The Testimony

by Laura London

  Her mother, Sylvia, had never overdressed for an occasion in her life. Tonight she even had on blue jeans, and no one but Indiana would realize that the teal mohair jacket she wore had cost over nine hundred dollars. Sylvia had features like her daughter, too snub to be pretty, but she was good with scarves, draping them dramatically on her shoulder or neckline, which had a way of convincing people she was a very beautiful woman. Or it might have been her hair, the shiny shoulder-length blond flow that tucked under at the ends with steely neatness, never showing the faintest outgrowth. Her careful makeup was tuned to the hour, the teal jacket, and the company. Christine had only to take one look at her to feel scrawny, straggly, and awkward.

  The hug she gave Christine might have looked breezy and vivacious, but to Christine it had always felt as though she were being seized and rapidly rebuffed. Oh, she had spent years trying to straighten out her feelings about her mother. When her mother kissed Jesse hello, she reached up nervously to smooth his hair, which didn’t need smoothing. It was her mother’s most unnerving trait. She could pinpoint with breathtaking accuracy the areas where you were perfectly secure, and then undermine them with reassurances. The Ludans, of course, were fairly immune. As Indiana had once remarked, unless you made it a major project, you could only work emotionally stable people over if you started young enough.

  In an unnecessary effort to set everyone at their ease, Sylvia smiled at Jesse’s mother, Mari. “Well, we’ve got our young idealist among us again. Did you know that Jesse was one of the cover stories for a leading news weekly in Tokyo? They ran a picture too. One of the surgeons from St. Mike’s was on vacation and he sent it to us.”

  Jesse’s aunt Rose said, “Then perhaps you’ll give me a copy. I’ve been keeping a scrapbook—oh, you should see the things I’ve collected. Imagine seeing our little Jess in Them magazine as one of the fifty most intriguing men of the year.”

  Jesse shoved his hands in his pockets. Christine could almost feel his irritation heat the clearing. “Maybe I should hit the lecture circuit,” he said sweetly.

  His family, who understood him, turned up an array of grins, but her mother, who did not, said, “What an excellent idea! And I know just the agency to handle you. They did Connie Abbott after her first novel came out—they absolutely pamper you. It wouldn’t be long at all before you had money for a new car.”

  Christine thought, What’s wrong with our car? Aloud she said, “It was a joke, Mother.”

  Sylvia gave her a cool disciplining glance under a slightly uplifted brow. She hated to be wrong. “Well, perhaps now that the idea has been raised, you’ll think it over.” Then she turned aside and admired the evening, the Ludan grandchildren, and the mushrooms soaking in tubs of salt water.

  Christine smiled as Jesse put his lips to her ear and said, “Don’t even think it. There’s nothing wrong with our car.”

  Frisbees sailed over the clearing until the sun disappeared. The children’s game changed to red rover until the clearing grew quite dark, and, as flames from the camp fire tinged faces scarlet, shooting sparks into the black sky, they played kick-the-can. By then the camp tables sagged under the weight of picnic food and the morels had been sautéed in butter. The family gathered near the fire on folding chairs, logs, and blankets, and talked, as they did every year, about the mushrooms—how many there were, how good they tasted, who ate a lot, who didn’t eat as many as last year, whether it was better to have them with wine or beer or brandy. The Ludan children and in-laws discovered early that statements like “I don’t like mushrooms” accomplished nothing beyond making oneself a target for aggressive attempts to teach one to like mushrooms. What one had to say was “Mushrooms don’t agree with me,” with its delicate hint of dire biological consequences. Then you were inundated with sympathy, not mushrooms.

  English and Hungarian blended in a pretty babble with the crickets and bullfrogs in chorus from the reeds. Christine loved the sound of Hungarian speech. Its melodious timbre came, Jesse said, from an unusually high proportion of long and short vowels to consonants. The younger kids wouldn’t speak the language. It seemed to embarrass them, especially in front of their friends. If a parent or older relative spoke to them in Hungarian, they answered in English. Their father would shrug and say, “It’s only natural.”

