The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [45]
At any rate, when he came out in December of ’86 from his supplementary time, the tireless Ted Constantine had him arrested immediately. My father had cashed in an ex-cellmate’s secrets to win that parole in the first place, and the aggrieved man had in turn offered Constantine details of an old unnoticed performance of my father’s, news to the prosecutor. The county attorney had taken advantage of the six extra months to build his case on this new offense and was ready to go as soon as Dad set foot on the outside.
I flew to Minneapolis for his arraignment. Dana had won the role of the Wicked Witch of the West in an off-Broadway children’s theater production of The Wizard of Oz and didn’t dare give her understudy an opportunity to bump her off. My mother had not paid attention to Dad’s legal events for decades, since the last time she had believed in his innocence. My father had spoken of a younger brother from time to time, but the sibling’s shifting status—sick, abroad, alcoholic, sick, cruel, abroad, dead, sick—prevented any contact. So I was alone, playing the part of a grown-up coming to advise my father in his legal troubles.
He was broke and so had a public defender, a blond-ponytailed girl of about eight, whom he seemed to enjoy baffling. I joined them in their intense and highly professional planning session.
“Well, okay, so we’ve come to the plea phase? And it’s like they’re saying, ‘So what do you say for yourself, mister?’ I know, I mean, obviously, I know that you know all this, but just to square our T’s. Now, I don’t want you to say anything to me yet. Let’s just lay out what they’re all lining up against you? Their side of the story? And then we can see what sort of answer is the best one for us? To make?”
“I never knew so young a body with so old a head,” recited my father.
“Dad.”
“Is your father up for this?” she asked me and turned, with me, to him. “Mr. Phillips, are you up for this? I know this can feel kind of crazy pressurized? But still, Mr. Phillips? We have to do this pretty much now, because they really do load up my client list. A keep-it-moving sort of feeling is what we need.”
I had never seen him like this before, though I had never been present at this stage of any of his jurisprudential adventures. He was no fun, to say the least. He was nearly sixty and was angry, depressed, all the predictable responses at last. He had no interest in defending himself, but he’d lost that old humor about it, the feeling that he was above it all.
Okay, here’s the memoirist’s self-accusation: if only I had …
Told him I loved him? Told him I forgave him? Asked him to come live with me and Dana? Told him I thought he was a great artist? Asked him to go over the evidence slowly with me and the lawyer, to see just how strong the prosecution’s case was? I did try the last one.
He wasn’t answering her questions, except to mock her in a way he thought she didn’t notice. She noticed.
“Ms. Stark, can I get a minute alone with my father?” I had some notion—likely absorbed from movies—that I would talk sense into him.
In truth, I didn’t know him anymore. His life was now beyond my comprehension and much of my sympathy—even if I had been a devoted visitor, a loving son, a concerned participant in his life. I was none of those. I found him embarrassing, an obligation with strands of sticky guilt floating off him, trying to wrap themselves around my ankles and throat. Even so, if he’d shown any sign of interest in my being there, if he hadn’t resisted my efforts to help, I would have … He was only withholding, to use that memoir term of complaint. We spoke such different languages that I wouldn’t have recognized a plea for help, a call for attention, a whimper for love, if he ever made such a sound. But let the record show I tried.
“You can’t just quote Shakespeare to her. She doesn’t even know you’re doing it. She