Bob Goes to Jail

by Rob Sedgwick

  If I’d just gotten that big part at the Public Theater four years ago with Kevin Kline and Helen Mirren...I was only twenty-five. Then, maybe…ach, who knows?

  The ball was snapped. Norwood’s kick was up and it was…wide right. No good!

  The Giants won the Super Bowl!

  And I won the betting pool!

  Everyone was gloriously drunk and happy and congratulating everyone else. For a brief few moments, we were all loving brothers. I said goodbye to some of the other hoodlums in the bar, everyone aware of my situation, and hugged Moss, knowing I’d see him tomorrow at my sentencing.

  The poor girl came back to my house to have sex. I thought I went at it with a lot of gusto and verve, but I was so drunk I couldn’t get my dick of death into the right orifice, and the orifice I did penetrate was not the one you wanted to impale on the first date. My ineptitude would have put a smile on Brad Fine’s face, had he watched.

  Morning.

  Here it was, my day of reckoning.

  Doom.

  But it was a low-grade doom. Way back there.

  Like I was going to be executed.

  But not until later.

  So, go on, enjoy the rest of the day.

  I had to walk Tybalt first, then I had a callback for this play, then the gym, then I’d walk Tybalt again, and then it was off to 40 Foley Square, and we’d spin the wheel, and “Tell him what he’s won, Bob!”

  You had to love Bob Barker.

  Or was it Monty Hall?

  While I was waiting for my callback, I was kind of snickering like a moron at a funeral. I walked in, said hello, started in, and…I was all over the place. Who cared? I started rearranging the papers on the audition table, did a somersault, jumped high into the air and tapped the hanging lights. I was free as a bird in the Lynyrd Skynyrd guitar solo. Nothing like what I’d done in the first go-round. They looked confused; there was lots of brow furrowing. They were deep in contemplation. This was very important stuff here.

  “Thank you, Rob.”

  Off to the gym.

  Should I do chest or back? Hmm…maybe I should just do some heavy cardio to burn off some of this heaving nervous energy?

  I went hard on the bike and felt like I was riding some insane bucking bronco. I played loud music. I grunted, I was a fountain of sweat, I groaned, I was the most obnoxious person on the planet, and I liked it. I wanted to be feared. After about an hour, I emerged, drenched as if from a downpour. I didn’t bother to wipe off the bike. I was bad.

  I showered. I put on some clothes to walk Tybalt. In the park, I instinctively scanned my immediate surroundings for any coincidental wandering Mexican, but then I remembered that Diego Robles was dead.

  I looked at Tybalt. I loved him so much I could have burst. He looked at me and started snorting like crazy again, then he went into this yayayayay bark, obviously all done for my benefit, to snap me out of driving myself nuts. We got back to the apartment; I gave him water; I went into my bedroom to change into my sentencing suit.

  It was also my high school graduation suit.

  Pierre Cardin.

  It still fit.

  When I wore it back then, the future held certain promise. There were even pictures of everyone smiling impossibly wide smiles confirming this. Now I just hoped the judge thought it made me look somewhat respectable and that he didn’t send me away.

  Tybalt watched. We were in my grandparents’ bedroom, and the sun at 3:00 p.m. on this January day streamed into the room, glorious and true. I sat on one of the single beds and looked at my beautiful dog, stroked his wiry blond hair and looked straight into his deep brown eyes. He was considering me from some other dimension neither I nor any other person I knew was acquainted with.

  My eyeballs stung. I hugged him hard. Then from nowhere he curled his lips into a small 0 and blew out this mild, sterling, softly conquering wooooooo that stopped time like a sustained Miles Davis note and draped over me like an invisible shield. I felt this surge of acceptance. Whatever happened today, I would be all right. I would make it. I kissed him on the top of his head and hoisted myself up to face the music. When I saw Tybalt next, I would either have won the lottery or would be making plans for his future care.

  There was no third option.

  —

  My stepfather picked me up in a cab, and we rolled downtown.

