April 11, I miss Jen. So sorry for your hurt. I know it is hard. Or that she read it every night. Helen recognized this immediately. I sent her a couple of xeroxed copies after I returned to New York. Now, where is the proof that he loves her? I mean, okay, the mother gives her the ring. But there are these wonderful words: I love her deeply. That she needed that, that validation.
She also recognizes what the diary is missing. He said, I love her deeply. Helen now wonders about her own behavior in those awful months. She tried to show Jen affection. At any rate, Helen is now clear on one very important point. I really mean that. For years, Jen had been painted as a villain for holding on to this diary. But Jen was suspended between worlds, without influence or status.
It fills the whole page. When I first read it, I was disoriented. Then I realized what it was. Should I rehearse? What I was reading was a script. Filled with fits and starts, but eventually he got there. I took a photo of the passage and sent it to him. But then, three pulsing dots in a bubble. He was still typing.
Except … I think it is sort of a misapprehension. He was right. I went through the whole diary again. I texted Jen the same photograph I sent my editor. Then she did. Her initial reaction was the same as mine: anxiety, despair in the form of an expletive. Still makes me smile Me: What does? Jen: That the people close to him saw and felt what they needed to.
You know? I did. The phrase certainly sounded like something Bobby could have said. It was very Yoda, and Bobby was definitely very Yoda, spouting his little aphorisms about the drives of the human heart. To me, it was the difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law, or maybe what we do when we intensify the color of an image on our iPhone. Instead, Jen misread it, formed a eulogy around it, and handed the McIlvaine family an organizing motto for their grief for 20 years.
I still debated not telling the McIlvaines. I mean, the bracelet, the tattoo. But in a phone conversation with Helen soon after, I sensed an opening. She quickly intuited that something was amiss. Helen was fine with it.
She sees the unlikely beauty of this misunderstanding, even how it was a gift. But she holds out the possibility that the phrase still lurks somewhere. She remembers it as Life truly loves on , for one thing. There are probably some missing diaries, too—why did he stop keeping them in , only to resume in ? Because the other thing his diary is about, the second thing, is grief. Through an extraordinary twist of fate, Bobby spent his final few months thinking about what it meant to live with loss.
He saw, through Jen, that it could render you angry, irritable, skinless. He saw that grief could utterly consume. He wondered what the utility of all this sadness was, all this suffering. Why do we have to hurt so badly? Is that the way the person we lost would have wanted it to be? At one point, he guiltily wished that Jen would just make a choice to seize control of the things she could. Yet somewhere amid all the passages of exasperation and dread—and many of them are quite detailed—Bobby comes to a much larger realization.
The date was August 20, There are people that need me. And that, in itself, is life. There are people I do not know yet that need me. That is life. To me, that is the most profound quote from the recovered diary. That is Bobby as Yoda. That is Bobby at his very finest, his most humane, his most mature. Even when those commitments are hard.
Even when they cause us pain. One hesitates to say this. But if there was any path forward for the McIlvaine family, it was probably going to be through Jeff. But it was thanks to Jeff, I think, that Bob Sr. There were people they did not know yet who needed them. Among those people were their four grandbabies. The oldest one is named Bobby.
At 22, Jeff had a profound insight. Imagine if he knew that my parents and his brother were never able to recover. Imagine how bad that would make him feel.
He was reflexively answering the very question Bobby had asked as he watched Jen struggle with her grief: Why do we have to hurt so badly? Jeff had a very clear answer: No.
He had too much of his own life left to go. It was so hard at first. He told no one at his first real job that his brother had died on September 11, because too many people were eager to share their own stupid stories about that day, always with happy endings. This delayed his ability to grieve for years. But eventually, he built a rich, fulfilling life. He married a woman who could not only subdue his pain but enter an entire grieving ecosystem.
He had four kids—four! He never wants any child of his to be in that position, should lightning ever restrike. I remain unsure. This has been his life for 20 years. I can really separate. I truly can. Penelope is his youngest granddaughter.
