She was lying. Who was supposed to rescue her? Her pompous father, probably. Little girls always think their fathers will save them. Women know better. He let it go. “Here’s something I don’t know: did Klein bother you more than that one time?”
Julie rolled her lips inward and nodded. Fear came into her eyes and they slid away to the door.
“Do you not want to talk about this?” Brian asked, flooded with pity for her. “I’m sorry, I thought that’s why you wanted to meet.”
“No. I mean, I’m glad to talk to you about—well, not glad—but it’s a relief to talk with someone who really understands. But no. I called you to talk about the Rydel case.” She paused, looked right at him with dread, as if she were faced with a high dive into cold waters.
“Well, sure, I guessed that much,” Brian said. “Since it broke in the paper last week of course Klein’s been on my mind too. I gotta say, I’m not happy to be thinking about him again. I stopped thinking and talking about him in therapy twenty-five years ago. And of course since I never followed what Klein was up to—I didn’t even know about his dumb-ass school and charity—it never occurred to me to get in touch with you, but my excuse is that until today I assumed you never saw Klein again.” Her expression made it clear that was quite wrong. Brian waited for her to volunteer more. When she seemed to be waiting on him to speak, he continued, “Revolting about Rydel, isn’t it? I read today, in a sickening background piece in the Times, that after Klein founded that phony school he adopted Rydel. At first I assumed that was a gay legal workaround to get the equivalent of marital rights in the eighties, but when I got to the end of piece I realized, no, it’s because he was proud of Sam. After all, Sam’s a real chip off the old block.” He chuckled. Julie looked horrified. “What?” he asked.
“That’s what you thought,” she said, unable to conceal her disgust. “That’s all?”
“What else is there to think?”
“He’s alive. Klein is alive,” she said.
“Yeah.” Brian remained puzzled. “I was surprised by that too. He’s been dead in my head for years, so I assumed he really was dead.”
Her black eyes flashed what looked like outrage. Does she expect me to do something? I’m Batman, she’s Catwoman, and we’ll avenge our childhoods? No. Stop thinking like a hack writer. She can’t be here for something practical.
“Tell me, Julie. I can’t guess what you’re thinking.”
Still looking offended, she held his gaze for another long beat. When at last she spoke, she answered a question he had asked earlier: “Klein became a patient of my father’s. A favorite patient because he knew celebrities. So he was invited to our house in Riverdale four, I don’t know, it may even have been five times over two years. I’m older than you. When I met you I was eleven, so I was thirteen the last time Klein showed up. I had breasts, real boobs by then. Each time he managed to get me alone. He was really clever about figuring a way to fool my parents into leaving us alone long enough for him to . . .” She paused. She frowned. “The first two times he came without Sam. He just used his hands. I didn’t fight. He stopped each time because somebody was coming. But then one Sunday he showed up with a dental emergency that turned out to be nothing, a cap had fallen out, on very short notice, and that time he brought Sam. After fixing Klein’s cap my father decided to start a barbecue and Mom had to clean up . . .” Her voice had been a calm monotone until this phrase. It broke without warning, threatening tears. She swallowed hard and then resumed in that emotionally neutral voice. “Noah had squirted ketchup all over himself and Mom had to get him changed. While they were all distracted, Klein and Sam both, they both came into my room, where I had gone specifically to stay away from him, and he put it in my mouth. With Sam watching. He put it in my mouth. I don’t know why I didn’t bite it off. I really don’t.” She looked at Brian as if he knew.
“You were protecting your parents,” he offered.
She dismissed that quickly. “Yes, but not just them. It sounds crazy, but I was protecting me too.”
“That’s not crazy to me,” Brian said.
Julie nodded. “There was a lot I was afraid of. So many things I was afraid of. I don’t know if I’ll ever know what all my fears were. But it still makes no sense to me that I did nothing that time, because the very next time, when he trapped me in the basement, I was getting a spare folding chair in the basement, he trapped me there and I threw the chair at him and ran upstairs and stood next to my mother, one inch away from Ma, for the rest of the afternoon. And that stopped it.” At last there was something other than gloom and self-recrimination in her expression. She looked faintly and distinctly proud. “He never came to the house again,” she said.
