"I do understand, Margaret. Calhoun was sick. He was addicted to control. He needed his partner to depend on him. He needed his wife to be subservient, and it may have been an accident, but probably he was satisfied when you ended up crippled and became absolutely dependent on him." Mrs. Barnes was still nodding as Jennie spoke, and Jennie paused and with exquisite timing suggested, "And from Jason, from his son, he also demanded absolute obedience, didn't he?"
Tears were now streaming down Margaret's face and she was intermittently sobbing and drawing short breaths. The first dark secret was out, and it was like plucking the cork on a dusty bottle of champagne.
"I… my son and I… we have no relationship. We haven't.. well, we haven't spoken in years."
"We'll get to that. Tell me about your family."
And for the next ten minutes, Margaret related what it had been like to be a wife, to be a mother, and to be a son in the house of Calhoun Barnes, a greater monster than we had even imagined. Margaret Barnes, as Jennie said, did want to get it out, and it came like a torrent, a sobbing collection of endless nightmares for her, and for her son.
As I listened, I was struck that Jennie had also been surprisingly prescient back at Jason's townhouse; Calhoun had been a terrorizing, overbearing bully who whipped and beat his son to a pulp for the tiniest infractions, who demanded and enforced perfection in matters and habits large and small. The things that could trigger Calhoun's volcanic fury ranged from the trivial to the arbitrary. Little Jason once bought a turtle from a school classmate; Calhoun discovered the turtle, thrashed Jason with a belt, crushed the turtle under his foot, then forced Jason to clean up the squashed mess and, afterward, to wash his hands one hundred times. Adolescent Jason got into a schoolyard fight, which was fine, but he lost, which was not, and Calhoun thrashed him so badly he missed three days of school. And so forth, and so on.
Because the mother was equally terrorized, and because she was bedridden, and then handicapped, young Jason was forced to confront his monster alone, unprotected and vulnerable. But I think not even Jennie had anticipated the unremitting ferocity the father unleashed on his son. Margaret eventually commented, "But you know the oddest thing? Jason actually looked up to his father. He admired him, and he obeyed him, and wanted always to please him. The two of them were.. unnaturally close. Jason idolized his father." She took a deep breath. "I did not lie about that." She inquired of her confessor, "Don't you find that peculiar?"
"I find it normal, Margaret. We see it sometimes in hostage situations. There's even a term for it-the Stockholm syndrome. The combination of applied terror and victim helplessness creates mental dependency, and, perversely, even affection and loyalty. For a young boy, trapped in the home of such an abusively dictatorial man, I'd be surprised to hear otherwise."
"I… yes, I could see how that explains it." In fact, she might-in her own way she probably had succumbed to the same bewitching phenomenon.
Jennie asked, "Did Jason ever learn the truth about your injury?"
"No. We… I kept it from him. I thought… a child… a son.. should not have to bear such a terrible truth. Don't you think that's so?"
Jennie glanced at me, pointed at Margaret's glass, and I got her another refill. I was tempted to tell Margaret that whatever her intentions, she had made a serious, even fatal miscalculation. In truth, she had made many mistakes, starting with her marriage, but mistakes compound, and some are worse than others, and cumulatively they become a disaster. Had the boy understood his father's barbaric nature, he might have learned to despise, rather than admire and obey, the beast dominating his life.
In fact, the hour was very late, and I was tired and becoming increasingly impatient to learn exactly what had triggered Jason's rage-but Jennie continued her pursuit, methodically and patiently Margaret's marriage to Calhoun had been a carnival of smoke and broken mirrors, and I was sure she had entertained strong visceral feelings, but she had never intellectualized or verbalized the causes and effects to others, or probably even to herself. Or perhaps she had, but with only the knowledge of how it had destroyed her life. Now she knew how it had destroyed her child's also, and she needed to rationalize the adjusted causes and effects.
For the next few minutes, alternating between a whispery intensity and hurt chokes and sobs, she detailed how Calhoun had estranged her from Jason, isolating him and isolating her. Daddy taught his boy to admire strength; Mommy was crippled, Mommy was weak, Mommy deserved contempt. Also, Mommy was physically incapable of caring for and protecting him, magnifying Jason's emotional enslavement to his father and his alienation from his mother. It struck me that young Jason might also have felt a sense of betrayal. Margaret had failed in nearly every sense, both practical and emotional, to be his mother, and a child is concerned not with cause but with effect.
Even I could understand that no child would emerge from such a malevolent and viciously manipulated environment healthy in mind, conscience, and soul. Jason's head was probably a shopping cart of pathologies, Oedipal guilts, and sexual confusion. No wonder the guy wasn't married yet. But Margaret finally paused to catch a breath, and Jennie, the good cop, asked her, "Another sherry?"
"Uh… if you'd be so kind."
Jennie handed me Margaret's glass. Being the bad cop carries its heavy burdens. I felt really bad about getting a witness liquored up and loose-lipped, but in murder investigations you do what works. As I got up, Jennie suggested to Margaret, "Now I think it's time to figure out what happened, why Jason has taken the course he's on."
Margaret thought a moment, then said, "I think… I suppose, his father."
"This was somehow related to the firm your husband and Phillip Fineberg started?"
"Oh… I believe most certainly it was."
"Can you explain what happened?"
Margaret waited for me to bring her the refill, then started, "As I mentioned, the fit between Calhoun and Phillip was never good or particularly healthy. Theirs was a partnership of convenience, at best. I think that with success and wealth, they needed each other less and disliked each other more."
"That's how it usually works," Jennie commented.
"Actually, I think Calhoun and Phillip were consummately jealous of each other." She paused for a moment before she added, "They grew to really hate one another."
"How long were they together?"
"Fifteen years. The last four or five were misery for them both. Calhoun complained viciously about Phillip. And I knew Phillip thoroughly despised Calhoun as well. And of course, by the seventies, the opportunities in this city toward Jews had changed greatly. Phillip knew it, and so did Calhoun."
"Was there a blow-up?"
"Oh, nothing so reckless. They were both smart men, and quite greedy. They knew to manage their situation discreetly. Richmond is a small city, after all. They would invite unwanted scrutiny, and their legal competitors would have eaten them alive." She paused a moment, then said, "Phillip finally ended it."
"How?"
"In a most interesting manner. One day, he just never came back to work."
"He… what? He just quit?"
"In a manner of speaking. He accepted a position at Yale Law, teaching, I think, tort law. Calhoun learned afterward that, behind his back, Phillip had discussed partnerships with several of those large northern firms. That proved to be fruitless. Phillip's lack of courtroom experience completely disqualified him, and he wasn't willing to again start at the bottom. In the end, I'm sure he concluded, teaching was the only respectable escape. The pay was stingy, but with the money he had made at the firm, he could live quite comfortably."