Defending Jacob(63)

She said, “The point is, the science is good and it’s getting better every day. Just imagine: up till now, we’ve always asked, What causes human behavior? Is it nature or nurture? And we’ve been very good at studying the nurture side of the equation. There’s lots and lots of good studies on how environment affects behavior. But now, for the first time in human history, we can look at the nature side. This is cutting-edge stuff. The structure of DNA was only discovered in 1953. We’re just beginning to understand. We’re just beginning to look at what we are. Not as some abstraction like the ‘soul’ or metaphor like the ‘human heart,’ but the real mechanics of human beings, the nuts and bolts. This”—she pinched the skin of her own arm and pulled up a sample of her own flesh—“the human body is a machine. It is a system, a very complex system made of molecules and driven by chemical reactions and electrical impulses. Our minds are part of that system. People have no trouble accepting that nurture affects behavior. Why not nature?”

“Doctor, will this keep my kid out of prison?”

“It might.”

“Then do it.”

“There’s more.”

“Why does this not surprise me?”

“I need a swab from your father too.”

“My father? You’re joking. I haven’t spoken to my father since I was five years old. I have no idea if he’s even alive.”

“He is alive. He’s in Northern Prison in Somers, Connecticut.”

A beat. “So go test him.”

“I tried. He won’t see me.”

I blinked at her. I was wrong-footed both by the news my father was alive and by the fact that she had already got a message from him. She had an advantage over me. Not only did she know my history, she did not consider it history at all. It was no burden to her. To Dr. Vogel, trying to contact Billy Barber was no harder than picking up the phone.

“He says you have to ask.”

“Me? He wouldn’t know me if I stood up in his soup.”

“Apparently he wants to change that.”

“He does? Why?”

“A father gets old, he wants to know his son a little.” She shrugged. “Who can understand the human heart?”

“So he knows about me?”

“Oh, he knows all about you.”

I felt myself flush like a little kid with the thrill of it: a father! Then, just as quickly, my mood plummeted, the thought of Bloody Billy Barber turned to acid.

“Tell him to f*ck off.”

“I can’t tell him that. We need his help. We need a sample to argue that a genetic mutation is more than a one-off but a family trait passed down from father to son to son.”

“We could get a court order.”

“Not without giving away to the DA what we’re up to.”

I shook my head.

Laurie finally spoke. “Andy, you need to think about Jacob. How far would you go for him?”

“I’d go to hell and back.”

“Okay, then. So you will.”





19 | The Cutting Room


In the last week of August—that non-week, the week of Sundays when we all move a little slower and mourn the passing of summer and get ourselves ready for fall—the temperatures climbed and the air thickened until the heat was all anyone could talk about: when it would break, how high it would go, how unbearable the humidity was. It drove people indoors, as if it was winter. The sidewalks and shops were oddly quiet. To me the heat was not an affliction, it was merely a symptom, as a fever is a symptom of the flu. It was only the most obvious reason the world was fast becoming unbearable.

We were all a little heat-crazy by then, Laurie and Jacob and I. Looking back on it, it is hard to believe how self-absorbed I had become, how this whole story seemed to be about me, not Jacob, not our entire family. Jacob’s guilt and mine were entangled in my mind, though no one had ever accused me of anything explicitly. I was coming apart, of course. I knew this. I distinctly remember exhorting myself to hold it together, to keep up appearances, not to crack.

But I did not share my feelings with Laurie, and I did not try to draw out hers either, because we were all coming apart. I discouraged any sort of frank emotional talk, and soon enough I stopped noticing my wife altogether. I never asked—never even asked!—what the experience was like for the mother of Jacob the murderer. I thought it was more important to be—at least to seem—a tower of strength and to encourage her to be strong as well. It was the only sensible approach: tough it out, get through the trial, do whatever it takes to keep Jacob safe, then repair the emotional damage later. After. It was as if there was a place called After, and if I could just push my family across to that shore, then everything would be all right. There would be time for all these “soft” problems in the land of After. I was wrong. I think about that now, how I should have seen Laurie then, should have paid more attention. She had saved my life, once. I came to her damaged and she had loved me anyway. And when she was damaged, I did not lift a finger to help her. I only noticed that her hair was getting grayer and sloppier, and her face was becoming crazed with lines like an old ceramic vase. She had lost so much weight that her hip bones protruded, and when we were together she spoke less and less. In spite of it all, I never softened in my determination to save Jacob first and heal Laurie later. I try to rationalize that merciless intransigence now: I was by then a master of internalizing dangerous emotions; my mind was overheated with the stress of that endless summer. It is all true and it is all bullshit too. The truth is, I was a fool. Laurie, I was a fool. I know that now.