“You stopped him, Julie. That was brave.” This is what she wants. Absolution. And approval. “You were very brave, Julie.”
Both hands came up and covered her eyes. “I’m not brave,” she mumbled. “I’m not brave,” she repeated, her shoulders quaking, voice breaking up with tears.
While he watched her struggle for composure he wanted to get up, kneel beside her chair and hug her, but he couldn’t budge. He remained stuck in his chair and felt a fool, an utter fool. All along he had thought he was the worst wounded at this table, but there was her old pain staring him in the face, much worse than his, and now there was fresh pain in the world, worse than both of theirs. You see, I’m not the hack. God is. And the Old Fart doesn’t know how to write a conclusion that’ll satisfy his audience. He leaves that to us, his lost children, doing his dirty work, inventing uplifting endings to erase his mistakes.
HE’S A MAN, Julie observed, and was surprised. Not surprised that Brian had aged but that he had matured. Men were usually adolescent or boyish: on the phone Jeff sounded like a teenager; her husband rarely showed more restraint than a toddler. Yet when she blurted out that Brian was a man, he said, “I doubt that.” Self-deprecation only made him seem all the more grown-up. Indeed, Julie was soon persuaded that at least about the subject of Richard Klein, he was wiser than she. The question was whether his wisdom would be of any help.
Is he gay? she wondered as she probed him over coffee and the Linzer cookie he ate with a kind of desperation after she said that Jeff had loved him. Was she unsure about his sexual preference because he had been molested by a man? Or simply because he was single and unmarried at fifty?
After she told him what Klein had done to her, had embarrassingly wept into her hands and confessed that she was a coward, she continued to muse in the background about Brian’s sex life while she told him some—not all—of what Gary had found out so far and all about her agreement with Jeff to keep their connection to Rydel a secret. She held back the bombshell, the latest news about the case that Gary had phoned in from the Hamptons last night. Meanwhile, watching Brian react was fun. With each twist and turn, his expressive face shifted rapidly from world-weary nods to wide-eyed surprise. He listened without interrupting. Even when she was finally done, he paused for a moment before commenting, “So if Jeff told you to forget about me, and you agreed to keep quiet to jump-start your son’s acting career, why are you talking to me at all?”
“Because of new information Gary has about the case. No one knows it. It’s not public.”
“What? What did he find out?” Brian, like her, was instantly panicked. Was that because he knew all along this could never end easily for them? Why do we keep hoping for a way out?
At last she took the risk, her great leap of faith. “In the past forty-eight hours I’ve lied to both Gary and Jeff. I haven’t lied to you so far, and I don’t want to, but you shouldn’t trust me.”
Brian broke into a grin. “Julie . . .” He tried not to, but then he laughed hard enough for tears to well. When he composed himself, he said amiably, “I don’t trust anyone, and by the way, you shouldn’t trust me. But I hope that doesn’t stop you. I’m dying to know what you’ve been lying to Jeff about.”
“I told Jeff I would stop Gary from covering
the case and I haven’t. I told Gary that Jeff didn’t care whether he covered the case and he should stay on it.”
“Wow. Good for you. Jeff won’t see that coming. I’m sure he thinks offering your boy a career is too good for you to pass up.”
“Zack would probably kill me if he knew. So Gary stayed on the case all day yesterday. And he called last night with really bad, really upsetting news.” Before she continued, she wanted to impress Brian with how much trust she was placing in him. “I’m not supposed to tell anybody on pain of death, so you can really mess me up if you tell Gary’s rivals. Right now he has this exclusively.” She waited.
“Okay. I can really mess you up. Do you want me to swear I won’t?”
“No. I wouldn’t believe you anyway. Here’s the scoop: Gary’s source in the DA’s office says they may not be able to make the rape and sexual molestation charges stick. Only the most recent cases . . . You know about the sta . . . statute of limitations on child sexual abuse?”
Brian nodded wearily. He said in a disgusted tone, “Five years after the child victim turns eighteen. If the victim doesn’t come forward by age twenty-three, it’s history.”
