So Near

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  Edmund and I sat across from the two younger lawyers, facing the view, while Lester sat at the head of the table. His colleagues—both fair haired and dark suited—looked almost typecast for their positions, but Lester, broad and beefy, could have passed for some sort of ringmaster with his orange suspenders, French cuffs, and a pocket square in his jacket. He had receding hair and a dark, carefully groomed handlebar mustache.

  “Edmund has already given us the basic outline of what happened,” he said. “I won’t pretend to know what you’ve been going through. I’ve never experienced that kind of terrible tragedy myself. But I can tell you that I’ve helped many, many people in your position. And one thing I really do understand is that nothing—nothing ever—will truly compensate for Betsy’s death. It’s ridiculous to even talk about that, isn’t it, Cal?”

  “Yes, it is,” I said, meeting his gaze. I was on the alert for fakery or false notes, but, despite his showy appearance, Lester struck me as straightforward and sincere.

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but I realized that a part of me had been readying myself for some sort of confrontation with this man. It hadn’t really occurred to me that he’d be on my side.

  “At the same time, Gannon Baby Products has a documented history of some very, very serious problems. They’ve faced a number of lawsuits and fines. They’ve been forced to issue recalls on a couple of separate occasions. We successfully litigated against them in a portable-crib death several years ago. I’m sorry to say that we know them—and their legal strategies—all too well. I thought then that we had helped teach Gannon a lesson they would never forget.”

  “You’re saying you sued these guys before?” I asked. “And won?”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Lester replied, running his index finger over the bottom ridge of his mustache. “They settled out of court for two point three million dollars.”

  “Some other lawyer told Edmund that quote-unquote dead kids aren’t worth all that much,” I blurted out. The line had been burning in my throat since I’d heard it.

  “Well, it depends on the context,” Lester said, glancing from me to Edmund. I sensed he was picking up on some of the tension between us. It occurred to me that he used his eccentric appearance as a kind of cover; you were too busy looking at Lester Stephens to realize just how much he was taking in about you.

  “The sad truth is,” he continued, turning back to me, “that if a child has been seriously injured in an accident—suffered brain injury, say—then the plaintiff’s lawyers will draw up what we call a ‘blackboard’ of costs for a lifetime of medical and emotional needs. The list could easily run into the tens of millions. Obviously, that’s not going to happen in your situation. But, believe me, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you now if I didn’t think you had a potentially very strong—and very important—case.”

  I sat forward.

  “In what way important?” I asked.

  “Too many parents—especially first-time parents—just don’t realize the danger so many of these so-called safety seats pose. Allergic reactions to chemicals in the fabrics . . . straps that can strangle when twisted . . . insufficient headrest padding—and head trauma is the leading cause of car-seat fatalities. It’s truly frightening. Young parents trust manufacturers like Gannon to know what they’re doing, to be thinking first and foremost of their baby’s protection. But these are companies, Cal; they’re out to turn a profit, plain and simple. Do you know what an outfit like Gannon figures into their cost of doing business—right along with advertising budgets and plant costs? Insurance to pay off and hush up people like you when the worst happens . . .” Lester paused, staring down at the blank legal pad in front of him for a second, then looked up at me and said:

  “If you give me the opportunity, I intend to make such an example of Gannon this time that no parent in this state would even consider buying another one of their products.”

  I slumped back in my chair. My heart was racing. Yes! I thought. It was as though Lester had been able to put shape and meaning to the anger and confusion that I’d been living with these past three months. He reinforced what I was just beginning to understand: that this wasn’t really about me. It was bigger than what had happened to Betsy. I was so sick of beating up on myself. I was more than ready to turn all that rage on somebody else. Suddenly the answer to everything that had gone wrong recently seemed clear: I needed to go after Gannon Baby Products and bring them down. It wasn’t their money that I wanted. Like Lester, I wanted to see the company totaled.

  Edmund must have misread my silence and body language, because he interjected:

  “That’s all very well and good. But we don’t want to lose sight of our case.”

