Without Jenny

by Mark Gunther

  “I apologize in advance,” Duckworth said, “if some of my questions seem probing or insensitive. I just have a job to do here. I hope you can forgive me if anything seems hurtful.”

  Joy gave him her crazy-ass witch stare. “Stephen, the whole thing is hurtful. Don’t fool yourself that you’re being nice to me. Just get it over with.”

  Bob laid a cautionary hand on her shoulder. Duckworth looked away. The silence extended.

  Score one for the defense.

  Duckworth looked at Bob, who raised an eyebrow and tilted his head toward the table.

  “Anything else?” asked Duckworth. “No? Then let’s begin. If you need to take a break for any reason, just ask.”

  The recorder was turned on. The stenographer stood, said the date, and turned to Joy.

  Stenographer: Do you swear to tell the truth, to the best of your ability and recollection?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: I do.

  Steno: State your name, please.

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Joy Sarah Swartz Rosenberg.

  Steno: Are you the mother of the deceased, Jennifer Hannah Rosenberg?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes.

  Mr. Duckworth: Mrs. Rosenberg, we are here to interview you as to the circumstances surrounding the death of Jennifer Hannah Rosenberg. Please answer each question to the best of your ability and recollection. Please describe the events of the day in question.

  Mrs. Rosenberg: I picked my daughter up from school at 3:10. We were going shopping at Union Square. We were driving down Bush Street. She was thirsty. I asked her if she could wait until we got downtown, but she wanted something now. I saw a convenience store and a place to park on the curb across the street, next to the construction site.

  Mr. Duckworth: Please describe what you saw.

  Mrs. Rosenberg: The building has been under construction for many months. It must be six or eight stories tall. A scaffold was set up on the sidewalk, covering the front of the building. There were things piled on it at various levels, drywall and wood beams and roof tiles. The curb had no cars or trucks. That’s where I parked.

  Mr. Duckworth: Please continue.

  Mrs. Rosenberg: The day was really windy. She wanted to stay in the car. I let her. I crossed the street and went into the store to buy a bottle of water. When I was in the store I heard a terrible crash. When I looked outside the scaffolding had collapsed on my car, with Jenny inside. I ran outside. There was a huge cloud of dust in the air. I remember coughing and choking. I tried to get to her. I tried to pull the steel away with my hands. Some people were trying to help me but nothing could be done. My hands were bleeding. The car was completely buried. I was screaming and crying and telling Jenny I was coming to get her. Officer O’Reilly took me to her car.

  Mr. Duckworth: You remember her name?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes. She took me home. Subsequently, she visited us with the final police report.

  Mr. Duckworth: What happened next?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: A fire truck arrived.

  Mr. Duckworth: How long did it take them to arrive?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: I have no idea. I was distraught. It seemed pretty soon.

  Mr. Duckworth: What happened next?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Nothing happened. They were keeping people away from me and the rubble. The officer took my statement. I kept asking where Jenny was. I didn’t understand why no one was working on the pile.

  Mr. Duckworth: Jenny is the decedent?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes, Jennifer. We called her Jenny. The firemen couldn’t do anything; they had to get a piece of equipment, like a backhoe or something. I kept wanting to get out of the car, but the officer kept me inside, except when I threw up. I called my husband. He left work to get our son. He was still at school. The pile was huge. Dust was blowing around. My throat hurt. I thought she was dead. I hoped she was alive. I thought it took forever for the backhoe to come, but I learned later it was only fifteen minutes. So it came and eventually the paramedics got to the car. I was just sitting there watching, feeling helpless. I somehow was holding the bottle of water I bought for her. A huge piece of wood stuck straight up. I found out later it had stabbed her right through the car’s roof. They wouldn’t let me go to her. I demanded to know what had happened. They told me she was dead. They thought she had died almost instantly. They gave me her backpack and her phone. The phone still showed the game she was playing, asking if she wanted to play again. I was relieved that she had finished the game she was playing. I called my husband again and told him she had died. We decided to tell Jake, our son, at home. Officer O’Reilly took me home. My husband and son arrived very soon. We told him together that his big sister was dead.

