Chapter 5 - THE VICTIM'S PLAYBOOK
By eleven o'clock Sunday morning, the campaign had begun.
I sat in Arthur Vance’s conference room. The room smelled of old paper, leather bindings, and the stale wintergreen Life Savers Arthur sucked on to mask his tobacco habit. Arthur sat across from me, his rheumy blue eyes squinting through bifocals at an iPad Lois had set up on the table.
"Look at this nonsense," Arthur grunted, his liver-spotted hand tapping the glass screen with a nicotine-stained fingernail. "Is this what passes for news among these idiots now?"
On the screen was Jessica’s Instagram profile. She had three thousand followers—mostly local boutique owners, interior designers, and women who posted photos of their matcha lattes against white marble counters.
Four hours ago, she had posted a video.
The lighting was soft, muted, almost clinical. Jessica was sitting on an ivory sofa, wearing an oversized gray cashmere sweater that looked three sizes too big, making her neck appear extraordinarily thin and vulnerable. Her yellow hair was pulled back into a messy, pathetic ponytail. There was no makeup on her face, and her skin looked pale and blotchy.
Across her left cheekbone was a pristine white gauze pad, held in place by two strips of medical tape.
"I... I didn't want to make this video," she began, her voice small, trembling, and pitched down into a whisper. She looked down at her lap, swallowed hard, and wiped away a tear with the back of her sleeve. "A lot of you who were at the party last night saw... what happened. I’ve received so many messages, and I just... I’m still in shock."
She paused, taking a ragged, theatrical breath.
"As many of you know, Michael and I have tried so hard to include his mother in our lives. We built an entire guest suite for her. We hosted her seventieth birthday party at our home. But... Eleanor has been struggling with cognitive decline and severe behavioral instability for months. We tried to protect her dignity, but last night, after a minor accident where a decorative item fell, she... she had a violent psychotic break."
Arthur let out a sound that was half-cough, half-bark. "Psychotic break? Did she get a medical license at the nail salon?"
"Hush, Arthur," Lois muttered. "Listen to the rest."
"She attacked me with broken glass," Jessica whispered, her voice breaking entirely into a sob. "She pinned me down. Michael had to physically pull her off me to save my life. I have lacerations on my face. The doctors say there might be nerve damage. We’re... we’re exploring our legal options, not out of anger, but to ensure that Eleanor gets the mandatory psychiatric intervention she so desperately needs before she hurts someone else."
The video ended on a freeze-frame of her hands trembling in her lap.
Below the post were two hundred comments:
*“Oh my god, Jess, this is horrific!!”*
*“Elderly violence is so real and underreported. Stay strong babe!!”*
*“File a restraining order immediately! She should be in a home!”*
"Nerve damage," Lois scoffed, crossing her arms. "I saw the scratch, Arthur. A kitten playing with a ball of yarn would have done more damage."
"Doesn't matter what the kitten did," Arthur said, leaning back in his creaking leather executive chair. The springs groaned under his weight. "She’s laying the groundwork for two things: first, an emergency temporary restraining order to keep Eleanor away from Michael; second, a defense against the debt call. If Eleanor calls the note, Jessica’s lawyer will claim Eleanor is mentally incompetent, that the demand note is the product of elder dementia, or that Michael was coerced."
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed on the mahogany table.
The caller ID showed Michael’s name.
Arthur pointed a finger at the screen. "Put it on speaker. Don't say a goddamn word until I nod."
I tapped the screen and pressed the speaker icon. "Hello, Michael."
"Mom?" Michael’s voice was completely different from the night before. The anger was gone, replaced by a low, urgent, conspiratorial tone—the voice he used when he was trying to negotiate a settlement between two warring departments at his company. "Mom, where are you? Lois’s phone went to voicemail."
"I am safe, Michael," I said evenly.
"Look, Mom... we need to fix this. Right now. Before this gets completely out of control." He took a breath, and I could hear the sound of his shoes pacing on the hardwood floor of his house. "Jessica spent four hours at Stanford Urgent Care last night. Her brother wants her to go straight to the police. He’s already talking to an attorney who specializes in torts and elder assault."
"And what do you want, Michael?"
"I want to protect you, Mom!" he said, his voice rising in manufactured desperation. "Don't you see what a disaster this is? If Jessica presses charges, you could be arrested! At seventy! Do you know what that would do to your reputation? To my career?"
"I see," I said. "And how do you propose to protect me?"
Michael hesitated. For two seconds, all I heard was the hiss of the air conditioning through his phone.
"Jess is willing to drop the whole thing," he said slowly, carefully choosing every syllable. "She won't file the police report. She won't file the restraining order. But we have to make things right, Mom. We have to show her family that you understand what you did."
"What does 'making things right' look like, Michael?"
"You need to sign a full quitclaim on the house," he said, the words tumbling out quickly now, like water through a broken dam. "The note Arthur drew up six years ago—the four-eighty. Jessica found out about it during the refinance talks last month. She was furious, Mom. She felt like you were holding a gun to our heads the whole time we were living here. If you sign the quitclaim and release the deed of trust, it proves that the money was really a gift. It proves you aren't trying to control us. And... and you need to sign an agreement to have a voluntary psychiatric evaluation at the county clinic."
Arthur looked at me across the table, his eyes wide with an expression that was almost admiration for the sheer, unmitigated audacity of the demand.
"And if I don't sign, Michael?" I asked.
"Then I can't stop her, Mom," Michael said, and his voice dropped into something cold, thin, and ugly. "She’s going to file the report this afternoon. The police will come to your house in Willow Glen. They will take you in. And I won't bail you out. I can't. I have to stand by my wife."
I sat in Arthur Vance’s dusty conference room, looking at the framed certificate on the wall showing that Frank’s brother had been admitted to the California Bar in 1974.
"Michael," I said softly.
"Yeah, Mom? Are you going to be reasonable?"
"Your father used to say that a man who trades his mother for a quiet bedroom usually ends up with neither."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean—"
"Arthur is going to speak to you now," I said, and pushed the phone across the table.
Arthur leaned forward, put his mouth two inches from the microphone, and cleared his throat with a sound like grinding gravel.
"Michael, this is your uncle Arthur," he barked. "Shut your mouth and listen to me. As of eight o'clock this morning, Eleanor has executed the formal default acceleration notice on the second deed of trust recorded against parcel 408-22-109. You have eighty-nine days to deposit five hundred and seventy-six thousand, four hundred and twelve dollars and eighteen cents into my client escrow account. If the funds are not cleared by five o'clock on November sixteenth, I will file the notice of trustee sale with the Santa Clara County Recorder and we will auction your patio off on the courthouse steps. Have a pleasant Sunday."
Arthur tapped the red button, ending the call.
The silence that followed was absolute. Lois let out a long, low whistle.
Arthur reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a fresh wintergreen Life Saver, and popped it into his mouth with a dry snap.
May you like
"Well," Arthur said, looking at me over his bifocals. "That ought to put some spice in their brunch."
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