Innocent Read online

  "The day you and Anna came for dinner, I'd been working in the garden."

  "Planting the rhodie."

  "Planting the rhododendron for your mother, right. And my back was killing me. And she brought me my four Advil as we were making dinner."

  "I remember that."

  "I didn't take them. I was distracted by the whole situation--you and Anna together. I forgot. And so after you were gone, as I was getting ready to go to sleep, your mom brought the pills upstairs to me again. She put them down on the night table. She told me I should take them or I wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning, and she went into the bathroom to get me a glass of water. And I don't know, Nat. The phenelzine tablets--they look just like the ibuprofen. Same size. Same color. Somebody even said that out loud at one point during the trial. But no matter how close the resemblance, there was a difference of some kind, something minute, but a difference. I never put the pills down side by side to see what it was I'd noticed, but I picked them up and stared at them in my hand for the longest time, and when I looked back up, your mother was there, with the glass of water, and you know, Nat, that was quite a moment."

  "Because?"

  "Because for just a second, a few seconds, she was really happy. Gleeful. Victorious. She was happy I knew."

  "Knew what?" he asks.

  I stare at my son. Accepting the truth is often the hardest task human beings face.

  "That she was trying to kill you?" he asks at last.

  "Yes."

  "Mom was trying to kill you?"

  "She'd been to the bank. She'd been in my e-mail. She knew what she knew. And she was lethally angry."

  "And she'd decided to kill you?"

  "Yes."

  "My mother was a murderer?"

  "Call it what you want."

  Now that he has heard it, he is finding it hard to speak. I can just about see his pulse twitching in his fingertips. It is a bad moment for both of us.

  "Jesus," says my son. "You're telling me my mother was a killer." He snorts and says out loud, the cat-quick logician, "Well, one parent must be, right?"

  I get it after a second. Either I'm lying because I murdered her or this is the truth.

  "Right," I say.

  He takes another instant to himself, staring at the refrigerator. The Christmas pictures from more than a year and a half ago have still not come down. The babies born, the happy families.

  "She knew who it was. The girl?"

  "As I said, she'd been in my e-mail."

  "I'm not going to ask you to tell me--"

  "Good. Because I'm not going to."

  "But it must have really pissed her off."

  "I'm sure she was enraged. And not only for her sake. She was trying to spare other people, too."

  "So it was somebody's daughter. One of your friends? It had to be someone she was close to."

  "No more, Nat. I can't sacrifice somebody else's privacy."

  "Was it Denise? That's what I've always figured--that you got involved with Denise."

  Denise is Nat's cousin, a couple years older than him, the daughter of Barbara's youngest uncle. A stunning young woman, she's had more than her share of trouble and is currently struggling in her marriage to a state trooper for the sake of their two-year-old.

  "There's no point, Nat. I behaved like an absolute jerk. That's all."

  "I already knew that, Dad."

  Touche. He sits at the table, looking away again, dealing once more with all his disappointment. I suspect what he is thinking: Mom was right. It all would have been easier without me. If one of us had to go, if I had created a situation where he could have only one parent, better it be Barbara. That was exactly what Barbara concluded, particularly because I had no right to imperil Nat's happiness with Anna.

  In the meantime, Nat heaves a labored sigh and takes a second to finally remove his jacket.

  "Okay. So you looked at Mom. And she's got this mad gleam in her eye."

  "I wouldn't quite put it like that. But I looked at the pills and at her, back and forth, and it was one of those moments. 'Zero at the bone.' And I think I said something stupid and obvious like, 'Is this Advil?' and she said, 'Some generic.' And I stared at the pills again. Nat, I don't know what I was going to do then. Something didn't seem right, but I don't know if I was going to swallow them or say, 'Show me the bottle,' and I never found out, because she came over and snatched them from my hand and downed all four of them. One motion. 'Fine,' she said, and walked away in a typical huff. I thought it was your mother being your mother."

