THE SCANDAL BROKE a year and a half after Bethany’s death. The news reports described a pattern of easy sentences for drunk drivers, detailing the payoffs to clerks, and the collusion and kickbacks between the prosecutors and the defense attorneys. And judges. According to the papers, Stinson had sent someone to the hospital two years before he’d killed Bethany. If he’d been put in jail then, my granddaughter would still be alive. As more information came out, it revealed how Stinson had bribed his way out of consequences that first time, allowing him to do it all again. And to repeat the same scam in the second trial, for killing Bethany. With the same judge and prosecutor.
Of course, we were aware of none of that at the time. As horrible as losing Bethany was, in the immediate aftermath we managed to grow together, comforting one another. It was the legal proceedings that nearly did us in, setting us adrift, without even a clear outcome to hope for, besides some sort of ill-defined sense of justice. It sucked us into a whirlpool of constantly frustrated expectations. Iris coped by appearing at every court date—which were capricious, impossible to plan for, and frustrating, since mostly they consisted of incomprehensible mumblings between lawyers and judges and whispered exchanges between attorneys and clients. The “family of victims” blogs on the internet said that it was important to keep showing up, to remind the court of the damage this man had caused. Bit by bit, the goal of “getting justice for Bethany” became Iris’s mission. It became her mantra, her reason for being.
And during all the months Iris was organizing her life around court dates, the guy who murdered Bethany was not in jail. His lawyer argued that Stinson was not a flight risk, since he was in a wheelchair and had a lot of medical troubles because of his damaged spine. (“As if people in wheelchairs can’t get on a plane,” Iris had sniffed.) An attorney friend of ours explained that because he was not incarcerated, it was in Stinson’s interest to employ every means he could to drag out the process. And this, more than anything else, chipped away at Iris, at my family. We spent mind-numbing hours waiting for the case to be called, only to find that Stinson’s lawyer was asking for another continuance because “Mr. Stinson had to have a procedure,” or because the arresting officer was not available to testify, or because some paperwork had not yet gotten to where it needed to be. I soon understood that Stinson’s lawyer knew exactly how to orchestrate all this, while still preserving the appearance that he, upstanding member of the bar, was in complete compliance. I came to loathe his lawyer almost more than I detested Stinson.
Television trains us to think that trials are full of tension, the courtroom charged with outrage. But that was not what I saw in the months that this played out. In reality, people were simply worn down by the boredom, the delays, the mundanity of it all. No wonder the neighbors and friends who had volunteered to accompany Iris to the hearings gradually stopped coming.
Who could blame them? They had jobs and families and daily lives: the imperatives of getting to the grocery store or their son’s soccer match superseded the need to make sure that they were in the gallery whenever Stinson was due in court. As months passed, I saw that in her neighbors’ eyes, Iris’s resolute insistence on “justice for Bethany” began to seem like a stubborn refusal to move on.
“Move on.” What a cruel term. How does one do that, I wonder, when the entire future one imagined has been destroyed?
But I wanted it for her too. It was necessary.
A year after the accident, I was sitting in Iris and Jimmy’s kitchen. The trial had still not been scheduled. I was trying to get Iris to think of other things, so I had dropped by, hoping to take them to dinner. To feel normal for an hour or two, to do something other than mourn or curse the lawyers. No one was home yet, so I sat in the kitchen to wait.
The refrigerator door still displayed a schedule of events from the middle school. An outdated permission form for a field trip Bethany would never take poked out from under strata of expired coupons. A palimpsest of a daily life, completely altered now. I moved a take-out menu, and there, affixed to the door with a butterfly magnet, was a heartbreaking drawing of the three of them, in front of their house, that Bethany had done as a fourth grader. Tears stung my eyes.
The door opened and Jimmy entered the kitchen, arms full of groceries. “Ma!” he exclaimed as he set the bags on the counter. Despite everything, there was still something youthful about him. Maybe it was his freckles. Then he leaned down to kiss my cheek and I saw the shadows in his eyes, their surface closed over the pain. “This is a nice surprise.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “I thought I could take you two out for dinner. Someplace fun. Maybe that barbecue joint?” The choice was strategic. Before she died, Bethany had become a vegetarian, in what Iris had decided was a form of rebellion in her meat-loving family. So they would never have eaten there with her.