  “Of course not,” Lester replied. “I just felt your brother might want to understand some of the overarching issues that concern me.”

  “They concern me, too,” I said.

  “Good,” Lester replied, smiling for the first time since we walked in. “Then, if you don’t mind, I believe that Janet and Carl have a few questions for you.”

  Lester sat back while Janet Graystone, a severe-looking blonde, walked me slowly through the last hours of Betsy’s life and Carl Zeyer took down what I said on his laptop. Though Lester mostly just looked out the window during the proceedings, I sensed that he was actually as alert to Janet’s questions as he was to my responses.

  “I’m sorry,” she said about ten minutes into the interview, “you say you had a few pops with the boys. Do you mean sodas?” She had the broad vowels of Boston.

  “No, we sometimes call beer ‘pops,’”I said. “We usually bring a cooler or keg with us to the games.”

  “So how many ‘pops’ do you think you had?” she asked.

  “I don’t remember,” I said. I could feel my neck flushing. “It was a hot day. The game went on for over three hours. It’s not something I would normally even mention except—”

  “I talked with him after the game,” Edmund said. “He was totally fine. And he was Breathalyzed at the hospital.”

  “Not at the scene?” she asked, frowning a little and turning to Lester.

  “Cal has no record of DWI,” Lester told her, “either at the time of the accident—or at any other time. We know from Edmund—and we know just listening to Cal’s story—that he’s the kind of loving, protective father who would never, ever drive drunk.”

  It was a not-so-subtle verbal slap on the wrist, and I thought I saw Janet actually flinch. Only later would I wonder if the whole thing hadn’t been prearranged by Lester and his staff as a way of both feeling me out on a sensitive issue and reassuring me of their confidence in my integrity. I remembered, too, Edmund’s crack the afternoon Betsy died about my “putting away the old brewskies,” the comment that had almost escalated into a physical fight between us. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to reweave the story of Betsy’s final hours, reworking any dark and messy patches that might make me appear less than a totally exemplary father and human being.

  Though Janet continued to question me for another twenty minutes or so, that was my only moment of discomfort—until the very end.

  “How is your wife holding up?” she asked.

  “Not so well,” I replied. “Not well at all.”

  “That’s to be expected, Cal,” Lester interjected. “We often find that one spouse is able to handle a tragedy like this better than the other. You never know how these things are going to affect people.”

  I think it was Lester’s fatherly, almost affectionate, tone that did it to me. I found myself telling him:

  “Jenny doesn’t like the idea of a lawsuit. In fact she’s dead set against it. She says that people who do this kind of thing are like vultures.”

  “Well, that’s a little rough,” Lester said, laughing. “But those of us in the legal profession have been called a good deal worse in our time. However, if we’re going to move ahead together on this we’ll eventually need her cooperation. I
deally, we’d want her to be an integral part of the process. At the very least, we’ll need to depose her—that is, have some fairly detailed discussions with her. Do you think you’ll be able to talk her around?”

  “Of course he will,” Edmund said. “She’s just grieving.”

  “There’s no ‘just’ about grief,” Lester replied. “It can be a very lengthy and debilitating process. We want to be very careful not to interfere with that. And, believe me, there’s a hell of a lot of work to do and still plenty of time before we need to talk to your wife. What do you think, Cal? Will she be there for you when the time comes?”

  I was pleased that Lester had put Edmund in his place. I was impressed by the lawyer’s depth of expertise and humanity. He seemed able to see all sides of our situation—and respond with compassion and even humor. Lester Stephens was someone I felt I could work with. It occurred to me that I’d already pushed past my initial objections and was ready to move ahead with the lawsuit and with Stephens, Stokes, Kline. I actually couldn’t wait to get the ball rolling. For the first time in many months I was feeling good about myself again. And I was beginning to realize how irrational Jenny was being. About Daniel and about the lawsuit. I’d reached the point with her where I could no longer take her objections seriously.

