Matters of Faith (11 page)

He and Ira used to talk about becoming cops themselves, how they would be tough, but would make sure things were okay with the people they arrested: the druggies would get to rehab, the abused would get safe, the children would get homes.

But Ira always sided with the cops, while Marshall sometimes felt sorry for the bad guys. He often hoped they would get away when they ran. He hated it when the cops pulled up a turned-over kiddie pool to find the suspect curled under it or when the fleeing perp—a word he and Ira used with glee—tripped and went down painfully hard, cowering under a K-9.

“They shouldn't run,” Ira would say solemnly. “They never get away, and it just makes it worse.”

Marshall would agree, but secretly he felt their desperation, felt the leap of adrenaline in his chest and the irresistible need for escape, the urge to struggle. He always thought that if he were ever in trouble, cops-chasing-him trouble, he would run as if his life depended on it.

But he hadn't known they were coming for him.

He opened the door before the squad cars came to a full stop, he said hello, as if welcoming them to his home. He confirmed his identity. He stood next to Ada as she did the same. And then when they told him he was being arrested for aggravated child abuse he'd felt none of the adrenaline he'd expected.

He couldn't have run then if prodded with a nightstick. He was too stunned. And as one officer read him his rights and another officer informed Ada that she was being arrested too, he simply stared at them. And he simply stared at first while Ada, with her damaged knees, struggled with the female officer, and then the front hall turned into a real scene from
COPS
when he began struggling, too, when he began screaming at them to leave her alone, to take their hands off of her. But he was dragged away, out the door, across the porch, and down the steps, eventually wrestled to his knees in the sand, brittle shells cutting into his legs.

They put him in the back of a squad car, putting a hand on his head just like he'd seen them do a thousand times before on television. It was all the same visually, his hands bound behind him so he had to find some way to keep from sitting on them, or against them, the dirty back windows, the split in the seat, the black grille separating the front and back.

But on television you can't smell anything, or feel anything, and the odor of urine was an assault on his senses, the feel of the ripped seat against the back of his calf was too real for it to be a dream, and when he banged his forehead against the grille in frustration, it hurt more than he would have imagined.

The cops dragged Ada down the steps and across the yard. He couldn't help but admire the fact that she was still struggling, still making it difficult to restrain her, all hundred and two pounds of her against three cops.

They should have run. That was all he could think now. Last night, they should have just gone. Anywhere.

When they started the car and took off, they didn't turn the sirens or lights on, but they drove fast, faster than he'd ever driven down their road, stirring up such a cloud of dust and sand that when he twisted around to look out the back window, the car Ada was in was completely obscured.

He'd never been to jail, never even had a speeding ticket, though he'd received a parking ticket when he'd stayed at the beach without feeding the meter. He'd paid it without ever telling his parents. He was shaking with fear when they took him from the car, took his things, got him fingerprinted and photographed, shuffled him through doors and doors and doors, and finally got him in a large holding cell with about twenty other men, where he wasn't answered when he asked about his proverbial phone call.

Some of the men laughed, two men said something to him in Spanish, but he merely looked at them helplessly and they turned away from him in disgust. A thin, balding man in overalls, actual denim overalls like some bad
Hee Haw
joke, held a cigarette out to him, and he shook his head and turned away quickly.

Throughout all of it he never saw Ada. He didn't know if there was a separate entrance for women; he knew she certainly wouldn't be in here. He didn't think
he
belonged here. He fervently wished he were under eighteen and was being held somewhere without these men. No matter how tough juveniles were, he would have felt as though he could have faked his way in, he could talk to them, about music, or movies, or something teenagers had in common.

But it was clear he had nothing in common with these men. They all seemed broken with their years, as if they breathed different air and walked in a different world, beyond a line he hadn't crossed yet.

Within thirty minutes another guard arrived to take him to the phone. Another set of doors, and then a small table in a cramped hallway and a phone. He stared at it, its filthy receiver, the numbers worn off the pad. Who did he call? His mother was the obvious choice. But he couldn't bear to hear her voice, her bewildered, terrified voice. And where would she be? In Meghan's room, of course.

That only left his dad. Maybe his dad would leave him here. He hadn't even been able to look at him, and Marshall had gotten the distinct impression that his father had wanted to do him violence, had barely been able to restrain himself. He stared at the phone and the phone book next to it.

“You either do it or you don't,” the guard said.

“I don't know who to call,” he admitted. He so badly wanted to call his mother.

“You got a lawyer? That's what I'd do. Girlfriend ain't gonna want to hear from you in jail.”

A lawyer. Why would he have a lawyer? Only criminals and millionaires had lawyers, and he was neither. Or perhaps he was now. Was this really it? Was this where he had been heading all his life? He wished again that he were younger. His finger itched to dial his mother's cell phone.

“Do I really only get one phone call?” he asked. “What if there's no answer?”

“I'd suggest you call someone you know's gonna be there.”

He stared at the phone and finally pulled the phone book toward him hastily when the guard made an impatient weight shift coupled with a practiced sigh.

Lawyers, lawyers, lawyers. Laser vision correction, law schools, lawn service. No lawyers.

The guard cleared his throat. “Attorneys,” he said, clearly bored with his charge.

Marshall flipped to
attorneys
. The pages were well-thumbed. Why didn't they just put a bookmark in it, or leave it open to the attorney page? He knew enough that he needed a criminal lawyer, and passed by the personal injury and malpractice full-page ads.

There it was. “Most Legal Matters,” “Felonies and Misdemeanors,” “Aggressive Representation!” “Available 24 Hours.” That was his man. He made the call. True to his ad, Charles Mingus was there: He answered the phone himself, and told him to keep his mouth shut and he'd be down as soon as he could.

