Compulsion (38 page)

"And then?" I said.

"Then he just stares at me with this terrible confusion in his eyes.  Like he has no idea why I did it.  And that’s the worst part.  That look  on his face.  It’s even worse than picturing what I did to him — you know, the way his neck bleeds.  I can't get his expression out of my head."

"
Make sure she can keep it out of reality
," the voice at the back of my mind said.

"You don’t feel the impulse to strike out at your grandfather that way right now, do you?" I asked.  "While you’re awake?"

She looked at me as if I had two heads.  "My God, no.  I don’t ever want to hurt him."

"I didn’t think you did," I said.

Lilly’s nightmare was transparent.  Her grandfather had strung her along, seducing her for years.  He had come
closer and closer
, without ever laying a hand on her.  To an adolescent girl’s unconscious mind, it must have seemed that he was taking
forever
to claim her.  But such a girl’s rage at being manipulated would grow in tandem with her erotic impulses, hence the fantasy of killing her grandfather as she lay in bed,
just as his lips are about to touch her
.  Even the grandfather’s
confusion
seemed on the mark.  He may never have consciously intended to harm Lilly, acting automatically on his own bent emotional reflexes — his
shadow
— born of who knows what childhood trauma.

Something Ted James had told me years before came back to me.  He’d been trying to help me let go of my anger toward my father, which I was never fully able to do.  "Eventually," James had said, "you’ll realize there’s no one to blame and no one to hate.  Your father was a victim, just like you."

I looked at Lilly.  "Maybe the reason your grandfather looks confused," I said, "is because he never understood why your relationship turned toxic — the dynamics that drove it in a destructive direction.  Maybe he didn’t understand it any better than you did."

"In other words," she said, "he didn’t
mean
to screw me up?"

"Maybe not," I said.

She seemed to be grappling with that notion.

"Do you say anything to him when he’s looking at you with that confusion in his eyes?" I asked.  "After you’ve cut him?"

"No," she said.  "That’s when I wake up."

"What would you say to him?" I asked.

She shook her head.  "I don’t know."

"Think about it," I said.

She smiled, then squinted past me, presumably imagining the situation.  After a few moment, she looked back at me.  "Sleep tight.  Don’t let the bedbugs bite," she said.  She laughed.

I let myself laugh with her, to drain the tension from the moment.  Were she a long-term patient of mine, her words and the tone of voice in which she delivered them — combining innocence, rage, and something vaguely sensual — would have been a perfect launching pad for a longer flight over the terrain of her trauma.  That was a very good sign indeed.  "You’re going to be okay," I said.

"Think so?" she said.

"I know so."  I extended my hand.  She took it.  "Good luck," I said.  "I’ll be thinking about you."

*            *            *

Billy was scheduled to be released later that day, but the gears of the legal system always grind.  He wasn’t released that day, or the next.  He and I joked about him being set free on Independence Day, but that didn’t happen, either.  It took ten days for the relevant paperwork to flow between the D.A.'s office and the jail.  Finally, on July 10, I went to the Suffolk County House of Corrections and watched him walk through the two sets of sliding steel doors that pretend to separate good from evil.  He glanced back just once as he half-jogged to me.  "I can’t believe I’m out of there," he said.  "Thank you."

"If you really want to thank me," I said, "you’ll worry with me."

"Worry about what?" he said.

"About yourself.  The stealing, hurting animals, setting fires — it can’t go on."

"That’s past history," he said.  "I’m not gonna screw up."

"Past is future, as long as you run from it," I said.  "Losing your parents, leaving Russia, living with Darwin — I promise you every shortcut you take to avoid facing those things leads back here.  I’ve seen it happen.  Dozens of times.  Kids with hearts every bit as good as yours."

He glowed with that last phrase.  "Will you help me?" he said.

"I will if you want me to," I said.

"I really do," he said.

Treating a sociopath is much harder than treating someone with depression, or even psychosis.  The trouble is that sociopaths don’t think they’re sick. 
Everyone else
is the problem.  If the world would just get off their backs, cough up what they’ve got coming to them, everything would be fine.  "We’ll give it a try," I said.

