So Near

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  “No, that’s not—,” I said. I got up from the table. I started toward him, but he was backing away. He held his arms up as if to ward me off.

  “Yes, you do. You think I let Betsy die. You blame me.”

  “No, really, listen, Cal—”

  But I don’t think he even heard me. He started down the hallway, but then turned back and yelled at me:

  “And you want me to feel guilty about it for the rest of my life. Well, fuck that.”

  I heard him open the front door and then slam it shut behind him. After a moment, I got up to follow him. I had no idea what I was going to do or say—but I hated letting him believe that I blamed him. I heard the Olds start down the driveway at the same time something caught my eye outside. It was snowing. I could see sloppy, mothlike flakes fluttering down through the light from the great room. I opened the door and stepped out onto the terrace. Obviously, it had been snowing for some time and I just hadn’t noticed. An inch or two coated the flagstones and blanketed the deck railing. Beyond, I could just make out the contours of the garden, the plants and walkways transformed by the snowfall into soft, amorphous shapes. So that what was actually a rock or a shrub could so easily be—my heart turned over at the thought—a child kneeling down, packing snow into a ball, her back turned to me forever.

  15

  Cal

  Edmund stood beside me. He was wearing his best suit, a rep tie, and a dark overcoat I hadn’t seen before and suspected he’d purchased for the occasion. I had on my winter parka and jeans, and I was secretly sporting a hangover so bad I thought my head was going to explode. I wasn’t expected to do or say anything, thank God. We were just part of the Stephens, Stokes dog-and-pony show. The bereaved father and caring older brother. We were standing to the right of Lester Stephens on the steps in front of the courthouse. A group of reporters and photographers had gathered below us. Two different camera crews were angling for position in the crowd.

  “What you see here,” Lester was saying as he nodded toward me and Eddie, “is a family torn apart by a senseless tragedy. Betsy Horigan—a beautiful, fun-loving two-year-old—was killed nine months ago in a car accident from which her father, protected by his seat belt alone, walked away unscathed. Why did this little girl die? Because her so-called safety seat, manufactured by Gannon Baby Products, simply fell apart when the Jeep turned over. Why did this little girl die? Because Gannon Baby Products once again put financial gain above product safety.

  “My law firm, Stephens, Stokes, Kline, has taken on Gannon before. We’ve taken them on—and we were able to prove that one of their top-selling portable cribs was nothing but a cute-looking death trap. This time, I’ve promised my client, Cal Horigan, and his family that—once and for all—I’m going to stop Gannon and their total disregard for the lives of our precious, innocent children. I intend to make Betsy Horigan a name no parent in this state will ever forget. I promise here and now that Betsy Horigan will be Gannon Baby Products’ very last victim.”

  It was bitterly cold. The wind was whipping across the courthouse plaza, ruffling Lester Stephens’s hair. But he stood there calmly, taking questions from reporters for another ten minutes or so. I tried to follow along, but between the biting wind and my hangover, my head was throbbing so badly I had a hard time concentrating. These last twenty-four hours have been a real roller-coaster ride.

  Edmund told everyone yesterday at our family Christmas dinner that Stephens, Stokes was going to be handling the lawsuit. It was the usual noisy, chaotic affair; three hours to open all the gifts, another two for the sit-down meal. Jenny hadn’t come. We’ve barely spoken since our last fight, and she left a note that morning saying she’d be at her father’s house. When I told my family, I made it sound as though Jude had bodily forced her to spend the day there. I said that Jude was fed up having to deal with the reverend on her own. I probably overdid the excuses; I saw Tessa exchange a look with Kurt when I was in the middle of explaining the situation. At the start of dinner, Edmund rose from his chair, tapped his glass, and launched into the big announcement.

  I appreciated the fact that he managed to make it seem as though the whole thing was really Stephens, Stokes’s idea—that they’d come to us and laid out such a convincing argument against Gannon that we really had no choice but to let them take the case.

  “I thought Jenny had some reservations,” my dad said.

