Replacement Child (22 page)

Their argument went a long way in reducing the financial award to $250,000. After attorney fees, the net to the family was $125,000.

Wrongful death awards typically take into account the potential earning power of the deceased for the family. The earning power of a seven-year-old didn’t amount to much.

“It’s still a lot of money,” their attorney told them. “It should be plenty to take care of Linda. You’ll see the money very quickly now, and it will all be settled.”

In fact, the award was in line with others of the time. Some wrongful death suits yielded under $150,000. Catastrophic injuries could come in under $50,000. The $250,000 award was the equivalent of about $2 million in today’s money.

Of course, the settlement didn’t account for inflation, or medical expenses over Linda’s lifetime. In the long run, it was not even close to enough, since the care she needed extended throughout her life.

The settlement was a hard kernel of resentment between my parents. My mother blamed my father for settling too quickly and not choosing the right lawyer. My father would say nothing when she brought it up time and again. He would just walk away.

I urged her many times to let it go, to give up on this particular frustration.

T
HE CAR IS
jam-packed with Justin’s stuff: his electric piano and amp, his laptop and speakers, bedding and towels, clothes stuffed into duffle bags and plastic garbage bags, a couple of milk crates full of books. He is a big reader, and he says he “needs” his books with him. I smile when I hear that. But by taking all this with him, it looks like he will never need to come home again, and I already feel myself tearing up. I fight the urge and keep moving to get us on the road.

The day goes pretty smoothly. We find his dorm and battle the crowds of parents moving their freshmen into their rooms. His roommates seem nice enough, although it is cramped for three boys in the one room. At the orientation session, they firmly tell the parents to leave at 5:00
PM
. The rest of the evening is for the students.

I try to make quick work of saying good-bye, and I pull away from Justin’s hug before I know I’ll break down. He looks confused, and I give him another quick hug and tell him to call me soon. I get in my car and try not to look back. When I do look back, he has gone inside.

David and I have driven up in separate cars since there was so much to bring along, but we stay in contact on our cell phones. After we find our way to the highway, I call him and tell him I need to stop. He can tell I’m already crying and asks me if I’m okay. When we find a strip mall just off the road, I pull over and give in to my tears. David climbs into my car and leans over to hug me. Letting go of my little boy is harder than I ever imagined.

JANUARY 22, 1952
(DAY OF THE CRASH)

3:37
PM

“O
KAY
, I
THINK
that’s enough practice—you will all do fine tonight,” my mother told the girls. “Why don’t you start for home, and I’ll get ready for Donna to come home.”

The girls gathered their belongings and left the apartment.

At the mention of her big sister, Linda was perched at the window. It was the highlight of her day, only trumped by my father’s arrival at dinnertime.

“Donna, Donna!” Linda pointed down the block. A moment later, Donna and Sheila were clumping noisily up the steep stairs to the apartment, chatting and shedding their heavy coats. Donna was careful to lock the door behind her as she had been taught.

My mother looked at her watch. Donna was home a full hour earlier than expected.

1967—1972

W
HEN
I
WAS
in high school, Linda was away at college. My life was filled with a new sort of drama: a flurry of boyfriends, finding the right bell-bottom jeans and pea jacket to keep up with my girlfriends, ironing my hair without burning it, and trying to stay out of the serious trouble some kids were getting into with drugs and sex.

One friend of mine was pregnant at sixteen, and another had such a bad acid trip that he was never the same afterward. There were a couple of car accidents, related to driving under some influence or other. I realized that some of my parents’ fears were, in fact, well-founded. It was a time of such upheaval, I felt like my parents were from a different planet, not just a different generation.

I kept most of this kind of information firmly away from my parents. They were already so fearful that I was worried if I shared any of what was really going on at school and with friends, they might never let me out of the house again. Whereas they had always tried to protect me from the truth of their own
tragedy, now it was my turn to protect them from the truth of my reality as a teenager growing up in the ’60s.

It seemed some kind of miracle that they let me do half of the things I talked them into. Like going to Woodstock in ’69, even though we got turned away and never made it into the festival. Or going with a friend to the May Day demonstration against the Vietnam war in 1970 when we brought our sleeping bags and slept in the park by the Washington Monument. But my rebellion was mild in comparison with some. I didn’t run to Haight-Ashbury or do drugs. My crowd experimented with Harvey Wallbangers at one friend’s house, and a little grass when it came our way.