He and Helen had lunch with her every Wednesday after preschool before the pandemic. They have so many opinions! She still gets depressed sometimes. Bobby would have been 46 this September. Jeff used to have vivid dreams about him, and man, how he loved them. They were brothers again, just talking, resuming their old rhythms and habits. But he seldom has those dreams anymore. He says he almost wishes sometimes that he could trade his current well-being for the suffering he felt 20 years ago, because Bobby was so much easier to conjure back then, the sense-memories of him still within reach.
Helen has found herself in the grip of a similar reverie. Recently, she was out with her limping group, and as she was looking around the table, staring in gratitude at these women who have held her up these past 20 years, a thought occurred to her.
Would they be willing to relive their same lives, give birth to those same children, fall in love with them and then lose them a second time? For Helen, nothing in this world has rivaled the experience of raising her two boys.
One of them, Robert George McIlvaine, died before his life truly began. But what would she have done without him, or he without her? For 26 years, she got to know this boy, to care for him, to love him. It was a privilege. It was a gift. It was a bittersweet sacrifice. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe. Danna Singer; original photo courtesy of the McIlvaine family.
Listen to Jen Senior discuss this story on The Experiment podcast, a show about people navigating our country's contradictions. Danna Singer. After Bobby died, Helen McIlvaine begged his girlfriend, Jen, to share his final diary with the family, to no avail. Shmurda and his year-old girlfriend Kimberly Rousseau plead not guilty in Bronx Supreme Court after he's accused of having Rousseau smuggle him a knife into Rikers Island, where he was imprisoned, and lying about it to a grand jury.
The Bronx Criminal Court has jurisdiction over Rikers and the case was treated separately from his conspiracy indictment in December He could've faced an additional seven years in prison on top of the previous 25 he faced for the plus charges as part of the GS9 case on felony and misdemeanor charges for promoting prison contraband, perjury and criminal possession of a weapon.
Shmurda appears with his third attorney on the case, Alex Spiro, in Manhattan Supreme Court, where Page Six reports that the judge denied him bail once more. After yet another hearing in Manhattan Supreme Court, the rapper is denied bond for a sixth time. The judge rejects the new bail package his family had organized in a sealed proceeding, which put the case back on its previous schedule with Shmurda's next court date set for Jan.
He deserves a fair trial. He deserves good lawyers. His label is hanging him out to dry and so I have a conference call tomorrow morning with them. Unfortunately for Shmurda, Shkreli was arrested by the FBI one day following the interview's publication and charged with securities fraud.
During the rapper's Jan. The case is adjourned for a week, while the defense and prosecution attempt to resolve Spiro's discovery applications. After his Feburary court date is delayed until May 11, Shmurda tells Revolt TV that he feels unfairly targeted in his case, especially after doing his research in the Westchester County Corrections law library.
May 2, Shmurda sues the NYPD for alleged false arrest on gun and drug charges from separate incident. The federal lawsuit has no connection to his arrest on Dec. Officers not only failed to produce any gun or drug paraphernalia, but Shmurda claims in the suit that they were "chanting the lyrics to his chart-topping songs" during his arrest. The charges were eventually dismissed, but as a result of the arrest, Shmurda claims he suffered permanent "nervous shock and mental anguish. The rapper spends four more months in jail after his trial is pushed back to Sept.
His date was previously delayed by one day from May 11 to May After previously refusing an eight-year plea deal in June , Shmurda, Rebel and a third co-defendant Nicholas McCoy accept a plea deal from the prosecution in a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing, agreeing to serve seven years in prison rather than risk trial, which had been scheduled to begin jury selection three days later on Sept. The three plead guilty to 4th-degree conspiracy to criminally possess a weapon and 2nd-degree criminal weapons possession, which concurrently carry a sentence of seven years.
Under the terms of the deal, Shmurda isn't allowed to appeal but receives credit for time served -- which was nearly two years at that point -- leaving five years remaining on his sentence.
It helps that Ernie has no interest in this and thinks that flying is for the birds. Ultimately, it took a village. The local community pitched in, as did Gerry Snodden, a flying instructor from Newtownards. As the film went on I began to really appreciate the generosity of people around. People never said no. Clint Eastwood is still not ready to ride off into the sunset, and the year-old's gift for expressing everything by doing almost nothing gets better with age.
