Twilight Child

by Warren Adler

  “I mention it only as a possibility,” Forte said, backtracking, noting her concern. “In a way, it depends on what kind of hardball they play. There are lots of ways to view the matter. It all boils down to one thing: God is the Judge and the judge is God.”

  “I’d like to avoid that, if we can,” Molly said suddenly, noting the tentativeness of the lawyer’s suggestion.

  “I wouldn’t,” Charlie said with an air of finality.

  “How can it help Tray if their marriage goes sour?”

  “Now, now. I’m just speculating. What you don’t want is to wind up with blame—”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Charlie said, his cheeks flushing. She did not like the direction in which this was going.

  “It’s a possibility,” Molly replied softly.

  “The objective here is to win,” Charlie said, his voice a decibel lower. “And whatever we have to do to win is what we have to do. That’s what we’re paying for. I don’t care about these other things. We can’t be responsible for what happens to them. That’s not fair.” It wasn’t quite indignation, Molly thought, although the turmoil just beneath the surface was beginning to show.

  “We’re not talking here about fairness, Mr. Waters. I just feel it’s my duty to lay these things before you. Among our options on which way to go in this case, that issue has to be considered. I didn’t mean to alarm you. After all, I’m not a psychologist, only a lawyer.”

  “I think you should remember that,” Charlie said with authority, still wearing his mask of control. It was beginning to worry her.

  But the lawyer’s words had frightened her. She hadn’t considered such a possibility. As always, Molly noted, the young lawyer was elegantly cool. He was, however, studying Charlie carefully with his large brown eyes.

  “Domestic relations are like ecology,” he said slowly, as if the words were being carefully chosen. “You inject a new life-form, and it changes the character of the environment. Relationships are very fragile. They depend on silent compacts, under the table deals, shaky compromises, perceived trust. The courtroom is a battlefield, but the armies ranged against each other are shadows. The real people and motives are sometimes hidden—”

  Charlie shot Molly a look of confusion. Forte, she felt, was deliberately talking over his head, and she resented it.

  “Of course we understand that, Mr. Forte,” she said, nodding toward Charlie. It was all gloss, she decided suddenly. He was patronizing them, showing his contempt. Empathy had been merely a sales pitch. He was a professional simply doing his job for money. It occurred to her that she had never thought otherwise, but it annoyed her just the same.

  “Just what is he trying to say?” Charlie asked, scratching his head.

  “That when the bomb goes off, the damage is unpredictable,” Molly said, oddly proud of the metaphor and Forte’s nod of approval.

  “What the hell do either of you know about bombs?” Charlie said, his voice rising for the first time that day. Recovering quickly, he changed his tone. “I can tell you about bombs. I’ve seen enough of them in my time. You always knew that they were coming, and when your sixth sense told you they were on the way, you hugged the ground and prayed. After all, you had no control over them. The object was to do everything you could to protect your own ass.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at the lawyer. Then he winked at Molly. “You’re the CO, pal. Take the objective. You give the orders, and we do it your way. Don’t give us all these warnings and such. I don’t give a tinker’s damn who gets killed or wounded on the other side. As long as we and Tray come out alive.”

  “You really don’t understand, do you, Mr. Waters?” Forte said with a sigh. Molly could see that Charlie was totally confused by the lawyer’s comment, just when he felt he had illustrated a profound philosophical point. She braced herself for what she knew was coming.

  “Understand what?”

  “If you come over like that, you’re dead in the water.”

  “Like what?” Charlie looked helplessly at Molly.

  “Hate, Mr. Waters. It will turn off the judge faster than an ice cold shower.”

  “Hate?” Charlie’s smile dripped with sarcasm. “I love my grandson.”

  “He doesn’t mean that, Charlie,” Molly whispered. But it was too late to soften the blow.

  Charlie’s gaze flitted around the room. He bit his lower lip and rubbed his cheek. She could see his confidence wilt like a water-starved plant.

