The Good Sister (27 page)

“Objection. Speculation.”

David Cabot addressed the bench. “Judge, for purposes of this testimony Dr. Balch has had extraordinary access to my client’s
entire life history.”

“Overruled. But I want to hear some substantiation.”

Dr. Balch turned in her chair and spoke to the judge. “I did an extensive medical history of Simone Duran and conducted more
than a dozen interviews with her doctors, teachers, and family members. I administered a number of tests, including a standard
IQ test, and compared the results to those she took periodically throughout school. She scores on the high side of what I
would call a borderline mental disability. Additionally, she has an attention disorder and a severe depressive mood disorder
complicated by periodic mania, grandiosity, and narcissism. Because of all these factors, the family has protected Simone.
She has been cared for and sheltered all her
life. She never learned to take responsibility for herself or anyone else. About the only thing she’s ever learned completely
is how to be helpless.”

Judge MacArthur scowled at the people whispering in the gallery. Their stares burned into Roxanne’s back.

Cabot said, “Explain what you mean, Doctor. How does a person learn to be helpless?”

“Well, to start with, it has nothing to do with IQ. There are plenty of people with IQs no higher than Simone Duran’s who
have families and jobs and function as responsible and productive citizens. However, due to a particular set of circumstances
in her family, Simone was kept from being accountable by the people who loved her most. They thought they were helping her,
but they were really teaching her to be helpless.”

Like pages in a book, examples of Simone’s helplessness turned over in Roxanne’s mind. She couldn’t balance on a bike so she
rode on Roxanne’s handlebars. She forgot how to program her phone so Roxanne did it for her. She lost her glasses and Roxanne
read most of
Jane Eyre
aloud and helped her write a book report.
Carry me, carry me
. At age six she would not walk from the town house to the corner. It was easier to pick her up than to listen to her whining.

One way or another, they had carried Simone all her life.

Dr. Balch explained that at its most severe, learned helplessness was characterized by extreme passivity and
dependency, a sense of inferiority and powerlessness, and was most frequently associated with women who were physically abused
and seemed powerless to escape their abusers.

“The syndrome applies in Simone Duran’s case equally as well, although her case is extreme and quite unusual and has its roots
in her infancy.” Dr. Balch leaned forward, speaking intently. “Children learn competence by trying and failing and trying
again until they succeed. Simone was rarely given this opportunity. As an adult she had no confidence that she could take
care of herself or her children. Treated as helpless all her life, she had come to believe that she
was
helpless. And near the end, she saw—believed she saw—that she had transferred her inadequacies onto her daughters. With the
exception of Merell, whom she did not believe to be her own.”

“And you have arrived at this conclusion how? Reading school reports? Medical records? What else?”

“Since December she and I have met for two hours twice a week.”

“After all these hours of consultation, can you tell the jury what it was that pushed Simone Duran over the edge into a psychotic
state?”

“It was cumulative, of course. In a period of just eight years she’d had four children and several miscarriages. When she
learned she was pregnant yet again and with another daughter, she could bear it no longer. But the final blow to her sanity
occurred when her husband said
he would bring his sister into the house to manage the children and so on.”

“Most women would be glad for the help,” Cabot said.

“But this wasn’t hired help, this was someone who would not receive a salary. Her sister-in-law would take over her position.
It meant an end to the role from which Simone took her identity. In a very real way, she would cease to exist. Faced with
the possibility of annihilation, she suffered a total break with reality. Her mind snapped.”

“And when her mind snapped was Simone Duran able to distinguish right from wrong?”

“Oh, my goodness, no. Absolutely not.”

Jackson asked, “Dr. Balch, is
snapped
a clinical term?”

She smiled. “It is not. It is, however, descriptive.”

“Did Simone Duran know what she was doing when she ‘snapped’ and tried to kill her children?”

“Not as you and I would know.”

“But she knew?”

“She was delusional, Mr. Jackson.”

“But she knew.”

“She knew what she was doing but she didn’t know it was wrong.”

