Golden State (34 page)

I didn’t understand then that I could die. In school, when we dropped to the floor, one arm over our heads, the other against our eyes to shield ourselves from a nuclear blast, what I was afraid of was everyone else dying. Being alone in the world with no one to take care of me.

Bobby was a year older than Julia when he climbed onto that stool in his bedroom and made a noose out of my mother’s silk scarf. Is that how he felt when he kicked away the stool, utterly alone in the world with no one to take care of him? He had me. I would have kept him company throughout that long night, taken care of him when I was older. But he couldn’t wait. Or I wasn’t enough.

Nothing was ever the same after that night, despite the years we would all spend pretending that it was.

* * *

I
WALKED
in bitter rain and gray mist, up before my neighbors, my only chance to be outside before the news vans reappeared. I kept my gaze on the slippery sidewalk, on my worn-out shoes in the rain. Once when I was twelve I’d gone to buy a movie magazine, wearing shorts. A man on the sidewalk outside the drugstore—maybe he was drunk, maybe he wasn’t as old as he seemed—said, “I’d like to lay you on that big butt of yours and screw you good.”

I’d walked away fast, looking only at my shoes, my eyes hot with tears. My shoes were brown, scuffed and stupid looking. When I got home, I didn’t say anything to my parents. I went straight to Bobby’s room. I took off my shoes and hurled them against the wall, satisfied when one left a mark.

Suddenly Bobby was there asking what the hell was going on. He’d come in from his sun porch. I had no idea he was even home.

“I hate my shoes,” I said. “Mom forced me to buy them. I hate her, too.”

Bobby sat on the other twin bed. “Understood, but why didn’t you throw the shoes at your wall instead of mine?”

It was a reasonable question. Why was I in his room? He was supposed to be away at Berkeley.

“Why are you even home?” I said to deflect attention off me.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“A guy outside the drugstore said he wanted to screw me,” I said as if I were used to strange men talking to me like that.

“What guy?” Bobby asked quietly.

I couldn’t keep it up. I started to cry. “Some guy. He said my butt was big.”

Bobby stood. “I’m going to the drugstore,” he said. “I’m going to find that guy and make him sorry he ever bothered you.” He pointed at the shoes I’d thrown. “Give those to me,” he said. I didn’t ask questions. I gave him the shoes.

I read from his collection of old comic books until he returned, a shoe box under his arm. I asked him if he’d found the guy. He said he had and that man would never bother me again.

“But if anyone ever says anything like that to you in the future, you scream ‘pervert’ at the top of your lungs. As if you’re really angry, you keep screaming ‘pervert,’ as loudly as you can.”

I asked Bobby what a pervert was. “It’s what that guy is,” he said. He made me promise I’d do what he said. Then he gave me the shoe box. It held a cool-looking pair of red Keds that I would wear until they fell apart.

Years later, a guy came out of nowhere to threaten me on a dark street in Oakland. I was alone. I didn’t see anyone else around. He backed me against a brick wall. I looked him right in the face and started yelling as loud as I could, “Leave me alone, you pervert.” He ran off.

* * *

A
T HOME
, I did laundry at six a.m. In the mess of dirty clothes on Julia’s floor, I found an old yearbook from Berkeley. We had a bunch in the attic, Eric’s, mine, my mother’s, my father’s, my grandfather’s. This one had Sara’s name on it—I didn’t know why we even had it. I flipped through the pages. Sara had been a blonde in a Peter Pan collar when she posed with her sorority sisters. But she’d also been a princess in the court of the Lambda Chi Daffodil Queen, something I’d never known. Sara’s accomplishments were not the kind that got noticed in our house.

Bobby was in the book, too. He was nineteen and a senior, photographed in a sport jacket, smiling shyly, next to a plaque on the wall. He had earned one of the top five scores in the nation in the Putnam Mathematical Competition.
That
was something everyone in our family knew.

Nowhere in the yearbook was it mentioned that for the first time students had to pay tuition that year to attend the University of California.

“It’s just a small fee,” I remembered Sara saying to our father.

