Sympathy Between Humans

37

When you’re sleeping well, the trapdoor at the bottom of your mind opens and you have deep, strange dreams: psychodramas full of symbolic imagery that you rarely remember on waking, and when you do, you tell a friend, Last night I had the weirdest dream. It’s when you’re restless and not sleeping well that you dream close to the surface of your mind, more like thinking in your sleep than dreaming.

In other words, the details of the dream that follows were just speculation, nothing more.

I was back in the courtroom. Hugh Hennessy was on trial, but this time I wasn’t the prosecutor. I was just observing, or that’s what I thought, until Kilander laid his hand on my shoulder.

Hugh can’t speak for himself, he said. Any judge would throw this case out so hard it’d bounce.

You said that already.

But they’ve found someone to speak for him, Kilander said. They want you to do it.

I said, I can’t do that.

Don’t keep the judge waiting, Kilander said.

Empathetic thinking is an important skill for a detective. No matter how much you might dislike a suspect, it’s useful to adopt his viewpoint, understand his motives. I kept this in mind as I settled myself behind the stand.

Whenever you’re ready, the judge said.

I leaned forward and spoke for Hugh. I know how bad it looks, I said.

A little louder, Ms. Pribek, the judge said.

I know how bad it looks, I repeated. But normally my desk was locked. And normally the kids didn’t even go in there; I didn’t keep anything in my study to attract them, no toys or candy. I kept the pistols there because there was no furniture in our bedroom that locked. My desk did. The guns would be just down the hall if I needed them. I kept the pistols loaded because the lake area wasn’t as built up back then as it is now. It was pretty isolated, and I wanted to protect Lis and the kids from break-ins. I don’t know why I forgot to lock the desk that one time. I just did.

How could it happen that the one time I forgot, Aidan went in there and found the gun? And he didn’t just shoot into the air, or his foot, but his chest. His chest!

I wasn’t afraid to call the paramedics and have the shooting on record; that’s not why I drove Aidan to the hospital myself. I know that’s what it looked like, but it’s not. I was afraid to wait for the ambulance. I grabbed him in my arms and ran for the garage. If there had been any speed traps on the road, the police would have had to chase me all the way to the hospital, because I wouldn’t have stopped. I wanted so badly to save him. But no one chased me, no cops saw me. I got all the way to the hospital, and still no one seemed to notice my arrival. And then I looked back at Aidan, and he wasn’t breathing. He was blue. And I knew he was gone.

I sat there in the car and cried, and still no one came over. When I was done crying, I thought about bringing the ER staff over to the car, getting them to take Aidan’s body, but then I didn’t want them to take him away from me and put him in the morgue. So I started the car up again and just drove home. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t thinking at all.

When I got home, Lis was sleeping with Marli in the bed, and I didn’t wake them. When the sun came up, the morning was so beautiful, and I decided to bury Aidan under the magnolia tree. Lots of old American families have gravesites on their property. It’s a tradition. So I buried Aidan under the tree, and I said a prayer.

Marli woke up and I told her Mother was sick, and Aidan had gone away for a while. She said, “He’s coming back, isn’t he?” and I couldn’t bear to say no, and so I said something like “Everything’s going to be fine.” Later, I took Lis down to the little grave. I told her this was better than sending Aidan to the hands of some funeral home to be embalmed and sewn up. This way, he’d always be with us. She cried and nodded. After that she was catatonic, almost. She didn’t call anyone. Not a friend, not her sister.

That’s what started me thinking. There were so many coincidences here, that no one saw Aidan in my car at the hospital, that no one had found out yet what had happened… It was almost like it was fate. Maybe there was some way I could cover for Aidan shooting himself. Maybe I could put it off on hunters. What good would it do for Aidan’s death to be splashed all over the papers? For people to point fingers at me and Elisabeth? They would have blamed her, too. What if some social worker called us unfit? What if they took Marli and Liam, too? It would have destroyed Lis. I mean, she was pregnant with Colm then, too. She was so fragile.

That’s when I remembered Brigitte and her little boy, Jacob. It was impossible but perfect. Jacob was almost exactly the same age as the twins. And they were both still so young, there was time. They could both forget the past. Jacob, in time, could be Aidan.

