“No more get-out-of-jail passes,” the clerk had said. “Tell it to the judge.” A hundred jurors were called down from the main jury room. They expected most of us to be dismissed. Word spread like wildfire; this was the media-saturated De Meglio murder trial: an Italian grandmother who shot her grandson’s dealer with a hunting rifle.
A woman climbing the stairs next to me whispered, “He’s going to let me out. I have three degrees, and they want malleable immigrants and blacks for trials.”
Judge Berliner welcomed us to the voir dire process. “Voir dire is from old French: ‘To speak the truth.’ You are obligated under New York state law to speak and say the truth. Many people in this room think they have indispensable jobs. I assure you that an important job is not enough for me. How many of you have not heard of this case?”
One hand went up. “He’ll be on the trial,” whispered my new hallway “friend.”
The judge dismissed him. A murmur went through the seats.
“This is a pragmatic court. Nothing’s wrong with watching a bit of TV. If you’ve been living in New York City and you haven’t heard of this case, I don’t want you in my courtroom. The lawyers can dismiss you, but the judge can, too. The one excuse I’ll accept straightaway is if you are a woman with a child under six without daycare. If you are in this category please raise your hands now.” About twenty hands went up. “Bailiff O’Reilly is going to take names and numbers of these women, and we’ll be imposing a serious fine if we catch anyone lying.” About a dozen hands went down. The remaining women went over to the clerk single file and were dismissed. “Are there others who believe they cannot sit on this case?” Practically the whole room raised their hands.
“I see,” Judge Berliner said. “Someone’s going to have to sit on it.”
We went up one at a time with our creative predicaments. In the silent courtroom it was easy to hear his consistent reply: “I see. But you’ll have to take your seat.”
My turn. I went toward the bench and handed him my jury card. “I don’t think I could be impartial. My cousin’s a recovering heroin addict—I’m his caretaker. Also, I have no money to spare. I’m temping and jury wage is not going to take care of my rent.”
“Thank you, Ms. Ganelli, you may take your seat.”
“How can you do this?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“My cousin went through the program! You can call Beth Israel! Stuart Lipschitz—”
“Please sit down, Ms. Ganelli. I’ve been in this courtroom for thirty years and I know someone inconvenienced by jury duty is not the same as someone who can’t serve.”
“Sit down, Ms. Ganelli.”
I sat there seething. Through the afternoon, Manhattanites unsuccessfully argued their right to rake in more than fifteen dollars a day. A sweet woman I had chatted with a bit in the women’s room provided Berliner with her son’s Yale graduation ceremony invitation. She was sent back to her seat with teary mascara.
She leaned over to a bunch of sympathetic jurors. “He said a smart son will respect me more if I went through the process.”
“Bastard!” the guy to my right said.
Berliner called him up to the stand. “I could fine you in contempt of court, but you’re not worth my time.” And he was dismissed. Why didn’t I think of that?
The clerk rolled the jury slips in a metal barrel that looked like the ones game shows use to pick out “this week’s lucky viewer.” Sixteen of the eighty-five left in the courtroom were asked to take their seats in the sturdy, wooden jury chairs and four fold-out chairs. The rumpled court-appointed public defender’s fly was at half-mast. “Ms. Rachel Ganelli? Ms. Ganelli, you wrote in Ms.?”
“Yes.”
“Briefly, what is your line of work?”
“I’m in between jobs, but I have worked as an acquisitions editor for a book firm.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Do you live at home?”
“What do you mean by that—am I an unmarried woman living with my parents?” Plan B: let the lawyers think I’m a livewire.
He scratched himself on the head and nodded.
“Let the record show that Mr. Presticastro nodded his head in the affirmative,” Judge Berliner said.
“I’m subletting from my parents.”
“Ms. Ganelli, do you have relatives in the law profession?”
“I have a cousin who’s a police officer. I really respect him.” How were they going to check on cousins? Safe lie.
“Tell me about your hobbies.”
“I like reading trial books.”
“Do you think you understand the law?”
“Absolutely. I think I’d make an excellent lawyer.” I peripherally caught Judge Berliner’s face. He was on to me.
“You have heard of this case?
“Yes.”
“How did you first hear about it?
“Where? On TV—I followed it closely, a horrible case!”
