The Judgment

Four

Why didn’t it end right there?” Asa Bartram inquired. Meditating on his own question, he furrowed his brow, a troubled look in his pale blue eyes. “You must have made the motion.

It’s almost always denied, but still, in a case like that, after what the boy said…” His voice trailed off as another thought came to mind. “Calvin denied it, didn’t he? But why?” An instant after he asked, his eyes flashed and he began to nod his head. “He thought there was still a chance you could lose, didn’t he?”

Asa knew his old friend well, and he was right. The boy could have admitted on the stand he had made the whole thing up and Jeffries would still have denied a motion for acquittal at the end of the prosecution’s case. But that was not what happened.

“I didn’t make the motion,” I admitted.

Asa thought I was making a joke. “Everybody makes that motion. You have to make that motion.”

“Ineffective assistance of counsel,” Jonah Micronitis observed, as if he had actually spent time in a courtroom.

Harper Bryce was laughing to himself. “And then the defendant-if she lost-would get a new trial.”

With a blank expression, Micronitis stared at Bryce and then looked at Asa for an explanation.

Asa appraised me with a shrewd eye. “Is that the reason you didn’t make the motion?”

I wanted to say that it was, but at the time I was not thinking that far ahead. The only thought in my mind then was simple defiance.

“As soon as the prosecution rested its case, I was on my feet, calling the first witness for the defense.

” ‘Mr. Antonelli,’ Jeffries interjected. ‘Isn’t there something you wish to take up with the court first?’

“It had become a war between us, and I was not about to give him the satisfaction of ruling against me again. ‘No, your honor, there is not,’ I replied. At that moment, all I could think about was getting Janet Larkin onto the witness stand. She had waited a long time for the chance to reply directly to the awful things that had been said about her and the terrible thing she was accused of doing. She deserved to have it.

“That was the only thing I knew I could do for her, give her that chance. Even after all these years, I don’t think I ever had a case where anyone was put in a worse position. In a lot of ways, it is easier to be convicted of something than just accused of it.

If the truth be told, it was easier to be Edward Larkin than Janet Larkin. He did something, he admitted it, and it became a tangible fact, something to be dealt with, something that gave a sort of definition to everything else. She was accused, and there was nothing she could do. She was helpless, impotent. Guilt clings to no one the way it does to the innocent. Imagine the shock of it. If you did something, something wrong, and you are caught, there is no surprise when you hear yourself accused. But when you did not do it, when you never would have thought about doing it, it eats you alive. You feel guilty. You think everyone who looks at you, everyone you pass on the street, is thinking of nothing else but this thing you supposedly did. The whole world is watching you, convinced you did it. Your friends-the ones who still come around-tell you they believe you, but you’re not sure they really do; you’re not sure they don’t look upon themselves as victims, caught between their obligation to you and the embarrassment they start to feel every time they come near you.

No one believes you, and you begin to wonder whether you should believe yourself. Could you have done this thing, and then, because it was such an awful thing to do, blacked it out as if it had never happened? You don’t really believe that, but you have to admit that, impossible as it seems, it could conceivably be true.

Does anyone really know when they first begin to go mad?

“Janet Larkin had been living with thoughts like these for nearly a year. It was a miracle that she had any sanity left. When I called her name as the first witness for the defense, she had the look of someone not quite awake, not quite certain that this was not still part of a bad dream.

“She did everything wrong. When she answered a question, she looked at me instead of at the jury. When she denied that she had ever done anything improper with her son, she spoke in a timid, quiet voice that instead of carrying the kind of outrage you might expect from someone wrongfully accused, made her sound as if she herself was not quite sure.

“At first, she would not answer the question. I had to put it to her directly. ‘Mrs. Larkin, did you at any time have sexual intercourse or sexual relations of any kind with your son, Gerald Larkin?’

“The courtroom was mobbed. The benches were crowded tight.

