Three Women (27 page)

Then she sat down and a woman prosecutor in a gray suit stood at the podium. The judges were very nice to her. Elena took a particular dislike to the one in the middle, who had asked her mother only one question but who seemed to coo over the young prosecutor. The prosecutor might have been his tall thin blond daughter, slightly horsey faced with an accent Elena had heard in the restaurant, that she supposed they learned in prep school—because she doubted anybody naturally spoke that way. The prosecutor was maybe fifteen years younger than her mother. They were being so sweet to her, all of them awake now. They did not ask her the same kind of tough questions they stuck Suzanne with. Elena wanted to kick the judges. Who would ever guess this was supposed to be a hot case? She was convinced, still, that Suzanne had won, because she had been so together, so fierce, so positive. She had answered every hard one they had thrown at her.

“There won't be an opinion for months,” Jaime hissed as the prosecutor sat down and the next lawyer came to the podium.

“How do you think it went?”

“Not so good. I know Suzanne's disappointed.”

Elena stood. “I'll take the MBTA home.”

“Don't you want a ride?”

“Not really. See you.” She would tell her mother later that she had sat in, but she felt she had intruded enough. If she could not say that she understood any better what Suzanne did, at least she knew now where it happened. That was something. It gave her a picture in her head.

Suzanne

The Friday before Suzanne was finally to argue Maxine's appeal, Miles wanted to see her in his office.

Miles, who was acting as Marta's lawyer, repeated patiently, “He was trying to invoke the domestic abuse statute.”

“Bastard!” Suzanne said. “We both worked for that. There's even some language in the statute that Marta wrote. How can he call walking in on your husband humping a younger woman in your bed and reacting, domestic abuse.”

“Assault with a dangerous weapon with the aim of doing malicious harm, as between two partners in a domestic arrangement. But Elena saved Marta's ass. She insisted that Marta never intended more than a symbolic act. The row of bullet holes far up the wall proves that, so the prosecutor told Jim he doesn't have a case.”

“It's a miracle she didn't lose the baby.”

“It looks as if we're out of the woods, at least until he starts bringing it up in the divorce proceedings.” Miles rose from behind his desk and went around to the other side, resting his behind on the edge just in front of her. “So, when's your court date on the day care case appeal?”

“Next Thursday. I've been at the rehab center so much, everything else is going to hell. I have to get my act together.”

“Marta too. Your lives have been a bad soap opera, Suzanne. Now Jim's determined to make trouble. I want you to keep that in mind and make that daughter of yours understand too. It hasn't to do with custody of Adam, because after all he's twenty, but the unborn girl…. Now I have to know from you, Jim doesn't want a divorce. Does Marta, really? What's your take on this. Is she reacting out of spite? Will she regret it after the baby's born?”

“I have to sit down and talk to her.”

“No kidding. Well, get on it and tell me. I don't want her to divorce
him while she's pregnant with his child unless she's damned sure that's the path she wants to take—not for right now, but for next year and the next two decades.”

Driving to school, she thought about the question Miles had posed her. She had not been able to forgive Sam for his infidelity, but their marriage had dried up by then. She had not felt she required a husband strongly enough to have one who preferred another woman. She had been stung, betrayed, with an almost physical sense of despisal. But Marta might still love Jim; she was, after all, bearing his child. If she herself could forgive Elena, perhaps Marta could forgive Jim. She had been with Beverly so much, she had neglected the support she should be offering Marta. They were supposed to be together in court Thursday for Maxine's appeal.

Suzanne gave over the visiting of Beverly to Elena for the weekend to review her brief and once again go over the videotapes of the children's testimony and the records of the two therapists and assistant prosecutor with the children. This was a case she found herself caring about intensely. The more her friends argued with her and colleagues and acquaintances attacked her for taking it on, the more she studied the records, the more determined she was to secure justice for Maxine and get her out of Framingham. Marta told her she'd be present. Marta knew how much Suzanne cared about this case and how controversial it was, so she would lend her moral support.

When they walked into the courtroom Thursday, there was a stir among the court personnel. Marta sighed. “Here I come, the one woman parade. I should have worn red. I think everybody in Boston has heard what happened.”

In the car, she had discovered she'd forgotten the glasses that did not slide down her nose and sent Jaime back for them. “Lawyers are terrible gossips.”

