The Good Wife

by Stewart O'Nan

  She knows what Gary’s going to say, so that when he finally gets up on the stand in his fake suit and tie, his answers seem rehearsed, which of course they are. His story’s familiar to anyone who’s been following the news. He and Tommy go into the house, thinking it’s empty. Tommy struggles with the woman and knocks her down; after that, she doesn’t move. Tommy decides they have to set the fire and gets the can from the garage.

  Gary recites his lines so matter-of-factly—dipping to the microphone so he has to look up at the DA—that Patty can’t believe the jury will buy it, and yet they’re paying attention to every word he says. Question after question, the DA keys on the violence of the struggle, the size of Tommy, “a hockey player,” against a bony old lady. One woman in the front row raises her hands in self-defense as Gary describes how Tommy poured the gas on Mrs. Wagner. Patty contains herself, jaw clenched, staring directly at Gary, daring him to look her in the eye.

  On cross, their lawyer nails him on his previous convictions and the bundle of money. He asks whose idea it was to target Mrs. Wagner’s in the first place, then quotes from a list of property reported stolen from their earlier jobs, including a dozen rifles that are still missing. He tries to tie the guns to the money, but the DA objects, and the judge sustains it.

  Patty wishes they could call Donna to the stand and make her tell the truth. That would prove that all of this was Gary’s doing. But they can’t, by law, as if that makes any sense.

  And the lawyer can’t make Gary take back his statement. It’s admitted as evidence, testimony given under oath, meaning now the jury will have to find out that he’s lying by themselves, and she’s not sure they’re that smart.

  The judge dismisses Gary, who’s escorted out the side door by the bailiff like a special guest. It’s past four, and Patty thinks they’ll just adjourn for the day, but the DA steps forward and asks to introduce one last piece of evidence.

  He brings it out on an easel, hidden behind a black shroud. It’s probably another diagram of some kind—or a photo of Mrs. Wagner, burnt.

  He circles it, recounting Gary’s testimony of the struggle between the defendant and the victim. “She realizes she’s fighting for her life,” he says, “but her opponent is too young, too strong. And yet she doesn’t give up. She can’t give up. In her final minutes, Audrey Wagner does everything she can to stay alive. It’s the most basic human instinct, self-preservation.” With that, he lifts back the veil.

  It’s a blowup of Tommy’s mug shot, his hair wild, the bloody slice across one eye.

  “Ob-jec-tion!” their lawyer yells, and the judge orders the DA to cover it up and calls a conference.

  The picture isn’t admitted, but it doesn’t matter, the damage is done.

  “He told me he ran into a tree,” Patty says. “I think the cops beat on him.”

  “I don’t think we want to argue either of those. It was a cheap shot, we just have to move on.”

  What he’s really saying is that they have to play by the state’s made-up rules, but the DA can do whatever he likes.

  That night, Eileen informs her that she and Cy are coming tomorrow. Patty wonders what their mother told her. She half expects Shannon to call and try to cheer her up.

  The next morning the court is packed to hear the lawyer and the DA make their closing arguments, but for Patty the trial’s over. If that’s all the evidence the state has, she isn’t convinced, not beyond a reasonable doubt. In the end it comes down to Gary’s word, and it’s obvious he testified to save his ass. As she listens to the judge give the jury their instructions, she thinks they have to see that.

  She tries not to imagine what the jury’s saying as they deliberate—the way she willfully ignores a Bills game on TV in the other room, afraid to hear something bad happening, wanting only the relief of the final score. She plays with Casey in the lawyer’s office, pressing his nose like a button. There’s not enough room for all of them. She’s told Eileen and Cy they can go home, but they won’t, filling the chairs, staring out the window at the street below, the reporters smoking in the gazebo. The lawyer says they want the jury to stay out as long as possible, which makes the afternoon drag. Every time the phone rings, Patty holds Casey still, as if the slightest movement could jinx them.

  At five, there’s still no word.

  “That’s a good sign, right?” Patty asks.

  “Usually,” the lawyer says.

  He checks with the court clerk, and it’s official, the jury’s sequestered for the night. She might as well go home.

