“Salazar’s kid was there; he was six-years-old, the same age Bri was, and he cried a lot like Bri.”
“You children were in the courtroom?” Sophia is dumbfounded.
“Mom couldn’t find anybody who would stay with us more than a couple of days at a time because of the reporters. They were always outside our house. They even ran down the driveway beside the car when we tried to leave. This one housekeeper said Mom couldn’t pay her enough money to take it. My grandma stayed with us some, but she kept getting sick.”
“Your mom told me she passed away. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Lung cancer got her. She wouldn’t stop smoking.” He rubs the crease between his eyebrows. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this.”
“Not if it makes you uncomfortable.” Sophia thinks it is her fault if it does.
He grins suddenly. “I keep forgetting you’re a shrink.” He pokes his tongue between the inside of his lower lip and his teeth, mugging a little. “But don’t worry, I’m not like that other guy, the one you testified for.”
“You mean Jody Doaks?” She’s a bit dismayed that he’s mentioned this.
“Yeah. I might be a little crazy, but I’m not psycho.”
“I can see that,” Sophia deadpans, “from your expression.”
He laughs and Sophia is grateful. But then he shifts his glance and she has the renewed sense, stronger now, that there’s something more weighing on him and he’s wondering, the same as his mother does, whether Sophia can be trusted. She waits hoping for his confidence. But then Cort comes across the yard, calling Thomas’s name, saying something about Megan, that she’s locked Brian out of the house and won’t let him in.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Work,” Cort answers Thomas. Where else? his look seems to ask.
“But I’m not done here.”
“I’m sure Dr. Beckman understands.”
“Of course,” Sophia says.
o0o
Sophia and Carolyn are snapping the green beans Carolyn bought that morning at the farmer’s market when they hear the outdoor faucet come on.
“Cort must be through for the day,” Sophia says. “I wonder how long until the job is finished.”
Carolyn looks up. “Honestly, Mom, you’re so paranoid. There hasn’t been one reporter, not so much as a phone call.”
“When I hired him, he told me it wouldn’t take him more than a couple of weeks.”
“Well, he’s missed days because of his situation, which seems understandable, at least to me.” Carolyn backs up her chair and takes the colander filled with beans to the sink. “Why don’t you ask, if you want to know?”
o0o
He doesn’t see her at first and her steps lag for a moment. What is she doing, nagging this man about this job? As Carolyn pointed out, there is so much on his shoulders. Instead of venting her petty concern, she wants to tell him to go home. How can he work at all? Where does he find the will. The—? Courage. The word appears in her mind. It is a trait she lacks, one that she recognizes is present in Cort. She has seen the toll his family’s ordeal is taking in his eyes and yet he is here.
Now he catches sight of her and turns off the water, shakes it from the brushes.
“I don’t want to delay you, but I wondered if you have a minute.” She shades her eyes against the late afternoon sun.
“Sure.” He answers congenially enough but his look has an edge.
And she is somehow put back on her guard when, truthfully, she no longer has any definite idea of what or whom she’s guarding against. It could just as well be the snare of her own feelings. She asks about the work and he apologizes for the delay. He says he’s going to have to take another day, that he and Grace have to drive to Huntsville and see to the post-execution arrangements for his brother’s body.
Sophia feels ridiculous and flustered. She says something about taking whatever time he needs and after he’s thanked her, they stand balancing the awkward silence that falls between them.
Cort wipes his hands with careful attention. “About yesterday,” he begins.
The scene in the driveway, Sophia thinks. “You and Grace are under a great deal of pressure.”
“The clock is ticking.” Cort holds her glance.
She crosses her arms. His meaning is clear and horrible and she wishes there were something she could offer him to mitigate the tension, but there is nothing.
“I’m afraid you have the wrong idea about me.” He’s staring intently at her now as if he expects her to agree.
But she has no intention of having a discussion with him regarding her doubts about him. Let him be the one to defend himself. He’s the one on a mission, the one with the agenda. Let him explain what he wants from her. She’s dying to know.
But that isn’t what he has in mind after all. He stuffs the rag into his back pocket and says, “I never knew my birth parents.”
