The Sabbathday River

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  “A what? Here?”

  “Yeah. A few more of the chosen moved into town after you left.”

  “Shit,” he said. “I got out just in time.”

  Unexpectedly, Naomi found herself smiling at this. The kettle gave its banshee groan. She brought him his tea.

  “Thank you,” Daniel said, and as he took the mug she felt again that stab of the accustomed and had to shake herself to reinsert the missing year between Daniel’s departure and Daniel’s presence on her couch. “So, you look all right,” he said, blowing on the liquid.

  “If that’s a compliment, thank you,” said Naomi. She did not return it.

  “You got the baby you wanted,” he observed.

  “She isn’t mine. I told you.”

  “You got a boyfriend.”

  She looked where he was looking. To her surprise, she saw, crumpled at one end of the couch, Nelson Erroll’s undershirt. Unnoticed by Nelson, evidently, and by herself, but not by Daniel. He had always seen the trees rather than the forest.

  “No. Not really.”

  Daniel smirked and sipped. “And business is good.”

  “Yes. It really runs itself, at this point.”

  “Like any good collective,” he said, a mite sarcastic.

  “Yes.” She was waiting. She wondered when he might get to the point. “You’re still in Woodstock? I heard you went to live on Andy Greenbaum’s place.”

  “Yeah.” Daniel nodded. “But I was in the city last summer. I hooked up with somebody, and we moved back up to Woodstock together.”

  She was reluctant to tell him she knew this already, but she tried not to appear too curious, either. It was important to Naomi that he not think she cared, especially since she didn’t.

  “Her name’s Katrina Frosch.”

  Naomi crossed her legs. “Didn’t she used to live with a guy who used to be a Weatherman?”

  “You heard that?” Daniel said with pathetic eagerness.

  “Oh, somewhere. So what are you living on, anyway?”

  Daniel looked at her steadily. He knew precisely what she was asking, and she knew precisely how he would answer. “The land, Naomi. We are living on the land.”

  “Well.” She shrugged. “All right. So Katrina has a trust fund, I guess.”

  Anger swept over his face. “It’s all you think about, isn’t it? How things get paid for. We have a community in Woodstock. We help each other. Everybody gets along fine.”

  “Good,” Naomi said. “You know, we really don’t have to fight about this, Daniel. I mean, if we ever did need to, we certainly don’t need to now.

  He considered this, and backed off. “I’m glad you think so. I really am.” He seemed to ponder his tea. “I want to sell the house, Naomi. Unless you’re willing to buy me out, that is.”

  For a long minute she wasn’t sure she had heard him properly. The words “sell” and “buy” seemed so unnatural in his voice that she wasn’t entirely clear on what he meant by them. “Which house?” she finally said.

  “This one. The one I built.” He watched her calmly. “It’s only fair, Naomi. I know you see that.”

  She gaped at him. “Wait a minute. Are we discussing property? As in private property?”

  “I built it, Naomi. It’s half mine. At least half,” he said uncharitably.

  “You might have said something earlier. I don’t know if I would have made so many improvements to a house I considered half yours. I might have started over in a house that already had a bathroom.”

  He looked blankly at her. “It’s fair, Naomi.”

  “What do you need the money for?” she demanded. “What could you possibly need to buy? I thought you all took care of each other down there in Woodstock.”

  “I’m going to be a father,” Daniel said. “The baby is due this summer.”

  This, as he knew it would be, was stunning. Naomi sat, dimly wondering which of those responses offering themselves she ought to pick: disbelief, denial, bereavement, rage. Or self-loathing, because of the times he had said he did not want children, and how the meaning of that—that he did not want children with her—was now so palpably clear. Katrina Frosch was having the baby Daniel would not let her have. The baby scraped out of her years before, in Ithaca, while he waited out in the reception room, flipping through magazines. The baby they had fought over all their last summer and fall, until he stopped sleeping with her altogether, because, as he said, he didn’t trust her. She had followed him here, she had lived in his miserable house without a bathroom down a muddy slope in the woods, and relinquished her friends and everything she might have accomplished by now, and he didn’t trust her not to stick an embroidery needle through her diaphragm and get herself pregnant with her husband’s child. The baby Polly could never be, because she was Heather’s. And now, amid the general loathing she felt for Daniel, there was an ice-clear stab of loathing for Heather, too.