He held out his hand.  We shook on it.  "So where are we going?" he said.

The way Billy asked that question made it plain to me he remembered my promise that I’d consider letting him live with me.  I remembered, too.  It was easy to deliver on, at least temporarily, because I had been staying with Julia and Garret at Julia’s mother’s West Tisbury house on Martha’s Vineyard.  Julia had been released from Mass General just three days before and was still feeling unsteady, physically and emotionally.  "We’re going to your grandmother’s house on Martha’s Vineyard," I said.  "I've been staying in the guest cottage while things come back together."

"So we get to hang out, just like you said," he said.

"Sure looks that way."

"Will Garret be there?" Billy asked.

"He’s moved most of his things in," I said.

Billy nodded over his shoulder.  "I have better memories of the House of Corrections than Darwin’s house," he said.  "At least everyone agrees this is a prison.  You kind of know what to expect."

*            *            *

Garret testified before the grand jury two days later.  Carl Rossetti was there, as was District Attorney Tom Harrigan.

Rossetti told me the scene was heart-rending.  Garret had been a mess, trembling and sweating, needing much more reassurance than he had at Boston Police headquarters.  Still, by the end of his testimony, he had nailed Darwin Bishop’s coffin shut with an eyewitness account that put the plastic sealant in Bishop’s hand and the bottle of Nortriptyline in his desk.  That complemented the fingerprint evidence perfectly.  An indictment of Darwin Bishop for murder in the first degree, with extreme atrocity and cruelty (a special add-on in the Massachusetts courts), along with two counts of attempted murder (Tess and Julia) was issued within an hour of Garret stepping down from the witness stand.

"I’ve been in this business long enough that most things don’t get to me, you know?" Rossetti had told me.  "But when Garret broke down, crying how he still loved his father but couldn’t understand why, I almost got choked up myself."

"Almost," I had said.

"Honestly, Franko, the only time I really lose it is when I lose at the track.  I drop more than a grand, I cry like a baby.  Anything else, it’s no skin off mine, if you know what I mean."

"So you did get choked up," I said.

"Pretty much," he said.

When Garret returned home, I sat down with him.  "I talked to Carl Rossetti," I said.  "I know how hard it was for you today."

"I didn’t think it would be," Garret said.  "I though it would be easier than last time.  Maybe it’s that we’re getting closer to the trial."

"And the trial itself will be even harder," I said.  "With everything Darwin has done, it’s normal for you to feel a strange sort of devotion to him."

"That’s what I don’t get," he said.  "Why would you worry about what happens to someone who’s tortured you?"

The answer to that question brings up another strange human calculus.  Most children would rather preserve the fantasy of a loving connection with their fathers and mothers, at all costs, even if it costs them their self-esteem.  When you’re three or seven years old, it’s less frightening to think of yourself as an unlovable, disappointing screw-up than to recognize the fact that you’re living with a monster.  "Questioning your love for Darwin would mean questioning whether
he
ever loved
you
," I said.  "That’s a tough one, at seventeen or forty-seven.  Take it from me."

"Was your father... abusive?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.  "He beat me."

"Shit," he said.  "I’m sorry."

"Thanks," I said.

He shook his head, took a deep breath, let it out.  "With everything Darwin did to me, I’ve always assumed he didn’t really mean it.  But he must have.  He couldn’t have cared about me.  Not in any normal way."

I could hear the guilt in Garret’s voice.  He was about to put his father away for life, after all.  "It’s not a question you can figure out in one sitting," I said.  "But if you keep coming back to it, you’ll get closer and closer to the truth.  And you’ll be less and less afraid of it.  Even when it hurts."

We sat for several seconds, without saying anything else.

Garret broke the silence.  "I’m glad you’re here — living with us for a while, I mean," he said.

I reached out, squeezed his shoulder.  "I am, too," I said.

Chapter 21

Julia’s mother’s house was vintage Martha’s Vineyard — an oversized, rehabbed barn on a lush hill within walking distance of the sea.  The guesthouse where I was staying was a weathered, gray 1852 cottage that had been moved from Edgartown at the turn of the century.  Wild blueberries and gooseberries and grapes grew all around the place, and the scent of sweet pepper bush filled the air.

