by Jodi Picoult
"Not since years ago, when she'd just been released from Greenhaven. She was pretty fragile back then, and taking care of herself was hard enough, not to mention a newborn. But then things got better, much better--or so I believed," Colin says.
"Do you feel you can provide a safer home for Faith?"
"God, yes. We live in a wonderful neighborhood, with a terrific backyard for her to play in--and I wouldn't let the reporters get to her. I'd nip the whole issue in the bud, just so that she could have her childhood back."
"As a father, how do you feel about Faith's situation?"
Colin's eyes meet Mariah's. His are wide and honest and bright. "I'm worried about her," he says. "I think her life is in danger. And I think her mother is to blame."
Mariah tugs on Joan's sleeve before she stands to do the cross-examination. "They think I hurt Faith," she whispers, stunned. "They think I'm doing this to her?"
Joan squeezes her client's hand. She's coached Mariah to expect the worst, but--like Mariah--she figured that would mean some calculated barbs about her hospitalization, not posing her as an abusive parent. Mariah's late arrival at court prevented Joan from warning her about Metz's strategy, and she is not about to break the news to her client now, in the middle of testimony, that the judge has instructed Mariah to have no contact with Faith for the duration of the trial. "Relax. Just let me do my job." Joan stands, staring at Colin long and hard, so that he knows just how reprehensible she truly thinks he is. "Mr. White," she says coolly, "you say your marriage was in trouble."
"Yes."
"Yet you didn't talk about this with your wife, because she was emotionally fragile."
"That's correct."
"Can you define 'emotionally fragile' for me?"
"Objection," Metz says. "My client isn't a professional in the field of psychology."
"Then he shouldn't have used the term in the first place," Joan counters.
"I'll allow the question," the judge says.
Colin shifts in his chair, uncomfortable. "She was in a mental institution seven years ago, because she had suicidal tendencies."
"Ah, that's right. You said she tried to kill herself."
Colin glances at Mariah. "Yes."
"She just tried to kill herself out of the blue?"
"No, she was very depressed at the time."
"I see. Was there any reason that she was depressed?"
Colin nods shortly.
"I'm sorry, Mr. White. You're going to have to speak up for the court stenographer."
"Yes."
Joan moves beside Mariah, so that the judge's eye--not to mention the voracious gaze of the press in the gallery--must fall on her as well. "Maybe you could help us out by telling us the reason she was depressed." Seeing the mutinous set of Colin's jaw, she crosses her arms. "I can ask you, Mr. White, or you can tell me."
"I was having an affair, and she found out."
"You were having an affair seven years ago, and it made your wife depressed. And four months ago, when you were having yet another affair, you were worried that the discovery might make her depressed again?"
"Correct."
"Was the only mistake you made in your marriage these liaisons with other women?"
"I think so."
"Would it be correct to say that these two incidents--four months ago and seven years ago--were the only times in your marriage that you--how did you put it?--that you felt a need to seek solace."
"Yes."
"I guess, then, that the names Cynthia Snow-Harding and Helen Xavier don't ring a bell."
As Colin turns white as his shirt, Mariah digs her nails into her thighs. Joan had warned her this was coming, and yet she still feels like running out of the room, or maybe up to the witness stand to scratch his eyes out. How could Joan have so quickly discovered something Mariah had not known for years?
Because, Mariah thinks, she wanted to know. I didn't.
"Isn't it true, Mr. White, that Cynthia Snow-Harding and Helen Xavier are two additional women with whom you had affairs?"
Colin glances toward Metz, fuming behind the plaintiff's table. "I wouldn't say they were affairs," he quickly responds. "They were very brief...connections."
Joan snorts. "Why don't we move along?" she suggests. "When your wife, Mariah, became severely depressed seven years ago after finding out that you were having an affair with another woman, you say she was institutionalized."
"Yes. At the Greenhaven Institute."
"Did the people from Greenhaven just show up at your door to get her?"
"No," Colin says. "I arranged to have her sent there."
