Accidental Life

by Pamela Binnings Ewen

  “Is Rebecca all right?”

  “—reschedule, send Russell down there. Just give him the file and tell him if he can’t convince defense counsel to move the hearing, he’ll have to do the best he can. And no, Rebecca’s not all right.”

  He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and began forcing his arms into the sleeves. “Rebecca’s on her way to the hospital. Say a prayer this isn’t a miscarriage.”

  Molly stepped aside. “I will. I certainly will,” she said as he flew by.

  “Thanks, Molly.”

  With the traffic at the toll bridge and the lights, driving took thirty minutes from the courthouse in Gretna. Peter wheeled around Lee Circle and down St. Charles Avenue, hanging a right on Napoleon, praying all the way. And still, parking took another seven minutes, and counting five more to get into the building and three or four to find out where to go, Peter arrived in the emergency room only about twenty minutes after Amalise and Rebecca arrived.

  He found Amalise standing in the emergency room hallway by herself, outside a closed door. When she spotted Peter, she lifted her hand. He hurried toward her and they hugged. There were tears in Amalise’s eyes.

  Seeing her tears, a wave of sheer panic rose. “What’s happening?” he said, struggling for control. He moved toward the door, and Amalise put her hand out to stop him.

  “She’s in there with the doctor,” she said. “She’s frightened, Peter. I know she wants you in there, but the doctor’s probably examining her and you should probably just wait right here for now.”

  He hesitated, and then nodded, letting his arms fall to his sides as he stared at the door. “What do you think happened, Amalise?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. But Rebecca says the doctor’s a good man; he knows what he’s doing.”

  He didn’t hear anything. Just closed his eyes and sank back against the wall, feeling limp. Amalise stood silently beside him. Peter’s chin dropped to his chest and he was quiet.

  Please, let the baby live. And let Rebecca be all right.

  He would be Rebecca’s strength if she fell apart, he resolved. Remembering all the discussions they’d had over the years about never having a child, he almost shook his head. A knot of fear in his chest tightened at the thought of what might now be happening on the other side of that door. He couldn’t bring himself to think any further and there came a hammering in his chest. All the tricks that he’d learned over the years about remaining cool under fire failed him now. He tossed prayers to heaven wildly, hoping they’d create a blanket that could cover Rebecca and the child.

  Seconds turned to minutes. Minutes seemed to turn to hours.

  At last the door opened. The doctor came out and through the open door he could see Rebecca lying on a table with a white sheet pulled up to her neck. Her knees were up, her arms folded over her chest, her head was turned toward the wall and he could see her shoulders shaking. As he started toward the door, the doctor stepped aside and he walked in. He heard the door close and he could hear the doctor moving around behind him. Walking over to Rebecca, he pulled up a chair and sat down beside her.

  “Rebbe, I’m here.”

  She turned her head to him and he saw that she was crying. Then she reached out and he leaned down and she wrapped her arms around his neck. He cupped her face in both hands, holding her eyes, struggling to read her thoughts, wanting to know, and not wanting to know.

  “It’s going to be all right, Peter,” she said.

  He froze, afraid to hope. What then?

  But she released him and looked over his shoulders, and so he turned, watching the doctor’s face.

  Dr. Matlock nodded. “The bleeding has stopped, for now. She’ll need bed rest for the next few weeks; and then she’ll take it easy for the remainder of her term.” He gave Rebecca a look. “No going down to the office, nothing like that.”

  Peter took a deep breath and let it out.

  Rebecca nodded.

  “We’ll do an ultrasound and keep her here tonight,” Matlock said to Peter. “But I’m fairly certain that what we’ve got here is what I suspected before, placenta previa. The test will confirm how much of the cervix is covered.”

  All right. Rebecca and the baby would be all right.

  Those were the only words he heard at first. Holding onto Rebecca, Peter dropped his head, pressing his face into the soft curve in her neck and squeezing his eyes together. Rebecca rubbed circles over his back with one hand, and her other hand stroked his hair. Her touch was soothing. He closed his eyes, blinking back the tears.

  He heard things in bits and pieces after that. Not unusual. Bed rest again. Should be all right. Caesarean. He sat up and turned to Dr. Matlock at that last part.

  “We’ll just have to see; might not be necessary. It’s too early to know.” Matlock bent and stretched his fingers, one hand, then the other. “As the baby grows, the uterus stretches. So it’s possible the previa could be out of the way by the time of delivery, or if it’s just marginal, we could still have a natural birth.” He spoke in a smooth, practiced way as he added, not to worry—that either way, both mother and child would be safe and healthy if she followed his instructions.

  Peter and Amalise waited in the room while Rebecca was taken off for the ultrasound test. Relief had lightened both their moods.

  “Your real problem, Peter,” Amalise said “is how in the world you’re going to keep Rebecca in bed for the next few weeks, and at home until the birth.”

  30

  The room was dark. She’d asked Peter to leave the curtains closed when he left for work. That fit her mood. The dark room matched the gloomy feeling inside.

  Then she turned over, hugging the pillow and closing her eyes, hoping that she could go back to sleep because the thought of facing yet another day with the clock slowly ticking backward was driving her mad. It was a good metaphor, she thought. Her life was moving counterclockwise now. She’d made partner, and then everything had suddenly changed.

