The Testimony

by Laura London

  The Testimony

  Laura London

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  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors’ rights.

  This book is dedicated to Jane Coleman, for contributions beyond value over many years.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Lois Walker; to Marcia Rachofsky; to Carol Wahlen; to Ted Kivitt of the Milwaukee Ballet; and to Joe, who was an inspiration to us.

  Chapter One

  She had loved Jesse Ludan for five years. Today, after six months away, he was coming home, to her home, to her bed.

  The home was Victorian Gothic, a century-old residence of creamy brick with carved gables and stained glass in the transom windows. The bed, inherited from a locomotive engineer uncle of Jesse’s, was a brass-framed antique that drank brass polish by the pint. She could put on dainty floral sheets and ruffled throw pillows and drape the frame with the granny-square comforter, but without Jesse the bed had all the comforts of sleeping on the cold stony ground.

  The thought drowned in a surge of guilt. Jesse had been sleeping in a bed that was so much worse.

  Christine sat alone, her feet curled against the ivory cushioned window bench that circled the interior of a small Gothic turret beyond the living room. In the garden outside the bay window, a butterfly danced in the morning sunlight, its shadow fluttering through prismatic ribbons of light thrown on the warm cedar walls by the beveled window above. The ballet slipper she had picked up to mend lay in her idle fingers. Jesse’s image filled her mind.

  Jesse, I need you. I’ve missed you so. Hurry.

  Again she tried to estimate how long it would be before he walked through the front door: the legal formalities, the visit—short, she hoped—with his lawyers; meeting with the waiting press; the ride home with his brother, who could be trusted to drop Jesse off and disappear. How long? It was impossible to tell. Late afternoon at the earliest, the lawyer had warned her.

  Her shadow fell near the floating outline of the butterfly. Once, twice, it seemed to settle like a bow in her hair. Her hair—her mother had called it “that unfortunate red” in the same way she referred to the time Cousin Cecil broke his fingers in the power window of his Rolls-Royce as “that unfortunate incident with the foreign car.” But Jesse would dip his fingers into her bright curls and spread them upon her pillow, whispering against her skin that each strand was like a streamer stolen from the setting sun.

  When it came to that, her mercilessly freckled complexion was a good deal more unfortunate. Gay splotches of rioting melanin covered her everywhere, even the soft, secret, intimate places, which had made it painful for her to undress the first time she and Jesse had made love. Wonderful Jesse—he had been so tender that night, murmuring gently teasing encouragement, covering her—freckles and all—with slow, sensuous kisses that made her feel as though her body were a special miracle filled with delight, giving delight. But six months later, in the week before their wedding, she had asked him snappishly how he would be able to stand spending the rest of his life looking at a speckled body—the question resulting from a good case of prewedding jitters, the strain left in the aftermath of an argument with her mother, and a rather immature impulse toward self-punishment. And he had answered her with that exhilarating grin of his and said, “After you, I’m afraid a body without much color interest would seem a little tame.” Laughing, he had dragged her against him, even though they were on the main thoroughfare of a shopping mall, and had whispered in her ear, “You don’t believe I think you’re beautiful? Come home with me and I’ll spend every minute left in the day showing it.”

  Nice as it was to hear, she knew very well she was no beauty. The rigorous moves of classical ballet training are performed to a wall of mirrors. Every detail of her face and body was familiar to her; she had no illusions. The slight roundness of her jaw, the clear blue eyes, the straight brows, and the nose that had no qualms about tilting upward a bit at the tip gave her face, even at twenty-six, a Disney-kid look that the freckles did nothing to dispel. Bartenders still asked her for identification. In the desperate search for acceptance during her teens, she had even—horrors!—tried false eyelashes (they fell in the pizza at the sophomore dance) and bleaching her hair (her mother made an appointment for her with a psychoanalyst). There was, however, a certain expressive mobility to her face, and people seemed to notice her smile. From time to time, strangers had even crossed the room in public places to say that watching her had brightened their day, never knowing how much they had brightened hers by saying so. All her mirror ever showed her was freckles and the kind of face that begged to be chucked under the chin. People meeting her for the first time were inclined to think she was shy. She was inclined to think they were right.

  Shy was, of course, the last adjective one would apply to Jesse. Jess could talk to anyone with ease. Or he could six months ago. Lately, in those too-short moments they were allowed to spend together on the telephone, he had sounded terse, at times even detached. Six months ago that quality had been as foreign to his character as California sunshine is to the pristine brilliance of a Wisconsin winter.

  Jesse was a man involved with life. Milwaukee was his city and he knew every part of it. Christine had been born and shielded through childhood in the North Shore suburb of Fox Point, and to her the city to the south had seemed gray, industrial, and crime-ridden, a place entered cautiously to visit the theater, to drive through on the way to restaurants. The last thing she had ever expected was that she would marry a man who had grown up in the shadow of a Milwaukee brewery in a “rear house,” one of the tiny homes built at the turn of the century by Eastern European immigrant families on the backs of their lots to shelter newly arriving relatives. Jesse was the second of twelve children whose parents had been forced to leave Hungary during the 1956 revolution. He and his brothers and sisters had been fed and clothed on their disabled father’s Social Security check and the income their mother made cooking at a Catholic seminary. And probably the last woman Jesse had expected to marry was a neurosurgeon’s slightly insecure daughter with a diploma in fine arts from Mills College and a trust fund from her grandmother.