"Really?" Joan feigns shock. "Did you try psychiatric counseling for Mariah first?"
"Well, briefly. It didn't seem to be working."
"Did you ask the psychiatrist to have Mariah put on medication?"
"I was more worried about what she--"
"Just answer the question, Mr. White," Joan interrupts.
"No, I did not ask the psychiatrist that."
"Did you try to support her through this crisis?"
"I did support her through it," Colin says tightly. "I know it's easy to make me look like the bad guy, the one who locked up his wife so he could conveniently keep having an affair. But I did what I felt was best for Mariah. I loved my wife, but she was...like a different person, and I couldn't make the old Mariah come back. You don't know until you've lived with someone who's suicidal--how you keep obsessing over the fact that you didn't see this coming, how you blame yourself for the really bad days, how you panic about keeping them safe. I could barely forgive myself every time I looked at her, because--somehow--I'd turned her into that. I wouldn't have been able to handle it if she'd tried to kill herself again." He looks into his lap. "It was already my fault. I only wanted to do something right for a change."
Mariah feels something turn over in her chest. It is the first time she's truly considered that being sent to Greenhaven might have hurt Colin as well as herself.
"Did you take time off work to be home with Mariah, so that you could keep watch over her for safety's sake?" Joan asks.
"Briefly--but it scared the hell out of me. I was afraid that if I turned my back for a second, I'd lose her."
"Did you ask her mother, living in Arizona at the time, to come stay with Mariah?"
"No," Colin admits. "I knew Millie would think the worst. I didn't want her to believe that Mariah wasn't improving."
"So instead you got a court order, and you had Mariah institutionalized against her will?"
"She didn't know what she wanted at the time. She couldn't drag herself out of bed to go to the bathroom, much less tell me how to help her. I did what I did for her own safety. I listened to the doctors when they said that round-the-clock supervision was best." His troubled gaze meets Mariah's. "I am guilty of many things, including stupidity and naivete. But not of malicious behavior." He shakes his head. "I just didn't know what else to do."
"Hmm," Joan says. "Let's come back to the present now. Seven years have passed, and your wife catches you in the act again."
"Objection!"
"Sustained."
"After Mariah discovered you were having another affair," Joan says smoothly, "you were worried that she might become depressed again. So rather than taking the time to talk it over, you just ran off?"
"It wasn't like that. I'm not proud of what I did, but I really needed to get myself together before I took on anyone else's responsibilties."
"You weren't worried that Mariah might be a little upset finding you in bed with another woman, just like seven years ago?"
"Of course I was."
"Did you make an effort to get Mariah psychiatric help?"
"No."
"Even though the last time this happened, she became severely depressed?"
"I told you, I just wasn't thinking past myself at that point."
"Yet you left your daughter with her," Joan says.
"I honestly didn't think Mariah
was going to hurt her. I mean, for God's sake--she's her mother. I assumed she'd be okay."
"You assumed Mariah would be emotionally stable in spite of your behavior."
"Yes."
"And you assumed Faith would be fine in your wife's custody."
"Yes."
"You asked no one to come to the house to double-check; you called no doctor, no social services, not even a neighbor."
"No. It was a mistake that I deeply regret, and I'm ready to atone for my wrongs."
Joan briskly moves past the witness stand. "We're all glad, I'm sure, that you're ready. Now, let me see if I get this straight. By your own admission, you assumed incorrectly that Faith would be better off with your ex-wife. Just like you assumed incorrectly that you needed to get yourself settled before you could even think about your daughter's welfare. Just like you assumed incorrectly that your wife would be better off in a mental institution than with a different form of treatment for depression. Just like you assume incorrectly today that you're the better parent here."
Before Colin can answer, Joan turns her back on him. "Nothing further," she says.
Dr. Newton Orlitz loves the feel of a witness stand. Something about the smooth wood beneath his hands and the smell of furniture polish that always lingers in a courtroom makes him blissfully happy with his longtime job as a forensic psychiatrist. He knows that most of the time his opinion as a doctor appointed by the court is repudiated by a private psychiatrist being paid a hell of a lot of money to say something contradictory, but it doesn't take away from his pleasure. He not only believes in the justice system, he is humbled to know he has a place in it.
