We Are Not Like Them

by Christine Pride

  I’ve never been in a courtroom before, and I’m surprised to find it’s so dark and dingy: faded paint peels off the walls, abandoned cans of Coke and a stack of brown accordion folders crowd the judge’s desk. The ancient radiators clang and grunt. The judge herself looks bored. I can’t believe our fate will be decided in this depressing room, or one exactly like it if Kevin goes to trial.

  The judge strikes her gavel, startling both of us. There’s a sudden churn in the courtroom as the cases turn over—actors taking their places, including me. I scoot back on the bench and sit up straighter, readying myself. Kevin stands when the bailiff calls his name. All eyes turn as he and Brice make their way to the table before the judge. I want to offer some final words of encouragement, but Kevin is out of his seat, trudging forward like a zombie before I have the chance.

  That horrible district attorney appears from out of nowhere and stands at a table in front of the judge. I want to stick a big wad of gum in her hair. I shoot daggers at Sabrina Cowell and hope she can feel my rage. When she starts to speak, I want to cover my ears against her self-righteousness, her smug tone.

  “Kevin Murphy…

  “Second-degree murder…

  “Manslaughter…

  It’s all so fast, a jumble, a blur of legalese and formalities and jargon that’s too hard to follow. Only one moment breaks through, like everything else in the room has stopped, when Kevin speaks. Two words, his voice so hoarse the judge has to ask him to repeat himself.

  “Not guilty.”

  And just like that, it’s over. It hardly seems worth all the bother of leaving Chase, but when Kevin returns to the bench and collapses in my arms as if he’s run a marathon, I’m glad I came. For better or worse.

  We all file back out into the hall, unsure how to behave, what to do now.

  “I’ve gotta pee.” I’ve been holding it for hours now and rush off to find a bathroom. In the stall I take my time, thumb through pictures of Chase on my phone for a minute to soothe my nerves. I’m still bleeding and I need another pad, but that would involve going to ask Cookie if she has a quarter and then she’ll ask why and it will be mortifying. Someone comes in. Maybe I can borrow some change.

  I walk out and nearly turn back into the stall. It’s her, Tamara Dwyer, so close I can smell her perfume. My knees buckle. I didn’t see her in the courtroom, but of course she would be here. I’ve seen her on television and from a distance at Justin’s funeral, but here, under the flickering fluorescent lights that are mandatory in every sorry municipal building in this city, she looks like a ghost. She locks eyes with me right away. We’re alone with three feet of space between us.

  “Congratulations,” she says quietly, looking at my swollen stomach.

  “Thank you.” A whisper as I take a small step back to the toilet stall.

  “You had a boy, right?”

  “Yes.” I can’t allow the guilt brought on by that simple fact to drown me. She doesn’t need my guilt. “Mrs. Dwyer, I’m so sorry. My husband is so sorry.”

  “I don’t want your apologies.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t. What would you do if someone killed your baby?”

  I don’t even hesitate, because I’ve thought about this every single day since Chase was born. “I’d kill them with my bare hands.”

  “Exactly.” The hard look in Tamara’s eyes tells me that she’s imagined it too.

  “But it wouldn’t do anything, would it?” I stutter a little. “Would it make it better?”

  She glares at me in the mirror. “Sometimes I think so. A life for a life. But that’s not what I want. I want my son back. I want my baby back. I want to wrap my arms around him and kiss his sweaty head and never let him go back outside into a world where a man like your husband will shoot him in the chest for walking home from school.”

  This is what we deserve. My son is alive.

  Both her hands grip the edges of the sink, and we’re talking through her reflection in the mirror. I can leave right now, walk away from this woman and her anguish. But I have to face her, face up to her. I risk reaching out to touch her and she jumps away from my hand so violently I pull back like I’ve been burned.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “And don’t say you’re sorry. I don’t want your sorrys.” Her eyes meet mine again, cold pools of anger and grief.

  “Chase—my baby, his name is Chase—he came early. I thought I’d lose him. I knew I’d die if that happened.”