I could see in Jimmy’s face that he knew exactly why I’d suggested it. He nodded. “Sounds terrific. Just let me put these groceries away.” He hoisted the bag. “I always welcome an excuse not to cook.” Apparently it still fell to him to figure out what was needed from the market and make dinner.
Poor Jimmy. He was just as devastated as Iris. But somehow he had to keep going to work every morning and dealing with the outside world, the world of offices and traffic jams and signing for packages and paying the bills. The world Iris had withdrawn from. I thought it was a form of bravery to somehow keep facing the world as if your private universe weren’t in collapse. But Iris sometimes acted as if Jimmy’s carrying on with daily life was some sort of cowardly caving-in, a refusal to foreground their catastrophe, to insist that the world account for it over and over again.
“Where is Iris?” I asked.
He was reaching to put a box of cereal on a high shelf, and I saw his shoulders tense. He didn’t look at me while he answered. “Um. Probably still at her group. But she usually calls if she’s going to be late.”
“She’s still going?” Dismay tinged my voice.
I was the one who had suggested that Iris join a support group. Now I regretted it. When I’d first mentioned it, she’d resisted. At that point she was so shattered and so insular that any way to get her out of the house and take steps back toward life seemed like a good plan. I had reached out to someone from MADD, the Moms Against Drunk Driving organization. They seemed so admirable. These women channeled their grief to a purpose, working to make sure no one else would go through what they had.
But Iris went in another direction. She finally said yes, not in response to my suggestion, but to a “grieving for lost children” group that had reached out to her. I’m not sure how they got her name—maybe they kept track of potential new members in the papers. At any rate, I went with her, thinking it might help me as well. I attended four times before I realized not every such gathering is healthy. And that some things don’t really count as “support.”
I had imagined such groups existed to help people put their lives back together. I’ll admit, maybe even that horrible phrase “moving on,” and all the things it implied, was part of my thinking. Because, well—life. Life demands that we live in the present and construct our lives with the materials we are given. And Iris and Jimmy and everyone in our family were faced with somehow incorporating this lousy, horrible sadness into the fabric of our every day.
But that didn’t seem to be the focus of this support group. At the first meeting we attended, the grievers—all women—perched on a folding chairs arranged in a circle in the basement of a local church. A table along the wall offered a package of cookies, a thermos of hot water and a basket of tea, instant coffee, creamer and sugar.
I went to get something to drink before the meeting began. As I opened the packet of Lipton’s, one of the participants, a thin older woman with papery skin and gray roots, hugged herself and started to sway. Soon she was shaking, weeping like a child, with snot running down her face as she railed against the injustice of the world that had taken her son. The others caught her emotion and began to call forth their own loss. Within minutes the entire group was sobbing, like some sort of grief orgy. I thought of religious ecstasies and mosh pits … places where emotions are magnified and reflected, spiraling upward toward extravagant release. I gaped, horrified.
My shock must have shown, because a person at my elbow said, “It’s something, isn’t it?”
I turned. A woman with glossy dark hair sipped some instant coffee and nodded at the lady who had kicked things off. “That’s my mom. My brother drowned two and a half years ago.” She pressed her lips together. “I’m Rachel, by the way.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” I lifted my chin toward Iris. “That tall woman with the slipping ponytail is my daughter. Iris. We lost Bethany—her daughter—last year.” I hesitated. “Iris was driving. She blames herself. They were arguing, and she didn’t make Bethany put on her seat belt.”
Rachel’s eyes signaled sympathy and recognition. As we spoke, another griever, a young woman in a yellow dress, began hiccupping, “If the doctor had done his job, Peter would still be here.”
Rachel continued in low tones. “She lost her son to meningitis. Next to her—a genetic disorder. The one with the scarf lost her daughter in a diving accident, and the other one’s kid had cancer.” She cleared her throat. “That’s really all they know about one another. That’s how they identify. They come here to crank up their sadness—to pump one another up.”
I whispered, “I thought … I expected there to be coping strategies. I don’t know, talk about moving forward or something.”
Rachel inhaled. “Yeah. You and me both.”
I saw it clearly. This was a place where these women could simply be grief, elemental and raw.
As she drove home, Iris kept sighing in exhausted, shuddering breaths.
I cleared my throat. “So. What did you think?”
She exhaled. “You were right about joining a group. For once I was around people who know what it’s like. They understand what I’m going through.” She dabbed her eyes. “Did you know some of them lost their kids more than four years ago?”
