Balance of Power

FIVE

"So now you want to pick my lawyer," Mary said.

On a bright fall afternoon, she and Lara walked along a path in Golden Gate Park. The cramped space of Mary's studio apartment, with its newly framed photographs of Inez, Joan, and Marie, had been too much for Lara. The park, with its spacious paths, the menthol scent from eucalyptus overhead, reminded her of the family picnics Inez would organize after Sunday Mass, evoking happier memories. But now her Secret Service detail led and followed. To Lara, the two surviving sisters composed an awkward picture—intense, unsmiling, walking slightly apart—belying the benign explanation that the First Lady had flown to San Francisco merely to spend time with Mary before commencing her travels as advocate.

"I can't pick your lawyer," Lara answered. "Only you can. But we wanted you to have the broadest range of advice. The Kilcannon Center sees these suits not simply as wrongful death actions, but as a way of saving lives. Isn't that what we want?"

" 'We'?" Mary's tone was pointed. "The other day, at school, a new teacher I barely know came up to me. I could see how hard it was for her to tell me how she felt.

"I was ready to say that I was okay, and that I was grateful for her thoughts." Mary's voice became quiet and bitter. "Do you know what she asked me, Lara? 'How is your sister doing?' She'd watched you with Cathie Civitch, and she was worried for you."

For a moment, Lara was speechless. For her, the appearance on NBC had been an ordeal, intensified by the pressure of an audience which had proven to be the largest ever for a prime-time interview. But, for Mary, it was another chapter in the lifelong story of Lara eclipsing her sisters, served up with a sad new twist—Mary as the forgotten mourner. "I'm sorry," Lara said.

In profile, Mary's thin face, gazing straight ahead, conveyed her sense of distance. "I'm just trying to make you see this, Lara. You can go on television. You can give speeches, tell people what laws to pass." Abruptly, Mary stopped, standing with folded arms and tears filling her eyes. "I didn't decide how to 'protect' Joanie and Marie. No one even asked me. I had to hear about it two days before your wedding.

"Three days later they were dead. I was there, Lara—I saw them die. I went to the hospital and prayed for Marie. But all I've got is recurring nightmares and a lawsuit against the company who made the bullets that tore them apart. And you want to control that, too."

Despairing, Lara clutched her arm. "I don't want anything from this."

"As long as I let your lawyer run the case." Turning on her, Mary demanded, "Are you still my sister, Lara? Or are you just his wife?"

Lara's mouth felt dry. "I'm your sister. That makes us both Inez's daughters, Joanie's sisters, Marie's aunts. We both hurt. Why fight over them when they're dead?"

"Because they were my family," Mary retorted. "Not a prop at a wedding, or an unpaid political advertisement, or people whose problems I can talk about on television . . ."

"The Chronicle was about to print the story." Wounded, Lara stopped herself, feeling the depth of her own guilt. "I couldn't help what happened, Mary."

"You can help what you do," Mary said with muted anger. "Or expect me to do."

They had to stop this, Lara knew. She tried to step outside herself, to see two grieving sisters. "Tell me, Mary, what this lawsuit means to you."

"More than money," Mary answered with fierce possessiveness. "It's my way of remembering them, and honoring my mother."

"My mother," echoed in Lara's brain. "Then when you're alone," she implored her sister, "ask yourself how she would want us to be."

Silent, Mary gave her a wary, guarded look.

"Alone," she said at last. "Right now that's all I want."

Five hours later, Mary called Lara at her hotel, and said that she would meet with Sarah Dash. Only then did Lara cry.