  “But you wouldn’t die. You’d have to keep going, and that is so much worse.”

  She turns and grabs at the door handle, pulling so hard the door flies open and slams into the wall hard enough to startle us both.

  “Tell your husband to do the right thing.” She spits the words and then she’s gone. I wait another minute because I’ll crumple if I see her again in the hallway. And I need to try to collect myself anyway.

  My wobbly legs barely get me back to the Murphys, to their tight semicircle. Brice is talking, animated, rocking back and forth, heel to toe, explaining this and that to everyone and no one.

  “If it gets to it, I like our chances at trial. I like them. That video. That kid is clearly pulling something out of his pocket. The jury only needs to find him a reasonable threat. Everyone wants to believe they wouldn’t shoot,” Brice says. “But no one really knows what they would do in that situation. No juror truly knows.”

  Cookie glances at me. “Are you okay? You’re trembling.”

  I grab one hand in the other to hold it still. “I’m fine.” She doesn’t look convinced, but we’re all distracted by something else: Sabrina Cowell striding toward us from down the long hall, the enemy approaching, a hyena circling the hippos.

  Cookie pinches her lips together so tightly I worry she might swallow her tongue.

  “Can I speak to you, Brice?” Sabrina asks. He nods eagerly, like the coach just called him off the bench in the last ten minutes of the game.

  As she and Brice walk away, Matt announces he’s going for a smoke. Cookie wants to go to the ladies’ room, and Frank needs to find a place to sit. Kevin and I are alone.

  The stone silence is killing me, so I start whistling the first few bars of “Patience.” “ ‘You and I got what it takes to make it,’ ” I sing softly into Kevin’s ear.

  When Brice returns some ten minutes later, we hear his heavy footsteps echoing on the marble floors before we see him. Kevin rushes over to close the distance between them. I waddle behind him as fast as I can. “Well?”

  “Finally. She wants to offer you a deal.”

  “So what is it?” Kevin asks.

  Brice pauses for dramatic effect. “Reckless homicide. Ten years’ probation. And it’s a felony conviction. But no prison time. It’s a good deal overall. It’s an unbelievable deal.”

  No prison time. Hearing this is such a relief my entire body goes slack, my bones turned to jelly. I won’t have to take my baby to see his father behind a grimy plate-glass window. This is way better than we could have hoped for. Kevin doesn’t seem happy or relieved though. I can see him turning it over in his mind.

  “Well, the catch is you have to testify against Cameron, of course.” Brice adds this like it’s a tiny hiccup. “It’s him she’s gunning for. In a trial he still has a strong defense. He can say he thought the kid was pulling out a gun, say that he truly believed he was shooting the other guy. You’ll need to say that the second you laid eyes on the kid, you knew he was the wrong guy, that you believe Cameron made a bad call. You’re the only other person who was there. Your testimony would probably sway a jury and she knows it. Without you, she might not get the conviction she wants. But if you both go to trial, you could both end up serving time. She wants an answer by the end of the week. I suspect she wants to know where you stand before Cameron turns himself in and is arraigned. She extended the deadline from forty-eight hours. Well, I got her to give us more time.”
Brice quickly revises his statement to place himself at the center of the achievement. “It’s a big decision.”

  Kevin turns to lean his forehead against the puke-green walls.

  “Oh, and you can’t be a cop anymore, anywhere in PA. You resign effective immediately,” Brice adds.

  “I can’t be a cop anymore?” Kevin sounds like a child who’s been told he can never see his mother again.

  He looks at me. I just nod. Tell your husband to do the right thing.

  Brice goes on. “If you want my advice—and that’s why you pay me the big bucks—I say take it. If it’s you or the other guy, might as well be the other guy, you know?”

  Thank God Matt and Frank aren’t here. “All those guys,” Kevin chokes. “They came here to support me. If I turn on Cameron, I’m turning on all of them.”

  Frustration seeps from Brice’s long sigh. Kevin is ruining his big moment. “Look, you have a week to think about it. But it’s a good deal.”