“What station did you follow it on? Which anchor person do you like to watch?” He had asked this question before, and when the person in the front row said Fox he seemed pretty happy. But what if he asked me about Fox—I didn’t know their anchors. Shit, shit. What do I say? Defense, they hate public TV …
“I was in Australia at the time, and I saw it on their public broadcasting station. The ABC. Excellent foreign coverage.”
“So, in actuality, you were out of the country when the incident took place?”
Fuck! “Yes.” The defense attorney smiled at me. “Thank you, Ms. Ganelli.”
“Mr. Lanier, is it? What do you do in your spare time?”
“I’m into UFOs—”
The assistant district attorney, Ms. Gorsham, spoke to us in a robotic manner. Before questioning me, she took a long pause to check her notes.
“Hangs her clothes on Shaker pegs,” the high school history teacher on my right whispered.
Ms. Gorsham sat on the edge of her lawyer’s table to get the skinny on me. How down-to-earth and confident, I knew I was supposed to think.
“Did you attend a university, Ms. Ganelli?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“Syracuse.”
“What did you major in?”
“TV, I loved my major, and, uh, science.” I looked her up and down. About fifty and rougeless. Barnard or Radcliffe. Jesus, she’s prosecuting, she wants me to be smart. Please don’t ask me which one.
“Science? How interesting, Ms. Ganelli. What branch?”
Hey what about the TV? Don’t you want to hear about my junior-year demographic analysis of Saturday morning cartoons? “Physics.” She raised her eyebrow to her young male assistant, who was downright hunky, even in my nausea I noted that. He made a mark on his pad next to a diagram of the juror seats.
After lunch the judge called us back from trial.
“When the clerk calls your name you are free to go.”
The clerk read from his book. “Ms. Pfister—Mr. Lanier—Mrs. Chu—Mr. Liss (the history teacher)—Mr. Rodriquez.” My name was not being called. “Mr. Molinari.” They’re dismissing the Italians. Manga! “Mr. Stein.” Name after not-my-name was called.
“Ms. Ganelli and Mr. De Jesus, after the clerk swears you in, you can join the two others sworn jurors in the jury room. We have eight other jurors and four alternates to secure.”
The clerk approached me. “Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?”
Wait a fucking second.
Nine jurors had been picked. Three more jurors and four alternates to go. The bailiff opened the door to our jury room. He looked like Rusty Staub, Frank’s favorite Met from the 1973 pennant race: big build, ruddy complexion, and tawny hair. He asked us to write down our requests for sandwiches.
“Who ordered the cappy ham?”
“I did,” Mr. De Jesus said.
“What’s cappy ham?”
“Kind of ham.”
“If we don’t have cappy, can I get you a normal ham?”
“I guess.”
“Okay then,” the bailiff said, “first crisis down. This trial will last about a month, is my guess, but don’t quote me on it. Better get used to each other.”
A pushing-elderly man in a yarmulke inquired, “Can you ask the judge if we get Monday off for Lag b’Omer?”
“Lag what?” Bailiff O’Reilly said.
The juror wrote it down for him to take back out to the courtroom.
“What’s that holiday for?” asked a forty-ish children’s book editor, an oversize, overhealthy blonde straight out of Edna Ferber’s So Big. During the voir dire, she had said she was of Swedish descent.
“It’s the day the manna started raining down from the heavens to sustain the Jews in the desert,” I said.
“You’re Jewish?” the Orthodox juror smiled.
“Half,” I said.
“That’s one interpretation. It’s the thirty-third day of the seven-week period of mourning from the start of the seder—mourning for the Jews who died at the hands of the Pharaoh. Lag b’Omer is the thirty-third day, and Shuvvuos is the fiftieth day. That’s the counting of the Omer. It’s a harvest preparation reprise from the mourning. You can be merry, plant wheat, and have haircuts.”
“Such knowledge!” the blond editor said.
“I’m a librarian at Yeshiva University,” he admitted.
“The counting sounds like the days leading up to Lent,” said Mr. De Jesus, the naturalized Dominican bartender from Washington Heights—the other juror selected from my batch.
“The Christians lifted many of their customs from the Jews; some of them I’m sure priests wouldn’t want you to know about,” the Orthodox juror said.