  He spoke quietly, calmly, in the non-threatening, high register of his voice, inflections up and down the scale. It was a lullaby.

  We took the FDR, and as the blazing skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan came into view, Ben pointed out how those buildings were the financial center of the world. My flesh crawled as we got closer. We veered off the FDR toward 40 Foley Square, the butterflies in my groin flapping wildly, then passed the Manhattan Correctional Center—so grave, massive. I tried to figure out what floor I’d been on when I was incarcerated, but the cab fled by in too much of a hurry and was not in a reminiscing mood.

  We arrived. 40 Foley Square.

  The building itself was dour, joyless. The winter sun petered out and submitted to a darker strain that was more powerful and chilling. I couldn’t take it anymore and excused myself from Ben to boogie to the nearest deli for a pack of cigarettes.

  I huffed on a Marlboro Red like some machine that had been conceived at the height of the industrial revolution, inhaling hunks of smoke like starving dogs inhale meat.

  Hustling back and on my second cigarette, I stopped to look at Ben. He was simply standing there, suddenly small, soft, and silent, with his hands clasped in front of him, waiting patiently for me. What a remarkable thing.

  Mom, the ever-busy super therapist saving a client’s world, was late. She was simply terrified, with no buffer whatsoever. She smiled, she laughed; tears began to well in her eyes, and I thought we were in for a geyser. But then my dad arrived with his wife, Meadow, whom Mom couldn’t stand, which shut off the waterworks—at least temporarily. Dad was always formal and awkward around Mom when he was with Meadow. This always brought out a thinly veiled contempt from Mom.

  Kyra and Kevin arrived seconds later, thank God, which took me off the Master of Ceremonies hook for a while, easing the tension between the two parent couples.

  Kevin looked to 40 Foley Square. “Oh my God,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a building look more foreboding.”

  The structure was now, of course, a grim, hulking, brooding fortress.

  Everyone started arriving. Milo, Moss, uncles, aunts, friends of my mom’s, my godmother, friends of my stepdad.

  It was a party, for God’s sake. And I was the man.

  At the third floor of 40 Foley Square, it was pandemonium and hubbub, a cocktail party without the hors d’oeuvres. I was running around trying to be a good host, saying hello to everyone. “How are you? Can I get you anything?”

  Everywhere were discarded newspapers with headlines of the ecstatic Giants victory from the night before. I, or whatever conscious concept I had of myself, was just slowly spinning around, floating above the newspapers. There’s this Bugs Bunny episode of him floating out of the evil scientist’s castle stoned on ether, with the evil scientist, an obvious Boris Karloff, in likewise stoned pursuit, crooning, “Commme baaaccckk, liittllee bunnnyy raaabbbbiit.”

  Showtime.

  Everyone filed into court for the big party and I waited by the door to thank everyone for coming.

  Then, lastly, my stepmother Meadow: “Robbie, do you have a breath mint?”

  “Of course, here.”

  “I hope you gave your lawyer a breath mint, because I was just talking to him and his breath was horrible, and if he gets near that judge and that judge smells his breath, surely you will go to jail.”

  HHHEEEERRRREEE’S ROBBIE!

  Everyone was here for me. The gallery, the cops, my lawyers, the stenographer, Brad Fin
e hoping it was thumbs down.

  Hi, Brad. I silently waved.

  Ron and Warren could not have been more right on: I couldn’t believe this was happening. It was a dream on opium. I was watching myself watch myself, so removed from the situation that my blood pressure’s natural inclination was to plummet. I was struck dumb. My body could barely move, like it was fat on tranquilizers. I sat down next to my stepfather to wait for the judge to make his entrance.

  Immediately I remembered “Weep and wobble for Warren.” I kneaded my hands, held my breath, cramped my muscles, anything to jolt me from this stunned inanimate state to something more skittish, fretful, and penitent-seeming. I looked up to see Julie sitting in the judge’s seat, smiling, nodding, giving me a mocking thumbs up sign.

  Then she came up to my face. “You blew it,” she said, smiling but enraged. “We could have had the moon, and now look.”

