Presumed innocent

Chapter 9

"In the end," I told Robinson, "we had to put Wendell McGaffen on the witness stand." His testimony was the only effective response to his father, and so we called the boy in rebuttal. Carolyn was splendid. She wore a dark blue suit and a beige blouse with a huge satin bow, and she stood beside Wendell, whose feet did not reach the floor from the hard oak chair in the witness box. You could not hear a thing in the courtroom.

And then what did your mother do, Wendell?

He asked for water.

When your mother took you in the basement, Wendell, what did she do?

It was bad, he said.

Was it this? Carolyn went to the vise, which had sat throughout, like an omen, at the edge of the prosecution table, grease-smeared and black, thicker in all its parts than any of Wendell's limbs.

Uh huh.

Did she hurt you?

Uh huh.

And did you cry?

Uh huh. Wendell drank some more water and then added, A lot. Tell how it happened, said Carolyn finally, softly, and Wendell did. She said to lie down. He said he screamed and cried. He cried, Mommy don't. He begged her.

But he finally laid himself down.

And she told him not to scream.

Wendell swung his feet as he talked. He gripped his doll. And as Carolyn and Mattingly had instructed him, he never looked over at his mother. On cross Stern did what little he could, asked Wendell how many times he'd met with Carolyn and whether he loved his mother, which caused Wendell to ask for more water. There was no disputing, really. Every person there knew the child was telling the truth, not because he was practiced or particularly emotional, but because somehow in every syllable Wendell spoke there was a tone, a knowledge, a bone-hard instinct that what he was describing was wrong. Wendell convinced with his moral courage.

I delivered the closing argument for the county. My state of personal disturbance was such that when I approached the podium I had no idea of what I was going to say, and for one moment I was full of panic, convinced that I would be speechless. Instead, I found the well of all my passionate turmoil and, I spoke fervently for this boy, who must have lived, I said, desperate and uncertain every moment, wanting, as we all wanted, love, and receiving instead, not just indifference or harshness, but torture.

Then we waited. Having a jury out is the closest thing in life to suspended animation. Even the simplest tasks, cleaning my desk, returning phone calls, reading prosecution reports, are beyond my attention, and I end up walking the halls, talking over the evidence and the arguments with anyone unlucky enough to ask me how the case went. About 4:00, Carolyn came by to say she was going to return something to Morton's and I volunteered to walk along. As we left the building, it began raining hard, a cold downpour driven almost sideways by the wind, which was full of winter. People dashed down the street, covering their heads. Carolyn returned her merchandise, a glass bowl whose source she did not identify, and then we headed back into the rain. She more or less shouted out as the wind came up, and I put an arm around her protectively, and she leaned against me beneath my umbrella. It was like something coming loose, and we went on that way for a few blocks, saying nothing, until I finally followed my impulse to speak.

Listen, I said. I started again. Listen.

In her heels, Carolyn was about six feet, an inch or so taller than me, so it was almost an embrace when she turned her face in my direction. In the natural light, you could see what Carolyn, with her devotion to lotions and gyms and spectacular fashions, tried to obscure-that it was an older face, past forty, the makeup clinging to the lines radiating from her eyes, a haggard roughness now part of the skin. But somehow that made her more real to me. This was my life and this was happening.

I've been wondering, I told her, about something you said. What you meant the other night when you told me, Not now.

She looked at me. She shook her head as if she did not know, but her face was full of caprice, her lips sealed to hold back her laughter.

The wind came up again then, and I drew her into the shelter of a recessed storefront. We were on Grayson Boulevard, where the shops face the stately elms of the Midway. I mean, I said, hopeless and pitiable and small, there seems to be something going on between us. I mean, am I crazy? To think that?

I don't think so.

You don't?

No.

Ah, I said.

Still smiling wonderfully, she put her arm through mine and moved me back down the street.

