I’d never known Bobby to look anyone in the eye, but he was now, making contact with each of the jurors. “You think it can’t happen to you,” he said. “Your constitutional protections cast aside, crimes you didn’t commit pinned on you. I’m here to tell you that it can.”
I finally understood. Bobby couldn’t put on the defense he wanted, but he knew he had to have one. The police planted evidence might have been his only option. Maybe he was arrogant enough to think he could get away with it.
Bobby looked at the clock in the back of the courtroom. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. “No one should have to listen to anyone for longer than that.”
Yes, I thought with a shameful thrill. I was rooting for the killer.
*
I LEARNED you can sit through anything, have the horrific become routine. After a few hours, the prosecution’s evidence numbed me: chemicals, wiring, a pipe bomb, handmade nails, three-ring binders containing diagrams of explosive devices, logs of bomb experiments written in my brother’s hand, a draft of the manifesto and the typewriter it was written on. Experts testified how materials found at Bobby’s cabin precisely matched fragments at the bombing sites. There were books from the cabin on bomb manufacturing written in three languages. English, Spanish, and German. Bobby was fluent in all three.
But the prosecutors had so much more. They had the bomber’s surviving victims and the families of the dead. They had their silent presence in the courtroom.
*
IN THE FIVE DAYS it took the prosecution to make their case, Bobby made no objections, cross-examined no witnesses. He never conferred with the court-appointed attorney. “I can’t stand it,” I said to Sara during the lunch recess on the fifth day. “All this devastating testimony and Bobby just sits there scribbling notes as if he’s at a math lecture.”
Sara nodded grimly in the small room the court offered us for our breaks. My mother said nothing. Sara tore off most of the bread on her sandwich, then ate half. I took a bite of potato chip but the salt burned my mouth.
At three forty-five that afternoon, the prosecution rested. The judge adjourned court until eight a.m. on Monday. Debra bent over me, and whispered that she wanted a word. She signaled a bailiff. He led us through an empty courtroom across the hall into a jury room.
“Is this the same setup our jury has?” I asked, although it was obvious that it was. The courtroom we’d just passed through was identical to one where Bobby’s trial was taking place.
Debra nodded. I looked around as if I’d just been granted access to the Oval Office. A large table and chairs took up most of the room. A sink and counter with a coffeemaker stood against one wall, next to a pair of vending machines. The room was so cramped I could barely maneuver. I couldn’t imagine twelve people wanting anything other than to get out of here as fast as possible.
“I’ve just learned that Bob has you on his witness list,” Debra said.
I stared out the window at the leafless trees. What had I been thinking? That Debra had taken me into this little room to give me a tour?
“He asked me to testify that his mind seemed clear the times I’d visited him in jail.”
“And you said?”
“I said no, I wouldn’t do it.”
She sank into a chair at the jury table. “Apparently he didn’t take your no for an answer. You should have told me.”
“It didn’t occur to me,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
She nodded wearily. “So far Bob’s doing a decent job of building a platform for his ideas,” she said. “My sense is he wants to use you to make him—and by extension his ideas—seem rational. Even sympathetic.” Her voice hardened. “But if you get on the stand and answer even one question for Bob, you’ll leave yourself open for cross-examination. If you so much as hint that his actions might be rational, you’ll lose every ounce of sympathy the jury has for you.”
She patted my hand. “We need you to testify for us during the penalty stage,” she said. “Even more than his mental illness, you’re our best argument for saving Bob’s life. You’d never have turned him in if you knew it would lead to his death. The jury doesn’t want to make you pay for that.”
I lowered my eyes, and nodded that I understood.
“We’re still all right,” Debra said. “The judge hasn’t ordered you to appear. You haven’t been subpoenaed. Bob must assume you’ll be in court on Monday. All you have to do is not show up. Disappear for a few days.”
I said I would. I phoned Eric from the parking garage, crouched against the wall, my coat around me, the hood drawn up. “It’s almost over,” I said.
