What It Was Like (42 page)

Only once did one of Nanci's siblings come to the trial – the brother who lived in Connecticut. He looked just like his old man: thin, conservatively dressed, and alcoholic. Her sister from Phoenix never even came to the trial at all, not once. For some reason, that made me extra sad. If I had had a brother or a sister and they got murdered, I certainly would come to the trial every day. I'm fairly certain that I would have been in that first row every single day, right next to Manny Prince, wanting – no,
demanding –
vengeance.

When the jury came in, I knew immediately that they had found me guilty. My first lawyer told me that if no one on the jury looked at me when they walked in, the verdict was bad. And sure enough, not one of them looked at me, and the verdict was guilty of murder. In the second degree.

When the court clerk said the word “guilty,” I didn't cry. Other people behind me cried, but I didn't. I mastered my emotions even as my heart sank into the Earth. I was going to save my tears for later and not let myself be photographed crying. That's just what the newspapers would have liked. And I was going to be strong for my family, the family that I had destroyed. Make that three families: I guess I had destroyed the Princes and the Jeromes too.

Some people on the other side of the room cheered. The Assistant District Attorney and his staff were happy; they “won,” even if they didn't get their First Degree verdict. My first lawyer put his arm around my shoulder and said not to worry, that we would immediately appeal. I can't say that I was really surprised by the whole thing. Three people were dead, and somebody had to pay for it. (I'm sure the jury held me responsible for Rachel's death, too, even though I wasn't driving the Mustang. I mean, why not?)

After I was found guilty, in some ways, all the excitement was over. No more trips to the courthouse. The press was already moving onto the next big story, the next murder. I got lucky: some guy named Charles Manson and these hippie-followers of his chopped up some people in Hollywood, knocking me right off the front page and out of the public focus. This was good because it finally reduced the daily humiliation that my parents suffered, so long as my trial was on the front page. And now I was old news, small potatoes; I had only “killed” three people, and Eleanor Prince wasn't any Sharon Tate. So thank you, Mr. Manson.

I've been in the Nassau County Jail all this time, but they're going to move me upstate soon, before any appeal can be filed. The only question is whether it will be Attica or Sing Sing. The difference in the driving – forty miles to Westchester vs. 350 miles to the middle-of-nowhere Upstate – would have a real effect on my parents' lives. To visit me up there, those long drives would kill my mother . . . so to speak.

I've had a couple of visitors since I've been here. My parents, of course, though I had to tell my Dad to stop my Mom from coming. I could see that it was too hard on her, especially when there were a lot of nosey, rude reporters and photographers outside. And my first and second lawyers and their staff: all very nice people. They were extremely understanding during this whole thing, from my arrest right through to the verdict. But the one visitor I never contemplated seeing was Manny Prince.

I didn't expect any visitors that day. I had been found guilty and was just another prisoner, waiting to be moved to another place in the system. The moment I saw Manny sitting behind the plexiglas partition in the Visitors' Room waiting for me, I could have walked out and refused to see him. But I didn't. I sat down and picked up the phone on the wall that connected us.

“Hello, Manny,” I said.

“Hello, smart guy,” he said back to me with a smirk on his face. He was wearing one of those silly, expensive, embroidered Caribbean shirts with the pockets that he liked.

At first, we just looked at each other. I suppose he had the right to gloat over his victory, but I still felt sorry for him.

“I assume they checked you for weapons,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “They search you real good in this place.”

“Tell me about it,” I said sarcastically.

Another pause while we looked at each other. He was “free,” and I was not, but there was something very strong and very odd that almost
equalized
us.

“What are you doing here, Manny?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, looking straight at me with the blue-blue eyes that Rachel had inherited.

“You want to see me suffer?” I asked. “Does that make you happy?”

“Yeah, it does,” he snapped back. But then he became reflective. “No . . .I don't know how I feel. I wish they coulda given you the chair. Then this whole thing would be over.”

“Sorry, Manny,” I said. “I'm still alive.”

He seemed more pathetic than I was, and certainly more pathetic than my Dad. But then I realized that it was because my father's only child was still alive, and Manny's wasn't.

“Rachel said you had a new girlfriend,” I said.

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “That's finished.”

“I know how you feel,” I said.

He shot me a dark look, and there was another silence between us.

“What do you
want
, Manny?”

He leaned forward, toward the scratched plexiglas that separated us, and whispered into the telephone after a long pause.

“I know it was her.”

“What?” I said.

His eyes burned into mine, just as Rachel's had so many times, and he snarled, “You think we were monsters, her mother and me. The worst parents in the world. Right? . . . You have no idea what it was like to try to be a parent to Rachel, no idea. You don't know what we went through with her. You know how many doctors we saw, how many specialists? From the moment she was born, she was not an easy kid. Beautiful and bright as anything, but never easy. Always trouble. Eleanor and me, we fought like hell over her, what to do with her, how to deal with her tantrums, her moods. We were at the school every other week with her when she was young. She was always difficult, always headstrong, always . . . impossible. Why do you think we broke up? We
wanted
to have other kids, but we were afraid to. We couldn't handle
one
Rachel, forget about
two
!
 
Our marriage never stood a chance, trying to raise her. … OK, so maybe we weren't the greatest parents in the world. But we did our best. And we did try to protect other people from her.”

“So now you're gonna tell me that's why you and Eleanor wanted to keep Rachel and me
apart
?” I said. “For my own good?”

“Partly . . .” Manny said. “Partly.”

I didn't say anything. Couldn't say anything. Even if what he said was true, it was all too sad to contemplate.

