Being Oscar by Oscar Goodman Read Free Book Online Page A

thousand times and would have lost 999 times, even with experience.
    I didn’t think I had a shot, but we won. Better lucky than good — bashert!
    And that’s how I became a mob lawyer.

CHAPTER 4
PLAYING FAST AND LOOSE
    T he Horowitz case opened doors for me that I didn’t even know existed. Word got out—I don’t want to say in the underworld, but my name started to get mentioned in certain circles where guys worked in businesses that required criminal defense representation.
    And my phone started to ring.
    Life was good and getting better, both in professional terms and on a personal level.
    Carolyn and I had tried to start a family, but it just didn’t happen. So we decided to go in another direction. We set up an appointment with Catholic Welfare, an agency that dealt in adoption. We met with Sister Margaret and Sister Joseph, two lovely ladies who seemed to take a liking to us. They knew we were Jewish and said they would respect that. They would find children from Jewish birth mothers for us.
    In a little less than four years, we adopted four children: Oscar Jr., Ross, Eric, and Cara. No matter how well I did as a lawyer, nothing could ever compare to what those children meant to Carolyn and me.
    She was an amazing mother, raising four children who were all under the age of four. The diaper changing and potty trainingalone were gargantuan tasks. I spent a lot of time out of town on cases, so most of the child rearing fell to her. She’d just tell me, “Go earn.” That was my job.
    When one of the kids got the chicken pox, she put the other three in bed with him. They all got it, which she knew was inevitable anyway. This just allowed her to deal with it in a compressed time period. Brilliant!
    Now is as good a time as any to put this on record: Of all the decisions I’ve made in my life, and of all the things I’ve accomplished, nothing compares to marrying Carolyn.
    She was a freshman at Bryn Mawr College when I was at Haverford. I had met her roommate at a mixer and the roommate mentioned me to Carolyn. She told her she had met this interesting fellow that she thought Carolyn might like.
    It was not love at first sight, at least not from Carolyn’s perspective. In fact, she thought I was a conceited jerk. A couple of years later I was at the library at Bryn Mawr doing some research for a paper when I saw her again. I still remember her wearing this short, kilt-like skirt. I think I fell in love with her legs first.
    I called her at her dorm. Back in those days there was a pay phone in the “smoker” room of the dormitory lobby. Whoever answered called her and told her who was on the line. As she was walking toward the phone I heard her say, “Not that jerk.”
    I hung up.
    But I wasn’t ready to give up yet. She ended up taking a sociology course where I was working as a teacher’s assistant. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, so I called again. After some bantering back and forth, she finally agreed to go out with me.
    That night we stopped at a bar on City Avenue in Philadelphia, and I asked her what she’d like to drink. She said whatever I was having. Ever the sophisticate, I ordered up two boilermakers, a shot of whiskey washed down with a cold beer.
    Despite her initial misgivings, we hit it off. That night we stopped by my house and she met my sister Ericka. They liked each other, and I think that’s when she started to see me in a different light. She got past my reputation for being somewhat arrogant and cocky and saw who I really was. We started dating, and that was it. We saw each other almost every day.
    Once we had gotten serious, she said that if I wanted to marry her, I would have to ask her father for her hand. Dr. Carl Goldmark, Jr., was an imposing man. He was the OB/GYN to the stars at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He was tall, handsome, and very self-assured. And he was not too anxious to give his daughter’s hand to some cocky kid from Philadelphia.
    Carolyn’s