At the same time, Linda was at Patterson State College majoring in speech pathology. She drove a white Dodge Dart convertible with red racing stripes along the sides. She had a small, tight-knit group of girlfriends who were always going somewhere—the beach, a concert, a dance. She seemed to find her niche at school, and I didn’t need to worry about her.

She met Phil at a college dance. They had danced together all night, and he called her the next day, not knowing her name, but having gotten her number.

“You had the red dress on last night, right?” he confirmed when he reached her at her dorm. That was all he said he remembered.

An engineering student at a nearby school, Phil was a handsome boy with a kind smile and gentle eyes. He was very quiet, and somewhat shy, but he folded himself into our family quickly and completely. What I most liked about Phil was that he seemed
to be able to do what we all did in the family—see through Linda’s scars. Just as we did, he didn’t treat her any differently than anyone else. And Linda seemed to be herself around him.

They married after they both graduated from college. Linda wanted to work with children, when speech therapy is most needed, but she was turned down for job after job because people thought she would frighten the kids. I always thought they overlooked how accepting children can be when they have an explanation. Mostly, they just want to know what happened. In any case, no school or hospital would give her a chance at the profession she had studied.

For a while, Linda had a fairy-tale life as far as I knew. Phil landed a good job and they bought a house in the suburbs in New Jersey. They had two beautiful daughters, Cheryl and Debbie. The babies were another miracle—the doctors had said she could never conceive because of her extensive radiation exposure from X-rays over the years.

I was surprised when the marriage ended. All I know is that they tried marriage counseling, which didn’t work. Linda moved back home for a little while after that, then to an apartment near my parents. She worked at a hospital in medical records for several years before she married again. Meanwhile, my parents sold their house and moved to Florida to retire. Linda’s second marriage only lasted a few years as well, and toward the end of it, she moved with her girls to Florida not far from my parents.

2006

I
T
’
S MY FIRST
trip to Florida to see my sister since our parents died. Linda had a hard time finding a place to live after her recent breakup with a boyfriend, and I want to see where she landed. We talked on the phone during her search for a place she could afford, and I tried to help from a distance as much as I could. But ultimately, all I could do was help her meet the first two months’ rent deposit. Any money from the settlement with the airline has long since been depleted, and she relies on disability assistance because of her injuries. Her back and leg pain require constant pain medication. She walks with the help of a cane and uses a scooter for shopping and longer outings.

Coming from the West Palm Beach airport, I try to follow her directions, but I can’t seem to find the street she told me she lives on. I call her on my cell, and she talks me through the turns until I see a small street between streets that looks like an alleyway. It’s lined with small houses that look more like shacks to me. My heart sinks a little when I see her little red car parked in front of one of them. The one-story boxlike building has yellow peeling paint and a flat, unevenly shingled roof. It doesn’t look
big enough to have more than one room inside. One reason she chose the place was because it is on one level, and she can manage getting in and out with groceries and laundry.

Linda is at her door when I pull up. She looks small to me, slightly hunched over and leaning heavily on her cane. Her hair is short and reddish blonde and has thinned quite a bit. I can tell she’s taken extra care with her makeup for me today, and she’s dressed in a colorful purple-and-white print top with black slacks. I notice she’s wearing the silver earrings and necklace I gave her for her last birthday. She’s glad to see me, and we hug at the entranceway to her place. She looks well, if a little tired around her eyes. I watch her watch my face drop as I come inside and I try to hide my shock.

Linda has managed to make the place homey. The tiny kitchen only has space for a very small table with two chairs. Linda proudly shows me how she has painted a kitchen set she found discarded in a Dumpster. There is a living room of sorts, where I spot many familiar things from her old place as well as some things from my parents’ home: an antique cigarette holder; the Royal Doulton pitcher I brought back to her from England; a white ceramic vase my mother made. The couch is another pick-up that someone discarded, with a blanket thrown over it to dress it up. She has hung pictures on the wall and gotten some lamps to counteract the darkness of the place. The one window in the room is boarded up.

She’s made a pot of coffee and bought a cake to celebrate my arrival, and we sit at her kitchen table for a while and talk. This place is not permanent, she tells me. Just until she can find a
better one. We talk about how to find one, and I offer some ideas about newspaper listings and using the web. I ask her if she wants to go out and look at some places while I’m here. She can see I am anxious to get her out of this place. All I can think of is how upset my parents would be to see her here.