Sullivan’s Justice

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “No,” Leo said, marching back toward the open grave.

  Chapter 19

  Sunday, December 26—9:40 A.M.

  Carolyn pulled into the driveway of her mother’s house in Camarillo, a small town located off the 101 Freeway just north of Ventura. After she’d visited Brad the day before, she had decided to take a nap before heading out to Camarillo. When she woke up, it was six o’clock at night. She’d assumed Neil would still be at her mother’s. When she had called, though, her mother told her he’d taken off after she went to bed Christmas Eve.

  People affiliated with the art world hung out in Brentwood, Melrose, or Santa Barbara. Neil had tons of friends in the LA area, most of them she’d never met. He carried a cell phone, but only turned it on when he made a call. She hoped he wasn’t holed up with Melody Asher, if for no other reason than out of respect for Laurel. If he was, there was nothing she could do about it. She’d babied and covered for him his entire life. This time, the situation was so serious she might not be able to fix it.

  After she’d learned that her mother was alone, she’d asked John to go visit her, then promised her she would spend the next day with her. Now it was time to fulfill her promise. Rebecca was at the mall with Lucy. As usual, John was out somewhere with his friends. As long as he came home by ten and maintained a four-point average, Carolyn felt he deserved his independence. Before he’d got his car, he had spent most of his free time taking care of his younger sister. She doubted if he was thrilled the night before when she’d asked him to take her mother out, but he hadn’t complained.

  Dressed in a red sweater with rhinestone Christmas trees on it, Marie Sullivan had naturally curly silver hair, fair skin, and was petite like her daughter. “I’m sorry about yesterday, Mother,” she said, embracing her in the entryway. “I meant to come, but this thing with Neil…I guess I was exhausted. Did you have a good time with John?”

  “Oh, yes,” she exclaimed. “He’s a wonderful boy. He only stayed a few minutes, though. He said he was going to a big party.”

  Carolyn had given John money to take her mother out to dinner and a movie. He’d never mentioned anything about a party. When she got home, she’d have to talk to him.

  Marie Sullivan lived in a gated retirement community called Leisure Village. The town people jokingly called it “Seizure Village,” since hardly a day passed without someone either dying or being rushed away in an ambulance. Leisure Village had been designed for active seniors. Most of the residents were in their late fifties or early sixties. On the property, they had a swimming pool, several tennis courts, and a nine-hole golf course. The only things the community didn’t provide were meals and transportation. Her mother was about to turn seventy and her hearing was failing. She had hearing aids but refused to wear them.

  “I can’t talk to you unless you put in your hearing aids, Mother!” she shouted. “I’m going out to the car to get your Christmas presents. One of them is a box of See’s Candies. If you don’t have your hearing aids on by the time I come back, I’ll let the kids eat it.”

  Mrs. Sullivan frowned. “I don’t like noise. It makes it difficult for me to think. And the awful things hurt my ears.”

  “Then I’ll have to leave,” Carolyn said loudly. “I’ll lose my voice, Mother. I love you, but I can’t scream all day.”

  Carolyn returned with a large box wrapped in foil paper. Inside was a peach-colored lightweight coat. Her mother’s passion for chocolate was greater than her dislike for her hearing aids. She placed the box of See’s on the coffee table.

  “This is lovely,” she said, putting on the coat and going to the other room to look in the mirror. When she returned, she smiled at her daughter. “It fits perfectly, honey. I bought you a present, too, but I forgot where I put it. Would you check the hall closet for me? It may have fallen behind the box where I keep my Christmas decorations.”

  Carolyn saw her mother’s hand already moving toward her left ear. Now that she had the candy, she was going to trick her and take the hearing aids out. Carolyn stood her ground. “We’ll find it another day.”

  “I think I know where it is,” Mrs. Sullivan said, knowing her daughter was onto her. “Wait here and I’ll go and get it.” She returned a few minutes later carrying a Nordstrom shopping bag. “I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t get around to wrapping it.”

