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Twenty-Six
AFTER COURT THE NEXT DAY,I drive to Sag Harbor, a restaurant there called Page, to have dinner with my older sister, Brigid.
Brigid still likes telling me that she always felt like I was more of a brother to her than a sister. Full disclosure? Brigid was always the pretty one. And the most popular one. Growing up, I knew more about all the New York sports teams than any boy my age. Brigid had zero interest in sports. Until she got to high school and became interested in whatever sport the cutest boys happened to be playing.
According to my father, Brigid was the smart one, because she ended up at Duke.
With Rob Jacobson.
On top of everything else, Brigid has also turned out to be a better wife than I ever was. And the mother I never turned out to be. Brigid’s own perfect daughter has just graduated from Duke. Pre-med. Her husband is the principal at Pierson High School in Sag Harbor. They are all nauseatingly happy.
On the drive from Riverhead, I make up my mind, decide to tell her about my diagnosis, because even though we’re not as close as she wants us to be—which means about as close as we’ve ever been—she’s my sister. And I feel as if I should tell somebody.
Jimmy Cunniff could be the next to find out, the lucky duck. Page is a block up Main Street from Jimmy’s tavern. I told him I might stop in to see him after dinner. He told me his heart just skipped a beat.
“How do you think the trial is going, I mean, so far?” Brigid says.
She’s ordered white wine. I’ve joined her. I’m not really a white-wine girl, but I’m going out of my way to be sisterly tonight.
“I’d feel better about our chances,” I say, “if my client didn’t keep lying like he’s trying to stay in practice.”
Brigid smiles. “Rob has always been a bit dramatic.”
I smile back at her. “Is that how you Dukies describe people who are so frequently full of it?”
“He’s a good person.”
“I’m not sure if even his own wife thinks that.”
“She’s never understood him.”
“I know. Only you really do.”
“Is that sarcasm I hear?”
“You know what they say, sis. If you have to ask.”
I take a sip of wine and look out at the foot traffic on Main Street. By the middle of summer, there will be nights when Main Street in Sag Harbor looks more crowded than Fifth Avenue at Christmastime.
Turning back to her, I say, “Are you sure you never slept with him?”
“How many times are you going to ask me that exact same question?”
“Maybe until you come clean about doing the dirty deed?”
I smile. She sighs.
“We are friends and have been since we both got to Duke. He certainly needed a friend back then.”
She is referring to the fact—part of Jacobson’s personal history and permanent record—that his father, Robinson Jacobson Jr., shot his teenage mistress and then himself when Rob was a senior at Dalton. If it sounds like a television movie, it’s because it became one.
“So that explains the kind of shitheel he has so often been since?”
“Well, I know you’re being your usual cynical self,” Brigid says, “but even you have to admit it certainly provides some context.”
“Bridge, in my world, there are reasons and there are excuses. You may think there are reasons why he’s lived his life a certain way. But it doesn’t excuse him, at least not in my book. You can look this up, but there are a lot of sons with dirtbag fathers who don’t end up locked up for a triple homicide.”
Brigid sipsa little of her own wine. She is a world-class sipper, my sister. She could make a single glass of wine last through two courses and dessert.
