Matters of Faith

by Kristy Kiernan

  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.

  “I won’t be long, baby. I’m just going to get some things from home, and then I’ll be right back. Daddy will be here, Daddy will take care of you. I love you, and I’ll be right back.”

  “I brought you a bag in case you wanted to stay here,” Cal said, motioning to a blue duffel bag on the floor. “But the lawyer said he would go to the house, so if you’re going...”

  He trailed off at my look. I stood, leaned over the railing, and kissed Meghan just above her right eyebrow before picking up the bag and walking out the door without another word to Cal. As soon as I was in the car, I turned on my cell phone with a shaking hand and listened to the message from the lawyer.

  He had a soft Hispanic accent and said his name was—could that possibly be right?—Charles Mingus. He was succinct and repeated his phone number twice at the end of the call. I repeated it under my breath as I turned out of the hospital parking lot and dialed with one hand, wheeling into traffic in a way I would have berated Cal for.

  “This is Charles Mingus,” the voice answered quickly.

  “Mr. Mingus, this is Chloe Tobias, Marshall’s moth—”

  “Mrs. Tobias, thanks for getting back to me. When can we meet?”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I still don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I thought Mr. Tobi—”

  “My husband is with our daughter right now. I’m on my way home, and I don’t want to be away from her any longer than necessary. I decided to call you directly rather than listen to it secondhand.”

  “I certainly understand your desire to get back to your daughter. Here’s what’s happening right now: Marshall is in the county jail. He and his friend, Ada, have been arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse with extenuating circumstances. Basically, what that means is that the DA feels that Marshall and Ada had clear knowledge of Meghan’s food allergies and proceeded to give her food they had a reasonable certainty would cause a reaction.”

  A reaction. I so desperately believed that this was a horrible accident. I did, I really did. But a reaction? That was like calling Hurricane Katrina a thunderstorm.

  “Mr. Mingus, how much do you know about food allergies?”

  “Obviously I am not as intimately acquainted with this medical condition as you are, however I am trying to gain a working knowledge of it as quickly as I can in order to help your son.”

  I almost laughed. Help my son? Who would have ever thought that someone would be researching food allergies to help my son? In the privacy of my own car, listening to someone so squarely on my son’s side made me realize that my own defense of him wasn’t nearly as stout as I thought when forced to protect him from Cal.

  “How did this happen?” I asked, still suspicious that Cal had somehow arranged for it to happen.

  “From what I could find out, one of the admitting physicians found out what happened and notified the DA’s office, who decided to bring charges based upon statements from her as well as a paramedic at the scene. From there arrest warrants were issued and they picked them up at your home this morning. They’ve also both been charged with resisting arrest.”

  Picked them up this morning. So Ada had still been there. My uncertainty over how I felt about Marshall grew heavier at my core. And what did resisting arrest mean? I pictured them holed up in Marshall’s room like desperadoes, knocking out a pane of glass to shoot at the police surrounding our home.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “With the resist charge? From what Marshall tells me, he began to struggle when they arrested Miss Sparks. I feel confident we’ll be able to get that charge dismissed.”

  “And what about . . . Ada?”

  “Apparently she began to struggle fairly vigorously with the female officer who was attempting to handcuff her. She has not retained me as her lawyer, but from what I understand, she has not co
ntacted anyone, and so she will remain incarcerated for the foreseeable future.”

  At least she wouldn’t be around my family. And like that, with a threat clearly identified and contained, my family was whole in my heart again. We were all in this together, and we would get through it together.

  If I could get them to cooperate.

  “So what now?” I asked, pulling into our drive, noting the ruts and spin marks in the sand and shells.

  “He’ll make his initial appearance in just about an hour. He’ll get bail, but he says he’s not sure if you’ll pay it. He’s given me permission to talk to you about the case, so now I need to know how willing you are to support your son.”

  “I will always support my son, Mr. Mingus. If we need to pay bail, then that’s what we’ll do. How much are we talking about?”

  “Won’t know that until the judge tells us. Will you be able to get to the courthouse by three?”

