The Sabbathday River

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “Can you describe that meeting, Mr. Deacon?”

  “Sure.” He nodded. “I was up a ladder. When I came down, there she was, looking up at me. She said she had something in her eye and she wanted me to help her get it out.”

  Charter looked meaningfully at the jury.

  “Something in her eye,” he said encouragingly.

  “Just a speck.” Ashley shrugged. “Then she asked me for a lift home.”

  “Did you think she only wanted a lift?” Charter leaned forward.

  “Well, no.” He grinned. “I mean, she made herself clear.”

  “And you gave her that lift?”

  “I did,” he said.

  “But you didn’t take her straight home.”

  “No. We went to the woods.”

  “For what purpose did you go to the woods?” Charter asked.

  Ashley gave him a look, incredulous, but not offended.

  “To fool around,” he said. “Obviously.”

  “Did you get the impression that Miss Pratt had done this sort of thing before?” Charter said innocently.

  Judith got up, “Object, your honor. I don’t think we need to hear Mr. Deacon’s unsubstantiated impressions of my client’s history.”

  Judge Hayes nodded. “True. Sustained.”

  Charter pursed his lips. “Let me ask that a different way. Did anything occur on that first occasion that led you to form an opinion of the defendant’s history with men?”

  Naomi looked at Judith expectantly, but this time she didn’t rise. Ashley said, “Well, she said she wasn’t a virgin. And she didn’t act like a virgin, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “What, specifically, are you referring to when you say that?” said Charter.

  “Oh …” He shrugged. “She was … I could just tell she’d been with lots of guys. The way she moved. You know. And then she came out and told me as much.”

  “That she wasn’t a virgin?”

  Naomi winced. How many more times would he manage to get this said aloud?

  “Yeah.”

  “Did Heather actually name some of the other men she’d been with?”

  “No. And I didn’t ask.” He said this, Naomi decided, out of some kind of warped chivalry.

  “Would you tell us,” Charter rose now and walked over to where Ashley was seated, “of the routine your affair with Heather fell into.”

  “Sure.” He was affable. “Well, I would pick her up after work and we’d fool around. Then if she had an errand or something, I’d take her. She didn’t have a car, and I felt sorry for her. Then I took her home.”

  “You did this how often, would you say?”

  “Oh, four, five times a week.”

  “You did this despite the fact that you were a married man.”

  Ashley rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say I was proud of it, but it didn’t feel like it was anybody else’s business.”

  “And Heather was aware that you were married.”

  “Oh yeah.” He seemed animated for the first time. “Oh sure. From the beginning.”

  Charter paused. He considered his witness. “Mr. Deacon, did you ever, at any time, tell Heather Pratt that you intended to leave your wife and live with her instead?”

  Ashley shook his head vigorously. “No way. She knew I wasn’t going to do that.”

  “Just think for a minute. Is it at all possible that Heather might have got that impression, mistaken though it was, from something you said or did?”

  “If she thought that,” he said fiercely, “she was dead wrong.”

  “Because you were always open about your situation, weren’t you?”

  “Very much so,” Ashley agreed. “My marriage always came first.”

  From the jury box, a snort of laughter, quickly stifled. Naomi caught it: the woman, middle-aged, in the back corner. An alternate. But even so, she felt a flurry of optimism.

  Charter, too, stifled a reaction. “Did Heather ever tell you about the other men she was seeing?”

  Jesus, Naomi heard Judith mutter. She shot to her feet. “Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence.”

  “It certainly does, Mr. Charter,” Hayes said, visibly angry. He turned to the jury. “Please disregard the last question.”

  But they wouldn’t, Naomi saw. That was the point.

  “Is it possible that Heather was seeing other men at the same time she was seeing you?”

  Ashley nodded. “Sure. I mean, I was only with her for a little time each day, and not on the weekends at all. I have no idea what she did the rest of the time.”

  “So when Heather told you she was pregnant, in the winter of 1984, you really had no way of knowing whether the baby was yours, did you?”

