by D. W. Buffa
“I was struck by her choice of words. ‘You wouldn’t allow him in your room?’
” ‘I made him promise me that she’d never find out. I didn’t want her to be hurt.’
“She was sixteen years old, and she talked like a woman who had been having an affair with her best friend’s husband.
” ‘How can you be sure that she didn’t find out?’
“She dismissed it out of hand. ‘She wouldn’t have kept something like that to herself. She would have done something.’
“I turned toward the jury. ‘The prosecutor claims she didn’t do anything about it because she was having the same kind of relationship with your brother your father was having with you.’
” ‘That’s a joke,’ she said. Her voice was filled with scorn. ‘Gerald and my mother! He’s just trying to get back at everyone.’
“Goldman was on his feet. ‘Objection. Move to strike.’
“Jeffries did not hesitate. ‘Sustained,’ he thundered. ‘The jury will disregard the witness’s last remark.’
“His voice was still echoing off the courtroom walls when I asked, ‘And did your brother ever once so much as suggest to you that something improper was going on with his mother?’
” ‘No, never. I told you. He’s just trying to get back at everyone.’
“Jeffries did not wait to hear the objection Goldman was rising to make. He leaned toward the witness stand. ‘Young lady, I know you’ve been through a lot. But your testimony has to be confined to things you saw or heard. You can’t speculate about what someone might or might not have been doing or why they may have said something. Do you understand?’ he asked firmly.
“She was not like any sixteen-year-old girl you’ve ever seen.
Age meant nothing to her. ‘I understand,’ she replied. ‘I’m not speculating about anything. Gerald told me he was going to get back at everyone.’
“There was a dead silence. His eyes still on her, Jeffries drew back, a scowl on his face. ‘Did it ever occur to you that he wanted to get “back at everyone,” as you put it, because of what was done to him?’
She did not back down. ‘Nothing was done to him,’ she insisted.
” ‘Do you have any more questions of this witness, Mr. Antonelli?’ Jeffries asked, eager to get her off his hands.
“Nodding, I gazed down at the floor, reluctant to begin the series of questions that I knew would be unlike anything anyone in that courtroom had ever heard, questions the answers to which might shatter the last illusions we had about who we were and what we could trust.
” ‘Amy, how old were you when your father first started to do things with you?’
” ‘Eleven,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘That’s when he started to touch me. I was twelve the first time we actually had intercourse.’
“She was sixteen years old, with hair that, depending on the light, looked brown or blond, and with just enough freckles on her face so that even in a dress she had the fresh-scrubbed look of a tomboy who could outrun any kid in her class.
” ‘When this first started,’ I asked, ‘why didn’t you tell your mother? Why didn’t you ask her to make him stop?’
” ‘He was my father,’ she explained. ‘He told me it was the way he could show me how much he loved me. He told me it had to be our secret.’
” ‘That wasn’t the only reason though, was it?’
“Her eyes were fixed on mine, and she did not open her mouth.
We had been over all of this before. We both knew what she was going to say. She kept looking at me, and then I realized what she was doing. She was waiting for me, waiting until she was sure I was ready. She had seen it the first time she told me, the stunned disbelief, the awkward embarrassment, and she did not want that to happen to me again. It had become second nature to treat adults like children. I smiled at her and repeated the question.
” ‘That wasn’t the only reason, was it?’
” ‘No. The real reason is that I didn’t want it to stop. I liked it. That’s what everyone forgets. Sex feels good.’
“It was so deathly quiet in that courtroom that I swear you could have heard a heartbeat if you had been able to take your eyes off this woman-child on the witness stand.
” ‘But despite that, there were times when you wanted it to stop, weren’t there?’
“She hesitated, and beneath that air of worldly self-confidence there was the first glimpse of doubt. No, not doubt, certainty. She knew that it was wrong, and she knew—or she thought she knew—she could have stopped it.
” ‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at her close-clipped schoolgirl hands. ‘Sometimes I’d ask him not to.’
“It was like trespassing on evil, asking those questions. I had the strange sensation of engaging in some utterly depraved private vice.
” ‘What would he do, when you asked him not to?’
“She lifted her head, a lost look in her eyes. ‘He’d leave.’
“We were in the dark, just the two of us, falling down a bottomless black hole. ‘What would happen then?’
” ‘He’d come back.’
” ‘And then?’
” ‘And then he’d sit on the edge of the bed and tell me that he knew I really wanted to, and that it was all right because a lot of people did the same thing; and he’d tell me that he really loved me and that there was nothing to worry about because it was always going to be our secret. And he’d tell me that he’d never do anything I didn’t want him to.’
” ‘And then?’
” ‘And then I’d do what he wanted.’
” ‘But only after he made you believe it was really what you wanted?’
” ‘Yes.’
” ‘You thought it was wrong?’
“With a gesture almost identical to the one her mother had used, she bit her lip and nodded. ‘Yes.’
” ‘But he told you it was all right?’
“Again she nodded. ‘Yes.’