T
he next morning Cabot called Simone to the stand.

Watching her sister, Roxanne’s response was an empathy so intense it drove out self-awareness. She became Simone as she rose
from the defense table and passed before the jurors in the box. She became what they saw, an ugly curiosity, a freak, a fascination.
It was Simone who took her seat in the witness chair, who blinked too fast and licked her lips, but Roxanne felt everything
with her. She was aware of her face, of each feature separately huge and horrible, something to stare and point at. She longed
for a dark burka in which to hide herself.

“Simone, you’ve recently given birth, have you not?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to speak up, Mrs. Duran,” the judge said.

“Yes.”

“A daughter named Claire?”

“Yes.”

“Where is Claire now?”

“She’s in a foster home.”

“Why is she there?”

“I was told it was because our home isn’t a healthy environment.”

Roxanne tried to read the jurors; she was always trying to read them. She even dreamed about them at night. The copy-shop
owner sat with her head tilted to one side. Did this mean she was curious about Simone, that her mind was still open? The
man beside her looked half-asleep. It appeared that as far as he was concerned, the case was sewn up and decided.

“And your other daughters? Where are they?”

“With my husband. And my sister-in-law.”

“Is that Alicia?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you live now, Simone?”

“My mother and I have an apartment.”

“Do you see your children?”

From the gallery Roxanne saw the tears well in her sister’s eyes.

“No.”

“Do you miss your children?”

Simone began to weep. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t want them to grow up like me.”

“And would that be so bad?” Cabot asked gently. “What would your daughters be like if they grew up like you?”

“Helpless.” Simone mumbled her words. “Trapped. Useless.”

“On that day, Simone, why did you tell your twin daughters you were taking them to the marina?”

“Because that’s where I meant to go.”

“Why didn’t you take one of your other cars? You had a Cayenne SUV and a Mercedes sedan in the other garage, did you not?”

“The other cars were just… ordinary. And gloomy-looking. But I knew we’d have fun in the Camaro.”

“What was the color of the Camaro?”

“Yellow.”

“Did you often have fun with your girls, Simone?”

“No.”

“You never took them to the zoo or the beach?”

“Not by myself.”

“Why was that?”

She shrugged. Like an adolescent, Roxanne thought.

“I couldn’t take care of them by myself.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just couldn’t. It was too much for me.”

“But you decided to go alone with them to the marina? What was different about that day?”

Simone’s brow creased with irritation, a look that was familiar to Roxanne. It meant she was sick of answering questions.
“I wanted to sail again. When I was sailing I wasn’t helpless.”

“Were you going to rent a sailboat?”

The silence following Cabot’s question lasted so long, it seemed like Simone wasn’t going to answer it at all.

“I was going to sign up for sailing lessons and Johnny would see that I did know how to do something. I wasn’t useless.”

Roxanne felt Johnny tense beside her. She leaned a little toward him, pressing her shoulder into his. She made sure it was
a small move that even the couple sitting behind them would not notice.

“But you didn’t go to the marina. Why not?”

“It was too hard.”

“What do you mean, ‘too hard’?”

“Olivia was screaming and screaming and I couldn’t open the string cheese.”

Simone’s hands twisted in her lap as if trying to open the plastic packaging.

“I couldn’t do anything right! It was too complicated. There weren’t any seat belts in the backseat and Olivia was still screaming
and the twins kept asking questions. I lost track of time.”

She looked around as if she needed to be reminded of where she was; and then she continued, breathlessly, speaking to herself
now and not the jury. The crowded courtroom, utterly silent except for the sounds of the rain, seemed transfixed.

“I couldn’t make my thoughts line up straight. I was trying to think but it was just words and words and words. And my head
hurt like someone was holding it with two hands and squeezing…. The twins wouldn’t do what I told them, they wouldn’t just,
wouldn’t just… be quiet,
just for two minutes so I could think. I loved them but they were stupid and silly like me and there was nothing I could do
about it. What was the point?”