  “I’ll be there. Mr. Mingus? How are you being paid?”

  “Mr. Tobias assures me that he has enough money to pay my fees.”

  “My husband said he was paying?” I asked in surprise.

  “No. Marshall Tobias.”

  “You are aware that he’s a college student?” I asked.

  “I am.”

  “You’re either very cheap or very new, Mr. Mingus.” I was beginning to appreciate the formality of our discussion, the Mrs. Tobias and Mr. Tobias and Mr. Mingus of it all. It made it seem somehow civilized, as if it might, one day, make some sort of sense.

  “I’ve been practicing criminal law for over fifteen years in Immokalee. I’ve just recently moved to this area, so I’m not very busy yet. Which is certainly in your son’s favor. Shall we meet on the front steps at three?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I hung up and turned off the engine, sitting in it just long enough to grow uncomfortable in the heat. I grasped the duffel bag and hauled myself out of the car, looking at my house as if I’d been gone for months.

  It certainly felt as though I had. The gardenia was in full bloom, and the sunflowers had all been bitten to the ground by rabbits. It would not have surprised me to have walked in the house to find that the walls had been painted a new color, the floors retiled, new furniture arranged in foreign ways.

  But it was all the same. The screen door caught my heel, the kitchen showed no change, nor the living room or stairs. Reaching the second landing, I glanced down the hall to the master bedroom, hesitated, then dropped the duffel bag and entered Meghan’s room.

  It was a wreck, as though someone had gone through it tossing things in a frenzy. I had no idea what might have happened. I backed out, then went down the hall to Marshall’s room. I didn’t enter, but just stood in the doorway, looking at the bed, clearly slept in, the suitcase, the bare walls, and the necklaces scattered on the floor.

  It was as if little bombs had gone off in both my children’s rooms, and I had no way of knowing how, or why, or how to fix it. The clock on Marshall’s nightstand caught my eye, and I hurried back down the hall to my own, undisturbed bedroom, in a hurry now.

  I was running late to get my son out of jail.

  MARSHALL

  They took him back to the same cell after he’d seen his lawyer. Charlie, he wanted him to call him, but it didn’t feel right yet. Or maybe just having a lawyer didn’t feel right yet. It was a tentative, uncertain thing, the way his first encounters with Ada had been.

  Only the promise of Ada was one of transcendence, understanding, and yes, he’d admit it, sexual nirvana. The promise of Charlie was one of freedom, which he’d just discovered was every bit as heady a promise when it was taken from you as the others.

  He had to see Ada. Charlie couldn’t tell him much of anything about her except she hadn’t called anyone, which meant she was just sitting there, in jail, with a bunch of prostitutes and thieves. He hoped her knees were being taken care of.

  He had to get out of there.

  Charlie didn’t know anything about Meghan either. But his parents were still at the hospital. He couldn’t think about that part of things for too long. He could still feel the water, hard under the boat, could see Meghan . . .

  He didn’t want to lie down on the bunk, didn’t want his head to touch the thin pillow, the sheets. He leaned back, until his shoulder blades touched the cold concrete wall, and closed his eyes, conjuring an image of Ada in his bedroom, remembering her hips, reimagining her legs without the bandages, while doors slammed, men swore, and the pendejo cried.

  Less than an hour later, he got a roommate. This was a bad thing. The man was easily in his fifties, but he was big, and it was clearly not his first time in jail. Marshall imagined there was some sort of protocol to follow when greeting your new cellmate, but he had not been given the handbook, and so he stood, nervously wiping his hands down his pants before he held one out.

  The guard shut the door and the man looked at Marshall’s hand and grunted before ignoring it and dropping heavily onto the bottom bunk. Marshall looked out the bars into the hall, then gingerly stepped over the man’s feet and hoisted himself up to the top bunk. He sat there, cross-legged, and leaned against the wall again, while the man beneath him passed gas and grunted, sometimes separately, sometimes all at once. Occasionally, the man shifted violently, making the beds shake and Marshall quake in readiness for . . . something.