  "She preferred to die rather than get caught?"

  "I don't know. I'll never know. I think in the moment, she couldn't enjoy watching me kill myself as much as she thought she would. She had to be feeling a lot right then, including a good deal of shame."

  "She saved you from her?"

  I nod. I'm not sure that's right, but it will do for a son thinking about his mother.

  "The phenelzine," he says. "That was just because it happened to look exactly like a pill you regularly took?"

  "It does. Which she'd probably realized years ago. And that provided an opportunity. But I think the larger point was to make it appear like I died of natural causes. So no one would ever guess."

  "Like Harnason tried to do."

  "Just like Harnason. I'm sure she took some satisfaction in finding the primer in how to kill me in one of my own cases."

  He smiles a little ruefully, which I take as an unvanquished appreciation for his mother.

  "But there was a fail-safe," I say. "If the phenelzine overdose was detected somehow, she would say I'd committed suicide. That was why she'd made sure I picked up that prescription--and handled the bottle when I came in so I'd leave prints. That's why she'd sent me to the store to get the sausage and the cheese and the wine. One of the searches about phenelzine and its effects had already been done on my computer. She had a belt and suspenders."

  He nods. He's followed all of that.

  "Okay, but what was she going to say was your motive to kill yourself right before the election? You were about to hit the peak of your professional life, Dad."

  "That's sometimes hard for people, Nat. And there was the divorce, my visits with Dana. I hadn't carried through the year before, so she could say I just couldn't face it."

  "Wouldn't it look bad for her to come up with all of that after the fact?"

  "She'd cry a little. Who wouldn't believe that a despairing widow would be eager to spare the reputation of her prominent husband, not to mention her sensitive son? She'd say the bottle of phenelzine had been out on my sink when she found me, and when they identified only my prints on the vial, it would corroborate her story. But no one would ask questions. Especially with Tommy Molto sitting in the PA's office saying good riddance to me. Besides, they could have torn the house apart. There was none of the stuff here they were looking for--mortar and pestle, dust from the phenelzine. They could have exhumed my body. They would never find anything that wasn't consistent with me voluntarily taking an overdose of phenelzine. Because of course that was exactly how I would have died."

  He fingers his coffee cup while he considers it all. And then, as I would have expected a while ago, he begins to cry.

  "Jesus Christ, Dad. You know. This lawyer thing in you. You can be like Mr. Spock. That's what I was saying before. You couldn't have sat around mourning. It's just not in you. Your way is to go completely cold. Like you're a million miles off. You talk about her as if she was a serial killer, or a hit man--you know, somebody who knew how to do this, to kill people. Instead of a super-angry, super-hurt person."

  "Nat," I say, and say no more. That is how it has gone forever, my displeasure with him expressed in no more than his name. There is no point in reminding him that this is the truth he demanded. He goes to the sink for a paper towel to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

  "And how did you figure all of this out, Dad?"

  "Slowly. That's what took a day."
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  "Ah." He sits again. Then runs his hand forward for me to go on.

  "When I woke up, the sheets were wet with her perspiration. And your mom was dead. My first thought was that it was heart failure. I did CPR, and then when I went for the phone on her nightstand, I saw a stack of papers which she'd left under the water glass she'd brought for me to take the pills."

  "What kind of papers?"

  "The ones she'd gotten from the bank. The receipt from Dana's firm. Copies of the cashier's checks that paid my legal bills and the STD clinic. Monthly statements with the deposit amounts circled. She'd obviously put them there after I went to sleep."

  "Because?"

  "It was the equivalent of a note. She wanted me to know she knew."

  "Ah," says my son.

  "I was shocked, of course. And not especially happy with myself. But I realized how angry she must have been. And that this clearly wasn't an accident. It didn't take me long to think about the pills and to wonder what she'd taken that she'd intended to give me. So I went to her medicine cabinet. And the bottle of phenelzine was right inside in front. I picked it up and opened it, looked down to be certain those were the tablets. That's where the rest of my fingerprints came from.