  “Well.” He shrugged philosophically. “I figured it was Heather’s baby. I mean, it was up to her what to do with it. Besides,” Ashley said, “I was having my own kid. I mean, my wife was.”

  “Your wife was, in fact, pregnant at the same time Heather was pregnant with her daughter Polly.”

  “Yeah. So, she knew what the priority was.”

  “I see,” Charter said. “Let’s move forward a bit, to August of 1984. Heather had given birth to her daughter. How did this event affect your relationship?”

  Ashley frowned, remembering. “Well, it didn’t much. I mean, she was at home more, with the baby, so I didn’t see her as much. Actually,” he said brightly, “I kind of tried to end it.”

  “You tried to end the relationship?”

  “Yeah. I went to her house. I sort of hinted maybe we’d better stop.” He considered. “I gave her my car, you see. I said it was a present. Which it was,” he said defensively, as if he had been challenged on this point. “But I thought, see, that if she had her own car, she wouldn’t need lifts from me.”

  “And what was Heather’s reaction to this?”

  “Oh, she cried,” Ashley said. “She didn’t want to stop seeing me. She did take the car, though.” This was said with an edge, as if it were some kind of vindication.

  “So you kept on seeing her, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All that fall. The fall of 1984. You continued to meet with Heather?”

  “Yeah. Maybe not as often. Two or three times a week.”

  Charter mused, looking at Heather. “Always in the car?”

  He nodded. “Always.”

  “Now,” said Charter, “where was the baby while you were fooling around in your car? Did Heather leave the little baby home with her grandmother?”

  Ashley shook his head. “No, we had her. She mostly slept.”

  “You had the baby in the car?” he said again. “I want to be clear about this. Heather took the baby along in the car when the two of you were having sex?”

  He shrugged. “I guess she thought it was all right.”

  But the jury didn’t. They glared, at Ashley, at Heather. Naomi’s mouth was dry. She looked longingly at the full glass beside Ashley, which he hadn’t touched.

  “Were you aware, Mr. Deacon, that Heather considered you to be the father of her child?”

  “I guess,” Ashley said. “She sort of implied.”

  “Were you aware that she also implied this to others?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. It kind of pissed me off, to tell you the truth.”

  “Because you didn’t think you were the father?”

  “How the hell could I know?” he said, clearly, if briefly, angry. “I mean, I don’t know what all was going on with her. It could have been mine, but it could have been somebody else’s.”

  Charter nodded sagely. “Would you say, by this time, your affair was cooling down?”

  “Well, I can’t speak for anyone else,” said Ashley, “but for me, yeah.”

  Naomi wanted to touch Heather’s back, which was near enough if she reached, and trembling. She had never seen this Ashley, and yet he was of a seamless part with the Ashley she did know, the Ashley of great good humor and small good turns. The Ashley of narrow, i
nsinuating hips and generous hands.

  “Were you aware that many other people seemed to know about the affair?”

  Ashley, sublimely unperturbed, merely shrugged. “Small minds, if they have nothing else to think about.”

  “I take it you were aware, but not particularly bothered, then.”

  “Not particularly.” He laughed. Then he said, “You know, it was nobody’s business but ours.”

  “And your wife’s, perhaps?”

  “Well, sure,” Ashley said responsibly. “That’s more or less why I cut it off when I did. Because I could see my wife was upset.”

  Naomi looked again at the jury. Her favorite alternate was rolling her eyes. One of the other women, she was delighted to note, had a look of utter incredulity on her face.

  “Did Heather ever discuss with you any expectations she might have about your support of her daughter Polly?” said Charter.

  “No.” Ashley’s voice was firm. This point, Naomi thought, was somehow terribly important to him. “Never.”

  “She never said, ‘As the father of this child, I expect you to …’” He waited for Ashley to fill in the blank, but Ashley seemed unable to do this. “‘Contribute financially for her care? Spend time with her? Bring her gifts?’”

  “Nothing like that,” he said. “I told you, she could take care of herself.”