He looked down, then looked up with despairing eyes, and continued, “OK, that's what I wanted to say . . . I know it was her. I know that she led you on, that you just followed her, doing what you two did. I know what she was really like. I always thought that something like this could happen someday. She was a beautiful, beautiful girl, but there was always something . . . something wrong.”

“Then why didn't you say anything at the trial?” I asked.

He leaned in closer and whispered viciously into the phone, “What was I gonna say? Something to
help
you? You were
there
, smart guy, and you didn't do
anything
to save those two people. You just did whatever she wanted you to do. So you
got
what you deserved.”

I could have answered him in a million snotty ways. Instead, I just told him the truth.

“What can I say, Manny? I loved her.”

Smiling sadly, he shook his head and muttered, “What an idiot . . . what a waste.”

I laughed once, bitterly, and said, “That's what my Dad thinks. Only he doesn't say it.”

“Well, he
should
say it,” Manny snapped. “And more than once.”

He smiled sadly and then sat back. “I saw your father in court. He seems to be an OK guy.”

“He is,” I said. “You'd like him. You have a lot in common. Both of your kids are dead.”

“Don't you say that!” Manny shot back. “Rachel's dead, and you're alive.”

That was a fact I couldn't challenge.

“So . . .” Manny continued, shifting in his chair, back and forth. “What else I came here to say was” – he stopped moving and looked straight into my eyes – “
dammit-to-hell!
I forgive you.”

Then he slammed down the phone so hard on the wall that I thought he would break it, got up out of his chair, and walked out of the Visitors' Room. I didn't even have time to hang up the phone or say goodbye. And I never saw Manny Prince again.

≁

My excellent new lawyer came to me with excellent news today: I am being sent to Sing Sing, not Attica. Yes! A win for our side! I'm not sure why that happened; I think he pleaded some kind of “hardship” or something. Anyway, the System somehow worked in my favor. (Thank you, Your Honor.) It will be much easier for my parents to visit me now and cry more often in person. I don't want to think about how often my mother cries at night. There are certain things that I can no longer think about.

≁

I saw my father one last time before they moved me upstate. He had gotten friendly with some of the guards – did I mention that my Dad was the nicest, sweetest guy in the world? He thought that if the guards knew him personally, they might go a little easier on his son. That's how he thought: even as I ruined his life, all he was concerned about was me.

“Your mother wanted to come,” he said into the phone, sitting across from me. “But she was too – what – overwhelmed lately.” He gave me a shrug and smiled through the smudged plexiglas barrier. The entry processing for visitors – the personal searches and the waiting, the waiting, the waiting – took more than an hour sometimes.

“I can see why,” I said. He seemed more tired than I had ever seen him before. The fluorescent light in the Visitors' Room sucked the life out of anyone's face, but I had never noticed how
old
he looked. “How are
you
doing?”

“Oh, I'm fine,” he said. “Your mother's on that Metrecal diet again, so guess who's starving?”

I tried to laugh, seeing that he was trying to cheer me up.

“Stop at Vinnie's on the way home,” I said. “And get yourself some cheese sticks. You deserve 'em.”

“Food here sucks, I bet,” he said, repeating what I had told him many times before.

“You have no idea,” I said. “They make Ma look like Betty Crocker.”

Dad laughed, “And how are you sleeping?”

“OK,” I lied. But then said truthfully, “Sometimes it gets cold at night, but all that could change when I go to the new place, so what does it matter?” I couldn't bear to say the name Sing Sing.

“You want me to, I'll call 'em up in advance and tell 'em to keep it nice and warm up there,” he said. “Maybe they don't know that they're dealing with
Heat-
ler here.”

It made me laugh
and
it made me sad to hear my Dad say that. Happy to hear him use our family nickname for him, the one he so hated, just to try to get a smile out of me, and sad, to think of home.

I had to say something or one of us might start to cry; I couldn't stand that. I know that he wouldn't want to cry in front of me.

“Remember when Mom was the class mother in my fifth grade class?” I said, letting the memory rush back. “And it was Halloween? They made this big party at school, and Mom came dressed up as a witch, with a big black hat and an orange face and her front teeth blacked out?”

My mother, a shy woman, had
never
done anything this flamboyant or theatrical before. Before
or
since.

“She visited all the other classes and scared all the little kids, but in a good way. She was the hit of the school.”

I had been at a new school that year, and I think she wanted to help me fit in. I was so surprised that she would do that; I didn't realize at the time that it was all for my benefit.

“No, I don't remember that . . .” he said, with a sad smile, his eyes misting over. “But it sounds terrific.”

“It
was
,” I assured him, wanting him to remember something that fine, something from so long ago, when things weren't so messed up, before I had ruined everything. “She was really something.”

My father blinked and looked up at the ceiling. He started to say something, stopped, then started again, “You know we wanted to have other kids, but it turned out that we couldn't. Your mother went to a couple of doctors.”

I looked into my father's eyes clearly, saying, “I didn't know that. I mean, I coulda guessed but . . . Who would want to have just one kid, especially if it turned out to be me?”

“Don't say that!” he said right back, gripping the phone tightly, looking straight at me. “This was just one crazy thing. You've been a good kid your whole life. A good son. . . . What I'm saying is: if we just had to have one son, I was glad he was you.”

I wasn't going to cry; that did nobody any favors. I held tight to my feelings and refused to cry, even though I was crumbling inside at the sight of this brave, beaten man. And I couldn't help but think about the Princes, with one child, afraid to have a second one, and my parents, with one child,
unable
to have a second one. And I thought how cruel and unfair and ironic this world can be – to everyone. No one gets out alive.

“I should have known that something was going on –” he declared.

“Please don't start that –” I cut him off, not wanting to hear him try to take responsibility for something that wasn't his to take.

“I wasn't really being a good parent,” he continued.