Jeff asked Brian. “What is this?”
“Just read them.”
Gary was less hostile. “These are the full statements from the kids Klein and Rydel molested and raped.”
“Look, I won’t lie to you,” Jeff said. “I’ve talked to my lawyer. He’s made a few calls about what’s going on. He says the statements are useless. They retracted them.”
“Yes, but in the retracted statements they name other children whom they saw raped. The AG is looking for them. Sooner or later someone is going to testify and it will all come out. Also, as you’ll see in there, Mr. Mark, your cousin is named as a participant as well. At least as of 2004, he was still healthy enough to be molesting kids.”
Jeff starting reading. They completed circling the block before he had finished. Jeff ordered the driver to continue until told otherwise. When he had read the last one he said, “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“We’re going public with what Klein did to us and what we know about Sam,” Brian said.
“We want you to come forward with us,” Julie said. “You know more about Klein and Sam than both of us put together.”
“What we know isn’t evidence of anything,” Jeff insisted. “It’s past the statute of limitations. Anyway, Sam was a minor. He can’t be held responsible for what he did with Cousin Richard back then.” He really had consulted his lawyer.
Brian began to answer, but Gary raised his hand to indicate he wanted to speak. “You know who I am?” Gary asked. “You know what I do?”
Jeff rolled his eyes. “Yeah. It’s not a well-kept secret.”
“The state attorney general isn’t ready to close these cases. I’m going to make sure he’s never ready to. You can ask your lawyer what kinds of public pressure political elected AGs are under.” He fixed Jeff with a purposeful glare to make sure those words had had an effect. Satisfied by Jeff’s expression, he tapped on the glass partition and signaled he wanted to be let out. As they lurched to a stop, Gary said to Jeff, “I’m an officer of the court. I’m leaving so you three can speak freely. Whatever Julie decides is what I’ll do about this.”
“Thank you, Gary,” Brian said. Gary opened the door, saying to Julie, “I’m catching a cab home. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
“I’ll call you tonight,” she said, an odd good-bye from a wife, Brian decided. And thus the childhood trio were alone for the second time in two days.
No one spoke right away. Jeff looked at Brian and kept shaking his head. “You’re really an asshole,” he finally pointed out. “You didn’t have to lie to me about why you wanted to see me.”
“Sure I did,” Brian answered. “You didn’t want Grace to know what we were really meeting about. Unless you’ve told her more than I think you have.”
Jeff rubbed his face hard, as if washing all the dirt away. When he uncovered, he sighed. “Look, I don’t get this. If the DA—”
“State attorney general—” Julie began.
“Whatever. If the cops are going to get them eventually, what’s the point of our saying anything? Cousin Richard’ll be dead soon. And Rydel’s done. His school’s stock is bleeding out. Huck Finn will be closed. Nobody’s going to let him near kids—”
Brian slammed his hand on the leather armrest, startling Julie. “If Rydel is given any chance to slip out of this, he will! The stock can drop to zero, he’s still personally richer than God from what he’s taken out of it. He can buy them all off! Maybe your cousin is too fucking old to molest any kids, but Rydel’s got years and the dough to ruin lots of children’s lives. And that’s your fault. You helped make him rich.”
Jeff resumed scrubbing his face with hands. He twisted his nose all the way to one side and ended up pressing his eyes as if he trying to push them out the back of his skull. “I didn’t . . .” He stopped and groaned. “I gave him ten grand in 1983, for chrissakes . . .”
“You launched that school. You spoke at the first graduation. You were on the board. You gave it legitimacy.”
“I’m not proud of that any of that, but I wasn’t doing it for Rydel.”
Julie cried out, “Why? Why did you do anything to help Klein?”
“That’s irrelevant!” Jeff said angrily. “I spoke at that school twenty-five years ago, just once, in 1983. I had nothing more to do with it after ’88. I didn’t know what Rydel was up to. I swear to God I had no idea what he was doing. I didn’t pay any attention to either of them after 1988.”