  The attraction between her and Jesse hadn’t been instant and animal. Well, perhaps it had been a little animal on her part, but a painful crush or two in her adolescence had taught her not to toss her heart like a rose. Her smile notwithstanding, she had never been the sort of woman who drives men into a frenzy. She had assumed he would be conceited—who wouldn’t have been with his bright caressing eyes, his soft thick layers of light-brown hair, his beautiful cheekbones, his body?

  A strong, incalculable pull had kept them seeing each other for the two months it took for her to realize that he was softer and more sensitive than she might have guessed—and for him to realize that she was stronger and more open than her Orphan Annie freckles suggested. But her heart had raced ahead of her common sense. She had fallen in love with him a month before she could believe with any assurance that it was safe. By some unquestioned miracle, he had begun to love her in return.

  He had come to mean so much to her, this man who could transform a meaningless gray day into a perfect pearl on an endless string. With him, she had changed from a person who faced her m
irror image with a look of half-quizzical exasperation into one who could walk down State Street and kiss her fingers at her reflection in the shop windows.

  During his absence, she had held his image like a jewel in her mind. Jesse in a tavern after a soccer victory, his team pouring beer on his head while he laughed. And later at home, Jesse heading toward the shower until she called him back, a delicate suggestion in her voice… watching him turn, smiling; watching him come toward her, his green eyes widening slightly as she tossed her T-shirt to the foot of the bed; and he, pulling his soccer shirt over his head, laying it with gentle deliberation over hers. The thin fabric of the briefly cut soccer shorts made him seem more uncovered to her than the innocence of nudity, and she could remember the long, elegant stretch of his legs with their golden sun color; and, above the teasing interruption of his shorts, the lighter gilded tone of his chest with its subtle pattern of muscle and baby-soft frost of hair.

  And she could see him in the kitchen in a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his arms plunged to the elbows in a sink full of dirty dishes, while she sat in a chair tending her flu. He came to her with a lacework of shining soap bubbles on his arms that transferred to her hair and skin as he caught her hot cheeks in his palms and pressed a light kiss on her lips.…

  And then the picture would change to a late evening on the shore of Lake Michigan. Jesse in the calfskin bomber jacket she had given him for his birthday, the wind drifting it open to show the quilted lining, the Fair Isle sweater, the thin wool scarf, the narrow hips of his faded jeans. She could taste the tang of autumn and lake breeze on her lips and the fading warmth of a distant sun as he stretched down for a stone and gracefully sent it skipping into the darkening water. That was the night he told her he might have to leave her soon.

  A hollow rumble came from the sidewalk in front of the house as a gang of small children rolled from the alley on their Big Wheels in a stampede of brightly colored plastic. The jewel image of Jesse faded. A quick upward glance toward the living room dragged Christine back to the present as she noticed the telephone receiver dangling glumly at the end of its short cord. “The Phone That Rang Too Often: A Moral Lesson.” She had let it drop after the last call, saying, “Hang loose, phone.” Jesse had said he wouldn’t try to get through. She had already talked to everyone else who mattered; there was no risk. The last three days had brought a barrage of calls. The receiver would reach out to her with a fresh jangle as soon as she returned it to its cradle. News that Jesse might be coming home any time was spreading. Family called—his and hers. Friends called—his, hers, and theirs. People didn’t mean for their concern to become harassment, but the sheer number of calls had become a relentless battering on her psyche.

  As frequent were the calls from the press, the geyser of questions. When do you expect your husband, Mrs. Ludan? Have you talked to him? How does he feel? How do you feel, Mrs. Ludan? She had answered them in vacuous elegies to her joy until her tension had built so high that she knew she couldn’t do it another time. Her phone—and her psyche—were both left dangling.

  How do you feel, Mrs. Ludan? Terrified. Today my husband is coming home from prison as a hero, and I’m terrified.…

  Her gaze refocused suddenly on her still hands, the curving fingers that held the poised needle, and she realized that she’d been deep inside herself, disconnected like the phone.

  Outside, a loud motor was idling at the curb. A car door slammed. Startled, alert, she heard footsteps on the concrete path, a key grinding in the front lock. The door was opened and quietly shut. Quiet also were the footsteps that came forward, then hesitated.

  “Christine?”

  Jesse’s voice. Jesse’s voice, rich and soft and close, keenly real, shed of the telephone’s electronic tinge.

  “I’m back here!”

  Quickly his footsteps began to retrace the path of her voice. Thoughts came to her like little sparks: breathless delight, sick longing, fear; and a silly dismay that here she was in a faded pink flannel nightgown with a scrubbed face when she had wanted to rifle her closet for something stunning, subdue her hair with a curling iron, put perfume and blusher on all the places on her body where Cosmopolitan insisted they ought to go—and do a hundred other things that wouldn’t matter to him but to her were a love ritual.