  “If you come over like that in the courtroom, you’ll blow our case. The objective is for us to portray you and your wife a victims who are worthy of compassion. We want your sense of victimization to be gut-wrenching for the judge. If you show her that you hate your daughter-in-law and her husband, our case is finished. Don’t you understand that, Mr. Waters?”

  “Of course he understands that,” Molly said. Too late to stop it, she knew she was making matters worse.

  “You make it sound like I’m a helluva liability,” Charlie said lamely, making an effort to regain his composure.

  “Only if you drop the mask.”

  “The mask?”

  “You’ve got to hide your feelings of antagonism for your daughter-in-law and her husband. No tantrums. No projecting animosity. Anything that detracts from the image of the wise old Gramps is the kiss of death.”

  She noted that Forte was no longer pulling his punches, no longer patronizing. He was cracking the whip, taking charge. Wasn’t that what Charlie had asked for?

  “You want me to keep my mouth shut?”

  “As much as possible. Answer all questions in monosyllables. You have only one message to deliver. Your love can be an asset to your grandson. No matter what they say or how they say it. No matter what sins they attribute to you and Mrs. Waters. No matter how your character is abused. No matter what parental crimes you and Mrs. Waters are accused of. You are not to react except as innocent victims and good Christians. What you must show that judge—always—no matter how difficult it gets is”—he paused and watched them—“the other cheek.” He got up from his chair, his strong, slim figure a picture of contained energy. Coming round his desk, he stood over them. “You must think of yourself as martyrs. Christ on the cross. Do you understand that, Mr. Waters?” He looked at Molly. “Mrs. Waters?”

  But both she and the lawyer ended up training their eyes on Charlie, who was obviously squirming.

  “I don’t know if I can be that good an actor,” he whispered hesitantly.

  “He’s no hater, Mr. Forte. His bark is worse than his bite.” Her efforts at placation seemed hollow and insincere. She searched her own heart. Did she hate Frances and Peter for taking Tray from them? No, she decided, she did not hate. Hate was an emotion to which they were both strangers. Charlie couldn’t hate. Not even Frances. All he wanted to do was love. Just love. She reached out and touched Charlie’s arm, and he patted her hand.

  “I just wanted to make it clear,” the lawyer said, walking back behind his desk. “I don’t like to lose.”

  “The question is,” Molly began, “what do we win if we win?”

  “We win the right to see Tray,” Charlie said. “That’s what we win.”

  “But what will he see when he sees us?” Molly whispered.

  “Good question, Mrs. Waters,” the lawyer said. But he made no attempt to give an answer.

  12

  JUDGE Annie Stokes frowned as she watched her daughter Peggy reach for the butter. Peggy must have noticed, and her reaction was predictable. She sliced a larger sliver from the stick and spread it thickly over the raisin toast. Then she thrust the toast belligerently into her mouth and noisily chomped off a large wedge.

  “No lectures, mother,” Peggy said through her stuffed mouth.

  “I wasn’t giving any.”

  “But you were thinking of it.”

  “So now you’ve become a mind reader?” As much as she would promise herself, she could not resist the sarcasm. It had almost become second nature be
tween them, a kind of verbal Ping-Pong. Peggy was sixteen and difficult, growing more difficult by the minute. In the last year she had put on twenty pounds and her figure, once merely well-endowed, had run to fat. Like Harold, Annie thought. It had killed him at thirty-seven.

  Unlike her other daughter, nineteen-year-old Laura, a straight-A sophomore at Harvard, Peggy was having a tough time of it. A nagging problem, Annie sighed, despite her certainty that the root was Harold’s early death. It did offer a convenient explanation. But, unfortunately, not the cure. As always, when memories of Harold and how he died surfaced in her mind, her stomach froze, its contents congealed. Did he, beneath it all, have a suicidal compulsion to eat himself to death? He might have just as well slit his throat. Always with the memory had come the old blame. But hadn’t she tried her best to help him fight this compulsive need he had had to gorge himself? Hadn’t she tried everything?