  In the car, she thinks the phone will be ringing when they pull in.

  It isn’t, of course, and it doesn’t ring—as she fears—just as she’s walking past it, a land mine set just for her.

  Eileen and her mother try to distract her with dinner and TV. Casey picks up on her nerves and cries, and she can’t calm him. That’s never happened before, and after a while she has to hand him to Eileen and close the bathroom door to compose herself. It’s been eight hours, and they couldn’t have spent much time on the burglary and arson charges. Or have they already quit for the night?

  She splashes water on her face, comes back out and takes her place on the couch. She can feel herself vibrating inside, a tremor in her skin that makes her want to swallow. If she could just stop thinking, but it’s impossible, and the TV’s no help, flashing pictures of airports and convertibles at her, a dog running across a yard in slow motion. It’s almost like being stoned, the way her mind flies around, bouncing off things, never landing.

  In the middle of a bad Streets of San Francisco, her mother stands up and says it’s getting late if she’s going to wake up at a reasonable hour. Everyone agrees. They see her off, and by then Casey’s head is heavy on her shoulder, a spot of drool on his cloth. Patty’s in their room, changing him into his jammies, when the phone rings, making her turn toward the door.

  “Do you want me to get it?” Eileen yells.

  “Yes,” Patty calls, then stops trying to fit his bottoms on and heads for the living room.

  “I do,” Eileen is saying stiffly, officially, then holds the phone out to her. “It’s Tommy.”

  “Jesus, you scared us,” Patty tells him.

  “I told you I was going to call.”

  “I’m going a little nuts here, if you can imagine that.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” he says, so they don’t squabble, but as they fall into discussing what might be happening, she thinks she should get off in case the lawyer’s trying to call.

  Eventually, their pauses grow longer, and it’s time to get off.

  “Pats,” Tommy says. “Listen. Tomorrow …”

  “Whatever happens, we’ll get through it. I promise you. Okay?”

  It’s that promise she comes back to after they hang up and she lays Casey in his bassinet. She doesn’t know if she’s strong enough to keep it. She’ll have to be, because she knows—even if deep down she can’t quite admit it to herself right now—that, no matter what, he is going away. It’ll just be her and Casey for a while.

  The phone doesn’t ring, meaning nothing. She watches TV with Cy and Eileen until a special comes on about the fall of Saigon, then says her good nights. She knows she won’t sleep, but it’s easier to just lie in bed by herself and listen to Casey breathe.

  Somehow she does, because hours later she wakes in the dark to Casey complaining. She feeds him and rocks him to sleep again, changes pads and crawls between the sheets, all of it dreamlike.

  In the morning he’s her alarm clock, crabbing at her, the room stark. She paws through her wardrobe, the few choices. It’s going to be hot, Eileen warns.

  They have to wait for their mother so they can all go in together. Patty wants to call the lawyer but figures he won’t be at the courthouse yet. Driving, she tailgates, then catches herself and backs off.

  The lawyer’s waiting for them with coffee and doughnuts. No news yet, but it could be any minute. County juries are pretty quick.

&n
bsp; The phone rings, and they all look at it.

  It’s just another client.

  The phone rings, the phone rings. The lawyer’s busier than she would have thought—more people who can’t afford a real one. They’ve grown so used to false alarms that when it rings around ten-fifteen, they’re more annoyed than anything.

  The lawyer covers the mouthpiece with a hand and turns to her. “It’s in,” he says.

  Shouldn’t a hung jury take longer?

  “Not necessarily,” he says, gathering up his papers. They’re supposed to reconvene immediately.

  They take the elevator down and make it a couple of steps into the hall before the photographers spot them. Cy shoulders in front of her, brandishing the carrier, clearing the way.

  The crowd is back as if they never recessed, the benches filled. The only empty seats are theirs in the front row. Elsie Wagner and her husband watch them process up the aisle like a bridal party, and, too late, Patty understands: they can’t do this without her. She should have just stayed away.

  The ritual begins, the ceremonial entrances, the actors taking their places. She tries to read the jury. They’re tight-lipped, grim. None of them will look at Tommy. They all rise for the judge, then settle again.