“Maybe you’re as innocent as you say,” Brian said, “but when Julie and I go public with our story and Gary helps the state attorney general unearth more molestations that Klein and Rydel can’t buy off, no one’s going to believe there’s nothing to the cozy relationship between you and your cousin. People are going tsk-tsk over who gave you that early start in showbiz. Will they remember you were talented enough to have made it all on your own? I don’t know, Jeff. There’s nothing that cheers up Americans more than being let down by their heroes.”
Jeff put the index finger of his right hand to his mouth and gnawed. All of his nails were bitten well below the rim of skin.
Julie spoke in a low, grief-stricken voice. “What happened to me . . .” She nodded at the wheel well of the limo. “You saw my husband. He’s a good man. But I’m going to have to leave him because I can’t love him. He deserves to be loved.” Jeff’s eyes glistened as he looked out the window on his side, so darkly tinted that a ghostly reflection of him, rather than the city, filled it. “And I can’t love him. I can’t love anyone,” she said hopelessly. Brian offered a tissue from one of three boxes in the limo—evidently the rich were often in tears. Julie dabbed at her eyes. She’s lovely in her heartbreak, Brian thought. The nakedness of her pain was irresistible. “Klein ruined my life,” she stated in a matter-of-fact tone. “Sam too. They both ruined my life,” she repeated.
Brian played his last card: “Taking advantage of Klein’s money and connections, that was your mother, not you. That’s why you cut yourself off from his school after 1988, right? That’s the year Harriet passed. Until then, you were being an obedient son by not blowing the whistle on Klein. You were still a victim. But this—protecting Klein and Rydel now—that’ll be your sin. And yours alone.”
“Good line for the trailer,” Jeff mumbled, then put his right index finger in his mouth, chewing on the skin. He produced an indeterminate sound, a low moan or a thoughtful grunt. “I don’t know,” he said, not really to them. He removed his iPhone from a dark brown suede jacket, too thin for February in New York, and checked the time. “I’ve got to get to the test. I need to think about this and I’ve got this screening and I can’t think about this while I’m worrying about that.”
“We can’t wait,” Julie said firmly.
“Tomorrow,” Jeff said. “Let me get through the test tonight, okay? I’ll think about it tomorrow and we’ll decide by tomorrow night, okay?”
“After tomorrow, Jeff, we’re not going to wait for you,” Julie said. She looked at Brian, a request he back her up.
“We don’t hear from you by five o’clock tomorrow,” Brian said, “we tell the world what we know: irrelevant, pointless, doesn’t fucking matter, we tell.”
Jeff nodded. “Tomorrow at five,” he said.
“Okay.” Brian shifted to open the door.
Jeff hooked Brian’s wrist. “Stay. Come with me to the test. Okay?” He said to Julie. “I can’t bring you. You’re a civilian. They’d ask questions. Brian, he’s there for reshoots or something.” That was a lie. Jeff could bring anyone he wanted. Why did he want to separate them? Another bribe rising in the oven?
Brian looked at Julie for permission.
“You go,” she said, kissing Brian on the cheek while she lay a caressing hand on his arm. It seemed like a marital farewell. “Take care of yourself,” she whispered as if he were in danger alone with Jeff. Maybe he was. She opened the door. New York’s car horns, a fire engine’s siren and the laughter of pedestrians invaded the
hush of the limousine.
“We’ll decide tomorrow, Julie,” Jeff said. “I promise.”
She looked at him steadily, a cool survey, then slid out and onto the sidewalk without another word. When she shut the door behind her, New York left too. A tomb’s hush enveloped the old boyhood friends. Jeff pressed intercom, ordering the driver, “Okay, let’s go to Jersey.”
As they lumbered into the traffic’s flow, Brian asked, “Isn’t the test later tonight?”
“Yeah, I got to check the sound and projection. No point testing it with a green tint and no bass.” Jeff sighed. “You know, a year from now I’d have to make this thing in 3D? Fuck me. A comedy in 3D.”
He was quiet as they slithered downtown. He became deathly still while they moved swiftly underneath the river. When daylight and Jersey appeared Jeff spoke as if they’d been talking all along: “It’s funny. The Horror was always scared you’d do something like this.”
