All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 21
I’d have to look at the evidence, but my guess is that if it was a close call for the DA at the higher standard, it will be an easier decision for us. The other benefit of course is that we get to conduct our own investigation, collect our own evidence. We get discovery, we get to depose witnesses. We can swear Mr. Larkin in and ask him questions under oath. If that’s what you all want.
Aunt Kate: I’ve never heard of it.
Bailis shrugs.
She looks across the table at Miranda and me. It would have to be up to you kids, she says. You’ve been through enough already. I won’t force you to do anything.
Of course, just an hour ago Aunt Kate was perfectly willing to override Alex’s wishes. Apparently she considers Miranda and me more fragile. She is not wrong. I just wish it wasn’t so obvious.
Bailis: I would add one other point. This will sound awful but you have a right to know. In a civil suit like this, for damages, the best plaintiff is the one who is most damaged, who’s sustained the greatest losses and is the most sympathetic to a jury. In this case, the children are the obvious choice as the lead plaintiffs.
Aunt Kate: No. I’m the one who should be out front on this.
Well, again this will sound awful but it’s true: a dead mother is worth more than a dead sister.
Kate blinks at him.
Miranda: This is crazy. You want us to sue our own father? Me and Jeff? Really?
I tell him, It’s a bad idea. I can’t even keep a houseplant alive. I don’t think you want me for this job.
Bailis: I don’t want you to do anything that you don’t want to do. I’m just telling you, as a practical matter the case is worth a lot less without you two.
Miranda shakes her head.
Aunt Kate: I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m not comfortable putting the kids out front like that.
Miranda: Hey, I don’t want to be the one to say no if this is what you guys want—Aunt Kate, if this is what you want.
What do you want, Miranda?
I could do it.
I don’t know, sweetie. I’m not sure you could. I’m not sure I should let you.
Bailis: What about you…
Jeff.
Jeff. What do you think?
I don’t think I could sue anyone, honestly, let alone my own father.
Okay.
I just don’t believe in it.
Okay.
What would be the point? Money? Money isn’t going to bring her back, money isn’t going to make me any happier.
That may be true. But, again, it’s not about the money.
You keep saying that: it’s not about the money. Of course it’s about the money. That’s the whole point of a lawsuit.
Not to me. Look, we use money as a punishment because we have to. We have no choice. It’s the only thing we can take from him. It’s the only form of justice available to us. The government keeps a monopoly on physical punishment—on the power to drag people away in handcuffs and lock them up. So we use the tools that are left to us. It’s not perfect, I grant you, but it’s what we have.
It just doesn’t feel right.
Okay then. Look, I’m not trying to talk you into anything. But can I ask you one question, just to satisfy my own curiosity? What do you think happened here, Jeff? What do you really think?
The DA said he was sure.
What about you? Are you sure?
I don’t know.
I get the feeling you do know. Am I right? It’s okay to say it, if it’s how you feel.
A moment passes.
Yes. I think he probably did it.
Are you sure?
Fifty percent and a feather.
Fifty percent and a feather won’t do. You have to be sure, otherwise it doesn’t make sense to go ahead with this. It’s just too hard. You have to be sure.
Another pause.
Yes. I’m sure.
Well then, that’s an awful burden for a young man. That’s a lot of weight to carry around.
You can’t manipulate me.
I would never try. It’s just, I’ve been carrying this case around too.
Not like I have.
No, not like you have. Of course.
And what do you think? Did my dad do it?
Yes, he did.
How sure are you? Fifty percent and a feather?
Let me put it this way: I made a terrible mistake not indicting this case twenty years ago.
And if you had?
He’d be in Walpole, I promise you.
So now you want to fix it. Your mistake.
It’s too late to fix it. You can’t go back. That’s one thing old men know. It was my mistake; I have to live with it. But maybe we can make things just a little better. For everyone.
With money?
With the truth.
But you’ll keep the money just the same.
You don’t have to keep it, Jeff, if you’re uncomfortable with it. Give it away to charity if you like. Make something good come of all this.
I have no idea, at this moment, if the great George Bailis is just another greedhead shyster or if he actually means what he’s saying.
I tell him: Well, honestly, everything I touch turns to shit lately. I’m not sure I can handle this right now.
Mimi is looking at me with an expression that is so crestfallen I have to look away. It’s like she has seen me the way the world sees me, not as her big brother but as the loser I really am, and she is disappointed. I am disappointed too. I have always been content to disappoint myself and delighted to disappoint others, but I can’t stand disappointing her.
Aunt Kate, what do you want?
I want you kids to be at peace.
But for you. What do you want?
I want my sister back, that’s what I want.
Kate breathes out a long, resigned sigh.
But since I can’t have that, I want the man who did this to her to pay. Somehow. If not in prison, then maybe this is the only way. There has to be a price for doing this. Otherwise it’s just—the world is—the whole thing is just…wrong.