And the Jews borrowed heavily from the Phoenicians, I wanted to say, but I’d learned my lesson from the last nasty quarrel with Benji at Passover. The bartender was of finer moral fiber than me. A bit later, as the two of us leafed through a stack of old Reader’s Digests, he told me to call him Louis. Louis said that he realized right off that the Orthodox juror was not used to talking to Catholic bartenders on a daily basis. He knew the man was merely trying to dispense information and not make a judgment, and had therefore forced a smile.
Five more jurors came in: a young woman who also looked Dominican or Puerto Rican, a black woman who later said she was a legal secretary, a young black man with dreds who worked for the post office, the three-degreed white woman from the hall, and the hot Indian or Pakistani guy I’d spotted in the far corner of the jury check-in room earlier that morning, reading Nietzsche. He had light brown skin, a chin-length bob, and a kissable mouth. He introduced himself as Raj.
The bailiff reentered our holding pen. “You will have Monday off for the holiday Lag b’Omer.” The big blond woman turned to the Orthodox juror and said, “Thanks! Let’s try Swedish Pancake Day.” The ones in on the joke laughed, except me, sourpuss with a recovering heroin addict back home.
“A few more items of information I need to pass on. We have a refrigerator,” the bailiff said, “but it’s pretty gross. There’s an inexpensive cafeteria in the building, and there is a decent Korean deli on the corner. I also recommend the vegetable dumplings at Excellent Dumpling House a few blocks down for a good quick lunch.”
“How about a microwave?” the legal secretary asked.
“What is this, Fantasy Island?” he responded with perfect timing. “This is the New York State legal system. You’re lucky the fan is working.” Once again everyone except me laughed.
“Don’t look so glum,” the rasta post-office worker said to me. “How bad can this be?”
A few minutes later the bailiff, known to us now as Kevin, instructed us to join the final four selected jurors in the courtroom.
“Thank you for being patient,” Judge Berliner said. “We will begin the trial on Tuesday—one of our jurors celebrates the Jewish holiday of Lag b’Omer. I will not sequester you for now, but you may not talk about this case outside of the courtroom. We can expect media attention on the trial, and I will warn you that if it gets out of hand and the hoopla interferes with justice, I have the legal obligation to sequester you. Please report to the juror room at eight forty-five A.M. Bailiff O’Reilly will give you a pass so you can leapfrog the lines outside the courtroom. Have a nice weekend. You are dismissed.”
“You’re on the De Meglio trial?” Frank gasped. He’d biked over to the apartment to bring my father’s minimum items for living: the Times, good virgin olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella, the latter three from the Italian Food Center on Grand Street. “What about Stuart? You’re going to leave it to Mom and Dad now, aren’t you? You’re from New York City. You don’t know how to get off a trial? What the fuck, Rachel? Didn’t you say your uncle is a cop?”
“I said my cousin was a heroin addict! And another cousin was a cop. What more could I do?”
“And another cousin was a gun-toting grandmother? You have to appear sincere.”
“Look, know-it-all, there’s a woman on the trial with morning sickness. The judge wouldn’t let her use pregnancy as an excuse—we might have to wait an hour every morning while she throws up.”
“I think it’s kind of a funny story,” Stuart said from the hallway. “Your mum’s going to help me get work this week. Don’t worry about me.”
Was Stuart to be trusted yet? The silverware, the computer, and the two expensive vases could be sold for cash. My parents had delayed their trip for another two weeks. God knows how long this trial would last. Frank was right: I should have been crazier during voir dire. I should have started quoting doctrine or taken my bra off and swung it like a flag. Wouldn’t I have done that if I wanted to take control again?
My father had been teaching Stuart how to play chess. Stuart was setting up the board for when my parents got back from their movie. He put the bishops where the rooks should be, and the black king on a white square, but I figured, Let Dad correct him. Next, I made an unconnected decision, like a decision to apply to a certain college while lacing up a new pair of boots. I was going to see Colin. That’s what I was going to do.
From my parents’ room, I called up the Garden box office. The INXS concert was sold out.
“Are you adding dates?”
“We’d love to, but it’s the end of their tour.”
How could I get backstage? I could track down the hotel he was in. I called my old house in Australia to see if they had sublet the place. No one answered. I called EMI and asked for their publicity department. They couldn’t release information on the Poppies’ personal schedule. Shit, if I only knew an assistant or intern there. My five-star secretarial contacts were in radio and quantum mechanics, not record labels. Richard! I could call Richard.
