John Lescroart - The Mercy Rule

By the time she was eighteen, she’d been to Europe with her parents five times, to the Far East twice. She met Leland Taylor while they both were in high school, and her parents considered him the perfect match for her, although believing they both should wait until a more seemly age.

Richard and Elizabeth had been torn by Helen’s desire to attend Lone Mountain College, an independent institution but, informally, the women’s adjunct to the University of San Francisco. They would have much preferred one of the eastern women’s colleges – Vassar, Brown – for cultural as well as protective reasons. Lone Mountain was run by nuns and, the Raesslers suspected, those crafty Jesuits.

Plus, Catholics were a much more rowdy group than Helen was used to.

On the other hand, Lone Mountain was close by. Their girl would be at hand and they could keep an eye on her. They would just have to keep her insulated from the riffraff, some of the working-class young men from across the street at USF.

And of course Helen went and fell in love with one of them.

It was 1965 and Helen was a freshman. Sal was finishing his senior year after a hitch in Vietnam, so to Helen he also possessed that indefinable cachet of the ‘older man’ – she was eighteen to his twenty-five.

To say that Richard and Elizabeth were not pleased would be a considerable understatement. When she became pregnant at the end of that first summer, before she and Sal were even officially engaged, they counseled their daughter to get an abortion.

But Helen and Sal wouldn’t have that. They were in love, they would get married and raise their family. When she eloped with the jock fisherman, the Raesslers cut their daughter off.

The slow thaw in relations between the families began at the birth of Graham, a name that, like George and Debra, did not exactly sing with Sal’s Italian heritage. It had been Richard’s father’s name, and Helen persuaded Sal that they should present it – their first child’s name – to her parents as a type of peace offering. Reluctantly, he’d agreed, although the peace never really extended to Sal.

A creeping bribery began. Elizabeth would buy nice clothes for the children and deliver them during the day, when she wouldn’t have to see their father.

Clothes, shoes, Christmas gifts, bicycles. Finally, Richard and Elizabeth wanted their grandchildren to grow up in a safe neighborhood, with the right kind of playmates. They weren’t trying to influence their daughter against her husband. No, it wasn’t anything like that. Sal would grow to be comfortable in Seacliff. They would put the down payment on a suitable place and Sal and Helen would make the monthly payments. It wasn’t a loan or charity. They were sharing equity, that was all. It was a partnership.

Sal hated all of this, but he told himself he couldn’t blame Helen if her parents remained important to her. He let it go on, thinking it a compromise. He was being reasonable, forgiving. It wasn’t so divisive.

Sal was wrong.

By the time Graham was old enough to notice, the difference in his parents was pronounced. Six days a week, before the sun was up, Sal was off fishing in the Signing Bonus . On Sundays he’d play some kind of sports with Graham and Georgie, except when the weather was prohibitive. On those days he’d go out to the garage and paint or drink or both.

In the meanwhile Helen had begun to see her parents more often. The clothes and other gifts had become a way of life. She would often meet her mother for lunch. Sometimes a childhood girlfriend of Helen’s would be invited – always a fashionable young woman married to her doctor or lawyer or accountant – or banker. Leland Taylor might show up and say hello, might inquire after her children.

Sal drew the line at accepting cash money from the Raesslers, but the pressure never let up. He kept thinking that if he could just get ahead on his own, he’d have the legs on which to take a stand. As it was, though, times were always tight. Proud and house poor, Sal could barely keep up with the monthly payments on the Manor.

By the time Graham was thirteen, the foundations of the marriage had begun to erode, but the collapse of the whole structure, when he was fifteen, happened with a jarring suddenness. From Graham’s perspective, one day Sal stopped going to work and the next he was gone from their lives. Completely cut off, as though he’d died.

In less than a year Helen had married again. To spare the children the trauma of another relocation, of more changes and domestic upheaval, Leland Taylor had moved into the Manor.

Perhaps finally, Graham thought, any real reconciliation between the Russo and the Raessler genes was hopeless. The schism was too profound. He was a Russo all the way, Sal’s kid. Debra and George were Helen’s.

Frustrated and angry, Graham pushed his coffee cup away from him, sharply blew out a breath. ‘I’d like a show of hands,’ he said. ‘Does anybody here care at all that Sal Russo died last Friday? That your father is dead. Has that made an impression on anybody here?’

Across the table Debra’s lip trembled at the question, while down at the far end George leaned forward. ‘Oh, please. Yeah, we’re heartbroken, can’t you see? He was such a great dad, always there when you needed him.’

‘Shut up, George,’ Debra said. ‘Don’t talk about him like that.’

‘Why not?’ He raised his voice. ‘Why the hell not?’ The younger brother stood up, nearly knocking his chair over behind him. His eyes were bright with anger. ‘You want us to feel bad that he died? I’ll tell you what – I feel good about it. Relieved. Do you have any idea the hell he’s put Mom through these last few months?’

Helen held up a hand to stop George, but nothing was stopping George, not now. ‘You don’t know anything about that, do you, Graham? All this late-in-the-day touchy-feely nonsense about dear old Dad, and you don’t have a clue the torture he was putting your own mother through.’

‘No. I didn’t know that. What-?’

Leland was firmer than Helen had been. He rapped sharply on the table. ‘We don’t need to speak of that, George. It’s over now. It did no lasting harm.’

‘What didn’t?’

George’s blood was up. He sneered at his older brother. ‘As if you care.’

‘I might if you’d tell me what it is.’

‘Dad came by here, that’s what. He was threatening Mom-’

‘I don’t believe that. That’s not true.’

Leland again. ‘George.’

But the young man couldn’t be stopped. ‘You think anybody believes this deathbed conversion of yours, Graham? You think all of us don’t see right through it?’

Leland tapped the table and said, ‘Son, please,’ but he might have saved his breath.

George was advancing toward Graham, who was out of his own chair now. ‘You know and I know – hell, we all know – he was a lousy father and husband and human being. He deserted us, Graham, all of us, maybe it slipped your mind. What happened was you found out he had some money. And after you blew off your law career, you knew you weren’t getting any more out of Leland, didn’t you? You thought you’d squeeze some cash out of old Sal. Wasn’t that it?’

George had closed to within two feet of Graham. His face had gone red. Suddenly he was on him, pushing at him, backing him up, shouting, spittle flying from his lips. ‘Tell me that wasn’t it, you lying son of bitch! Tell me it wasn’t-’

Graham pushed back, hard. His brother’s leg caught the side of a chair. Graham, pressing his advantage, pushed again, and George went down.

Everyone else was up as Graham whirled around, a hand out in warning. No one should come any closer. George was on his feet again, glaring.