“That’s nice, honey,” her parents chimed, almost in unison, scarcely taking their eyes away from the Scrabble board.
Sarah, meanwhile, had begun to rub the puppy’s stomach. He responded by vigorously wagging his tail and licking the fingers of her free hand. Then he suddenly got up and began to run around in circles. Sarah, ecstatic, began to run after him. In hot pursuit, she came too close to the blanket and stumbled on the edge of it. The Scrabble board flipped over, its tiles flying in all directions.
“Oh, Sarah, just look at what you’ve done!” her mother scolded her.
“I’m sorry, Mommy, I didn’t mean to.” She looked close to tears.
“Between the three of us, we could probably reconstruct the board,” Gottlieb suggested.
“Yeah, right,” grunted Peter icily. He glared at his sister and kicked a heel into the sand.
“Peter, she didn’t mean to do it,” Sharon tried to calm him. “Besides, it’s just a game.”
But Peter was not to be calmed. “Brat! The shit she gets away with, when she bats those big brown eyes. It makes me wanna puke!”
“You’re overreacting,” said his father gently. “It’s been a very nice day, up to now. Let’s not ruin it, okay?”
“I’m gonna take a walk,” he announced abruptly. “See ya later.” He shuffled off, eyes downcast, shoulders slumped, and the pleasant day turned into history.
Hal and Sharon retrieved the tiles, and Sarah tried to help. None of them spoke for several minutes. Dejected, still contrite, Sarah headed off to the water’s edge.
“God forgive me,” confessed Sharon, “but I really can’t abide him. Those miserable adolescent sulks of his, that self-absorption! How many more years do we have to put up with this?”
“Come on, Sharon, let’s try to keep perspective here. All right, he’s self-absorbed and moody. So is every adolescent who ever lived. So was I. So were you.”
“Not like that, I wasn’t. If I stormed off in a snit like that, my parents would have come down on me like a sledgehammer. If I’d secluded myself in my room the way he does, for hours—no, make that days at a time, living in squalor, they would
have—”
“They would have what?”
“I don’t know, but they would have done something!” Her tone hardened. “You’re the hotshot shrink. Why don’t you figure out what the fuck we should do with him?”
His voice stayed calm, but his own anger was mounting too. “Listen, Sharon, just because I do what I do, it doesn’t mean I’ve got all the answers.”
“You’re goddamn right it doesn’t!”
“I try to talk to him,” he snapped, “to keep the lines of communication open. I try to be there for him, to the extent he wants me there, to the extent that he’ll tolerate me there. I also try to let him know that I still love him. I do the best I can.”
“So do I,” she replied, more quietly. “But I guess our best efforts aren’t good enough right now.”
He reached for the bag of pretzels and munched distractedly on one. “As I said, let’s try to keep perspective. He doesn’t drink or use drugs.”
“Not that we know of,” she challenged him. “For all we know, he could be shooting up in that vile den of his. He could be smoking a dozen joints a day.”
Gottlieb shook his head. “His eyes aren’t glazed. He doesn’t smell of pot or booze. He has no tracks. Apart from all that, and this is what you keep forgetting, he hasn’t gotten into serious trouble yet. His grades aren’t what they used to be, but they’re decent. More than decent. He’s never had run-ins with the law. He’s never shown the smallest hint of violence. For all he’s going through right now, he’s still a rather gentle soul.”
“Jesus Christ, I get so sick of you defending him, no matter what!”
His voice rose. “Well, let me tell you something, Sharon. I get pretty sick myself, sick of your hysterics about him! Sick of how you blow up everything into some great calamity, sick of all your doom and gloom where he’s concerned. By the way, don’t you think he picks up on that? It would be nice if you tried to let him know that maybe, just maybe, you still believed in him!”
She faced the water, squinting into the horizon. “All right, tell you what, I’ll turn over a new leaf. No matter what he does, I’ll grin and bear it. Every chance he gives me, I’ll praise him to the skies. And if he doesn’t give me any chances, what the hell, I’ll praise him anyway.”