  "Then I went to my computer to find out about the stuff. And you know how the browser finishes your search term if you've used it before? 'Phenelzine' came right up. That's when I realized she'd been on the PC. I was scared immediately that she had been through my e-mail. When I looked, she'd gone in there and deleted those messages."

  "From that woman? Pretty stupid to have left them there, Dad."

  I shrug. "I never thought your mother would nose around like that. She would have gone postal if I'd ever glanced at her e-mail."

  The truth, of course, is that I knew I was taking some chance, but that I could not bear to erase those messages, the lone memento I had of a time I still often longed for. But I cannot say that to my son.

  "Why would she bother deleting them? Or the e-mails from Dana?"

  "Because of you."

  "Me?"

  "That's my best guess. If things worked out as she intended, if my death was taken as one by natural causes, there was still a good chance you'd want to look through my e-mail, not to investigate, but just to remember your father, the same way mourners like to look through old letters. By sanitizing the account, she'd leave your memory of me in peace.

  "But on the rare chance there was an investigation, it would have suited her purposes for those e-mails to be gone."

  "Because?"

  "Because it ensured there would be nobody to contradict whatever story your mother was going to tell. She'd have to account for the papers from the bank and acknowledge knowing I'd had an affair the year before. But she could say she never knew with who. It would have come off that I was thinking of divorce, but couldn't face it for unclear reasons. Maybe the girl dumped me when I told her I was going to leave my marriage. With all the corroboration of my suicide, there would never have been any further investigation."

  He takes his time again.

  "Where did those papers go, anyway? The ones from the bank on the nightstand?"

  I laugh. "You're smarter than Tommy and Brand. Once we put the banker on to testify she gave your mother those documents, I kept waiting for the prosecutors to ask where the hell her copies went. They searched the house several times. But things were happening too fast, and besides, it was just as reasonable for them to think that she had destroyed them."

  "But you did, right?"

  "I did. Tore them into bits and flushed them down the toilet. That day. Once I figured it all out."

  "Thereby committing obstruction of justice."

  "Thereby," I reply. "My testimony in the trial was not a model of candor. There was a lot I didn't say I should have said if I was telling the whole truth. But I don't think I committed perjury. I certainly didn't want to--it would have rendered my whole professional life a joke. But the day your mother died? I destroyed evidence. I misled the police. I committed obstruction of justice."

  "Because?"

  "I already told you. I didn't want you to know how your mother died, or what role my own stupid behavior had played in that. Once I read about phenelzine, I thought the odds were overwhelming that the coroner would just take it as heart failure. I knew that Molto would be the biggest hurdle, so I would have been happiest if we could have avoided the police and the coroner, but you wouldn't let me. The funeral home probably wouldn't have, either, but I was going to try."

  Nat looks at length into his coffee cup, then gets up without a word to refill it. He adds milk, then sits again and assumes the same pose. I know what he is weighing. Whether to believe me.

  "I'm sorry, Nat. I'm sorry to tell you this. I wish there were some other conclusion to be drawn. It is what it is. You can never really anticipate what's going to happen once things start to go wrong."

  "Why didn't you say all this stuff at trial, Dad?"

  "It still wasn't a story I was eager for you to hear about your mother, Nat. But the biggest problem would have been admitting that I messed with the police and destroyed your mother's papers. As the law says, 'False in one thing, false in all.' The jury wouldn't have had much sympathy for a judge screwing around that way. I told as much of the truth as I could, Nat. And I didn't lie."

  He looks at me at length, the same question still circulating, and I say to him, "I got myself into quite a mess, Nat."

  "I'd say." He closes his eyes and works his neck for a second. "What are you going to do, Dad? With yourself?"

  "Sandy has the agreements for me to sign this afternoon."

  "How is he?"

  I wrap my knuckles on the wooden table.

  "And what's the deal he cut?" Nat asks.