  “She still does,” I replied. “But I’ve come around to thinking that we’d be wrong not to go ahead. This law firm we’re dealing with sued Gannon before—and won. They had all sorts of really scary information about how dangerous a lot of their products are. Gannon needs to be stopped.”

  “But I worry, honey, if it’s really up to you to stop them,” my mom said. “Gannon is such a big name. Shouldn’t the government be stepping in on something like this?” My mother’s always been superprotective of me, her youngest. I think she still sees me as her baby.

  “If enough people file suits the way we are,” Edmund replied, “if enough people take up the fight the way we have—then, eventually, the government will have to do something. That’s how the law works in this country, Mom. That’s how justice gets done.” I noticed that Edmund was taking on some of Lester Stephens’s speech patterns and mannerisms. I used to think my older brother was kind of pompous and full of himself. But I’ve come to really appreciate his self-confidence—that take-no-prisoners approach to getting things done. It’s true I was a little slow to sign on to all this; Edmund had to convince me we were doing the right thing. But now I don’t think I could move ahead with any of it without his direction and support. He seems to get the whole process in a way I know the rest of my family probably doesn’t.

  I glanced across the table at Kurt. He was turned away from me, helping Jamie, who was in a booster seat beside him. Tessa and Kristin were busy moving back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen, bringing in plates of food. It surprised me that Kurt continued to keep quiet as the meal progressed and other members of the family weighed in. I’d been bracing myself, knowing how negative he’d been about going after Gannon. But both he and Tessa stayed out of the conversation.

  “So everyone has to watch the local news tomorrow night,” Kristin said at one point. “Cal and Edmund are going to be part of a press conference. And we think it’s going to be televised.”

  “Daddy’s going to be on TV?” Ava, Edmund’s daughter, asked.

  “Well, we’ll see,” Edmund said. “That’s what the law firm’s saying, anyway.” He looked a little embarrassed that Kristin was making such a big deal of this. Maybe it was just me, but I felt pockets of unease around the table. My mom began to grill Edmund about who “these people”—meaning Stephens, Stokes—were. She grew up in Covington, daughter of a prominent lawyer, and tends to view anyone outside a ten-mile radius of our town as somewhat suspect. While Edmund gave her a rundown of the law firm’s bona fides, my dad looked down the table at me and said:

  “You’ll want Jenny by your side on this.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I answered. “Maybe not tomorrow, but she’ll be there eventually.”

  Later, as the others were gathering their gifts and divvying up the leftovers, I managed to get Kurt alone. He was in the front hall, collecting Jamie’s things. I pulled him outside. The frigid night air was like a slap to the face.

  “You haven’t said anything all night.”

  “You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

  “That’s not true. Your opinion means a lot to me.”

  “Bullshit! You don’t get to have it both ways. You already know what I think. I’ve been telling you for months and months not to do this without Jenny. But you’re going ahead anyway. And the trouble is? I don’t think you really even know what you’re doing. What you’re risking. How close you are to losing every fucking thing that matters.”

  “That’s not—”

  “And I’ll tell you what else: I’ve been asking myself all night why
you thought you had to lie to me about the car seat. Why not just tell me that day when you asked for it what you were doing? What you and Eddie were plotting? The truth is, you’ve been lying to me right along. I know you too well, Cal. I know how you work. You haven’t just been lying to me. You’re lying to yourself. This whole thing is bullshit. It’s not taking on Gannon. Rounding up the bad guys. It’s not about justice.”

  “What’s it about, then?”

  “Sorry, brother,” he said, turning around to go inside. “I think you need to figure that one out for yourself.”

  So I’d gone back to my darkened house. To my wife locked away in my dead little girl’s bedroom. I’d pulled down the bottle of Jack Daniels from the cupboard above the refrigerator. The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the couch in the great room in the blinding daylight, as sick as a dog.