“Sharon, I’m not asking you to put on some big phony act with him! I’d just like you to stop being so judgmental, so critical. Not to mention, so blatantly pessimistic.” More to himself than to her, he muttered, “Where’s a Jewish mother when you need one?”
“Well, that’s the answer,” she lashed out. “Why didn’t I think of it before? I’ll become the perfect Jewish mother, and we’ll all live happily ever after. I’ll make chicken soup with matzo balls three times a week. From scratch, no less. I won’t get angry, even if he burns the house down, I’ll just sigh a little. I’ll quit work, the better to be on call for him. I’ll bend to his every passing fancy.”
He stood up and began to walk off. “Where are you going?” Sharon said.
“Anywhere, to get away from you.”
“Well, that’s helpful . . . ” But people were talking and laughing all around him, and radios were playing, against the background music of the breaking waves, and he couldn’t hear her.
⸎
He walked along the beach, alone, for more than half an hour. By the time he came back, Peter had returned as well. Without ado, they packed up their belongings and headed for the car.
They traveled home sullenly. No conversation, no CDs. Sarah slept in the backseat, but the other three sat up, barely moving, their eyes straight ahead, like soldiers en route to a
dangerous posting.
Gottlieb spent the evening by himself. He paid bills, sorted through accumulated mail, glanced at the Sunday paper. Around nine, dimly aware that he was hungry, he fixed himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then he retreated to the dining room table with a couple of psychiatric journals. But his concentration faltered, and he might as well have been trying to read hieroglyphics. Peter kept intruding on his thoughts. Peter, briefly happy as they’d swung Sarah through the water, as they’d tossed around the Frisbee. Peter, storming off in a sulk. Sharon’s taunt came back to him. You’re the hotshot shrink. Why don’t you figure out what the fuck we should do with him?
Abruptly tired of pretending to read, he stood up and walked into the family room, where Sharon watched TV alone. “Where’s Sarah?”
“In bed, out like a light. She could barely stay awake while I bathed her.”
“I think I’ll head upstairs myself, make it an early evening.”
She nodded briskly. “I’ll be up in a while. “’Night, Hal.”
“Goodnight.”
He went upstairs, undressed and showered, brushed his teeth with exaggerated concentration, put on his pajamas. It was an hour before he usually went to bed, and he wasn’t very tired. But he didn’t want to prolong the day. It had dragged on much too long already.
He turned off the light, tried to sleep but couldn’t. Instead, he found himself thinking about Cassandra Wirth. What had her relationships with men been like, the men before and after her professor? He imagined them as intense, passionate but unromantic, often brief. Had she been as blunt with other men as she’d been with him? Did she use bluntness to ward off vulnerability? Was she looking for a friend, or a lover, or both, or neither? What demons made therapy so terrifying to her, this self-assured woman who seemed to fear so little? And who was Uncle Franz, and what had he done to her?
He looked forward to seeing her again. To talking, at length, although the other possibilities weren’t lost on him. He thought of the scrap of paper with her number on it, tucked in his wallet, folded carefully between his Texaco and Discover cards. He really didn’t need it, since he’d already memorized the number, but he kept it
there anyway.
About to fall asleep at last, his defenses down, he couldn’t shield himself from an unsolicited blast of insight. Part of my interest in her stems from my anger with Sharon. Pursuing her would not be a constructive way of dealing with that anger.
The insight failed to dampen his curiosity about her in the slightest.
CHAPTER X.
“S HANNON’S SETTLING IN OKAY,” reported Norma, as Gottlieb sat with her and Dwight in the GCFI canteen. “He kind of fades into the background.” The Friday morning was already warm and muggy; the ancient wheezing air conditioner waged a losing battle against the heat.
“He’s been eatin’ in the dining hall for a couple of days,” Dwight added. “No one’s hasslin’ him, so far.”