  Her hands were gesturing to the ceiling, then slapping her hips. She was right.

  “What kind of a legacy do you think you’re leaving?”

  Again, she was right. I had no answer.

  “I don’t know if forgiveness is on the table here, from me, but whatever happens from this, I hope you remember me, what you did and didn’t do. Tybalt must be beyond disappointed in you.”

  “I think he is, but he’s covering it well. I’m so very sorry. I love you very much.”

  “I think I always fucking will. It beyond sucks. And your daughter has white blonde hair. Like you did. Your childhood hair is going to be staring me in the fucking face for years. So fuck you. I hope you rot, and I hope you get out of this, and I love you.”

  She looked so beautiful and strong, a foundation of granite. Would that I could lay on top of that granite now and rest. I wanted to get up and take her hand and walk out of here. But she wasn’t really there.

  “Son, what the fuck are you mumbling? And I love you too, but this is not the time. Take deep yoga breaths,” my stepfather urged.

  Warren motioned me over to join him and Ron at the front table. Patting Ben on the knee, I scuttled over to them, and the old-fashioned courtroom drama we’d all seen on TV began.

  It never gets old.

  When that bailiff said, “The Honorable Judge Ashberry. All rise,” oh boy, did you rise, and when he said, “Be seated,” oh boy did you sit down.

  And then there was the Honorable Judge himself. He was straight out of central casting, and there was no one on Earth who commanded more respect than he did at that moment. Not a king, possibly not God. He held the sway of all final decisions, great and small. He was wisdom personified, a Rembrandt self-portrait come to life, all mystery and eminence.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Montano.”

  “Good afternoon, Judge Ashberry.”

  Ron began, “Judge Ashberry, we are gathered together today, all of us,” he looked to my overcrowded gallery, “a great many of us, and all are here in support of Rob Sedgwick. He has—”

  “Yes, Mr. Montano, I’m fully aware of Mr. Sedgwick’s case. He pled guilty in this courtroom only a few months ago.”

  He seemed a little miffed, for some reason—I hoped not at me.

  Ron was getting to my work and community-service record.

  “Rob understands his mistake, is terribly ashamed, and has done his utmost to give back to the community and atone for his errors. He has done a great deal of community service this year—”

  “Yes, Mr. Montano, I’m aware of this.”

  “And for much of the past year, he has worked steadily in his very difficult chosen field, appearing on a television show here in New York…on this television show that is broadcast not at night, but during the day…and he…he had…I’m sorry, the name of such a show is now escaping me for some reason—”

  “I believe it’s called a daytime drama, Mr. Montano.”

  The crowd guffawed as if this were a thrilling hit play.

  “Yes, that’s it exactly. Thank you, Judge.”

  I looked at Ron walking back and forth, his hands touching his chest, then jutting outward, a continuous circular motion as if he were doing a breaststroke, but then I remembered both Ron and Warren emphasized that the judge was extremely religious, a Quaker. So maybe he was genuflecting for the judge’s benefit.

  Did Quakers genuflect?

  Judge Ashberry just looked and listened; he didn’t move. He had the weight and density of an enormous stone, and that stone belonged on Mount Rushmore—implacable, immovable for the ages.

  I looked at Mom.

  Her thoughts:

  I don’t know if I can breathe. My God. Try and get a hold of…self…of me…my life. Why? How? A mother’s love for her firstborn. This is too much to bear. I can’t take this. I am going to throw up. This is not possible. So beautiful as a bouncing baby boy, a full head of white blond hair in the hospital, and the nurses, they loved him so, their favorite. He was such a great dancer with his nanny in Harlem, to the Supremes. He was Supreme. When he was a baby, three, he used to be able to run like a deer, then not—why? All my fault. Now he is so sad…so handsome, why not married…why…I cannot fix this…why… that suit…Oh my God, ridiculous. I wanted to take him shopping. Brooks Brothers. I always wanted him to be a Breakfast at Tiffany’s type. I’m his fucking mother. I should know his type. What if the judge doesn’t like it and sends him to jail—he could die. He will die…my grief, I’ll never…my womb, my life…for what? My baby boy in jail. A mother’s love is like the sea…then gone…I won’t be able to live…what have I done? What have I not done? I think I will want to die…I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.