  “Well,” she finally said, “I see.” All her energy was directed toward not weeping. Not in front of him. “How unexpected.”

  “Not really,” Daniel said proudly. “Katya and I made the decision together. We wanted a child.”

  This was so wantonly cruel that she could only glare at him.

  “You know what I mean, Daniel. What happened to your stand on overpopulation? What happened to that line about how it was narcissistic to replicate your DNA when there are too many hungry and homeless children? You said having children was a bourgeois gesture in this country, like having a big car, and you wouldn’t do it. What happened to that?”

  He shrugged. If he had insight into this, he was not moved to share it.

  “So you need money.” She sounded, to her own ears, increasingly strident. “You yourself don’t care about money, but your child should have some.”

  “I don’t have to justify this to you, Naomi. It’s my life. My life is no longer caught up in your life.”

  Another wound. A blow upon the bruise.

  “Listen, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t do this in a dignified and equitable manner.”

  “Equitable, Daniel?”

  “There’s no reason we should have to involve lawyers.”

  “What?”

  “Though I’ve spoken to one of our neighbors in Woodstock, who is an attorney. And he feels it would be best to have the house appraised and take it from there. Certainly I have no objection to your buying me out if we can reach a price we both feel is fair.”

  She shook her head. “God, you’re a bastard, Daniel.”

  “Of course you feel that way. It’s normal,” he reassured her blandly.

  She got to her feet, not entirely steady. “Well, while this house is still mine, I’d like you to leave it, please.”

  He sighed, and stood. “All right. You know, I’m sorry you’re reacting like this, though I’m not really surprised. I thought, at least, you’d bring your business acumen to bear on the situation.”

  “My business acumen,” she observed, shaking her head. “You detested my business acumen. You said my values were defective. You said my conduct was unbefitting a socialist.”

  “It was,” Daniel said languidly. “And it is.”

  “You’re too busy perfecting your own life to have an impact on anybody else’s. Your mom and dad knocked themselves out to change the world, and you’re just sitting there with the rest of the converted, preaching into thin air.”

  “Are you finished?” He half smiled.

  “What have you done?” Naomi shouted. “What have you done to make the world better? What have you done except talk?”

  Daniel shrugged on his parka. “I’m staying down in Hanover with Katya. If you want to reach me tomorrow, we’re at the Chieftain Motel. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll have my neighbor write you a letter, and we can do all this by mail. You’re looking well, Naomi.”

  “You said that already.”

  “Take care.”

  And he left. She stood where she had been standing, uncertain
of where she would go when the potential for movement returned. On the floorboards in front of the couch bits of dried earth ringed the place where his feet had been. From outside there was the unmistakable sound of a car, slogging and spinning in muck, trying to make way. Then the tires caught and pulled him up—out of the mud and the stones, and away down the road.

  Chapter 43

  Human Error

  JUDITH WAS WHITE. NAOMI SAT STILL IN HER seat, mildly watching the mime of argument, the stray gestures and overworking of jaws. They looked almost comical against each other, Judith with her blanched skin and bobbing black curls, and Charter red in the face with his colorless comb-over. It amazed her how little she had come to care about all this, even about Heather, who slumped a few feet before her, numb with Valium and grief. This, she was beginning to understand, would not end soon. They would always be here, the same players in the same seats, watching the same mute drama. Only outside, on the steps of the courthouse, would the participants change. Today there were more—more Dartmouth students, men included, more Boston matrons fired by the Globe editorial into a froth of righteous anger, and for the first time a tentative cell of her own neighbors, each carrying a flimsy placard that read GODDARD SUPPORTS HEATHER. This ought to be remarkable, but Naomi was no longer in a mood to find anything remarkable.

