All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 24
But first, a drink. Maybe two. As soon as the plane has steadied and we are comfortably missiling west, I order two nips of Stoli and a glass of ice. The stewardess brings me two packages of peanuts, too, in fiendish, unopenable packets. Breakfast of champions. I empty both mini bottles into my plastic United Airlines cup, and I settle back among the travelers with their neck pillows and their People magazines, who have never heard of Jane Larkin.
2
Fourteen months later. September 21, 1994. Five days before the trial is scheduled to open.
I am back in the conference room in Mr. Bailis’s little office. I am resolved that the only way to deal with this situation is to immerse myself in it—in the details of trial strategy and evidence. The only way out is through. So I am poring over transcripts of depositions—sworn testimony, under oath, conducted by the lawyers—which have been the greatest part of Bailis’s “discovery” (wonderful term) over this long pretrial period. Before me now is Jamie’s deposition. The deposition took place in this very room, last April. She may have sat in the same chair I am occupying now.
Mr. Bailis: Were you ever afraid of Dan Larkin?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Bailis: Why? Did he ever behave in a way that frightened or concerned you? Or made you afraid for your safety?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Bailis: Or your mother’s safety?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Bailis: What did he do?
Witness: He touched me in a way that was inappropriate.
Mr. Bailis: Sexually inappropriate?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Bailis: Did he ever hit you or injure you physically?
Witness: No.
Mr. Bailis: But he touched you in a way that you considered unwelcome?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Bailis: How many times?
Witness: Ten or twelve. Approximately.
Mr. Bailis: Over how long a period?
Witness: Almost a year.
Mr. Bailis: Did you report it to anyone at the time?
Witness: Eventually.
Mr. Bailis: Who did you report it to?
Witness: My mother.
Mr. Bailis: And what was her response?
Witness: We moved out of the house.
Mr. Bailis: All right, let’s talk about this.
I have read this deposition several times already.
Mr. Bailis has told me that as the client, I have a perfect right to see the evidence. He holds back only his own handwritten notes. He is humoring me, I think, but I am helping him too. There is something lonely and monastic about Mr. Bailis’s life. He seems to enjoy my presence in the office. This is the second straight day I have spent in the conference room studying his papers, and he stops by every few hours to check on me.
Coming into the room at the end of an afternoon, he asks, So what do you think, counselor? You don’t look happy.
Some of these are hard to read.
Yes. But this is the business we’re in.
Anyway, I think we’re gonna lose. We don’t have anything solid.
It always seems that way. Look.
He takes my yellow legal pad and flips to a blank sheet. He draws a vertical line down the middle of the page, creating two columns. Above the left column he draws a minus sign, above the right column a plus sign.
All you do, he tells me, is put down every piece of evidence, every argument, every fact, in one of these columns. Either it’s good for us or it’s bad for us. Then you try to move everything in the minus column to the plus column. From this side to that side. And that is the entire practice of law.
What if you can’t move it?
You can always move it.
That’s it? It takes three years of law school to learn that?
Well, you don’t learn how to be a lawyer in law school.
Where do you learn, then?
Here. Doing what you’re doing right now. There were lawyers long before there were law schools. How do you think they learned?
He winks. He seems to brighten the closer the trial gets.
Time to go home, Jeff. We don’t have to find all the answers tonight.
* * *
—
That evening, I am at a restaurant in Brookline Village. Waiting for Miranda and Jamie. The place is casual, crowded with tables, open kitchen, noisy, clattery, cozy.
When Jamie arrives, she makes her way over. It is a pleasure to watch her. Something about her square-shouldered walk and her heart-shaped face framed by curls.
I stand and we hug cordially.
You’re here early.
If you’re five minutes early, you’re ten minutes late.
She gives me the side-eye. Who are you and what have you done with Jeff Larkin?
It’s something my dad used to say.
Where’s Miranda? I feel like I’m crashing. You don’t mind that she invited me?
Of course not. She’s not here yet.
I think she wants to lock us in the linen closet together.
She thinks it’s what I want.
Jamie wrinkles her nose: Let’s not go there. You look different. Did you change something?
No, I don’t think so.
A waitress comes by to take our drink order.
Jamie, to me: What are you drinking?
Just water.
Really?
Really.
Okay then. To the waitress: I’ll have the sangria.
The waitress leaves.
Jamie, can I ask you something before my sister gets here? I read your deposition.
Well, that’s embarrassing.
How come you never said anything?
I did.
To me, I mean.
She looks down.
And why did you wait so long even to tell your mom? If you were scared, if he was putting his hands on you—I don’t get it. Why would you wait?
She does not answer. She is not prepared for this conversation.
We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want. It’s just, why so long?
You mean you don’t know?
No.
Because of you.
A beat.
Because if I told, I knew I’d never see you again.