  One of Christine’s favorite consequences of a two-culture family was the names. Depending on whether his name appeared in Hungarian or its English equivalent, or its formal or affectionate variation, Sandor could be Alexander, Sandy, or Sanyi. Andy could be Andrew, András, or Bandi. Of course, Jesse and Indiana were unique, the mistakes. They had immigrated to America with the Hungarian names Zsolt and Attila, and a social services worker, probably with visions of grade school recesses, had suggested that Janos change their names to something more American. His choices after three weeks of English classes showed just how difficult it was to come in cold to another culture. He’d picked Jesse from Jesse James, a frontier figure Americans seemed to venerate, and Indiana from a newspaper piece on the heroes of the Indianapolis 500, which Janos had gathered was an important patriotic battle. He still laughed sometimes at the image of himself naively naming his sons after an outlaw and a racetrack.

  After dinner, the talk grew softer. Older folks settled down to tell stories, younger ones mingled. Sandor came by to drop a fresh beer bottle into Jesse’s hand, patted his shoulder, and said, “Have a little brewski, Jess.” Peter, the wild brother who’d grown up to be a rock promoter and own a penthouse overlooking the lake before his twenty-fifth birthday, had caught Jesse in a moment of reverie and made him laugh by playing a chorus of “Folsom Prison Blues” on the guitar. Sometimes a brother or a cousin or a sister would come up to Jesse and hug him for no reason at all. They knew, and they gave him what they could.

  Christine had carried her pie plate back to the table and, standing with her back to it, she watched Jesse from a distance. He was making a miniature canoe in birch bark and twine for Nicky, explaining the steps as he worked, a touch of humor tugging at his shapely mouth. Firelight burnished his profile in warm red and gold tones. His face seemed more relaxed than it had been since the day he’d come home.

  A soft maternal chuckle drew Christine’s attention to Beth, who was sitting on a blanket with her head tucked into Sandor’s shoulder. Her jacket was opened, and Sandor’s hand rested against the rounded upper curve where her pregnancy pressed against her sweater. Sandy leaned forward to place a light kiss where his hand had been, and another kiss, gentle with relaxed eroticism, on her lips. Mesmerized by the tenderness between them, Christine followed the kiss in her mind until she became suddenly conscious that she was intruding on a very intimate moment and looked away, her cheeks smitten with color.

  But Sandy missed very little, and before she could wander off, he called her. She turned.

  “The baby’s moving,” he said. “Come and see.”

  Very embarrassed, but not unwilling, she came to the foot of the blanket and sat down on her heels. With placid kindness he stroked her chin, his smile radiating in creases from his eyes, and, taking hold of her wrist, he placed her palm on Beth’s stomach.

  “Up a little bit,” Beth said, and his hand carried Christine’s upward obediently. “Have you ever felt this before, Chris?”

  “No,” she said. Her eyes remained self-consciously on Sandy’s strong fingers where they clasped her wrist, and she thought how strange it was that in a world full of humans she had never felt one move inside a mother. “Oh. Was that—”

  “Yes.” Beth leaned back contentedly.

  Fascinated by the tiny life stirring under her hand, Christine said, “Does it hurt?”

  “No. I like it.” Catching Christine’s smile as she looked up, she said, “Are you afraid of going through all of this?”

  “A little.”

  Beth nodded. “So was I. Before.”

  Jesse joined them, his hands falling on her shoulders, massaging contentment into her. He pulled her to
her feet, bowing her lithe body to fit his, rocking her lightly and dipping his face to the side of her throat, tasting the little-girl saltiness of her skin. “One of these days soon,” he whispered, “shall we start a baby together?”

  She turned in his arms, burying her face in his sweater, and he felt her nose rub up and down on his chest as she nodded, and the lift of her taut cheek as she smiled.

  Two logs away, watching them with a small glass of Hungarian apricot brandy in her hand, Sylvia Bell smiled and said, “Look at them, Mari. Aren’t they sweet?”