  “So she never requested that you be Polly’s father?”

  Judith stood. “Objection, your honor. I’d like Mr. Charter to clarify that he is speaking in terms of support and behavior. Mr. Deacon either is or is not the biological father of Heather’s daughter Polly. One way or the other, it’s a fact. He can’t change his mind about it.”

  “Quite true,” Hayes said. He looked at Charter expectantly.

  Charter looked at Ashley. “She never said, ‘Ashley, this is your child.’ Did she?”

  “Never,” he said emphatically.

  “All right,” said Charter, evidently satisfied. He flipped a few sheets of his legal pad, then searched the yellow page with his fingertip.

  “Let’s talk about last January, Mr. Deacon. January 16. A Monday, I think.”

  “I remember.” Ashley nodded. “We split up that day.”

  “You went to work as usual that day?”

  “Sure. And after, Heather and I drove into the woods.”

  He let this sink in. “Was the baby with you that day?”

  Ashley thought about it. “No. I guess she was home with Heather’s grandmother.”

  “What happened in the woods?”

  “There were people there. My wife was there. They were making a big fuss.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Well, I couldn’t drive out. My car was blocked. So we walked out.”

  “‘We’ being?” Charter nudged.

  “Me and Heather. We walked out. We walked all the way back to the mill where she worked.”

  He nodded. “And what did you do when you got there?”

  “Well,” he said evenly, “we went inside.”

  “Oh,” said Charter disingenuously. “Was it open?”

  “No, no,” said Ashley. “But I knew it wouldn’t be hard to fix up the next day. So I broke the windowpane.”

  “Really!” Charter said. “Now, whose idea was that?”

  Ashley shrugged. “I really can’t remember. Might have been hers. She was pretty excited.”

  “Excited?” Charter said lecherously.

  “Sexy excited,” Ashley spelled it out. “Well, me too. So we went upstairs. But after, I started to feel bad. About Sue. And I thought, This is just nuts. I’ve got Sue pissed off at me, and it isn’t worth it. So I told Heather that was it.”

  “I see,” Charter considered. “And how did she react to that?”

  “Oh, fine. She just said goodbye. She didn’t cry or anything, if that’s what you mean.”

  She was crying now, Naomi observed. Little snorts of grief, tamped down, wetly stifled. It amazed her that they weren’t all staring, but then Naomi had been watching only Ashley’s face. Now she looked around and saw that, in fact, she and Ashley were nearly the only ones not looking at Heather. The jury gaped openly at her, their faces variously disapproving and compassionate. Even Judith was murmuring something that sounded vaguely kind into Heather’s ear. Heather, impervious, seemed to be reliving the moment of her abandonment with such uncontrollable force that Judge Hayes himself was leaning forward in his seat, first inquiring and then requiring a break for everyone. The jury was removed, some shaking their heads. When the door closed behind them, Charter leaped to his feet and condemned the defendant’s “blatant grandstanding,” her “cynical histrionics,” but he could barely be heard over Heather’s wailing. Naomi got up from her seat and went to Heather. She waited for someone to stop her, but no one did, so she put her arm around the girl and held her, hardening herself against the mucus-sweet smell of Heather’s grief.

  The break lasted ten minutes, during which Ashley excused himself to go to the bathroom and Charter, his face pink with anger, wrote notes in his tight-fisted hand. Heather, by tiny increments, seemed to bring herself under control. She rocked in small movements, her back slumped against her wooden chair. “I can’t do this,” she confided. Judith, angry, turned away.

  “The worst is almost over, I think,” Naomi lied. She was crouching next to Heather’s chair. “Jesus, who knew he was such a bastard?”

  “But he’s not,” she sobbed anew. “He isn’t. I don’t understand why this is happening.”

  To that, Naomi could say nothing. She gave Heather a last squeeze and went back to her seat. The jury returned. Then Ashley came back. His face had a sheen, though not of sweat. He looked cool, washed and blotted dry, his hands thrust deep into his jeans pockets. He passed them, rigorously impervious to their stares—Naomi’s baleful, Heather’s imploring—and returned to his seat. Charter, still red-faced in frustration, set off again without delay.

