Once A Liar

NOW

I am supposed to be playing the role of father now that Jamie has moved in, and since I skipped out on dinner yesterday, Claire demanded that I stay home and interact with my son instead of heading to the office on a Sunday afternoon.

“His first night was incredibly awkward,” she says, “and of course it was. He didn’t even eat dinner. He just went up to his room like you did.”

“Remind me how this is my fault, Claire?” I say, still getting ready to go to the office.

“You should have been here. You should have welcomed your son on his first night in your house. You didn’t make any effort at all.” Claire isn’t looking at me. In fact, she hasn’t made eye contact all morning.

“I have to work, Claire. How do you think I afford to provide all of this for him? Sometimes I won’t join you for dinner. You’ve always understood that. He’s just going to have to understand it, too.”

“Oh, stop it, Peter. I know you weren’t at work. I called the office while Jamie and I waited for you, and Anna told me you’d left hours ago. Don’t feed me your lies.”

Caught but unconcerned, I continued to focus on tying my tie.

“He didn’t mention anything about his room. I tried so hard to make it welcoming for him. It’s like I shouldn’t have even bothered,” Claire pouts. She’s not talking to me anymore, just speaking her mind aloud and airing her frustrations into the mirror. I watch her shake the negativity off herself, still determined to make strangers into family.

“Peter, please at least have lunch with us today before you go into the office. For me. I got your note yesterday, the one that said I get to be a mother now? Well, you have to be a father now. It’s Sunday. Please. Stay for lunch.” She turns and rushes down the stairs.

I stand on the landing outside my bedroom and wait until I hear the murmur of chatter in the kitchen before I gently make my way down the steps to Jamie’s room. I’m curious to see what it’s like to have him in this house.

Jamie is impeccably tidy, and I am impressed with the way he’s made his bed and folded his clothes in the closet. I walk around and look at the pictures sitting on the bookshelves, photos of me with bigwig CEOs on fishing trips, of me shaking the hands of politicians and criminals on the steps of courthouses. A photo I don’t recognize is propped up against a frame; a picture of Juliette in a long yellow gown. As I lift it out of the way, I see it’s obscuring a picture of me with my arm around John Gotti holding a giant fish. I lay the photo back in front of a different frame.

I sneak down the stairs to the parlor floor and hear Claire and Jamie chatting in the kitchen. I peek in through the slightly propped door.

“How have you been doing? It’s only been a week since your mom passed.” Claire doesn’t look at him, busy shoving herbs and lemon peels into the cavity of a chicken.

I hear Jamie take a deep, ragged breath before responding. “It’s weird. I mean I knew it was coming, you know? She was sick, but—I guess it still hasn’t really hit me. I feel like I’m on vacation staying here. It doesn’t feel like this is my house.”

“Well, you just got here, sweetie. It’s going to take a little while before you feel comfortable. Sometimes even I feel like I’m vacationing here.” She peeks out from behind the carcass and grins warmly at Jamie.

I step into the doorway to make myself known before they can delve further into their irritating discomforts.

“Hello,” I say, walking into the kitchen as if I hadn’t been listening to them.

“Hi,” they both respond at the same time. Claire’s face flushes, and she busies herself with lunch instead of admitting to me that she’s uncomfortable in my house. Jamie looks at me with the expectant eyes of a teenager. What could he possibly want from me?

“Jamie, welcome. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help you get settled yesterday. Big case I’ve been working on, I hope you understand.”

He shrugs like he didn’t even notice my disappearance.

“Good. I’m sure Claire took great care of you.” I glare at her, silently letting her know her lecture was unwarranted.

“I’m making a feast for lunch here, Peter. Jamie didn’t eat anything last night, and I don’t want him to starve to death,” she says lightly, obviously trying to change the subject.

“Fine,” I say, using an authoritative voice I hardly recognize. “I’ve got some work to do, so I’ll be in the parlor. Let me know when it’s ready.” I step through the threshold and sit down in front of the fireplace in the parlor. I pull some papers from my briefcase and open my laptop, but instead of working, I’m straining to hear what’s happening in the kitchen.