What started as an unserious errand to a lawyer’s office to humor my aunt has left us all feeling devastated.
Bailis says, Well, I suggest you all go think about what you want to do. Obviously it’s a big decision. In the meantime, let me leave you all with this thought: somebody always pays. Your mother paid, obviously, with her life. But for a long time now, you’ve paid too. All of you. You, Jeff. Your sister, your whole family. The question isn’t whether someone should pay; the question is who. You? Or him?
* * *
—
In the days after meeting with the attorneys, Miranda slips into a funk. It is nothing dramatic at first, just a modulation to a lower key. She is quiet, somber, dull, fatigued. I am boiling with the idea of suing Dad, awed by it, terrified, exhilarated by it, but Miranda won’t talk about it, even leaves the room if I bring it up.
I have been staying on Miranda’s couch, in her little one-bedroom apartment in Somerville. Beside the couch, piled up on my open suitcase, is a bird’s nest of all the belongings I brought with me, plus a whorl of bedsheets and blanket, which I ball up every morning and toss onto the pile. On the day after our meetings, when the district attorney’s decision not to prosecute is on page one of the Globe, Miranda comes to sit beside me on this couch, among my tossed-off things.
Mimi, is there anything I can do for you?
No.
Do you have any meds or whatever that you can take?
She gives me a stern look. I am being ridiculous.
You want to do your Rocky thing?
No.
Bring on the pain! I love pain! Yo, Adrian!
It’s okay, Jeff. You don’t have to worry, you don’t have to fix everything. I’m just a little upset, that’s all.
I do worry.
Well, stop.
Don’t you want to feel better, Mimi?
No. I want to feel just what I’m feeling.
Okay. Sorry.
How can you not be upset, Jeff? I don’t know where we go from here.
By the second day, Miranda has retreated to her bed. Until now, I haven’t really understood what Mimi’s depression looks like as it sets in; I have only seen the bottoming-out and, more often, the aftermath, the slow recovery. So I can’t be sure if this is the real thing or, as Miranda insists, just garden-variety sorrow, a normal reaction to a very bad day. But as the hours pass, her grief becomes physical: how ill she looks, how vacant her expression, how bone-tired she feels. It is like she is fighting an infection, which in a way she is.
I hover around her as much as she will tolerate, but eventually she always demands to be left alone.
The second night, I have a skittish anxiety that she will hurt herself, so I sneak into her room to sleep in the chair beside her bed.
Next morning, I wake up in the chair. My neck aches, the vertebrae crunch as I move my head.
It is early.
Miranda is sleeping on her side, facing me, oddly peaceful.
I whisper to her, Mimi, you’ve got to snap out of this. I’m all alone here.
She does not stir.
That day she does not come out of her room except briefly to eat and use the bathroom. She takes a long nap in the afternoon and nods off again, in her bed, after dinner. At what point do I call a doctor? At what point do I overrule Mimi’s wishes and call for help?
Around ten, I check on her. The bedroom has the clammy stink of illness. This is not the romantic tristesse you might imagine from movies. It is more like a fever.
Miranda, you want anything to eat? I could get you something.
No.
You might feel better if you ate. You must be hungry.
No response.
Miranda, please try.
No response.
Mimi, listen to me. Give me something to do or I will go crazy.
She gazes at me, as if it has never crossed her mind that her suffering might affect someone else. She says, making up an errand for me perhaps: I’d like to see Jamie.
* * *
—
Jamie answers her phone after four rings. Her voice is instantly recognizable, same cadence, same distinctive tone, though a little deeper now, thicker. A grown woman’s voice. My voice must be different too. The last time Jamie Bennett heard me speak, I was sixteen years old. But I am afraid what she will hear in my voice is not maturity but defeat, failure, compromise, dissipation.
On the phone, we barely speak, and we certainly don’t acknowledge our awkward history. Jamie and I are both beside the point; Miranda is asking for her, that is all that matters, so Jamie will come.
When she arrives, about a half hour later, there is a little thrill in seeing her, of course. At thirty or thirty-one, she is exactly what I imagined. Transformed yet familiar. Not “gorgeous,” as Miranda promised, but correct in some mysterious way. She is the standard, the template. I measure other women, consciously or not, by a simple test: How does she compare? Is she more or less pretty, smart, clever, kind, etc. than Jamie Bennett? This is the enduring power of first love: it is definitive, it imprints on you.
Jamie betrays no such emotions upon seeing me. She smiles, but in a way that is polite and measured. I am tangled up in a bad teenage memory. I can’t blame her.
She tells me it is good to see me and, with a pat-pat on my shoulder like a benevolent aunt, she moves quickly past me to Miranda’s room.
There she sits down on the edge of the bed beside my sister, strokes her hair, and says, Sweetie, what happened?