Without objection from Jeffries, those who could not find a seat had been allowed to stand along the wall at the back. All those eyes staring at her frightened her, and from the moment she took the stand she refused to look anywhere except at me. Until, that is, I asked her that question. A look of utter hopelessness came into her eyes. Her shoulders sagged forward and she gazed down at her hands. She began to rub them together as if she was trying to wash them clean. It was only when I repeated the question that she stopped and looked up again.

” ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head back and forth. Her sad eyes were wide open. ‘I never hurt my children.’

“I had to remove any possible ambiguity. ‘You never had sexual intercourse with your son?’

“She bit her lip and a shudder passed through her. ‘No.’

“I took her back through all of it, what her husband had done to her daughter and when she had first learned about it. I had her describe what she did to help her daughter and how she tried to help her son.

” ‘He told me one day that he didn’t think his father should have to live alone. I told him he could visit, but he needed to live at home.’

” ‘After he made this accusation, he was taken out of your home and allowed to live with his father, correct?’

“We went on like that for hours, explaining everything that had happened until, finally, we were at the end of it, and I had only one question left to ask.

” ‘You think it’s your fault, don’t you? What happened to your daughter, and then what happened to your son to make him tell a story like this?’

“I do not know how much time or how many different days we had spent together, going over every detail of her married life, but we had never talked about this. Not once. I asked it now because suddenly it seemed the only question that made sense. She looked at me as if I had just betrayed a secret. Her mouth began to quiver and tears came into her eyes. She had to force herself to answer.

” ‘Yes, I do. I should have known,’ she said as she buried her face in her hands. ‘It’s my fault. I should have known.’

“Because he had believed the boy from the beginning, Spencer Goldman had no sympathy for the boy’s mother.

” ‘Are you trying to tell us that your husband was having sex with your daughter, that it went on for years right under your nose, and you knew nothing about it?’

“His manner was cold, caustic, and he threw questions at her so fast that she had barely started to answer one before he was shouting the next. Each time he did it, I objected, and each time I objected, Jeffries overruled it. We went back and forth, like pup-pets in a Punch and Judy show. ‘Objection.’ ‘Overruled.’ ‘Objection.’ ‘Overruled.’ Finally, I bounced up one last time and instead of objecting, said, ‘Perhaps your honor would like to lend Mr.

Goldman your gavel so he can save us the trouble of a trial and just beat a confession out of her?’

“You have never seen such a wrathful look. ‘Do you want to be held in contempt a second time?’

” ‘At least that would be a ruling we could both agree on, your honor,’ I replied with studied indifference.

“There was really nothing he could do. No matter what he said, he was not going to hold me in contempt and have me dragged out of the courtroom. We were too far along in the trial, and besides that, there were too many people watching. Jeffries abused his power too often not to understand that it was best done in private. His only reply, at least for the moment, was a withering glance just before he turned his attention back to the prosecution. ‘Please continue, Mr. Goldman.’

“I continued to object, not because I thought there was any chance that any of them would be sustained, but simply to give Janet Larkin time to collect herself. Goldman never could break her down. She answered every question and she told the truth.

That was all she had left. Her husband had taken everything else.

He had taken her daughter, and he had taken her son, and not just taken them, but in different ways stolen their innocence and destroyed them.

“Afraid of making a mistake, aware that hundreds of eyes were watching her, she formed each word of each answer with the deliberate care of a mother teaching a child the first letters of the alphabet. Goldman, always ready with the next question, could barely contain himself. When he tried to hurry her along, she ignored him; when he tried to interrupt, she went right on talking as if she had forgotten he was there. He kept after her, asking the same thing over and over again, trying to get her to admit what he knew she had done, or to change her testimony so he could use the inconsistency against her. He hurled questions at her with incredible ferocity. He would have stoned her to death if he had been able. It had no effect. She sat there like a glass-eyed automaton, going back to the beginning of the answer to repeat it all over again. Frustrated beyond measure, Goldman finally gave up.

” ‘You can deny it from now until kingdom come, Mrs. Larkin, but we both know you raped your son!’

“With the sound of that accusation ringing in the air, Goldman shot one more glance at the accused and then turned away.