The jury returned a little before 7:00. Guilty on all counts. Raymond had remained in the office awaiting the verdict, and he came downstairs with us to meet the press, cameras not being allowed above the lobby of the County Building. Then he took us out for a drink. He had a date, and so around 8:30 he left us in a back booth at Caballero's, where Carolyn and I talked and became drunk and moony. I told her that she had been magnificent. Magnificent. I don't know how many times I said that.

TV and the movies have spoiled the most intimate moments of our lives. They have given us conventions which dominate our expectations in instants whose intensity would ordinarily make them spontaneous and unique. We have conventions of grief, which we learned from the Kennedys, and ordained gestures for victory by which we imitate the athletes we see on the tube, who in turn have learned the same things from other jocks they saw on TV. Seduction, too, has got its standards now, its slow-eyed moments, its breathless repartee.

And so we both ended up coming on smooth and wry and bravely composed, like all those gorgeous, poised movie-time couples, probably because we had no other idea of how to behave. And even so, there was a gathering in the air, a racing current that made it difficult to sit in place, to move my mouth or lift my glass to drink. I don't believe we ordered dinner, but we had the menus, something to stare at, like coquettes with their silk fans. Beneath the table Carolyn's hand was laid out casually, very close to my hip.

I didn't know you when this started.

What? she asks. We are close on the plush bench, but she must lean a bit nearer because I am speaking so softly. I can smell the liquor on her breath.

I didn't know you before this case, before this started. That amazes me.

Because?

Because it just doesn't seem that way now that I didn't know you. Do you know me now?

Better. I think so. Don't you?

Maybe, she says. Maybe what it is, is that now you know you want to get to know me.

That's possible, I say, and she repeats it:

That's possible.

And will I get to know you?

That's possible, too, she says. If that's what you want. I think that is, I say.

I think that's one thing, she says, that you want.

One thing?

One thing, she says. She brings her glass up to drink without looking away from me. Our faces are not very far apart at all. When she puts her glass down, the large bow on her blouse almost brushes my chin. Her face seems coarse with too much makeup, but her eyes are deep and spectacularly bright, and the air is wild with cosmetic scents, perfume, and body emanations from our closeness. It seems as if our talk has been drifting like this, circling languorously, like a hawk over the hills, for hours.

What else do I want? I ask.

I think you know, she says.

I do?

I think you do.

I think I do, I say. But there's one thing I still don't know.

There is?

I don't quite know how to get it-what I want.

You don't? Not quite. Not quite?

I really don't.

Her smile, so arch and delicately contained, now broadens, and she says, Just reach.

Reach?

Just reach, she says.

Right now?

Just reach.

The air between us seems so full of feeling that it is almost like a haze. Slowly I extend my hand and find the smooth edge of her bright satin bow. I do not quite touch her breast in doing that. And then, without turning my eyes away from hers, I gradually tug on that wide ribbon. It slides perfectly, and the knot breaks open so that the button at her blouse collar is exposed, and at just that moment, I feel Carolyn's hand fluttering up beneath the table like some bird and one long fingernail skates for an instant down my aching bulge. I almost scream, but instead, it all comes down to a shudder, and Carolyn says quietly that we should get a cab. "So," I said to Robinson, "that was how my affair began. I took her back to her fashionable loft and made love to her on the soft Greek rugs. I just grabbed her the minute she set the bolt in her front door, hiked her skirt up with one hand, and put the other down her blouse. Very suave. I came like lightning. And afterward, I lay on top of her, surveying the room, the teak and walnut and the crystal figurines, thinking how much it looked like the show window of some tony shop downtown and wondering in this idle way what in the fuck I was doing with my life, or even in a life where the culmination of a long-cultivated passion passed so quickly that I could hardly believe it had happened at all. But there was not a lot of time to think about that, because we had a drink, and then went to her bedroom to watch the story about our case on the late news and by then I was capable again, and then, that time, when I reared up over her, I knew I was lost."