“I know,” he said. He told me he was going to spend the weekend at his mother’s with the kids. “The TV people are back camped out in front.” Eric’s tone was the same one he used every time ants invaded our kitchen.
*
MY MOTHER’S HOUSE was dark, too silent. The door to her room was shut, a dim sliver of light underneath. When she didn’t answer my knock, I opened it. She sat in the upholstered chair next to her bed, her hands folded in her lap, her body motionless, her eyes blank and staring.
“Mother,” I said, my voice frantic. I rushed toward her.
Her eyes flickered. “I’m not dead,” she said.
I sat on the edge of the bed next to her chair, my father’s side of the bed. I glanced down. My legs were shaking.
“You frightened me,” I said.
“I was lost in thought,” she said. There was an old-fashioned glass on the table next to her, half full of amber liquid, the ice nearly melted. The only light came from the low glow of her beside lamp.
“Sara’s out running?”
My mother nodded. “She’s always been so disciplined, so self-possessed. I’m surprised she never made more of her life.”
“What about me?” I asked. “Have I made of my life what you imagined?”
She smiled. “You’ve made of your life exactly what I imagined. You’ve been a good girl.”
“Maybe too good a girl,” I said. “Or not quite good enough.”
My mother narrowed her brows. “Just what are you trying to say, Natalie?”
“I stopped at the old house. The new owner gave me a tour.” Weeks had passed since I’d been there. I didn’t know what possessed me to bring it up now. Perhaps I’d simply passed the point of no return.
My voice shook as I told her about the sudden rush of memories that had come to me in Bobby’s old room, memories of that hot night when I was eleven and Bobby seventeen. I hesitated, but I knew if I didn’t bring it up now, I never would. “Bobby tried to hang himself, didn’t he?”
My mother took a long swallow of her drink, her hand clutching the glass. I glanced away from the bones prominent in her thin flesh, the dark spots on her translucent skin, her arthritic fingers.
“But you were asleep,” she said.
“I thought what I heard that night was a dream,” I said. “But now I know it wasn’t.” I braced myself. “Mom, we have to talk about it.”
I waited in agony for her to begin. When she finally did, she started with the heat of that August night. Every window in the house was open in the hope of a breeze. My mother had fallen asleep with the electric fan blowing on her. Sara was away at camp. Bobby was in his room. I was asleep in mine. My father was out. He came home much later than he should have, an elegant man, in elegant clothes.
“He’d snuck in the house with his shoes off like a boy,” she said.
“But why?” I asked without thinking.
“He’d been out with a woman,” she said.
I felt wild, sick. I wanted my father there to tell me it wasn’t true, that none of it was true, to silence my mother, and restore my dream of him. But I wasn’t a child, and my parents had built their little kingdom together, just as Eric and I had built ours.
“He was often out at night,” my mother said.
I’d pushed her, and she was going to push me right back. She was going to leave me with n
othing, not even a shred of fantasy. Maybe that’s how she felt.
“Mom,” I said gently. “I need to know what happened with Bobby.”
My mother did not answer for long time. When she finally did, she spoke without looking at me, as if from a place I couldn’t imagine to somewhere beyond my presence. I bore her words silently, in stillness.
*
MY FATHER had climbed the stairs, shoes in hand, his thin black socks slippery against the dark wood. At the top of the landing, something made him turn toward Bobby’s room instead of his own.
There was an odd banging sound coming from inside it, a band of light under the door. My father knocked, his fist pounding his alarm, his powerful voice demanding Bobby answer. When the knob wouldn’t turn, he flung his shoes aside and took his still-strong shoulder to the door. The wood splintered and the lock broke. But he had to heave twice more to dislodge the bureau his son had used for a barricade.
Bobby’s body swung in front of him. The sound my father hadn’t been able to identify came from his son’s shoe banging against the foot of the bed.
My father righted the stool Bobby had used, and climbed onto it. He lifted Bobby’s slack body, trying to loosen the silk noose around his neck. He used the gold pocketknife Bobby had given him for his forty-fifth birthday to cut him down.