  “Mr. Foreman,” the judge asks, “have you reached a verdict?”

  “We have, your honor.”

  Patty wants to run, except she’s boxed in, Eileen and her mother holding on to her as she cradles Casey, as if they all might be swept away. She braces for pain like at the dentist, knowing it’s coming, hoping it won’t.

  “On the charge of murder in the second degree,” the foreman reads, “we find the defendant guilty.”

  Behind her, the room erupts so she can’t hear what comes next. The foreman’s still standing, the lawyer leaning into Tommy like he’s giving him advice. The judge calls for order. She listens, squinting to filter the noise, because that can’t be it. There has to be something else—a correction, an explanation.

  There isn’t, only further convictions on the burglary and arson charges.

  It will be weeks before she believes it, and even then not completely. Because she can’t accept their verdict. She won’t. She’s not exaggerating when she swears she’ll fight this decision the rest of her life, no matter how many appeals it takes. Like Mrs. Wagner’s death, it’s just a terrible, terrible mistake.

  25 TO LIFE

  AND IF YOU DON’T LOVE ME NOW

  YOU WILL NEVER LOVE ME AGAIN

  FLEETWOOD MAC

  ESCAPE ATTEMPTS

  THE LAWYER’S ONLY HALF RIGHT ABOUT THE SENTENCES. THE JUDGE gives Tommy the maximum, just like he said. Gary gets off with five years’ probation and time served.

  When Patty hears this, she calls Donna.

  “We’re sorry,” a recorded voice answers. “The number you have reached is not in service at this time. Please check that you have dialed the number correctly.”

  “Fuck you!” Patty says, like it might get through anyway.

  She’s twenty-seven, meaning she’ll be fifty-two by the time he gets out—if he makes parole on the first try. There’s no time off for good behavior like in other states. Her mother’s only fifty-one, and look at her. Patty can’t imagine him wanting that.

  When she goes to see the lawyer about their appeal, he shows her a Department of Corrections map of the state with all the different locations. She’s surprised at how many there are, and the different kinds. Because it’s murder, Tommy will be assigned to a maximum security facility. The lawyer points them out, marked with black triangles like state parks. She remembers seeing cops in riot gear storming Attica on TV, firing their rifles into clouds of tear gas, and later the bodies laid out on the ground. There’s one right in Elmira that would make visiting easy, and another in Auburn about an hour away. The rest are down near New York City, and one place upstate, way the hell up by Canada.

  “How do they choose who goes where?” Patty asks.

  “It’s whoever has room.”

  The way the system works, they won’t know where he’s going until he’s already there. The state keeps it a secret so their people don’t get ambushed when they’re delivering prisoners. Patty hadn’t thought of that, and sees it as a missed chance, standing in the middle of the road with a shotgun and flagging down a van, like something from a bad movie.

  He gives her a pamphlet from a place called Prison Ministries with a cross on the front and an Elmira address rubber-stamped on the back. “It helps to be in touch with folks who know the ropes.”

  She accepts it to be polite, and to get back to the real reason she’s here.

  The appeal’s pretty much automatic in a case like this, he says. He can file a notice this week and write up a formal brief as soon as he has time. It would go to the Appellate Division in Albany, but the earliest they’d hear the actual argument is around eighteen months from now. He says all this offhand, as if he doesn’t think it will work.

  “And you’d be doing it,” she asks.

  “Unless you have someone else in mind.”

  “Like who?”

  “You can ask the appellate court to appoint you a lawyer if you want to claim insufficient counsel, that’s your choice.” The way he says it, it’s more than a question.

  All she wanted was the information; she didn’t think he’d be part of the appeal. There’s no way she’ll ever trust him again, not after how badly he fucked up the case, but she doesn’t want to say that, just sits there taking notes like she’s catching up. She wonders if he knows that’s what she’s going to do, because he basically tells her how, and as Patty jots it all down she realizes the bastard’s quitting on them.

  “Good luck, Mrs. Dickerson,” he says when she leaves, and from reflex, she thanks him.