“The Horror?” Brian asked, but he knew who was meant.
“Ma,” Jeff said. “She read a review of your first play that said there was something in it about a child molester, and she got worried you were writing about Cousin Richard.”
“Everything I write is about Klein.”
Jeff shifted to face him. The weak chin, puffy pale skin, worried bug eyes at last seemed to notice Brian. “Really? I don’t see that. In your films, anyway. To be honest I’ve only seen one of your plays.”
“Yeah, in some way if you go Freudian enough, you’ll find the wisdom of Klein in everything I write. He taught me my own desires can betray me. I learned from his lies, his seductions, his self-delusions, his entitlement to pleasure, and the corrosion of trust in anyone who shows me affection. Especially people who claim to love me. Worst of all Klein taught me that anyone”—Brian looked at Jeff—“even the person you love and trust the most will betray you.”
Jeff’s gaze wandered back into self-reflecting glass. “Really,” he said.
“Yeah,” Brian said. “Really.”
Mother’s Helper II
November 2008
JULIE TOLD HER whole story to Amelia and succeeded in unspooling her friend’s cool, sophisticated manner, the last thing she ever imagined she might accomplish. She had warned Amelia that she had something unpleasant to tell her and then began the account of her molestation and that she intended to tell the world the truth about Richard Klein and Sam Rydel. While she spoke, Amelia evolved backward from eye-lifted, capped-teeth aplomb, to gossip-hungry New Yorker, to cruise-control sympathy, to the pure shock of bewilderment, and then her earliest self, a sweet child-Amelia appeared. Face shattered, she hugged Julie too hard, squeezing her like a pain-saturated sponge she could wring dry.
Julie was amused by Amelia’s ferocious empathy. She patted her soothingly, hoping that might ease her steel embrace. She tried making conversation practical, whispering into Amelia’s ear, “Could you tell Suzie and maybe Cindy? They can tell everybody else.” Julie extricated herself from Amelia. “I don’t want any of our friends to find out from a news conference,” she explained.
“Honey, we’ll be there for you!” Amelia protested as if someone had denied they would. “When is this happening? Suze, Cindy, we’ll all go, we’ll stand beside you.” Her eyebrows were inverted, beseeching. She was utterly kind, and ridiculous in her kindness.
Julie was deeply touched and had to fight not to laugh. “I don’t know when we’re talking to the press, Amelia. I don’t know even if that’s how . . .” She paused, still very uncertain whether she could wrangle two virtual strangers, both odd and difficult men, into this public act of confession. Confession? No. Accusation? Contrition? Humiliation—that’s what it will feel like. “I’ll let you know. I’m sorry to dump all this on you and run, but I have to go now. I need to meet Zack and tell him all about this. I don’t want him learning about it on TV.”
Amelia’s covered her mouth. “Oh my God, of course you have to tell him,” she whispered, appalled at the prospect of a mother discussing such a subject with her teenage son. She rallied to be supportive. “Zack’ll be great about it. He’s such a sweet young man. He’ll be proud of you for speaking up.” Her caretaking instinct returned: “Are you sleeping here tonight? Do you want to join Harvey and me for dinner? I’ll make chicken soup, I’ll make the most comforting of your comfort food, just tell me what that is. Or do you want me to ask Harvey to go out with one of the boys so we can talk?”
“I won’t be staying here tonight.”
“You’re going home. You’ve told Gary,” Amelia figured it out. “How was he? Was he a shit about it?”
Amelia’s distrust of Gary was undiluted by what Julie had confessed. Can’t she see Gary was unfaithful to me because I couldn’t give him real passion, real love? “Gary’s being great about all this.” Julie changed register, to cue her friend that this next question was not as demanding as it sounded: “Is this going to be a problem for you, my working in the archives? I understand if it is . . .”
“Are you insane?” Amelia was restored to her haughtily confident self. “Darling, don’t be ridiculous.” She took both of Julie’s hands in both of hers and squeezed. “Of course it’s not a problem. You were a victim. How does that disqualify you? And you’re a meticulous and brilliant archivist. I’m never letting you leave us! You’re invaluable.”