My mother awoke, thinking she was dreaming. She heard my father yelling for an ambulance, and knew immediately it was Bobby. Later, she wouldn’t remember what she said to the operator, only the feel of the dial on her shaking finger as it made that awful circle.
She ran barefoot down the hall. My father was on his knees pounding his fist into Bobby’s chest. She thought there’d been a fight, that my father was pummeling Bobby, and she screamed for him to stop. Then she saw my father leaning over their son’s mouth to blow air into his lungs.
As if she were somewhere outside herself, she took in the remnants of a silk scarf, recognizing it as her own. It was a special scarf, the blue-and-gold one she’d worn to the governor’s first inaugural. Blue and gold because those were the state colors of California.
My mother saw the bits of ceiling plaster and broken glass on the floor, the smashed model airplanes on their tangled wires. She had to move around my father to glimpse Bobby’s face. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his skin a gray she had never seen on a living person. His mouth was open, his tongue was black, and she knew he was dead.
When the ambulance attendants brought their gurney inside, they scuffed the wall. She thought there must be something wrong with her for noticing. When my father left to ride with the ambulance, she handed him his shoes. The sidewalk under her bare feet was still warm from the heat of the day. Alone in the dark, she realized she didn’t even have her robe on.
On her way back into the house, she heard me calling her. She climbed the stairs to my room. I asked what all the noise was.
She sat on my bed, stroked my hair in the dark, and said, “It’s nothing. You were dreaming. Go back to sleep.” She waited until she heard the rhythmic breathing that told her I had. Then she shut my door and went back to Bobby’s room. She picked up what remained of the silk scarf he’d taken from her bureau. She returned the furniture to where it belonged and placed the model-plane wreckage on his desk. Later, she brought her broom upstairs and tried to sweep the room clean.
“If your father hadn’t been out with one of his women and come home just when he did,” my mother said, “I would have lost my son.”
All I could think was that she lost him anyway. I asked her if Bobby had seen a psychiatrist after he tried to kill himself.
“He didn’t want to,” she said.
“He was seventeen,” I said too loudly. “You gave him that choice?”
“We took care of him at home,” she said.
I heard the front door open. My sister was back from her run. “And you never told Sara?”
“It was no one’s business,” my mother said. “We brought Bobby home from the hospital and we never spoke of it again.
chapter forty-seven
IT WAS RAINING when I left my mother’s, but I didn’t bother with an umbrella. My hair wet, my face bloodless, I drove as if in a trance, my hands clenched to the wheel.
I longed for Eric’s warm grip and the chatter of my children, but the house was cold and dark when I arrived. My family had gone to visit my mother-in-law, to the embrace of an uncomplicated grandmother, to a tidy house without news vans and sightseers parked outside.
I poured some Scotch into a tumbler and took it into the living room. I’d selected or inherited every piece of furniture in the room, positioned each lamp, every photo in its pretty frame. The colors were my colors, warm and easy, the style my style, the Oriental carpet on which my children played their board games was the same one I’d played on as a girl. Yet I couldn’t shake the sensation that at any minute another woman would emerge to ask what I was doing in her house.
I’d pushed my mother for the truth, and when I’d gotten it, I was horrified. Princeton had sent Bobby home because he’d broken down mentally, and my parents hadn’t gotten him help. Ten months later, he’d gone through my mother’s scarves and my parents never asked why he’d chosen the one he did. Instead, they sent him to finish college under the blue-and-gold banners of Berkeley. He never saw a psychiatrist even once.
My parents had sacrificed Bobby out of pride or fear or reasons I would never know. But they could have done everything right, and still lost him.
My brother had been a math professor at Columbia. A few years later he was living in a dirt shack. I had blamed myself when Bobby wouldn’t have anything to do with me. My sister shrugged it off. My father couldn’t hide his disgust with him. My mother gave him money. We chose, each of us, not to listen to the ticking at the edge of our lives.
The Askedahls weren’t so different from other people. We tried to hold our family together by ignoring what could break us apart. Except our delusions cost seven innocent people their lives.