  Finally, the afternoon passed, and when the guard came to collect him for his initial appearance, he jumped to the floor in relief. On his way out the door the man grunted, “Luck.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Marshall said, strangely comforted. It didn’t last long. As he made his way through the jail with the guard his stomach roiled at the thought that he would have to see one of his parents. He didn’t know which one it would be, or which one would be worse.

  Nine

  CHARLES Mingus looked nothing like his namesake, nor did he look like I’d pictured him from his voice and manner on the phone. I’d envisioned something like a Hispanic Perry Mason, but Mr. Mingus was short, slim, and seemed like one of those men who were never meant to wear a suit and yet had managed to choose a livelihood nearly dependent upon one.

  His handshake was firm, predisposing me to like him. I detested men, and women for that matter, who grasped the ends of my fingers and wiggled. But then I am notoriously unreliable when it comes to first impressions. They’re rarely right; I am not that woman who can read people, or who “just has a feeling” that someone is good, or kind, or evil.

  It has never stopped me from acting upon my first impressions—after all, what else do we have to go on?—and I fell into step beside Mingus, my head bent toward him, listening intently, as if we’d made this trek a hundred times. I got a brief crash course in the Florida justice system—what this initial appearance was all about and how we would go about arranging for bail and how long that would take.

  He asked about Meghan, and I stumbled in my response, unsure of what I was supposed to say, unsure if there was a side, and if so, which one I was supposed to be on at this moment. Had Cal been there—But he wasn’t, was he?

  So I told Mingus all about Meghan, and I accepted a crumpled tissue when he offered it, and then felt foolish when he looked at his watch and I realized he didn’t know how to tell me that right now, this wasn’t about Meghan, it was about Marshall, and we were going to be late if I didn’t pull myself together and get on with it.

  I’m not sure what I expected, but what happened didn’t come close. I thought I would be able to talk to Marshall, but I never saw him in person. Instead I, and at least fifty other people, sat in a courtroom with the judge and lawyers and watched a video of prisoners, one by one, some in powder blue jumpsuits, some in street clothes as Marshall was, listening attentively to the proceedings.

  I thought Charles Mingus would object to the things the prosecutor said about Marshall. But he didn’t say a word until he finished. I thought he would object to bail being set at all. But he quickly buzzed t
hrough a few reasons for bail to be low, pointing out that Marshall had no prior criminal history or warrants, and that he had family in the community.

  I thought we would be there for an hour, hashing it out, but it lasted approximately three minutes, the majority of which was taken up with a lot of paperwork changing hands. I was shocked when the judge commented about how serious the charges were and that he was setting bail at sixty thousand dollars and it was done and over and I was left reeling.

  “Why didn’t you say something?” I railed at Mingus when we were again in the long courthouse hallway. “I thought you were his defense attorney. You didn’t defend anything.”

  He turned to me, resigned, as if he dealt with mothers ignorant of the system all the time. “This isn’t the time for that,” he said. “That wasn’t a trial, that was simply to set bail, which we did.”

  “Sixty thousand dollars,” I said in disbelief. “We don’t have sixty thousand dollars. I know people put their houses up—”

  “You’ll need six thousand dollars,” Mingus said. “I have several bail bondsmen I can refer you to.”

  I stared at him. “But why is it so high? Doesn’t that seem high?”

  “Aggravated child abuse is considered a violent crime,” he said. “I’ve seen it higher.”

  “Well, can I see him?”

  He shook his head. “He’ll be transferred back to the jail. Do you have the six thousand dollars to bail him out and if so, do you want to do that?”

  I thought about Cal, and about our bank account. Unlike many married couples we knew, Cal and I actually took care of the bills together. I knew what we had, where it was, and what we owed. We might have been competitive about who brought in what, but we usually seemed to agree on what we would do with it.

  I wasn’t used to making any major financial decisions without Cal, and though there was no chance of me not bailing Marshall out, it still felt foreign, as though I were making some sort of statement, to not confer with him. But Cal had forced me to take care of this myself, and his cell phone wouldn’t be turned on while he was in Meghan’s room, and so it was my decision to make without his input or approval.