"I can't believe they'd do that."
Anna laughs. "One of the few worthwhile things my mother-in-law ever said to me was, 'Never be surprised when people don't change.'"
In the bedroom, we have some chuckles looking through the ties in my dad's closet. There must be fifty of them, all basically the same, red or blue, with little patterns or stripes. The violet tie he asked for stands out like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I find some tissue paper and a bag downstairs and we fold them on my parents' bed.
"Want to hear something that will weird you out totally?" I ask Anna. One thing about my girlfriend: There is no chance she would say no to a question like that. "When Paloma and I were in high school, we'd sneak home to do it while her folks were working, and for whatever reason, she thought it was a total turn-on to do it in her parents' bed."
Anna smiles a little and wags her head. Apparently it doesn't sound so bad to her.
"Well, it freaks me out now just to think about it," I say, "but you know, you're seventeen, it's like you want to do it everywhere. But of course one day we ended up over here and she had this notion to get it on in this bed. That was too much. I mean, I couldn't perform. It was zero."
"Is that a challenge?" Anna asks, and comes close to me and goes right for it. I feel mini-Me stirring at once, but I pull away.
"You are a freaky, freaky girl," I tell her.
She laughs but comes back toward me. "Should I say I double-dare you?"
My mom's death ended that blissful period when we were fucking all the time and began the blissful period when we are fucking most of the time in spite of everything else. There is a connection and oblivion in sex that has sustained us. In January, we both got the flu and were home from work for three days. We were each pretty wretched, both with high temps and a lot of annoying symptoms, and we slept most of the time, but every few hours, we'd find each other and go at it, the two overheated bodies sticking to each other like plastic wrap and the intensity and pleasure seeming to be part of the fevered delirium. That trance state somehow has never quite ended.
Whatever Anna's off-center desires, making love in the bed where my mother died is more than I can handle, but I pull her down the hall into the room I slept in for twenty-five years. That bed is kind of home field for me as far as sex is concerned, the place where I had my first orgasm, in my own company at the age of thirteen, and where I first got laid-actually with Mike Pepi's older sister, who was nearly twenty-and we have a great time there. I am considering round two when Anna sits up abruptly.
"Jesus, I'm hungry," she says. "Let's go." We agree on sushi. There's a decent place on the way back into town.
We grab the ties and are out the door in a few minutes. Back in the car, I feel the weight of everything settling on me again. That's the problem with sex. No matter how long you make it last, there is still an afterward.
"I wish you could come for my testimony," I tell her. "Stern could ask the prosecutors, right?"
She thinks about it only a second before shaking her head.
"That's not a good idea. If I'm there and you end up talking about what happened that night, somebody's bound to bop over from the prosecution table and ask me what I remember."
From the start, Anna has dreaded saying something that would make things worse for my dad, and the truth is almost anything could do it. Just the little bit that came back to her tonight about my dad pouring the wine at the dinner table or offering my mom the tray of appetizers loaded with tyramine would be greeted by Brand and Molto with an entire brass band. Everybody-Stern, Marta, my father, Anna, and me-has agreed that we're better off if she remains one of those witnesses both sides fear calling, unable to predict who will come off better for it.
"One thing Sandy told me tonight is that he didn't want my dad to testify."
"Really?"
"He was afraid it would help Molto connect the dots in front of the jury. And he thought there was an outside chance that Yee might change his ruling about the affair and let Molto get into it. Which he tried to do."
"You're kidding!"
"I couldn't even sit there and listen to the argument. You know, I'm still like 'Fuck him'-my dad?-every time it comes up."
She takes her time, treading carefully. Generally, we see this subject differently, because, in a few words, he's not her dad.
"It's not my place," she says, "and it's not like I haven't told you this before, but sooner or later you have to get past that."
This is an old discussion by now. It always comes back to my stubborn conviction that the affair had something to do with my mom's death.
"It was just so fucking stupid," I say. "And so fucking selfish. Don't you think?"
"It was," she says. "But here's what I really think. The guy I met and fell in love with. That guy?"
"A super-awesome dude," I say.
"Totally," she answers. "Well, that super-awesome dude was a law clerk on the state supreme court. Which just happened to be an office his father was running for. And that super-awesome dude used to show up for work in the supreme court with weed in his pocket. Even though if he got caught, it would have been on page one. Even though he would have lost his job. And his law license for a while. And maybe the election for his father."
"Okay, but I was feeling really fucked up for a while."
"So was your father, probably. So was the girl, for all you know. And I understand your dad disappointed you. But we all do weird, unbelievable stuff once in a while and hurt the people we think we love. If someone does that kind of crap all the time, then you have every right to hate their guts, but we all have our moments. You don't want to hear about all the stupid sexual stuff I've done."
"That's for sure." A couple of Anna's stories have been enough. She spent too much time looking for love in all the wrong places. "There's still a difference between the fucked-up stuff you do when you're young, and the fucked-up stuff you do when you really know better."
"That's pretty convenient, don't you think?"
"I don't know what I think," I answer. I've had enough by now. The lights, twinkling on the Nearing Bridge, blear. I am going to cry. I get to this point every day, when it all overwhelms me and I'd give anything just to be able to hit fast forward and deal with a certain future. "I hate this. I hate this whole fucked-up situation."
"I know, baby."
"I hate it all."
"I know."
"Let's just go home," I say then. "I want to go home."
CHAPTER 30
Tommy, June 23, 2009
Another day in the courtroom. The defense was clearly mobilized. Despite the pasting Rusty took yesterday, he arrived looking well composed, even wearing a new tie, a sporty violet number that seemed to boast that his spirit was undimmed. Sandy was issuing instructions from his chair, as if it were a throne, and Marta and the rest of the Sterns' staff were hustling about.
Marta stopped over at the defense table. Age favored some people, and it had clearly done well by her. When Marta Stern started practicing with Sandy, she was like a teapot on the boil, shrill and constantly stirred up. But something about becoming a wife and mom had calmed her. She could still get in your face, but usually with a reason. After the last baby, she dropped about thirty pounds, which she had managed to keep off. Despite being a dead ringer for a not-so-good-looking father, she was actually kind of attractive. And a hell of a lawyer. She was not the same showman as her old man, but she was smart and steady, with a lot of Sandy's instinctive judgment.
"We're going to want to use Rusty's computer," she told Tommy. "Probably this afternoon."
Tommy waved his hand nobly, like it was nothing to him, as if the defense and their shenanigans were annoying, but only in the trivial way of gnats. When she turned away, though, he made a note on his pad, "Computer???" and underscored it several times. Given how devastating the evidence of the deleted messages and the Web searches was, the prosecutors made a point of bringing Rusty's PC to court every day in the pink shrink-wrap in which it had been encased since being recaptured from Judge Mason last December. It sat on the prosecution table all day, right in front of the jury.