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To comment you must now be an Irish Times subscriber. The account details entered are not currently associated with an Irish Times subscription. Please subscribe to sign in to comment. New York always has a bad effect on Bobby. He goes back to it with dread and fascination, like a Jonah slipping back into his whale. Andrew Davis knew that this time he might easily get lost inside the whale and never make it to the plane.
So he had prepared the kind of script they used to write for Mission: Impossible. So he asked Tony Saidy to take Bobby on a shopping trip and rounded up two friends and a professional chauffeur to help him. The friends knew Bobby but had not met Saidy. The chauffeur had never even heard of Bobby. And none of the five had ever abducted anything trickier than a cookie. Hochstetter is a stocky, energetic man of 55 with a hard business mouth and pale amused eyes almost concealed by folds of rough skin that hang down from his eyebrows like worn portieres.
He is a well-known marketing consultant and an old friend and client of Andrew Davis, who introduced him to Bobby about 12 years ago. Morris Dubinsky is an ex-butcher from the Bronx and as independent as a rubber chicken. When the supermarkets took over the meat business, he closed his shop and bought a taxi.
He also has muscles in his lip. By one P. They had called Davis several times. Davis had called Bobby and heard him mumble with a tongue like a sash weight that it was still too early.
So he had urged them to sit shivah till the body resurrected. But after that almost nothing happened. Who could blame him? In the past 18 months, Bobby had played one long tournament and three long matches, all of them jackhammering assaults on his nervous system. Now he was facing the longest and most difficult match of his career, a contest that might run to 24 games and last up to 75 days. But Bobby had never quailed at challenges before. Something more than the challenge seemed to be troubling him now.
Andrew Davis is a slim man of middle height with quick dark eyes behind professorial specs, a small head penciled with careful hair and a big, unexpected crashing Teddy Roosevelt smile. He is 43 and has the crinkles to prove it, but he also has a squirrelly schoolboy brightness and a balloon-popping sense of fun. Davis likes to think of himself, I suspect, as something between an English master at Choate, a hard-haggling jobber in the Garment District and a dwindled Disraeli.
He reads voraciously in almost all directions, but the intellectual side subordinates without overmuch regret to the zestful practical man. At the law Davis is shrewd, precise and so ethical that friends call him Saint Andrew. He shares with his father a solid unspectacular practice that provides a comfortable living but will never make him rich. People close to Bobby tell me that in 12 years as his lawyer he has never charged him a dime. Why not? He will never abandon him.
For weeks now, grating his teeth, Davis had been wishing he could. Bobby took time and energy that other clients needed. But he had hung in there because there was nobody to take his place and because he felt in his bones that Bobby was riding recklessly for a fall that might be fatal. Davis saw black if Bobby backed out of the match. The media, already annoyed and mocking, would gut him: the public, denied a spectacle it was lusting after, would remember him with disgust diminishing slowly to contempt; the chess world would write him off as a second Paul Morphy, a genius too morbid to realize his talent.
Chess organizers would hesitate to sign for a major match a man who might not even show up to play. But what worried Davis most was the potential effect of such mass rejection on Bobby himself. With such risks in mind, Davis proceeded delicately when be met Bobby at the Yale Club.
Bobby greeted him with a big smile, but behind the smile Davis felt wariness and resistance. His idea was to keep Bobby pliable, to head off a hard statement of principle that Bobby would later feel obliged to stick to. He said the hall was inadequate and he was sure that the problem of lighting a championship chess match was beyond the skills of the local technicians.
As for hotels, he said there was only one on the island fit to live in, and he was convinced he would have to share it with the Russians and the press. Not one tennis court on the whole island, not even a bowling alley. Things like that might hurt my playing. But what bothered him most was the problem of coverage. A few reporters might fly in for the start and finish of the match, but the games could not be telecast to North America and Europe—no Intelsat equipment.
If it is, I predict that chess will become a major sport in the United States practically overnight. Bobby also had some financial objections.