“Sex and violence. Pregnancy and betrayal. I hate feeling like such a patsy.”

The three judges entered and they rose. She began to focus. She ran over the basic arguments in her head. The children's testimony had been rehearsed, coerced, and heavily edited. The defendant had never been permitted to confront her accusers. There was no cross-examination, no chance to test the coherence of the stories. Maxine had not been granted
her full rights by law. Further, evidence of the child witnesses had been tainted by the process by which it had been obtained—repeated questioning, which amounted to coaching and suborning of their testimony.

If the conviction was overturned, the state would appeal; if the conviction was not overturned, she would appeal. Either way, it was going to be a long process. She would be living with this uncomfortable case for the next year or two. Well, Maxine had been living with it a lot longer, ever since she had first been accused by the parents of one of the children in her day care center, of sexual abuse of their son.

As the oldest judge Laplaine had a private conversation with the clerk of the court, she mustered her concentration. She owed Maxine that. Distraction was the antithesis of the focus required to win. She had drawn a judge who was new to the district court of appeals, a man in his early sixties from the North Shore who had been a prosecutor before being elevated to the bench. Then there was Judge Corrigan, just turned seventy. Suzanne had pleaded before him several times. He had the reputation of being fair and learned, but with the disconcerting habit of pulling cases from nowhere. Suzanne had never been caught unprepared, but she knew Marta had once been slapped with a defeat because Judge Corrigan cited a case Marta had never heard of and could not argue. The oldest and chief justice was Laplaine, a little deaf, fair if he followed you but known to space out. Sometimes he dozed with his eyes open. Other times he was sharp, the most conservative of the three, although she did not know how that would affect this case. He was strict in his interpretations. He had given her a hard time with Phoebe, but in the end she had won.

At her cue, Suzanne rose. She had her fifteen minutes. “Good morning. May it please the court, I am Suzanne Blume representing Maxine Rodriguez. I'd like to reserve three minutes for rebuttal….”

 

Suzanne and Marta sat at a corner table in a seafood restaurant in Fan-ueil Hall. They both ordered broiled salmon, a salad, and a glass of Evian water.

“So, how do you think it went?” she asked Marta.

“I thought Corrigan was with you. I saw him nod once. He didn't hit you with one of his obscure case citations. He seemed interested.” Marta frowned, considering.

“I wasn't sure about Laplaine. I couldn't tell if he was even listening until he asked that question about my interpretation of the rules of evidence. I felt he was iffy. What did you think about the new guy, Beamer?”

“I can't read him yet. I've never argued before him. He was a tough prosecutor and I thought he might be leaning to their side.” Marta rubbed her eyes. “It always takes a while to figure out a new judge. Yes, he was a prosecutor, but some judges with that background are harder on prosecutors who haven't done a sterling job. Until Beamer has a track record, how can we read him?”

“Well, we'll find out in a few months. They're considering the appeal, but they're not letting Maxine out in the meantime. I was hoping she could recover her health.” Suzanne sighed. “Do you think I did a decent job for her?”

“I thought you were superb. It's partly political, you know. The AG put his weight behind this case.”

She considered Marta's answer and her stomach clenched. Marta did not think she had won. What could she have done differently? Had she not been prepared enough? She did not know how much more prison time Maxine could endure. Had her life gotten in the way of her case?

Marta was saying, “I was surprised to see Elena in court.”

“
Elena
? Are you sure?”

“You didn't notice? She was sitting with Jaime in back.”

“How strange. I'll have to ask her tonight. Marta, we have to talk about what happened.” Suzanne propped her chin into her cupped hand. “I don't know where to start. You're my best friend. Elena I love dearly as you know, but she has this talent for creating dangerous messy dramas.”

Marta groaned. She pulled at her gray-blond hair that was always elegant, like the color of furniture in Beverly's apartment in the fifties—Hollywood oak, she thought it had been called. Bleached oak, just that silvery ash blond. “Jim is older and is supposed to know better.”

“Marta, don't you really think I should take Elena and clear out?”

“I don't want Jim to fuck up my life more than he has. And I don't want anybody downstairs but you. While I'm not ready to forgive and forget, I feel less angry with Elena because of how she dealt with the police. That saved me a lot of grief, and I appreciate it.”

“Elena's not seeing him, you know. She's not even talking with him. She's bitterly disillusioned.”