  "I resign from the bench, because of what I did with Harnason. But I get to keep my pension. It's ninety percent of my three best years, so I'll be fine financially. Your mother left a decent bequest for me, too. There's already talk about who will replace me on the court of appeals, by the way. Want to guess the name Sandy is hearing most often?"

  "N. J. Koll?"

  "Tommy Molto."

  He smiles but doesn't laugh. "And what happens with BAD?" Bar Admissions and Discipline. "What happens with your law license?"

  "Nothing. I keep it. The obstruction conviction is a nullity. Purely judicial misbehavior is not in their bailiwick traditionally."

  "And what will you do?"

  "I had some talk with the state defender's office up in Skageon. They always need an extra pair of hands. I thought that would be interesting after being a prosecutor and a judge. I don't know if I'll stay up there permanently, or try to come back eventually. I'll let things cool down for a year or two. Give people time to forget the details."

  My son looks at me and turns it all over again. His eyes well.

  "I just feel so bad for Mom. I mean, think about this, Dad. She scarfs down those pills, and knows what she's done to herself. And instead of going to the emergency room, she takes a sleeping pill and crawls into bed next to you to die."

  "I know," I answer.

  Nat blows his nose again, then rises and heads to the back door. I stand three steps above, watching him with his fingers on the knob.

  "I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I still don't think you've told me everything, Dad."

  I lift my hands as if to say, What more? He stares, then comes back up and raises his arms to me. We cling to each other a second.

  "I love you, Nat," I tell him, with my face close to his ear.

  "I love you, too," he answers.

  "Hi to Anna," I say.

  He nods and goes. From the kitchen window, I watch him walking down the driveway to Anna's little car. We filled him with our troubles, Barbara and I, but he will be okay. He is a good man. He is with a good person. He will be okay. We did our best for him, both of us, even if we tried too hard at times, like lots of parents of our generation.

  But along t
he way I've made more mistakes than that one. Probably the biggest of them was not accepting the inevitability of change more than twenty years ago. Rather than imagine a new life, I pretended about the old one. And for that I have surely paid a price. In my darker moods, I feel the cost has been too high, that fate has exacted an unfair revenge. But most of the time, when I think of how much worse it all could have turned out, I realize I have been lucky. It does not matter, though. I am going on. I have never doubted that.

  My initial days out of confinement weren't easy. I was not accustomed to other people or much stimulation. I was jumpy around Lorna and for the first week never slept through the night. But I came back to myself. The weather was remarkable, day after sparkling day. I was up before her, and in order not to wake her, I would sit outside in my fleece, looking at the water and feeling the full thrill of life, knowing I still have the chance to make something better for myself.

  I go now into the living room, where the forest of framed family pictures decorates the shelves: my parents and Barbara's, all of them gone; our wedding photo; the pictures of Barbara and me with Nat as he grew. A life. I look longest at a portrait of Barbara taken up in Skageon not long after Nat was born. She is uncommonly beautiful, facing the camera with a small smile and a look of elusive serenity.

  I have thought often about Barbara's last hours, and on much the same terms as my son, who was always so quick to feel her pain. I'm sure she took some time to foresee how all of this would play out. When that message popped up on the computer during the trial, I wondered if she'd died hoping it would look as if I'd murdered her, that she'd somehow seeded the card as a final revenge. But now I am sure Nat has it right. Barbara's ultimate moments were totally despairing, particularly that she hadn't gotten more from me. Bad marriages are even more complex than good ones, but always full of the same lament: You don't love me enough.

  In the months I awaited trial, I thought of Barbara far more than Anna, whom I'd finally left behind. I would come look at these photographs and mourn my wife, occasionally miss her, and far more often try to fathom who she was at her worst. I wish I could say I did my best by her, but that would not be true. Nearly four decades on, I still have no clear idea what it was I wanted from her so deeply, so intensely, that it bound me to her against all reason. But whatever it may be belongs to the past.