Roxanne wondered if Simone was aware of the tears running down her pale cheeks. One of the retirees on the jury took a tissue
from her purse and dabbed her eyes discreetly.

“What happened next, Simone?” For a big man, David Cabot had a surprisingly gentle voice.

“I got in the front seat and I shut the door and in like a second, all the confusion went away.” She looked at David, wide-eyed.
“I knew what I had to do. I
knew
.”

Clark Jackson leaped from his seat at the prosecution’s table and charged to the witness stand; in his eagerness to get down
to it, he was up so fast that he almost collided with David Cabot returning to the defense table. He stopped midway between
Simone and the jury and faced her as if he were spokesman for the twelve people seated behind him. And then he said nothing,
just looked at Simone as if she were a specimen. Roxanne couldn’t see the look on his face; but she could imagine it as clearly
as if it were being directed at her.

“Isn’t it true, Mrs. Duran, that you told your girls you were taking them to the marina because you wanted to hide the truth
from them? Because from the beginning you intended to gas them?” Jackson snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah, I forgot! You were
helpless, weren’t you? You were just doing what a voice—”

“Objection,” Cabot said. “Bullying the witness, Your Honor.”

“Sustained.” The judge frowned at the prosecutor over his narrow glasses. “Mr. Jackson, it has been a long day and my fuse
is short. Make sure you don’t light it.”

“Sorry, Your Honor.” He paced a moment before going on. “So you heard a voice—”

“Stop saying that!” Simone stood, her face scarlet. “It wasn’t a voice and I didn’t
hear
anything. I just
knew
what I had to do.”

“Sit down, Mrs. Duran,” said the judge.

“If you didn’t hear a voice, Mrs. Duran, how did this so-called knowing come to you? Was there a thunder roll? A flash of
lightning?”

Cabot had told Roxanne he was going to let the prosecutor take as much rope as he needed to hang himself. He called Jackson
a bulldog who would push too hard if given a chance. He might make Simone look more pitifully helpless than Cabot ever could.

Jackson asked, “Do you think God was talking to you, Mrs. Duran?”

Simone slammed her hands over her ears. “No one talked. There wasn’t a voice. I just
knew
.”

Jackson’s shoulders slumped as if cross-examining Simone had worn him out. Shaking his head, he walked back toward the prosecution’s
table.

He’s finished,
Roxanne thought, stunned with relief.

And then he stopped and turned back.

“Mrs. Duran, in July something happened at your home that made your daughter, Merell, call 911. Will you tell the jury what
happened that day?”

“Merell already told you.”

“Now I’d like to hear it from you.”

“I was in the pool with Olivia, the baby. She fussed and twisted out of my arms.” She turned a little so she could address
the jury directly, sounding confident now, no longer helpless or confused. “Merell was up on the steps, she didn’t see what
happened, not clearly anyway. She called 911 to get attention.”

Her testimony was too pat.

“Merell always wants to be the center of things.”

The first train of storms had moved east. Rain still fell intermittently, but through the courtroom’s smeared windows Roxanne
saw patches of blue sky and occasional flashes of sunlight. More wet weather was forecast but for the moment the world beyond
the courtroom looked brighter than it had in several days. However, sunshine and blue sky were not enough to overcome the
malaise of testimony-fatigue hanging over the courtroom when Johnny took the stand at the end of the second week of trial.

Looking out at the gallery from the witness stand, his eyes were lost in deep bruises of fatigue, and—most telling of all
to Roxanne—he didn’t smile. This was Johnny Duran stripped of gloss, of ambition and charm, Johnny bared to his core.

Cabot asked, “Mr. Duran, you met Simone when she was eighteen. What was she like then?”

“Beautiful. Feminine.”

“What do you mean by feminine?”

“Not aggressive or pushy. She didn’t have a lot of opinions.”

“And you liked that.”

“I’m traditional. I like women who act like women.” Johnny spoke without affect. “She let me take care of her, and when I
talked to her, she paid attention. There was never any feeling of competition between us.”