  Now, as I stood next to Edmund on the courthouse steps, I wondered again what Kurt had meant about my real motives. Hadn’t he been the first one to assure me that Betsy’s death wasn’t my fault? You actually trying to say you think you’re responsible for what happened? he’d asked me the night of Betsy’s funeral. So what was he trying to tell me now? Did he really think so little of me at this point that he figured I was just in this for the payday? I’d been ready for Kurt to be a little pissed off. But it takes a lot to get him mad, and he’s always gone so easy on me. So I wasn’t really expecting much more than a lecture. Some complaints and caveats. In fact, I’d never seen him as angry as he was last night—at anyone. And it scared the hell out of me.

  “What are you contemplating in terms of damages?” I heard a reporter ask Lester, who finally seemed to be feeling the cold. He’d pulled his coat collar up against the wind.

  “It’s way too early in the process for that discussion,” he said, clapping his gloved hands together. “Okay, I think that will do it for today. Thank you all for coming out—and for interrupting your holiday week like this. I look forward to seeing you all in the new year.”

  As the crowd began to scatter, Lester turned to us and asked, “Would you gentlemen care to join me for lunch? There’s a passable little Italian restaurant not far from here that I can recommend.”

  I was still feeling so rocky that I was about to beg off, but Edmund grabbed my elbow before I could say anything and told Lester, “Yes, sir, thank you, we’d really appreciate that.”

  Luigi’s was a great deal more than passable. It took up all three floors of a restored townhouse down the block from the courthouses. The interior gleamed with mahogany wainscoting, elegantly carved staircases, and cut-glass chandeliers. Lester seemed to have a regular table. With a nod, the maître d’ picked up three menus and led us through the room to a quiet corner in the rear. Lester stopped to chat at a couple of tables while Edmund and I were seated.

  “Pull yourself together,” Edmund said, picking up his napkin and shaking it out.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been like a zombie all morning. I didn’t say anything about it in the car coming up here because I figured you were nervous, but I could smell the booze on you. Don’t drink anything at lunch.”

  “Are you my keeper?”

  “Don’t blow this, Cal,” Edmund said. I could tell he wanted to say more, but Lester came up to the table. As he took his seat, he picked up the menu and put it to the side of his place setting, saying, “Don’t even bother looking at that. Luigi will come by with the specials and you’ll want to pick one of those.” Lester ordered a martini, but both Edmund and I said we were fine with the iced water.

  “But we have something to celebrate,” Lester said. “Don’t you think it went well?”

  “Yes,” I said, before Edmund could jump in. I was determined to take charge of the situation. “You were great. It’s just that—all this—it’s still pretty hard. It’s been a pretty rough Christmas, honestly, for me and my family.”

  “Of course,” Lester said. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me. Sometimes I get a little caught up in the dynamics of the legal process. It may seem dry to you. A couple of pieces of paper change hands inside a courtroom. So what? But, believe me, Cal, the equivalent of a bomb was dropped in there this morning. And I could hear the glass shattering all the way down at Gannon corporate headquarters in Raleigh.”

  Both Edmund and I followed Lester’s lead and ordered something that turned out to be squash soup followed by stuffed pasta shells. I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to eat anything, but it turned out to be really good. By the time we’d moved on to espresso and a plate of biscotti, I was almost feeling myself again. Lester led the conversation, but he was skillful at bringing me and Edmund into it, soliciting our opinions and advice. With the offhanded tone of a real insider, he talked about the never-ending political mess in Albany. He seemed to be on a first-name basis with prominent judges and the DA. He’d been at the governor’s mansion for some party earlier that week. Over coffee, he swung back to our case:

  “You feeling comfortable with Janet and Carl? I think pretty highly of them both, or I wouldn’t have brought them into the initial discussions. But it matters more to me that you’re happy with them. I want you to feel that you’re part of a team. Think you can work with them all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering how Lester had put Janet in her place about my drinking. I think we all knew perfectly well that it was Lester who called all the shots. The rest of them were his minions. “They both seemed fine. So—what happens next?”

