The Crystal Child (14 page)

She tried to shrug off his concern.  “There’s no danger.”

Jake stared at her furious with confusion.  “My God, I don’t know you at all. You don’t show any shame.”  Jake, the perfect lawyer, demanding remorse before sentencing.  “Is that it?  You feel no shame?”

“Yes, I do … I guess I do.”

“You guess?”

“He wanted it.  It didn’t seem wrong.  Oh, I just wasn’t thinking.  There was no time.”  She realized her answer was rambling nonsense.  “He wanted it.”

“He’s eleven years old,” Jake screamed, then dropped his voice.  “He wanted
what
?  How did he phrase it?  ‘Please, Julia, may I have a piece of …’ ”

“Stop!” she snapped, glaring at him.  “Just stop. You don’t understand.”

He blew out a long breath.  “No, no, I don’t.  But I hope you understand that I want that kid out of here immediately.”

“He won’t go,” Julia told him.  “I know he won’t.”

“Then what?  Good lord!  I don’t suppose you’re thinking of eloping.”

“No. Oh, I don’t know what we’re …  what I’m thinking of.”

“That’s all too clear.  Then just stay away from him and leave this up to me.”

Julia would never be certain why Jake did it.  He claimed he was acting in Aaron’s interests, but it was surely an act of revenge.  He sought out the Laceys and told them what he had heard from Alex.  Later he said he begged them to keep the matter quiet, but he could not have been unaware of how they would respond. Already resentful that Julia had alienated their son’s affections, they now ascended into high outrage.   Jake actually encouraged them to act quickly.  “Find some way to get your boy home tonight,” he told them.  “In another day I’ll be moving out with my son.  I think there’s a chance my wife may try to abscond with Aaron.  I’m sorry to say she’s not to be trusted.”

No sooner had Jake left than the Laceys were on the telephone to the juvenile authorities,  frantic parents rushing to protect their child.  They came to Julia’s house that evening.  Isolated and demoralized, Julia begged Aaron to leave with his parents. “We’ll work this out somehow.  If you stay, they may feel they have to arrest me.”

Aaron’s look told her he felt betrayed, but he did as she wanted.  He packed and left, not even saying good-bye.  When he reached home, he would answer none of the questions his parents asked.  “This won’t do any good,” he told them.

“You can’t just clam up on us,” his father said, his anger rising.  “What did she do to you?”

“That’s private,” Aaron answered.  “You know enough.  You don’t need the dirty details.”

“This is intolerable!” his father shouted.

“Oh?  Is it?  Perhaps you should just spank me and send me to my room.”

The following morning, Jake left with Alex.  The last Julia saw of Alex was his glowering face as he closed the door.  There were no good-byes. Julia, on her own in the house, welcomed her loneliness.  She arranged to have all her appointments and commitments cancelled, then sat quietly and waited.  She knew it would not be long before her world began to come apart.  Somehow the media would find out; she was sure of that.  She thought seriously about buying a plane ticket to anywhere distant.  But she remembered the expression on Aaron’s face when they parted. She could not simply run out on him, even though the risk was mainly hers.

There was something else.  When she imagined being far from him, it tore at her.  They might never be close again, but she must not be the one to put miles between them.  She must not let him believe she thought only of herself, for indeed she could not.

So she waited.  One day, then another. Finally, the calls began.  The juvenile welfare  office phoned, asking her to appear for an interview.  The tone was cold, officious, ominous. “Dr. Stein, there has been a complaint filed with us regarding Aaron Lacey, a boy eleven years of age.”  Within an hour, there was another call, the state medical licensing board informing her that there would be an inquiry regarding a charge of unethical behavior.  In the meantime, she was advised to suspend her practice.

It was time to call John Briggs, her lawyer.

***

When she said it was urgent, John Briggs was on the phone in five minutes.  “What’s this all about?” he asked.

“I’m being accused of sexual abuse.”

“Abuse?  Of whom?”

“One of my patients.”

“Ridiculous!  Your patients are all a hundred years old.”

“I have one who’s a bit younger.  You may have heard.”

“The boy?  What’s his name?”

“Aaron.”

“You’re accused of molesting him?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s accusing you?”

“His parents.”