  Nor was she surprised, any longer, to be still here in the courtroom —though after Nelson’s confession she had indulged in a spasm of relief: surely it would end now. Surely Warren, the attorney general and nobody’s fool, would stop the trial in its tracks and publicly haul Robert Charter down to Concord and across the coals of his office portal before summoning what dignity he could to drop all charges against Heather. Judith did not concur, and of course she had turned out to be right. No public announcement followed Nelson’s visit to Naomi, but Judith believed that Warren was watching closely now, whether Charter knew it or not. He would not compromise himself by drawing attention to Charter’s excesses, but he was watching closely.

  In her lap, she held Ella’s latest proclamation, a sheet of lavender bearing what was by now the conventional wisdom surrounding Heather’s tragedy. Naomi, with nothing to do but watch Judith fight with Charter in the sidebar, read it again, straining for enlightenment:

  WHO KILLED THE GODDARD BABIES?

  1 Man: Ashley Deacon, who refused to accept responsibility for his children.

  2 Men: Nelson Erroll and Robert Charter, who used intimidation to force a false confession.

  A Town Full of Men: who condemned a woman for her sexuality.

  A Society of Men: for whom a woman is always suspect.

  Naomi sighed and crumpled the page. She knew why Judith was angry. She knew that David Keller was sitting outside in the courtroom hallway, waiting to testify, reading a copy of The New York Times and getting impatient, and that Charter, who had said his interrupted psychiatrist would be the final prosecution witness this morning, now wanted to put somebody else on the stand.

  Hayes, evidently refreshed from his long weekend break, seemed to possess the patience neither of the two attorneys could summon. He sat placidly, his chin planted on his two fists, listening and nodding.

  When he made his decision and sent them back to their seats, Judith turned with a bitter face. Naomi sighed. Evidently they were now going to hear from Charter’s unanticipated witness, after all.

  The door behind them opened, and a man named Bob Rena was called. Naomi did not know a Bob Rena and turned with mild curiosity. This was more curiosity than Heather herself seemed to muster. She continued to sit stodgily in her place, her white arms outstretched on the tabletop to maintain her balance, and barely shifted her gaze to look. Judith, as if in compensation for all the indifference, stared intently at this unanticipated personage, as if hoping to glean from his appearance some clue to who he was, or why he was here.

  Bob Rena, for what it was worth, turned out to be a husky kid of twenty or so, with thick brown hair and a rather pleased expression. That he was a Dartmouth student was evident from his sweatshirt in green and white, which plainly announced Dartmouth Rugby, and the rest of his outfit (old corduroys and new Dock-Siders) did nothing to counter the impression. He walked deliberately up the aisle with a comfortable grin on his face, holding a small white paperback book in his hand as if it were a Bible. When he passed Heather he did not so much as look at her, so intent was he on getting to the witness seat and saying whatever it was that he had come to say.

  He took the oath and sat down. Judith glared at him, her pen poised over her legal pad, waiting to learn who he was and why he was important enough to send the prosecution case into overtime.

  “Mr. Rena,” Charter said, “can you tell me why you contacted me last Friday afternoon?”

  “Sure.” The kid had a deep voice. “I saw something about this case in The Manchester Union Leader. I don’t usually read the paper, but it was lying around the house and I saw her picture.”

  “Who do you mean by ‘her’?” said Charter eagerly.

  “Hers.” Rena nodded in Heather’s direction. “That girl. Heather. And I remembered her.”

  “You remembered meeting Heather Pratt?”

  “Sure. It was a while ago, but I remembered. And I checked to make sure.” He held up the white book. Dartmouth Class of 1987, it read in bright green letters. “Then I was sure, when I saw her picture.”

  “When did you meet Heather?” Charter moved to the front of his table.

  “At Dartmouth. It was my sophomore fall. So two and a half years ago.”