“Good. Let's hope it stays that way.”

“The worst thing is, Marta, I suspected this maybe two months ago and I confronted Elena. She persuaded me I was crazy. I kept watching them together and I couldn't see any sign that something might be going on.”

“I never caught on myself. But it's nice to know I wasn't abnormally dense.”

They both picked at their food. Then they walked together, slowly. It was a clear sunny day, one of those cool glassy days of October in Boston. The sky seemed infinite over them. The air was fresh and almost squeaked in the lungs. Only her life, she thought, was full of disorder and murky with the odor of unsolved problems. Suzanne took Marta's arm. “So how are you feeling about being pregnant?”

“Am I still cool with it? Well, I admit I had second thoughts right afterward—”

“It's late but not impossible to do something about it. It still seems to be a pretty risky business, having a baby at our age.”

“No! She's my baby. I've always wanted a daughter. I still do.”

Suzanne nodded, tightening her grip on Marta's arm. The baby who had died had been a girl. Then came the miscarriages. “But do you really want to raise this baby alone?”

“Oh, he'll insist on visitation. Besides, I won't be alone. I have you. Don't I?”

“Of course. But you don't feel the baby needs two parents?”

“Yes. You and me. Plus Adam. He'll shape up and come through. He's just dazed and pouting for the minute. Jim will make demands. It isn't as if I'm trying to keep him away from the baby. But I don't want to go through my life having a husband who prefers other women to me. The business of making love in our bed was more than I can stomach. I could forgive him once, but this was too close to home.”

“Forgive him once?”

“Do you imagine I never knew why he was fired? I just thought it was better for everybody if I pretended I didn't. I thought he'd learned a lesson. I thought it was a onetime aberration. Now I wonder how many more there were I never knew about. I wonder about the receptionist
before Elena. I wonder about his patients, but I don't lie awake wondering, and if I stay married to him, I will.”

“I know. When I discovered Sam was having that affair, I just couldn't recover from it. I kept thinking, well, if he would rather be with her, why are we together? I kept being haunted by images of them in bed together. I kept listening to everything he said and wanting to cross-examine him. Oh, so you say you went to the dentist. Exactly what time was your appointment? Well, a filling shouldn't take more than half an hour….”

“We're going to be on short rations. Babies are expensive. Adam will be in school for years yet. Maybe we should take in roomers. Oh, Adam's coming home this weekend.”

“He sounded martyred on the phone.”

“Well, he's going to have to put his bony shoulder to the family wheel. We're all in deep shit, and he's going to have to help rather than suffer at the top of his lungs.” Marta sounded cheerful, in spite of her words. “I hope you win this case.”

“I have to. If they don't overturn the conviction, I think it'll kill Maxine. That really scares me.”

“You did the best you could for her under frankly impossible circumstances.”

“You don't think we have a prayer, do you? I have to start preparing for the SJC.” The Supreme Judicial Court: the highest court in the state. But would Maxine hold out that long?

Beverly

Beverly's words beat around in her head like birds trapped in a house, banging themselves on the windows, able to perceive where they wanted to go but trapped by an invisible barrier. She could not think of a damned thing to look forward to. She would be lucky if she could drag herself around in a walker again. She knew how slow and painful and
partial was the recovery from a stroke like hers. She had enjoyed certain things after her first stroke: being with Elena, E-mail, playing around on the Internet, and chatting to the degree she had been able to with Sylvia. Those had been her pleasures. She did not think she would be talking again soon. Sylvia had gone off to another job. Elena would probably leave now, to get away from Marta's hostility. Her vision was too blurry to read a computer screen, although she could more or less see faces. She could distinguish between the bored nurses and orderlies and the truly nasty ones, and the couple of nice young women who tried to make contact.

She was worried about her darling. Elena was unnaturally quiet and broody. Every day she came to the rehab center to sit with her. Elena felt guilty about the fall, and Beverly had not managed to persuade her that to take responsibility for an accident was silly, unnecessary. It was like coming around a corner and bumping into an oncoming truck.

She did not believe in sulking, so she tried, to the degree she was able, to convey good spirits. But when she was alone, she wept. Sometimes she thought she would choke to death from her tears and the way they made her nose and sinuses block up. It would have been perfect if she had never wakened from that coma, just slid from sleep into death and vanished.