He likes to play games with himself on the stand, too. Sometimes he watches the attorneys and diagnoses them in his mind. As he sees Malcolm Metz approach him for his testimony, he thinks: megalomania, clearly. Maybe even a God complex. He imagines Metz dressed in a white robe, sporting a long, ethereal beard, and he chuckles to himself.
"Glad you're happy to be here, Dr. Orlitz," Metz says. "Did you interview Colin White?"
"Yes," Orlitz says, consulting his small salt-and-pepper notebook, in which he's recorded his observations for this particular case. "I found him emotionally stable and perfectly capable of providing a good, solid home for a young child."
Metz smiles broadly, as well he should. Orlitz knows not all attorneys get to hear what they want when the court psychiatrist gives his evaluation. "Did you also have the opportunity to interview Mariah White?"
"I did."
"Could you tell us a little bit about her psychiatric history?"
Orlitz thumbs through his notes. "She was institutionalized at Greenhaven for four months, for suicidal depression. While there, she received psychotherapy and antidepressant medication. As I'm sure you know, though, Mr. Metz," he says, smiling blandly, "her behaviors were a response to an extremely stressful situation. This is how her mind happened to cope with it. She thought she'd lost her husband, and her marriage."
"In your expert opinion, Doctor, do you think Mariah White might go through that sort of psychological crisis again?"
Orlitz shrugs. "It's possible. She's vulnerable to that type of reaction."
"I see. Is Mariah taking medication now, Doctor?"
Orlitz runs his finger down the side of a page. "Yes," he says, when he finds the notation. "She's been taking twenty milligrams of Prozac daily, for the past four months."
Metz raises his brows. "When was this prescribed?"
"August eleventh, initially. By a Dr. Johansen."
"August eleventh. Do you happen to know what day Colin White left?"
"I understand that it was August tenth."
"In your opinion, Dr. Orlitz, did Mariah White obtain this medication because she could not handle the stress of the current situation without it?"
"Most likely, but you should ask her private psychiatrist."
Metz gives him a dirty look. "Doctor, did you have an opportunity to interview Faith?"
"I did."
"Did she appear to be a normal little girl?"
"Normal," the doctor says, laughing, "is a very relative term. Especially when you're defining a child who's suffered through a traumatic divorce."
"Does Faith seem to seek the approval of her mother?"
"Yes, but that's a very common response after a divorce. A child is so afraid the remaining parent might leave, too, that she will do anything necessary to keep her interest."
"Perhaps even imitate behavior?"
"Absolutely," Orlitz says. "A parent might be consciously or unconsciously enforcing the behavior, playing the child off the other parent by pushing her to act a certain way--so that the child, in effect, becomes a pawn. Some experts refer to this post-divorce pattern as 'parental alienation syndrome.'"
"Enforcing the child's behavior," Metz repeats. "Interesting. I have nothing further."
Joan stands and buttons the front of her suit jacket. She knows Metz well enough to realize that he's laid the foundation for a future witness. "Why don't we start with this issue of enforced behavior?" she says. "Did Faith's interview suggest to you that her, shall we say, more extraordinary behavior of late was directly motivated by her mother?"
"No."
"Thank you. Now, Doctor, you had a chance to interview both of Faith's parents. And you said that you found Colin White to be emotionally stable and capable of providing a good home for a child. Did you find Mariah White to be emotionally stable?"
"Yes, she's functioning well right now."
"Did you find her to currently be a good parent?"
"Yes. Faith is very attached to her."
"Let's shift gears again, Doctor. How many people in America, would you say, are on prescription antidepressant medication?"
"I believe," Dr. Orlitz says, "close to seventeen million."
"In what percentage of the cases do the drugs work?"
"Well, if the patients stay on them for a certain period of time and are in therapy, they're effective in approximately eighty percent of the cases."
