All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 19
I’m going to see him.
Good.
Come with me, Miranda.
No way.
Please. Don’t make me go alone. He’s your father too.
I’m not the one who ran away.
This is a little stiletto, and it leaves us both silent a moment.
I’m going to ask him, Mimi, straight out.
You never learn. Go ahead, ask him whatever you want. You know what he’s going to say.
Please come. I don’t want to go by myself.
I can’t, Jeff. I can’t handle that right now. You can do it. You’re strong enough.
I’m not. You overrate me.
Uh-uh. You go, you can handle it. I can’t look at him right now. I can’t listen to his bullshit.
I know what you think happened, Mimi. It’s right there in your story. But we really don’t know.
Before they found the bones, maybe we didn’t know. Now we do. We need to stop fooling ourselves.
Miranda is right, of course. I know she’s right, but I can’t quite accept it yet. Not yet.
So how are you doing, Meem? Your mood. All this, it’s terrible timing for you.
No, it’s okay. I’m good. I feel like they gave me the tools I need.
She is referring to the shrinks at the Wharton Center, a wonderful, miraculous psych hospital in western Massachusetts where Miranda spent two snowbound weeks last March to deal with a paralyzing depression. I came out from San Francisco to see her. Our father did not come from Boston to see her.
Yeah? Like what tools?
Just tricks, kind of.
Tell me one.
It’ll sound stupid.
Not to me.
Well, there’s one I use called the Rocky technique.
Rocky, like Balboa?
Mm-hm.
Show me.
So you just, when you feel it coming on? It kind of feels like this…heaviness, sort of. Like your body is…slowing…down. And you just know that feeling. Your mood starts dropping and there’s nothing you can do and you’re starting to go over the edge. So what you do is, you close your eyes and make two fists, and you imagine this cloud coming at you, this huge cloud. And you picture yourself sticking out your chest and raising your fists like Rocky and shouting, Bring it on! Give me the pain! And you imagine this cloud enveloping you, and while you’re in this fog you keep shouting, I love it, I love pain! I’m stronger than you! You can’t break me! And you keep doing that until the cloud passes, and then you imagine yourself standing in the sun, with a clear blue sky. And you open your eyes and you feel better.
That works? Really?
Yeah. Makes me feel like a warrior.
Across the table, above her plate of pancakes, my sister holds up her fists in a pretty good boxing position, right fist at her chin to block a punch, left fist extended to jab her opponent. In slow motion, she throws a big, looping right hook toward my cheekbone. Her arm barely reaches halfway across the table. Pow, she says.
* * *
—
So I drop Miranda at her apartment, and in her car I go “home.” Along the way, I pass my old grammar school and playground, the houses of old friends, a meandering tour of my childhood. It is all subtly changed, unfamiliar, dissociating, unsettling—weird. But then, my whole life lately has this trippy, mournful vibe.
By the time I force-march myself to the front door of my old house, my head is a riot of ideas and grievances and regrets. I am not ready to see Him.
Then he is standing in front of me, the object of my obsession but so much reduced in person, so small and mediocre that he seems unworthy of all the attention. The whole thing—a lifetime of shaping myself around the anvil of my father and what he may or may not have done—it all feels futile and foolish, something I ought to have outgrown years ago.
He is wearing a shabby terry bathrobe and apparently nothing else. No Rolex, no collar pin, no cat’s-eye ring, no pocket square. Just a pair of tortoiseshell-and-wire-framed eyeglasses. The lenses have thickened since he was younger, when he used to slip off his glasses and gesture with them constantly. His curly hair is messy and, at fifty-seven, he is starting to go gray. His morning beard also shows a little gray, which gives his complexion an ashy tone. Between the lapels of his robe, a bristle of silver curlicues is grayer still. His bare shins and feet are thin and hairless and smooth as bone.
I feel a little guilty catching him like this, stripped, undignified. He was always so proud of his appearance.
He doesn’t seem to care. With a little of his old cocksure manner, he says, Hell-o, stranger.
Hi.
This is a surprise. Why didn’t you call ahead?
Didn’t know I was coming.
I step into the old house, which seems smaller and darker than I remember it but mostly unchanged. More than anything, it feels empty, abandoned.
Come here, he says.
He pads over to kiss my cheek. I bend down to accept a kiss, and he puts a hand on the back of my neck.
Why am I doing all this? Why am I pretending? Why is he? We both know what the situation is.
Come, sit down.
He leads me into the kitchen, which is worn and dingy. The walls and cabinets need painting. But everything is in place. There are no dishes or food in sight, and, true to form, he has Windexed the sink to a shine.
Coffee?
No, I just had breakfast with Miranda.
Did you? Wonderful!
Yeah. I guess.
How is she?
She’s good.
You came back for the funeral?
Yeah.
Good. I’m glad. Where are you staying?
With Mimi.
You can stay here, you know. There’s plenty of room. Your old room is still there.
It’s okay, Mimi’s got room.
He nods. He seems determined to keep things light, superficial.
So you have a big birthday coming up. The big three-oh.
Yeah.
My thirty-year-old son. I can hardly believe it.
