Sins of the Fathers

by James Scott Bell

  “Stop telling me what I’m thinking. Stop trying to psychoanalyze me all the time.”

  “Mona, honest, I’m not trying to—”

  “Just say you’ll stop it. That’s all I want to hear right now. And then I want you to tell me what is wrong with the food. Do you understand me?”

  “Listen to me carefully,” Brad said. “There is nothing wrong with your food.”

  “Stop it!” The mellow light of innocuous conversation flipped instantly to the harsh beam of accusation. Under its glare, Mona was unable to see anything except the potato dish, more imperfection, sitting there mocking her feeble attempts to bring order to her world. She threw it against the wall.

  “Mona, don’t.” Brad got out of his chair and started around the table toward her.

  Mona got up quickly and pushed her chair into his path. “Don’t touch me. Don’t do anything. Don’t even think of cleaning this up. I’m going to clean it up. I am going to make it right.”

  “Let me help you. Please.”

  “Help yourself. Leave me alone. I’m sorry I ruined dinner.” The whole ugly table laughed at her. She grabbed a corner of the tablecloth and, like the magicians used to do, pulled with all her might.

  But instead of leaving the contents undisturbed, everything came crashing to the floor.

  Brad’s expression of shock was more than she could bear.

  “Get out! Get out! Get out!”

  “Mona . . .”

  She screamed so loudly her throat spasmed.

  SIX

  1.

  “How you doin’, Pop? Lookin’ good.”

  Leon sat on the arm of the sofa, knowing his father could not answer. The Reverend Calvert Colby, dressed in a white bathrobe, slowly looked up at his son and, just as slowly, nodded.

  “Yeah, you’re lookin’ good,” Leon lied. But it was a soft lie, a white lie, the kind you told when you wanted to encourage someone who was on the final lap.

  Leon turned to Rosa Mendez, the live-in caregiver who had also been a longtime member of Reverend Colby’s church. “How’s he been?”

  Rosa said, “He is getting along. Lots of people visit.”

  “That’s good. You like that, Pop? You like the visits?”

  His father nodded again. Leon’s stomach clenched. What a practical joker life was. What a bad practical joker. The punch line wasn’t funny, a permanent residence in a prison of sadness.

  You take a man who once had a booming voice and animated features, who could bounce around a pulpit in a one-man assault on the gates of hell. You take a man who could sing with the gospel choir and fill any room with the sound of righteous conviction. You take a man who didn’t know the meaning of nuance, who saw the world without shades of gray, you give him confidence in his calling and inject passion into his message. And then you watch life have its joke.

  You watch as his wife of forty years wastes away with cancer. And then you watch this man, who covered his heartache with trembling utterances of scriptural hope, you watch him fall off the stage one night with a massive stroke. You watch as doctors come and go, and deliver news that is not good, that robs an anointed man of the very faculties that mean the most to him. You watch as he loses his ability to talk, let alone sing. You watch him waste away, a once ample-bellied man shrinking into a stick figure who can barely stand.

  And when all that has happened, you come to the house weekly to check in because you can’t talk to him on the phone. You come because you’re the son and that’s what you do.

  “He eating okay?” Leon said to Rosa.

  She pointed her finger at his father. “He need to eat better. He push around his food too much. I have to get mad.”

  Calvert looked blankly at Rosa.

  “He get his Milky Way?” Calvert Colby had always liked Milky Ways. He used to say it was God’s proof that he wanted men to be happy.

  “I don’t give unless he eats,” Rosa said.

  Leon nodded, took out his wallet, and gave Rosa a twenty-dollar bill. “Go easy on him. Let him have a Milky Way every now and then.”

  Rosa took the money.

  “Now don’t you worry about me, Pop,” Leon said, giving voice to what he was sure occupied his father’s feeble mind. Before his stroke, Calvert Colby had made plain his hope that Leon would come back to church. It was a source of sorrow for him that his son had chosen not to become a preacher, and worse, to give up on Christ.

  Leon sometimes wondered if that sorrow was partially to blame for his father’s stroke.

  Now there was a thought that might drive him crazy. He buried it deep.

  Leon patted his father’s thin arm, then reached for his right hand. They always shook hands at the end, and his father, while severely weakened, still gave the grip his all.

  2.

  Judge Greene said, “Colby make you an offer?”

  “Twenty-five to life,” Lindy said. “Some offer.”

  They were sitting out on Greene’s redwood deck, which had an incredible view of the ocean. The judge had done all right for himself. His wife, whom Lindy had never met, was out doing something social. Word was she had major bucks. This was not a world with which Lindy was familiar. She almost laughed thinking of her mobile home in the canyon, with its view of charred hills, big boulders, and a Los Angeles County reservoir. Even when she closed her eyes and thought real hard, she still couldn’t imagine it was an ocean.

  Greene thought a moment, his eyes looking out at the sea, darkening in the oncoming night. What he must have seen with those eyes over the years. What they all had seen in the criminal-justice system. Enough darkness for three lifetimes.

  “Could be just the thing for your client,” Greene said. “It’s not life without parole. He could get out.”