  Mr. Duckworth: Mrs. Rosenberg, please look at this photograph. Does this look like what you saw when you exited the store?

  Steno Note: Fifteen-second pause.

  Mr. Duckworth: Mrs. Rosenberg?

  Mr. Davidson: Joy, do you need anything?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: No. Yes.

  Mr. Duckworth: You are identifying this picture with yes?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes.

  Mr. Duckworth: Mrs. Rosenberg, were you aware that you were parking in a construction zone?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes, although I didn’t really note it when I stopped. I saw no work going on, and I was going to be there for two minutes.

  Mr. Duckworth: Work was being conducted inside the premises, behind the locked gate.

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Okay.

  Mr. Duckworth: Mrs. Rosenberg, let me show you this photograph, taken by the contractor two days before the incident. It clearly shows the “No parking, construction zone” sign. Can you read me the hours on the sign, please?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: 7AM to 5PM, Monday through Friday.

  Mr. Duckworth: What time did you park there?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: About 3:30.

  Mr. Duckworth: So you parked in a clearly marked construction zone?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes. I already answered this question.

  Mr. Duckworth: Mrs. Rosenberg, have you had any experience with construction?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: What?

  Mr. Duckworth: Have you worked in a construction firm, or had any work done on your home while you were living there?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: We had our house painted about eight years ago.

  Mr. Duckworth: Did the painters use scaffolding?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes.

  Mr. Duckworth: Did you receive a document such as this one?

  Steno Note: Trifold brochure Living Safely with Scaffolding entered as Exhibit 1.

  Mrs. Rosenberg: I don’t have the slightest idea. My husband managed the job.

  Mr. Duckworth: Are you aware that construction zones are inherently dangerous places?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: We were outside the building. No work was going on where we were. No trucks or other equipment were parked. I thought they were done working for the day. I drive by there many times a week. Workers park their trucks there all the time. They eat lunch in their trucks. They talk on the phone in their trucks. Without hardhats. I don’t believe this was an extra dangerous place to leave my car. Scaffolds are not supposed to fall down in construction zones and kill little girls either. If we’d been walking through the covered sidewalk under the scaffold at the same time she’d be just as dead and I would be too.

  Steno Note: Twenty-second pause.

  Mr. Davidson: Joy, do you need a minute? No? Let’s move on to the next question, please.

  Mr. Duckworth: Mrs. Rosenberg, did you often leave your daughter unsupervised?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Very rarely. More recently as she was getting older. She was ten years old.

  Mr. Duckworth: Why did you leave her at this time?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: I was only running into the store for two minutes. She was playing a game and wanted to continue it. I locked the car door.

  Mr. Duckworth: Did you believe this was safe?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes. I did not anticipate your client’s property falling on her.

/>   Mr. Duckworth: No one anticipated that.

  Steno Note: Fifteen-second pause.

  Mr. Davidson: Mr. Duckworth?

  Mr. Duckworth: Mrs. Rosenberg, you are making a claim for lost business income. Please describe your claim.

  Mrs. Rosenberg: I have a design business, and work on contract for a large range of clients. My work includes business development, finding new clients, as well as executing design projects for existing ones. I have lost revenue during the time I’ve been out and my inflow of new business also will be impacted due to that lack of activity. I expect to go back after six months, but to lose the equivalent of a full year’s revenues.

  Mr. Duckworth: Why are you unable to work sooner?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Are you really asking me that?

  Mr. Davidson: My client is a professional with nearly fifteen years of experience. She is able to evaluate her own capacity to work to expectations. Her claim is quite fair.

  Mr. Duckworth: Have you submitted all the expenses related to the claim?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes. Except therapy will be ongoing.

  Mr. Duckworth: We understand. Mrs. Rosenberg, is there anything you would like to add?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes. Jenny’s most important role in life was as big sister to her brother Jacob. He has not had a voice at this table, but he is as much a victim as Jenny. He is suffering the largest part of this loss. My husband and I have decided that any settlement is going into a trust for him and hopefully his children.