  Carolyn pulled out a red silk scarf with tiny roses embroidered on it. Chanel N° 5, her mother’s signature fragrance, drifted past her nostrils. Every year, Marie gave John and Rebecca a thousand dollars to put into their college fund. Her daughter always received a scarf. She was lucky to get anything. Neil was the contemporary Michelangelo, according to her mother, but she hadn’t given him a Christmas present since childhood, probably because she didn’t have any male clothes or accessories in her closet. Carolyn actually didn’t mind. When she wore one of her mother’s scarfs, she didn’t have to add any perfume.

  They went to lunch at Coco’s restaurant, then returned. Her mother seemed tired. “I should probably go home,” Carolyn told her, running her hands through her hair. “I haven’t been spending enough time with Rebecca and John.”

  “Don’t leave,” Mrs. Sullivan pleaded, her voice trembling. She perched on the edge of the blue velour sofa. “I have something to tell you.”

  Carolyn sat next to her and took her hand. “What is it, Mom?”

  Marie cleared her throat. “I should have told you years ago. I thought…well, you know…it was painful for me to talk about it. Neil decided to clean out the chest of drawers in the guest room last night. He was going to stay with me until this mess with the police was cleared up. He found something I’d forgotten was in there. Since he knows, I think you should know, too. I tried to explain things to him, but he wouldn’t listen. He became upset and ran out of the house. I’m scared he might hurt himself. He’s too much like your father.”

  She got up and disappeared into the spare bedroom. When she returned, she was carrying a plastic storage container, the kind she stored her sweaters in during the summer. She took a deep breath and sat back down on the couch, composing herself. “Your father didn’t die of a heart attack,” she said. “He killed himself.”

  Carolyn’s face froze in astonishment. How could her mother have failed to tell her something this serious? “Are you making this up?”

  “No,” she said, clasping the box against her chest. “After he retired from his teaching position, your father worked day and night on his math. The man next door had a Doberman that barked all the time. It drove your father crazy. Normally, things like that didn’t bother him. He was suffering from sleep deprivation, though, and he hadn’t been eating properly.”

  She walked over and handed her the box. “I’m going in the other room to rest. When you’re ready to talk, come and get me.”

  Carolyn took the lid off, seeing several documents. One was a death certificate, listing her father’s death as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The other was the Camarillo PD report. She began weeping. After an altercation with his neighbor, he had turned the gun on himself and blown his brains out.

  She checked the date. It was six years ago to the day. Her mother had told her that her father had died of a heart attack. The funeral had been closed casket, so they couldn’t see the wound. At the time of their father’s death, Neil had been away in Europe, and Carolyn was in the midst of her divorce from Frank. Everything had been a blur. Her emotional state was wrecked by the divorce and then crushed by her father’s sudden death. Her mother had never told them he had a heart condition until after he died. Now she knew why.

  Carolyn’s hand involuntarily opened and the police report floated to the floor. In most instances, suicides were not publicized unless they involved a crime. The only one who’d known the truth was her mother. Why hadn’t she told them? Carolyn pushed the plastic box off her lap onto the table, leaning over at the waist. She feared she was going to vomit. What had driven her father to kill himself? He’
d been the most gentle, loving man she’d ever known. He wasn’t a talkative man, but when he did speak, he generally said something worthwhile.

  After his retirement, he had drifted into a world of his own. Her mother was still teaching chemistry at Ventura Junior College. She quit after her husband’s death.

  Carolyn brought forth the last memory of her father. She’d moved back in with her parents for a brief period after filing for divorce from Frank. Once she got a court order giving her possession of the house, she and the kids had returned to their home in Ventura. This was several months before her father’s death.

  Awakening at four in the morning, she’d gone to the kitchen for a glass of milk. Her father was working at the table, stacks of papers in front of him, all covered with complex equations. He used to concentrate so intently that when she and Neil were kids, they made a game out of trying to distract him. They would blast the radio, even stand in front of him and scream that someone was breaking into the house. He would continue working as if no one was in the room with him.

