A Season in Purgatory (44 page)

“Are you serious?”

“Yep.”

“Would you testify to that?”

“No, I couldn’t do that.”

“Who knows this?”

“Nobody. Not even my sister. She worships all of them, especially Aunt Grace.”

“Dear God,” I said.

“Listen, Harry, if they could have pinned it on you, they would have, you know. I’m sure it was discussed,” said Fatty. “But you were too smart, and they all knew it.”

We pulled up to the hotel. “Come on in and have a drink with me,” I said.

“No. Too risky. Besides, you better get some dry clothes on.”

“You know, Fatty, I should have gone to the police back when it happened. I shouldn’t have lied. It’s haunted my life, knowing what I knew.”

“Let up on yourself, Harry. Look at it this way. If you’d gone to the police, or even threatened to go, something might have happened to you. You were not a very noticeable character in those days. Who the hell would have missed you? You had no parents, no friends to speak of, except Constant. Only your aunt Gert. What’s the matter?”

“A chill just went through me.”

“You’re soaked, that’s why.”

“Yes, that’s why.”

“They used to laugh at your aunt Gert, you know, when you weren’t there, just as they used to laugh at Sis and me.”

I couldn’t bear to think that they had laughed at Aunt Gert. After I showered and changed, I drove over to St. Mary’s Home in Ansonia, where she had been a patient for years. I hadn’t been to see Aunt Gert in ages. The last time I had seen her, she hadn’t recognized me.

“Visiting hours are over,” said the nun on duty.

“Yes, I know, but can’t you bend the rules just this once? I would like to see her. I have come a long way. Please. I am her nephew. I pay her bills here.”

“Let me see if she’s asleep,” said the nun.

Finally I was let in. Aunt Gert looked tiny in her bed. Her face was very pale and her hair very white. She looked over at me, and I knew she recognized me. I leaned over and kissed her forehead. She reached out her hand, and I took it and sat on the edge of her bed. I didn’t tell her that Claire and I were separated. I didn’t tell her that I was involved in
a murder trial. I didn’t tell her that I had more or less abandoned my career, at least for the present time, because I could not concentrate on anything but what was happening in my life. I could, and did, talk about the twins. She loved hearing about Timmy and Charlie. I had brought her a picture of the boys, and her face lit up with joy. Then I stood up to leave.

“I wanted to say thank you, Aunt Gert, for taking care of me after they died,” I said. She knew I meant my mother and father. With her, I always said they died, not that they were killed, or murdered. “I don’t think I ever told you that before. I don’t think I was ever grateful enough. I didn’t understand how good you were to me. I didn’t understand how important your advice was to me. Once you said to me, ‘You are bewitched by those people, Harrison.’ Do you remember that? I was. You were right. I didn’t listen.”

She looked at me.

“I know you’re getting tired. Before I go, I want to ask you something. Do you still pray so much? Do you? Pray for me.”

I leaned over and kissed her cheek. I never realized that I had loved her. Her eyes followed me.

“Thank you, Aunt Gert. I love you.”

I grew fond of Fatty Malloy. Occasionally we would meet, always in secret. He talked to Sis every day and kept me abreast of the doings in the family.

“Gerald has become very religious,” he said. “Communion every day. Cardinal has sort of reconverted him back. Cardinal said to Sis, ‘He has reembraced his Catholicism with fervor. It is a beautiful thing to see.’ ”

“Gerald religious?” I was incredulous.

“According to Sis, Cardinal says he’s abandoned the sins of the flesh.”

“I would think at age seventy-five, after a massive stroke, it was time to slow down in the flesh department.”

Fatty roared with laughter.

“How’s Kitt?” I asked.

“She’s always falling down, covered with bruises, or breaking a toe, or something.”

“Who is that girl?” asked Kitt. She was sitting in the car outside the courthouse with Maureen.

“Her name is Maud Firth, from Lake Forest. Winston Firth’s daughter,” said Maureen.

“Oh, yes, Maud Firth. I thought I recognized her.”

“You know her?”

“I went to her coming-out. What’s she doing here?”

“The same thing Weegie Somerset’s doing. Testifying against Constant.”

“Oh, dear,” said Kitt. “I never heard about that.”