  Mr. Duckworth: Thank you, Mrs. Rosenberg. That concludes our questions. Mr. Davidson has sent us a letter in which he described the decedent as a unique and special child. Did you have any exhibits you wish to include today?

  Mrs. Rosenberg: Yes.

  Joy opened the portfolio that had been sitting on the table in front of her. Little pieces of Jenny’s life began to fill the table. Her report on the California Missions. The program for the tap recital she never got to be in. The letter from the synagogue scheduling her now-cancelled Bat Mitzvah. Her school evaluations. Medical exam. Duckworth dutifully noted each one, peeling a number off a roll of stickers and pasting it carefully to the top of each paper. They circulated through the lawyers to the stenographer, who placed each one facedown on the copy machine on the shelf behind her. When the machine spit out the paper, she compared the copy with the original, made a note in the stenograph, stamped the copy and initialed it, and returned the original to Joy, one by one.

  Dead child street theater, Joy thought.

  Steno Note: The deposition concluded at 10:47 AM.

  After debriefing in Bob’s office, Joy’s backpack was delivered and she used Bob’s private restroom to change into jeans, socks, and sneakers. It wasn’t enough, so she took off her fleece and her shirt and stood at the sink in her bra with her pants down low on her hips, below the counter so they wouldn’t get splashed, and rinsed and soaped and then scrubbed really hard at the skin on her face and her chest and her underarms with the high thread count towels Bob’s firm provided. Her skin had reddened in places, but she couldn’t see it when she put her shirt back on. Downstairs was a brisk March day.

  Decedent, she thought. Fuck.

  It took two hours to walk home.

  17.

  WHEN JOY GOT pissed at him, she thought that Danny had his shit way too together.

  “That’s an uncharitable thought,” he said. “I hold it in all day. I can’t talk to anyone there, no matter how nice they are. I’m still the boss.”

  “Maybe we should go to a support group,” Joy said.

  “Do you want to?”

  Absolutely not, she said to herself, but she said, “It sounds like something we should try, at least. You could talk there.”

  “You, too.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay,” he said, and within the hour he had found a group and a schedule and talked to the leaders on the phone.

  The closer it got the more uneasy Joy felt, but Danny seemed to be looking forward to the experience. Soon enough Danny was leading her down Waller Street, then down a narrow alley made even more inconsequential by the dark, looming wooden bulk of the church. Maybe it will fall on us, she half-hoped, but it didn’t. They descended five steps to a blank brown door. A piece of notebook paper was thumbtacked there, scrawled with the words Compassionate Friends in thick black marker.

  The room looked like an afterthought—spare space the architect had discovered during construction that could be made usable with a little more excavation, a concrete slab, and a few sheets of drywall. Two small transom windows provided the only ventilation. Against the opposite wall, below a couple of tacky pseudo-spiritual posters, a tired gray plastic folding table held a bubbling teakettle, a jar of instant coffee, a basket of assorted teas, three cocoa packets, and a collection of mismatched coffee mugs. A stained laundry sink sat in one corner. Twelve brown metal folding chairs were arranged in a circle on the worn linoleum floor patterned with triangles. Three other couples and two single women occupied the room. A tall, lean middle-aged man in a stocking cap came over to them, accompanied by a slight but stunning woman with long silver-streaked red hair and an impish smile.

  “You must be Joy and Danny. Thank you for coming,” the man said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “It happens,” Joy said. “It happened to you.”

  “To everyone here,” he said.

  They all shook hands and he handed them two already-prepared nametags. “My name is Benny, and this is my wife Deborah.”

  “Deb, please,” said Deborah. “We share the hosting of this meeting with two other survivor couples. Our son was seventeen when he was killed by a drunk driver, fourteen years ago.”