  On this particular morning, Carolyn had been surprised when her father had dropped his pencil, removed his glasses, and asked her to sit down so they could talk. “You don’t sleep much, do you?” When she admitted that she suffered from bouts of insomnia, he asked her, “Does it bother you?”

  “Well, yes,” she told him, surprised he was speaking on such a personal subject.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Carolyn had said, smiling. “I don’t want to be tired the next day, I guess. Besides, everyone else is asleep.”

  “Are you tired the next day?”

  “Not really,” she replied, never having thought about it.

  “Neither am I,” her father said. “People sleep their lives away. I sleep three, maybe four hours. You’d be surprised what you can accomplish at night. No interruptions. No noise. It’s nice, you know. Stop trying to make yourself into a common mortal. You have a fine mind and an energetic body. My mother was like that. She used to do crossword puzzles all night, then work a ten-hour day.”

  Carolyn put the papers back, then went to her mother’s bedroom. She found her sitting in a maple rocking chair, with cranberry-colored cushions, her hands folded neatly in her lap.

  A picture of Neil was sitting on the bureau. No wonder he’d left in the middle of the night. His breakdown carried more significance now. If the police found out, and they probably would, it could lend credence to their suspicions that he was a murderer. They would also find out he had served time in a mental institution to avoid prosecution for assault.

  Carolyn rested her back against the doorway. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she said. “This must have been a terrible burden for you to carry. But why would Dad kill himself over a barking dog? When he concentrated, he shut everything else out.”

  “After he stopped teaching,” Mrs. Sullivan explained, “Peter became convinced that he was on the verge of solving the Riemann hypothesis, a famous mathematical puzzle. He’d been awake for days. On numerous occasions, he’d asked Mr. DiMaio to do something about his dog. DiMaio was a large man with a nasty temper. When Peter went over there to speak to him that night, Mr. DiMaio knocked him to the ground and threatened to kill him. Your father came back to the house and got his shotgun. I grabbed his papers and tore them into pieces, screaming at him to stop wasting his life over a problem he’d never be able to solve. He slapped me, then he ran out the door with the gun.” She placed her hands over her face, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed. “I couldn’t let him shoot someone. I had to do something. Maybe if I hadn’t torn up his papers he wouldn’t have done it. I always thought we’d be reunited in heaven when I died.”

  She must have lost her Catholic ideology along the way, Carolyn thought. According to the church, her father would have gone to hell. Eventually he would go to purgatory. After eons had passed, he might be admitted to heaven. Suicide was a cardinal sin. “Dad may have been thinking about killing himself for some time. When they retire, especially men from Dad’s generation, they sometimes feel useless, decide their life is over. Most people don’t just shoot themselves, even in heated situations. You couldn’t have prevented what happened, Mother.”

  “That’s not true,” Mrs. Sullivan said, reaching for a tissue to blow her nose. “I called the police. I’m certain he wouldn’t have shot himself if I hadn’t made that call.”

  “In a situation like this, nothing is certain. Things may have ended up the same no matter what you did.”

  Mrs. Sullivan stared across the room as the events of that night played out in her mind. “I was only a few steps away when he did it. When he saw the police officers, he looked straight at me. I could tell from his eyes that he thought I’d betrayed him. Then he put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.” She stopped and took a breath. “He was the only man I ever loved. I was drenched in his blood. His brain was…Oh, God, it was so awful.”

  Carolyn walked over and dropped down on her knees, tenderly stroking her mother’s arm. “It’s all right, Mother. You don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said, reaching under the chair and pulling out an envelope. “Even in death, I cheated him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He solved it!” Marie Sullivan said. “I taped the papers back together that I took from him. He only had one more step, which I completed from his notes. Your father solved the Riemann hypothesis, the most important unsolved problem in mathematics. If I hadn’t done what I did, he would have won the Fields Medal.”

