But When She Was Bad

by Peddicord, Lou;

  “Yes.”

  “During this time, during this October when you held a job at a sculpture gallery, the very October about eleven months before Todd was born, what, then, were you and your husband doing?”

  “Doing?” Annie asks. She does not like this new tack and is not about to volunteer anything.

  “Yes, doing,” Mormon Applebee repeats. “This was two or so months after your marriage to Mr. Wexler and your unfortunate wedding-night miscarriage, so had you and Mr. Wexler come to any conclusion by that month of October as to a new pregnancy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Miss White, what was that conclusion?”

  “That we would try again.”

  “Try to have another baby?”

  “Yes.” Annie is very uneasy with this new emphasis on the timing of our decision to have Todd. Indeed, she doesn’t like anything at all about this latest interruption.

  “And how were you going about that?”

  “Your Honor?” Albert Redding is standing and objecting. “It’s quite obvious to all of us as to how one goes about such a thing. Mr. Applebee is being contentious and puerile.”

  Mormon Applebee turns to Albert Redding and waves a hand. “Are you saying, Mr. Redding, that you and your client would like to stipulate for the Court that Miss White and Mr. Wexler were routinely and regularly and exclusively having sexual intercourse during October, November, and December—”

  “Mr. Applebee!,” the judge calls. He is exasperated. He’s already warned Applebee about addressing Albert Redding directly.

  Mormon Applebee continues on, oblivious to the judge. “That is, that they were having sex together with the purpose in mind of conceiving a baby during the very months young Wolfie’s journal is covering?”

  “Applebee!” Judge Biers shouts.

  “Yes, your Honor?”

  “That will be quite enough, Mr. Applebee. The Court has had just about all it will tolerate from you today.”

  “Your Honor,” calls out Albert Redding, once more on his feet. “If it will make him happy and shut him up, I’m sure Ms. White will stipulate that she and Mr. Wexler had sexual intercourse during their marriage.” He sits down, pleased with his wit.

  Annie stares hard at him, then turns back to the judge. She seems suddenly to be on the verge of panic.

  Judge Biers, fed up with both attorneys, says, “That’s enough, the both of you. Mr. Applebee, were you going somewhere with this line of questioning or would you like to go to jail?”

  “Not at all, your Honor. In fact, we’re already there, your Honor, at the testimony I was wishing to elicit from Miss White. Because we have now established that Miss White was indeed attempting to conceive a child with Mr. Wexler during the exact same time period we are treating via this delightful journal kept by young Gaynor Wexler. Furthermore, we have established that such attempts at conceiving a child were being made on a continuing basis through the exclusive act of congress between husband and wife which we all know familiarly as sexual intercourse.”

  There were titters in the courtroom and Judge Biers seemed about to say something.

  “Is that not true, Miss White?” Mormon Applebee was still facing away from Annie. He looked about to set off on another slap! slapping! journey around the courtroom.

  “Yes.”

  “That you and your husband were having sex in order to make a child together?”

  “Yes, dammit!”

  “A child you could share as something the two of you—and no possible others—would together create via the sacred miracle of conception?”

  Annie, her eyes suddenly like a frightened child’s, whispers it: “Yes.” Some nuance in that last Mormon Applebee question has triggered fear in her. She has sunk in on itself, sitting there in the witness box. She appears smaller, more fragile. It’s been years since I’ve seen Annie’s LITTLEGIRL-INSIDE but I see it now. It’s very scared.

  “Then we are indeed ready to go on.” Applebee turns back to Annie and says, “So, my dear little lady, would you therefore pick up where we left off and read Wolfie’s journal entry for October 24?”

  53

  All this while, all during my and Annie’s running testimony, a very abject, very remorseful Billy Greckle was pacing the halls outside the courtroom. He’d refused, any number of times, my suggestion that he at least come in and sit down.

  “Oh my goodness, no,” he said, time and again. “I don’t want to hear any of this.”

  “Then why are you here, Billy?”

  “Because I’m responsible, dammit!” It was a statement laced with pain. He looked at me with eyes that begged forgiveness—eyes which meantime searched for clues that I was indeed the Gil Wexler he assumed I was. My face was new to him.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” I said. “If anyone is, I’m the one who’s responsible.”