I close the door and leave them alone. Already I feel a sense of relief about my sister. Help is here. Whatever it is that Miranda needs right now, Jamie has it and I do not.
* * *
—
When she emerges a half hour or so later, alone, from Miranda’s room, Jamie slips into the chair opposite me. She sits straight as a ruler and fixes her eyes on me.
So, she says.
So.
I lie tossed across the couch, where I have been doping myself with Oreos and stupid TV, waiting. But I sit up now and click off the TV in a guilty way. I want to be present, serious. As steady and grown-up as Jamie seems to be. I want to match her.
How is she?
She’ll be okay. It takes time. This happens. You look tired, Jeff. How are you?
You mean in the last couple days or the last fifteen years?
Both.
Terrible, in both.
Miranda says you’re going to sue him.
We’re thinking about it, yes.
She’s not sure she can do it.
It’s pretty obvious she can’t, isn’t it?
Can you?
I don’t think so.
That’s understandable.
They want me to be the lead plaintiff. The front man. Mick Jagger.
And what do you want?
You know me: I’m not Mick Jagger. I’m the bass player, I’m the guy whose name no one remembers.
I remember your name.
Do you?
Of course.
That’s good.
The lawyer must think you can do it or he wouldn’t have asked.
He says I have the best case because I’m the victim’s child. I’m the most damaged. I have the winning lottery ticket: a dead mother.
And what do you say?
I say I have a sister who’s been catatonic for forty-eight hours just thinking about this, and I have a brother who’s playing for the other team. So I guess I’m the only candidate.
No one’s forcing you to do anything.
No.
So part of you must want to do it.
Part of me thinks I have to do it.
Why? Why would you have to?
For my mother.
Is that what she would want?
No. Actually, I think it’s the last thing she would want. What she would want is for all of us to just get along. One big, happy family.
Jamie makes a face: Too late for that.
Can we talk about something else, Jamie?
Why? What else could be as important today?
Because I’d like to think there could be a time, someday, when you could look at me and not think of the murder.
Okay. So what should we talk about?
Tell me about you. What do you do?
I’m an executive assistant.
I don’t even know what that means.
It means I run errands.
Yeah? For who?
A man who owns art galleries.
How many art galleries?
Three. Boston, Wellesley, P-town.
Is he gay?
Why would you ask that?
Just the P-town thing.
Oh.
Also, I’d really like him to be gay.
You would?
Kind of, yeah.
Aw. Thank you. Yes, he’s gay.
Good. Is he a good boss?
Oh God, no, he’s a tyrant. I think he hired me just so he can have someone to yell at.
That sounds pleasant. Where do you live?
Brookline.
With your husband.
Don’t have a husband.
Do you want one?
No. One tyrant in my life is enough.
Fiancé? Boyfriend? Dog?
No. Maybe. Yes.
Maybe a boyfriend?
Well, define boyfriend.
Do you think of this person as your boyfriend?
Hm. I don’t know. Sometimes.
Is he taller than me?
Honest answer?
God, no.
He’s very short then.
You’re a terrible liar. I hate him already. He’s not worthy of you.
You might be right about that.
You said yes to the dog?
Yeah.
Tell me about your dog. He’s not some little runty fuckin’ thing, is he? I hate dogs that are the size of gerbils.
He’s maybe seventy or eighty pounds.
Good. What’s his name?
Stanley.
You named a dog Stanley?
He was already named when I got him. Whoever named him Stanley also left him at the pound.
What is he?
He’s a mutt. Mostly shepherd, I think.
Does Stanley like the boyfriend?
Stanley likes everyone. He’s not very bright.
Okay, how about this: If the boyfriend were allergic to dogs, would you get rid of the boyfriend or Stanley?
If he were allergic to dogs, he probably wouldn’t have become my boyfriend.
You said before he wasn’t your boyfriend.
I’m just using your word.
Okay, whatever. It’s a sudden thing, he develops a dog allergy overnight.
That’s not realistic.
It is. A man in Fresno was hit by a dump truck, and when he woke up he was allergic to dogs.
Wow. Is that so? I must have missed that story.
It’s absolutely true.
Okay then. If my boyfriend, who is not actually a boyfriend, were hit by a dump truck in Fresno and he woke up with a mysterious dog allergy, I would definitely get rid of him.
Of course you would. You’d have to. Because what was he doing in Fresno?
Exactly.
Can I ask you something? Do you remember the day we went driving in your mother’s car?
Of course I do. Except as I recall, you went driving.
You made me do it.
I did not!
You egged me on.
That is so not true. I was a helpless victim.
That memory? That’s one of my favorite things.
Mine too. You were so…unafraid, Jeff.
I was pretending.
What’s the difference?
I don’t know.
Miranda says some girl out there broke your heart.