Thank God for family apartments that are forts of time. On the refrigerator, next to an adopt-a-manatee sticker we had tried to soak off for years, was the unpublished studio number my parents insisted on having when I worked at the station.
A young female intern answered. “Studio.”
“Slick Rick, please.” That was Richard’s brilliant “secret password” to screen out fans who might have gotten ahold of the number.
“You’ll have to wait a few seconds, he’s still on the air,” the perky intern said. Had I sounded this chipper when I’d answered the studio phone?”
“Rick McDonald,” a familiar baritone voice said.
“Hi, Richard, it’s Rachel.”
“Rachel?”
“Ganelli. Your long lost intern? I’m despondent that my name hasn’t stayed on the tip of your tongue.”
“That Rachel?”
“That.”
“How the hell are you?”
I was determined to keep this short. “Great. I’m doing great. Yourself?”
“Wonderful. I got married. Two beautiful kids. I signed another three-year contract—can you hold a sec, Rachel, the promo’s about to end.”
I stared at my ceiling, waiting for the optical-illusion perception change. Eventually, the ceiling was the floor, and my furniture was hanging from the ceiling. “Hi again. Rachel, would you like to come visit at the station? I’d love to see you.”
“I’d love to see you, too, but I’m a juror on a trial starting Monday, and the hour I get off is when you go to sleep.”
“A trial? What kind of trial are you on?”
“The grandmother shot her grandson’s—”
“You’re on the De Meglio trial? I’ve been reading updates on jury selection!”
“I’m not even supposed to be saying anything. Richard, let me cut to the chase. I have to ask for a one-time-only favor from you.”
“From me? What can I do you?”
“I need INXS tickets and backstage passes, if you could swing that. I have a twelve-year-old cousin coming in from Michigan who cried when I told her they were sold out.”
“It’s always tickets when you’re in the radio business,” Richard joked. “I’ll help you out if I can. What’s your phone number?”
“Oh, you’re great! 555-2348.”
“Isn’t that your old number? You’re still there?”
“Still there.”
“I’ll speak to the programming director, Tony.”
“Tony’s still there?”
“Yes, we’re the dinosaurs of the station. That’s right—Tony always liked you. I think he would’ve hit on you if you weren’t a baby—unlike me, huh?”
That was a pretty good joke. He seemed brighter than he had seven summers earlier.
An hour later the phone rang. I raced to answer it, a silly thing to do since Stuart was unlikely to pick it up.
“Rachel Ganelli? It’s Tony Fedele, remember me?”
“Tony!” I said, with false cheer.
“Rachel, I got the tickets you asked Ricky for. You could’ve come straight to me, doll—our interns since you have been morons. You were the best, doll.”
“Thanks, Tony, I can’t believe you got the tickets! Fantastic.”
“Now listen, Rachel, I got you a limited backstage pass that everyone at the radio station has, you and your cousin won’t be able to get into INXS’s dressing rooms—but pretty close. You can try. Flash those legs of yours to the guard is my advice, if I don’t sound like too much of a sexist pig. But hell, you know, this is the industry. It’s not me, you know? It’s the way everyone in the industry is—”
“The passes will be fine. You’re the best, Tony.”
“How old are you now, Rachel?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Funny thing, I broke up with my girl last month. Perfect timing, don’t you think? Can I take you to dinner? You still have that great smile? You were so funny, I still tell people how funny you were. After you get out of the trial, doll, let me take you to dinner—Ricky says you’re on the De Meglio trial—you’re going to let that lady free, right? Poor old woman. I say shoot all pushers. String ’em by the balls. She’s a heroine—disgraceful that she’s locked in a cold cell. Good thing a smart girl like you got on the trial—the Italians got to stick together, right?”
Tony had the tickets messengered to me.
On Tuesday, we had a four-hour delay. The morning-sickness woman had the head of gynecology from her hospital come in to get her off the trial, and for once Judge Berliner was impelled to back off from his hard-boiled approach to the American judicial system. I pondered if I could risk getting a note from Beth Israel. Now that the case had started, reporters raced to look into everything. No, it would be safer to ride this out, was my unhappy conclusion. One of the four alternates took the expectant woman’s chair: a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall who had protested at the stand that she was part of a dance formation and couldn’t possibly serve. Then the assistant district attorney began the outline of her case.