  “So after you broke into the mill where Heather was employed, you went upstairs and had sex. Do I have that right?”

  “Yeah,” he said affably. “She was pretty wild that night. I remember that.”

  “Oh yes?” Charter said, discernibly eager. This, it struck Naomi, must be some kind of unanticipated morsel.

  “Yes. I guess it kind of … well, the danger of it, right? Like, we ran away from all those people. I guess it turned her on.”

  Judith, cursing beneath her breath, quickly objected. “I wish the witness would stick to his own thoughts, rather than speculating on other people’s.”

  Hayes leaned over to Ashley. “Mr. Deacon, kindly limit your testimony to what you experienced or observed, and refrain from making assumptions about what other people were thinking.”

  “Sure.” Ashley said agreeably, as if the damage were not already done.

  “There was something different in Heather’s sexual behavior that night?” Charter immediately picking up the scent again and emphasizing the key word with a fairly unpleasant leer.

  “She wanted me to do something different to her.”

  Heather, white, put down her head. She put it down on the table, turning one cheek to its surface. She looked alarmingly serene, as if she had been struck deaf and could not hear what he was saying about her. Ashley went on talking. In the jury box, fourteen faces reacted.

  “And this was how Heather responded to being confronted by your wife and others in the woods?”

  “She thought—”

  “Your honor!” Judith slapped the table with her fist.

  “Mr. Deacon, you could not possibly know what the defendant, or anyone else, was thinking.”

  “She said it. She said she thought I was going to leave my wife for her. I said no way. I never said I was going to leave my wife. I wouldn’t ever do that.”

  “So Heather would have been mistaken in that belief, then.”

  “Totally. It was just nuts.”

  “And after that night—after you left that
night—where did you go?”

  “Back home. I might have stopped off for a drink first. But I went home after.”

  “And did you speak with Heather after that night?” Charter said.

  “Nope. Never. I don’t know what she did, but I had no part of it.” He paused, and looked at her for the first time since entering the courtroom. “I feel bad for her, though. I mean, I’m not a creep.”

  Naomi glared at him. Ashley looked back at Charter.

  “Mr. Deacon, when did you become aware that Heather had again become pregnant?”

  He pursed his lips. “Well, not till you told me,” he said. “Would have been last fall, I guess.”

  “Miss Pratt did not contact you to tell you about the pregnancy?”

  “Nope.”

  “But during Miss Pratt’s first pregnancy, when she clearly considered you to be the father of her child, she did inform you, didn’t she?”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe this time she thought it was somebody else’s.”

  “I see,” Charter said thoughtfully. He studied his legal pad for a moment, tapping the pencil in his right hand against the palm of his left. “Any ideas who that somebody might have been?”

  Ashley looked up at the ceiling. “Well, she didn’t tell me who else she was seeing, so I really couldn’t say.”

  “She didn’t tell you she was seeing Christopher Flynn?”

  Judith, her hands tied, moved her jaw in frustration.

  “No.”

  “But as far as you’re concerned, she might have been seeing Christopher Flynn, and indeed other men in addition to him.”

  “I don’t know who all she was seeing,” Ashley said tersely. “I told you, she didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. Most of the time I wasn’t around her, you know.”

  Charter gave the jury a moment to give this observation weight.

  “For the record, Mr. Deacon, where were you between September 19 and 20 of last year?”

  Then he grinned, lit with paternal pride. “Well, down at Mary Hitchcock mostly. My wife went into labor on the afternoon of the eighteenth. I stayed in the room almost all the time. Her folks were there, too. And our son Benjamin was born the next afternoon at four. I just stayed at the hospital till she checked out the day after that.”

  Charter allowed Ashley to glow for a moment. Then he went still and solemn. “Mr. Deacon, did you have any idea what happened to Heather Pratt’s infants?”