By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

Last Sunday, Hal and I watched the two-part documentary about Michael Jackson, Leaving Neverland, in one salacious stretch. I’m not sure which was worse: that we cozied up to a National Enquirer-worthy story or that we were privy to interviews that were as much therapy sessions as entertainment.

When I was younger, I used to love tearjerkers where the main character died of cancer, never realizing they’d be ideal preparation for adulthood, which for me included widowhood at age 39. I’m not sure why we watched the Jackson special. It’s not like I needed some kind of refresher on the idea that when a pedophile knocks, you don’t let him in.

The only good thing, is that for me Michael Jackson is no longer an enigma. Now he’s just a pedophiliac jerk. That shouldn’t have been a surprise. Anyone who could have carried the actor who played Webster around like a pocket pup probably had his issues.

Was it really such a shock? The Penguin had a cane and an eyepatch. The Joker had green hair. Could we really not have known that someone who covered his face with a mask and wore one glove was some kind of long-lost villain from the Batman cartoons? In retrospect, “I’m Bad; I’m Bad” sounds less like a song and more like a character description.

I’m still reeling that no one, namely me, figured it out in the 90s when Jackson was first accused. Adults with breathy, high-pitched voices who invite children for sleepovers after throwing money at their families are obviously up to no good.

Maybe it was just a more innocent time when people wanted to think that a big star, out of sheer goodness, would pluck downtrodden boys out of obscurity and anoint them as his special friends. And then they’d sue him and try to fleece him.

It’s hard to believe we really were that stupid. In watching the program as raptly as I did, maybe I was reliving my own parenthood of two boys who lost their dad young. How might I have reacted if someone with money, power, and the promise of paternal care, benighted as it was, had swooped in to save them, to save me? Maybe watching the program was exactly what I needed to feel superior to the moms who folded. I could sit back from the moral authority of my couch and the #metoo movement and proclaim myself a keener judge of character, a better parent.

Could I, though? When my boys were in elementary school, they had an unattached tennis teacher who regularly asked me if he could take them to McDonald’s in one of his six fancy souped-up sports cars. (It was the promise of cheeseburgers and Happy Meal toys that would have done it for my kids, not the rides in a Maserati.) While this man’s intentions may have been good, I always said no. But at the time, I felt bad about my refusal, thinking it was impolite. But somehow I continued to allow this man to teach my kids tennis. If something bad was going to happen to my boys in his car, it could just as easily happened when he was alone with them on a tennis court.

Oddly enough,  I never said anything about his invitations to the management at the clubs where he taught. I probably should have. And maybe in 2001, they would have talked about me behind my back. Can you imagine? Here was this nice guy who was just asking to take boys without a dad out for a hamburger…

That’s probably not what they would say now.