“Amazing,” Julie said. That legal nicety, which apparently was old news to Brian, was shockingly new to her. “Anyway, yeah, so there are only four witnesses under twenty-three. Two of the four are . . . what’s the word? Impeached. One has a long criminal record, the other is a meth addict. And yesterday, the two who were considered good witnesses suddenly changed their story, made it sound like it was just consensual sex games going on between the boys that Sam Rydel covered up, or something like that. It’s pretty lame but good enough to create reasonable doubt, Gary says. Rydel’s lawyer is offering that he’ll plead to contributing to the delinquency of a minor, that he’s willing to go into rehab for his Percocet habit—”
“Percocet? Seriously?” Brian laughed bitterly. “That’s so nineties. He should at least update his addictions.”
Julie didn’t care for cynicism and now she tried to discourage it with stern urgency. “Listen. They’re negotiating with Rydel’s lawyer now. If he can keep his broadcasting school, Rydel’s willing to check himself into some kind of psychiatric program for six months. The deal hasn’t been made because the DA also wants him to agree to take a drug that some sex offenders are put on. I can’t remember what Gary said it was . . .”
“Cyproterone?” Brian offered.
She shook her head. “No, that’s not it.
“Depo-Provera?”
“That’s it. Depo- . . .” She hesitated.
“Provera. That makes sense for a DA to demand in lieu of jail time because it’s verifiable. Depo-Provera has to be given by injection and it stays in your system for ninety days. So once every three months you have to come in for an injection. That way they can be sure a sex offender is on the drug and presumably harmless.”
“I see.” Then a terrible suspicion arrived and she couldn’t keep it to herself: “How do you know about these drugs?”
Brian spread his arms to encompass the universe. “Wikipedia!” He made a Bronx cheer. “Also, serial killers, child killers, they’re hot, they’re the new cool kids, the new vampires, the new zombies, everybody’s favorite spook monster. In just the past year, the studios must have sent me two dozen books to adapt about the fascinating subject of child sexual murderers.”
“Is that really why you know so much about them?” She didn’t let his eyes go. She was naive enough to believe that if he lied to her about this, she would see it in his eyes.
He frowned with disgust. “I’m not on Depo-Provera or cyproterone, Julie.” She didn’t release him. He met her stare and testified solemnly: “I’m not a child molester.”
So, as it turned out, even more than she had assumed, she was still walking on the thin ice of trust. She had gone too far out to worry about falling through now. “Brian, the point I’m trying to make is that one way or the other Rydel’s going to get away with it.”
“I agree. I expected him to get off even if they charged him. He can afford great lawyers.”
“And that’s not the worst part,” Julie said. At last she had arrived at her real point: “Klein’s going to get away with it.”
“Klein? Of course. He’s eighty-four.”
“No, it’s not that he’s too old. This is something only Gary knows from his source in the DA’s office. So again, I have to trust you.” Brian nodded. “More than a dozen witnesses, boys and girls, have come forward that Klein molested them at the academy, and at the camp too, but mostly at the academy in the past twenty years. All but two are too old, but using the two who still are younger than twenty-three, the DA was going to nail him too, Brian. They were going to get Klein. But the witnesses against Klein have the same kind of credibility problems, so they’re going to let Klein go too. And even if the witnesses who aren’t too old decide to sue, Gary says both Rydel and Klein will settle out of court with them in exchange for not admitting any guilt.”
“Sure.” Brian rubbed his temples as if he had a headache. “The Times piece said that even with the academy’s stock dropping like a rock, Klein’s still worth a fortune.”
“They’re going to get away with it, Brian,” Julie insisted. Her black eyes gleamed. “And I’ve decided that’s not acceptable.”
Brian stopped rubbing. He squinted at her. “Not acceptable? What does that mean?”
“We have to do something.”
“No, we don’t,” he said, his answer like that of a schoolteacher: a mild, amused correction. “In fact, ‘something’ is exactly what we can’t do. There’s no ‘something’ available to us.”
Julie lowered her voice to a whisper, to make absolutely sure the waitress couldn’t hear. “If I’d blown the whistle on Richard Klein years ago, God knows how many kids he molested would have been spared.”