  We’ve been dangling from a cliff for so long, and someone has finally thrown us a rope, only Kevin isn’t reaching for it. Why isn’t he reaching for it?

  “We’ll make the right decision,” I tell Brice and grab my husband’s hand. “Come on, let’s go to the hospital.”

  Back to Chase.

  Chapter Fifteen RILEY

  “It looks nice on you.”

  I look down at the silk blouse, unsure.

  My mom reaches up and firmly tucks the silk into the back of my jeans and then stands behind me in the closet-size dressing room, appraising me. I haven’t been shopping with her since my last back to school shopping trip to JCPenney in the summer before seventh grade.

  “I don’t know, it’s expensive.” The price tag makes me wince and I want to hide it from my mom like it’s a shameful secret, but then, it was her idea to duck into this tiny boutique on Sansom Street in the first place. This whole outing today—lunch and shopping—was her idea, an invite she shocked me with this morning. I look up in the mirror at our chummy reflections—we’re just like the TV mother and daughter I’d imagined. At least, we have been for the last few hours. We even ordered aperol spritzes and gossiped, though I’m not sure she knew that aperol was alcohol and I decided not to tell her until she took a sip and pronounced it, “So refreshing!” I even told her I was meeting Corey today, in thirty minutes actually. I hadn’t intended to, but there we were, talking about Shaun and Staci’s latest spat and how my cousin was getting married in the summer and Momma would like us all to go to Memphis for the wedding, having made strides to make peace with Uncle Rod. So it just seemed natural to tell her about my love life, even if it’s terrain I avoided with a ten-foot pole all my life. New leaves and all that. That’s how we ended up here in this overpriced store—she insisted I should get a new blouse for our date. The tan sweater I was wearing was apparently underwhelming. “I’ve seen people wear sexier outfits to Bible study, Riley.” That must have been the second aperol talking for her to use “Bible study” and “sexy” in the same sentence, let alone drag me by the hand into a store that sells $400 cashmere sweaters.

  “I always wondered what happened to him, that Corey,” she says now.

  “You didn’t hate him, then?” I just assumed she did. I assume everyone starts out on Sandra’s bad side and has to work mighty hard to get anywhere from there.

  “Child, I barely knew the boy. You brought him around all of once. He seemed nice enough and you liked him. That I could tell. You got this look in your eye. Damned if it wasn’t a sparkle. That’s why I was confused when he was up and gone.”

  So was I, Momma. Sometimes I confuse my own self. I turn and angle myself to get a side view of the shirt. It’s blue, which is a plus; Corey loves blue.

  “You look pretty.” She reaches up to smooth the collar. This compliment is also a surprise. Momma always said being pretty was a curse. “And especially with that long straight hair of yours, girls gonna hate you just for that,” she told me in middle school, and then said that I shouldn’t ever look in a mirror in front of other girls because they’ll think I’m conceited, that I am admiring myself. To this day I feel self-conscious seeing my reflection. Which probably means I’ve been walking around with food in my teeth most of the time.

  “You also look nervous,” she says to me. She can always read me. I’m laid bare in front of her no matter how much I like to think I’m my own person with my own private thoughts and smoke screen of serenity.

  “I guess I am. A little. Is it that obvious?”

  “Oh, please. I know you. You were me, before you were you. Don’t forget that.”

  I don’t know exactly what she means, but I get it. For all the ways I want to be different from my mother, there are many more we’re alike. It’s an idea I could learn to embrace.

  “I wish we’d gotten to know him better, Corey. Why’d you fall so hard for him? Your nose was wide open!”

  “I don’t know, Mom, he made me feel seen. It’s hard to explain. Like I could just be my real self. I didn’t overthink with him, I just was. When he looked at me, I felt like both the person I am and wanted to be. He made me feel, I don’t know… special, confident… as dumb as that sounds.”

  “Riley Wilson, you’re the most confident, exceptional human being I know. I raised you to know that. To know your worth.”