Sophia is nonplussed.
Cort says his parents were killed in a boating accident before he was a year old, that the couple who adopted him, Lonnie and Arlene Capshaw, were nice people, good people. When he pauses, Sophia thinks of excusing herself by saying to talk further would be unprofessional, although she’s not certain that it is, strictly speaking. She could say she has no interest, but that would be a lie.
“What I remember about being a kid is that I was happy most of the time.” Cort’s voice is quiet. “We didn’t have much, but I didn’t notice, not the way Jarrett did. Then Lonnie lost his job; we had to go on welfare and that really got to him. One day he just didn’t come home and life got a whole lot worse. Mom was depressed; she couldn’t find work, or if she did, she couldn’t hold onto the job. She just never had any energy. We couldn’t keep the lights on. You know the drill, I guess. Sometimes I’d get so hungry I’d cry.”
Bending, Cort picks up a pebble and sidearms it into the grass. “Jarrett would go to different corner markets, the ones outside our neighborhood and steal food.”
“Did your mother know?”
“She suspected, but she was caught, you know? The food stamps weren’t enough; we were always hungry. Jarrett made sure we got fed and that the lights stayed on. He got us through, but along the way he got a lot of weird ideas about right and wrong too. The first time he was jailed, he was fourteen. It really changed him.”
“In what way?”
“He wasn’t scared straight if that’s what you’re asking. He still swiped stuff, but he worked too, worked hard. Did Grace tell you about the job he had after he graduated high school?”
“Managing the fleet of cars—”
“His boss Bill Everly was a great guy. He paid Jarrett a good salary, more money than Jarrett or any of us had ever seen before. He got Jarrett to invest some of it, too, you know, he did the 401K thing. We had health insurance. It was great, but at the same time, it went to Jarrett’s head. He just had to drive a Corvette, dress out of GQ, that kind of thing. When I was seventeen, he bought me a pair of handmade Italian loafers. What did I need with a twelve-hundred dollar pair of shoes? It pissed me off; we got into it. Jarrett ended up busting my nose. He tossed the shoes out the car window when we were driving down the freeway.”
“Was it that he wanted to feel he was taking care of you?”
“No. Well, maybe. But to be honest it was more like he had something to prove. That he was— Maybe not better, but as good as the next guy? If that makes sense. He wanted to impress people.”
“Even you? Is that why he bought you the shoes?”
Cort’s sigh is heated, impatient, but whether he’s annoyed with Sophia, himself, or Jarrett, isn’t clear. “He hated it that we were poor, that he had to wash his socks and underwear in the sink, that kids at school made fun of us for wearing the same shirt all week. He was ashamed of the neighborhood, his house, his life. Me, his own brother.”
“That must have been awfully hard on you, Cort.”
“Yeah, but you know, I’m making it sound like he was a self-centered, gre
edy jerk, when, really, his heart was—is huge. Ma and I would have starved if it hadn’t been for him. He was always there for me. He made sure I had what I needed.”
Sophia glances sidelong at Cort. Is he defending his brother? Excusing him?
“Sometimes I hate him.”
Ah. Sophia carefully loosens her gaze, letting it drift, giving Cort a wide-open space in which to fit all the difficult words.
“I love him too. When I was a kid, I looked up to him, admired him.” Cort hesitates. “I’ve never said this stuff to anyone before.”
Sophia offers the same assurance of confidentiality that she has given Grace and attempted to convey to Thomas. She wonders how much farther out on a limb she’s willing to go for this family.
“Jarrett’s senior year, we were on the track team together in high school. I was a trainer, but Jarrett was an ace runner, mostly cross country. He could go mile after mile and never lose his breath or his stride. He could have gone to college on his talent, the Olympics—aaagh—” Cort flaps his hands. “That’s water under the bridge now. But we traveled, you know, with the team, all over Texas, Oklahoma, other states and everywhere we went, Jarrett would look up Lonnie Capshaw, our adoptive dad, in the phonebook. He wanted to find him.”
“Did you want to?”
