All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 22
A little bit.
I’m sorry.
She didn’t love me. It’s not her fault.
That’s very mature of you. But you’re still left with a broken heart.
Not broken. Just cracked a little.
That’s not what Miranda says.
No? What does Miranda say?
She says you’re not yourself. You’re drinking too much, sleeping till noon.
That’s not myself?
It didn’t used to be.
No, you’re right, it didn’t.
It’s not something to joke about, Jeff.
Oh, I disagree. I’m the best joke I know.
Not to me.
This is too much, too close to home. I am anxious to point the spotlight away from me:
How’s your mother? Does she still hate me?
She never hated you, you know that. It was never about you.
How is she?
She’s good. Remarried.
She did the right thing, getting out, taking you away.
She didn’t have a choice.
I know. I understand. She did what any mother would do.
It had nothing to do with you, Jeff.
I know. Sorry. Shouldn’t have brought it up.
What are you going to do about the lawsuit?
I really don’t know. What should I do?
It’s not for me to say. He certainly deserves whatever he gets.
A beat.
Well. It’s getting late. I better get going.
Okay.
We both stand. For a long, awful moment we stare at each other.
I ask, Are we a hug or a handshake?
Hug. Definitely.
She steps forward to bestow a chaste hug.
I cinch her up close, my hands on the flat of her lower back, and I lay my head on her shoulder. Her body is comfortable, strong, thick. And I can’t help it: what I want, in that first moment, is to fuck Jamie Bennett as soon and as heroically as I possibly can. To lose myself in it, spend myself, forget myself. But a sense of tragedy suffuses the whole thing (Remember when we drove in your mother’s car?) and deadens my idiotic libido. Hasn’t yearning steered me wrong too? (Miranda says some girl out there broke your heart.) And by stages my desire declines, reduces to a mere idea, a thought, de-eroticized, manageable, minuscule, and I am happy to send it eeling away. What remains, what I want then, is just to stand here, with my head on her shoulder and her body crumped tight against me, for as long as I can, for as long as she’ll let me. That’s all I want. Just to rest here awhile.
She bends to me, as a tree bends with the wind. What she is feeling, I have no idea.
Then the moment is over.
Okay, Jeff. I think I better go.
* * *
—
Around four the next day, I am back in the waiting area of George Bailis’s office.
Scattered on a coffee table in front of me are the copies of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly I have been flipping through, oddly fascinated, for nearly two hours.
In the hallway, the elevator door rattles.
With no more evidence than this sound, the secretary, Donna, nods at me: This is him. Donna and I have formed a little alliance. She seems impressed that I have stuck it out this long to see her boss.
When Bailis enters, she announces, Mr. Larkin has been waiting to see you.
Has he?
I stand up.
Why didn’t you call ahead, make an appointment? I wouldn’t have kept you waiting.
I didn’t really think it through. If I had, I probably wouldn’t be here.
Bailis frowns. With his ruined face, his beat-down slouch, the battered boxy lawyer’s briefcase dangling from his hand, he seems very old for a fifty-something man, which is what he must be if Glover’s math is to be trusted. There is only a little glint in his eyes, a hint of quickness, to suggest the whiz kid that Glover remembers.
Well, he says, I’m glad you didn’t think, then. Come in, come in.
The receptionist extends to him a bouquet of phone messages on pink slips of paper while, with her other hand, she offers to take Bailis’s briefcase.
He refuses both, leads me directly to his office.
In the office he plops down in his desk chair and opens a bottom drawer to prop his foot on.
Sit down, Jeff. You’re alone today. Where’s the rest of your crew?
They don’t know I’m here.
Ah. Okay.
I’m not sure what to tell them. I’m not sure I can go through with it.
That’s understandable. It’s a big step.
I keep thinking, you know: What if we’re wrong? What if we’re destroying my father’s life and we’re wrong? Because this case is going to destroy him either way, isn’t it?
Probably.
And I’ll be responsible, won’t I?
Partially.
You really think my father did it.
I do. I’ve told you that.
See, this is what I don’t understand. You seem so sure. How can you be so sure?
I look at the evidence and decide. What else can I do?
That’s what the DA said. I just don’t think I’m wired that way. To judge people. If we’re wrong, I don’t know if I could live with it. The responsibility.
I don’t envy you. You’re too young to have to make a decision like this.
It’s just that I don’t want to hurt anyone.
Well, it’s actually pretty easy to go through life without ever hurting anyone or getting anything wrong or making a mistake. Just never act. Never do anything. Leave the world exactly as you found it.
At this I close my eyes, rub my brow. There is a knot in my brain.
Bailis comes out from behind his desk and tactfully closes the office door, then takes the chair opposite mine, in front of his desk. The office is not very big; our knees nearly touch.
Can I ask you a question, Jeff? What is your relationship like with your father?
