The first member of Dad’s inner circle went on the run near the beginning of the investigation. He became a new man with a new identity, and the man he became didn’t have a young son or wife to care for. His left-behind family waited, never knowing where he had gone, the scars of a fatherless childhood hardening with time.
For Dad, leaving us behind wasn’t an option.
It wasn’t until Aaron left for Rome with his wife and two young daughters (the same two daughters we would later hang out with on those summer visits to France) that Dad reconsidered fugitive life.
Eventually, he confessed to Mom that if we stayed in America, prison was inevitable; the case had built up too much momentum. He’d approached the government to eke out the possibility of making a deal for his surrender, but they wanted him to take ten years, no parole, a forfeiture of all his assets, and full cooperation. He refused to cooperate on principle, and he wouldn’t leave us without funds on which to survive. I imagine it’s easy to conjure reasons for not going to jail.
He broached the possibility of going on the run nervously, but with a nonchalance that surprised them both, Mom made a cup of tea and drew up a list of pros and cons. If the trail ran cold and the case grew old, then the government might be more amenable to making a deal. He could end up serving a few years or even paying a fine. We could all return to America and he could start again. Dad argued we only needed to stay away for a year, two at most, and he felt there was something romantic about us kids getting a European education.
For Mom, the prospect of life on the run felt preferable to a daunting number of years visiting her husband in jail and raising three young children alone. She didn’t want to force him into choosing between prison and his family when he had always been honest with her about his work.
After all, Mom had a successful history of running away, that knee-jerk reaction I’ve since inherited. As a child, Mom ran from one Jesuit boarding school to another; at sixteen, she ran away from an unhappy home by marrying an older man; and a year later, she had that marriage annulled, because she’d kissed a man beneath a coffee table who made her feel like everything was going to turn out okay. But after three years together she ran from Dad too, balking at talk of marriage and conversion to Judaism. Eight years later—the years in which Dad became seriously involved in the drug trade and he moved out to Marin County—it was Uncle Rick who discovered Mom had walked out on husband #2—Papa!—and was living alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles with her two-year-old son—Evan!—while working in a bank. Rick contrived to reunite her with Dad, knowing that she had always been Dad’s Daisy across the bay.
They fell in love quickly, for a second time, and Dad sent Evan a home video to introduce himself before they met, taking him on a tour of his house in Mill Valley, out to the hot tub with a slide running into a plunge pool, a shot of Omi, then still a puppy, curled tail wagging and toy in mouth, and then himself, Dad’s freckled face smiling into the camera, ending with a red tricycle waiting for when Evan arrived.
Within a few months, Mom and Evan had left LA to move in with Dad. Mom saw his lifestyle: the house built on pillars of drug money, hundred-dollar bills stacked in secret places ready to fly into the air around them like terrible green confetti; the type of men who came and went, manila brown envelopes passed discreetly. And Dad told Mom exactly what he did: he said he limited his work to one or two deals a year, and he was extremely cautious. In the end, she felt there were worse flaws a man could have, and it was hard to equate the Ben she knew with a hardened criminal. He adored her and doted on Evan like his own son.
When a letter arrived from one of Dad’s ex-girlfriends warning Mom that he would never change and he would never quit his illegal dealings for her, in fact demanding she and her little boy turn around and walk right out of that drug-money house, Mom read the letter and, standing over the bin, she tore it into ever-smaller squares until it disappeared between her fingers, a premonition.
Happiness is so rare and so fleeting, she says, and they were so very happy.
When trouble came, standing by him felt like the courageous decision.
Dad waited until the last possible moment to leave. As the investigation raged on, his father was diagnosed with cancer of the spleen and was given six months to live. After the escalating misery of a slow, painful death, the family gathered around Grandpa’s bed to wish him farewell, one by one, kissing his ancient parchment skin before it turned to dust. Looking at his loved ones, he wept, because life was so beautiful and he would never know how the story ended.
Dad knew Grandpa was close to dying when he stopped wearing his hairpiece for visitors. They held each other for one last time, and Grandpa whispered into Dad’s ear, “Tell them it was me, son. Please, I want to do this for you, for your family.”
His very last words were saved for Grandma, whom he had loved for fifty happy years. I do not know what words they shared, the final parting pillow talk of his deathbed.
Shortly after the funeral, Deep Throat told Dad the FBI was preparing his indictment. This meant the authorities had sufficient evidence to bring a case and there might be a lull in surveillance, offering a window of opportunity for Dad to flee the country.
While still in mourning, Dad gathered his resources and set our escape plan into motion.
* * *
It’s a balmy night in late June 1985. I’m one-and-a-half years old, a fat toddler; Caitlin is four and Evan, eight. We’re little creatures sleeping in a makeshift bundle on the empty living room floor.
Shortly after midnight, Mom fetches her car from the space at the end of the driveway and brings it up to the house under the boulevard of apple trees. The trees are dotted with small sour fruits, but as the summer passes the sun will sap the water from the lake and the green from the grass, and the apples will grow sweet. Mom will not be here to collect them to bake in pies or stew for winter. Instead, they will grow fat and fall to the ground in lurid explosions of color. At night, critters will come and feed on their fermenting sweetness, and by day they will sweat and sulk in a sad mess, because we will be gone.
