That was perhaps the most intriguing thing of all, and even now I cannot pretend to understand why the reaction against her was so much more ferocious than it was against him. He had been having sex with his own daughter for three and a half years. Not his stepdaughter, his own flesh and blood. It is difficult to imagine anyone doing anything worse, yet from the time his wife was first accused of having sexual relations with their young son, she became a monster of depravity and he became, well-nothing.
He was a part of the background, a bit player, someone who had done something unspeakable, but something no different than the unforgivable acts of a thousand other men. The blame that attached to what he had done to his daughter had, as it were, been diffused by the frequency with which such things had been done before. Edward Larkin was a sexual predator who would be dealt with in the normal course of the criminal law; what Janet Larkin had done was beyond anyone’s experience. No mother had sex with her son; it was an unnatural act outside the boundaries of not only every convention but every instinct. It was the ultimate taboo, and for that reason it had to be true. It was not the kind of thing someone, especially a child, would just invent.
I got the case for no other reason than that it was my turn. I was still doing court-appointed work, and when Janet Larkin was called for arraignment and announced she could not afford to hire a lawyer of her own, my name was next on the list. It is strange how often the most important things that happen to us are matters of chance, and how often we don’t understand it at the time. I certainly did not. When I went to the district attorney’s office to pick up the discovery in the case, the clerk, a tall woman in her late forties with long dangling brightly colored ear-rings, suggested I come up with a reason to get out of it.
“Have you heard about the book?” she asked, shaking her head in disgust. “It talks about having kids in the same bed with their parents. That’s really sick,” she added, as she turned away.
Just as I got to the door, Spencer Goldman grabbed my arm.
Short, with a bristling brown mustache and wiry hair, he talked the way he moved, in sudden, explosive bursts.
“There’s not going to be any deal in this case,” he announced with ill-disguised hostility. There was a look of triumph in his eyes, as if he were certain that he had just inflicted a mortal wound. We had had cases together before, and he knew I was not shy about going to trial. I took every case I could to trial-
that was the whole reason I became a lawyer: to try cases. He was not trying to scare me; he was trying to show me just how confident he was that Janet Larkin was guilty and that he was going to be able to prove it. There was something else as well, a sense of moral outrage about what had happened. Others, of course, had the same feeling, but I believe that he felt it perhaps more than anyone else.
“It was his case,” Asa suggested by way of explanation.
“It was more than that. It was personal. Not between him and me,” I added quickly. “Between him and the boy. He believed him, believed every word of the story the boy had told. Goldman didn’t have any doubt-none-and it was, really, the most extraordinary story you’ve ever heard.” Pausing, I stared down at the table, remembering the look of defiance on Goldman’s face when he told me he knew the boy was telling the truth. “I suppose we believe what we want to believe, or what we think we’re supposed to believe. Whatever the reason, he believed him, and he came to believe that the only chance the boy had to recover from the awful thing that had been done to him was to let him know that everyone believed him. The mother had to admit what she had done, or there had to be a trial to prove to the world that she had done it. He wanted to punish the mother, all right, but he mainly wanted to save the child.” I shook my head. “The child! He was smarter than anyone else involved in the case.
There was no question he was his father’s son.
“Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that Edward Larkin, the father, never got caught. He had been abusing his daughter for years, and no one knew. The girl never told a soul. Once, it is true, she tried to tell someone-a girl she went to school with-but she pretended she was talking about someone else. She could not bring herself to admit the truth. It was a secret, and it might very well have remained a secret, if her father had not decided to talk about it himself.
“Try to imagine, if you can, what happened to Edward Larkin.
For years he had been having sexual relations with his own daughter. I can’t tell you that he felt guilt, or remorse, or had any kind of regret about it at all. I can’t even tell you he thought it was wrong. Of course he had to have known that other people thought it was wrong; he had to have known that it was the kind of thing people get into very serious trouble about. It is certain that he never breathed a word about it to anyone. Then, one day-or so he claimed-he saw a television show, a discussion about incest, and he decided he had to talk to somebody. I don’t know. It may be true. It’s easier to admit you’ve done something when it’s something other people do. And it’s easier still, if it’s something that can be considered a disease, something that isn’t your fault, something that can be cured. He began to see a psychologist, and the psychologist convinced him that he had to see the police.
“Larkin told them everything. Charges were filed, but because he had come forward voluntarily, and because he was already in therapy, he pled guilty to one count of sexual abuse and was placed on probation. And because he was in therapy, the rest of that family had to go as well. Obviously, the girl needed help, and the mother, who had just learned what her husband had been doing with her daughter, needed it as well. The boy, it was thought, required counseling to help him cope with what had happened to everyone else.
“Gerald Larkin was eleven years old, and all of a sudden his whole world had been destroyed. Before anyone else could tell him what had happened, his father told him, though precisely what he told him no one ever really knew. But it would have been natural for the father to suggest that what he had done was not all that serious, or all that blameworthy, to spare his son as much pain as he possibly could and to tell him that at some point everything would be back to normal.
“Two months after he began seeing a counselor, the boy revealed that at the same time his father had been abusing his sister, his mother had been abusing him. He did not bring it all out at once. At first he remembered only being touched by someone’s hands. Then, gradually, under the questioning of the therapist, he was able to recall more of what had happened until, finally, he had a clear recollection of everything. His mother, he insisted, had repeatedly forced him to have sexual intercourse.
“Everyone believed him, the psychologist, the police, the district attorney’s office. It explained certain things. How could the father have been doing these things with the daughter without the mother knowing anything about it? The answer of course was that the mother did know, but did not care. You can see why everyone thought she was a monster. And then, of course, it seemed to explain the meaning of that book. It was nothing more than the simple proposition that it was better to let children crawl into bed with their parents when they felt afraid or insecure, than force them to stay in their own room alone. Whether that is good advice or not, I would not know, but there was nothing sinister in what it intended to teach. You could not tell that to anyone who had only heard about it, however. As far as they were concerned, it was a manual of depravity, written by the devil himself, instead of something you could find in any bookstore.