Right now?
Right now.
I don’t have one.
What does that mean? You don’t speak at all?
No, we don’t.
When was the last time you spoke to him?
It had been years, then I just saw him a few days ago. I accused him.
And what did he say?
He said I was wrong, he didn’t do it. He insisted. I haven’t spoken to him since. I don’t know that I ever will.
I’m sorry.
It’s no big deal.
It’s a very big deal. What would you like your relationship with him to be?
It doesn’t matter what I’d like. It’s not up to me.
Why not?
Because I can’t change him.
Why would you want to change him? Why not just accept him as he is?
You know why.
No, tell me.
Because of what he did.
A minute ago you said you didn’t know what he did, you still had doubt.
I don’t have doubt. I have…resistance. I don’t want this. I don’t want it to be true.
I don’t blame you, kiddo.
Do you have kids, Mr. Bailis?
I have a daughter.
How old?
Thirty-two.
Are you a good father?
I’m an imperfect father.
Are you a good-enough father?
I don’t know. I try to be.
I’m an imperfect son.
There’s no other kind, Jeff.
Yeah, but we don’t all sue our fathers. We disappoint them, not sue them. What if I decide not to go ahead with it? What happens to the case?
I think it probably ends there. If the children are opposed, if they still believe in their father, it’s unlikely a jury would go against that.
But we wouldn’t be opposed. We just wouldn’t be participating.
How is a jury supposed to tell the difference?
What about my aunt Kate? She has a right to a lawyer, doesn’t she?
I suppose. She has a right to a lawyer; she doesn’t have a right to me. And I wouldn’t bring the case if I thought you and your sister didn’t want it.
Are you trying to pressure me to do it?
Just the opposite: I’m trying to ease the pressure on you. Here—
He goes to his desk, rummages around in the papers on the desktop, and brings a manila folder to me.
Here. Look this over. See what you think. It’s my file on your mother’s…disappearance. I kept a few reports from the DA’s file.
Is that legal?
I don’t know. You’ll have to ask a lawyer.
He winks.
Okay. I’ll check it out. Maybe I’ll find something everyone else missed, right?
No. You won’t find any answers in there, just facts. Old police reports, photos, grand jury transcripts. A bunch of puzzle pieces that don’t fit together. But go on, read it, maybe it’ll help you decide.
I’ll bring it back.
Keep it. If you decide not to go ahead with the suit, I’ll have no more use for it.
But you hung on to it all these years.
Exactly. Maybe it’s time for all of us to move on.
Can I ask you a question? Did you know my father back then?
Of course.
Did you ever try a case against him?
Many times.
He was a good lawyer, wasn’t he?
He was an excellent lawyer.
What did you think of him personally?
He was an excellent lawyer.
Ah. That’s what I thought. Why didn’t you like him?
He was difficult. But lots of lawyers are difficult, I suppose.
You mean he was an asshole.
Lots of lawyers are that too.
What was it, then?
I didn’t trust him.
He lied to you?
In this job everybody lies.
Do you lie?
Of course.
No, you don’t. I don’t believe that.
Sure, I do. If I have a client who I know is guilty, and I stand up in court and say he is not guilty, haven’t I lied?
No. It’s like a poker player saying he has a full house. It’s not lying; it’s how the game is played.
It’s how the game is played. Exactly. That’s why I shouldn’t bad-mouth him.
Okay, so maybe he lied a little back then. Doesn’t mean he did this.
No, it doesn’t.
You think he was capable of it.
I think in the right circumstances anyone is capable of anything.
I’m not.
You underestimate yourself.
Overestimate, you mean.
Bailis makes a face: eyebrows raised, head tilted. Whatever. He says, Maybe you overestimate your father. You wouldn’t be the first son to do that.
In the waiting room, he tells me, Just let me know what you want to do. Any decision you make will be the right one. You’ll know.
The Lawyers Weekly is still on the coffee table where I left it.
Can I have this?
Sure.
* * *
—
Alex invites me to play golf at his country club in Brookline. This has never happened before. I have no interest in golf or country clubs or, for that matter, in Alex. But it is hard to say no to my brother, whose invitations feel like commands. He says You wanna play golf? with the same presumption that a rich man says to his driver Will you bring the car around?
I am supremely uncomfortable here. The club is snooty, the members are an army of farcical old-money clichés. And here am I, in rumpled khakis and old sneakers.
Alex is wearing a trim, fitted golf outfit. He looks like a very tall acrobat.
It is a muggy morning, and I am sweating more than anyone else on the course, I’m sure.
Of course I have no chance against Alex. His golf game is picturesque. With his long body and long clubs, he is like a windmill. He generates power effortlessly with great lazy, looping swings. He has a trick of backspinning the ball so that, on landing, it snags the surface with talons and sticks there. Me, I don’t play golf, and this course is not for beginners. It is short but difficult, full of sand traps, water hazards, hillocks, tall grass, and narrow fairways. It is infuriating. It is designed to be infuriating. Even the fairways are pimpled and rolling like the surface of the ocean.