  “But I enabled it. I set up the whole thing by insisting you meet this damned woman.”

  “That’s absurd. You could just as easily—and just as inaccurately—say Annie’s mother enabled it by being a paranoid schizophrenic, which in turn made Annie a nut case.”

  Billy Greckle grimaced. “Well, she did, and Annie is. But so did I.”

  This particular conversation was taking place during a recess on the second or third day of the drama—I forget which. Billy and I hadn’t had very much telephone contact with each other over the preceding couple of years, so there was a certain awkwardness to his being there at all. I’d seen him in the halls the first morning of the hearing and went over to introduce myself. He seemed startled when I approached and his tall, gangly, Big Bird frame hunched down over me when I said my name as if he were assessing the authenticity of my presence. “Really?” he’d said. “I thought you were taller, Gil.”

  “I was once. I got shorter.”

  This seemed to break through the ice and we had a relaxed chat for a few minutes. He said Annie’s brother Marcus had advised him of the hearing date and that he’d decided he had to come. I saw him briefly during every recess thereafter, sometimes just waving at him but sometimes talking a little more together. During one of our sessions in the hall, I pointed out Annie to him.

  “Do you recognize her?”

  “Who?” he said, following the furtive nod of my head in Annie’s direction. She was striding down the hall toward us on stiletto heels, her blue eyes literally black with hate. She was with Albert Redding and seemed to be working on slicing him a new orifice. The attorney was taking the abuse with practiced equanimity, which was further infuriating Annie. She glanced at me and Billy as she went past, and she smoothly and seamlessly worked a “Fuck off, both of you,” into her harangue. It was really quite a neat feat. What we heard was: “Nor do I see why you let him get away with—Fuck off, both of you—that crap about my abandoning him and his brats when he’s the one …” Then she was out of earshot and Billy and I were left to marvel in her wake.

  “That’s Annie?” Billy Greckle breathed. “My God, I had no idea she was so—well, never mind.”

  “So—what, Billy?”

  The prig in Billy was in full bloom, reddening his gaunt, hatchet face with a blush. “Oh, I couldn’t,” he said.

  I laughed. “Say it.”

  “So much a hooker, for Christ’s sake!” He looked at me with apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have thought that. Maybe it’s the way she’s dressing now. And the ten pounds of makeup!”

  I laughed again. “It’s okay. I’ve thought worse.”

  “Surely she wasn’t like that when I first—uh, when I—”

  “No,” I said. “She was wholesome then. When I first met her, she was a plump little butterball of virtue and reticence. Nothing would melt in her mouth.”

  “Oh how you go on,” said Billy, grinning. He loved nasty talk.

  In any event, Billy and I renewed our acquaintance during this time and I bring it up now because of Billy’s insistence that he was to blame for what had happened in my life via An
nie White.

  I think Billy, like so many people, has got it all wrong. I don’t think you can blame anyone for their role as agents in your life. Sure, a Billy Greckle might have brought an Annie White and a Gil Wexler together—but he didn’t cause anything. Nor do parents. Just as we don’t owe our parents anything, we can’t really blame them for anything either. We pass through them; we’re not of them. You see this in the way the two, or three, or four children of the same parents can be so radically different … from each other and from the parents as well.

  In point of fact, I think each of us manipulates those around us to bring about exactly and precisely what we want. In the case at hand, it was I myself who used Billy Greckle to summon Annie White.

  “You conjured her, then?” A very skeptical Billy Greckle said, looking askance at me. “Made her up out of whole cloth?” Billy rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so, Gil. She was quite there in the flesh.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But I called her in to my life for a very specific job. And you have to give her credit: she’s done it well.”

  “For what possible reason, what job, might that be?”

  “Well, Billy, I guess I had reached a point in my life where I couldn’t go on any longer without Jillian—couldn’t cope with the kids we both made and couldn’t cope without a woman—so I brought in Annie White to end it, to complete it, to cure me forever of that raging need to join with someone else and complete myself that way.”