  They didn’t seem sad at all. Danny led Joy to a couple of chairs. She slid hers against his and again slipped her hand through his arm, holding on firmly. She kept her jacket on. Introductions proceeded around the circle. Drunk-driving victim, drunk-driving perpetrator, cancer, overdose, suicide, construction accident. Seventeen, sixteen, three, fourteen, twenty-one, ten. Joy’s shoulders buckled under the weight of these children—and their killers.

  From among them she heard Danny talking. “My phone rang. I saw it was Joy calling and I felt happy, I always was happy when she called, but on the phone she was hysterical, crying, gasping, choking out the words. I had never heard her sound like that before. I was scared; something terrible had happened. When I understood what I screamed, ‘Where is Jake?’ I was terrified that both the kids were in the car, but he was at school. I wanted to go to Joy, but she just kept repeating that I needed to go get Jake, to be home when she got there. I told my secretary ‘Something happened’ and just ran out. I left my jacket and briefcase and everything. I got in my car and somehow drove across the bridge, but when I got to the city, Joy called again and it hit me. I pulled in to the parking lot and cried. I was hitting the steering wheel with my fist, but I knew I had to keep it together for a little while longer.”

  He’s keeping it together now, Joy thought. She looked at the other men in the room, wondering if that was what they all did. Only Benny was actually looking at Danny.

  “I called my parents in Calistoga,” Danny continued, “my brother in LA, Joy’s dad, and Joy’s two closest friends. I called my secretary and told her what happened and to cancel all my appointments, that I wouldn’t be in for a while. I called the school to tell them I was coming and could Jake please be ready and outside. Then I remember I took five deep breaths, I counted them, and started driving.

  “When I got to our son he could tell that something was wrong, but I tried to be cheerful. Protect him for another five minutes, I guess. A police car was in front of the house. Jake wanted to know why. When we got inside, Joy was there. She looked wild, her hair was everywhere, she was all dusty. She jumped on me. Jake was scared. When the police officer left, we got into a close huddle and Joy said there was a terrible accident, that Jenny had died. Jake asked if he could ever see her again. Joy coll
apsed onto the floor, and I had to tell him that he couldn’t. No one could.”

  Someone asked, “Were you alone?”

  “Not for long,” Danny said. “The people I called started showing up. We just talked and cried and sat around. The rabbi came. We picked something to bury her in—a dress she might have hated. I gave her my childhood prayer shawl. Then we had the funeral, and we were zombies for a month. I went back to work after that.”

  For a moment, he slumped. His head dropped toward her and Joy stiffened, ready to carry his weight, but he lifted his head up and continued.

  “After we talked to the rabbi, my father drove me down to the site. Joy’s car had been taken away, and the contractor was cleaning up the mess. I stood in front of the store and watched them working. I didn’t want Joy to be on that street alone. A few days after the funeral I went to the police holding yard to clean out the car.”

  His voice quavered. “I tried to avoid the bloodstains on the passenger seat but I couldn’t, so then I really looked, visualizing her sitting there, looking down, earphones in her ears, hearing a noise, then the board spearing through the roof. They think it hit her in the head and knocked her unconscious before she got cut open.”

  They both cried.

  “We didn’t view her body.”

  Joy held his arm tighter. The day he came back with the car things. Did he talk? Did I listen?

  Deborah passed them a box of tissues.

  Directly across from them a young man’s arm enveloped his wife. Their three-year-old child Susie had died of cancer two years earlier. The woman wore a worn brown corduroy housedress under a beige cotton cable-knit sweater. Her hair was brown and hid much of her face. She was too thin, but Joy empathized. She could be pretty, if she bothered.

  “When Susie died,” the young wife said, “the world ended. She had been sick since she was six months old. We’re from a small town in Illinois. We grew up there, and walking around I saw her everywhere. Everybody saw me, too, but nobody talked to me about our daughter or how we were doing. It was like she never existed. You were supposed to get over it, but I couldn’t stand not talking about her. Mom took down all the pictures she had of Susie. When she came to our apartment she turned my pictures around so she couldn’t see them. After a few months we left and came out here. She probably had the cancer even before she was born. How can we have another baby?”