  Jesse’s mother had been poking a wandering nut-brown lock back under her cotton head scarf. “They’ve been through a rough time, those two.”

  Christine knew her mother firmly believed that the rough time her daughter had been through resulted from having a husband who was too pigheaded for his own good.

  “Well, they’re two grown kids,” Christine heard Sylvia say. “No one can tell them how to live their lives.”

  Janos Ludan leaned forward in his chair to pour her more brandy. “No. No one. He’s a strong man, my Jesse.”

  “Stubborn.” Christine’s mother sipped her brandy. “Stubborn.”

  Jesse was watching now, and though Christine could feel his stillness, she knew he was too courteous to be provoked into an argument with someone like her mother, whom he considered a political lightweight, in the middle of a family picnic. On the other hand, last week he had told a soccer official to shove it. She was glad to see Indiana step his long legs over the log and sit down beside her mother. He said easily, “It’s good to be stubborn.”

  “Sometimes,” said Christine’s mother. Christine knew her mother would have let it drop there because she hated overt public disagreements—overt being the operative word—and besides, she was a balletomane. Indiana Ludan was one of the few people with whom Christine had ever seen her mother become rather bashful. Her dad, however, was not so sensitive to social nuances.

  “It’s possible to be too determined,” he said, clearing his throat. “Sometimes you have to bend. That’s the way the world is. You have to make compromises.”

  Indy stretched his legs out before him with sinuous precision. “Don’t you think, Dr. Bell, that there are certain compromises that would entail giving up one’s self-respect?”

  Christine saw that her mother was beginning to look disconcerted, as if she suspected someone of trying to miscast her as the villainess. “Don’t misunderstand us, Indiana. No one is talking about not having ideals. Obviously we’ve raised Christine to have ideals or Jesse wouldn’t have married her, isn’t that right?”

  “But when a judge orders you to reveal information, you should comply,” Christine’s father said. “That’s the law.”

  Beth spoke up suddenly. “There used to be a law in England that you could be hanged for shooting the king’s deer. That was the law; was it right?”

  “If I lived in England and that was the law,” Christine’s mother said hotly, “I certainly wouldn’t have shot one of the king’s deer. That’s precisely the point. When push comes to shove, you’ve got to bend. But here’s Jesse thrown in jail with car thieves and”—she stopped, as if it was beyond her to imagine what sort of desperate characters her son-in-law had been exposed to—“and God knows what all, and left with a criminal record!”

  It was dangerous to speak. Christine knew she was in an emotional state, but the words came unbidden. “Jesse doesn’t have a criminal record, Mother. There were no criminal charges against him. It’s insane that in a system of justice where murderers can demand a jury trial, one judge and one DA in some secret hearing can throw someone in jail without having to justify what they’re doing to a soul.”

  “Now, that I never did understand,” said her father, shaking his head.

  “It shouldn’t happen in America!” she cried in a breaking voice. Silence followed, sticky with its massed sympathy, and Christine realized that she had gone forward, and that she was alone without Jesse’s touch in appalling exposure. But Jesse made no move to come to her. He must have realized it would have made her weep, and the small part of her that wasn’t actively mortified was so pleased that he saw she could stand without a shield. Still, she was chokingly relieved when Jesse’s grandmother ended the moment by hurrying forward and drawing out one of the linen handkerchiefs she embroidered so beautifully to press into Christine’s hand.

  “There, all of you. See what you do?” she demanded, rounding on her grandson. “Just like your father, you are, Jesse. Worrying about the government, and this idea and that, and your poor wife had such a sad face at Christmas without you. Every month while you were away I sent money to the fathers at Holy Hill to say Mass for her, all alone in that big house without the love of a husband. You should worry about her now, instead of to think about politics.”

  Christine saw that her father had risen to his feet and put out his arms to her, this small man whom she felt she hardly knew, standing hesitantly. And then she was in his arms clinging to him, remembering the words she had listened to so lightly earlier: Jesse’s mother saying, “Something good comes from everything.” And she knew why Jesse had held back.