Her friend Dave had died in a coma. He had been struck by a scab's truck on a picket line and never regained consciousness. He had left a living will, and for once, the doctors respected it—probably because there was no money in his family. The union was picking up the tab, but there were times it paid to be poor. She knew he would have wanted to go out the way he did, a light turned off, not to be kept like a big turnip in a hospital bed.

Dave and she had gone out for Chinese-Cuban. He loved black beans. When he was younger, his hair was black like those beans, like Elena's. Glossy hair, his complexion ruddy, always a little weathered, and those gray eyes: they went right through her. Was it after the garbage strike? No, it had been a demonstration. Something about welfare. He'd had a scar on his right hand, crossing the back of it, dark red and slightly raised. For some reason, she had never asked him how he got it. She remembered the feel of that scar when she was touching his hand, when he was caressing her. They had never really had an affair, just gone to
bed a couple of times. He was no great shakes in bed. Too much in a hurry. It was one item on a list. Too bad. He had been gorgeous to look at. She had gone to bed with him twice, no, three times, each time hoping it would be better, that he would be more involved, more sensual, less abrupt. Then she had decided it was pointless, and that they would just stay friends, which they had, until the end. She was glad he could not see her as she was now. She refused to look at herself in the hand mirror they gave her. That was not her face. Her hair was growing out gray again.

When she thought of her face, she thought of herself when she had been at her peak. For her that had come on the late side, say thirty to forty. Everyone had thought she was younger than she was, but when she had truly been younger, she had not had the confidence, the knowledge of men, to do much with her looks. No, her glory days had been in her thirties and early forties. She had worn a red rinse in her hair. Red hair, green eyes. Suzanne should tint her hair red. She would look much more interesting, but Suzanne had never listened to her when she tried to tell her how to capitalize on her features, how to present herself, how to dress and walk and smile. She had done her best to pass on tips to her daughter, although her hard-won know-how had been rejected every time. It was sad. Suzanne just refused to learn from Beverly, when if she had taken a little advice, she could have had so much more fun. A man like Victor would have gone off anyhow, but she could have kept Sam on the hook far longer if she had known how to play him. Suzanne just shut down whenever Beverly tried to pass on a few good words. If Beverly knew anything, it was men.

Whatever she tried to give her child, Suzanne never seemed to want. Instead she felt as if Suzanne wished she was more like her sister Karla, a homebody, a lump, a
balebusteh
, a grade school teacher with sentimental left politics, rife with superstition. It was her own fault for leaving Suzanne so often with Karla, but it had been out of the question to take her little girl into some of the dangerous situations where she was working as an organizer, particularly in the South. Those Klansmen didn't care if they shot or burned a child instead of an adult. Perhaps they liked it better. She could not understand them, those men so driven by hate and malice and pride, so ready to maim and kill in the name of their skin. More than once she had thought she would die there, in the
South. She had one of the lawyers with the civil rights movement draw up a will for her. She had little to leave, but she wanted it clear that Karla was to be Suzanne's guardian. Once during a march, she had looked up and realized she was in the bead of a man with a rifle standing on an overpass. Then for some reason he laughed instead and did not shoot her. Later she heard he had shot someone else, a young man from Chicago. They never caught him. They usually didn't.

How could she have lived her life so near the edge, so fully, so passionately, and be stuck now in a bed with no more ability to communicate than a worm or a cauliflower? Her voice had been her weapon, her tool. She had been valued by others for her ability to marshal the right words and say them passionately in a ringing voice. Her voice had never been called shrill, a full womanly voice that carried into a crowd. Without her voice, she was indeed crippled. Soon she would not remember what her own voice had sounded like, low pitched and rich in quality that men had compared to honey.

When the doctors or the nurses discussed her, they emphasized it was her second stroke, as if that proved she was careless, in a category of those easily dismissed. Maybe they tried hard with the first-stroke victims, but if it happened again, it was no longer worth their trouble. There was something dismissive in the label. Second-time loser. Second time around. Secondhand. They used to call imperfect merchandise seconds. She was certainly imperfect merchandise.

She wanted out of the rehab center, but going back to Suzanne's was not hugely attractive. Her own life had been demolished, like an old tenement where people had lived for generations and raised their families and faced their troubles. Now it was a parking lot. Now she was parked in this bed. She could taste her despair. It was bitter tea in her mouth.