Age of Consent (14 page)

“We've got Kirtz,” the receptionist offered. “Hang on a second.” The receptionist held up a finger.

June watched as she went back to the phone and punched some numbers. The woman was turned away from June, having dragged the receiver as far from the desk as the cord would allow. Another woman, a black nurse with a stethoscope and a crisp white trouser suit, arrived a few minutes later from behind a curtain and told June she was not allowed to discuss patients with anyone except relatives.

“Are you a relative, ma'am?” She had a thin flat face with a wide nose, deep lines beneath her straightened bangs. Her eyelids hung heavily, like two weighted curtains, and she looked serious, even angry, or it may have been that after so many years of organizing patients and staff, an air of exasperated bossiness had become her natural state. Typed out on a badge above her shirt pocket was the biblical name Esther.

“Oh…yes. Yes, I am a relative,” June said.

“You his wife?” Esther asked.

“Not his wife, no.”

“Then who are you?”

She thought for a moment. “His wife.”

Esther gave her a look, then shook her head slowly from side to side, as though everything about June was difficult. “He had a car accident,” she began. There was an explanation about how he'd been retrieved, and that he had not been conscious when they brought him in, and how there had been no number in his wallet so they hadn't notified his next of kin.

“Next of kin,” June repeated and wondered if he was dead. When her real husband had died, had been found dead, in fact, it had taken three of the staff just to cope with her. And she wondered if it was her apparent calm now that made this nurse doubt who she was. “How bad is it?”

“He broke his arm—”

“That's it, his arm?”

“And a head injury and…are you
really
his wife?”

“We've been married for three years,” June heard herself say. As she said the words she began almost to believe them. “We have a daughter,” she added, then felt a shiver of panic and a deeper voice calling to her from inside herself, asking,
Have you lost your damned mind?

She sensed a subtle shift in tone in the nurse, who came out from behind the desk and took her to one side, huddling beside a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall and a big stainless-steel table on legs. June was told it was serious but that he was stable. No, he could not be seen now. She could go home or she could wait.

June searched out a chair in the waiting room, joining a few other people with their newspapers and bandages and kiddies in strollers. The seat was hard plastic, linked by the arm to the one next to it. Across the aisle was a family—a mother and father with their little girl whose lap was filled with a large, gaudy pink teddy bear, and her foot wrapped in ice. The foot was swollen so that it looked like a paddle, the toes bluish. The girl did not look especially unhappy. Like many of the injured, she had an almost giddy response to her accident. She bounced the teddy bear on her knee, then pretended to feed it some of a Hershey's bar she was eating. June did not worry for the family; the worst was over for them and now only good things would happen. The foot would be x-rayed, then set in a cast. They would go home with the feeling of near escape. She was not even that worried about Craig. He was alive; she was here waiting for him. The doctors would fix him. Every bad thing about the day—the long drive, the dust of the road, the sun's uncomfortable heat—was over now. She could relax in the waiting room as these others around her were doing, with a sense that within the labyrinthine corridors of the massive hospital, and all its privacy curtains and examining rooms and surgical suites, good was being done for those who needed it.

2008

S
he doesn't understand much about criminal court hearings, but Bobbie is pretty sure she can't be seen driving her mother's car, or admit to speaking with June last night when she'd arrived into her bedroom like an aged Thumbelina. There are strict laws about trying to persuade witnesses. June could be held in contempt of court, Bobbie worries. And then she thinks how she's only been back in her mother's life for a matter of hours and is already trying to protect her.

She parks the Impala a mile from the courthouse, locks the door, and leaves the keys on the front wheel. She's going to walk the rest of the way. The traffic is heavy, with sudden explosions from car horns that unnerve her on this raw morning, but it is better to walk and clear her head and not have to answer any questions about why she is driving her mother's car.

The courthouse looks like a college library, set back from the road with fat pillars and impressive stairs, a concrete fortress that scares her. She can't bear the thought of climbing the stairs to the entrance. She wishes she was going anywhere but through the massive doors and into the entrance hall, which has the official feel of a municipal building and a worrying coldness to it as though the law is there to frighten people, not to keep them safe. The only people she is allowed to talk to right now are from the district attorney's office and she tries to find the conference room where she is to meet with them before the hearing. She has been told that everywhere else, and everyone else, is off-limits.