“It was in some ways worse than murder, worse than what we normally think of as rape. He never took her by force; he did something far worse. He made her the accomplice of her own destruction. He made her think herself guilty of her own defile-ment. He taught her pleasure. That is how he stole her innocence.
He made her want what she believed only he could give her. He corrupted her, his own flesh and blood, and so far as I could tell, never gave it a second thought. All the therapy in the world was not going to change it. Everyone in that family was seeing a psychologist—two of them testified at the trial—but they knew nothing about what had really happened to that girl. They droned on forever about ‘dysfunctional relationships,’ and they described the coping mechanisms by which everyone could eventually learn how to adjust to what had happened, but they had nothing to say about the human soul or the evil of incest. Not one word.
There was madness in all of this; madness in what the father had done; madness in what these self-proclaimed experts in human behavior had done or rather failed to do. I am not a religious man, but I tell you without hesitation that you will find more wisdom in the book of Genesis than in all their scholarly texts.
The girl had been forced to eat of the tree of knowledge by her own father, forced to leave the Garden of Eden and the unquestioning innocence of childhood. Even worse, she was made to believe that it was her fault, that she was the one who had committed the original sin.
“She certainly believed that her knowledge of what her father really was made her responsible for what happened to her brother.
” ‘Did your father ever do or say anything that made you think he might do something to Gerald?’
” ‘He told me that sometimes he’d find himself getting aroused.’
” ‘By Gerald?’
” ‘Yes.’
” ‘And do you remember what you said to him about that?’
” ‘I told him if he ever did anything to Gerald, I’d tell mother what he’d been doing with me. He promised he never would.’
> ” ‘Did you believe him?’
“She did not answer, not directly. ‘I tried to take care of Gerald. I spent a lot of time with him. I took him places, even when my friends didn’t want to have a little kid along. I let him know every way I could that he could talk to me about anything he wanted, that I wasn’t just his sister, but his best friend. I told him that parents didn’t always understand what kids were going through.’
” ‘Did Gerald ever say anything that made you think he was doing what he now says he was doing with his mother?’
” ‘No, of course not. He told me everything, and he never said anything like this until …’
” ‘Until?’
“She rubbed the corner of her eye, and then, grasping the arms of the chair, sat straight up, her mouth pressed into a rigid straight line. ‘Until he went to live with my father.’ With a thin, bitter smile, she added, ‘My father is very good at seducing children and getting them to believe whatever he wants them to believe.’
Her eyes moved to her mother, sitting in the chair next to mine, as if she wanted to make sure she was all right. It was the look of a parent checking on a child.
“Goldman was no fool. Most of his cross-examination was short, to the point, and done with a show of reluctance.
” ‘After all the terrible things that have happened, it must be good to know you can count on your mother’s support.’
“She was too smart. She did not say anything. She watched him, waiting for a question.
“Goldman flashed an ingratiating smile. ‘You know what it’s like, don’t you? Not being able to tell anyone, even your own mother, about something that has been done to you?’
“He should have known better, but despite everything he had heard, he still thought he was dealing with someone too young, too inexperienced, to know that questions often have meanings beyond the things they ask.
” ‘I couldn’t tell my mother,’ she replied, fixing him with a withering stare, ‘because it would have hurt her beyond anything anyone could have done. But Gerald could have told me—would have told me—because why would he think it would hurt me?’
“Goldman did not take his eyes off her, but his whole body tensed as he felt himself come under the watchful scrutiny of everyone in the courtroom. He tried to bury her answer beneath another question, but she was too quick for him.
” ‘I watched out for him. Gerald knew I wouldn’t let anything happen to him. And nothing did—not until they let him go live with my father!’
“Goldman’s face was screwed up tighter than a drum. ‘You’d lie to protect your mother, wouldn’t you?’
“It’s the question that never works, and I’ve heard it a thousand times.
” ‘I don’t have to,’ Amy calmly answered.”
I stopped and looked around at the three men gathered at the table with me. Harper, who had been staring into his empty glass, glanced up. Micronitis tapped the crystal of his watch to remind Asa that they were already late. The old man paid no attention.
He took his hands, which had been folded together under his chin, and spread them open, large, soft, and pink, like the smooth surface of a baby’s belly.
“What happened then?” he asked in a quiet, sympathetic voice.
Micronitis pulled his sleeve down over his watch and sank back into his chair.
I could see it in my mind, feel it in my soul, all the pulse-pounding, heart-stopping rhetoric I threw at that jury of strangers, all those years ago, when I stopped doing the things that were expected and started doing what something deep inside my own conscience told me to do.
“I quoted Euripides,” I said out loud, surprised when I heard myself say it. “During closing.”
Micronitis blinked and then moved forward, resting his elbows on the table. The sullen worried look on his face was replaced with an expression of immediate interest.
“What was the quote?” he asked, an eager, expectant smile on his small, pinched mouth.