“That’s nice, but let’s not get complacent.” Gottlieb knew, they all knew, that defendants charged with crimes against minors were always at risk in correctional settings. Dining rooms, moreover, are particularly dangerous places. An ordinary knife or fork might turn into a deadly weapon in an eye blink, a tray or plate might turn into a missile. No coincidence that a disproportionate number of fights and riots started there.
“He’s talking, at least from time to time, but he’s still not saying very much,” resumed Norma. “Still spends most of his time reading. His brother and sister brought him some books on Irish history, but most of the time he sticks with the Bible.”
Gottlieb took a bite from a cinnamon cruller and turned to Dwight. “Do you hold to your theory about their having sex and her threatening to turn him in?”
“Well, it makes ’bout as much sense to me as anything else. Call me cynical, but I have trouble believin’ he was tryin’ to save the world from her.”
Dwight reached suddenly for an envelope in the pocket of his white jacket. “Almost forgot to give this to you. Results of the neuro consult. Physical exam, EEG, CT scan, blood work. Everything came out fine. Sumbitch doesn’t even have high cholesterol! Gonna make it to a hundred if they don’t give him
the needle.”
Gottlieb took the last bite of cruller, finished his coffee, and wiped his mouth with the corner of a paper napkin. “I think I’ll start with him today. Maybe I’ll run your theory by him.”
When he entered Shannon’s room, his patient lay on the bed, a paperback resting against his drawn-up knees. His half-glasses combined with his serious face to give him a scholarly air despite the unscholarly prison khakis. He greeted Gottlieb in a friendly but subdued manner, without smiling.
“What’s the book?” asked Gottlieb.
“Something Tim brought me. How the Irish Saved Civilization. Did you read it?” Gottlieb shook his head.
“It’s interesting. It’s about how the Irish kept some of the classical traditions alive during the Dark Ages. I’ll lend it to you when I’ve finished, if you want.”
Gottlieb made an equivocal sound, a kind of uhmm. On the one hand, he didn’t want to start a precedent of exchanging gifts. But it was also the first overture Shannon made to him, and he didn’t want to trample it.
He issued his customary invitation. “Shall we go to my office?” Shannon accepted with his customary nod. He got off the bed, rather stiffly, donned slippers, and they headed down the corridor together.
“We got back the neurologist’s report—” began Gottlieb.
“And everything checked out okay,” his patient interrupted. Gottlieb nodded.
“I’m not surprised. Brendan will be disappointed, though. He’d have an easier job defending me if they found something physical. A brain tumor or something.”
“How do you feel about him?”
“Brendan? He’s a good man, a good friend. I know most people don’t care much for lawyers. They think they’d sell their grandmother’s soul to win a case. But Brendan isn’t like that. He fights hard, but he still holds on to his moral standards.” Shannon shifted his weight in the chair in front of Gottlieb’s
desk. “You met with him the other day, I understand. He probably mentioned that we’ve known each other a long time.”
“Yes, he did.”
“This may sound funny to you, but I feel sorry for him.”
A siren’s blare broke into the quiet morning. “Why is that?” asked Gottlieb, as it faded.
“Because he’s defending a man everyone hates. They’d like to lynch me, and a lot of people would like to lynch the lawyer who’s defending me, for good measure. Besides, what kind of a case does he have? I can’t even help him out by being crazy.”
“He told me that he’d recommended you get another someone with more experience in these cases, but you turned him down.”
Shannon nodded. “Brendan may not be a criminal lawyer, but he’s smart. More important, he’s familiar. That’s what I need now, above all else. A familiar, trusted face.”
“He told me this will almost certainly be a capital case,” said Gottlieb carefully.
“I knew that from the beginning.” He paused. “It’s still very strange to find myself facing the death penalty. Not something I ever thought too much about, but I never saw myself as a candidate for it.”
