The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

by Griffin Dunne

In closing, Barshop read a letter that Melinda had found while cleaning out the house on Rangely. It was written by Dominique to Sweeney, but whether she sent it or if he ever read it, we would never know. I am not permitted to do enough things on my own. Why must you be a part of everything I do? Why do you want to come to my riding lessons and my acting classes? Why are you jealous of every scene partner I have? Why must I talk about every audition when you know it is bad luck for me? Why do we have discussions at 3:00 a.m. all the time, instead of during the day? Why must you know the name of every person I come into contact with? You insist on going to work with me when I have told you it makes me nervous. Your paranoia is overboard…You do not love me. You are obsessed with me. The person you think you love is not me at all. It is someone you have made up in your head. At the end of Barshop’s reading, Adelson leapt from his seat and pointed at my brother. “Your Honor, Alex Dunne has tears in his eyes!” he cried out, presuming the judge would agree that the sin of his emotion would prejudice the jury. By then Alex had had enough. “I can’t go back there anymore,” he said to me as we left the courtroom. “I can’t be where Sweeney is.”