“Great. Because I’ve never really told you how much I love working there. We said it was temporary ten years ago, and I realized when I was walking over that I’ve never sat down and told you how much pleasure it gives me to be trusted with the sketches and diaries and personal letters. Sometimes”—and of all things, this thought filled Julie’s eyes, cracked her voice—“it’s like I’m with the artists while they work, that I know what they were feeling”—and now she was blubbering—“that I’m part of making all that beauty.”
Amelia called out, “Oh, honey,” and took her into another crushing embrace. She then proceeded to supervise Julie as if she were her daughter, insisting she fix her face before leaving, digging into her own purse and pressing her to use a mauve lipstick. “It highlights your black eyes and fair skin. I’ve always wanted you to put on this color, but I felt it was . . . I don’t know . . . rude for me to suggest.” She emitted a sigh of relief at having unburdened herself of this suppressed desire—the only kind of secret, Julie believed, that Amelia harbored.
It was not because the lipstick suited her complexion that Zack stopped in his tracks when he came out of Trinity School and saw his mother waiting for him as if he were five.
To his “What’s up?” she asked where they could go for a quiet talk. He seemed agitated by that and irritably didn’t make a suggestion, especially after she said she wanted to avoid any place where his friends might appear. They ended up six blocks away, in the back booth of a coffee shop new to both of them.
He fussed and tugged his locks nervously while she waited for the waitress to bring coffees and a slice of apple pie she didn’t want but felt obliged to order. “This isn’t about you and Dad?” he blurted before she could say a word.
“It affects us, but no,” she said. Of course Zack worried they might divorce. Had any parent ever succeeded in hiding marital unhappiness from their child? Would it really be so much worse for Zack if she had kept her nerve and they were splitting up? Eventually, at least Gary would be happier with someone else. And that would be better for Zack.
“What happened? Where did you go? Dad refused to say anything. He just kept cursing and looking at his messed-up eye in the mirror and then he left.” Zack scrunched up his face like a little boy trying not to cry. “I was really worried about you, Mom.” He put his hand out, not on hers, but in the general direction so she would be encouraged to take it, as she did. He is my angel, he will always be my angel, she vowed while pressing his flesh as hard as Amelia had pressed hers.
Then let she let go and began her story. It took a while to get to the hard part. Zack knew nothing of Klein and Brian an
d practically nothing, other than their names, of his great-aunt Harriet and great-uncle Saul. He knew about Jeff, but the Jeffrey Mark he knew of was famous, a glittering star of today. The goofy, whiny boy with a crazy mother and dolorous father, in a dingy apartment in a working-class neighborhood was a different creature entirely. His listened distractedly, nervously sipping coffee, staring out the window, until she said Sam Rydel’s name. After that he stayed on her.
It was her turn to have trouble meeting his eyes while she explained about Klein’s groping her at Aunt Harriet’s and, later, with Sam watching, forcing her to . . . she chickened out and let the unfinished phrase hang. Zack got very still, eyes flashing, mouth set. She decided not to tell him any more—she couldn’t protect him from lurid details that might appear in the press someday, but with any luck, since she had told him this much herself, he would be merciful to himself and ignore the coverage. And she did not, as she hadn’t with Brian or Gary or a shrink, not even the motherly Amelia, breathed a hint about her own odd tastes. All this honesty, after all, wasn’t entirely honest. But she gave herself credit for informing Zack of the most important effect on her of the sexual abuse by concluding, “What happened has always made it difficult for me to enjoy myself as I should, as everyone should, when they make love.” She wanted to look at Broadway, at the laminated menu, at her spoon, anywhere but Zack. She forced herself to. He hadn’t listened so raptly to her since he was a toddler, when he would sit like a miniature king on the throne of his Maclaren stroller, demanding to know what or why or when, confident his mother had the answer.
Men are different from women. He didn’t react with feeling. Like Gary, he wanted more facts. “So this happened at your parents’ house? More than once?” he asked with an astonishment that to her ears was a rebuke.
She pleaded, “I was confused, I didn’t know what it really—”
The Wisdom of Perversity Page 29