Brian interrupted. “Give me a break, Julie. Give yourself a break. By the time you were twenty-three, it was already too late.”
“Doesn’t matter!” Julie caught herself shouting. She lowered her voice, again to an intense whisper. “It would have put the spotlight on them. And maybe whatever sickness he did with Sam would have come out. Maybe our talking then could have helped Sam . . .”
“And that could have stopped him? Saved those poor black and Hispanic kids?” Brian’s Linzer cookie was gone. He wetted his fingertip and picked up the few remaining crumbs from his plate, licking them. How could he eat? Julie wondered. She felt sick to her stomach. Since she had heard from Gary the full, detailed accounts of what Klein and Rydel did to those poor orphaned boys, the disgusting way they were seduced and bullied and perverted . . . sickening. For years, she had been haunted by the responsibility of not telling on Klein—Rydel was proof her fears had been justified. Saying it aloud made her feel even worse. As an unspoken guilt, in the company of all her other shameful secrets, its ugliness had remained in shadow. Now she couldn’t look away from the revealing spotlight: she bore a portion of the blame for all those ruined lives.
“So we’re murderers.” Brian sucked the last dot of sugar from his thumb. He didn’t have old man lips, thinned and downturned. He looked his age, but there was something preserved about him, an old child. That was how she had remembered him and chose to recall him when she was in heat, sometimes imagining him as an adult in a suit, sometimes insisting on his thin boy’s face: but always his eyes understood her, feeling what she was feeling, seeing what she could not.
“What?” She hadn’t really taken in what he said.
Brian casually repeated, “So we’re murderers. Aren’t we—if what you say is correct—responsible for everything Klein and Sam Rydel have done? I don’t know if Gary has different info, but I heard on TV one of the Huck Finn boys hanged himself in a cabin on the camp grounds. Before that, another OD’d on glue or some household product or other, right? I mean I did my best not to listen, but I did hear something like that. So if we’re responsible for Rydel raping those b
oys, then we’re responsible for their deaths.”
He might as well have punched her. She bent over until her head nearly touched the organic honey dispenser. Brian’s judgment hadn’t occurred to her, not consciously. He’s right. We’re responsible for those deaths. For decades, they had done nothing about Klein and Rydel, so now they were a party to every crime they had committed, to every boy and girl who had been broken.
Brian touched her forearm briefly. She sat up. He looked stricken. “I’m sorry. I’m being a drama queen,” Brian said. He tried to retract his awful indictment. “That’s what the studios pay me to do: raise the stakes; increase jeopardy, heighten conflict. All that bullshit. Don’t pay attention to me. It’s just storytelling. In the real world, only lunatics believe in that melodramatic crap.”
Despairing, Julie stared into the middle distance: rows of pastries blurring, an espresso machine catching light, blinding her for a moment. Brian tapped her arm again, lightly, voice urgent: “Listen, I was exaggerating. Okay? I like to play around with this shit in my head, that’s all. Any first-year psychology major will tell you we were kids, just kids—none of it is our responsibility. And any first-year law student will tell you there was nothing we could have said, even if we were miraculous human specimens who could get it together to make our accusations before we turned twenty-three, in the 1970s the chances our testimony alone would have prevailed is really really questionable. In fact, we could have been sued for slander, and with a guy like Klein, I bet he would have sued. And as for today? These new charges? We have no evidence, none at all, against Klein or Rydel about what they did. What I said makes a good dramatic speech, but in the real world it’s just bullshit. Nobody, nobody in the history of the world, would have done anything differently than what you and I did. Nobody. What I just said is sentimental melodrama. Don’t give it a second thought.”
Julie was grateful he wanted to relieve her of guilt. But he was wrong. She did not judge him harshly for his longing to remain passive, the cynical bystander. He was willing to accept her without judgment and deserved the same from her. For better or for worse, she felt sure there was no one else on earth who could do for her what Brian could. Others could offer sympathy, empathy, soothing explanations. But only he knew or could know the truth of her experience. She could trust him. She was convinced she had found a reliable ally. That was what today’s meeting had to settle for her.
The Wisdom of Perversity Page 17