I remembered not only the quote, but whole sections of a closing argument that had taken nearly two hours. I had worked on it for days, written it out longhand, written it and rewritten it, read it over so often that it echoed in my brain when I tried to sleep; I read it and rehearsed it so many times that it lost all familiarity and began to seem like something I had never seen before. I was certain I would not remember a word of it when I stood up to give it, and determined that even if that happened I would not read anything from the written page, not in front of a jury and a crowded courtroom. No, this had to appear sponta-neous, something I believed in so much that the words came of their own accord. In a real sense, they did. When I began to talk to that jury I forgot all about what I had written, rehearsed, and tried to remember. I forgot it all, and did not forget a word. I had learned it so well that it had become a part of me, something that had gone deeper than my conscious mind. It now had all the force of passion.
The passion was gone, and only the words were left. To repeat them now, without the fire, without the righteous belief in what they meant, seemed awkward and even embarrassing.
Asa saw my hesitation. “Go ahead,” he urged. “You’ll be the only one who might laugh.”
” ‘Oh where is the noble fear of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness and none join—’ “
Micronitis finished it for me. ” ‘And none join in fear of the Gods.’ Iphigeneia at Aulis. You really said that in court?” he asked, looking at me with a new respect.
Dragging his finger back and forth across his lower lip, Asa studied me for a moment. “That was Antonelli’s secret,” he said, with that same shrewd look in his pale blue eyes. There was a wistful tone in his voice, the nostalgia of regret. “Lawyers make the mistake of thinking they have to explain everything to jurors in the simplest possible terms. So they talk down to them, like they’re children. Antonelli always talked to them like there was at least one person on the jury who knew more about the case than he did. He talked to them the way you would talk if you were standing in front of the twelve most serious-minded people on the face of the planet. That’s why you always won, isn’t it? Because you understood that people don’t have to be smart themselves to recognize intelligence.”
I shook my head and shrugged, as if it were something about which I had never given a thought.
“I think Jeffries probably had a different interpretation.”
Asa was too old, and too clear-sighted, to indulge in a lie, even the kind we pass off in polite conversation as a concern for the feelings of other people.
“He thought you were a dangerous person, that you could persuade jurors to do things they shouldn’t, that you corrupted the system.”
Harper Bryce’s eyes widened as he looked at Asa and then at me. “How many times did you try cases in front of him?” he asked.
Asa answered for me. “Just that one time. The Larkin case.”
He turned back to me. “How long was the jury out?”
“Twenty-five minutes.”
Harper’s stomach knocked against the edge of the table as he laughed. “No wonder he thought you corrupted the system. But why was that the only time you ever tried a case in his courtroom?”
Asa had known Jeffries most of his life, and he had known me through my whole career. The story had become as much his as mine.
“It was the case that made Antonelli famous, and part of it was because of what Calvin had done. He threw him in jail for contempt; he took the side of the prosecution every time there was an objection. You heard what he said to the girl when she testified—about how if her brother wanted to get back at people it was because of what his mother had done. About the only thing he didn’t do was tell the jury they were supposed to convict. Calvin had gone too far. It might not have mattered if Antonelli had lost, but Antonelli won, and that made it look like Calvin had lost. That was one thing Calvin could never forgive.
>
He always had to win. Antonelli would have been a fool to try another case in front of him.”
Shoving back from the table, Asa stood up. “Well, he’s gone now,” he said. “He had a brilliant mind, one of the best legal minds I’ve ever encountered. It’s too bad he didn’t have more use for other people.” He glanced at his watch. “Why didn’t you tell me it was getting so late?” he asked, darting a glance at Micronitis before he looked back at me and winked.
After he was gone, Harper bent closer, a wry expression on his face. “Maybe that explains why Jeffries hated you, but why do you still hate him? He threw you in jail for a couple of days, but he was doing you a favor. That’s all anyone talked about, how you showed up in court right from the county jail, looking like some wino off the streets, and asked the same damn question all over again. You became a legend because of what he did. And even if you weren’t as smart as I think you are, it happened too many years ago to still carry a grudge.”
He watched me for a moment before he said, “It wasn’t the Larkin case at all, was it? There was something else, some other reason why you can’t stop hating him, even now, after he’s dead.”
Five
_______
As soon as I saw her leading the funeral party out of the church, her face hidden behind the widow’s black veil, I knew I had to see him. I had always meant to. God knows, I had thought about it often enough, especially when it first happened, when everything fell apart, but there always seemed to be something else I had to do, another case, another trial, something that got in the way. I kept promising myself I would do it, and after a while the promise itself became enough to assure me of my own good intentions. Finally, I managed to put it out of my mind altogether, but then, every so often, I would hear a name that reminded me of his and would convince myself again that this time I would really do it.
If I did not do it now, I never would. It was not just because Jeffries was dead and that Elliott Winston had once been married to his widow. If I did not see him now I would never get over my own sense of guilt, the feeling that what happened to him was in some measure my fault. It was not really my fault, of course; I had nothing to do with it, at least not directly. But I still blamed myself for not seeing what was going on before it was too late. I knew better than almost anyone what Calvin Jeffries was capable of doing.