The sentence put a chill in my heart. It reinforced my fear that Iris was in danger of defining herself solely as “a woman who had lost a child.”
I said, “That’s horrible. But … well, I wonder if maybe the people who run the group need to challenge those folks a little.”
I felt her stiffen. “Challenge?”
“Well, you know. For some of them it’s been years, and there is still such …” I let myself trail off, afraid to say more.
Her voice rose as she took one hand off the wheel. “What more challenge do we need, Mom? Getting out of bed is a challenge. No one who is grieving needs more of a challenge. How can you say that?”
I twisted in my seat and pleaded, my voice rising. “But no future was being developed. Don’t you see? All that did was amplify your sadness. It was like people were performing their pain, not creating a new life beyond it.”
“Oh my God.” Her voice cracked in anger. “I can’t believe you.” You’re the one who nagged me about joining a group. So I do, and now you don’t approve.”
“I meant … something worthwhile. Something that will help you put the pieces back together.”
We came to a red light, and she turned to glare at me in evident disbelief. “I’m the one who gets to say what helps me. And that did help.” She was furious. “God, Mom, how can you say stuff like that?”
I couldn’t believe me either. It wasn’t my place to judge. I was appalled at myself.
“You’re right.” I reached for her hand resting on the seat between us. “I’m so sorry.” I swallowed, ashamed. But she pulled her hand away and turned from me to stare out her window.
Months later, as I sat in my daughter’s kitchen and Jimmy sorted away the food, I said, “I didn’t know she was still going to those meetings.” At one point Iris would have discussed everything with me, but apparently not anymore. My throat tightened.
Jimmy busied himself with washing his hands before meeting my eyes. “She says it helps her.” I could tell by his tone it wasn’t helping him, or them.
There were footsteps on the back porch. Jimmy turned, his face rearranged into a practiced hopeful expression as Iris came in the door.
“Hi, honey.” He bent to kiss her cheek.
She was distracted and puffy-eyed. “Hi.” Then she saw me. “Mom … What brings you here? You should have said something—I would’ve made sure I was home.” As was usual lately, she wore no makeup, and her hair hung in a lank braid.
I smiled, feeling like I was caught in some guilty act. I often felt that way around Iris. She was so fragile, and so angry. “I thought I’d take you two out to eat. There’s that barbecue place I’ve been wanting to try.”
“Oh.” I could tell she was uncertain how she should respond. More and more I had the sense that there was some criteria Iris carried in her head, some rubric that she had to consult before allowing herself to do anything. In my mind it was directly related to the support group. Would a truly grieving mother go out to dinner?
Jimmy adopted a forced cheerfulness, but I could feel the tension underneath. Just like me, he didn’t know what to do or say to make things better. He put an arm around her shoulder, trying to knit the two of them into a united team. “That sounds like a great idea. It’s a nice evening, and I hear they have a patio.”
I quickly stood and adjusted my jacket. “Great! It’ll be fun. Do you some good.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Iris flared. “Do me good? What do you mean?”
I leaned back. “Just—it’s nice to get out once in a while. Change of routine, see what’s happening in the world.”
She pulled away from Jimmy and stepped toward me. “I don’t need to know what is happening, Mom. What difference does any of it make to me? Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing?”
“For goodness sake, Iris.” I lifted my shoulders, and opened my hands. “It’s dinner. You make it sound like inviting you to a restaurant is trying to pull something sneaky.”
“You’re trying to make me feel better. But I’m not going to feel better. I’m not about to forget my daughter. It’s barely been a year. Just because it’s inconvenient for everyone if I’m sad, I am not going to pretend it’s all okay just to satisfy you.”
“Iris! You know better than that.”
“You’re just like everyone else. Wanting me to ‘get over it.’” She made air quotes as she spat out the words. “Well, I’m not. I refuse to.”
“So what are you saying? That you’ll live in perpetual misery, with no purpose except to be sad? No one is forgetting Bethany. No one ever will. But we are still here. We need to somehow move on. Go forward.”
“Go forward?” She glared at me. “You have no idea. You’ve never lost a child.”
I felt like I’d been slapped.
“Iris! Stop!” Jimmy stepped forward, his voice loud and wavery. “For God’s sake, I lost her too. Frannie lost her. You think you’re the only one who feels it? Like you’re the queen of grief?” He was fighting for composure, his mouth trembling.