” ‘The defense calls Amy Larkin,’ I announced before Goldman had reached his chair. Until the last minute, I did not know if Janet Larkin’s daughter would show up. She had said she might not. She knew how important it was to her mother’s defense-I had left her in no doubt on that score-but she had let me know it was her decision to make and that she was not going to be forced into anything. I had her served with a subpoena and it did not make any difference. If she decided she was not going to testify, there was nothing anyone could do about it. She was willful, but she was not defiant. She did not question the authority that could drag her in front of a judge and put her in jail for contempt. It was not that at all. She just was not going to do anything she did not want to do. Not anymore.

“I have not seen her since her mother’s trial, and I never tried to find out what happened to her after it was over. Perhaps I did not want to know. Perhaps I preferred the comfort of an illusion, the vague hope that somehow everything had turned out well.

All I know for sure is though she was wise beyond her years, it was not the kind of wisdom that was conducive to what we think of as happiness.

“It never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong. She was a witness-a crucial witness as far as I was concerned-and she had to testify. If anyone had suggested that I was doing something as obscene as what her father had done, I would have dismissed it as the ignorant comment of someone who knew nothing about the conduct of a criminal trial. But they would have been right. All the unspeakable things that had been done to her had been done to her in private; they were a shameful secret that she had never been able to share with another human being. By confessing, her father had betrayed her twice. He had violated the primal obligation of a parent, and then told the world what he had done. Called to testify on behalf of her mother, she was compelled to tell hundreds of strangers what she had for years concealed from people she might have trusted with her life. What business did I have-what business did anyone have-doing that to her?

“I was not thinking of any of that then. All I cared about was that she was actually there, inside the courtroom, holding up her hand as she listened to the clerk recite the oath.

“She did not seem the least bit nervous, but how many witnesses ever do? They sit there with their hearts racing and their minds filled with a thousand fears, wondering if they will be able to open their mouths when it is time to answer and whether anything will come out if they do. But on the outside they look completely composed, as if this was something they do every day. We are all actors, wearing the mask we think the world wants to see.

“I led with the question that was at the heart of the prosecution’s case. ‘During the time it was going on, did your mother know you were having sex with your father?’

“She shook her head emphatically. ‘No. I’d never allow him in my room if my mother was still awake.’

“I was struck by her choice of words. ‘You wouldn’t allow him in your room?’

” ‘I made him promise me that she’d never find out. I didn’t want her to be hurt.’

“She was sixteen years old, and she talked like a woman who had been having an affair with her best friend’s husband.

” ‘How can you be sure that she didn’t find out?’

“She dismissed it out of hand. ‘She wouldn’t have kept something like that to herself. She would have done something.’

“I turned toward the jury. ‘The prosecutor claims she didn’t do anything about it because she was having the same kind of relationship with your brother your father was having with you.’

” ‘That’s a joke,’ she said. Her voice was filled with scorn. ‘Gerald and my mother! He’s just trying to get back at everyone.’

“Goldman was on his feet. ‘Objection. Move to strike.’

“Jeffries did not hesitate. ‘Sustained,’ he thundered. ‘The jury will disregard the witness’s last remark.’

“His voice was still echoing off the courtroom walls when I asked, ‘And did your brother ever once so much as suggest to you that something improper was going on with his mother?’

” ‘No, never. I told you. He’s just trying to get back at everyone.’

“Jeffries did not wait to hear the objection Goldman was rising to make. He leaned toward the witness stand. ‘Young lady, I know you’ve been through a lot. But your testimony has to be confined to things you saw or heard. You can’t speculate about what someone might or might not have been doing or why they may have said something. Do you understand?’ he asked firmly.

“She was not like any sixteen-year-old girl you’ve ever seen.

Age meant nothing to her. ‘I understand,’ she replied. ‘I’m not speculating about anything. Gerald told me he was going to get back at everyone.’

“There was a dead silence. His eyes still on her, Jeffries drew back, a scowl on his face. ‘Did it ever occur to you that he wanted to get “back at everyone,” as you put it, because of what was done to him?’

She did not back down. ‘Nothing was done to him,’ she insisted.