  A dispassionate observer might have seen his death as comic. Certainly it was ludicrous. It had occurred at a celebration of sorts. Peggy was one month old, and this was to be the beginning of yet another new chapter, a last gasp before Harold turned himself in to the doctors to shed the fat that was sure to kill him.

  “You have a wife and two daughters, Harold. You owe it to me, and to them.”

  Finally, she had decided, her one-note perpetual message had hit home. He had promised, and with his promise had also come vows of greater frugality. No more bad real estate deals. No more wild investments. No more compulsions, unrealistic hunches, and aspirations.

  That night in New York was etched irrevocably in her memory and the recall of it was relentless and inescapable, unbearable in its fidelity. She saw his face, sweat pouring down his cheeks as he shoveled in the ample portions that represented double helpings of Mamma Leone’s best culinary effort.

  “This may be my last chance,” he had told her, his face beet red with the effort. By then, he had bulked to nearly 270 pounds and smoked three packs a day. At least he had called it accurately, which was much more than he had done in life.

  It was so ugly, so humiliating to die that way, right there at the table, red pasta sauce sliding down his shirt. In retrospect it seemed like a scene in a black comedy. People at the other tables cast irritated glances at the resuscitation squad that had to be called in, or simply did their best to contemptuously ignore the scene, obviously angered by so gauche a gesture as dying disgustingly in a crowded restaurant where they had come to relax and enjoy themselves.

  Her reaction then, which time had not eroded, was indignation and helplessness, and she had vowed never to be helpless again, never to tie her tail to a kite on which she did not hold the anchoring string. Except for Peggy. That string was always slipping, and errant, unforeseen winds buffeted the kite.

  He had left her with two small children, no insurance, massive debts, and worst of all, an inheritance of cloying pity. Poor little widow Annie. Sad eyes seemed to follow her everywhere, and she would imagine the soft clucking murmurs of observers. Faced with the stark reality of her situation, she did not crawl quickly back into dependence. She simply became more determined than ever to rise above the debacle. For that she was grateful. It was the best legacy she could have had, although she knew in her heart she could never forgive him for his early and ignominious exit.

  When Peggy reached once again for the butter, Annie could not contain herself, swiftly removing the plate to her end of the table.

  “Mother,” Peggy whined.

  “Look in the mirror. You’ll get the message. You can lay out a whole deck of cards on your backside.”

  “Well, it is mine,” Peggy pouted.

  “It will destroy your self-image. Make you hate yourself.” She had tried everything, everything that also had not worked with Harold, from being overly supportive to simply ignoring the problem. It didn’t matter. Peggy was relentless. Calling attention to the problem only made it worse. But she couldn’t help herself. It was even more difficult to remain silent.

  Yet, she was certain she understood the heart of their problem. Peggy was created in Harold’s image, a genetic match so precise that it ensured his immortality. Where was that piece of herself? Annie had wondered, even at the moment when she inspected the soft, round little body for the first time, counting its fingers and toes? Had the child known even then?

  Based on the presumption that self-knowledge was the beginning of wisdom, she had set about to root out any prejudices within herself that might hurt the child. This took the form of innumerable conversations with an imaginary Peggy.

  “You hate me because you hated Daddy.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “And you were mad at him for dying.”

  “I resented fate for taking him away so soon.”

  “Not true. You wanted him gone. And you see him in me.”

  “I love you.”

  “How can you if you hated him?”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Intelligence and logic were things you called upon to solve all problems. The fact was that she had started out not loving the child, not with the same zeal and passion she had for her older daughter, the one that did not remind her of Harold, the one loaded with her own genes. Then, oddly, as Peggy grew more and more like her dead husband and her efforts to resolve the dilemma inside herself grew more frenetic, she began to love her more. And the more she loved the child, the less she could convey the sense of it to her. Worse, Peggy grew more and more certain that she was unloved, more and more convinced that she was only her father’s daughter, more distant and alienated.