  “Hey, you know what?” Janos Ludan was struggling to his feet, pulling himself up by his cane, speaking in a clear, carrying voice. “She’s a special girl, my daughter-in-law. So many wouldn’t have stood with my son. But Jesse knows about freedom because he learned from me. I love this country, and I pass that love on to my children, and I teach them about what happened to Hungary so they will never take freedom for granted. I want everyone here to listen good”—he drove his cane into the hard ground as though striking the words into stone—“to what I say when I tell them that my son Jesse told that judge to go to hell because I brought him up so that he doesn’t know how to live another way but by his conscience. And I’m proud of him.”

  The wind made a nice sound through the trees; the fire crackled a warm tune. Rising slowly to his feet, Sandor joined his father.

  “I propose a toast,” he said, holding aloft his brandy glass. “To Jesse and Christine.”

  “Hear! Hear!” her father said, releasing her, helping her mother to stand as everyone was doing. And Jesse slid his hand in Christine’s as the glasses raised to them sparkled in the firelight. “To Jesse and Christine,” Janos Ludan repeated. “And to America!” They toasted. It was a beautiful moment, free from cynicism.

  “To the brave Hungarian Freedom Fighters of 1956!” It was her father’s voice.

  There was a roar of approval. Janos drained his glass and reached out to pump her father’s hand.

  Indiana, with his sweeping smile, was putting a brandy into her hand, and one into Jesse’s, and her husband was holding her in a wantonly loving gaze. He raised his glass toward her and murmured, “To Christine.”

  “To Jesse,” she said, and kissed him.

  That drew a delighted “Ahhhh!” from their combined families.

  And Christine, who had endured being the center of attention for as long as it was humanly possible, extended her glass toward the dark sky and sang out, “To the mushrooms!”

  Chapter Eight

  Jesse hummed to himself on the long ride home. They pulled into the driveway under a silvery moon and the night song of crickets. It was unseasonably cool.

  Thirty minutes later, Christine came out of the shower yawning, combing her fingers through her wet hair to separate the snarls. She considered her drawer of nightgowns and underclothes, looking for interesting possibilities, but when she dropped her bath towel the cool bedroom air nipped her moist skin, raising the gooseflesh on her limbs and back. Abandoning the notion of becoming a siren, she slid into her washed-out jeans and a cotton sweater of Jesse’s.

  Downstairs Jesse had made a fire. Fat knots from pine wood popped in the hearth, and he lay stretched out on the couch, his hair, loose and fluffy from an earlier shower, brushing against the persimmon country french floral print beneath. One bare foot swung absently in its u
praised posture over the back of the couch. He wore his oldest jeans and nothing else. He seemed warm and drowsy, an open magazine on his thigh, staring in a stuporous way at the TV set, which he’d placed on a side table beside her African violets.

  Jesse was gazing, enraptured, at a rerun of of some sit-com as though he were trying to memorize the script. When she saw him like this, she could hardly resist the devilish urge to do something frightful to him, like putting crushed potato chips in his pants. Coming into the living room, she employed her most pleasant voice.

  “It was really fun today.”

  No response, though the long, graceful fingers on the couch back lifted briefly in what might have been a greeting. She gave it another shot.

  “I’m glad we went, aren’t you?”

  A suspenseful pause. Then, “Yeah…” he said, his eyes glued to the television.

  In the same pleasant tone, she asked, “Have you got an erection?”

  “Yeah…” His rapt gaze never left the screen. “It’s immense.”

  That surprised a laugh from her. “You were listening after all.”

  “Did you expect less from one of the fifty most intriguing men of the year?” His light gaze touched her body. “Do you have anything on under your jeans?”

  She pretended to be indignant. “I may, or I may not.”

  His smile began in his eyes, a slow translucent softening that reminded her of the glowing iridescence of a rainbow. He got up, flicked off the television, and sat back on the couch.

  “Let’s find out,” he said. “C’mere and sit on me.”

  He drew her down, her knees straddling his thighs, her hands against his naked chest. “I don’t want to take you away from your favorite pastime.”