  “That would be the fall of 1983, during Heather’s first week at college. Before she dropped out.”

  Judith objected to the term, but was swiftly overruled.

  “Did you meet Heather in one of your classes?” Charter said. “Or perhaps in the dining hall?”

  Rena grinned. “I met her in my fraternity. Alpha Delta. In the basement.”

  “I see. You met Heather Pratt in your fraternity basement.”

  Naomi sighed. Had it really come to this?

  Bob Rena was now describing how Heather had looked at him, and what she had said, and how many plastic cups of beer he had filled for her from the keg before she’d gone upstairs with him. From the back of the courtroom, loud whispering signaled the disapproval of Heather’s supporters.

  “Did she seem hesitant about having sex on the first date?” Charter stressed the word “date,” since it wasn’t even that.

  “Not at all. She was eager to have sex,” Rena commented, pleased with himself.

  “Did Heather say that she expected this encounter to lead to some kind of relationship?”

  “Not at all. She got up and went home, all on her own. I got the impression she’d got exactly what she wanted from me, and that was it.”

  Heather the sexual predator, Naomi thought grimly. This was new.

  “You’re saying she was sophisticated sexually?”

  “She was a natural,” Bob Rena said. “Definitely.”

  Charter seemed to give this rather more consideration than it deserved. “Mr. Rena, do you happen to know a Christopher Flynn?”

  He had obviously been asked this before, because he did not hesitate now.

  “I don’t know exactly, but I have known a few guys named Flynn, yeah.”

  “A few guys named Flynn,” Charter intoned. “Could any of them have been at Dartmouth during the same time Heather was there?”

  “Sure.” He nodded. “I couldn’t say for sure, but it’s possible.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rena. I appreciate your coming forward.”

  As if he had done something noble. This seemed to be Rena’s interpretation, too, for he nodded with great solemnity. Then Judith got up.

  “Mr. Rena, am I right in thinking that the only reason you are here is to inform this court that you had sex, on one occasion two and a half years ago, with the defendant in this case?”

  “Well, if you put it that way.” He grinned.

  �
��Do you, in fact, have any information on anything that is actually at issue in this trial?”

  He shrugged, nonplussed. “I thought I ought to come forward. He thought it was important.” Rena nodded at Charter.

  “Do you even know what this trial is about, Mr. Rena?”

  He looked up at the ceiling. “Didn’t she kill a kid or something?”

  “Your honor!” Judith shouted, appalled.

  Mr. Rena was given a brief instruction on the appropriate parameters of testimony. The jury was instructed to disregard what he had just said.

  “No,” Rena said next time around. “I’m not really clear on the details.”

  “You’ve testified that during her single sexual encounter with you, Heather was a ‘natural.’ Can you tell us what you mean by that?”

  He nodded eagerly. “Sure. I mean she knew how to move like she’d been doing it for a long time. And she told me I was the first.”

  There was a sputter of shocked laughter from the back. Naomi looked at Charter, who evidently had not heard this part of Mr. Rena’s braggadocio. Now the self-satisfied expression was waning on his face, and it was Judith who was smiling.

  “So she was a virgin when you met.”

  “I was her first, yeah,” he confirmed.

  “And you slept with her once?”

  “Yup.”

  “And this was September of 1983?”

  “Yeah. Like I said.”

  “I see …” Judith nodded, letting the jury do the math. One lover, one time, before Ashley. So much for Heather’s fabled promiscuity.

  “Mr. Rena, you testified that you were not certain that you remembered Heather until you checked your book.”

  “Yeah. I thought so, because she looked familiar. But I was sure after I looked in the p—” He looked suddenly abashed. “In the face book,” he amended, but not fast enough.

  “I’m sorry. Were you about to call it something else?” Judith said, and Naomi was right there with her. There really was so very little new under the sun, she thought bleakly. The frat boys at Cornell had been just the same, circling the pretty girls in the directory and planning their strategies.