He considered himself a superstar, the strongest chess player in the world, and when it came to money, he wanted what superstars like Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali are offered. The I. But when Bobby demanded 30 percent of the gate, the I. At that point, Bobby had stonewalled, too. Even before discussions with Thorarinsson began, Bobby had been flirting with the idea of abandoning the match. He described Dr.
By the time he left for California, he had decided that the U. Government was against him, too. By the time Bobby returned to New York from California, these speculations had overgrown his mind like vines and may have obscured his view of the real situation around him. He shrugged off the money he would be giving up and seemed unconcerned that the title would relapse by default to his lifelong enemies, the Russians. As for his career, he had no fears. It was also clear that reasonable discourse would hardly drive them out in a day.
Only a Gordian stroke could unwind his mind, and a little after six P. Fox was the almost-unknown director the ICF had signed to make a documentary movie of the match, a year-old cherub with an acute case of freckles and a halo of fuzzy orange hair.
Stein was his backer, a stocky, capable wheeler-dealer who had made millions in athletic apparel and then started a second career in the law. His eyes twinkled like money and he came from a business where a man was judged by the reputation of his brand name and the size of his cigar.
They had come, Stein announced, to offer Bobby a deal. According to Stein, all Bobby had to do in return was go to Iceland and play chess—and maybe read some comments accompanying the film Fox intended to make of the match.
Stein and Davis watched Bobby closely. For different reasons they had both hoped the offer would impress him. Instead, it seemed to confuse him and stir up his suspicions. As Stein gave a rundown on residuals, syndications, costs above and below the line, Bobby sat anxiously twisting and tearing and crushing a paper cup until he had mashed it down to the size of a lima bean. Suddenly, eyes narrow with suspicion, he broke in. Stein blinked. Patiently, Stein explained that the profits of a complicated venture are hard to predict.
And whatever it makes, you get a share of that. Stein looked helplessly at Davis. About business the guy was a shlub. Stein then explained to Bobby that in the American way of doing business, the people who risk the money are entitled to most of the profit.
Davis almost cracked up. Not for long. Ten minutes after they left, Bobby was bad-mouthing the Icelanders again. The Gordian stroke had missed its mark. Some other way would have to be found to get Bobby to the chessboard on time. His eyes are bright, his voice is clear, his grin is large and welcoming. There is nothing third-string about his mind. He met Davis at the same time and became his friend and client.
When Hallowell showed up at the Yale Club on Thursday morning, he ran head on into a crisis. Bobby had to be yanked out of there fast. But that aggressive reporter and photographer were patrolling the lobby like a couple of jumpy coon dogs with a panther up a tree. Hallowell and Saidy and Hochstetter worked up a scheme to smuggle Bobby through the enemy lines. Still indignant about the attempt to break into his room, Bobby was delighted at the idea of escape.
He promised to get up soon, but three visits and almost two hours later, Hallowell and Saidy found him still stumbling around in his Jockey shorts. At last, about two P. Saidy took the front elevator to the lobby. The reporter had left, but the photographer was still there.
But the photographer, smelling a rat, ran to check the freight entrance. He arrived just in time to see the back door swing open and Bobby, Hallowell and Beers walk out.
When Hallowell told the photographer to buzz off, he said OK and headed east on 44th Street. Bobby headed west. Suddenly reversing direction, the photographer ran ahead of Bobby and began snapping shots.
And after him, knees high and eyes bulging, came Hallowell and Beers. When they reached 42nd Street, they all wound down to a stop. Hallowell and Beers were gasping. Bobby had plenty of wind left. They looked back. No photographer. Hallowell laughed with him. He had no way of knowing that in the incident a theme had emerged, a theme of flight that would follow their enterprise all day long like a little cold wind and before the night was over would send him racing after Bobby through rain and darkness under circumstances far more frenzied and bizarre.
The next problem to appear was Dubinsky. They treated him like some idiot king. And then came the incident at Unbelievable Syms. Dubinsky was suspicious. Then he called the salesman at Syms and somehow satisfied himself that Bobby had walked out because he thought Dubinsky was getting a kickback.