  She’d been lying in this bed for almost a week now. This was only the middle of October and she couldn’t imagine how she’d survive the next six weeks, with Amalise downtown bonding day by day with Roberts Engineering. Images of the bustle continuing without her at Mangen & Morris rose. Her new office was going to waste. She could see Amalise and Preston and Raymond and Doug all moving forward, while she moved backward. They’d be laughing with friends, their telephones ringing, people coming and going, arguing in conference rooms, or maybe off to Bailey’s for lunch. But they were there, and she was here, and life as she had known it had suddenly stopped.

  She pounded the pillow with her fist. Then, gently, so as not to disturb Daisy, she rolled onto her back and flung her arms out to the sides, hitting the bed with both fists. Then she stared at the ceiling, feeling hopeless. Because, there was nothing else that she could do.

  Beside her, on the bedside table, the telephone rang. She turned her head and looked at it. Her first impulse was to let it ring. So she let it ring three times, and then couldn’t stand it anymore and picked it up.

  Rose Marie was on the other end. The files that Rebecca had said she needed to work on Brightfield’s brief would be delivered to her in a little while. Amalise would drop them off. Rebecca told her secretary where the key was hidden in the garage, and then she hung up.

  Pushing herself up, slowly she crawled out of bed. She would take a shower. She would brush her hair and put on a bit of lipstick. Perhaps that would cheer her up. Besides, there was no way in the world she’d let anyone see her looking like this. Not even Amalise.

  A half-hour later, Rebecca heard the door open downstairs. Amalise called out, and Rebecca yelled to come on up.

  “Hey,” Amalise said when she breezed in, hugging a stack of file folders to her chest. “This room’s too dark,” she said, setting the files down on the bed beside Rebecca. T
here was a book on top of the files, she saw.

  “It’s good to see you.”

  “You’re just glad to see a living human being. This place is a morgue.”

  Amalise walked to the windows on the far side of the room. “I can’t stay,” she said over her shoulders as she yanked a curtain aside. Sunlight streamed in. “I’m late. I’ve got to meet Jude. We’ve got a parent-teacher conference at Luke’s school this afternoon.”

  Rebecca watched in silence as Amalise pulled each curtain aside and the room turned from dark to light. When she’d finished this, she did the same with the windows on each side of the bed. Then she rushed to Rebecca’s side, leaned down, planted a kiss on her forehead, and said that she was sorry that she had to leave. That she’d be back tomorrow for a long visit. And then she was gone.

  Rebecca stared after her for a moment, wondering if she’d just seen a mirage.

  Then she reached for the files that Amalise had left beside her, and the book slid off onto the bed. Picking it up, she turned it to the front cover. It was a Bible.

  She smiled. First the curtains and the light; then a Bible. That was just like Amalise. She put the Bible down on the bed and lifted a file from the top of the stack. She’d asked Brightfield to send transcripts of the trial in the lower court for her work on his appellate brief. Reading the transcripts would take a while, but she certainly had the time. Flipping through the pages, she scanned several. Then with a sigh, she closed the file again.

  Maybe later. She put the file on top of the others and looked down at the Bible beside her.

  A slip of paper was stuck between the pages. Amalise again. Curiosity won. Pursing her lips, Rebecca picked up the book and opened it to the page marked by the first slip. There, in bold red ink, Amalise had circled a passage. The marked words read:

  “Therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

  Amalise was incorrigible. She let out a laugh, and glanced at the top of the page. Matthew: Chapter Six. This was verse 34. Then she lifted her eyes to read the verses above, from the beginning of the poetic wisdom. At the end of chapter six Amalise had written: “Rebecca, also see John 19:35.”

  She pressed her lips together, irritated that she was so predictable. Amalise had known she’d read on.

  It took a few minutes to find. She wasn’t used to the organizing system. But after she found the passage, and read it, she rested her head back on the pillows and pondered the words. “He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows he is telling the truth.” From the book of John, chapter 19, verse 35. They were the words that any lawyer would want to hear from a witness. They were words that touched the heart of a woman who wanted to seek answers.

  She set the book down on her lap, thinking of the baby growing inside of her. If anything was evidence of a miracle, it was the very existence of Daisy.

  And then she picked up Amalise’s Bible again and found the beginning of the book of John, the witness. And she began to read.

  Part Two

  The Trial

  31

  Tuesday, november 30, 1982. First day of the trial.

  Alice Hamilton had read about it in the paper yesterday. Just a short article on page seven of the Times-Picayune about the trial of Dr. Charles Vicari. The article wasn’t terribly clear, it mentioned an abortion that had gone wrong and that the infant had died, and then the reporter outlined the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973 and that was all.

  But that name had gripped her. Doctor Charles Vicari had been indicted for murder. The name had jumped off the page as if the three words were written for Alice Hamilton, or perhaps since he’d emerged from her past, for Alice Braxton. It had taken a minute for the information to travel across the synapses in her brain and rise to the conscious level. Look here, Alice! This is for you. It was a name she’d been praying she’d forget for over two years. The phone call a few months ago should have alerted her, she realized. But she’d forgotten all about it. Until now.