  “Well, it’s not that easy sometimes.” I don’t add that she raised me to constantly be a better version of myself and that that was exhausting and that Corey loved the version of me that already existed, flawed as she may be. But we’re having such a nice moment, I’m determined not to ruin it by mining my childhood for grievances.

  “But I know, Momma, I know. I appreciate you.”

  “Get the blouse. You deserve it. You’ve been working so hard. Treat yo’self. Ain’t that what the kids say?”

  She reaches over and digs into her pocketbook and hands me a $20. “Here, let me put something toward it. I want you to have it.”

  “No, no, I got it.” I’m still getting used to the idea, and the guilt, of making more money than anyone in my family.

  “Well, keep that money and use it to pay your way tonight. Girls let men pay for them and these men expect something, you know.”

  There’s only one thing Corey expects from me: an explanation.

  I start to take off the blouse and then remember I’m going to wear it tonight. I hand my drab sweater to my mom. It won’t fit in my tiny clutch. “Could you take this home with you?”

  “Home? I’m going to take it right over there to the Salvation Army!”

  We walk to the register and my mother leans in and lowers her voice like she’s prepared to divulge another secret. Is this the day I learn about her secret love child?

  “So, you think Kevin’s going to take the deal?” she asks in a stage whisper that people from a mile around could hear.

  Over lunch, I told my mom in confidence how Sabrina had called me to tell me about the offer. It was now clear that using Kevin as leverage had been Sabrina’s strategy all along. It was Cameron whose head she wanted on a platter—his was the more solid legal case to make. Cameron shot first and he shot someone who didn’t match the description of the suspect they were chasing. Sabrina was confident that she could get a guilty verdict and a long prison sentence. “Ten years, at least,” she told me. “That’s some justice.” So Kevin now had a lifeline, and it would be crazy for him not to take it. Except we’re already three days in and he hasn’t decided.

  “I don’t know, Mom. He’d be crazy not to, though.”

  “Yeah, but those cops rather go to jail than rat on each other. Even the Black ones get all caught up in that. But I guess we’ll see. You’re seeing Jenny next week, right? That’s good, that’s good.”

  I’d told Momma at lunch about my talk with Jenny, how hard and infuriating it was. But how it was also a relief, to finally get out everything I’ve been thinking, even if it changes everything between us.

  “But at lea
st you’re talking,” she’d said. “Just keep going on. You can’t expect everyone to get everything. Sometimes you’ve gotta meet people where they are and bring them along. It’s not always worth it, but you love Jen through and through and vice versa and y’all will get through this.”

  “We’re meeting up the week after, actually.”

  The only thing I’d heard from Jenny was a cryptic text the day after Kevin’s arraignment saying she was going out of town but could we see each other when she’s back. It’s funny that I have the same feeling thinking about meeting up with Jenny after our last conversation as I do about Corey, an excited dread, like I’m preparing for something, but what?

  I hand the tag to the sales clerk. “Could you ring me up with this? I’m just going to wear the blouse now.”

  “It looks great on you,” she says.

  “I appreciate y’all didn’t hover over us and follow us around like we were going to steal something,” Mom says to the sales clerk, nodding her head in vigorous agreement with her own thoughts.

  The young blond woman has no idea what to do with this strange “compliment.”

  We walk out into the dusk, the sun casting a labyrinth of shadows on the sidewalk. I strangely have the urge to keep our mother-daughter date going—drinks at Parc or pedis, but Corey awaits. And besides, we may not want to push our luck.

  “I’ll see you and your brother at five p.m. sharp on Saturday, right?”

  Both Shaun and I are dreading this, but we agreed to go look at apartments in Bensalem with our parents this weekend. Momma puts on a chipper facade whenever she talks about downsizing and claims to be looking forward to having so many fewer rooms to clean. She’s working hard to hide her despair. I learned from the best.

  “At least we’ll get a discount on moving, with your brother’s gig.” Her laughter feels genuine enough for me to allow myself the hope that this move and losing the house won’t break her—maybe it’s a fresh start.