Smoldering, Dubinsky complied. But he often came off sounding mealymouthed. Practiced and confident persuaders, they hit Bobby with pep talks about Iceland every chance they got. Everyone in the car felt a sense of rising emergency. Bobby lives out of two enormous plastic suitcases that look like toasted piano crates. He had one of them in , and hefting it around gave Hallowell his second unexpected workout of the day. On the evidence available, it was possible to say only that a man who was running around town getting ready to go to Iceland was probably still considering the trip.
Davis turned up briefly at the Gay Nineties and carried Hallowell off to some legal meetings. A little later the limousine arrived. Bobby had his TV set but no digital clock, and after an hour without pep talks, his mood had become darker.
Tuning out the conversation, he buried his head in his chess wallet. Dubinsky drew himself up. When the handle was reattached, he stood back and gestured confidently at his handiwork. Bobby picked the suitcase up. The handle came off. Shortly after P. Get here as fast as you can. Things look bad. Bobby arrived at the Davis apartment looking like a grenade about to go off.
He was obviously at the point of refusing to take the plane. I felt like a psychiatrist trying to cool out a patient hanging on the edge. Instinctively, Davis played the occasion as a casual evening with old friends. His apartment is a pleasant old-fashioned straggle of fairly large rooms in a good unswanky building in the West 70s.
Hallowell and Saidy and Hochstetter sank wearily into some solid nondescript chairs and a fat sofa grouped around a glass-topped coffee table. The three Davis children—Jennie, 14, Margot, 11, and David, 9—were in and out of the room and the conversation. Bobby took a chair in the darkest corner and sat there looking stony.
But he brightened a little when he saw one of the Davis cats, a big, soft fur ball that looked consoling. Jessie brought the cat over and Bobby began to stroke it firmly and rapidly. Finally Bobby gave up and just sat there looking peeved. He perked up again when Jessie brought him a big roast-beef sandwich and a glass of milk, but when the others tried to include him in the conversation, he just mumbled and looked away.
Davis was in his bedroom most of the time, packing and dressing for the trip to Reykjavik, but now and again he came wandering into the living room to follow the conversation and sneak a look at Bobby. Take-off was scheduled for P. There was a second flight scheduled to leave at that usually took off a little later and a final flight scheduled for , but Davis wanted to keep them as emergency reserves. Davis checked his watch: There was still time to call Thorarinsson and wrangle some more about the gate.
As a negotiator, he knew it was the perfect moment to call. He had Thorarinsson over a barrel. With perfect sincerity he could say: No gate, no match. So he dawdled over his packing and put off the phone call. The others rolled out of the chairs and moved toward the door, but Bobby looked startled and began to sputter.
What about those open points? But he knew the situation was anything but fine. Bobby was less interested in making a deal than in keeping his escape routes clear. As long as he stayed in the living room and let Davis handle it, he was free to repudiate any deal that Davis might make.
In order to defeat Thorarinsson, he seemed entirely willing to destroy himself. The phone call was a disaster. We have made concession after concession. We have done everything in our power to satisfy Mr. But we have begun to wonder if it is possible to satisfy Mr. We Icelanders are a generous people, Mr. Davis, but we are also a proud people.
We will be freely generous, but we will not be forced to be generous. Certainly he had, if by making concessions he had expected to shut Bobby up. Somehow Davis had to make Thorarinsson realize, without actually telling him, that their interests at the moment almost exactly coincided, that he was just trying to find a face-saving compromise and rescue the match.
It was Whatever he did, it had to be done in the next 95 minutes. Davis needed time to think, but the only time left was the time it took to get to the airport.
Davis walked into the living room briskly, like a man who had just accomplished something. On the way, we can talk the deal over. I can call Thorarinsson from the airport.
We can keep the limousine. Bobby very hesitantly said OK. Davis asked Jessie to call Loftleidir Icelandic Airlines and tell them to hold the plane. Jessie and the children wished Bobby good luck and then shyly kissed him goodbye. Embarrassed but pleased, Bobby hurried out to the elevator. They came back with three corned-beef sandwiches—one for Saidy, too—and opened the back door of the Cadillac, figuring to get in out of the rain, where they could eat in comfort.
Not a chance.
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