  Judge Ashberry: “Thank you, Mr. Montano. We are here today to, quite frankly, decide the immediate fate of Mr. Sedgwick who, as I can see from the gallery, has ample support indeed. This is a very serious situation, and Mr. Sedgwick has pled guilty on all counts to a terribly serious charge. The scourge of marijuana is an evil force in our society and must be dealt with severely. Mr. Sedgwick has committed a heinous crime. However, he has cooperated with the government to the best and utmost of his capacity, which is what a reduced consideration requires. But, and I must emphasize this very clearly, had Mr. Sedgwick not cooperated with the district attorney in this case, I not only would have handed down the mandatory minimum incarceration period of five years, I would have given him much more, and he would have deserved…”

  The judge pounded his desk with his fist at each single word:

  “EVERY” (pound!) “SINGLE” (pound!) “DAY.” (pound!)

  He took a breath.

  “However, Mr. Sedgwick’s timely and forthright cooperation must be taken thoroughly into account and judiciously weighed.”

  My father’s thoughts:

  Ah, the scales of justice. Maybe I would have made a good judge. I certainly knew enough people way back when to get there. If I wanted…would I have wanted? I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I think I want money, success. Yes, that’s what I want. Some power, a great deal of power, so people look up to me. At least more than they do. Which is not very much at all. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know, I don’t know, I think I don’t know—me. It’s all so confusing. Thank God for Meadow, my anchor.

  I used to know my son. And now this. What happened? If we had kept him at the Goddard Gaieties longer, then kept him at Westminster or any good prep school—what a tennis player!—maybe none of this would have happened.

  I remember when he was getting his tonsils out when he was six and I went to visit him in the hospital after it was over. He looked so small and helpless and he looked up to me and smiled like the sun. I couldn’t help but smile back, and I was so happy and desperately in love with him that I wished time would stop so I could just look at him like that always. My God, did I love him! And as I was looking at him, my little son, my brave young man, looking into his eyes, wanting to burst i
nto tears, I realized that the little person I was looking at was really me.

  And I felt so achingly happy.

  And so desperately sad.

  I feel so lost most of the time. I don’t know why.

  —

  Ben writes me at tennis camp when I’m fifteen. My forty-eight-year-old father has just started dating our eighteen-year-old second cousin, whom he has also been enlisted to chaperon:

  Dear son,

  I know this must be a difficult time for you regarding your father, difficult and terribly confusing, and for that, I am very sorry. Your father is, in many ways, alone in the world—as we are all alone in the world, really—but a partner in life does provide a certain degree of comfort and safety, and in some cases, such as with your mother and myself, great joy. Obviously, the age difference between him and your cousin is worth noting. I don’t care about the cousin issue, the age issue, or that he was chaperoning her, or any of the other—forgive me—bullshit that seems to ruffle the Sedgwick side of your family. That is not important to me.

  What is important to me is you: how you grow, how you learn, and how you take hold of yourself, both as a man and as a human being.

  Also, and perhaps most crucially, it is important to me that you learn how to forgive. Your father is fallible, as we are all fallible. We all make endless mistakes and are so stupid. Your father, desperately in love with you as he most certainly is, is failing you right now. He doesn’t mean to. You must, even at your age, learn to forgive him.

  Up to this point in your life, your father has been your idol, and you are discovering he has feet of clay. Someday you will be a father and someone else’s idol, and when he discovers your feet of clay, you will crave his forgiveness, as most certainly someday your father will crave yours.

  All my love,

  Ben

  —

  My lawyers told me we’d be out of there in fifteen minutes. Judge Ashberry had now gone on for twenty. I felt punch drunk. I kept kneading my hands and curling my toes, trying to look nervous and penitent, but I was having trouble keeping alert.