“Hello, hello!” she hears, and there is the assistant district attorney, a young man named Dreyer, in a tailored suit and crimson tie. He has pink cheeks, a receding blond hairline. He looks like he's fresh out of law school but has, in fact, been litigating for years. He tells Bobbie this is a nice judge and an outstanding jury. “They will like you!” He smiles, as though he is about to introduce her to his parents. “And here's coffee!” He holds out a paper cup. She notices his cuff links, two little white-gold squares, and his wedding ring, a fat band on his young hand.

“I hope you take it with milk,” he says.

As they go into a side room next to the courtroom she says, “Am I going to be humiliated in there?”

“Absolutely not,” he says. “I wouldn't let that happen.”

She wants to ask him about Craig but doesn't want to risk hearing something that will upset her. Dreyer must sense this in her because he says, “He's not going to talk to you. He may
look
at you, but so what? He's the one on trial, not you.”

“He doesn't worry me.”

She knows he doesn't believe her. He says, “Don't direct your answers at him when you testify. Look at the jury. And if you can't look at them, look at me.”

“My mother—”

“Your mother won't be in court until after you testify. She's a defense witness. You won't even see her.”

“I'm afraid she's going to try to, you know, disrupt things.”

Dreyer looks at her sharply, his eyebrows knitting together. “What makes you say that?”

“I think she's gone a little nuts. She showed up in my room last night. She practically climbed through the window.”

“Showed up at your
hotel
room? Does anybody else know this?”

“The woman who let her in, I guess.”

“You didn't talk to her about the case?”

“I didn't talk to her at all. I drove her home.”

“You haven't spoken to any other witnesses?”

“No.”

“Not to Daniel Gregory?”

Dan. Absolutely not. “No,” she said. “I haven't.”

“Not even on the phone?”

She hadn't called him, though she'd wanted to. When she'd returned to the room, having dropped her mother off, she'd found his number in the book. She'd even written it down. But she hadn't called him, mostly because by then it was too late at night to phone a man you haven't spoken to in decades. “No,” she says to Dreyer. “The last I heard from Dan was when he told me about the girl, the one who said Craig had been having sex with her. The one whose case got messed up.”

Dreyer says, “Then stop worrying. Relax. This morning is easy. You are talking to me. We're just going to have a chat while you are on the witness stand. You know all the questions and you know all the answers.”

His words are designed to reassure her but she cannot help feeling as though she has done the wrong, that it is she who is the defendant. There is something discomforting about bringing this charge—in this court, at this time—over a matter that happened decades ago. Even she asks herself the question that is on everyone's mind: Why bring it all up
now
?

She glances into the courtroom as they pass, noticing the wooden benches set out like church pews, the judge's seat like an altar, the jury seats to the side as though they are a choir stall, and it seems to her as close to Judgment Day as mankind can create. She wishes for the hundredth time she had never given a statement. She wishes she'd never responded to the e-mail from Dan, or opened the attachment that revealed a scanned copy of a recent article about Craig, reporting that he'd been acquitted of a statutory rape charge. There had been a mistake made during the trial, some sort of technical error that Bobbie didn't entirely understand. What she did understand was the girl's age: fourteen. The girl had even gone to her same junior high.

She waits with Dreyer in a small room to the side of the court. She tries to remember the last time she was this nervous, the last time she felt so exposed. If she thought about it long enough she'd bring herself right back to when she was a young teenager, loaded to the breaking point with anxiety about Craig.

“Five things I want you to remember when the defense attorney questions you,” Dreyer says. He holds his palm up, his fingers in the air. “Number one, listen carefully to the question.” Down goes a finger. “Number two, answer only the question being asked.” Another finger down. “What's number three?”

“If I don't understand the question, I ask them to repeat it, or to rephrase it.”

“Exactly.”

“And four?” She can't remember four.

“Four is you answer in as few words as possible. Lastly, don't worry if she makes you answer yes or no. That's what she's going to do. She wants to reduce every answer to yes or no. Go with it. We'll fix everything up on redirect.”

Redirect is when Dreyer speaks to her on the stand again. He will come along after the cross-examination and ask questions that will allow her to expand on her answers and present them more favorably.

“Do you know what time it is?” he says.

There is a clock on the wall and she glances toward it but is stopped by Dreyer, who places his hand on her arm, then shakes his head in a mild scold. “Try again. Listen to the question, answer
only
the question.” He studies her, his eyes fixed on her eyes. “Now, do you
know
what time it is?” His eyebrows are raised, his lips parted. He leans forward, waiting.