  Billy Greckle merely looked at me. His silent skepticism was eloquent in his eyes. So, too, his scorn for such inchoate psychobabble.

  I finished up anyway. “In the same way, Todd came along as the angel to free me … as the stranger who would masquerade for a time as my son and then, moving on, allow me to move on too.”

  “So that’s the why of Annie?” Billy Greckle sneered. “She’s a nut case and a—forgive me, Gil—a true blue bitch—because they misheard you at God’s drive-through window when you said, ‘Oh, and throw in one fish sandwich too?”

  I laughed. “No, they got it right, Billy. I said bitch … and, hell, we always get what we ask for … plus we always deserve what we get.”

  Billy mulled on all that and rightly concluded that I was a deluded idiot. He was too mannerly to say so, however. Instead, he asked the obvious. “So if that’s the case, about Todd being the one who frees you, why on earth are you fighting for custody of him?”

  After some thought, looking down and studying the floor, I say, “To thank him, I guess. Because I owe him one.”

  Billy Greckle heaves a big sigh and gets up from the bench we’re sharing. “I feel better,” he says. “I may still be to blame—and I do persist in feeling that way—but you were a disaster waiting to happen, Gil.” He looks down at me, still sitting there. “I hope you’re over it.”

  Over it? I marvel inwardly at how he could say such a thing. Do you really think it’s that simple, Billy? I suppose it’s fitting that a man who can’t remember a face from moment to moment would forget that the life you’ve led is prologue to the life you’ll always lead.

  And Annie White will always be a part of who I am.

  I decide it’s time to make a new start here, too. I stand and shake his hand. “Take care, Billy,” I say.

  54

  Annie, trying very hard to recover from her sudden fright, looks down at Wolfie’s JURNUL again and begins reading in a very quiet, tremulous voice: “OCTOBER 24: TRACK LADY TO LIPSTICK STORE THEN TO SCULPTURE GALLERY AND CLIMB IN—”

  She stops abruptly and sits utterly still, her eyes riveted to the page. She’s made out the words. There is a new pink flush to her face.

  Mormon Applebee continues his progression around the room. He passes the table where a puzzled-looking Albert Redding is sitting, then loops around his own table where I’m sitting with his four assistants, then circles in front of the empty jury box, then begins closing in on the judge’s bench, nearing the witness stand.

  He is letting the silence build. His slap! slap! of shoe leather fills the courtroom. Finally, the judge says, “Counsel?” Mr. Applebee simply waves a hand and says nothing. The judge looks inquiringly at Annie, then at her attorney. “Mr. Redding, is there a problem with your client?”

  Albert Redding stands. “I don’t know, your Honor.” Miserable, knowing something is very wrong here, he calls out, “Ms. White?”

  Annie is not answering. Her shoulders are beginning to quake and there are now tears visible on her face.

  Everyone in the courtroom is staring intently at her. They know that something has happened—something is happening—but they still don’t know what. Their frustration is high. Women touch at their faces. Men run fingers through their hair. There is a cough or two.

  Mormon Applebee has reached the witness box. He roughly grabs the book marked JURNUL from Annie’s lap, and in a stentorian voice that a trembling Moses, awaiting the Commandments, would have recognized in an instant, intones:

  “OCTOBER 24: TRACK LADY TO LIPSTICK STORE THEN TO SCULPTURE GALLERY AND CLIMB IN WINDOW WELL IN ALLEY. LADY KEEPS UP CLOSED SIGN AND TAKES TALL MAN MAN BY THE HAND TO THE LITTLE BACK ROOM UNDER MY WINDOW WELL. LADY TAKES OFF CLOTHES AGAIN AND—”

  “Your Honor! Your Honor!” Albert Redding is screaming it. He has leapt to his feet and he is pointing at Mormon Applebee. “He’s testifying, your Honor! He’s not the witness! He’s not—”

  “Sit down, Redding!,” the judge shouts. “Applebee!” he commands. “Give me that book!” He extends a hand over the bench, reaching for the notebook.