“Not the way Jarrett did. It wasn’t going to make Lonnie less of a jerk, but Jarrett’s my brother.” Cort shrugs. “We were at a meet in Tallahassee, Florida, when Jarrett dialed a phone number and Lonnie answered. He was living with a woman and claimed they were married, which would have been fine, if he’d ever bothered divorcing Mom.”
“That must have been quite a shock.”
“It gets worse. We snuck off and went to see him and what does he do? Holds us up for cash. Then he tried to get us to drink with him like it was only a day or two and not a matter of years since we’d seen him. Jarrett went ballistic, he started knocking Lonnie around. I tried to stop him, but he was a maniac, plus he was as strong as an ox. Pretty soon Lonnie was in bad shape, blood everywhere. The wife—” Cort tweaks air quotes— “called the cops.”
“Was your dad okay?”
“I made sure he had a pulse before we left and we did get out of there before the police came, but it was wild. Scary,” he adds. “I’d never seen Jarrett that out of control before.”
Sophia follows Cort’s gaze into the street. Three boys whoosh by on bicycles, peddling fast, shrieking laughter.
“We got kicked off the track team for going AWOL. Jarrett said he didn’t care, but that’s what he always said after every chance he ever screwed himself out of. But that time he screwed me too. I was mad as hell.”
“I can see why. Especially given that the meeting with your father didn’t accomplish anything.”
Cort laughs a not-funny laugh. He mentions his mother, how she worried herself sick over Jarrett. “In a way I was relieved when she passed before his trial ended, but on the other hand—” Cort bends his head, sniffs back a sharp breath. “She wasn’t that old and she was all right physically and then he goes and kills a couple of people and gets himself arrested and we’re dealing with not just the cops this time, but the feds and a freaking media circus, and then boom, she’s gone. The doctor could just as easily have written that a broken heart and not cancer caused her death.”
Sophia looks at Cort.
“Yeah. I blame him that she died.” He answers her unasked question. “It doesn’t make me very happy either.”
“No.” Sophia doesn’t want to go, even in her mind, to the place where Cort is leading her, his particular corner of hell.
“As a kid Jarrett was shy; he didn’t sleep well, he was moody, but he didn’t get—I don’t know. He was just a lot more intense after Lonnie took off, that’s all.”
Sophia watches as Cort gathers his brushes and stows them in an empty paint bucket. She’s thinking of Grace’s description of Jarrett. Dark and brooding, she’d said, a present-day Heathcliff. And like Heathcliff, Jarrett was also orphaned and had grown up to become a victim of his passions. Sophia had read once that Emily Bronté had been advised to write Wuthering Heights under a pseudonym and that she’d also been compelled to defray the cost of publishing the novel due to fears that the story wouldn’t be well-received because the themes were too disturbing for the time. One hundred and fifty years have passed since then and nothing has changed, Sophia thinks, such stories still exist and they are still disturbing.
Cort straightens. “You want to know what’s funny? Jarrett always called Lonnie a loser. He was always saying how much it scared him to think he’d end up like that. Now he tags himself that way.” Cort clicks his tongue at the irony. He takes a brush from the bucket, riffles the bristles, studying them.
Sophia thinks of what Thomas said about his dad, how it angers him: The way he looks all hang dog. She wonders if she should mention this to Cort, that it’s this as much as anything that’s keeping Thomas away from the prison. She wonders why Cort has told her his long tale. Perhaps he’s only trying to make sense of it, or perhaps, despite his protestations, he is using the job as a means to gain her sympathy in the hope that he can induce her to take up his cause to save his brother.
Whom he loves but also hates.
It’s a terrible predicament, one that might be resolved in time. But as Cort pointed out there is no time.
“Mom thought he’d been abused.”
Sophia looks at Cort. “Before your parents adopted him, you mean? Was there some sort of evidence?”
“Not more than her instinct. She never knew his circumstances.”
“The adoption record was sealed?”
“Yeah. Listen, do you think we could talk about Grace?”
“Well, you realize our sessions are confidential.”
“I don’t want to hear any of that. I know her, that’s all; I know how she works. There are things I can tell you that it could take her months, years, to tell you. For instance, has she said why she stayed with Jarrett? That it’s out of guilt?”