“No,” he’d said. “It’s the beginning of the end of everything we worked for.”

My father had his timing wrong. The beginning of the end of everything he’d worked for had come earlier, on the summer night he cut his only son down from the ceiling.

* * *

W
HEN
E
RIC
and the girls came home on Sunday, they were so happy to see me I would have bargained away everything to stay like that always. It was late before Eric and I had a chance to talk. I knew it was
dangerous. There was the possibility of a fight that could last all night when I needed my wits about me on Monday. I might not be able to hang on to my fragile decision.

“I don’t want a drink,” I said when he offered me one. My husband looked surprised. This was something new.

I explained the situation as simply as I could. Here is what this person, that person, and these people wanted from me. This was what I was going to do: I would be in court for my brother on Monday morning.

I steeled myself for Eric’s anger. But he sidestepped what I’d just said. He spoke to me as a lawyer, his voice matter-of-fact, his feelings hidden.

“Bobby seems to be in control of himself in a way I didn’t foresee,” Eric said. “He got his opening statement right. He understands that he has to offer a defense. If he’d tried to take credit for his bombings or claim they were justified, he’d be admitting guilt and the judge would have stopped the trial.”

I said I understood that.

“But he’s going to get his philosophy in at some point, and for that to have any sort of credibility, he needs two things.” Eric held his fingers up to tick them off. “One, he needs to appear somewhat sympathetic as a human being. And two, he has to seem sane. If he’s evil, then so is his philosophy. If he’s crazy, same thing.”

I’d already heard this from Debra. A fight with Eric would have been less painful.

“To do those two things, he needs you,” he continued. “He needs you to humanize him, to make him seem reasonably sane.” He paused to make sure I got the point. “He’s
using
you, Natalie.”

“I know that,” I said, because I did. I looked toward our large living room window, the pane streaked with rain. The news crews would be back in the morning and the curtains once again drawn. “Bobby can’t endure the humiliation of being depicted as crazy in that courtroom. One way or another it would kill him.” My voice broke and I waited to regain it. “If I did what the defense and everyone else wants, I would be the one doing that to him.”

Eric was thoughtful for a moment. “I understand,” he said. “But, if you give Bobby what he needs, you risk hurting yourself. It might be brave, but it’s also foolhardy. You’re going to make people angry, including Sara and your mother. Some of them might go after you publicly. They’ll question your motives, even your sanity.”

“I know,” I said quietly.

We sat together without speaking, listening to the rain, and then I said good night. I had to be up at five the next morning. A few hours after that, I would have to walk into a courtroom and sell out my mother, my sister, and the attorneys who were trying to save my brother’s life.

chapter forty-eight

M
Y HANDS CLENCHED
, I gazed at the judge’s bench and the flag behind it, as one might an altar, a cross. But no prayers would be answered for me. Debra looked stricken when she saw me in my usual seat, her eyes pained and disbelieving. I looked away from her. There was no point in trying to explain. I rose to let my sister and mother sit, neither of them guessing what it meant for me to be here in my spot. I clung to the aisle seat, as if I imagined I could run.

The prosecution lawyers came down the aisle, their steps light, every shred of evidence on their side. Bobby brushed past me in his borrowed jacket, his head down, his narrow shoulders hunched, his legal pads clutched to his chest. The mismatch would have been heartbreaking if Bobby had not done all he was accused of. My brother did not look at me. He had so trusted I would be here that he hadn’t even thought to subpoena me.

There was silence tinged with dread as we stood for the judge, and saw the jury enter. This was it, my brother’s big moment.

As if we didn’t know, the judge explained that it was my brother’s turn to put on his defense. Bobby rose and in a thin, nervous voice called his first witness. It wasn’t me.

A quietly dressed, slightly built woman came forward, her curly hair streaked with gray. She put her hand on the Bible and stepped into the witness stand.

Bobby stood behind the lectern, his hands thrust into his pockets, an intense, shy academic. His witness was the librarian from the tiny
Idaho town closest to his cabin. He was one of her hundred or so patrons. She’d known him about ten years.