And now Marshall was one of those people who had a lawyer.

This time the guard, without explanation, led him to a different area of the jail, into an actual cellblock. As he walked past the cells, he was prepared to flinch, for when they threw things at him, jeered at him, told him of the terrifying ways they were going to humiliate him in the shower. But most of them didn't pay any attention to him. The ones who looked at him at all did so balefully and without much interest.

A small black man said, “Hey, little man,” softly to him as they passed, but it was without threat. When they walked by the cell in which a man was crying, the guard said, “Shut it,
pendejo
,” and the man, without ceasing his cries, replied, “Screw you, man.”

Before the guard shut the cell door Marshall asked about Ada. The guard shrugged. “Not my department. Maybe
your lawyer
can find out.”

He was alone, for now, in his cell, but the men in the other cells made their presence known. It stank of men, and sounded of men, farting, snoring, and, of course, there was still the crying. He listened to the guard's heavy steps recede down the hall.

As he passed the crying man again, he said, “Shut it,
pendejo
.”

“Screw you, man.”

I DIDN'T want to leave the room and Cal didn't want to tell me while I was in it. We argued in harsh whispers and when two nurses arrived to do their usual vital checks, he left, standing out in the hall stubbornly while I stood just inside the door, anxious to get back to her bedside, to entreat her, once more, to open her eyes.

“Nothing is going to happen if you step outside the door, Chloe. Now get out here so we can talk about this, unless, of course, you'd like to leave him in jail. That'd work for me. I debated even telling you.”

That did it. With one last look I stepped into the hall and let the door shut softly behind me. It was the first time Meghan had been without either of us, and I felt nearly sick at the realization that eventually there would probably be more firsts. The first time I left to go home, the first time that maybe I didn't stay all night. There could be years of firsts, just like a second childhood.

Cal stood on the opposite side of the hallway, freshly showered, his hair in place, newly shaven. How long had he known, how long did he wait to tell me?

“What are you talking about?” I was still whispering.

“They've arrested Marshall and Ada for child abuse. Marshall's lawyer called and left a message on my cell phone. He said he left a message on yours, too, and one at home.”

I grasped the cold metal rail that ran along the wall to steady myself. Marshall's
lawyer
?

“When? Where is he?”

“He's in jail, Chloe. That's why his lawyer called. There will be an appearance before a judge, and he says bail will be set then. We have to post bail if we want him out.”

“Well then, we post bail. Child abuse?”

“Aggravated child abuse, with extenuating circumstances,” he clarified, which actually wasn't a clarification at all, but only served to further muddle my thoughts.

“What does that mean?”

“I didn't think to ask.”

“My God, how did this happen? Did you tell them to do this?”

“No, but I wish I had.” Cal's jaw was set, his mouth a thin line.

“Because it's not bad enough, right?” I asked bitterly, the desperation for my husband's comfort forgotten at the reminder of his unforgiving nature, turned now, not against his harsh parents, but against his own child. “It all has to go to hell at once? What have you done, Cal, what have you done?”

He grabbed my shoulders and shook me. Not gently, not as a man might shake his wife to make her see reason or to startle a crying jag out of her, but a jaw-rattling, whiplash shake.

“I told you,” he said, the words forced from behind his clenched teeth, “I didn't do anything. But I wish I had, yes, I do. I'd have liked to have been there for it. Don't you know she's going to die, Chloe? Our
son
killed our daughter.”

I wrenched myself free, feeling the welts raise immediately, and hit him, across his chest and shoulders, while he stood there like a tree, immovable, intractable, and beyond my comprehension. When my fist clipped his jaw, he caught my wrists and pulled me up against himself, and for the first time in my life I felt vastly,
globally
enraged that men were stronger, that most could, whenever they wanted, overpower women, and there was nothing we could do about it.

“Stop,” he said in my ear as I struggled. “Stop, stop now. Everyone's looking, Chloe, stop. It's not going to help anything.”

I shouldn't have cared that anyone saw. But I did. I couldn't bear the thought that doctors and nurses and visitors would see us as a divided family. We were supposed to come together, lean upon each other, and think of nothing but our daughter, speed her healing with our combined emotional strength.

But none of that was happening. I was thinking about more than Meghan; I was thinking about my marriage and the chasms and bridges within it, and whether it might be too hard to build another bridge across this particular chasm and whether I even wanted to.

And worse, how could you speed healing when half of the team was sure there wasn't any healing to speed?

I caught my breath and stopped struggling, aware that I could lean into him, that he would put his arms around me, and that even though we were so utterly divided over our children's fates, I would gain some comfort from it for a moment, and wouldn't that feel exquisite?

But I didn't have the luxury of that moment, and I pulled my wrists from his grasp and wiped my eyes viciously with the backs of my hands.

“Okay, so, what do we have to do?” I asked.

He shrugged and raised his eyebrows. “I don't know, Chloe. The lawyer wants to talk to both of us. Marshall asked him to. But one of us needs to be here. What do you want to do?”

“Great choices,” I said. Leave my daughter, or leave Marshall to Cal, who seemed to be just fine with him sitting in jail.

“Those are the only choices we've got,” he said.

“What would you say to the lawyer?” I asked. What I wanted to hear was that he would tell him to do whatever he needed to, and that he would be there for Marshall.

What I heard was: “I don't know.”

“Then I guess I'd better go,” I said. He said we had choices, but
we
didn't.
He
did. I pushed past him and entered Meghan's room. I wouldn't be rushed on this. I pulled the chair I'd been sitting in over and got as close as I could to the side of the bed, cheap wood frame against cold metal rails, and stroked her forehead the way I did when she couldn't sleep.