Claire leaves the chicken to roast while Jamie tells her about his classes and friends at school. The details are boring, and I’m not hearing my name, so I tune out and focus my attention back on the computer.

After nearly an hour of mundane chatting, I hear the sounds of cupboards opening and closing and the clatter of plates and silverware. I focus back in on them to hear what they’re saying.

“Do you like going to the movies?” Jamie asks her.

“I like watching movies at home—I haven’t been to a movie theater in a long time. Ever since the bedbugs thing in New York, I got really grossed out by those places. There’s a huge screen down in the basement with big leather chairs. It’s really fun to watch down there. It’s like being in a clean movie theater.”

That’s what I like to hear, something positive. At least I’ve provided a good place for movie watching.

“What kinds of movies do you like?” Jamie asks, classic teenage attempt to find common ground with a grown-up.

“I like everything. Action, comedies, romantic stuff that you probably hate. I like sports movies, too. My favorite is definitely Field of Dreams.”

“I love that movie. Been watching a lot of the superhero stuff these days. Lots of Batman movies.” Jamie’s jovial tone turns pensive and my ears perk up. “I feel like Batman sometimes.”

“You feel like a superhero?” I can hear the hopefulness in Claire’s voice.

“No... I feel like an orphan.”

“Oh, Jamie. I’m so sorry. You must miss your mom so much.”

Now I’m getting agitated, and I don’t know if I want to listen anymore. I don’t need to hear about Jamie’s feelings of being orphaned. It’s not my fault his mother is dead.

“Yeah, and I wish I knew my dad. It’s like he doesn’t really exist, you know? My friends tell stories about their dads coming to lacrosse games and taking them on vacations, and I can only tell them stories that my mom told me. And I know she made them up.”

I stand and lean against the doorframe in the parlor to hear them, careful not to step on a creaking floorboard.

“What did your mom tell you?” Claire asks, and I hear the clattering of the oven door close.

“What a nice guy he is, and that person we saw on TV during big trials was just his professional persona. She said that he really loved me and wanted to stay with our family but that he didn’t know how to. She told me about when they first met, and he would take her out on these fancy dates and plan these special surprises. She told me this one story about a scavenger hunt that he set up for her across New York City. She said he made her feel special. But I never saw him like that. He always ignored me.”

I feel a twinge of defense brewing in my stomach as I listen to Jamie list my perceived shortcomings.

“One time he called me Charlie,” Jamie adds. “Couldn’t even remember my name.”

Did I? I chalk it up to a Freudian slip.

“He’s a good man, your dad.” Claire begins her well-versed defense. “Just sometimes it gets lost under his...his armor. He doesn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

“Is he nice to you?” Jamie asks delicately.

I strain to hear how Claire responds. I know I’m not nice to her. At least not lately.

“Well, no, not all the time. But he can be. And when he is, it makes all the other times worth it. When he’s good, he’s perfect, but when he’s bad...”

Now I’ve had enough. I won’t allow this conversation to continue. I loudly slap the laptop closed and make a point to rustle the papers as I shove them back into my briefcase.

“Does he even know how much he hurts people?” Jamie lays out a final question.

Before Claire can compose an excuse for my behavior, I walk through the parlor doors to join them in the kitchen. I can just see Claire quickly bring a finger to her lips and extend her pinky across the table. Jamie takes it in his pinkie and mimics her finger to his lips. I walk into the kitchen to see my newfound family sharing what they think are secrets behind my back. I don’t tell them that I heard every word.

THEN

I left the club that night before Marcus did, sick to my stomach by his behavior with the dancer. Marcus’s cruelty was deeply etched in his treatment of others, and as I walked home that night, I feared that Juliette’s words were truer than I had given them credit for. I walked downtown, the air cool and fresh, my head filled with contradiction.

I had come to New York to become the next Marcus Rhodes. My ambitions were materializing before me, and I couldn’t allow myself to be held back professionally because I took personal issue that my mentor turned out to be cruel and inhumane. I always knew I’d have to temper my soft side to succeed in this business, but I wouldn’t allow myself to become like Marcus. He was just teaching me a lesson with the dancer, I told myself. A lesson I would be sure to learn sooner rather than later.