“As I said, I’m not at liberty to discuss—”
“Look, Dr. Beckman, Jarrett isn’t the only one who’s been doing time in this family and after he’s—after his is done, Grace is going to have years left to think of all that she did and didn’t do to cause this.”
Cort’s gaze is desperate in its appeal that Sophia is unable to disengage herself from it, from him. She thinks of taking him upstairs to her office; they could fill out a patient chart, insurance forms, run through the usual routine questions, but Cort would refuse such procedures outright. He’s asking for her help now and here, one person, one human being, to another. All the rest is red tape and rules, layers of formality that, in this case anyway, seems pointless.
“Did she tell you she gave him an ultimatum?”
“Yes.”
“Did she say she threatened to call the cops on him, if Jarrett didn’t quit the business?”
“No.”
“Jarrett thought Grace tipped off the feds. He thought his own wife caused the ambush he walked into that night.” Cort catches Sophia’s sidelong glance. “No,” he answers. “She didn’t do it; she couldn’t have.”
From the way Cort says this, Sophia realizes two things, that Cort has never entertained a single doubt about Grace and that he thinks he is wiser about her than his brother. And she thinks a third thing, that Grace would be hard pressed to find a man more deeply concerned for her. She hasn’t met Jarrett though, Sophia thinks. She doesn’t know if his eyes assume a glow, if his entire expression warms at the mere mention, the mere thought of her.
“Grace thinks it’s her fault Jarrett got mixed up with her father. It’s her fault Jarrett’s sitting in a cell waiting to die. It’s killing her, too. Her guilt is killing her.” Cort shoves the paint bucket with the toe of his boot. A car passes in the street.
He wipes his face. “I have no idea where that damn codex is, but if I did, I’d rip it up myself. I don’t care how important a fi
nd it is. If it holds the frickin’ key to mankind’s survival, I don’t care. So much has been lost because of it. I don’t have to wait for 2012 or 2037 or some other wigged out prediction about the end of the world. This, right here and now, this feels like Armageddon to me.”
Sophia waits out what is an injured silence.
He says, “If that sounds over the top, I’m sorry.”
“No,” she says. “It’s understandable.”
“I love her.” Cort’s stare drifts. “I always will. Even if she’ll never have me,” he adds.
o0o
The light is diffuse, the bedroom crowded with fractured shadows. The ticking of the clock on the mantel downstairs looms into the deep night silence. The sound pulses, rhythmic, banging, an anvil brought down on steel. Sophia puts her hands over her ears. The Capshaws, their ordeal. Her head is full of it. If she were to fire Cort tomorrow, resign as Grace’s therapist, tell Thomas she has no further need of his after-school services, she would still be with them, marking time in fractions until the clock, the execution clock, stopped. When the State, if the State should actually go through with ending Jarrett Capshaw’s life.
And what then, when it’s done? Grace is in love with Cort and he with her; they need each other. And yet out of mutual respect and devotion, they are bound by their shared commitment to save the life of the one man who, if he is granted clemency, will keep them apart. Cort is honor bound; Grace is bound by guilt to a marriage that by her own admission was a mistake.
Sophia doesn’t want to care, to be touched by their plight. To be involved. To lose sleep of all things. She tosses aside the bedclothes. In the bathroom, she opens the medicine cabinet, examining the contents of the shelves as if she’ll see something stronger than aspirin.
It is as if she wants to see something stronger and it makes her afraid in the pit of her stomach. She puts her hand there but she is powerless to stop the near-physical thrust of remembrance: of Fort Worth, Terrence, the confused, drug-addicted girl she’d been. After Russ died, his cardiologist offered her a prescription for something to help calm her anxiety, but she had declined.
Because she has a morbid fear of losing herself again, of tumbling like Alice down the rabbit hole. The fear is sharper without Russ. Alone, she isn’t as sure of her strength to resist. She thinks of her old nemeses, Demerol, Nembutol, Cecanol, her bad companions. Sisters to oblivion. They’d had such a powerful hold on her and that appetite, the perverse longing, is like an itch she dares not scratch.
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