” ‘Do you have any more questions of this witness, Mr. Antonelli?’ Jeffries asked, eager to get her off his hands.

“Nodding, I gazed down at the floor, reluctant to begin the series of questions that I knew would be unlike anything anyone in that courtroom had ever heard, questions the answers to which might shatter the last illusions we had about who we were and what we could trust.

” ‘Amy, how old were you when your father first started to do things with you?’

” ‘Eleven,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘That’s when he started to touch me. I was twelve the first time we actually had intercourse.’

“She was sixteen years old, with hair that, depending on the light, looked brown or blond, and with just enough freckles on her face so that even in a dress she had the fresh-scrubbed look of a tomboy who could outrun any kid in her class.

” ‘When this first started,’ I asked, ‘why didn’t you tell your mother? Why didn’t you ask her to make him stop?’

” ‘He was my father,’ she explained. ‘He told me it was the way he could show me how much he loved me. He told me it had to be our secret.’

” ‘That wasn’t the only reason though, was it?’

“Her eyes were fixed on mine, and she did not open her mouth.

We had been over all of this before. We both knew what she was going to say. She kept looking at me, and then I realized what she was doing. She was waiting for me, waiting until she was sure I was ready. She had seen it the first time she told me, the stunned disbelief, the awkward embarrassment, and she did not want that to happen to me again. It had become second nature to treat adults like children. I smiled at her and repeated the question.

” ‘That wasn’t the only reason, was it?’

” ‘No. The real reason is that I didn’t want it to stop. I liked it. That’s what everyone forgets. Sex feels good.’

“It was so deathly quiet in that courtroom that I swear you could have heard a heartbeat if you had been able to take your eyes off this woman-child on the witness stand.

” ‘But despite that, there were times when you wanted it to stop, weren’t there?’

“She hesitated, and beneath that air of worldly self-confidence there was the first glimpse of doubt. No, not doubt, certainty. She knew that it was wrong, and she knew-or she thought she knew-she could have stopped it.

” ‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at her close-clipped schoolgirl hands. ‘Sometimes I’d ask him not to.’

“It was like trespassing on evil, asking those questions. I had the strange sensation of engaging in some utterly depraved private vice.

” ‘What would he do, when you asked him not to?’

“She lifted her head, a lost look in her eyes. ‘He’d leave.’

“We were in the dark, just the two of us, falling down a bottomless black hole. ‘What would happen then?’

” ‘He’d come back.’

” ‘And then?’

” ‘And then he’d sit on the edge of the bed and tell me that he knew I really wanted to, and that it was all right because a lot of people did the same thing; and he’d tell me that he really loved me and that there was nothing to worry about because it was always going to be our secret. And he’d tell me that he’d never do anything I didn’t want him to.’

” ‘And then?’

” ‘And then I’d do what he wanted.’

” ‘But only after he made you believe it was really what you wanted?’

” ‘Yes.’

” ‘You thought it was wrong?’

“With a gesture almost identical to the one her mother had used, she bit her lip and nodded. ‘Yes.’

” ‘But he told you it was all right?’

“Again she nodded. ‘Yes.’

“It was in some ways worse than murder, worse than what we normally think of as rape. He never took her by force; he did something far worse. He made her the accomplice of her own destruction. He made her think herself guilty of her own defile-ment. He taught her pleasure. That is how he stole her innocence.

He made her want what she believed only he could give her. He corrupted her, his own flesh and blood, and so far as I could tell, never gave it a second thought. All the therapy in the world was not going to change it. Everyone in that family was seeing a psychologist-two of them testified at the trial-but they knew nothing about what had really happened to that girl. They droned on forever about ‘dysfunctional relationships,’ and they described the coping mechanisms by which everyone could eventually learn how to adjust to what had happened, but they had nothing to say about the human soul or the evil of incest. Not one word.

There was madness in all of this; madness in what the father had done; madness in what these self-proclaimed experts in human behavior had done or rather failed to do. I am not a religious man, but I tell you without hesitation that you will find more wisdom in the book of Genesis than in all their scholarly texts.