Oh. Oh.
It’s okay, Jeff. It was a long time ago.
It’s not okay. I wish I’d known. I would have killed him.
Thank you.
I mean it. It makes me so angry, even now.
Well, it’s over. And the lawyer said I won’t have to testify, so no one ever has to know. He said it’s not relevant.
I think it’s relevant.
Eh. It happened long after your mother disappeared. What would it prove?
If my dad had a thing for young women, and his wife wasn’t young anymore? If he saw something he couldn’t have, and he tried to take it anyway? I think that’s relevant. But all that—that isn’t what I meant. I don’t know if it’s relevant to the case; I’m not a lawyer. I meant it’s relevant to me.
Well, look, there’s a kind of man that every woman knows to stay away from. He was one. There’s no reason for you to be upset, though. Not now.
Not sure I agree with that.
I’m a little happy that you’re upset, honestly. Thank you.
I’m glad your mother got you out of there. Even though.
Me too. Even though.
Miranda arrives with a flutter, like a bird flapping down into a nest, all smiles and apologies and cheek-kisses. My two favorite people, she says.
Miranda has a manic, false quality tonight. She is working to be happy, laboring against the outgoing tide.
She says to Jamie, Are you okay, sweetie? You look upset.
I’m fine.
What horrible thing did he say to you? You two look so serious.
We were just talking, that’s all.
About what?
Jeff was just telling me about the trial.
The trial. I wish we could think about anything else. At least it’ll be over, right? We’ll ride the roller coaster to the bottom and then we’ll finally be able to get off.
I tell her: Mimi, I’ve told you, don’t think that way. You’re going to be disappointed. The roller coaster isn’t going to stop.
So what am I supposed to do?
Just protect yourself a little, that’s all.
How? How do I do that? Can you do that? You didn’t use to. I don’t know what happened to you.
Maybe I’m getting old.
Well, stop it.
Jamie lays her hand over Miranda’s and squeezes it, which is probably what I should have done.
* * *
—
After dinner, Miranda makes a point of vanishing so I will be alone with Jamie.
We walk to her apartment, a fifteen- or twenty-minute stroll on a pleasant September night.
She says, Did you mean what you said to Miranda, that you don’t think the trial is going to make any difference?
I said it wouldn’t be the end for her. For me, it will be. I need to start my life.
Thirty’s late to be starting your life.
Thirty-one. And I know.
Well, you still have a few good years left.
Thank you for that.
When we reach her apartment building, she says, Do you want to come up?
I think if I come up, things are going to go a certain way.
That’s kind of the idea.
I don’t—I’m not in the habit of turning down offers like that.
Jeff, I’m not exactly in the habit of making them.
It’s just, I kind of have this feeling like, if things ever…went a certain way with you, I kind of want everything to be perfect, you know?
You might be waiting a long time. Perfect is a big word.
I know. I just don’t want it to be part of this whole thing, something we just did because we were under stress, because the trial was coming up. I want it to come after.
After. Okay.
Is it?
It’s fine, Jeff.
It doesn’t feel fine. It feels like I’m blowing it right now, like this is the moment.
Who knows. Life.
Yeah. Life.
Just don’t wait too long, okay? Don’t think so much.
I’m working on it.
She goes inside, and I do not. I stand on the sidewalk already knowing our moment will never come. I can go in now, still. I can change my mind. But I don’t. I walk away.
* * *
—
Four days before the trial is set to begin, my father calls with an offer to settle. Settlement offers are not unusual, Mr. Bailis tells us. It would be surprising if he did not offer to settle, at least half-heartedly. (What’s to lose?) But it is obvious that, even in this run-of-the-mill interaction, my dad can’t help pissing off Mr. Bailis. Rather than convey the offer to our attorney, as lawyers ordinarily do, my dad cuts Bailis out of the loop by calling us directly with an invitation to meet. With a bully’s eye for weakness, he invites Miranda first, the most pliable and sentimental of us plaintiffs. Once she has accepted his invitation, the rest of us are trapped. Rather than meet at an attorney’s office, he asks to meet at his own home, at the dinner table where we grew up eating as a family. It is all so transparently manipulative—an appeal to emotion, to family loyalty—that I half admire him for sheer ballsy shamelessness.
But it is also emotionally obtuse. Whenever I am in that house, I can’t help but think of my mother. Time has not scrubbed her from this place. She is in the floorboards, she is in the walls. She is in the creaky dining room chairs where, on a Friday morning, we now gather to hear the great Dan Larkin plead with his children for mercy. How could he not know that, sitting around the table where we ate dinner every night at six, his children would be reminded of her? That we would feel angry, not nostalgic, and certainly not loyal to dear old Dad.