  “To what? And what’s prison going to do to a boy?”

  “There have been cases,” Greene said, “where lives have been turned around.”

  “Can you count them all on one hand?”

  “Maybe both hands.” He was trying to soften the blow of what might be inevitable, and she appreciated the effort. Unless she could get the insanity defense to fly, Darren DiCinni would spend most of the rest of his life in adult prison.

  Nothing could soften a blow like that.

  Lindy listened to the waves breaking on the shore. She normally welcomed this calming sound. Now, though, it reminded her of ships crashing into rocks.

  “Can any good really come out of this?” Lindy said. She realized that was what she wanted from him. To know. Even if it was bad news, just knowing something for certain would help.

  “We can’t rule that out,” Greene said. “I mean, look at that ocean. We can’t comprehend its size. What’s happening here, we can see a little of it. But what happens beyond the horizon? What’s the water doing miles out to sea, or on the other side of the world? I think the world is like that. If I didn’t, maybe I’d go a little bit nuts myself.”

  Lindy tensed.

  “I’m sorry,” Greene added quickly. “I didn’t mean you.”

  “It’s a fact, Judge. You deal in facts. I went nuts after Marcel Lee. I couldn’t handle it. Why’d you bring me into this?”

  Greene waited a long time before answering. “Can I tell you something, Lindy?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m a private man. I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve. A judge has to be objective. But I’m also a religious man, Lindy, and that’s what keeps me going.”

  She was not surprised at this, though she was surprised she had not thought of him as religious before. A judge with religion—that was not a creature she was anxious to embrace.

  But Greene was a good man and a good judge.

  “The Bible says that God’s plans cannot be frustrated by man. And yet man has a part to play in the way things turn out. Maybe I thought getting you back into the game was the best way to help you.”

  “But this one, this case. It’s so over-the-top compared to anything I’ve ever handled b
efore.”

  “That’s where God comes in.”

  “Oh, so he waits until now to intervene? The whole thing about evil messes with my mind. I don’t see how he lets it happen.”

  “It’s messed with a lot of minds over the centuries. One thing I know, as a judge: there is such a thing as evil, and that’s the way some people are.”

  “So what about lives changing?”

  Greene shook his head slowly. “Rare. It can get so deep in a person. That’s why we have prisons. And the death penalty.”

  “I’m against the death penalty, you know that.”

  “Sure, but evil has to be dealt with. Bad people deserve punishment. Like Marcel Lee. I know you had a rough time with that case, but he is a bad man, Lindy. You did your part in the system, you represented him well, and now that’s over for you.”

  “I don’t know if it’ll ever be over for me.” She paused. The breeze had turned suddenly chilly. “I went to church.”

  Greene turned toward her. “Really?” He seemed more astonished than anything else.

  “Quite a shock, huh?”

  “Not at all. I would encourage you in that, Lindy.”

  “My mind is expanding a little too quickly at the moment. Like the universe.”

  “Step at a time. My advice: don’t get personally involved with DiCinni. Stay professional. Whatever the outcome, know that you did your part.”

  For a long time they sat in silence, Lindy feeling the strength of this judge who had become her friend, who had selflessly reached out to her. She drew from his strength. She wished she had more of it herself.

  3.

  “They taking care of you?” Lindy asked.

  Darren shrugged. Once again they were in the attorney-interview booth at county jail. And once again Lindy was trying to set her client at ease so he would open up at least a little bit.

  “Anything you want to tell me about? I can rattle some cages if they’re doing anything you don’t like.”

  He shook his head.

  “I came to tell you that a doctor’s going to examine you.”

  That brought a frown to Darren’s face. “I’m not sick.”

  “I mean a psychiatrist. You know, someone to go over what’s going on inside you. Just talk, that’s all. But it needs to happen.”

  Darren DiCinni’s eyes flickered for a moment. “You think I’m crazy?”

  Lindy wanted to shout Yes! Don’t you realize it? You’re damagedgoods, and there may be a way to heal you, but I don’t know what it is.

  “Something’s wrong, Darren. You don’t kill people without something being wrong. You realize that, don’t you?”

  He frowned as if he did not understand.

  “Darren, suppose you try something. Suppose you tell me why you killed those kids. You have to talk about it eventually. I’m your lawyer. It’s best to start with me.”

  He looked at her with that blank stare again. “My life is really over, isn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t have to be. You’re only thirteen.”

  “I’ll never get out of here, will I?”

  Trying to stop his slide down a pole of despair, Lindy said, “That’s an open question. Getting people out of here is what I do, Darren. And if you give me a little, I can help you more.”

  She waited for him to respond to the pleading in her voice. Justcome to me halfway.

  The young prisoner, lost in the orange jumpsuit that looked like an ill-fitting Halloween costume, slumped on his stool. “I’ve done what I need to do.”

  “Need to do?” Lindy said. “What do you mean, Darren?”

  He shook his head.

  “Darren, what did you mean by that? I want to know.”

  He waved the back of his shackled hand at her, looked at the dull green wall.

  “Tell me,” she said. “Please, trust me. What is it you needed to do?”