I wince, but not for the reason he imagines. I don’t give a shit about turning thirty. It is June 1993, I was born in July ’63. It’s just math. Who cares? I am wincing because I know now what this guy is. I know, don’t I? We both know. What the fuck are we talking about? How long are we going to keep this up?
How are you doing out there? Are you still…?
Bartending, yes.
I hear the little voice in his head: Why would a grown man waste his time bartending? But he keeps it bright:
Great. You enjoy it?
Not really.
Oh. So what’s next, then?
Dad, I need to ask you something. Those bones.
The bones, yes. We can finally have a funeral. But the DA is dragging it out, isn’t he? He wants to torment me. Eighteen years. Eighteen years of this, and still!
He waits for some affirmation from me, but I say nothing.
Ah, he’s got a job to do, he’s got a job to do. I get that. I shouldn’t say this stuff to you, Jeff. I don’t mean to put you in a position. I know how you must feel.
Do you?
Well, I know how I feel. I’ll leave it at that.
And how do you feel?
Destroyed.
Destroyed. That’s an interesting choice of words.
Is it? Why?
It’s passive. You make it sound like something happened to you.
It did.
It did, huh. Dad, I need to ask you something. ’Cause I am trying to get my head around this, I mean I am really trying. How on earth did Mom’s body get buried there? Of all places.
He gives me a long look. I don’t know, he says.
You knew that place. You’d been there. How does this happen?
I don’t know. That’s the honest truth. What else can I say?
That’s just not good enough. Nobody’s going to believe it.
It’s the truth. I promise you.
I keep hoping there’s some innocent explanation. Is there? What is it?
I’ve been racking my brain, Jeff. Maybe she drove up there for some reason. She did that once before, you know. She went up there looking at places for the next summer, for our next vacation. So I figure she must have gone up there again and she ran into the wrong guy at the wrong time. That’s all I can figure.
Then how does her car end up at the train station right here?
Whoever did this to her must’ve dumped the car there. Covering his tracks.
I shake my head.
You don’t believe me?
I don’t know. I want to, I really do. But I’m having a hard time, y’know? It doesn’t make any sense. What would be the motive?
Motive? Who knows. People do crazy things. I’ve seen it. Crimes like murder, rape—there isn’t always a motive. It doesn’t work that way. Sometimes people just do things. Maybe it’s just a crime of opportunity. This woman shows up in a little town. She’s an easy target. She isn’t from around there, nobody knows her. And your mother wasn’t the most streetwise person.
No. That’s not what happened.
Why do you say that?
I just don’t believe it. Those bones, Dad. Those bones change everything. Don’t you see that?
Jeff, I’m telling you the truth. It’s all I can do. What else can I tell you?
That’s what you always say.
Tell me what I can do to convince you. I’ll do anything. Test me. Give me a way to prove myself.
You can’t.
Exactly. There’s nothing I can do, there’s no way I can defend myself against…suspicion. Against doubt. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see the position I’m in? It’s impossible. There’s no proof. It’s just rumors.
There is proof now. You know there is.
What proof? A few bones? What do those bones have to do with me?
Look, why don’t we just— What do you care what I think? It doesn’t matter what I think.
Of course it does. It matters very much to me. More than anything else. Much more than what they think.
He is looking at me in an imploring way, but I have nothing to say to him.
Look, Jeff, I know we haven’t always—I know I’m not the father you might have wanted. You haven’t spoken to me in, what? Five years?
You haven’t spoken to me either.
I know. I’m not accusing. I don’t want to argue. I only mean that, whatever flaws I might have had as a father, I never lied to you. Now, you know that’s true. Even when it was something you didn’t want to hear, even when I knew you were going to get your back up, I always said it straight out, to your face, didn’t I? I was always honest with you. Well, I’m telling you now: I’m not lying. I promise you. I promise you.
Even in his ridiculous bathrobe, even worn down with anxiety, he was a good lawyer. I’ll give him that. He identified my weakest point—doubt—and he planted his flag there.
I’m sorry. I’m just having a hard time believing you.
Well, let’s talk about it, then. Tell me why. Let’s keep talking.
No. You know what? Let’s not. I can’t talk about this anymore.
Okay, we’ll pick it up later, then. You must need some sleep.
No. I mean, I don’t think we should talk anymore, ever.
Jeff, what? Come on. You don’t mean that.
He gawps, and I understand that the hurt he feels is real. I find some lame, pathetic comfort in that. That he cares about my approval. That simply leaving him, withholding myself from him, my mediocre self, is painful to him. Good.
Jeff?
I’m gonna go now, I tell him.
And that’s it. That’s all there is. Saying goodbye to my father ought to be a grand gesture, the climax of something, but it happens quietly. No tears, no violins. It feels perfunctory, a formality. Like signing the paperwork on a deal that we agreed to a long time ago. It is almost a relief. I bet he feels the same way, deep down, happy to be rid of me. All we have ever done is fight. Where is it written that fathers and sons have to get along?
On the way out I notice a photo of my mother on a table in the living room, in a silver frame. Not much older than the big three-oh herself. It is a picture I remember.