  “Gannon will come back at us, guns blazing. So be prepared. They’ll refute everything we claim. Denounce us as money-grubbing charlatans. But that’s all just part of pre-settlement foreplay, so don’t let it worry you. And the press will probably start calling you. Wanting comments, et cetera. Now, this is very important: you have nothing to say. Okay? All such questions you refer to Janet. Please let everyone in your family know this, too. Tell them not to talk to anyone about the case—except us. How’s Jenny doing, Cal?”

  The question seemed to come at me from left field. I hesitated for a moment. How long could I keep telling everyone that Jenny was going to eventually come around? I’d stopped believing it myself.

  “She’s still in pretty bad shape. But I think maybe the holidays are especially hard on her.”

  “Of course they are,” Lester said, signaling for the check. “Better let her know that Gannon might play rough, okay? I’d prepare her a little for that, Cal. If you like, I’d be happy to sit down and talk to her about all this. What to expect. How to cope with some of the media scrutiny. Please make sure she realizes that we’re here for her—as we are for you. Any time of the day or night.”

  “Sorry about what I said before,” Edmund said on the drive back to Covington. “I was out of line. You did great with Lester at lunch.”

  “Thanks, but you were right to call me on it,” I told him. “The drinking, I mean. Jenny and I are having our problems, as you’ve probably already guessed.”

  “Bad?”

  “Bad enough,” I said. I was feeling sick again. The fancy lunch was beginning to churn in my stomach. What the hell was I thinking, knocking back all that coffee? What I needed was a cold beer. Hair of the dog. And I was still reeling inside from the way Kurt had reamed me out. His anger, like Jenny’s coldness, makes me feel off-balance. Concussive, all over again. That they’re both against me feels wrong, unfair. It feels weird to me that Edmund—and Daniel, so new to my life—are the only ones close to me who seem to really understand. It’s as though Betsy’s death has fundamentally changed Jenny somehow. And now Kurt, too. Or maybe it’s changed me.

  “Want to come and watch the news in my office?” Edmund asked as we pulled into the Horigan employee lot behind the store. I’d parked the Olds there that morning and driven up to Albany with Edmund.

  “Thanks, but I’d better head home.”

  “Did you see the Channel Six crew there today?” Edmund asked as we walked together across the parking lot. “
Lester sure knows how to draw a crowd.”

  “Yeah. He’s pretty impressive.”

  “We did good,” Edmund told me when we’d reached my car. He patted me on the shoulder. “You did good. Don’t worry about Jenny. Once she sees how big this thing is, she’ll come around.”

  I stopped at the Cove, the local bar and grill, on the way out of town. It’s basically Horigan Lumber’s company cafeteria. Big old-fashioned jukebox in the corner. Pool table in the back. Wall-mounted television tuned to sports above the bar. I’m a regular. Darryl was pulling a draft before I even sat down.

  “Tough day?” he asked.

  “How’d you guess?” I said, tipping back the frosted mug.

  “Joel was in for lunch. I think some of the guys are coming back to check out the news coverage. Way to go, Cal. I mean that.”

  I had another draft before Joel and Nicky and a few of the others showed up. I’d somehow known Lori would be with them. She gave me a smile and a little wave as she took a stool at the end of the bar. The video segment on Gannon lasted about a minute, if that: Lester making his announcement and then a couple of the follow-up questions. At one point the camera panned over to me and Edmund—then zoomed in on me. My eyes were tearing from the wind. I looked grim and heartsick.

  A cheer went up in the bar when the news anchor cut to a commercial, and Nicky clapped me on the back.

  “Great job, Cal,” he said. “We’re counting on you to stick it to those fucking bastards!”

  I had another beer. I saw Lori get up and go to the ladies’ room, then come back and pick up her coat and bag. She glanced my way as she paid up. When I signaled to Darryl for my tab, he shook his head.

  “On the house tonight.”

  I followed Lori outside and down the steps.

  “You maybe need another ride home?” I asked her.

  “What? No, I have my—,” she began, turning to me. She saw the way I was looking at her. “Actually, yes. Of course! I could use a ride.”