I wrapped myself in an afghan and drained my Scotch. On the street outside, a car slammed on its breaks to avoid—I hoped—whatever small animal had run into its path. I must have been six when I followed some other kids to look at a run-over cat. The animal’s black fur was ripped wide, flies crawling on the glistening insides. I remembered staring, transfixed. This was death, and it was profoundly interesting.
I didn’t understand then that I could die. In school, when we dropped to the floor, one arm over our heads, the other against our eyes to shield ourselves from a nuclear blast, what I was afraid of was everyone else dying. Being alone in the world with no one to take care of me.
Bobby was a year older than Julia when he climbed onto that stool in his bedroom and made a noose out of my mother’s silk scarf. Is that how he felt when he kicked away the stool, utterly alone in the world with no one to take care of him? He had me. I would have kept him company throughout that long night, taken care of him when I was older. But he couldn’t wait. Or I wasn’t enough.
Nothing was ever the same after that night, despite the years we would all spend pretending that it was.
*
I WALKED in bitter rain and gray mist, up before my neighbors, my only chance to be outside before the news vans reappeared. I kept my gaze on the slippery sidewalk, on my worn-out shoes in the rain. Once when I was twelve I’d gone to buy a movie magazine, wearing shorts. A man on the sidewalk outside the drugstore—maybe he was drunk, maybe he wasn’t as old as he seemed—said, “I’d like to lay you on that big butt of yours and screw you good.”
I’d walked away fast, looking only at my shoes, my eyes hot with tears. My shoes were brown, scuffed and stupid looking. When I got home, I didn’t say anything to my parents. I went straight to Bobby’s room. I took off my shoes and hurled them against the wall, satisfied when one left a mark.
Suddenly Bobby was there asking what the hell was going on. He’d come in from his sun porch. I had no idea he was even home
.
“I hate my shoes,” I said. “Mom forced me to buy them. I hate her, too.”
Bobby sat on the other twin bed. “Understood, but why didn’t you throw the shoes at your wall instead of mine?”
It was a reasonable question. Why was I in his room? He was supposed to be away at Berkeley.
“Why are you even home?” I said to deflect attention off me.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“A guy outside the drugstore said he wanted to screw me,” I said as if I were used to strange men talking to me like that.
“What guy?” Bobby asked quietly.
I couldn’t keep it up. I started to cry. “Some guy. He said my butt was big.”
Bobby stood. “I’m going to the drugstore,” he said. “I’m going to find that guy and make him sorry he ever bothered you.” He pointed at the shoes I’d thrown. “Give those to me,” he said. I didn’t ask questions. I gave him the shoes.
I read from his collection of old comic books until he returned, a shoe box under his arm. I asked him if he’d found the guy. He said he had and that man would never bother me again.
“But if anyone ever says anything like that to you in the future, you scream ‘pervert’ at the top of your lungs. As if you’re really angry, you keep screaming ‘pervert,’ as loudly as you can.”
I asked Bobby what a pervert was. “It’s what that guy is,” he said. He made me promise I’d do what he said. Then he gave me the shoe box. It held a cool-looking pair of red Keds that I would wear until they fell apart.
Years later, a guy came out of nowhere to threaten me on a dark street in Oakland. I was alone. I didn’t see anyone else around. He backed me against a brick wall. I looked him right in the face and started yelling as loud as I could, “Leave me alone, you pervert.” He ran off.
*
AT HOME, I did laundry at six a.m. In the mess of dirty clothes on Julia’s floor, I found an old yearbook from Berkeley. We had a bunch in the attic, Eric’s, mine, my mother’s, my father’s, my grandfather’s. This one had Sara’s name on it—I didn’t know why we even had it. I flipped through the pages. Sara had been a blonde in a Peter Pan collar when she posed with her sorority sisters. But she’d also been a princess in the court of the Lambda Chi Daffodil Queen, something I’d never known. Sara’s accomplishments were not the kind that got noticed in our house.
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