  “Yes, she will be there for me,” I told Lester. The fact of the matter was, I didn’t intend to give her a choice.

  As we were leaving, Lester asked us for the car seat. The firm planned to have a series of forensic tests run on it, hoping to pinpoint exactly what had gone wrong. It was weird, but I felt my heart constrict when Edmund turned the thing over to Janet. She took it from Edmund with both hands and cradled the black plastic bundle in her arms as though holding a baby. She must have seen the look of pain that flashed across my face because she said:

  “Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of it.”

  “So?” Edmund asked halfway across the lobby. “You kind of liked them, right?”

  “Yeah, I liked him,” I said. “But what’s the story there? Do they wheel the top guy out to make the sale—and then pawn you off to the underlings once you’ve signed on the dotted line?”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Edmund said, laughing. “This case is potentially a very big fucking deal. A lot of money could be involved. I kind of admire your restraint in not asking him outright for a number—or at least a range. Because I did when I met with them two weeks ago.”

  We were approaching the car. I waited until we were inside, buckling up.

  “And?” I asked.

  “One to five,” Edmund said, gunning the BMW as he turned the motor on. “Million, that is.”

  We drove back down the Taconic through the soft summer twilight, the jagged silhouette of the Catskills backlit by the setting sun. I watched the orange ball expand for a moment, then collapse into strokes of lavender and pink.

  I suppose it was because I was feeling at peace for the first time in so long that my thoughts turned to Jenny. Not the difficult and demanding person she’s become. But the fun-loving girl I used to know. The first person, honestly, besides Kurt, whom I loved for herself alone—because of who she was, not for what she could give me. You don’t get the chance to feel that way about too many people in your life. My heart began softening toward her, all my earlier anger melting into sadness. I didn’t want to hurt her. I vowed to do everything I could to keep this lawsuit from upsetting her. But, at the same time, I felt a real need to pursue this new course. I owed it to Betsy, didn’t I? And, though she couldn’t see it yet, I owed it to Jenny, too. In time, she would come to understand that. Someday, I told myself, she would thank me for it.

  10

  Jenny

  The farmhouse that Cal’s folks gave us as a wedding gift was originally built in the 1820s by the first Horigan to settle in the area, Jeremiah Livingston Horigan, who immigrated west from Boston, seeking his fortune in lumber. He established the first sawmill in the newly incorporated settlement of Covington, then an area of sparsely populated rocky farmland, heavily wooded hills, and rushing streams from which local industries looked to harness power.

  The original homestead, according to plans Kurt located at a “house histories” Web site a few years back, was just four downstairs rooms: parlor, kitchen, bedroom, scullery. Over the years, succeeding generations of Horigans added floors and porches, a barn and outbuildings. Each era left its own stamp and personality, so that today the house is a hodgepodge of styles. There’s a fanlight transom over the front door, gingerbread molding on the side porch, a circa 1950s picture window in the breakfast nook. When we first moved in, I seemed to be discovering some remnant of the past—yellowed-newspaper-lined canning shelves in the basement, a cider press in the barn—almost every day. I loved the sense of history and tradition permeating these things; my own family’s roots in Covington are so relatively recent and shallow.

  The grounds, too, offered a testament to long-forgotten enthusiasms: the circle of blackberry bushes half-hidden in underbrush, the cracked-cement remains of a goldfish pond. With Betsy in tow, I spent hours exploring the property, gradually charting our new domain in the notebook I carried with me in my gardening bag. I began planning how to turn these notes and drawings into a grand renovation project, one that would incorporate some of the property’s idiosyncratic elements into an enlarged and more contemporary design of my own.

  Since Betsy’s death, though, I often lose track of what exactly I’m supposed to be doing—indoors or outside. It’s hard for me to concentrate, to think ahead as I once did. At the end of an afternoon, say, I’ll find myself staring out over the distant hills, uncertain of where my thoughts have drifted. The only clue is that kick to the heart—that wham!—as I remember all over again, as I’m forced to do every morning when I wake up, what it is that I’ve lost.