“How often would you say I came into the library?”

“At least once a month,” she said, a tremor in her voice. “More often in the winter when you could get a ride into town with the mailman.”

The mail bomber hitching a ride with the mailman. If we’d been anywhere else, someone would have laughed.

Bobby asked the librarian how much interaction they had.

“Quite a lot,” she said. “I helped you obtain books and journals from other libraries, to locate academic publications, to hunt down obscure volumes.”

“How would you describe me in our interactions?”

“You were always polite and appreciative.” Her voice had grown more certain. She seemed to really like Bobby. “I enjoyed the professional challenge you gave me.”

“In our work together over ten years, did I ever seem crazy or mentally impaired to you.”

“No,” she said, this answer coming more slowly than the others.

Sara tapped my knee and shook her head almost imperceptibly in disbelief. We’d learned to communicate in court with the barest of expression. We could have been spies. I closed my eyes in shared concern.

“Do you have computers connected to the Internet at the library that anyone can use?”

“We have three for public use.”

“Did you see me using those computers?”

“Yes I did.”

“Could someone use one of your computers to publish his ideas online, making them available for anyone to appropriate?”

The lead prosecutor objected. “Calls for speculation,” he said. The judge agreed, telling the jury to ignore the question. But Bobby had gotten his point across. Anyone could have cribbed his ideas. Even the Cal Bomber.

Bobby thanked the librarian and went to his seat, a look of quiet satisfaction on his face. The prosecutor said he had no questions for
the witness. He could afford to let the mouse scamper awhile before he pounced.

Sara leaned across our mother, whispered in my ear, “Bobby’s got to have more than this.” He does, I thought.

The judge addressed Bobby: “Mr. Askedahl, on Friday you made a request to call a witness who has been in court for the trial. Generally, witnesses are excluded from being present during the trial. However, since neither side has invoked Rule 615, which would have barred the witness from testifying, and there has been no objection from the government, I’m going to allow it.”

There was a slight stir as the spectators tried to connect the dots, but Sara got it immediately. I felt the burning of her shocked, incredulous glare. Then Bobby rose, and in a clear voice called my name.

The courtroom murmur sounded like blood in my ears. The judge pounded his gavel. I thought I heard Sara whispering “no” as I rose too quickly from my seat. When the bailiff opened the gate for me, I wanted to take his arm to steady me on the walk toward the witness box. But he was not my father, and I was no bride.

My hand on the Bible, did I swear to tell the truth? My throat was so dry, I wanted to ask for water, but I didn’t know if I could. My brother asked the judge if he could approach me.

“Are you nervous?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t be,” he said. When he smiled, I felt a rush of affection.

He asked my name, my occupation.

“Natalie Askedahl. Third-grade teacher and mother.”

We established that I was his younger sister and that I did not use my husband’s name. My brother’s face seemed the only friendly place in the room.

“In your own words, would you describe what kind of brother I was to you?”

“Loving, gentle, patient. You never talked down or brushed me aside.” My voice was shaky, too emotional. I took a breath. “You taught me to tell time, to appreciate nature, to recognize constellations, to play chess. How to ride a bike. You listened when I talked.”

Bobby held up his hand as if in modesty. “Did you ever see me hurt anyone or anything?”

“Never.”

“To show prejudice toward any group?”

“No.”

“In recent months, you visited me on two separate occasions in the Sacramento County Jail, is that correct?”

I pressed my hands against my trembling legs. “Yes,” I said.

“Did I act in any way mentally ill or impaired on any of the occasions you visited me?”

I heard the breath come out of me, quick, sharp, and painful, magnified by the microphone at my side. Bobby looked at me suddenly uncertain. I was taking too long.

“No,” I said. It was the truth, as well as a lie.

“In the last fifteen years before I was arrested, how many times would you say we saw each in person or spoke on the phone?”

“Once.”

“Did we correspond?”

“I wrote you a few letters, sent some cards, but you never wrote me back.”

“Do you think your husband liked me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But if we were not communicating and your impression of me was as you described, why would you contact the FBI about me?”