The girl had been forced to eat of the tree of knowledge by her own father, forced to leave the Garden of Eden and the unquestioning innocence of childhood. Even worse, she was made to believe that it was her fault, that she was the one who had committed the original sin.

“She certainly believed that her knowledge of what her father really was made her responsible for what happened to her brother.

” ‘Did your father ever do or say anything that made you think he might do something to Gerald?’

” ‘He told me that sometimes he’d find himself getting aroused.’

” ‘By Gerald?’

” ‘Yes.’

” ‘And do you remember what you said to him about that?’

” ‘I told him if he ever did anything to Gerald, I’d tell mother what he’d been doing with me. He promised he never would.’

” ‘Did you believe him?’

“She did not answer, not directly. ‘I tried to take care of Gerald. I spent a lot of time with him. I took him places, even when my friends didn’t want to have a little kid along. I let him know every way I could that he could talk to me about anything he wanted, that I wasn’t just his sister, but his best friend. I told him that parents didn’t always understand what kids were going through.’

” ‘Did Gerald ever say anything that made you think he was doing what he now says he was doing with his mother?’

” ‘No, of course not. He told me everything, and he never said anything like this until…’

” ‘Until?’

“She rubbed the corner of her eye, and then, grasping the arms of the chair, sat straight up, her mouth pressed into a rigid straight line. ‘Until he went to live with my father.’ With a thin, bitter smile, she added, ‘My father is very good at seducing children and getting them to believe whatever he wants them to believe.’

Her eyes moved to her mother, sitting in the chair next to mine, as if she wanted to make sure she was all right. It was the look of a parent checking on a child.

“Goldman was no fool. Most of his cross-examination was short, to the point, and done with a show of reluctance.

” ‘After all the terrible things that have happened, it must be good to know you can count on your mother’s support.’

“She was too smart. She did not say anything. She watched him, waiting for a question.

“Goldman flashed an ingratiating smile. ‘You know what it’s like, don’t you? Not being able to tell anyone, even your own mother, about something that has been done to you?’

“He should have known better, but despite everything he had heard, he still thought he was dealing with someone too young, too inexperienced, to know that questions often have meanings beyond the things they ask.

” ‘I couldn’t tell my mother,’ she replied, fixing him with a withering stare, ‘because it would have hurt her beyond anything anyone could have done. But Gerald could have told me-would have told me-because why would he think it would hurt me?’

“Goldman did not take his eyes off her, but his whole body tensed as he felt himself come under the watchful scrutiny of everyone in the courtroom. He tried to bury her answer beneath another question, but she was too quick for him.

” ‘I watched out for him. Gerald knew I wouldn’t let anything happen to him. And nothing did-not until they let him go live with my father!’

“Goldman’s face was screwed up tighter than a drum. ‘You’d lie to protect your mother, wouldn’t you?’

“It’s the question that never works, and I’ve heard it a thousand times.

” ‘I don’t have to,’ Amy calmly answered.”

I stopped and looked around at the three men gathered at the table with me. Harper, who had been staring into his empty glass, glanced up. Micronitis tapped the crystal of his watch to remind Asa that they were already late. The old man paid no attention.

He took his hands, which had been folded together under his chin, and spread them open, large, soft, and pink, like the smooth surface of a baby’s belly.

“What happened then?” he asked in a quiet, sympathetic voice.

Micronitis pulled his sleeve down over his watch and sank back into his chair.

I could see it in my mind, feel it in my soul, all the pulse-pounding, heart-stopping rhetoric I threw at that jury of strangers, all those years ago, when I stopped doing the things that were expected and started doing what something deep inside my own conscience told me to do.

“I quoted Euripides,” I said out loud, surprised when I heard myself say it. “During closing.”

Micronitis blinked and then moved forward, resting his elbows on the table. The sullen worried look on his face was replaced with an expression of immediate interest.

“What was the quote?” he asked, an eager, expectant smile on his small, pinched mouth.