  But Mormon Applebee goes on, hardly noticing the exchange between the judge and Albert Redding—or the judge’s insistent order that he give up the marbleized notebook. He reads, “—LADY KNEELS LIKE FOR LEAPFROG. MAN PUSHES NIGGLE AGAINST LADY AND LADY SHAKES HEAD UP AND DOWN FOR A LONG TIME AND MAKES THE OOH AND UH NOISE—”

  “Your Honor!” Al Redding is screeching now. “Objection! This is not allowable! This is not—

  “Sit down, Redding!” Judge Biers yells. He again extends a hand over the bench. “Give me that book now, Applebee!”

  The attorney placidly hands it up to the judge and the courtroom watches in captivated silence while the judge’s face gradually reddens, finally becoming a brick-red hue.

  Redding is still screeching. “Your Honor, this cannot happen! This cannot be countenanced! This is—! This is—!” Beside himself with fright and panic, Albert Redding is sputtering but making no sense.

  Judge Biers is ignoring him. Furious, he scans through Wolfie’s JURNUL, but he’s apparently not having much luck deciphering Wolfie’s scrawl. He frowns and glowers as he quickly thumbs past Mormon Applebee’s paper clips, once in a while stopping and muttering; we can see his lips moving as he tries to figure out the words. After a few more moments of this, he shakes his head and the lip-readers among us see him decide, Let her do it, dammit!

  Judge Biers lifts his head and looks angrily around the courtroom. “The witness,” he intones, “is directed by the Court to read each entry that has been marked by counsel. If she fails to do so, she will be jailed for contempt of court.” Vibrating with puritanical indignation, Judge Biers watches the courtroom for any signs of rebellion, then hands the notebook marked JURNUL back to Mormon Applebee. “Here, take this filth and give it to her.”

  He turns his head to Annie. “Read it.”

  The bellow from Albert Redding is so loud that it cuts off even the excited murmurs from the spectator’s gallery. “Objection! There is no way she’s reading that!”

  The attorney, himself a vivid beet-red that rivals the judge’s coloration, has bounded to the judge’s raised dais and, still shouting, he’s banging his fist against the bench. “You cannot force such a reading, your Honor!” He heaves a torturous breath and yells it again, “There is no way she’s reading any more of that!”

  Al Redding looks like a man who has caught a glimpse of Dante’s Seventh Circle of hell and will do anything—anything—to s
hut it out.

  Judge Biers is round-eyed, speechless at such an onslaught of raging, frenzied insistence. Such ferocity, he knows from his time on the bench, is unprecedented for Albert Redding.

  Mormon Applebee, still standing adjacent to Annie, is regarding the spectacle with a smug grin. Both hands are folded on the frontal slab; the JURNUL is tucked safely against the mountainous stanchion of pin-striped flesh.

  Al Redding sucks in another loud, gasping supply of oxygen and beckons to Annie. He is evidently panicked beyond all reason at the prospect of Wolfie’s reporting being made part of a permanent, transcribed record. “Get down from there!,” he orders her, hoarse now from his bellows. “Get out of that chair and go sit at the table!”

  Annie, herself terrified, willingly jumps to her feet, leaves the witness box, and dashes away—even as a dumfounded Judge Biers tries to react. But she doesn’t stop at the attorney’s table. She keeps going and is almost to the door of the courtroom before Judge Biers is able to collect his wits and, leaping to his feet, calls, “Bailiff! Get her! Constrain her! Bring her back here, dammit!”

  One of the deputy sheriffs who’s been savoring this wild spectacle of prurient journals and defiant attorneys grabs at Annie as she darts past and he’s able to hold her. She’s sobbing audibly and she struggles in his arms even as the deputy side-steps his way back up the aisle, lurching her along. He deposits her at Albert Redding’s table and tentatively backs away, holding both arms extended in front of him as if he’s warding off further attack by an escaped animal.

  “Sit!” yells Judge Biers at Annie. “Stay!,” he adds in a panicked bellow, sounding very much like a thwarted animal trainer.

  The buzzing, babbling spectators are overjoyed at this sudden chaos. They feel validated in their earlier, instinctive flocking to this particular courtroom. I can feel them squirming and jostling behind me, excitedly sharing analysis while rehearsing their I-was-there-and-saw-it-all! chatter for later that evening.