It took every ounce of my energy to dig up the dirt on the Bogovian accuser. On the surface, she seemed picture-perfect. I asked around at her high school and her university down in North Carolina. I called everyone who might be willing to throw an old friend under the bus. A college roommate proved to be just the person I was looking for.

The case was making headlines well before we went to trial. Bogovian was portrayed horrifyingly, if accurately, in the press, and my job became harder as I was forced not only to deliver a case that would produce sufficient doubt, but also surmount the image the media had disseminated. Jury selection was a nightmare; everyone in New York had heard of Stu Bogovian and everyone had an opinion. Finding peers without preconceived notions proved incredibly difficult. I was meticulous in my preparations, acutely aware of Marcus’s expectations of me.

The trial itself didn’t take more than a couple of weeks. The alleged victim had a roommate in college who was willing to testify that she was into kinky sex. The roommate had told me a story about the girl being left tied to the bedpost in an encounter gone wrong, and she simply lay there, naked and spread-eagled, waiting for the roommate to find scissors to remove the binding. It started to seem plausible to me that this woman was nothing but a money-grubbing slut, like Marcus said she was, looking to extort a wealthy man. She had probably asked to be tied up, I told myself.

I brutalized the girl’s reputation in court. I brought up every name, every story, every sexual encounter I could verify. After closing arguments, there was nothing to do but wait while the jury deliberated.

Marcus stood by me, reminding me to temper my sense of remorse for publicly destroying the intern’s credibility. But mostly it felt like he was just trying to relieve me of human decency.

It took the jury four days of deliberation to come back with a verdict. When the jurors filed back into the courtroom and we all stood to listen to their decision, my confidence was so high, I had my celebratory cigar unwrapped and clipped in my jacket pocket. I had discredited the accuser. I had poked holes in the prosecution’s timeline and evidence. Although I struggled with the moral depravity, I’d had to do what I’d done to get the win. I knew we would come out on top.

The foreman walked the paper to the judge, and as he read the verdict to himself, he looked directly at me. I could see the traces of a smile upturning the corners of his mouth. My confidence grew even more.

I stood up and pulled Stu’s chair out for him. “Here we go,” I whispered. Stu smiled and shook my hand.

The foreman returned to the bench, looked at the victim’s lawyer as he spoke and refused to make eye contact with me or with Stu. “We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant Stuart Bogovian guilty of assault in the first degree.” They went on to find him guilty of first-degree attempted rape.

The room suddenly felt warm and claustrophobic. I turned to look at Stu, who fell back into his seat and grasped his greasy hair with his sweaty palms. He tugged the bottom of my suit jacket and pleaded with me to do something. “What the fuck, Caine? I thought you said we had this in the bag?”

I couldn’t choke out a word, watching Harrison and Eric Gordon explode with excitement as cheers rose from the crowd. My head felt stuffy and faraway, like I was watching the verdict on an old television through layers of static. Everything felt like it was moving quickly around me, but I was trapped in some slow-motion underwater world where I couldn’t move or react.

The bailiff put Stu in handcuffs and court officers led him away while I stood, disoriented and confused, wondering if what was unfolding around me was really happening.

Stu struggled as the officers opened the door to exit the courtroom, and he screamed accusations and profanities my way. “You’re a fucking fraud, Caine! You’ll never succeed in this town, mark my words!” The door slammed behind him as Harrison and Eric walked across the aisle to gloat in my face, unable to contain their satisfaction.

Eric, smirking at me, extended his hand, clearly a faux-professional gesture.

“Can’t win ’em all, eh, Peter?” He laughed.

I gathered up my papers and briefcase, nodded his way and muttered, “Well played.”

Harrison, for his part, didn’t even attempt to shake my hand or show any dignity. He just slapped his ADA on the back and led him away, looking at me with judgment plastered all over his face.

The reporters waiting outside the courthouse were merciless. Shoving cameras and microphones in my face, hollering questions as I shielded myself from their torments, walking quickly to the curb and jumping into the back of a cab.