Iris’s face drained of all color. “I’m sorry.” She pressed her fingers to her mouth and looked down. “I’m sorry.”
Jimmy lost his battle and tears filled his eyes. He turned his back to her, his hands gripping the counter.
Iris stood in the middle of the kitchen, like the still upright mast of a foundering ship. She floated over to him and gently put her hands between his shoulder blades. Her voice was anguished. “How could God do this to me?”
Jimmy stiffened. “You’ve got to stop, Iris.” When he turned, his face looked broken, but his voice was hard. “I mean it. You’ve got to stop. It isn’t a punishment, and there isn’t a reason. God does not murder little girls.”
Iris looked up at him, her mouth half open. Then she swallowed and backed away for a few steps before turning and rushing out of the room, hands over her mouth. I tried to follow, but she yelled, “Just go away. Why can’t you just leave us alone?” and slammed their bedroom door.
I returned to the kitchen, where Jimmy still stood over the sink, his face a mask of bleak despair. I squeezed his arm before letting myself out.
That night Jimmy called me in a panic. He had found Iris on the floor of the bathroom, barely conscious, empty pill bottle in her hand. We rushed her to the hospital, where they saved her life.
After that, she refused to see me. She didn’t talk to me for three months.
It ended when another parent I had gotten to know from all the hours sitting in court called. He, too, had lost his daughter—to another drunk driver. “Where are you? Don’t you want to see the sentencing?”
“What do you mean?”
“It was added to the calendar for today. It’s happening now.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe the prosecutor hadn’t let me know. I called Jimmy from the car. They too were rushing to get there so the judge could see my daughter’s tear-stained face and sense her shattered heart and understand Stinson needed to be sentenced to the harshest possible punishment.
I ran into the building from the parking lot, but when I reached the courtroom door, I hesitated, suddenly uncertain. I tiptoed in and sat in the back. I wasn’t sure Iris would welcome me.
That is how I came to hear the words that dispensed the “justice” for my granddaughter’s death.
Stinson slumped in his wheelchair, shriveled and pathetic looking. His lawyer stood next to him, and across the aisle was the incompetent prosecutor, who hadn’t bothered to have us testify and hadn’t even notified us that the hearing date had been changed. The judge lectured Stinson, in a sonorous accent, about his behavior and his irresponsibility and the grief of our family. He spoke about how “the life you took can never be replaced,” while looking with dramatic sympathy at Iris and Jimmy. Then the judge became stiff and officious. “But I do not believe the taxpayers should be made responsible for providing ongoing medical care, as they would be if I were to sentence you to prison. Your injuries are perhaps adequate in regard to limiting your freedom, but I am still sentencing you to home confinement with an ankle bracelet.” He paused and looked down at the paper in his hand, and spoke words that later would torture my memory. “You will participate in an adequately vetted twelve-step program and work with schools to show young drivers what can happen if they make the same poor choice you did. You will also pay an eight-thousand-dollar fine.” Then it was over.
Stinson sat up straight in his wheelchair, suddenly looking more robust. He pumped the hand of his lawyer and grinned widely at the judge, who shot him a glare back and shook his head.
I sat gape-mouthed, unable to process this travesty. Iris jumped up, her voice breaking. “Wait. Wait! I want to testify. Don’t family members get to speak?” The prosecutor turned to cut her off, throwing a signal look at the guards, who moved forward. The judge, who had been halfway out the door, paused and held up his hand. The guards surrounding Iris stopped. She pleaded with the judge, “Please. Please let me tell you about my daughter.” Her voice was ragged. “This isn’t right.”
The judge took a step toward her and spoke like he would to an upset child. “We are sorry for your loss.” He adjusted his robe and nodded at the defense table, now empty. “It’s all over now. He has been adequately punished. You should go home and rest.” To Jimmy he said, “Take care of your wife.” Iris sank into the bench, staring from him to the prosecutor, in disbelief.
Jimmy wheeled on the prosecutor, asking, “What the hell was that?” But the prosecutor was already rushing out of the room, his face pink, like he couldn’t get away fast enough.
That night, I was staring, unseeing, out my window, my heart aching for my daughter, and wondering if she would survive this, when I heard a key turn in the door. Before I could throw off my afghan and get up off the couch, Iris appeared in my living room, eyes swimming.
“Oh, Ma,” she cried, and dove for my lap. I stroked her hair while she wept.