  Yet she continued to try. A time would come when Peggy would have to cope with life on her own, put aside the role of hurt child, and enter the jungle of competing adults. For that, she needed every advantage, every edge. And she was showing increasing signs of lagging, falling badly behind.

  She was already getting failing grades, and unless she straightened out, she would never get into college. For Annie that was a vowed goal that had to be fulfilled. For Peggy’s sake. Even the girl’s social life, which had started out with such promise, had been reduced to a few close friends, all of them of dubious motivation. It was awful watching history play out a repeat performance of what she had gone through with Harold.

  Nor had she neglected seeking outside help. Professionals sought out professionals, didn’t they? Unfortunately, the two psychiatrists she had seen merely confirmed what she already knew. They also confirmed that it was the child who needed the help, not the mother. But Peggy had refused to see either of them.

  “I’m not crazy,” she had told Annie with a vehemence that suggested that further discussion was useless.

  Peggy reached across the table with her knife and sliced off another heavy gob of butter. Annie watched with resignation.

  “I could cry,” she said.

  “No you couldn’t. You don’t cry.”

  “You’re my daughter, and I love you.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily follow.”

  “I can’t bear to see how unattractive you’re making yourself.”

  “Then don’t look.” Peggy stuffed the heavily buttered raisin toast in her mouth. Her cheeks inflated.

  “In life, when you fall behind, it’s very difficult to catch up,” Annie said. It was actually a homily that might have worked well with Laura if she had needed it, which she didn’t. It had had just the opposite effect on Peggy. “You are falling behind, you know.”

  “Don’t be such a judge.”

  “It’s second nature now,” she said, trying to lighten the mood. The fact was that Peggy hated her being a judge, despised her success. That, too, she felt she understood. It had something to do with the humiliation of her dead father. Always, she took that into account. And in the end, it wrecked any relationship with a man that might have flourished in her long widowhood. That was the silent trade-off with her daughter. At least her staying single had made their life together tolerable, a
lthough barely.

  But to cope with each other, they had to deal in euphemisms and evasions. For example, Peggy’s stated reason for opposing Annie’s judgeship was money, or the lack of it. To become a judge, Annie had chosen to give up a lucrative salary in one of the city’s most prestigious law firms. That meant that Peggy couldn’t have the car she had been promised, or some other extras that today’s teenagers expected. The real reason, of course, was the old one. Again, knowing the reason changed nothing. On the other hand, Laura had been approving, supportive, proud. But then, Laura was a different story. Laura had gotten a scholarship to Harvard.

  “It’s what I want to do with my life,” Annie had explained to both her daughters when her appointment to the bench was being considered. It had always been her first career choice, even when Harold was alive. His sudden death very nearly put an end to that dream. She was in her last year at the University of Baltimore Law School, not the most prestigious school in the country, but convenient for a mother with two children, and, of course, she could take night courses. Harold had been supportive of her ambition. Perhaps he saw what was coming.

  After Harold’s death, it wasn’t moral and emotional support that was needed. It was money. It took some doing to get herself through her last year. She’d had to hold down a full-time job, on top of caring for the kids and going to school. She could have gotten a loan from her parents. Harold’s parents, too, although poorer than hers, offered modest help. She refused, less out of logic than instinct. She cast herself in a heroic role, the struggling widow and mother. In fact, her independence gave her good feelings about herself. It taught her that anything was possible.

  “It’s my life,” she told her own parents and in-laws. “And my responsibility.”

  “What are parents for?” her mother had protested. Harold’s parents, on the other hand, might have been relieved by her refusal. Harold’s death, she sensed, had made them resentful that she had survived him. She wasn’t completely certain that this was true, but it did inhibit her desire to be around them. In fact, she detested being around them. She hated being, for them, a reminder of Harold’s short and failed life. Nor could she shake the feeling that they secretly blamed her for the loss of their son.