The first couple of weeks there were Eden.  Not only were Billy and Garret coming to me for advice on everything from sports to girls to careers, letting me play the good father, but Julia was combining her neediness and sensuality more magically than ever.  There were evenings she wept in my arms over vivid memories of Darwin’s cruelty and could be comforted by no one else.  She would mix her tears with surprise caresses, the warm wetnesses mingling into a potion that leached to the center of my being.  She might whisper she was scared at one moment, that she needed me inside her at the next.  And when we made love, it was with such intensity that I lost the boundary between my pleasure and hers, so that I was moved equally by each.  Transported.

Those days were like a drug, a drug I wished I could stay on forever.  But on Sunday, July 21, just shy of three weeks after Darwin Bishop’s arrest, the high ended, and everything began to crash.

The day had been my best on the Vineyard.  Julia, her mother, Candace, the boys, and I had lingered over a late, gourmet brunch that drifted effortlessly into an easy day of Julia reading on the porch while I played a lazy game of catch with Garret and Billy, the three of us cooling off in waves that seemed custom-made for body surfing.  As evening approached, Julia said she was feeling more herself and suggested we celebrate with our first real excursion — a sunset stroll along the cliffs at Gay Head.  I agreed, and we drove there together.

The faces of the 150-foot bluffs glowed like the center of the earth in the day’s last light.  The tide was low, rhythmically washing the velvet sands below, leaving behind fields of iridescent bubbles.

Julia wrapped both her arms around one of mine as we walked.  "For the first time in my life," she said, "I feel safe."

I stopped, turned to her, and kissed her forehead.  Her emerald eyes literally sparkled.  "Same here," I said.

"You do?" she said.

I nodded.

"You trust me?"

"Of course I trust you," I said.

"Then close your eyes," she said, with a sly smile.

I glanced at the edge of the cliff, three feet away.  "If you’re already bored with me, you can just tell me."

Julia laughed like a little girl.  "You said you trusted me."  She kissed me deeply and pressed herself against me, moving her hand to my crotch and moving us a foot closer to the edge.  Two more steps, and I’d have been parasailing without a sail.  "C’mon, close your eyes," she said, massaging me.  "It’ll be fun, I promise."

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes until Julia was just a shadow.  One of my knees bent automatically, bracing me.  An exhilarating combination of passion and fear gripped my heart.  Beads of sweat ran off my chest, down the center of my abdomen.  I could feel them pool in my navel, then spill over.

Julia’s warm, quick tongue moved up my neck, then into my ear.  "Keep them closed," she whispered.  She let go of me.

I stood there several seconds in a kind of trance, listening to my own breathing and watched Julia back up several feet.

"Don't cheat," she said.  She turned to run away.

I lost sight of her in the sun’s glare.  Fifteen, twenty seconds went by.  All I could hear was the wind and rustling grass.

"Okay," Julia called to me, from a distance.  "Find me."

I opened my eyes and looked around.  The colors of the grass, ocean, sky and cliffs seemed even more brilliant than before.  The sun was a burning, red-orange beach ball hovering on the horizon.

Julia was nowhere in sight.

"Where are you?" I called out.

No answer.

A quarter-mile of low hills stretched before me.  Julia could by lying in the wavy grass almost anywhere.  I walked away from the cliffs, scanning the ground for footprints.  When I’d gone about fifteen yards, I turned to face a grove of tall, flowering sweet pepper bushes about ten, twelve yards to my right, a subtle path of matted grass leading to it.  I had a feeling she was squirreled away inside.  I walked toward the bushes.  When I had closed to within several feet, I heard her giggle from inside the foliage.  I slowly walked the rest of the why and cautiously pushed apart the screen of leafy branches.  Then I stood there, staring at her.

Julia was lying on her back on a bed made of her clothes, naked, her feet planted wide apart, her knees bent and touching.  She looked like a mermaid in a secret garden, resting between tides.  Her silky, black hair moved in an easy breeze that rustled the branches all around her.  She smiled bashfully and let her knees drift apart.  "You gonna come inside?" she said.