  Luckily she’d been sitting down when she came across the story. It had transformed an ordinary day into a nightmare. There she was in her own home, minding her own business—relaxing, reading the paper, and eating breakfast—and then . . . the invasion.

  But even more shocking, another name had startled her, too. The prosecutor for the district attorney’s office was Peter Jacobs. She recognized Rebecca’s husband’s name immediately from her file. This was too close—way too close. Someone could be searching for her now.

  So, here she sat at her kitchen table with yesterday’s paper folded to that article and a decision to make. She sat gazing through the window at the elm tree, thinking about what should come next. She’d had a difficult time maintaining composure yesterday at work. Alice decided she had to find out exactly what was going on in the trial.

  So she’d called in sick today—and now sat in her kitchen fighting off a tension headache and wringing her hands. She’d never thought she would cross Charles Vicari’s path again, and she really did not want to see him now.

  She read the article over again once more, and then called for directions to the courthouse. Hanging up the phone, she went into the bedroom, looked into her closet, and pulled out her best dress.

  Leaning toward the mirror, she powdered her face and added some lipstick, and then dressed. When she was ready, she called a taxicab. Then she picked up her black straw hat from the dressing table, a small hat that she’d clung to for thirty-seven years. The hat had net veiling, a half-veil that she could lower over her eyes, or push back, up over the brim, according to her mood. She’d noticed that when she pulled down the veil, people seemed to leave her alone. As if she’d suddenly become invisible. She didn’t care that the hat was out of style, old-fashioned. She’d long ago decided that she’d earned the right not to care.

  Standing before the window while she waited for the taxi, she watched people across the street entering and leaving Ciro’s. When the taxi arrived she put on the hat, and pulled on her short white gloves, picked up her pocketbook and left the apartment, locking the door behind her. There was nothing for it but to do it.

  She told the driver that she was going to the courthouse in Gretna, across the river from downtown, and he shook his head, but then said all right. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. At the courthouse she’d find a place to sit in the back of the room and find out what was going on. And whether this trial would change her life. Again.

  Her head ached and her stomach churned as they rode from Oak Street to Carrolton, Carrolton to St. Charles Avenue, then a few miles down, around and up the ramp onto the freeway and across the Greater New Orleans Bridge to the courthouse in Gretna. Exiting the highway, they turned right on Huey Long Boulevard and eventually drove through a pretty area of creole cottages and shotgun houses. This was a wide street separated by a broad neutral ground; plenty of green grass and a tunnel of old oaks.

  Close to the levee guarding the city of Gretna from the Mississippi River, past a small town square situated between an old post office building and a one-room red train station, she could see the courthouse. The front of the building was made of green glass, as described to her by the woman on the phone who’d given her directions. Just behind the tower was the hulking Parish Prison. The driver hooked a U-turn and stopped.

  She paid and thanked the taxi driver, even though he failed to come around and open the door for a lady. Then, standing on the sidewalk, she halted and took measure of the place. At last, clutching her pocketbook in one hand, she walked up the steps, opened a door and went inside. There, again she halted, and looked about. Crowds of people dressed in business suits rushed past, peeling off right and left, moving fast. Ahead she saw a bank of elevators, with people pushing toward them.

  Pulling the net down
over her eyes, she moved forward. To her right she spotted a desk with a sign that said Information. A gentleman in uniform sat behind it.

  He looked up. “May I help you, ma’am?”

  “I’m here for the trial of Dr. Charles Vicari,” she said. “The paper said it’s starting this morning.”

  He ran his finger down a list then looked up. “That would be courtroom 404, Judge Calvin Morrow.” He stood, pointing as he gave her directions.

  She thanked him and headed off. She would locate a seat in the back of the room, in a corner away from the light, but close to the door. And she would make certain not to stare at Charles Vicari or Eileen Broussard, because she believed that it is true that people can feel your eyes on them when you look too long.

  There was a crowd in front of the elevators, but when she walked up, a kind young man stepped aside, allowing her to enter. As they ascended she told herself that no one ever had to know that she’d come here, and that even if the doctor or Eileen spotted her in the courtroom, there wasn’t much chance they’d recognize her after almost three years.

  Entering the courtroom, she realized she was early. The seats were only half-filled, and most people had crowded toward the front. She spotted Vicari immediately, sitting at a table with someone else on the other side of a railing. His lawyer, she guessed. She looked about, but didn’t see Eileen Broussard.

  Then, holding her pocketbook tight against her chest, Alice Jean Hamilton slipped into the last bench in the rows running down toward that railing. She sidled down to the end, beside the wall, in the corner. She put the purse down beside her. Lifted the veil. Removed her gloves. And then she began to wait.

  At the front of the courtroom, sitting at the prosecution table, Peter and Dooney were settled in and, along with everyone else, waiting for the judge to arrive. To his right Peter could feel Dooney’s tension building, the same simmering cauldron of fear and excitement inside that still hit him on the first day of every big trial. He glanced down at the evidence boxes on the floor. Those were Dooney’s responsibility. Still, he always checked. And all was well.