“Good morning—or should I say, good afternoon? Over the next several weeks, I will attempt to prove to you that the defendant, Maria De Meglio, purposely took a man’s life. The defense will no doubt want you to sympathize with her story, but you are legally bound to examine whether or not a crime was committed. I will present irrefutable evidence that Mrs. De Meglio is guilty beyond the benefit of a doubt. Despite how we feel about drugs, vigilantism is not legal, and as jurors that is what you are bound by law to do—that is, determine if an action was illegal. I will show that Mrs. De Meglio understood what she did, even if she did it in the name of love …”
After her statement we were allowed to go to lunch. I wandered over to Chinatown, two blocks north on Canal, and bought a red satin notebook at Pearl River, a Chinese department store. I wolfed down an egg roll from a street cart and raced back to the courtroom. I could have taken my time. A reporter had spotted a rival journalist slipping a hundred-dollar bill to the Norwegian-descent book editor.
Judge Berliner decreed that since it was the beginning of the trial he was going to dismiss the juror, and we would now be sequestered at a motel. So much for Colin and my tickets. All jurors were going to be accompanied to their homes by court officers to pick up clothes. We were given instructions for conjugal visits.
My mother and father and Stuart were watching TV when I got home. Stuart fled for the bathroom when he saw the officer’s uniform.
“We heard,” Dad said. “You’re going to be sequestered.”
“Can you believe this? Mom, can you come into your bedroom? I need your help packing.”
Dad offered a soda to the officer. Mom followed me into her bedroom and put on the light. “What a mess. You’ll have to survive this. Good thing we came, huh? We’ve been looking after Stuart. Daddy and I took him to see the new Harold Pinter play. Stuart was great—he stood on the half-price tickets line while we parked our tuchases in a pizza parlor. He said he had never seen a play before, can you imagine? I’m not sure he got the references, but he seemed to love the atmosphere.”
“You’re great, what can I say? But listen—I need an even bigger favor. I need to give you these tickets for the Tall Poppies and INXS concert later this week. I want to talk to Colin. Please don’t judge me. Please go to the concert and give him a note for me. You can take Frank or Dad. But you have to go backstage, and you have to get a note to Colin. The pass should get you to in front of their door. I know you could talk your way back. I got them from the station I used to work for. I need to talk to him. I’m falling apart. I have to know why he didn’t tell me. He has to know what’s happened to me. I can’t believe he wouldn’t care.” I was squeaking again.
“I don’t want my baby to get hurt.”
“Colin’s not going to hurt me. He’ll be mortified when he finds out, but he’s not going to hurt me. I want him to visit me at the motel. I think I can get him permission. It’ll make me feel better.”
“What does he look like?”
“He has a rough, chiseled face,” I sniffed. “He looks like he’s from the Outback, except he hates horses. He’s as venturous as a stuffed bear.” I smiled inside for a second, remembering when we went to Phillip’s uncle’s cattle station together in the movie-famous Snowy Mountains, and Phillip, Kerri, and I were trotting ahead before we realized that Colin had refused to get on a horse, more of a city sissy than me. He later made up some ridiculous excuse about a hammertoe.
“What color hair?”
“Bottle blond, nice and tall, and amazing light blue eyes, ethereal almost—”
“Not Jewish.”
“Neither is Daddy.”
“That’s why I’m going easy on you. I’m a sucker for a great goyisha face. I’ll pack your bag. You write that note. Let me give you something that Colin slipped under our door today with these tickets.”
“Colin was here? Mom!”
“He left messages on the machine a few times this week. I erased them. I’m sorry, Rachel, but I thought you needed him like a hole in the head.”
“MOM!”
“I wasn’t going to tell you about it. I was protecting my little girl. Mrs. Frino said she spoke to an Aussie friend of yours today through her chain, that’s undoubtedly your Colin. She said she didn’t know we were in town, and she told him she hadn’t seen you.”
I couldn’t even yell. Mom believed she had done the right thing, and I had a court officer waiting in my living room.
I grabbed the note and read it. In his boxy capitals Colin told me all about how life is wonderful. I wanted to be near him so badly, but it made me furious that he would casually seek me out like this without admitting his slimy actions. How dare he. How dare he screw my life up like this.
Here’s where things get really debauched: my eyebrows knitted like Wile E. Coyote’s, I grabbed a pen and a manila pad off the desk.