I remembered not only the quote, but whole sections of a closing argument that had taken nearly two hours. I had worked on it for days, written it out longhand, written it and rewritten it, read it over so often that it echoed in my brain when I tried to sleep; I read it and rehearsed it so many times that it lost all familiarity and began to seem like something I had never seen before. I was certain I would not remember a word of it when I stood up to give it, and determined that even if that happened I would not read anything from the written page, not in front of a jury and a crowded courtroom. No, this had to appear sponta-neous, something I believed in so much that the words came of their own accord. In a real sense, they did. When I began to talk to that jury I forgot all about what I had written, rehearsed, and tried to remember. I forgot it all, and did not forget a word. I had learned it so well that it had become a part of me, something that had gone deeper than my conscious mind. It now had all the force of passion.

The passion was gone, and only the words were left. To repeat them now, without the fire, without the righteous belief in what they meant, seemed awkward and even embarrassing.

Asa saw my hesitation. “Go ahead,” he urged. “You’ll be the only one who might laugh.”

” ‘Oh where is the noble fear of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness and none join-’ “

Micronitis finished it for me. ” ‘And none join in fear of the Gods.’ Iphigeneia at Aulis. You really said that in court?” he asked, looking at me with a new respect.

Dragging his finger back and forth across his lower lip, Asa studied me for a moment. “That was Antonelli’s secret,” he said, with that same shrewd look in his pale blue eyes. There was a wistful tone in his voice, the nostalgia of regret. “Lawyers make the mistake of thinking they have to explain everything to jurors in the simplest possible terms. So they talk down to them, like they’re children. Antonelli always talked to them like there was at least one person on the jury who knew more about the case than he did. He talked to them the way you would talk if you were standing in front of the twelve most serious-minded people on the face of the planet. That’s why you always won, isn’t it? Because you understood that people don’t have to be smart themselves to recognize intelligence.”

I shook my head and shrugged, as if it were something about which I had never given a thought.

“I think Jeffries probably had a different interpretation.”

Asa was too old, and too clear-sighted, to indulge in a lie, even the kind we pass off in polite conversation as a concern for the feelings of other people.

“He thought you were a dangerous person, that you could persuade jurors to do things they shouldn’t, that you corrupted the system.”

Harper Bryce’s eyes widened as he looked at Asa and then at me. “How many times did you try cases in front of him?” he asked.

Asa answered for me. “Just that one time. The Larkin case.”

He turned back to me. “How long was the jury out?”

“Twenty-five minutes.”

Harper’s stomach knocked against the edge of the table as he laughed. “No wonder he thought you corrupted the system. But why was that the only time you ever tried a case in his courtroom?”

Asa had known Jeffries most of his life, and he had known me through my whole career. The story had become as much his as mine.

“It was the case that made Antonelli famous, and part of it was because of what Calvin had done. He threw him in jail for contempt; he took the side of the prosecution every time there was an objection. You heard what he said to the girl when she testified-about how if her brother wanted to get back at people it was because of what his mother had done. About the only thing he didn’t do was tell the jury they were supposed to convict. Calvin had gone too far. It might not have mattered if Antonelli had lost, but Antonelli won, and that made it look like Calvin had lost. That was one thing Calvin could never forgive.

He always had to win. Antonelli would have been a fool to try another case in front of him.”

Shoving back from the table, Asa stood up. “Well, he’s gone now,” he said. “He had a brilliant mind, one of the best legal minds I’ve ever encountered. It’s too bad he didn’t have more use for other people.” He glanced at his watch. “Why didn’t you tell me it was getting so late?” he asked, darting a glance at Micronitis before he looked back at me and winked.

After he was gone, Harper bent closer, a wry expression on his face. “Maybe that explains why Jeffries hated you, but why do you still hate him? He threw you in jail for a couple of days, but he was doing you a favor. That’s all anyone talked about, how you showed up in court right from the county jail, looking like some wino off the streets, and asked the same damn question all over again. You became a legend because of what he did. And even if you weren’t as smart as I think you are, it happened too many years ago to still carry a grudge.”

He watched me for a moment before he said, “It wasn’t the Larkin case at all, was it? There was something else, some other reason why you can’t stop hating him, even now, after he’s dead.”