On the day of the preliminary hearing to discuss the admissibility of the testimony of Weegie Somerset, who, married, was now known as Louise Belmont, and Maud Firth, the atmosphere in the courtroom was tense. The prosecution felt that the testimony of the women at the trial was vital for a conviction, as it showed a pattern of behavior on the part of Constant Bradley. Valerie Sabbath was equally determined to keep the two women from testifying in front of a jury.

“Let me go over this with you one more time, Constant and Jerry, so you absolutely understand what ‘pattern of behavior’ means in a court of law,” said Valerie, speaking low to her client and his brother at the defense table. “At the risk of appearing a little crude, I’ll give you an example. If you had pasted on a red mustache every time you fucked these women, and you only fucked them up the ass, and all the women were Chinese, that’s a pattern of behavior. But just knocking them around a little bit doesn’t necessarily constitute a pattern of behavior. Understand?”

The brothers looked at each other.

“Do you understand?” she repeated.

“Yes,” said Constant.

“Weegie what’shername in the cabana, who later tells Captain Riordan you didn’t hit her, and then almost twenty years later says you did, forget it,” said Valerie. “I scared the shit out of that girl, with her little pageboy and her little gold barrettes, when I took her deposition. She’ll cave in on the stand, you mark my words.”

Constant didn’t reply.

“Take Maud Firth. That’s a little different. She had seventeen stitches. There are hospital records. But she took money, am I right? A settlement? And she was loaded when it happened, right? That won’t look so good when I get her up there. There’s a fruit cousin, called Fruity Suarez, if you can believe that name, whom she went to see that night. He wants to testify how beat up she was.”

“Fruity Suarez got kicked out of Milford for kissing dicks,” said Constant.

“Good to know,” said Valerie, making a note. “You mark my words, Judge Consalvi will disallow the testimony of these ladies.”

A smartly dressed woman walked down the corridor of the courthouse.

“You probably won’t remember me, Harrison,” she said. “I’m Louise Belmont. When we knew each other in Scarborough Hill, I was Weegie Somerset.”

“Of course, I remember you, Weegie,” I said.

“I just hate today. I’m terrified,” she said. “My husband’s furious with me for agreeing to testify at this hearing. I think it’s wonderful what you did, Harrison.”

“The betrayer, I’m called. A snitch, a sleaze, you name it.”

“I don’t call you any of those things. My parents don’t, either. There’s a lot of people cheering for you.”

“Why did you always say he didn’t hit you that night in Watch Hill? I was out by the cabana that night. I saw. I heard. But you told Captain Riordan after Winifred was killed that it wasn’t true. Why did you do that?”

“I loved him then. I ached with love for him. I’m sure if I had gone to the police then, Winifred might still be alive today. I felt responsible in a way, and now that I’ve got a little
girl of my own, I had to come forward when Mr. Lupino called me in for a deposition.”

Valerie Sabbath was chatting in a corner of the corridor with Charlotte Bradley. A woman quite unlike Weegie Somerset and Maud Firth walked by, her hair in a snood.

“Who’s that?” asked Charlotte.

“Wanda Symanski,” said Valerie.

“The one my husband picked up in the bar in Sag Harbor?”

“Yes.”

“Is she testifying?”

“Not yet. She’s made charges that are unprovable.”

“She’s not even waitress-pretty,” said Charlotte.

A television news cameraman came precariously close to their faces with his camera. “Take that camera out of my face,” Valerie yelled at the cameraman. Charlotte withdrew quickly, out of camera range, but Valerie was incensed at the intrusion. As the cameraman withdrew, he held the camera on her. She followed him down the length of the corridor, holding up her middle ringer to the lens. “This what you want? This what you want?” she screamed in a taunting voice. By this time, the corridor was filled with reporters. “You people think you own the courthouse,” she screamed at them. “I was having a private talk with Mrs. Constant Bradley, and he stuck his camera right in my face. You sleazoids will go to any length. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

“Oh, dear,” said Maureen.