  PENDING TRANSFER

  TOMMY ALREADY FEELS FAR AWAY IN THE COUNTY JAIL. ONCE HE’S IN the system, she’s afraid he’ll disappear completely.

  At home, she takes care of Casey, waking early with him, then waiting for visiting hours to roll around. Her mother’s retreated, leaving her alone most of the day, and when she does come, she says things like, “You really need to think about what you’re going to do.” She makes it clear that Patty’s throwing her life away if she sticks with him.

  Patty can’t make plans. The truck’s still in custody, and she hasn’t been able to pay the hospital bill. She notices she’s smoking a lot; she has to burn from Cy when she runs out, and his Camels are harsh. When Casey goes down for his nap, she gets stoned and sits on the back stairs, watching the ants zigzag at her feet, letting the sun warm her bare arms. Birds flit from tree to tree. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do—go back to work, ask her mother if she can watch Casey during the day. It won’t solve anything, but she needs the money. It’s what they want for her, a regular life.

  “Too late,” she says to the sky.

  Father’s Day, she makes a card for Tommy, wraps Casey’s hand around a magic marker and shakily signs his name. They spend their hour together playing with a rainbowed, oversized ring of plastic keys and dreaming aloud about the appeal, the promise of a better lawyer. Leaving, she hangs on to him too long, and the guard tells her to step back. In the parking lot she’s teary, blowing her nose in the hot car. From his carrier, Casey watches her, and she stops. “It’s okay,” she says. “Mama’s just sad.”

  At home, the monthly bill from the self-storage is waiting for her, the only one she absolutely has to pay. Her checkbook says she can just cover it. She tries to think of something she can sell, but the cops took everything worth pawning. She wedges the bill into her checkbook and sticks it back in her purse where she won’t have to look at it.

  She doesn’t mention money when she visits. They only have so much time together, and there’s nothing he can do about it. It’s like everything else: she just has to deal.

  Her biggest fear is that they’ll send him upstate, the place way up near the Canadian border. The last week of June, he hears
rumors. The guards are talking about the first of the month as a transfer date. When it comes, nothing happens. The Fourth of July annoys her, all the patriotic crap, like it’s the bicentennial already. And then the next Saturday when she goes to see him, he’s gone.

  HIGHWAY MILES

  ALL THEY CAN TELL HER IS THAT HE’S IN PROCESSING. SHE IMAGINES what they’re doing to him. All she can think of is army recruits going through boot camp, getting their heads buzzed, putting on starchy uniforms.

  Now there’s really nowhere to go. After two days of wandering around the house, she invites herself to her mother’s for lunch.

  “It’s like when your father was in the war,” her mother says. “I’d get a letter, but he wasn’t allowed to say where he was. I swear, sometimes it looked like swiss cheese.”

  Patty’s mystified by her sympathy, even if it’s unintended, comparing Tommy with her father.

  They talk about summer coming on, and the groundhog that’s living under the shed in the far corner of the garden. It feels normal, the two of them taking turns cradling Casey—as if she’s free for the afternoon while Tommy’s off at work.

  “Oh honey,” her mother says, reaching over to comfort her, because suddenly Patty’s crying.

  “It’s all right,” her mother says, hugging her sideways. “Things will get better. They have to.”

  Her mother’s right, or partly, because a few days later a letter comes from the sheriff’s department saying they’re finished with the truck. They’ll release it to her even though her name’s not on the title, but they want three hundred dollars for impound fees. Even after she borrows the money from her mother, before Patty can sell it she needs Tommy to sign it over to her.

  At least she has the truck. She sits in it, breathing in his smell, remembering nights at the drive-in, or the time it rained when they were camping up on Seneca Lake and they stayed warm in the cab, playing cards all weekend. His cigarette butts are still in the ashtray, his work gloves and a Nerf football in the toolbox. There’s an extra pair of cruddy boots shoved under the driver’s seat for rainy days. Sunglasses, change, a bottle opener, a fluorescent orange bobber, a dozen Juicy Fruit wrappers—even the dust and pebbles in the floor mats are his. She’ll have to vacuum it before she parks it out by the road with a sign in the window, but not yet. She can’t do anything until she hears from him anyway.