“Why would they say such a thing?  You saved their child’s life.”

“They have a witness.”

“You mean somebody’s telling lies, slandering you.”

“They have a witness,” she repeated.

A judicious pause.  Briggs knew better than to ask for more on the telephone.  “We should meet right away.”

“Can they arrest me?”

“They can, but I doubt they will.  If you were a black teenager who stole a candy bar, they’d be down on you in force, hand-cuffs, SWAT team, and all.  But you’re a woman, you’re a prominent doctor, and they know you’d be out on bail in an hour.”

“Please keep me out of jail.”

“Jail?  Who’s going to jail?  We’ll have this laughed out of court in twenty-four hours.”

The next day she met Briggs in his office.  He had bad news. “Jake’s being a rat,” he said.  “He won’t back you up.”

“I didn’t expect him to,” Julia said.

Briggs raised an eyebrow in surprise.  “I didn’t know things were that bad between you.”

“They are.”

“He says he’s standing by Alex, whatever that means.  But one lucky break.  Mad as he is, he says he won’t take the stand against you.  His testimony would only be hearsay anyway.  All he knows is what Alex told him.  Alex is the key to this case.”

“Alex?”  She was not surprised to hear that Alex would be involved, but she shuddered nonetheless.  “They won’t bring Alex into this.”

“Aaron Lacey’s parents are out for blood, Julia.  There’s no question they’ll want him called. Whether he is or not will depend on the district attorney.  Nobody likes dealing with kids on the witness stand.  In this case the D.A. is in a tough corner.  Forcing a son to testify against his mother sounds like something out of the Third Reich.”

“They mustn’t do that,” Julia insisted.  “You mustn’t let them.”

“I’m told they’ve already prepared questions for the judge to look over.  He may decide to depose Alex in private.”

“What will they ask him?”

“They’ll ask him if he saw you and Aaron having sexual intercourse.  They’ll ask him to describe exactly what he saw, where, and when. He’ll be under oath same as in a court room.  No matter how angry Alex may be with you,  I doubt he’ll be able to brazen that out.”

“There’s no way to avoid having him questioned?”

“If they don’t call Alex, they don’t have a case.  For that matter, if they do call him, the whole thing may blow over in a few minutes.  All he has to do is break down and tell the truth, that he made it all up.  The judge will give him a good scolding and that’ll be that.”

“If they make Alex testify, I won’t fight the case.”

“You’re willing to let him get away with a nasty lie like this?”  He waited for her answer, but she only looked away.  He allowed a long pause to settle in.  “Julia, let me be clear.  Are you telling me that this is
true
?  That what Alex claims he saw — you and Aaron together
in flagrante
— really happened?”

Up to that point, he had not put the most obvious question.  His tone made clear that he regarded the charge against Julia as absurd.  “Yes,” she answered.

Briggs blew out a hard breath.  He picked up a pencil and began to drum slowly on his desk. He studied her, more puzzled than judgmental.  “Well,” he sighed.  And then “Well,” again.  “That rather changes the nature of the case.  Our best choice is to admit the facts …”  He paused there and fixed her with a steady gaze as if he needed to confirm where they now stood. “The facts.  These are the facts, Julia, right?  This isn’t some sort of strange maneuver on your part?”

“No.  It’s true, John.”  She was looking him straight in the eye.

“Very well.  We admit the facts and appeal to the court to spare Alex the anguish.  That way you come off looking like a good mother — or looking as good as you can under the circumstances.  We can do our best to defend your character, play for pity … suggest some kind of diminished responsibility.”

“Insanity?”

“We don’t use that word any more.  But something like that.”

“I’m not crazy.”

“You don’t have to say so, but I do, in so many words.  We can say you’ve been under great emotional strain, your marriage has been getting rocky, you’ve been experiencing lapses of judgement.  We can imply that you developed unhealthy feelings for this boy, feelings of extreme sympathy and tenderness, stemming from your unusual relationship.  Something like that, something unique and unaccountable — a single rash act.  It’s your only alternative to being seen as plain evil.  This is child sexual abuse, Julia. These days, nobody gets off lightly for that. You have to offer some kind of excuse.”

