Jealousy

In disgust, Jeffrey Greenberg flung his copy ofThe Wall Street Journalto the rich oriental carpet in his opulent office on the 24th floor of the Nova Center building in Phoenix.

"That goddamn woman and her husband aren't going to draw a peaceful breath for the rest of their lives if I can help it," he snarled aloud. Striding to the open door of his mahogany paneled private suite, he glared at the closest of his several secretaries. "Get Aaron in here immediately," he barked and the startled young lady quickly reached for her phone. Jeffrey had just read theJournalarticle summarizing the speech of Ambassador Harrison Ward at last night's dinner meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City and he was fuming.

Retired since serving as one of Secretary of State Madelyn Albright's most trusted senior advisors during the last two years of the Clinton administration, Ambassador Ward's speech had expanded on his previously well-publicized criticism of the Bush administration in leading America into the Iraq war. A career diplomat for thirty-five years, Harrison had a distinguished career of success representing the United States in the Middle East, Africa and Asia before advancing to the highest levels of the State Department. His last overseas post before returning to Washington was that of Ambassador to one of the most critical Mideast countries at the time of the 1996 terrorist attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the 1998 bombings of the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Because of his unflattering opinion of current government policy in the Mideast, he had become a darling of the liberal establishment; ergo, one of the most reviled by conservatives. Right wing radio talk shows flailed him mercilessly. Among others, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved vilified him as the secular personification of the Anti-Christ. Slobbering with rage, Michael Savage, nee Michael Weiner, venomously demanded his immediate imprisonment as a traitor followed by deportation.

Following his retirement from the State Department, Harrison had been a visiting scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, a frequent op-ed contributor to newspapers and the author of two books on America's diplomatic failures since 9/11 that ranked high on non-fiction bestseller lists. He was often a guest on television's Sunday morningMeet the Pressand other political talk programs where he invariably bested his conservative opponents in debate. At sixty-one years of age, he had been supremely happy in a monogamous marriage to his beloved Mary Beth for twenty-nine years before losing her to a rare sarcoma cancer four and a half years earlier. Following prolonged grieving, he had married the prominent university educator, Dr. Carol Wilson-Greenberg six months ago.

Carol was the divorced first wife of Jeffrey Greenberg and mother of three Greenberg children.

Jeffrey was chairman and CEO of several national healthcare companies and the son of Aaron Greenberg whose fortune came from his control of the national franchise chain of over 400 Kwik Kut hair salons. Upon earning his MBA at Stanford's Graduate School of Business at the age of twenty, he alertly predicted the growing importance of healthcare for the elderly as America's population aged. Just out of college and financed by his father, his first venture was the purchase of a decrepit senior retirement home in rural northern California. With nothing more than a new coat of paint on the pathetic cottages and a bit of external landscaping improvements, the facility was sold eight months later for a handsome profit. His father's investment was repaid with interest and his career choice was vindicated.

After several additional purchases, refurbishment and resale of small retirement homes, his first big coup was his formation of America's Hospices, a franchise concept that rapidly grew into more than forty care centers for the terminally ill in California, Nevada and Arizona. Over the years, the number of his acquisitions exploded through the aggressive use of debt and discreet bribes to government officials with regulatory authority over the healthcare industry. The final jewel in the crown of his empire was Nova Healthcare System, a network of 245 urgent care centers, assisted living homes and hospices nationwide. Some of the franchised facilities were adequately managed. Those that did not meet his demanding profit goals were ruthlessly disposed of. Settling on Phoenix as his corporate headquarters, Jeffrey's latest triumph was the Nova Center building, a recently completed 36-floor monument to his personal greed. Architects of stature despised the ostentatiousness of Nova Center's multi-colored rococo facade. Ever the showman, Jeffrey reveled in the building's ornate vulgarity, which was more in keeping with the sleaze of Las Vegas than a respected corporate campus.