  Jesse stood in the frame of the arched doorway. Angled sunlight found his hair, lifting honey tones from the smooth minky layers. “Strokable hair,” her sister had called it. His eyes held the beginnings of a smile, a soft glow that gave the irises the clear color of sun-filled birch leaves. The firm lips echoed his spare smile. She knew his face heart-wrenchingly well; yet as she gazed at him it seemed as though she had forgotten the sensuality of his features, the suggestion of sexuality that made women looking at him think of swift, unplanned seductions and lazy erotic aftermaths. In certain expressions his mouth had a sardonic tilt that had both alarmed and fascinated her in their early acquaintance; she had been sure he was silently mocking her. But then he had smiled at her, an open smile of such startling charm that she remembered wondering if her spirit would burst from its fast trip upward. This smile was different. It was raw.

  He had allowed his hair to grow in prison. In back it covered his collar, and that burned into her again the feeling that too much time had passed since they had been together. Under the heather-gray blazer, the ivory cotton shirt, the soft wool pants, she knew every exquisite play of skin and muscle, every dense curve of bone and tendon. She knew them, but for six months she hadn’t had access to them.

  “Don’t move,” he said, and came to her, walking slowly, his gaze steady, holding her. Facing her, he rested his knee on the bench. Its hard warmth touched her thigh, igniting a sharp thrill in her senses. Only one man could do that to her and it was so good to see him, so good, that she wanted to fold him into her body. She started to tell him.

  “Jesse…”

  He gently touched his forefinger to her lips. “You don’t have to tell me. Not now.” The tip of his finger moved across her face, tracing her cheek. His gaze was luminous, almost wondering.

  “Don’t move, Chris,” he whispered again. “I just want to look at you.”

  Yet his eyes closed for a moment as his palms molded themselves to the contours of her face. His thumbs delicately outlined her eyebrows, her lashes, her eyelids; they followed the shape of her lips, and then, more playfully, the down slope of her nose, softly tilting the tip upward. One hand curled under her throat urged her chin up, and then his eyes opened into the love in hers.

  She felt his full interest as though it were a material presence hovering near the edge of her thoughts, absorbing signals and clues. It was this slow gaze that had always made her want to save a hundred details from each day to tell him in the evening—and there had been six months of days. But now the urgency to speak had faded as he seemed to draw the dark loneliness from her—through her flesh, into his hands, into his heart. His love stroked her, soothing a sore place within her.

  His palms moved slowly lower, warmly enclosing the sides of her throat, his thumbs offering a careful support for her chin. There was a stillness about him, a concentration that seemed more intense than anything she could remember. It was almost as though he couldn’t believe she was there. Even as she reveled in his emotion, it awed her. His thoughts were far from clear to her, but she felt the weight of them. His name was a murmur on her lips as her arms traveled the achingly pleasurable path around his waist and she buried her face in his stomach. Tears came, cooling the slight roughness of the fabric, as his hand made long slow passages over her hair.

  The lilting chime of the doorbell pealed through the room, and she awoke to the sound like a dreamer, uncertain what had aroused her.

  A curiously passionless frown crossed Jesse’s face. It was a numb expression, unreadable. He was quiet for a moment, his hands in a light embrace on her shoulders. The bell chimed again. He let his hands fall away and said in a mild tone, “Were you expecting
someone?”

  Her fear returned. Not we. You, he had said, like a casual visitor who would be leaving soon, leaving her alone with her doorbell, her life. Six months. Had she expected him to flow back into their life together as easily as if he’d stepped out to the corner store for milk? No. But being without him had been so hard that she wanted it to stop being hard now.

  “I told everyone not to come,” she said, and felt a second twinge. Would he read condescension in that? Would he read control? For six months the rigid prison structure had controlled Jesse’s every move. “That is—I really wanted it to be just us today. I hope you don’t mind.” She was frustrated by her tone; it seemed defensive, babbling. She tried to correct it. “Your family wanted to come, but they seemed to understand, and I…” The bell rang a third time, its deliberately pretty chime taking on an abrasive edge. She stood quickly to answer it, to spare him the vexation. Then she thought, My God, that is condescending. She forced a smile. “Would you like to get it?”

  He gave her a curious look and turned, his gaze traveling to the unseated telephone. “What’s been going on? Has someone been bothering you? The press?” His tone was curt, shot with coiled animosity.

  They had been bothering her but she didn’t want to tell him. This was Jesse—her husband, her lover—and seven months ago she would have given him all her thoughts as though they belonged to him as much as they did to her. As their ordeal began, her feeble efforts to protect him in small ways had been useless. But even now she lied.

  “Never. I count them as family.” She walked into the living room, with its light-colored dhurries, its airy patterned wall coverings, and chintz love seats. Padding barefoot across the oak floor to peek out through the louvered shutters, she continued, “Speaking of which, it’s channel twelve—I recognize the Action News van. Oh, and there’s Harrison P. Fosdick, complete with capped teeth. And he’s wearing a trenchcoat.”