Once home, my mind finally cleared, and the realization of what just happened began to sink in. The sickening taste of defeat didn’t sit well with me. I poured myself two fingers of scotch to wash down the bitterness in my throat and turned on CNN to find Eric and Harrison on-screen. Harrison stood larger than life behind his ADA, and Eric took the microphone to speak. Before I could hear what he had to say, my phone rang, and I snatched it up immediately.

“Angry?” Marcus asked me from the other side of the line.

“Furious,” I responded, though I was still more bewildered than angry.

“Good. That’s the kind of fuel you need.” He drew in a deep drag of his cigarette and I could almost hear him grin.

Just as I was about to respond, I suddenly understood what was happening. “You did this...you did this on purpose? You knew we would lose?”

“Of course we would lose, Peter. This was a completely unwinnable case. I’ve always known what you were capable of, and I’m not talking about legal skills.” He sucked in another drag. “You needed to get your ego in check and you needed to access the useful parts of yourself.”

“The useful parts?” A rapid succession of visuals passed through my head, and I remembered watching Marcus Rhodes, my legal hero, a god to my classmates in law school, gutting his opponents in courts without mercy or pity.

“The useful parts are the cold ones, Peter. The unsentimental, remorseless, brutal parts. That’s what you need in your career. Put that sympathetic bullshit behind you and embrace the fury you feel right now.” He was a monster, and I had sold my soul. Juliette’s warning that afternoon in Central Park flashed like a neon sign in my head.

As Marcus instructed me to accept my spite and anger, I struggled to reconcile my thoughts. I couldn’t accept that Marcus would set me up to fail and damage my pristine reputation, the one thing I wanted so badly to maintain. I looked up to him, and for me to learn from him and achieve his levels of success, I couldn’t turn against him—I couldn’t start to hate him.

“Why would you put me through this, Marcus? I did everything you asked of me. Why humiliate me like this?” I didn’t want to whine or appear unappreciative, but I couldn’t understand what we could possibly gain through failure.

“I didn’t do this to you—Harrison Doyle did. Don’t be mad at me, Peter. Get mad at him.” I focused in on Harrison’s pixelated face on the television. It wasn’t Marcus who would be on the receiving end of my hate; it was Harrison Doyle.

I hung up the phone, in need of a distraction. I headed to Bull & Bear at the Waldorf, assured I was far enough uptown to avoid anyone involved in the Bogovian case. But, of course, with the luck I was having that day, Harrison was there, holding court at the bar. I dreaded speaking with him, though I wanted to hear exactly what he had to say. I craned my neck to listen.

“Peter Caine is an ineffective upstart, lacking the singular ability it takes to win cases—heart. Even his client called him a fraud.”

Harrison went on to slander Stu Bogovian, spurred on by the gasps and guffaws of the rest of the lawyers. My ears filled with a burning heat, and the word ineffective blared in my head over and over again. Harrison Doyle said I was a feeble attorney, that I couldn’t do my job. He trashed my reputation in front of colleagues and peers.

My humiliation turned to anger and was then replaced with a burning, malicious drive. Marcus was right—it was Harrison who put me in this position, not Marcus. Marcus was teaching me how to be the best, and I was going to get there. All I needed to do was follow Marcus’s path, coldhearted as it may be.

Ineffective? Never. I vowed to make Harrison regret those words. And oh, how the tables would turn.

NOW

This morning, Claire rises early, catching me as I put on my suit in my dressing room. It’s rare that Claire and I wake up together, and even more infrequent that we share a morning coffee or breakfast. Even on the weekends, I always have something to do that takes me out of the house and away from her. She’s used to living with a ghost; an indent in the other side of the bed, a whiff of aftershave as opposed to a real human being.

“Good morning,” she calls, her voice foggy.

I pop my head through the doorway to look at her. “What are you doing up so early?” I cinch my tie tightly up to my throat.

“I wanted to make sure I was awake to send Jamie off to school before I go to work. Give him a nice breakfast.” Claire yawns and stretches her thin limbs across the whole bed.

“That kid kept me up half the night traipsing around. Floorboards creaking down there—it was deafening.” I scrutinize my reflection.

“I didn’t hear a thing. You’re probably just imagining it.” She takes a long sip of water and rubs the sleep from her eyes. “He’s living here now. You have no more excuses to avoid developing a relationship with him. It’s important—he’s been through so much. He needs his father.”

