I take the stairs up, open the storm door, and step onto the wooden deck. Simon is sitting on one of the lawn chairs he’s put up here, gripping a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“Hey,” I call out.
He turns, waves me over. “Didn’t hear you,” he says, but he’s slurring his words.
“You okay?”
I sit in the other lawn chair but turn to face him. Yep, glassy eyes. He’s thrown a few back, all right.
I take the bottle from his hand. “What happened?”
“‘What happened?’” He pushes himself out of the chair, opens his arms as if preaching to the masses. “What happened? What happened is he knows, that’s what happened.”
“Who knows what?”
“Dean Cumstain, as you call him.” He raises his chin and nods. “Come to think of it, I’m gonna call him that, too.”
“Knows what, Simon? What does the dean know?”
“He knows.” He turns and stumbles. He’s not close to the edge of the roof, but he’s starting to make me nervous.
“Simon—”
“Twelve years ago, I believe it was!” he calls out like a circus announcer, whirling around to his audience in all directions.
Twelve year—
Oh, no. Oh, shit.
“The year of 2010! I believe it involved a grand jury looking into the murder of a prominent—”
“Hey.” I grab him by both arms, put my forehead against his. “Keep your voice down. Someone might hear you.”
“I don’t care—”
“Yes, you do,” I hiss, holding his arms as he tries to break free. “Quit acting like an idiot and talk to me. Let me help.”
“I am so fucked,” Simon says, slumped over the wooden railing of the roof deck, head in his hands. “The dean owns me now.”
I run my hand up and down his back. “You aren’t fucked. We’re gonna figure this out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out. He’s got me by the short hairs.”
“What does he have? That court opinion didn’t name you—”
“Oh, come on, Vick.” He turns to me, ashen, shaken. “It might as well have. It would take anyone with a brain about five seconds to figure out that the court of appeals was talking about me in that opinion. ‘A male family member,’ they wrote. Another place, they said the ‘family member’ was twenty-four years old. How many family members did my father have, period, much less a man who was twenty-four in May of 2010? Mom was dead, I’m an only child, and so was my dad. He didn’t have a wife, any other children, any brothers or sisters, nieces or neph—”
“Okay, okay.” I take his hand. “I get it. If anyone read the opinion and knew the context, they’d know it was you.”
“And they’d ask me, anyway,” he says. “If this came to the attention of the faculty and the tenure committee, they’d just come out and ask me to confirm that the subject of that judicial opinion was me. I’d have to say yes.”
“You wouldn’t have to.”
He shoots me a look. “Even if I were willing to lie about it, which I’m not—nobody would believe me. Then I’d be a liar, too, if being a murder suspect weren’t enough.”
“Oh, stop with this ‘murder suspect’ crap,” I say. “He’s been dead twelve years, Simon. I don’t see anyone putting you in handcuffs.”
“Yeah, and guess why? Read the opinion. I got off on a technicality—that’s what everyone will think.”
“You’re overreacting. You think a bunch of law professors, of all people, wouldn’t appreciate the importance of a therapist/patient privilege?”
“Sure, they would. They’d probably agree with the court’s decision, too. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t murder my father.”
I have no answer for that. He’s right. I’m trying to rally him, but he’s right. This judicial opinion has been lurking out there all along, for the last twelve years, talking about a subpoena issued by a grand jury investigating the murder of Theodore Dobias at his home in St. Louis, Missouri, where he moved after Glory died and Simon disowned him. It didn’t name Simon specifically, but it described a twenty-four-year-old male who was a member of Ted’s family—and Simon’s right, only he could possibly qualify.
The St. Louis County district attorney was interested in a phone call Simon made to his psychotherapist in the early morning after the night Ted was found dead in his pool, stabbed to death. The grand jury subpoenaed his therapist to testify, but she refused to answer on the grounds of privilege. Simon hired a lawyer and fought the case up to the court of appeals, which ruled in Simon’s favor. Nobody got to ask the shrink what Simon said to her that morning.
The police probably still think Simon killed his father, but realized, at some point, they couldn’t prove it. And Simon’s right. It will look like he was never charged because of a legal technicality. If the tenure committee hears about this, Simon is finished.
Simon has wandered into the middle of the massive rooftop deck, hands on his hips, looking around. “My mom and dad would dance up here,” he says. “I ever tell you that?”
I walk up to him. “No.”
“Oh, yeah, they’d come up with a bottle of wine and a little boom box and play music and dance. Sometimes Mom would sing. She was an awful singer, but boy, she didn’t care.” He gestures to the chairs. “Sometimes we’d have a little picnic up here, and I’d sit over in the chair with my juice box and sandwich while they danced. You should’ve . . .”
His head drops. He rubs his neck.
“You should’ve seen how she looked at my dad. I remember thinking how great it must be to have someone look at you like that.”
I touch his arm.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m . . . I’ve had too much to drink.”
I put my arms around him, put my face against his chest. “Dance with me,” I whisper.
We rock back and forth. I’m no singer, probably no better than his mother, so we sway to the street sounds below, kids playing and shouting, music from passing vehicles, some help from birds chirping nearby. He presses me tightly against him. I can feel his heart pounding.
Simon deserves someone who will look at him the way his mother looked at his father. He deserves more than I can give him.
“I don’t know what it was, why she was so taken with him,” he says. “When you’re a kid, you don’t realize—I mean, they’re just your parents. In hindsight, I mean, she was twenty times the person he was in every way, but God, she just swooned over him. He was everything to her. And then when he—when he—”
“I know,” I whisper. “I know.”
“It just broke her. Y’know? It just . . . broke her.”
It broke Simon, too, as it does now, as he chokes back tears.
I rub his back. “It’s all gonna be okay,” I tell him. “Everything will turn out fine.”
“I wish I was so confident.”
“Let me help you with this problem,” I say. “Let me help you with the dean.”
“No.” Simon breaks away from me and wags his finger. “No. Thank you, but no.”
“Why not? You said it yourself. The dean owns you. If you buckle the moment he raises your past, he’ll know he always has this over you. You’ll never get out from under his thumb.”
“I don’t care. I’ll . . . go to another school or something.”
“But you’ll obsess about this the rest of your life, Simon. I know you. You’ll obsess about Dean Cumstain and Reid Southern like you obsess over that high school jock Mitchell Kitchens.”
He picks up the bottle of Jack and takes another pull, the wind carrying his bangs. “I don’t obsess about him.”