Almost all of his companies had at one time or another been the targets of investigation by state insurance regulators. The healthcare industry did not hold the professional competence of his many facilities in high regard but his competitors universally agreed that Jeffrey's aggressive advertising campaigns, which preyed on the financial fears of the aged, were spectacularly effective. His last major challenge was the allegations of Medicare fraud that surfaced three years ago. Instinctively combative, he loosed his army of attorneys and public relations flacks plus a few well-placed campaign donations in Washington and the matter was effectively contained. Many of the same tactics were employed to thwart last year's SEC investigations of Nova's off balance sheet subsidiary holdings. Despite his brash public demeanor, the recent backdrop of corporate scandals evidenced by the Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Tyco and Adelphia experiences made Jeffrey realize that the SEC allegations posed a serious risk. Nevertheless, his aggressive counter-attack seemed to have quieted the situation and no indictments had been forthcoming. As insurance against a worst-case scenario, he had quietly placed considerable amounts of his personal wealth in private accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Caymans. Last year, he was able to obtain dual citizenship status with the State of Israel as a final precaution in case a self-imposed exile might prove desirable in the future. He remained deeply resentful of the cost that arrangement had required in overseas political contributions.  

Jeffrey's creed was to take no prisoners. In direct competitive business confrontations, he was never content to prevail. His life's goal was to brutally crush any opposition and, if possible, ruin the professional and personal reputations of his antagonists in the process. His view of the juridical process was that it can used as an effective offensive weapon and he became well known for bringing suits against his competitors for all types of alleged wrongdoing. His highly paid publicists were famous for their attack dog tactics in smearing the personal character of his real or imagined enemies.

Jeffrey Greenberg was not a nice person by anyone's definition. This characterization did not concern him in the least and he gloried in the knowledge that his reputation brought fear to many. His objective was total victory in every business and personal undertaking and the means used to reach his goals was irrelevant. Never an introspective person, he was totally unaware that his self-centered drive had become increasingly sociopathic through the years. He never gave a moment's thought to the well being of others or the ethics of his actions. His desires were his only priority. Once, early in his career before moving to Phoenix, the rabbi of an orthodox congregation in California diplomatically broached to him the spiritual value of an ethical life. Jeffrey's furious reaction to the suggestion that he meditate on the Nesane Tokef prayer of atonement between the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur holy days was to withdraw his young children from the congregation's Isaac Yaakov Elementary School and cancel further donations to that highly-regarded institution. When the rabbi had the temerity to recommend participation in the ritual of Kaparot, he ordered his staff to bar the cleric from visiting his office again.

Physically, Jeffrey was a small thin man with a receding hairline of dark curly hair and a light olive complexion given to a faint sheen of perspiration. His body was hirsute. He never weighed more than 155 pounds in his lifetime. Though not a sportsman, his energy level was incalculable and he frequently left colleagues and enemies alike exhausted in the wake of his normal sixty-hour workweek. His overbearing personality and rapid speech drained others ... "he sucks all the oxygen from the room," one exasperated employee once correctly commented.  He seldom hesitated to interrupt or talk over others while they were speaking. His incredible energy was clearly visible in an intense body language of quick movements and the never-ending tapping of his glistening $1,600 Armani shoes. He often leapt from his chair and paced the floor to make a point in discussion or to issue orders to subordinates. His dress was conflicting. In business, he invariably wore an impeccably tailored dark English suit, glistening white shirt and the most conservative of contrasting tie. At home and on vacation, he favored flamboyantly colored silk sport shirts, shorts, sunglasses and sandals. His vanity was vulgarly displayed in the most expensive jeweled wristwatches, a diamond-encrusted wedding band and an ostentatious platinum necklace chain that cost $18,000 after a negotiated discount at Tiffany's.

Behind his back, many sneered at Jeffrey's small-man disease and it was probably true that he suffered from a Napoleon complex. If a luckless employee overly argued a contradictory opinion, termination would frequently result. Usually, the individual involved remained silent and received a reasonably golden goodbye handshake. If Jeffrey was unduly angered by the person's attitude, the reward was sacking plus carefully placed rumors of professional incompetence or personal turpitude, a tactic designed to hinder future employment. Unquestioned personal loyalty was demanded of every Nova employee but they were compensated handsomely for their obsequiousness. Not surprisingly, his board of directors, senior executives and mid-management wannabes were a legion of sycophants.    