  “You must be mistaken, Mother,” she said. “Have you shown Dad’s work to anyone? People all over the world are trying to solve that problem. Some people say it’s unsolvable.”

  Mrs. Sullivan leaned forward, her mouth set in defiance. “He solved it, Carolyn. It’s right here. Don’t pass me off as an old fool because I’m not. Your math skills aren’t good enough to comprehend it, but it’s undeniable. How can I go public with your father’s accomplishment? I would have to tell the world that I stole this from my husband, then pushed him to commit suicide. Here,” she said, handing her a key. “His papers are in the safe at the bank. After I die, you can show them to everyone. I’m sure your physicist friend can confirm what I’ve told you. Unless someone else solves it in the next few years, you and your brother can split the money.”

  Carolyn handed the safe-deposit key back to her, kissed her on the cheek, then stood to leave. Her thoughts were scattered—first Neil, then Paul, then Brad, now this. She knew what happened when a man put a shotgun to his head. She saw her father’s kind face, but then another grotesque image appeared. This was a new death. She felt the same as she did the day her mother called her at work and told her he’d suffered a fatal heart attack, as if she needed to start shopping for a coffin, call all the relatives. She would have to grieve again. “I’m not interested in money or mathematics, Mother. Right now, I’m trying to make certain you don’t have more articles to add to your box of secrets. If you hear from Neil, tell him I need to see him. The police may issue a warrant for his arrest if he skips town. In addition, he’ll appear guilty. He’s got enough going against him as it is.”

  “Merry Christmas,” her mother said despondently. “I didn’t mean to ruin it for you.”

  Carolyn forced a smile. “Christmas was yesterday,” she said. “Anyway, someone else made a mess of it long before you. Will you be okay here by yourself? Do you want to stay with us for a few days? We have the extra room, you know.”

  “No, no,” she said. “Take care of Neil, darling. He’s terribly fragile. Great artists have delicate temperaments. The only person he’ll listen to is you. Be strong for him.”

  “Haven’t I always?” Carolyn tossed her sweater over her shoulder as she headed out the front door. One of the reasons Neil was so screwed up was her mother. She’d tried to push him into science and math when all he had ever been interested in was art. When he began reaping money
and acclaim from his paintings, she’d started telling her friends he was the contemporary Michelangelo. Before, her mother had treated him like a failure.

  Her poor father. If what her mother had told her was true, he’d worked all his life for nothing. How could Marie have torn up his papers? Faced with the same situation, though, she might have done the same thing. Even if she could have chosen a different set of parents, Carolyn knew she would want things to be just as they had been, with the exception of her father’s tragic end. She thought of John and Rebecca, reminding herself to look under the surface, make certain there weren’t problems she was missing. In today’s world, though, young people faced a myriad of dangers and parents were often inattentive. How could she be everything to everyone? She could sleep less, but look at what had happened to her father. Was lack of sleep a factor? From what her mother said, it had been. Everything she knew about her father had changed in a few hours. Now she would spend endless hours replaying their moments together, analyzing and wondering. Underneath his quiet demeanor, her father had been a complex and tormented man.

  Opening the car door and sliding behind the wheel of the Infiniti, Carolyn stared out the window. Her windshield was filthy. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? She got out and rubbed the spots away with her sweater.

  How could her father be dispatched to hell when he’d never done an immoral or cruel thing in his life? The teachings of the church suddenly seemed barbaric, she thought, tossing her sweater in the backseat and driving off. It was idiotic to believe that hell even existed. As far as she was concerned, they were already living in it.

  Carolyn vowed to remember her father for his brilliance—in time she’d manage to set aside his suicide—but she had learned a bitter lesson. After almost forty years of marriage, her mother had not known her father. If she had, she would have never torn up his papers. Carolyn could not allow herself to make the same mistake with her brother.