  “Shut up,” he said quietly.

  No, she was not going to shut up. She had just seen a fissure in the mountain. A thin shaft of light shone out, but the mountain was threatening to close up again. If she didn’t drive a wedge in now she might never get the chance.

  A wedge. Something to shove into the tiny crack.

  “You want to know about me?” she asked. “Want to know why I’m here?”

  Darren was silent for a moment, then slowly nodded.

  “I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to make a deal with me. You’ve got to give me something back, okay? Deal?”

  Nothing from him. Oh, well, she had to dive in anyway.

  “I was pretty messed up as a kid,” Lindy said. “A real troublemaker. My dad and I didn’t get along too well. He didn’t really like me. And then, I don’t know, something snapped in me when I got to be a teenager. About your age I guess. I started doing things behind my father’s back.”

  Darren’s eyes moved a little, but he was looking right at her.

  “Then he ran off. That was really hard on my mom. I tried to deal with it. I started drinking and stuff like that. Let school slide. There was a teacher at my school, though, wouldn’t give up on me. Managed to get me into junior college. Long story short, I got through college and into a law-school program at night. I went on to do mostly juvenile work with the public defender’s office. And then . . .”

  She was about to tell him about Marcel Lee. She stopped herself. She was backtracking to some other part of her past when Darren spoke.

  “Do you believe in God?” he asked.

  That was unexpected. And the crack stayed open.

  “Do you?” he pressed.

  “What made you ask me that?”

  “I just want to know.”

  In the split second between question and answer Lindy relived the bar exam—she felt all the anxiety, all the information jumbling around in her head, all the hope that when it came to crunch time something would make sense. Only that was just the bar exam. This was a kid’s life.

  “Sure,” Lindy said.

  “Why?” He was challenging her, a prosecutor cross-examining a defendant who tried to get by with shallow answers.

  Lindy shrugged. “It’s just one of those things you know. There has to be a God.”

  “Yeah, but what’s he like? What do you think he’s like?” He moved his hands around in the desk shackles and leaned forward. His default reticence was replaced suddenly by some odd curiosity.

  “I think God knows everything. But what he does with that knowledge is beyond us.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Darren?”

  “I know God.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  He smiled then, like a kid who knew where the answers to the test were and had copied them down. But he did not say anything further.

  “Darren, I really want to know.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t really want to know.”

  “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “You’re getting paid to do this, aren’t you?”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in this case, in you.”

  “You better believe in God,” he said. “You better.”

  And then the fissure sealed shut, crushing Lindy with frustration.

  This kid better be crazy, and she’d better find a good doctor to verify that.

  4.

  “I think it would be a good idea to be apart for a while.”

  Mona heard her own voice. It sounded clipped and precise and emotionless. It surprised her that she wasn’t crying.

  Not even Brad’s look, his shocked and hurt face, brought tears to her eyes. She wondered if he’d cry. Every now and then Brad would tear up at an old movie. He would try to hide it, but Mona always knew. He’d pretend to scratch his head when he was really wiping his eye. Like when John Wayne looked at his gold watch in She Wore aYellow Ribbon. Got him every time.

  And she couldn’t resist holding him when he did. She would tear up and grab him and hug him, even though he told her not t
o. He was embarrassed and tried to cover up. Usually she had the waterworks.

  Now she was the desert as Brad’s eyes misted ever so slightly.

  “Do you mean . . .” he said, then started again. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean apart for a while. I don’t want to have a repeat of last night.”

  Brad waited a long time before responding, and Mona knew he’d picked up that there was more to her words than she’d let on.

  “You don’t actually think,” he said, “our marriage is in trouble?”

  Can’t you see it? Where have you been?

  “I’m not saying anything,” Mona answered, “except I think we need some time apart.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not a good idea at all.”

  “I think it is a good idea.”

  “So that settles it?”

  “Yes.”

  Brad normally sat during upsetting discussions. It was Mona’s observation that this was his way of anchoring himself to something. He did not like emotional upheaval. And his chair in the family room, a brown recliner,was his favorite. Mona, who was standing with arms folded, expected he would remain there as the discussion drew to a close.

  But he did not. And Mona knew that meant trouble.

  SEVEN

  1.

  Lindy went over to check on Mr. Klinger. He was in his favorite soft chair, circa 1958, watching a sitcom.

  “Ah, Lindy! Come and watch how bad this is.”

  She looked at a couple of actors pretending to be flummoxed.

  “Not funny,” Klinger said, waving his arms. “Now Sid Caesar, he was funny. Funny this is not.”

  “Why don’t you turn it off,Mr. Klinger? Might be better for your blood pressure.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “You with that crazy kid.”

  Lindy sighed and sat on his modern sofa, circa 1965.“You’ve been watching the news.”

  Klinger wiggled his bushy white eyebrows. “I don’t want you should get in too deep.”

  “Impossible in a murder case.”

  “Murder! That was a massacre. Kid like that.” Klinger shook his head sadly as canned laughter filled the room.“Why, Lindy? Why did he do that terrible thing?”