When I told Lis, she got hysterical, called me sick. But I weathered it. I told her that nothing would bring Aidan back, but explained all the reasons. I pointed out what Lis had told me: that since the death of her boyfriend, Brigitte had been a basket case. She was drunk a lot, stoned a lot, and she’d let her son lose his finger to that vicious dog. Jacob was better off with us. I said we could give Jacob a wonderful life here, and we’d never, ever forget Aidan, we could visit his grave every day.

Brigitte was easy. She knew she was a bad mother and that her sister would be good to Jacob. A big check was all it took to push her over the edge. And once she’d cashed the check, she couldn’t go to the authorities. She was implicated.

The day we got Jacob home, too, that was a disaster. I’d told Marli, “Aidan was bitten by a dog and went away to get better,” and she’d believed it. But when I brought Jacob in, she took one look at him and started to cry. She knew he wasn’t Aidan, and I was telling her he was, and she was so confused that it frightened her. I said, “Marli, he looks different, but he’s Aidan, he’s really Aidan inside.” But she kept crying and saying, “I want Aidan, I want Aidan.” And Lis was so fragile then, she sat down in the rocking chair and wept, too. Marli was in the corner, crying, and Lis was in the chair, crying, and Jacob was standing in the middle of the room like he wanted to cry, too. I thought, You’re the monster here, Hugh. How’d that happen? All I ever wanted was to be a good husband and father and now I was a goddamn monster and I couldn’t understand how the hell it had all happened.

Then Jacob looked around and saw Lis. She looked a bit like her sister, Gitte, more beautiful of course, but he saw the resemblance. He went over to her and said, “Why are you crying?” and got up in the chair with her, and she let him. Then Marli saw that her mother wasn’t afraid of the new Aidan, so she went over and climbed up with them. There they all were, all three of them. Looking at them, I thought, Things are going to be okay. I would have liked to have been part of their embrace, but that rocking chair was filled to capacity. I stood apart from them and thought, You’re the odd man out now, Hugh. I can live with that. I probably deserve it. As long as Lis is happy.

But of course, things didn’t work out that way. Marli and the kid became fast friends, and in six months I’d swear they didn’t remember that Jacob Candeleur ever existed. But I couldn’t forget, of course. I drank too much and got an ulcer and waited for something to go wrong. Lis loved that boy like he was her own, but she also took to spending time at Aidan’s grave, and I realized what a lousy idea it was to bury him where she’d always be reminded of how he died. I wanted to move, but I was too afraid. What if the new owners tore up the new carpeting in the study and found the huge bloodstain in the floorboards? What if they dug under the magnolia tree and found Aidan’s bones? What about the goddamned BMW? We were stuck here, with reminders of it at every turn.

But we couldn’t grieve openly for Aidan, and I think that’s what killed Lis in the end. Then she was gone, and I came home from the funeral and realized that my wife, who I’d loved more than anyone, was gone, and instead I had her sister’s illegitimate kid in my house. He was crying under that goddamn magnolia, right on Aidan’s grave, and I went out and hit him for the first time. It wasn’t the last time, but who cared anymore? I was the monster, I’d known that years ago.

I started fantasizing that I could erase his memory of being Aidan Hennessy as easily as I’d once erased his memory of being Jacob Candeleur. It took me way too long to realize that I could do the next best thing: send him back to Brigitte. When I called to suggest that, she was all for it. And I liked having him gone so much that when Brigitte died, I found an old friend who’d take him.

Marlinchen didn’t understand, and I hated to hurt her. Once, I nearly told her the whole story. I took her down to Aidan’s gravesite, but when I was there I lost my nerve, and I only told her about missing her mother and how we’d once pledged our undying love there.

I wanted to tell her. She’s so much like her mother, and for so long I’ve wanted to tell somebody about this and have them say, “I understand.” That’s all. “I understand.”

Now I know that’ll never happen. I’ve paid and paid and paid for my mistake, and I don’t know that it’ll ever end. I succeeded in erasing Marlinchen’s memory and I succeeded in erasing Jacob’s. I can’t erase the one memory I most want to: mine.