He sits at the head of the table with some papers in front of him. He is wearing a suit. The buttonhole in the lapel of his coat winks open, a real handmade buttonhole, not the usual fake stitched-on kind. He has taken off his necktie to suggest he is weary, beleaguered, at the end of his rope. But it is all so stiff and stagy—so careful. (I know it sounds ridiculous to say that my father can’t even take off his tie without seeming phony, but I’m telling you: nothing this guy does is spontaneous, nothing. This is a man who makes a point of sitting in a different spot on the couch every day so the cushions wear evenly. I promise you: he thought long and hard about leaving off that necktie.)
Opposite him, in my mother’s chair, is Kate. He had to include her; she is a named plaintiff, he needs her agreement on any settlement. But she seems so far from settling with her sister’s killer that it’s surprising she even showed up. Probably she came in order to prevent a settlement, not agree to one. It is also striking, as she sits in Jane’s chair, how alike and how different she looks from her sister—a skeletal, stony, sculptural version of my mom. And of course Aunt Kate is much older today than Mom ever got to be.
Miranda, in “her” chair from childhood, wearing her hair pulled back and a six-inch cuff of bracelets on her left wrist.
Mr. Bailis with his old briefcase.
And me. Amid all this emotion, I am preoccupied, absurdly, not with the murder or the settlement, but with the fact that I had a chance to sleep with Jamie Bennett last night and I passed it up. It is shallow, I know, to be thinking about getting laid right now, but I am alive and my mother, God bless her, is not.
The only one missing is Alex, whom Mimi has lately been calling Benedict Larkin. Alex is not a plaintiff but he is still a member of the family, and his absence is noticeable. I presume it was carefully calculated too: my dad knows I will say no whenever, wherever, and whyever Alex says yes.
Dad explains his offer: It is everything he has. Two-point-eight million dollars in cash (that’s tax-free, he tells us, waggling his finger), his entire life savings. He will include the house we are sitting in, too, after a life tenancy that would permit him to live there until his death.
As he spells out his proposal, eyes dart around the table. The number is actually low and dishonest. His inheritance alone will be much larger than what he is offering, unless the Coachman Shoe fortune has completely vanished. No doubt he has some cash hidden away too.
He finishes with this closing argument:
I’ve thought about this carefully, about what’s best for all of us. None of us wants this lawsuit. It’s foolish. None of us can win, surely you know that. I’ve spent my whole career in courtrooms and I can tell you: nobody wins. I don’t want to face my own children in court, and I want you kids to have whatever peace you’re looking for. Your complaint asks for twenty-five million in damages. That’s insane. I don’t know where that figure came from. I don’t have anything like that kind of money. There’s no chance you’ll actually recover that number. It’s just not realistic. The real purpose of asking for an outrageous verdict like that is to destroy me; I don’t know how else to interpret it. It’s to wipe me out for good. I’m asking you to be reasonable, and in exchange we can all be spared what’s about to happen. It’s not too late. All I’m asking is to keep the clothes on my back and a roof over my head. I’m not a young man; it would not be easy for me to be wiped out like this, believe me. If you don’t trust me, I have a letter here—let me find it; here—from a forensic accountant documenting that this is all the assets I have. This is literally everything you could possibly win in court. It would be a complete victory for you. You can’t get blood from a stone.
Kate says, It’s not everything. You’re not admitting what you did.
Kate, you know I can’t do that.
A confession is the only thing that matters. I don’t need money, I don’t need a house. I need the truth. Finally.
You can’t ask me to confess to murder. There’s no statute of limitations for murder.
Is that the only reason?
No, Kate, of course not. I didn’t do this.
Then why settle?
Because the truth doesn’t matter. I can’t win this case, and you know it. The moment I walk into court, I lose. It doesn’t matter what the jury says. I’ll look like a killer just sitting there. That’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? You’ll convict me in public whether you prove your case or not. I’ll be smeared. That’s why you’re doing it.
Kate shakes her head. No. Not without a confession.
Kate, be reasonable. We’re talking about a settlement, not a surrender. Both sides have to give something. That’s what settling means.
How can I settle over something as important as my sister’s life?
And how can I confess to a murder I didn’t commit?
Well then, Dan, it seems we’re at an impasse.
Miranda says: If there’s a way to avoid a trial, I would like that.
Silence.
Dad says, It’s a lot of money. It would really help you kids, which I would love to do. And you can’t win a penny more by going to trial because there isn’t a penny more to collect.
Miranda: What do you think, Jeff?
Mimi, I think we should be honest. Since we’re all putting our cards on the table, I think Dad is right about what he’s saying, about how a trial is going to suck for everyone. And it is a lot of money. But I also think Aunt Kate is right: we owe Mom something. Somebody has to stand up for her. And there’s also me and you, Miranda. We need to be able to walk away with some finality about this. Dad’s not offering that. I don’t blame him, really. If he confesses to murder—