She took Briggs’ advice to heart.  Nobody wanted an excuse — or rather a reason — for her conduct more than she did.  She sat late into the night in her empty home scrutinizing her conscience as closely as a specimen under a microscope.  She had always given herself credit for taking her professional ethics more seriously than any doctor she knew.  Healing the elderly imposed a special moral burden on the physician.  She had spent her career dealing with people who were severely dependent, often incapable of deciding their own fate, people who often did not know their own mind.  It could be so easy to exploit their trust.  In that respect they were like children.  They all but cried out for care, for love.  She insisted whenever the point came up in conversation that there should be miles of distance between doctors and patients.  No emotional involvement. Well, pity perhaps — if it was objectively expressed, but nothing more, especially when the patient was as much at the doctor’s mercy as the very old or the very young.

But
was
Aaron very young?  She knew nobody with whom she could raise that question; it barely made sense to her.  But that was the heart of the matter.  And if she answered that question as her feelings told her she must, then she would have to answer no, he was not a child.  When she was with Aaron,
she
was the child.  She felt girlish, as if she were with someone who knew far more about life.  In his company, she returned to the excitement she remembered from her adolescence, when the things that happen between men and women were still clouded with mystery.  There had been just such an air of discovery about their love.  It bewildered and intoxicated her, but seemed entirely natural to Aaron.  She knew now that he was the faun-like presence who came to her in dreams to beckon her deeper and deeper into the forest glade.  Wherever he led, she would follow, leaving all thought of right and wrong behind.

Or was she fooling herself?  Maybe she was no better than a sex-starved woman hungering for intimacy too long denied.  She had been suffering through a long dry spell, struggling to put down every least sexual impulse, replacing passion with work.  She and Jake had been living like room mates for … how long?  Years now.  Same house, but different worlds.  Could she have been that desperate?  Desperate enough to prey upon a boy entrusted to her care? These uncanny qualities she thought she found in Aaron — were they self-deception meant to cover over a shabby, opportunistic act?   She flinched at the thought.  In times past, she would not have been the least bit willing to excuse what she had done, no matter the reasons given. She had always been quick to condemn male colleagues who took advantage of their female patients. How could she expect people to see this as any different?

***

Aaron sat unspeaking, waiting for John Briggs to begin.  The lawyer found the boy’s face almost mesmerizing, the eyes especially: calm but penetrating. 
If he grows up looking like that
, Briggs thought,
he could be the heartthrob of the nation.

The district attorney had raised no objection to Briggs talking with Aaron. But Julia did.  She consented to the visit only after offering much resistance.  “Please be gentle with him,” she said at last.  “He’s been through so much.”  Briggs promised to handle the boy with the greatest care.  But once he was in the same room with Aaron, he realized he was not dealing with a scared little kid.  The boy’s self-possession was intimidating.

“Now, of course, this isn’t easy to talk about,” Briggs began.

“What isn’t?” Aaron asked with a smile that hinted at amusement.

“I think you know.”

“My having sex with Julia?”

Briggs paused to study the boy’s manner.  “Then you did have sex with her?”

“Yes.  Has she denied it?”

“The evidence we have is true?”

“Alex’s testimony?  Yes, it’s true.  He barged in on us.  Didn’t even knock.”

“You do know that what you and Julia did was wrong?”

Aaron laughed under his breath.  “You’re seeing things through a prejudiced eye.”

“What prejudice?”

“I suppose it might be called calendar-age chauvinism.”

“Meaning what?”

“That you can’t measure everything by a person’s calendar age.  You think I’m too young for such a relationship.”

“You’re just turning twelve. Am I right about that?”

“That’s what my birth certificate would tell you, yes.”

“And that’s what the law has to go by, Aaron. You’re a minor.  Julia is accused of molesting you.  Do you understand that this is a crime?”

“As well as an unnatural act, I assume.”

“And can I ask how you feel about what Julia did?”

“You mean what
we
did.  I have no complaint to make.  I’ve learned what I wanted to learn and she learned all I could teach her.  It was a fair exchange, consenting on both sides.  If you want to call what she did a crime, I’d say it was a victimless crime.  As you may know, I’ve told the district attorney that I refuse to be put on the witness stand.  Whatever I say will be misunderstood and used against her.”