Can I keep this?
Of course. Go ahead.
I don’t expect I will ever set foot in this house again. So, okay. Good. I’m fine.
* * *
—
Here is one thing that has changed since my mother’s skull rolled out of the dirt in Vermont: no longer do Miranda and I imagine that she might be out there somewhere, living under some other name. As nutty as that sounds, Mimi and I have always preserved that possibility, whispered about it. Well, we would say, it’s possible, there’s no way to disprove it. We worked out all kinds of crazy theories explaining why Mom would hide herself from us: mental illness, amnesia, kidnapping, brainwashing, a threat of harm, a cult (okay, that was mine). Miranda adored this game. She made up elaborate stories about Mom sustaining a head injury that magically erased her memory or convinced her that she was some other woman. She liked to imagine Mom in picturesque places like Key West or the south of France. Wherever she was, in Miranda’s dreams Mom was always happy. Well, those fantasies are all over now.
The district attorney is not the fantasizing type, either. After waiting eighteen years for a break in the case, it takes him only twenty-four hours to come to a decision, once the lab confirms the identity of the bones using the new science of DNA.
He does have the decency to invite the family to his office in Cambridge to explain the decision in person. We assemble there on a perversely fine morning in June. Sunny, temps in the eighties. The entire city, usually so gruff, is uncharacteristically cheerful, as summer-starved, sun-drunk New Englanders tend to be when the warm weather finally arrives.
The DA’s office occupies half of one floor in a molded-concrete 1970s courthouse in Cambridge. It does not even feel like a courthouse to me. There’s no patinaed old woodwork, no marble statues. Just generic county-government office space. Thin carpet squares laid over a concrete floor, flimsy walls painted Government Beige, fluorescent lights, water-stained acoustic-tile ceilings. The office could as easily be the Registry of Motor Vehicles or the Office of Weights and Measures.
Around quarter to ten, we begin assembling in the waiting area.
Aunt Kate is already there with Uncle Stephen. She smiles when Mimi and I arrive and rises to hug us. She fusses over me in particular because I have been away. But her face looks hardened, gaunt. There are bags under her eyes.
Next to arrive is the detective from Newton, whose name at first I can’t remember. Mimi air-kisses him in the same way she did Uncle Stephen, laying her cheek on the stained side of his face. Then she reintroduces him to us. His name is Tom Glover, which of course I should have remembered but I’m terrible with names.
Alex processes in like an emperor, wearing a suit that must have cost more than my car. He shakes everyone’s hand firmly, in turn, as if we have all come here to meet with him. Good Lord, my brother can be a jackass.
His wife is with him. A yuppie like Alex, a Harvard MBA with frosted hair who works in business consulting doing God-knows-what. Her name is Laurel Marcus. She uses her maiden name because, she says, Laurel Larkin is too hard to say and Laurel Marcus-Larkin sounds worse, but I think it is really because she is so alarmingly complete, so perfectly finished that she could no more remove her name than she could remove her nose. Still, she has a softer manner than Alex, and the self-possessed awkwardness of an only child, and no long history with us Larkins. Also, she seems to genuinely love Miranda, which goes a long way with me. (Alex and Laurel have three young kids, too, aged seven, nine, and eleven. I find these spoiled children more insufferable every time I see them. At this rate, I expect that very soon my nieces and nephews will be suitable only to be sewn up in a burlap bag with a wolverine and tossed into the nearest river.)
And that is it. Our whole oddball, de-parented family gathered in one room at last. Aunt Kate is now the eldest among us. My mom’s parents died a few years ago, never knowing whether the case would be solved. Mom’s mother—my grandmother—was convinced that my dad killed her beloved Jane, and she despised him until her last breath.
We are met by a young woman with the baffling title of victim-witness advocate. She escorts us through a heavy locked door, past a maze of cloth-walled cubicles, to a windowless conference room.
There we are joined by the district attorney himself, an unsmiling, square-jawed man named Martin Leary, and his top assistant, a doughy guy in a baggy suit whose name I do not quite catch. Chris Something-or-other.
District Attorney Leary greets us one by one. He is not a natural politician. I am sure no one has ever met him and thought, There goes the next governor of Massachusetts. He speaks in a terse, cautious way. His movements are stiff.
We sit down around an oval table. We Larkins have no appointed leader, but Alex and Aunt Kate both radiate a natural, effortless authority. The rest of us fill in between them like the dimmer stars in a constellation.
District Attorney Leary says: I want you all to know how difficult this case has been for me. Not just professionally, but personally. I am haunted by this case. I think of your mother—your sister, Kate—I think of her every day. And I have for years. I mean that sincerely. Every day, for years. I want you all to know how very much we want this case closed. We owe that to Jane and we owe it to you. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants this case prosecuted more than me. Obviously there’s two sides to it. I don’t know how each of you feels about Dan Larkin’s role in all this, and honestly I don’t want to know. For you three children especially, he’s your father and I would never ask you to choose. The decision has to be mine. I have to do what’s best for the case, not what’s best for you. So, end of speech.