Jeffrey's personal life followed much the same course. He demanded unquestioning commitment from family and acquaintances. Those who bowed to his oppressive yoke enjoyed the fruits of a lavish life style. Those few who had the courage to rebel, even in the smallest detail, became targets of his long-lived wrath. One example was his first wife, Carol Wilson.

Carol was the only child of a somewhat pedantic English professor at the small and undistinguished Breckenridge College in downstate Monmouth, Illinois midway between Galesburg and Burlington, Iowa. Blessed with a remarkable intellect, Carol had formed definite goals early in life. Professionally, her objective was to become a nationally recognized leader in tertiary education. Personally, she developed a taste for the physical possessions of life that the modest salaries of academia could never provide. The solution to these conflicting objectives was found when a mutual friend introduced her to Jeffrey Greenberg while both were graduate students at Stanford. Jeffrey was a gifted student in his last year of the university's business school. Three years his senior in age, Carol was finalizing her doctoral dissertation in the School of Education. Carol was not at all physically attracted to this frenetic little man whose hair was already beginning to thin. Still, his supreme confidence and energy lent credence to the future business ambitions that he boasted of to anyone who would listen.

Initially, Carol was appalled at his gaucheness. However, there was no question that his unmitigated gall was an essential characteristic of a successful entrepreneur and she fully realized that entrepreneurism was the modern road to personal wealth and the privileges that provided. She mused. Maybe, just maybe, this frenzied young man might be worth a second thought. They would never have a mutuality of intellectual interests of course but let's face facts. My career is my first order of business and his family's money can grease the skids in the academic world as well as anywhere else. Musing further, she perceived that Jeffrey's gene pool had given him the promise of doing exceptionally well in business himself quite beyond family money. He's never said it but it's obvious his primary objective in life is to exceed his father's wealth. Yes, she coldly calculated, this little Jeffrey and I might make a pair at that.

Warming to the chase, Jeffrey was delighted to introduce this tall and self-assured patrician blonde as his personal trophy to his Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity brothers and he launched a targeted courtship. Carol forewent further thought of a love match and initiated her own campaign to win his affection. Ever promising but never delivering physical pleasures, her seduction of Jeffrey was masterful. Within a month, he was a mass of sexual frustration.

The week after their joint graduation from Stanford, they eloped to Reno for a quick justice-of-the-peace marriage without family, friends or religious liturgy. The dismay this brought to the Episcopal Wilson and orthodox Greenberg families bothered neither Carol nor Jeffrey. The stage Carol had set was for a partnership of mutual material gain, not a warm, loving and sharing relationship.

While at Stanford, Carol had built on her teenage sexual experiences through several brief liaisons with student peers and a few more intense affairs with faculty members. One of the latter resulted in a rather ugly divorce action with her being named as correspondent in the suit brought by a vengeful wife. She was by no means virginal and was supremely confident that her highly skilled sexual techniques could manage Jeffrey's needs with ease. She was quite correct.

In the garish Lake Tahoe hotel selected by Jeffrey, their marriage was consummated. His physical energy evidenced itself in four missionary couplings during the night, none of which lasted more than ten minutes. With no more than cursory foreplay, Carol experienced considerable personal discomfort. She had a pang of pity for the ineptness of her husband and attempted to slow his brutish mountings but his premature climaxes defeated her best efforts. Carol came nowhere close to satisfaction that night. So this is what the physical side of marriage to Jeffrey Greenberg is going to be, she contemplated. I should have imagined as much. Dozing fitfully, she was awakened repeatedly to receive another of his inelegant approaches or listen to his unending descriptions of future business plans.

Eleven months into their marriage, a son, Aaron, was born who proved to be a loyal supporter of his father during and after his parents' acrimonious divorce eight years later. Named for his paternal grandfather, Aaron followed his father's lead in attending attended Stanford. Joining Nova Healthcare immediately after graduation, his personality became even more abrasive than that of his famous father. He held most of his colleagues in disdain and every Nova employee feared him. He became his father's primary source of information on executive gossip and who could be trusted. His negative opinion frequently led to an individual's unexpected departure.