  The morning after my birthday party, Cal unrolled Daniel’s computer-generated blueprints on our kitchen counter while I stood beside him, holding my coffee mug. I hadn’t slept well, which isn’t unusual for me, but it wasn’t Betsy who had kept me awake. Instead, I kept replaying the memory of Daniel leaning toward me, the way I felt when he kissed me.

  My training at Pellani’s Garden Center enabled me to look at Daniel’s designs and see right away that he planned to rip out all the old gardens and start with a landscape tabula rasa. The peonies that Cal’s grandmother had planted—one for each of her five children—were to go, as were the day-lilies, hostas, and hollyhocks. In place of these two-hundred-year-old plantings, Daniel had proposed a series of large, undulating beds set on raised banks of fieldstone. His plans favored shrubs over flowers—buddleia, continus, heather, dogwood—interspersed with tall stands of grasses. The color palate was muted and cool: silver, blue, plum, white. It was all very professional. He’d solved the problem of the uneven sloping grade of our property. Still, I didn’t sense he’d put much time and thought into the project. The designs looked generic to me—just another showy, expensive garden like the ones that surround so many of the new second homes in our area. Daniel, I thought, had simply cobbled together a few signature ideas.

  “Wow,” Cal said. He leaned intently over the printouts, though I suspected he didn’t really know what he was looking at. “These are pretty impressive, don’t you think?”

  “All that stone is going to cost a fortune,” I said.

  “Well—I already told you that’s not an issue.”

  “And those specimen shrubs? Do you know what a Harry Lauder’s Walking Stick is going for these days? And look—he’s asking for three of them here.”

  “Jen? Enough, okay? The question is—what do you think of it—the big picture, I mean?”

  I hesitated a moment, knowing how much my resistance to the project upset Cal. Then I remembered the warmth of Daniel’s breath in my ear the night before—and shivered.

  “I don’t know. There’s just something about him that—”

  “Oh, for chrissakes!” Cal said. “I’m n
ot asking what you think about him as a person. And, anyway, you’ve made your feelings pretty clear on that point. You were really almost rude last night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It was like you couldn’t get him out the door fast enough. I was kind of shocked by the way you acted. Especially because I think I made it clear I like the guy, okay? I invited him to the party. Every once in a while you might want to think about how I feel. What I want.”

  “Oh. Sorry. You know, for some stupid reason I thought this was supposed to be a birthday present for me. But since it’s really all about you—then I say: great! These plans are just totally fantastic!”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Cal asked. He looked utterly bewildered.

  “I don’t know,” I said, deflating suddenly. “I’m just—I’m sorry. I think maybe it’s that I don’t want to touch anything. To change anything, you know? I’m afraid that if we do, it’ll be like saying we’re ready to—move on.” Like so many of our exchanges these days, this is half-true, or only partially a lie. Usually, we let these minor deceptions slide. But, for whatever reason, Cal decided to call me on this one.

  “You were tearing up the patio when I first brought Daniel over.”

  “You’re right,” I said, looking at the floor. “But that felt different somehow. I was in control of it, I guess. I could do it in my own way. It was more—”

  “Okay, I get it,” Cal said. “Okay. We’ll just shelve the whole business for now. I’ll tell Daniel that we’re not ready. All right? That we really like what he’s done—but we’re going to have to wait to actually put the gardens in. I’m sure this kind of thing has happened to him before. Especially now, with the downturn.”

  “But—” I hesitated. I could tell by Cal’s tone what this was costing him. It was going to be an embarrassment for him. He’d probably been hoping that the project would solidify his friendship with Daniel, and this wasn’t going to help on that front. For the first time, I actually did make an effort to see the situation from his point of view. Aside from what he’d wanted for himself by commissioning Daniel, I knew that Cal had only been trying to please me. To help me. He wasn’t the one to blame for the outcome.