“No,” she says finally.

He lets out a long breath. “Perfect. You are correct. You don't know.”

She can hear the swing of the doors and the shuffling of people as they cram onto the courtroom seats. She hears the bailiff settling everyone down for the proceedings and the judge entering. She imagines the packed room, the reporters in the wings, the court reporter with the tiny steno machine, the clerk with his Bible.

“When do you go in?” she asks Dreyer.

“In a minute.”

She wonders who will watch the hearing. The parents of the girl who accused Craig of statutory rape will be there; members of the public who know him from the radio, of course. Plenty of journalists, a number of his fans.

The air-conditioning is weak; the room has no windows and is hot. She imagines the temperature of the courtroom elevating by the minute. She imagines her mother somewhere in the building. She thinks of Dan, considering what he looks like after so many years. She cannot stop herself thinking about Craig. He will sit with his long legs, his big frame taking up a lot of room. He will be wearing a suit and tie, a handsome middle-aged man, a man of the community whom she fears the jury may love.

“I'm going to leave you here for a little while. You'll be brought in shortly,” Dreyer says. “We're going to take it from the day you met him, then forward up until the car accident. If you need a recess, say so. Or just gesture. Do this.” He makes a little movement with his finger. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“We need to recount as many of the separate times he had sex with you as we can. Just like we've gone over before, but this time you'll be saying it in front of the court and that will be more difficult. Just follow the program. Exactly as we've practiced.”

She nods.

“And of course we will slow down and really focus on how you came through that accident in such good condition,” Dreyer says.

“I didn't.”

“I mean, that you lived.”

“Oh, yes, well there's that.”

“The defense is going to ask why you didn't go for help.”

“I didn't want my mother knowing,” she says, the beginning of an answer she has already rehearsed with Dreyer.

“You are going to have to explain how you got home, having walked all night, without your mother suspecting anything.”

Bobbie nods. “My mother was with
him
that night,” she says. “From that night forward she was always with him.”

“I know, but you need to say that. And you need to say—”

“That she didn't find out because by the time she got home, she would have believed I was at school.”

“Good,” Dreyer says. She has answered the way she is meant to. He wants it all down pat. No errors. No surprises. “One more thing. Do you know how many miles you walked that night?” he asks.

“From the accident, you mean?” She tries to remember the miles; it was noted in a document Dreyer had given her months previously.

Dreyer answers the question for her. “Seven miles barefoot after a near-fatal collision,” he says. “That may be difficult for a jury to believe. Describe it the way you did in your statement. In detail. They are going to want to know how you managed it, a kid of fifteen.”

She almost laughs. “Well, that's exactly how I managed. Because I was fifteen. I wish I was as tough now.” She could hear the murmurings of conversation in the courtroom next door, the bailiff making announcements.

“Even so, review your testimony,” Dreyer says with a serious, almost grave expression. “I know you are ready, but be extra ready. Think about that night and exactly what you did. Every footstep if you can.”

“Okay,” she promises.

“And when I press you for why you didn't ask for help, for why you were able to walk so far after such a collision, remember that I am only speaking like that because the defense is going to ask you anyway. We have our chance early on to set it in the jury's mind that the whole thing makes sense.”

She nods. She reminds herself that she always knew this would be hard.

“She will try to discredit you during cross-examination, first by trying to convince the jury you weren't in that car. Second by claiming your hatred of Craig as an intrusion in your childhood is what brought you here today and not anything he did to you directly. But it won't be easy for her, believe me.”

“Why won't it be easy for her?” Bobbie asks meekly.

Dreyer smiles. She loves how confident he is. She wonders what magic pill people take that allows them this measure of confidence. He says, “Because she knows that if she treats you badly and the verdict goes against him in the end, the sentencing will bear that out. He'll get slammed with more time.”

He snaps his briefcase shut. He pulls it forward and she hears the leather scrape against the table. Then he stands in front of her, shoulders back. His expression is full of appreciation, as though she is doing a special favor for him. “Hey, feel good about yourself,” he says. “You're doing right.”

She watches him leave. She sips her coffee alone in the windowless room. There is nothing to do but recall the crash all those years ago, what she can tell the jury, what she can remember. She recalls the terrifying collision that seemed to go on forever. And the awful march through the night that followed.