“Is that what you want? To be executed?” Gottlieb had worked with Death Row inmates. He knew they sought execution more commonly than generally imagined—as a last-ditch bid for the world’s attention, as a fate preferable to life in prison, or as a de facto suicide.
Shannon made no reply. “Is that what you want?” Gottlieb asked again.
“If that’s God’s will, I accept it.”
“But is it what you want?”
“Occasionally. Death holds no terror for me. Sometimes I think it would be a great relief. And sometimes I’d just as soon live.” His tone conveyed a staggering indifference.
“Prison doesn’t have to be a waste of time,” he went on. “A
prisoner can still read, he can write. He can pray. He can even
be useful, helping other inmates and tutoring them and so forth. He can take part in one of those programs where they talk to kids in trouble with the law and teach them what it’s like to be locked up. That’s always mattered a great deal to me. Being useful.”
“There’s also the possibility you’ll get out someday.”
“I suppose so.” The prospect seemed not to impress him very much.
“I’m interested in the period between your wife’s death and your arrest,” Gottlieb changed the subject.
“I thought we already talked about that.”
“We did, but some things still aren’t clear to me. For instance, the effect her death had on your relationship with your daughter.”
“Well, I won’t say it brought us closer,” he answered warily. His answers often had a wary edge when they talked about Christina.
“That was as much my fault as hers,” continued Shannon. “My grief turned into a wall between myself and the rest of the world. But even if I had been more open and available, I’ve no illusions Christina would have met me halfway. None at all.”
“How did she react when her mother died?” Gottlieb recalled what the girl’s aunt said: I didn’t think her mother’s death was too important to her.
Shannon’s answer jibed with his sister’s view. “At first I thought she was shell-shocked, the way I was. Then, over the next few months, I decided she simply didn’t give a damn.” Gottlieb had never heard him utter the smallest profanity before.
“Her mother dies and she shows no reaction, none at all?”
“Oh, I suppose it was inconvenient to her. Margaret stayed active until the end. She drove Christina around, took her shopping, bought her clothes. Christina might have missed those things.” He reached over, picked up a rubber band from Gottlieb’s desk and played idly with it. “But did she miss Margaret? Miss her as a person—as a person who happened to be her mother? I saw no sign of it. I wish I had.”
“Were you lonely after Margaret died?”
“Yes and no. I missed her terribly. Her death was like an open wound that wo
uldn’t heal. But I didn’t want to be with other people any more than I had to be. A number of them reached out to me. My family, my neighbors, some of the ones I worked with. I kept them at a distance, most of them. I wasn’t trying to be rude. It’s just that I needed to be alone.”
“Did you miss the company of women?” asked Gottlieb, as offhandedly as possible.
“Once in a great while. That part of life has never been too important to me.”
“Did you go out with other women?”
“No. Definitely not.” The question provoked a flash of indignation, but it disappeared in an instant. “Perhaps I might have, a couple of years down the road, but I wasn’t anywhere near ready for that kind of business.”
Gottlieb paused and quietly drew in a breath, as he sought to choose his words carefully. “Mr. Shannon, I need to ask some personal questions about you and Christina. Sometimes, when we’re going through a painful, stressful time, we’re not ourselves. We do things we ordinarily wouldn’t do in a million years.”
His patient’s expression mixed annoyance and bewilder-ment. “I don’t understand what you’re driving at.”
There’s no easy way to ask him, so I might as well stop tap-dancing, thought Gottlieb. “When your wife died, did you ever have an inappropriate relationship with your daughter?”
Shannon’s pallor gave way to a violent blush, and his pale blue eyes filled with fire. For a moment he was too angry to speak. “Never!” he replied finally. The blush persisted. “I’d have killed myself before it came to that! Never!” He glared at Gottlieb. “Is that what you think this is all about?”
“No, but I needed to ask you anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Gottlieb answered neutrally, “these things occur more commonly than we like to think. Because, if something like that had occurred, it might have had a bearing on what happened later.”
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