Maureen and Kitt and Charlotte sat unblinking and stony-faced as the prosecutor, Bert Lupino, gave graphic descriptions of the depositions of Weegie Somerset and Maud Firth. Their hands were folded in their laps. Through the years, they had heard whispers that there had been an altercation
with Weegie, but they did not know about Maud Firth. They had never heard that she had been knocked down in a hotel room and had seventeen stitches taken in her head.

“I don’t believe a word of that,” said Maureen.

Neither Kitt nor Charlotte said anything.

Judge Consalvi said she would make her ruling on the admissibility of the women’s testimony on the first day of the trial.

The more salacious newspapers and television shows reported the event with painful prominence.

“Oh, dear,” said Maureen, watching the television news.

For the first time in years I had days with nothing to do. My time was taken up only with waiting for the trial to start. Each postponement requested by Valerie Sabbath and granted by Judge Edda Consalvi was agonizing. I lost interest in the sort of stories that used to fascinate me to write. I could no longer cover trials. I was in one. I went on leave from my career. I had no office to go to. I had no deadlines to keep. I stopped swimming. I read
War and Peace
. I read the six Palliser novels. I rented videos, six at a time, but rarely saw one all the way through. Other than Fatty Malloy, to whom I became devoted, I had no one to talk to who was not involved in the case. I missed Claire. I missed her intelligent conversation. I missed being married. I missed the day-to-day life of watching my sons grow up. I telephoned them each evening at six, eager to hear their tales of playschool and Halloween costumes and the class pageant. More and more I drove up to the country to see them, and take them out to McDonald’s, but also to talk to Claire. I asked her to tell me about the book she was editing. She was totally involved with the work of an author she had discovered, and read me passages from her first novel. For those
moments my turmoil abated. She never asked, “What’s the latest?”—meaning about the case—for which I was grateful. But when I spoke, I would start sentences with “When the trial begins” or “When the trial is over.” It was the moment in my life that I was waiting for and dreading. All things led to it and away from it. Claire understood without saying she understood. Once she said, “Are you keeping a journal? Are you keeping track of all this? You should, you know.” When I left them, I often had nowhere to go. I began driving with no purpose in mind, looking at towns and villages and covered bridges and seasonal changes, things I had never spent time doing before.

One day, stopping to look at a sign, I realized that I was near the village where the Milford School was. I had never gone back there since I graduated in 1973. I rarely read the school magazine they sent me, even though I heard from time to time I was written up in it. I knew that Dr. Shugrue had retired and become headmaster emeritus. Once I had a letter from the new headmaster asking me if I would come and speak at the school, but I declined, saying that I was going to be on assignment in Europe, although that was not the truth. I drove through the village, which had become a small town. The local theater where Constant and I had sneaked to movies had become a cineplex. At the far end of Main Street, I turned to the right and drove up the hill. At the top of the hill was the entrance to Milford.
THE MILFORD SCHOOL
said the sign. What a strange feeling it was to look down on the school that sprawled below. I had forgotten how happy I had been there, until it happened.

Ahead of me, beautifully situated, was the Bradley Library. The last time I saw the building, on the day of my graduation, when Gerald Bradley took me inside and gave me the plane tickets for Europe that were to ensure my silence,
it was in its final stages of completion. The handsome red-brick Georgian facade was still bare. Now ivy had grown up its walls, and lovely elm trees, transplanted fully grown, were in place around it. It appeared to have been there for a hundred years.

I went in. It was almost twilight. The lights were on. Ahead was a reading room. On a table were magazines and newspapers, neatly lined up. On a green leather chair, an old man in a tweed jacket and bow tie was sleeping. His hornrimmed spectacles had slipped down his nose. A copy of the
New York Times
had fallen to the floor beside him, open to the page he had been reading. It was Dr. Shugrue. I wandered about, looking here, looking there at the lovely building. It was early evening, and there were no students about. When I looked back at the figure in the chair, I saw he was looking at me. He had righted his glasses.

“It’s Harrison, isn’t it?” he asked. “Harrison Burns?”

“It is, sir. I am flattered that you would recognize me after so many years, and so many students,” I said.

“We have your two books here in the library. We’re quite proud of you,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Is Elias Renthal still in jail?”

“Prison, not jail.”

“Prison, of course.”

“Yes, he is.”

“Good. And Max Goesler?”

“Yes, and for a long time to come.”