She parked in the spot next to the garage usually reserved for Dad’s Corvette, now sold along with everything else—the Yellow House included—all in secret so as not to alert the authorities of our departure. Dad took a moment to look at us curled around each other, unaware of what was happening, and then picked me up, resting me on one shoulder, and wrapped Cait around his waist, like he had done so many times before when carrying us to bed and, with his one remaining hand, led Evan groggily along.
We waited in the dull shadows of an overcast night. He put Cait down in order to gently rock me. Cait had dragged her blanket out with her. Discarded in a pink puddle at her feet, it was a poor substitute for Henrietta the taxidermy chicken, which she had been forced to relinquish. Cait had taken Henrietta everywhere with her, even once her head had fallen off. When Granny came to stay for the wedding, she said it wasn’t normal for a little girl to be attached to a decapitated stuffed bird and threw Henrietta away. Cait secretly saved her from the bin and hid her safely in her bed until Granny went home to England again. Her rescue mission was to no avail. There was no place for Henrietta the taxidermy chicken among the limited possessions our family had been reduced to. We had five suitcases and a rucksack each to carry.
Mom did the work while Dad hung back. When we were all ready, she indicated to him with a nod. He maneuvered his way into the backseat, lying down at our feet, contorted so he could bend his knees in. Mom draped a black sheet over him, tucking it in on either side to disguise his shape like she was tucking him in for bed.
“Shall I leave your head out for now?”
“No, I may as well go under.”
She pulled the sheet over his face so he disappeared in a black shroud.
“Can I ride in the front?” Evan asked, suddenly a little awake.
She would normally have said no, but she hoped the young blond boy in the front seat would distract from the dark-haired man hidden under a blanket in the back.
“Okay, everyone comfortable back there?” Mom asked.
“How about an upgrade?” Dad’s voice joked from beneath the blanket.
She opened her door to climb into the driver’s seat.
“Oh, wait there!”
A collective moan.
She ran back into the house.
She went to check that all the lights were off, the front door was locked, and she hadn’t left the gas on. She acknowledged while doing so it was nonsensical. There was nothing left to steal anyway. But she was compelled to do it.
The house seemed desolate, left forever in darkness. She felt like we were sneaking away while it slept. She walked through the empty rooms and into the kitchen one last time. She loved that the insides of the cupboards were painted the same lemon yellow as the external walls. It was in this kitchen, sitting at that long oak table, that she had told Dad she was pregnant with me. Dad (optimist) had turned to her and said, “I’m so happy. I never knew life could be this way.” And Mom (pessimist) had replied sadly, “Yes, it’s true. But nothing this good can last forever.”
Now it was gone. The house was empty just like the day they had moved in. The few items they wanted to keep—the bed in which I was born, the Mobutu the gorilla painting, a doll of Caitlin’s that Dad had stuffed with a stash of his finest Hawaiian grass—had been put into a secret storage unit and would be shipped over once we had settled in whatever strange corner of the world we were destined for. The remaining possessions had been raffled away to their closest friends at a small farewell party. No one else knew we were leaving. Mom had labeled all the belongings with numbers then handed out raffle tickets. It was a sad hurrah. Mom has never seen most of her American friends again, and I wonder if she had known that then, whether she would have marched back outside, told us all to get out of the car and back into our own beds and for Dad to face whatever it was he had coming.
She looked down to see Sativa winding around her legs. Sativa had been sent to live with our next-door neighbor, Roxy, but she had made her way back home, because you can’t tell a cat what to do, especially a Siamese. Sativa sat down and began cleaning her chocolate-dipped paws, proud and indignant at her ill treatment. Mom carried her back outside, kissing her head and giving her one last squeeze, before shooing her away into the night. She knew Roxy would find her tomorrow. She always said her greatest regret was leaving Sativa behind and knowing she would spend the rest of her days wandering up and down the rooftop screaming for Mom to come home. Later still, when we were on the run in Europe, Roxy got word to us that Sativa had gone missing, and Mom tried to convince Dad to let her return to California to look for her, but Dad refused to risk everything for the sake of a cat, and no one saw Sativa again. That was the second thing Dad did that Mom could not forgive.
Feeling desperate, Mom hurried back to the car and jumped in so the door slammed shut and everyone flinched.
“Sorry!”
“What were you doing?”
“I was just checking everything was switched off and we hadn’t left anything behind.”
“It’s fine, take your time,” came Dad’s muffled voice from beneath the blanket.
Mom slowly pulled away, barely touching the gas, hoping to roll the car unnoticed past the FBI who might still be stationed in the derelict shed by our gates.
We were to drive through the night to Los Angeles airport, where we would buy first-class tickets in cash to Rome. Dad knew his name could be flagged up on the system and they could stop him at any point, but he felt confident they weren’t watching. His lawyer had been instructed to prepare as if Dad was planning to fight his case, so the government had no reason to suspect him of running, especially with his young family in tow.
It would be now that they had us in full sight. They would be able to see the car drive straight past them and get a full view of Mom at the steering wheel. Her instinct was to put her foot down and speed away, but she let the car continue its slow roll.
She listened for the sound of a vehicle behind her. There were no headlights in the rearview mirror. Nothing. They could watch that gate for as long as they wanted. No one was coming home.