"Does Prozac affect normal day-to-day functioning?"
"No."
"Would it interfere with parenting capabilities?"
"No."
"Dr. Orlitz, did you speak to Faith about the afternoon her father left?"
"Yes, I did."
"Did it affect her in any way?"
"She didn't understand the dynamics of the adult relationships--which is a blessing, actually--but because of that, she felt her father's subsequent absence might have been her fault. She's going to need therapy regarding that issue."
"How unfortunate," Joan says. "So even though, in your opinion, Colin White is a capable parent now, he did do something once that hurt Faith."
"Yes."
"Did you find proof of anything Mariah has ever done that in some way has hurt Faith?"
"No. She's been a stable, continuous thread for Faith to cling to during a crisis."
"Thank you," Joan says, and turns to sit down beside her client.
Judge Rothbottam announces there will be a short break, and the reporters run out of the courtroom to call their affiliates with updates. Metz shepherds Colin out, and they disappear in a crush of bodies. Mariah does not move from her seat, but instead rests her head in her hands.
Joan touches her on the shoulder. "The reason we're called the defense," she says, "is because we fight when they're finished. It doesn't matter what they say, Mariah, truly. We're going to give it back in spades."
"I know," Mariah says, rubbing her temples. "How long do we have?"
Joan smiles gently. "About long enough for a bathroom break."
Mariah is out of her chair in a heartbeat; anything to get away. She walks out of the courtroom and sees a sea of faces. Her gaze slides to Ian, who sits in the lobby awaiting his turn as a witness, pretending he does not know her.
It has to be like this; they have discussed it. But right now, with her mother at Faith's bedside, Mariah could have
used a strong and solid ally.
She forces her eyes to move past Ian. It takes all her self-control to walk past him without glancing back, just to see if he's watching her go.
Dr. DeSantis is a small, compact woman with a cloud of black hair that bounces when she speaks. She recites her impressive background to the court, and then smiles at Malcolm Metz. "Dr. DeSantis," he says, "did you have a chance to interview Colin White?"
"I certainly did. Mr. White is a wonderful, caring, perfectly stable man who very much wants his daughter to be in his life."
"Did you interview Mariah White?"
"No," the psychiatrist says. "She declined the opportunity."
"I see. Did you have a chance to review Dr. Johansen's findings on Mariah White?"
"Yes."
"What can you tell us about her psychological health?"
"This woman has a history of severe depression. Such a history places her at high risk for future major episodes of instability, and nobody can predict what will trigger another one."
"Thank you, Doctor." Metz nods at Joan. "Your witness."
Joan stands up, but doesn't bother to move forward. "Dr. DeSantis, are you Colin White's therapist?"
Beneath the cloud of hair, the psychiatrist pinkens with indignation. "I was called in to consult on his case."
"Isn't it true, Dr. DeSantis, that the first and last time you met with Colin White was October twenty-ninth, just two days after the initial hearing on his motion to change custody?"
"I suppose so."
"Ah. Doctor, how many trials have you testified in?"
"Over fifty," the psychiatrist says proudly.
"How many of those fifty trials has attorney Metz asked you to testify in?"
"Twenty-seven."
Joan nods thoughtfully. "In any of those twenty-seven trials, Doctor, have you ever found his client to be mentally deficient?"
"No," Dr. DeSantis says.
"So, just to recap, then: Mr. Metz has hired you yet again, and--correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. DeSantis--in your expert opinion, you found his client to be perfectly stable, and my client to be an emotional basket case."
"I wouldn't use those terms--"
"Yes or no, Doctor?"
"I found Mr. Metz's client to be more stable than yours, yes."
"Well," Joan says dryly. "What a surprise."
The hospital chapel is a sad little room that used to be a broom closet. There are six pews, three on each side of a small podium with a cross hanging overhead. The chapel is nondenominational, but somehow this symbol of Christian culture escaped notice. Father MacReady is on his knees, his lips moving silently in a paternoster while his heart sinks lower and lower in his chest.