Colin,
I’ve been out of town, sorry I didn’t get your note in time to meet with you. Congrats on your concert. I’m proud of you. You may be wondering why I am sending this with my mother. I’m a juror on a crazy trial. This crazy old grandmother shot her grandson’s dealer. You can read about this in the paper or watch the news. I’m not kidding! I have to stay at a hotel room for the duration of the trial. I’m not supposed to be talking to anyone about this trial. I’m breaking the law right now! We can only have conjugal visits, i.e., sex visits (!!!) from our fiancés and husbands. When you get this note, I’m afraid I will have already missed the concert. But I do want to see you. Please contact the bailiff at New York State Supreme Court, Courtroom 12, 100 Centre Street. You must tell them that you are my fiancé and that you have arrived from visiting your sick mother in Australia. And they will make arrangements for you to be bussed to my secret location in New Jersey. We’re both famous this week, in a strange way. But you’re more famous, or will be! I want to catch up on everything. Congrats again on the big news. OOOXXX, Rachel
Mom didn’t ask to read it, she’d packed my clothes for me as I wrote out the note. She handed me an envelope, and I made her promise him she’d leave as soon as she got it in his hands.
“Kiss?” she asked with a guilty lilt. She knew full well how angry she’d made me. At the elevator, my mother yelled, “Wait, Rachel!” and the court officer pressed the open button. She handed me a red velvet pouch.
When I’d been almost four, my parents had taken Frank and me by subway to a nursing home in a far-off land called Brooklyn—to visit my Grandpa Ganelli, who Mom had said was not going to be able to be visited anymore. I didn’t remember ever meeting him in the first place, and this greatly upset Dad. “Sure you have, Rachel, he has that big funny beard, like Santa Claus? We brought him turkey and stuffing at Thanksgiving?” When Dad gave up on jogging my memory, I heard him say to Mom, “At least he’s going with all his marbles.” When the subway emerged from the tunnel for elevated track, it was snowing. The car twisted and bent like a snake, and then there was this magnificent white vista of the Manhattan skyline in front of us, perfect, like in a picture book.
Later, in Grandpa Ganelli’s room, Frank gave him a Polaroid that my father had taken of Frank and me on the subway car. The coughing old man got misty-eyed at the gesture. Grandma Rosa was there; her presence confused me since Frank had told me that because Grandpa Ganelli refused to go to church, he and Grandma Rosa were annoyed, which meant they didn’t live together. Aunt Virginia was there, too, holding my father’s hand and praying, and these people called relatives were in a room down the hall. “I’ll have something to remember you by when I’m far away,” Grandpa Ganelli said. He was hard to hear, so I went right near his mouth.
“Can I have your marbles?” I asked. “Daddy says you still have your marbles, and when you go away, I’ll remember you, too.”
My parents were shocked by this statement, and later on I understood why, but my Grandpa Ganelli laughed, albeit with difficulty. “Joe! Make sure you give her my marbles. Children, I want to tell you a story. See the pretty snow outside, isn’t it pretty?”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“When I first came to America, it snowed like that. I was the same age as Frank.”
“You were?” Frank asked, forgetting about his G. I. Joe for once.
“Come here, too.” Frank went closer to the bed. “Yes. It snowed like that except it was even bigger, greater. We were on a boat headed for Castle Clinton, the place where little boys from Italy got to first step in America.”
“You were in a castle?” I gasped.
“Yes. I stared out a window: the famous new Statue of Liberty had snow piled high on her open palm.”
“Really?” Frank asked.
“The greatest blizzard in New York ever, and they still talk about it today in the history books. I never saw a day with so much snow in Italy. The most perfect snow in the world. My first snow in America and it was the most famous snowstorm of the century! What do you think of that? Do you like that story, children?”
Frank wasn’t convinced. “How can the Statue of Liberty have snow on her palm?—she’s holding a book in one hand and has a torch in the other! I know, Grandpa, ’cause I went there with my class. And how can you go on a boat in the middle of a blizzard?”
“I like the story,” I said, a sentiment echoed years later by Stuart from our hallway, the day I was forced on to the infamous De Meglio murder trial. “It’s funny.”
“You mustn’t forget that story, children. I’ve waited my entire life to tell it to you.”
A few weeks later, after my grandfather died, my father bought me a bag of colored marbles in a red velvet pouch. It had traveled with me to Syracuse, to Australia, and now to an under-wraps motel in Elizabeth, New Jersey.