I scuffle through seven holes, hitting five balls into the woods, losing two of them. There is a foursome creeping up behind us, and I am anxious about holding them up. Alex and I barely speak. I am miserable.
But on the eighth hole something miraculous happens. The hole is a short par 3 with a fairway that bends to the right. The only way to play it, Alex instructs me, is to drive the ball to the elbow of the fairway, where the path to the green turns, then pitch to the green from there. By dumb luck and for the first time today, my drive is on target. I know nothing about golf, but in the magical snick of the three wood off the tee, I can feel what draws golfers in: the little elation of a ball well struck, the rapture of watching it arc toward its goal. The momentary taste of rightness, of perfection—yes!
High on this little success, as Alex and I walk to our cart then ride down the side of the fairway, I let my guard down a little, I begin to imagine that Alex and I can be real brothers. So I disgorge a pet theory:
This has to be the stupidest sport. I mean, isn’t it? How many hours have you spent playing this game, and for what? To learn the skill of hitting a little ball with a stick? What on earth is the point? What are you going to do with that skill? Think what you could have accomplished.
You could say that about any sport. What’s the point of throwing a ball through a hoop? What’s the point of hitting a ball over a net?
Yeah, but golf is especially ridiculous. It takes so much time.
Right, Jeff, because you use your time so wisely. You’re so busy.
It’s not even good exercise. I mean, look at us. We’re riding in a cart, for Christ’s sake. We’re like invalids! This is a sport?
You’re just saying that ’cause you suck at it.
Yeah, I suck at it, but I suck at a lot of things. I suck at open-heart surgery, I suck at playing the trombone; I would never say those things are stupid.
We arrive at my ball. It may have been my first decent drive all day, but I am still a good ten yards short of Alex’s ball.
You’re away, Alex says, because he is a dick.
I have no idea which club to use for any given shot, so I have to ask Alex, What am I hitting?
Seven iron.
I take this club from my bag, which Alex has borrowed from a friend of his because Alex’s own clubs are much too long for me.
There’s golf courses too. What a complete fucking waste of real estate. Look at all this. We can’t find a better use for this land?
No, Jeff, we can’t.
This game probably made sense at the start, in Scotland, because that whole country looks like a fucking golf course. You didn’t have to build anything. You dug a few little holes and, boom, that’s a golf course.
You’ve never been to Scotland, Jeff. Hit the ball.
Golf courses and cemeteries: biggest waste of real estate in America.
Just hit the ball.
So I make a few golfish gestures. I stand back to look at the flag and visualize the ball arcing toward it. This is a technique Alex has shared with me: imagine yourself succeeding, and you will. I take a relaxed practice swing. I stand over the ball and waggle the clubhead. I am ready. But then—what happened?—I am not ready. I have waited too long, the ready moment has passed, and now I am thinking too much: I can par this hole. The drive is the toughest part. If I can just hit this green. Don’t think. Just relax…
I shank the ball off the heel of the club. It dribbles away to the left, not more than twenty feet.
I fucking hate golf.
It takes practice.
I’m taking a mulligan.
You can’t take a mulligan. We’re playing here.
Exactly, we’re playing. Do you even know what that word means?
It means somebody wins and somebody loses.
No! That’s not what it means at all. Anyway, you must be up by twenty strokes.
Eleven.
Who cares, Alex? Look, what if I just concede? You win. Now we can play just for fun.
Then what’s the point of playing?
Exactly! There is none! It’s a game.
It’s not a game; it’s competition. That’s not pointless—it’s life.
Life is golf?
No, life is competition. It’s like golf. It’s a metaphor.
It’s not a fucking metaphor! Alex, we’re hitting a ball into a fuckin’ hole in the ground. What’s metaphorical about that?
Ai, this is your whole problem: You want everything to be easy. You don’t want to work for anything. That’s the metaphor.
What? Do you know what a metaphor is?
Jeff, do you know why people play golf?
No, but you’re about to tell me, aren’t you?
They play golf because it’s not easy. They want to challenge themselves. That’s not you. God forbid you ever challenge yourself.
Wait, all that because I suck at golf?
No, it’s not just golf. You have problems here, so you run away to San Fran.
Nobody calls it San Fran.
And when that doesn’t fix it, you drink yourself stupid. You’re thirty years old, Jeff—thirty!—and what are you? Your whole life is a mulligan. It’s one long excuse. A mulligan is a kind of lie. It’s avoiding responsibility.
I have no idea what that means. I just want to hit the golf ball again.
Let me ask you something: What do you think you’re up to with that lawyer? Suing Dad?
What does that have to do with anything?