Sixteen months later, Jeffrey and Carol's second son David appeared and he was Aaron's diametric opposite. A sensitive but assertive boy, he dramatically announced his homosexuality at age fifteen and Jeffrey emotionally shunned him from that moment on. Now a family tradition, he too graduated from Stanford and in his mid twenties became the nationally prominent executive director of a large nonprofit gay organization in Seattle. Through the years, David remained an embarrassment to his father who never mentioned his existence socially or in business. He became a treasured son to Carol who deeply respected his commitment to his chosen lifestyle, despite her own total heterosexuality.

Fourteen months after David, daughter Sarah arrived. Now twenty-three and a Yale law student, Sarah was a dedicated social liberal whose opinions closely paralleled those of her mother and her mother's new husband, Ambassador Ward. Sarah's last meeting with her father had been while he was visiting New Haven and it was a catastrophe. With two huge Bombay gin martinis before dinner and almost a full bottle of expensive pinot noir under his belt, Jeffrey launched a diatribe against her traitorous left wing socialist views and the perverted lifestyle of her college friends. Sarah attempted to answer with her own reasoned but opposing beliefs, and that led to a furious outburst by her father. Talking loudly over his daughter, he lost control of himself, threw his napkin on the floor and stalked out of the restaurant leaving her alone under the embarrassed glances of the surrounding diners. Taking a sip of her own drink, she reddened in anger at his boorish but all too typical behavior. The only redeeming virtue of the evening was that her father's current wife, an overdressed and affected English woman four years Sarah's senior in age, wasn't there to gloat over her humiliated stepdaughter. Later that night she called her mother in Washington to describe the incident and vow that she never wanted to see Jeffrey again. Once again, Carol was placed in the awkward position of placating her daughter while trying not to condemn her father.

Many times through the years, Carol thought of her marriage to Jeffrey with an ambivalent conclusion. He was unquestionably gauche and embarrassing in social situations. She was often repulsed by his violent sexual demands that almost always left her unsatisfied, nothing more than a chattel to satisfy his immediate need. Still, it was undeniable that his phenomenal business success had indeed provided the many advantages of wealth that she had desired from childhood. Their three children were a mixed blessing. David and Sarah bonded wonderfully with their mother and Carol loved them to the depth of her being. Aaron? Well, Aaron so reflected his father's negative characteristics that she had to admit he had become lost to her emotionally and that was a sad reality. Despite an unfulfilled marriage, Carol remained staunchly faithful to her husband and firmly rejected many opportunities to dally with desirable and highly placed men of business, government, the professions and academia. She took perverse pleasure in the knowledge that whatever her shortcomings, she had never betrayed her marriage vows. The same was not true of Jeffrey.  

During her first pregnancy, Carol became painfully aware of her husband's infidelity. Short trysts became long-lived affairs that Jeffrey skirted but never fully denied. His libido was only a part, and a small part at that, of his philandering. Far more important was the ego enhancement he gained from being seen with young women of beauty and there were many available to share his attention and wealth. Deeply hurt by his increasingly open boasts of conquest, Carol began to regret her own faithfulness as three children were issued from their unpleasant couplings.

Thoroughly disillusioned with her husband and everything he represented, Carol sued for divorce in the eighth year of the marriage. Son Aaron was then seven, David five and daughter Sarah four. The divorce action was based on well-proven charges of Jeffrey's numerous adulteries. His army of attorneys fought hard and the acrimony of the suit was well publicized in the society pages of the Phoenix papers. The one grievous error Jeffrey had made, never to be repeated, was that in his youthful inexperience he had neglected to require a prenuptial agreement. Following her successful action, Carol found herself to be a very wealthy divorcee and the subsequent growth of her acquired equity shares in Epic Healthcare multiplied the value of her large cash settlement many times over the years. The settlement provided that Aaron would remain with his father while she gained custody of David and Sarah. Although visitation privileges were generous, the division of custody well suited the individual wishes of both parents and the children. All of the children were placed in the most expensive of private boarding schools until they reached college age. During their few overlapping undergraduate years at Stanford, David and Sarah saw each other frequently but almost never associated with Aaron.