I don’t respond. After their clandestine conversation yesterday, dancing on the edge of insulting me, I don’t feel inclined to take parenting advice from someone who doesn’t have faith in me.

Claire plods gently into her bathroom to brush her teeth. As soon as she shuts the water off, I close the bedroom door and quickly head down the stairs.

“What am I going to cook for this kid?” she says aloud when she walks into the kitchen. She’s not speaking to me, instead posing her question to the inside of the fridge. I don’t respond. She pulls out a package of bacon and starts laying strips in a frying pan. “All teenagers love bacon, right?” she asks into the pan.

The smell instantly fills the kitchen, and Claire inhales deeply while chopping vegetables for a quick frittata. She punches the button on the espresso machine and makes herself a coffee while she works. I keep my nose in the paper, making sure my presence stills her ability to return to a discussion about me once Jamie comes down.

Jamie appears in the doorway with his backpack slung over one shoulder.

“Morning,” he says. He drops his bag on the ground and pulls up a seat at the round table.

“Good morning, Jamie.” Claire smiles. “Did you sleep well?”

“Not really. I think I need to get used to my new room.” He looks nervously in my direction. “Sorry if I was loud. I was wandering around a bit.”

“No problem,” I lie.

“Bacon and eggs okay?”

“Great, thanks, Claire.” Jamie stands and takes the plates from the cabinets and sets the table for breakfast. “It was good to talk to you yesterday,” he begins but immediately stops himself.

“Yes,” she agrees. She sips her coffee, and I think I see her shoot a wink his way.

“I walked around the house last night.” Jamie fiddles with the knife by his plate, changing the subject from yesterday’s conversation that I wasn’t supposed to hear. “I couldn’t fall asleep, so I went exploring.”

“Where did you explore?” I ask, wondering if he’d been snooping in my things.

“Just around my floor and down here. There aren’t any pictures of me in this house,” Jamie says. “I mean, I don’t want to be an egomaniac or anything, it’s just there used to be so many pictures of me at home. And now I’m in a house with none. It’s noticeable. There aren’t any pictures of you, either,” he says to Claire.

Claire frowns. Both of them look to me for explanation, but I’ve turned my attention back to the paper.

“No,” she sighs. “No, there aren’t. The framed photographs throughout the house were mostly gifts. Prints of Peter and whatever client he just successfully defended. He gets a lot of those as thank-you presents. It’s just part of what he does for a living.” She slices the cake-like frittata and brings Jamie two big pieces flanked by crispy strips of bacon.

Claire holds up the spatula in my direction and asks me if I would like a slice. She is looking at me as if she’d like me to leave. Like she has things to say to Jamie she doesn’t want me to hear.

“No, thanks.” I smile. “I’ve got to make a quick call in the other room before I head to the office.” I hold up my cell phone and walk to the parlor again. I make a show of loudly speaking into the phone to no one and pacing the floor. Just as I expected, Jamie starts back in on the conversation, but I can’t quite hear the beginning of what he says. I mumble a loud “mmm-hmm” into the phone and pull it away from my ear so I can listen to my son.

“Do you think he knows they’re guilty?”

“I don’t know if all of them are guilty,” Claire responds, “but it certainly seems like they are. Peter once told me that it’s not his job to care if they did it or not. It’s his job to provide them with the best possible defense.” I’m pleased to hear Claire defending me so beautifully.

“My mom told me about his cases sometimes—she wanted me to be proud that he was such a good lawyer. But then I would look up the cases online, see who he was defending and what they had done. The funny thing about all of Peter’s cases—” Jamie chews a piece of bacon “—when his clients are found innocent, no one else ever gets arrested for the crime. So, it seems to me, his guy must have done it. But they still go free all the time.”

Juliette seems to have spent quite a bit of time talking about me. I reflexively crack my neck in agitation.

“A person needs a proper defense. Our whole legal system is based on that notion. Innocent until proven guilty, right? And if the prosecution can’t prove it, then it’s the system’s problem.” Claire knows exactly what to say. I’ve trained her well.