sounded like he belonged on late-night AM radio, telling stories like raconteur Jean Shepherd.
“I don’t know.”
“Did a lot of people at the club use it—the driving net?”
“No, not really. I hardly ever had to wait to use it. It was almost always available.”
“There was only room for one person at a time?”
“Yes.”
“The club pro used it occasionally, correct? Harry Fallows?”
“Sure.”
“You ever take lessons from Harry?”
“When I was younger. But he stopped being my coach when I was fourteen. He kind of wasn’t a fan of me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure. But I think he was always a little scared I’d make him look bad.”
“Why did you stop taking lessons with him at fourteen?”
“Well, I didn’t need him. I had Heidi.”
“In other words, you began training with Heidi Romming?” Montgomery asked.
When I nodded, the lawyer smiled and pointed at the stenographer, a polite reminder that I needed to speak my answers aloud. “Yes,” I said obediently, and likely louder than necessary.
“Did you ever see Harry giving other people lessons at the net?”
“Yes,” I answered. None of this had been part of my prep with Cleon Barker, but it all seemed innocuous enough.
“So, August third,” Montgomery said, and I supposed our detour was behind us. “Did you check the mesh before you started?”
My lawyer looked at me in a way that was meaningful but I couldn’t decipher.
I wanted to say that I hadn’t noticed any rips in the netting.
Either the tear had not been there when I started or the webbing was just (well) hanging by a thread and was ripped apart by the golf ball.
But perhaps Mr. Barker didn’t want me to answer this.
“Mira?” Montgomery pressed.
“No,” I answered finally.
“The net was designed for home use. It wasn’t meant for country clubs or public courses. Did you know that?” Montgomery asked.
“No,” I said again. I’d never thought about where the net belonged.
“Had you ever had any problems with it?” he continued.
“Like what?” I asked, looking for land mines.
I had given a statement to one of the police officers at the scene, and Mr. Barker had studied it to make sure I had revealed nothing (his words) inadvertently incriminating.
Apparently, I hadn’t. He’d also reviewed the notes from the two detectives who’d come to our house that night.
Again, I hadn’t shot myself in the foot.
Nevertheless, I had my guard up during this deposition.
Montgomery shrugged. “You tell me. I’m not much of a golfer.”
“Well, no. I mean, using it was never as useful as going to a real driving range. I never knew how far the drive had gone, the way you can at a real range. There used to be this target in the mesh that you wanted to hit, depending on which club you were using, but I never found it helpful. In fact, I found it not helpful. You’re supposed to keep your head down when you swing, you know, but if you wanted to see where the ball had hit the target, you had to pull your head up instantly.
And that could only create bad habits. I complained about it to Harry.
To be honest, I kind of had a hissy fit.
I just didn’t understand why the club had such a ridiculous net. ”
All of the lawyers, including my father, were looking at me as if I had just told them it had been my goal to hit Kenny Foster, or revealed something they didn’t know—or something that at least my father and Cleon Barker didn’t know.
One of the lawyers for the net company was unable to restrain a small smile, and both of the country club’s attorneys sat forward, their unease obvious even to me.
“When was this?” asked Montgomery. “Your…hissy fit?”
“July, I think.”
“Did you remove the target?” asked one of the lawyers representing the practice net manufacturer, but a Foster family lawyer cut him off.
“You’ll get your turn, Robbie,” he said to him. Then the Fosters’ attorney asked me—and it was almost comic—“Yes, Mira, please tell us: Did you remove the target?”
Once more, Barker gave me a look and then said, “Mira, do you need a bathroom break?” I was confused, supposing the guy was clairvoyant. Then I feared I might have been fidgeting like a toddler with a full bladder.
“You can’t take a break after I ask a question,” said Montgomery.